On this Thanksgiving Day, it is timely to reflect on how my creative life has been enriched by blogging. A vibrant online community provides encouragement, education, accountability, problem-solving and critique yielding true friendships all around the world. While I regard my blog as primarily a means of self-expression and personal record-keeping, sharing online has raised my profile and provided many opportunities, sometimes from unexpected quarters. You never know who is reading your blog!
Four years ago, I wrote a post about post about time management and included some photos of Father Time and the Maiden, a redwood sculpture from 1866 that adorns the cupola of the Savings Bank/Masonic Hall in Mendocino, California. Art historian Lynne Adele found my photos and I am thrilled that one is featured in her new book As Above, So Below: Art of the American Fraternal Society, 1850-1930
The book is substantial – 10 x 10in, 288 pages. It is beautifully presented with gilt embossed cloth boards under the paper dust jacket and with 238 black and white and color photos.
I haven’t read it from cover to cover yet but already I have a new appreciation of the rich vein of art created during the “golden age” of the American fraternal society and the thoughtful decoding by Adele and her co-author Bruce Lee Webb. As David Byrne (yes, the Talking Heads David Byrne) remarks in the foreward:
“So, here we are in 1900, people all across the county in thousands of small towns…toiling away making weird and beautiful stuff. A creative explosion. Democratic and non-elitist. Ordinary people enacting rituals that reaffirmed their common values…There’s an inspiring and wacky solemnity in these organizations—high values reinforced through pageantry and performance in an ecumenical social setting—which deep down must also have been a whole lot of fun. Now it’s as if that foundational Other America, that underpinning of the America we know, has gradually eroded, and here we remain, living in a world that is a mere shell, a movie set, of the world that made our world manifest, that brought it into being, and all we have left are these perplexing masks, banners, and costumes to puzzle over.”
For the textile enthusiast, there is much to enjoy in this book. There’s a whole chapter on banners and another on costumes and regalia including parade dress and aprons. And, yes, there are even quilts featuring masonic symbols.
PS: If this has piqued your curiosity, I see that University of Texas Press is currently offering a 33% discount on As Above, So Below -US$40.20 down from US$60.
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