Soon David arrived and off we went on his vintage 1997 BMW 650 Enduro. Stopping at the Carthage Deli on the Square, over an early dinner we chose our ride’s destination then headed east. Gliding past Kellogg Lake and her lively fountain sending up a bevy of sprays, I happily remembered another eastward trip we made some months ago to the same destination as this evening’s.

Back then on a late January afternoon with light fast fading, two or so miles northeast of Carthage, just off Route 66, David and I arrived at of the old home place of Belle Starr. We were there to fetch one of our well-known local celebrities.

According to Wikipedia, “Myra Maybelle Shirley Reed Starr, better known as Belle Starr, was a notorious American outlaw who associated with the James–Younger Gang and other outlaws. In 1883 she was convicted of the serious crime of horse theft. In a case that is still officially unsolved, Belle Starr was fatally shot in 1889.
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Obviously we were not there to pick up Belle. Rather we were waiting for another of our town’s best known personalities. Our mission was to gather and to deliver him to be honored at the Carthage Chamber of Commerce Annual Awards gala.

Dressed in a subduely stunning silver lamé tea-length sheath, Rose, our celebrity’s lovely wife, was first to emerge onto the porch of their home, Belle Starr’s restored house. Lowell Davis, soon to be named Artist-of-the-Year, then appeared in his signature flat driving cap, a woolly plaid muffler draped above his sport coat and black turtleneck he had paired with jeans. As Sophie our granddaughter would say, the two together “looked quite fashion-y!”

At the Awards Banquet, another local artist hero, Andy Thomas, gave a touching tribute as he called Lowell to the stage to the applause of a standing ovation. “He’s done so much for Carthage!” Andy declared. “His work has depicted farm life in America. Thousands and thousands of people from across America have come to Carthage to visit him. They still visit him. You can’t go out and visit without being interrupted by someone who wants to meet him. He is in my eyes the greatest artist I have ever known. He’s one of the greatest people I’ve ever known, and I’ve known some great people.”

Great people attract fans. Lowell is no exception. Lowell is a magnet! On almost any day you can visit his Facebook page and see new photos of Lowell at home spending time with guests. They come to see Lowell, and they come to see Red Oak II, the enchanting, artful village he has created.

Red Oak II (located about eighteen miles from the “old” Red Oak) exists today as Lowell’s painstaking re-creation of the original, where he spent his boyhood before going out into the world. The first Red Oak, Missouri, like many other rural agricultural towns across the country, started to fade sometime after World War II when people began to move to the cities. In the 1970’s, Lowell returned home to find his beloved hometown all but vanished.

What did he do to assuage the loss of the place and the simpler times so dear to him? He made art—his paintings and sculptures and Red Oak II. Lowell found and bought homes and businesses from the original Red Oak town site and other lost villages; he moved them to Red Oak II; and he restored their “grandeur”.

With respect for their evening privacy, David and I left off paying a call to Lowell and Rose and began our walkabout. We admired the old vehicles randomly scattered about as though frozen in time; their Belle Star House, a Phillips 66 station and an old schoolhouse; a feed store, the church and a diner; and a town hall, jail and several homes. Two buildings of special personal significance for Lowell are the General Store run by Lowell’s father and where he learned to sculpt and paint and the blacksmith shop where his great-grandfather once practiced his trade.

​As Lowell’s chickens scurried back and forth across the dirt track before us, we were reminded that our own flock would soon be ready to be shut in their coop for the night. Donning our helmets we climbed back on the Beemer. Passing the Belle Star cottage we delighted at our celebrity sighting. Lowell was sitting on his porch, wearing his flat driving cap and a cravat smartly knotted at his neck. He smiled and raised his fly swatter in a wave as we passed by to start our journey home.

I don’t know. I’m too early dinner hungry to make a choice, so we stop in at the art embellished Deli, place our order with ever-friendly Christina and Nathan Brown and sit in the sawed-in-two, chrome-loaded, fin-tailed, hot pink (‘60?/’61?) Chrysler where we admire the fabulous hot pink colors of the potted bugambilia sitting in the giant picture window framing a sumptuous view of our majestic Jasper County Courthouse.

Our wait on the Chrysler’s bench seats was brief, but did we really order all the food that’s delivered to our table? A grilled Reuben to share (another as a half-price special to take home), two bags of chips (sea salt are our faves), a complimentary Tuesday brownie with colorful sprinkles, two of Christina’s homemade, mouth-watering cookies, two pieces of homemade pie—crusted cherry and creamy mint chocolate—because we couldn’t decide, two cappuccinos in clear glass mugs and a cappuccino ice cream shake topped with a scarlet stemmed cherry for David. Oh, my! Oh, my! How we do like to eat!

We finish up and pack our take home in the motorcycle carrier, strap on helmets and off we go…but I’m running out of word space to tell of our remarkable art adventuring. Our destination story will have to wait for a future Art Notes.

Today I want to tell you about another dining-and-art-viewing favorite this coming week. The exciting artCentral 2019 Membership Picnic and Exhibition will open Friday, May 31, 2019, with a celebratory feast beneath the beautiful canopy of old growth trees on the lawn of Hyde House backdropped by the enchanting artist murals painted on artCentral’s Great Wall including the newest mural by aspiring young artists at artCamp.

This is a much anticipated annual happening when the artist members of artCentral really strut their stuff and artCentral supporting patrons turn out to celebrate the wealth of talent that is artCentral. If you’re not already an artCentral member come to the party anyway! We’ll be happy to sign you up for a membership. The festivities commence at 6:00 p.m. with an al fresco spread at $5.00 for a dinner to best any other you’ll locally source. The tastiest fried chicken in all of Carthage will be the catered entrée from Sirloin Stockade complimented with sides and desserts brought by artCentral members who are definitely among the best of all regional cooks.

As the partaking and visiting wind down the evening’s big excitement will crank up with the announcement of the art and artists tapped for special recognition and receipt of generous cash prizes by artCentral’s distinguished jurors—our Carthage hero and famous watercolorist, Jerry Ellis, and Beth Simmons, Director of the McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation and an avid art collector with an astute eye for distinctive creativity.

This stunning exhibition is made possible by the generous underwriting of the McCune-Brooks Healthcare Foundation.
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Take your own arty ride to artCentral, and you’ll see why our excited anticipation is on the rise about art in our small town in mid-America!

While we are teaching children they are teaching us. As our young, treasured sages, they remind us how to look and see with our eyes and our hearts—eyes and hearts that are fresh and intuitive, inquisitive and curious. They show us how to say and tell what we see through our appreciating and making and sharing works of art informed by our feelings.

As grownups conditioned by experience and education, we may become more sophisticated in what we choose to see and in how we approach our looking and expressing, but always the heart of an uninhibited, lyrical child beats deep within each of us.
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At the Heart of artCentral is artCamp where uninhibited, lyrical children fill Hyde House with their love for art and their art-making laced with laughter. Yes! artCamp is coming for two weeks, Mondays through Fridays, July 8-12 and July 14-19, 2019! Curriculum and registration forms may be picked up at venues around Carthage and Joplin and at artCentral. They’re also available online at https://www.artcentralcarthage.org/artcamp-2019 where you’ll find all the fun artCamp facts.

At artCentral’s recent Board and Annual Membership Meetings officers were elected for our 2019-2020 year. With tremendous gratitude we extend appreciation to Jackie Boyer, who as president has led the board and artCentral to ever more expansion and strength during her past two-years in office. Thankfully Jackie will stay on to serve on the board and contribute with her unflagging enthusiasm. Our wise financial adviser, Lonnie Heckmaster, will continue in his role as treasurer, while many-talented Jane Ballard assumes the responsibilities of our secretary. Betsy Flanigan is stepping up to fill the presidency role.

Betsy’s positive outlook, her years of philanthropic experience, her “this isn’t hard” attitude, her beautiful smile and bright laughter and her multi-skilled tool box make tackling any task a doable pleasure with her, no matter how large the challenge or how steep the learning curve. With all my heart I thank Betsy for taking on artCentral’s presidency and sharing her time and talents so very generously.
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Betsy became my faithful side kick, or as her husband Bren likes to say my “work spouse”, as over the past several months we developed artCentral’s Give 4ART campaign that was rolled out for May’s Give Carthage Day sponsored by the Carthage Community Foundation with the expert leadership of Heather Goff Collier. Together Betsy and I wrote letters, crafted emails, developed posts for social media and attended educational workshops to help us enhance our fundraising skills.

At the Heart of artCentral are the generous artCentral Members and Community Supporters who stepped up to help artCentral continue to bring grand art to our small town. 

ZHANG HUAN
Three Legged Buddha | 2007
 
The work of Zhang Huan (Chinese, born 1965) engages with Buddhist philosophy and rituals and with the artist’s notion that the contemporary condition is continually revitalized through an engagement with the past. Three Legged Buddha—a copper and steel sculpture standing twenty-eight feet high and weighing more than twelve tons—represents the bottom half of a sprawling, three-legged figure, one of whose feet rests on an eight-foot-high human head that appears to be either emerging from or sinking into the earth. The work is comprised of nine sections of copper “skin,” each with an interior steel armature, held together with bolts and welds.
While the legs of Three Legged Buddha are modeled closely after fragments of bronze Buddha sculptures that Zhang encountered on a trip to Tibet in 2005, the sculpture’s face—visible only from the nostrils upward—is a self-portrait. Zhang folds himself into his creation, much as he took his own body as subject in the 1990s, when he came to prominence for performance-based work. Three Legged Buddha further alludes to performance and to the process of making a sculpture in both the perforations and hatches on the copper surface. Zhang designed the hatches to provide access to the sculpture’s interior so that incense might be burned inside, with the resultant smoke emanating through holes in the Buddha’s toes and through the head’s open nostrils and eyes.
https://stormking.org/artist/zhang-huan/

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STORM KING ART CENTER

Once upon a time not so very long ago, my husband David and I had an artful, giant-filled adventure when we visited Storm King Art Center, an expansive, 500 acre outdoor museum and sculpture park nestled on gently curated hilltops and in miniature patchwork meadows in New York’s idyllic Hudson Valley.
 
Since 1960 Storm King has been dedicated to stewarding the highlands, lowlands and forests of the center’s site and surrounding landscape. The first acquired sculptures were placed in a formal garden outside the Museum Building, originally a large, stone and slate-roofed residence built in 1935 as though modeled on a storybook illustration.
 
Storm King supports renowned giants of the art world—modern and contemporary artists and some of their most ambitious outdoor works. Each work is carefully sited as part of a vast visual fabric. More information on the collection can be found at collections.stormking.org.
 
Our spring day visit was fair with hints of blue heavens shining from behind dramatically jostling rain-laden clouds. Our hearts were happy. Our eyes eager for discovery.
 
Journeying north from Ridgewood, New Jersey, our east-coast-traffic-experienced driver speeded over the Palisades Interstate Parkway then slowed to wind on old two lane roadways threading through villages made quaint with Victorian cottages and stacked stone walls and brooks that seemed to be singing.
 
Our in-search-of-art-and-giants companions were our two granddaughters—Sophie, almost six-years-old, and Xandie, just six-months—and their adventuresome, art-loving mom, Audrey. We arrived early morning well-equipped with extra wraps and an all-terrain stroller for the baby. Yes, our family believes no one’s ever too young or too old to engage in artful adventuring and giant stalking. To find terrific art and giants outdoors is awesome!
 
Storm King Art Center’s new season was just opening. The old growth trees were just beginning to leaf out, so the vistas were wide and stretched far across the manicured park to the distant mountains. Young trees thoughtfully arranged—a copse here, a bosky there—offered bouquets of soft spring-green textures contrasting with the massive, heavy art works constructed of media chosen to endure outdoor elements.
 
Each in our art-seeking, traveling party had a special role to play. Mine was as family photographer and documentarian;  Audrey, our capable driver and guide to our artful destination, multi-tasked mommie duties while keeping us loosely organized and pointed toward must-see installations; Baby Xandie simply smiled, napped, cooed and was our all-day darling; Sophie, who always runs or skips and never walks, kept us briskly, exuberantly moving; and David provided tons of Grandpère fun while serving as Sophie’s personal Sherpa as he uphill-pushed the baby’s stroller on steep inclines.
 
Storm King is about the serious business of preserving art for future generations to come. There are even cautions posted in the lavatories explaining the “no touch” policy, because natural oils, dirt, sunscreen, bug spray, hand sanitizer or lotion on our hands can irreparably damage the surface of sculptures. Visitors are encouraged to look but not to touch or climb. As exceptions, there are select works designated for interaction.
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The interactive “Momo Taro” by Isamu Noguchi is the first sculpture to which Sophie ran for her initial photo op. Noguchi visited Storm King in 1977, ​surveyed the landscape, selected a site, then ​returned to his studio

​Another family favorite was Alyson Shotz’s “Mirror Fence”—a simple picket fence that magically reflects the minutia of the landscape.

​When from the top of a lawn sidekicks Sophie and David saw a sculpture below that appeared too far and slow to reach by following the long paved path, simultaneously they stretched out on the grass and began to roll down-down-down the slope, their arms and legs and laughter flying all around them as they 

came to rest ​​at the feet of our favorite giant in all of Storm King—the huge “Three Legged Buddha” (2007) by Zhang Huan!

​Yes, once upon a time not so long ago we visited Storm King Art Center with three most delightful companions. We’ve brought home many happy memories and pictures of art and giants—enough to fill a storybook!  We should write one!