Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 - (Page 3)

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Sartisky, Ph.D. Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light Driving up the dusty grey gravel road winding through the bright green rice fields and beneath the warm yellow light of the sun descending from a crisp blue sky hung with lazy clouds, I saw in the distance the classic bright tin roof of an Acadian country house surrounding by colorful pitched tents and a milling throng of people. I was southwest of Lafayette just outside the modest town of Maurice the third Sunday in May and I was on my way to say good-bye to a friend. The beloved Louisiana painter and photographer Elemore Morgan, Jr. had passed away and his friends were assembling to remember and honor him in an elegant quiet simple ceremony: a moment of silence, a dedication poem by the state Poet Laureate Darrell Bourque and a solo violin envoi by Michael Doucet. Darrell had read from his collection A Blue Boat: Where Land Meets Sky He loves this place he’s fallen into: To view works by the artists mentioned in this column, his skies of smeared lilac, his clouds spun log on to the following websites. by muscled ether, congealed air so newly blue it’s hard to tell it from the sky we knew onc For Elemore Morgan, Jr.: and loved so. After shot-silk sky, what else? http://www.arthurrogergallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=38 All the earth and all that’s creatured in it. Tongues of irises from the swamps, big lazy trees, bells For John Scott: on boats in creeping rivers and cows like peace http://www.leh.org/artofjohnscott/js_index.html flags grazing in the prairies, or lying in wells of cow dreams making milk. He loves the creases and the blur: stalks filled with rice to falling, water rushing from pipes, and a leaf in wind. Leases on anything that takes us to the places these converge, a line in all we see and know, oh holy curve and surge. Years ago, in the first profile I ever wrote about a Louisiana artist, thinking of Emily Dickinson’s idiosyncratic and distinctive voice, in yet another intersection between art and poetry, I described Elemore as painting from a “certain slant of light,” so deftly and uniquely did he capture the Louisiana landscape. Hanging prominently in my dining room is Domed View, a landscape of spring rice fields that Elemore painted from first light until the darkness following dusk such that depending on the intensity of light of light I play on it, its colors actually change. Soft light brings forward a blush of rose, light yellow and green and soft blues, but a brighter light, such as noon, transforms the painting into hot clear yellows, cutting sharp greens, and cold cold blues. Finally, if I pull down the light such as at dusk, the bright colors flee the canvas and surrender to eggplant purple, bruised greens, purples, and deep reds. Indeed, Elemore so totally expropriated that landscape by virtue of his art that driving to his house that Sunday morning I felt as if I were driving into the warp and weave of one of Elemore’s paintings even more than a physical space or place. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night At the farewell to Elemore I forcibly was struck by the monumental warmth and sense of shared sorrow and even joy of the community of people he left behind. In the weeks before his passing, as he struggled to recover from surgery in a Baltimore hospital, family and friends kept him company there and a digital vigil was shared with scores of others via an informal e-mail network. Sadly, it echoed for me with the same tragic vacillations of rally and decline I had only too recently experienced with the struggle to live of another friend and glorious Louisiana painter, John Scott of New Orleans, who mastered and defined the New Orleans urban visual landscape much as Elemore had the rural. As with Elemore, John’s family and friends kept a far-flung community engaged with his heroic efforts to recover from major surgery. In perpetual memorial to John, the Louisiana Humanities Center in New Orleans is now home to the largest permanent collection of his work in the world. With the loss from our company, but never our memory, of these two truly inspirational artists, once again a poet’s words seem appropriate as a farewell. Dylan Thomas, the Welsh bard, penned these words on the occasion of the illness culminating in death of his own beloved father. I read these to my own father and would have to these two wonderful friends had circumstances made it possible. They seem especially appropriate given the art they pursued with such vigor and love: Do not go gentle Into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. —Michael Sartisky, PhD Editor-In-Chief EXECUTIVE EDITOR/ART DIRECTOR David Johnson MANAGING EDITOR John Kemp LAYOUT/DESIGNER Toan Nguyen ASSISTANT DESIGNER Laura Ladendorf COPY EDITOR Anita Yesho CONTRIBUTORS Charles Chamberlain; Michael A. Cowan, Ph.D.; Cheryl Gerber; Jessica Harris, Ph.D.; Gary D. Joiner, Ph.D.; Karen Kingsley, Ph.D.; Karen Leathem, Ph.D.; Michael Lewis; Mark E. Martin; Robert Polidori; Bruce Raeburn, Ph.D.; Tom Sancton; Ben Sandmel; Rebecca Smith; Sue Strachan; Thomas Uskali LEH BOARD OF DIRECTORS Alice G. Pecoraro, Ph.D. Morgan City, Chair M. Cleland Powell III New Orleans, Vice Chair Janet R. Wood Lafayette, Treasurer R. Lewis McHenry, J.D. New Orleans, Secretary Brad Adams, J.D. New Orleans Judy M. Bajoie New Orleans Prof. John Biguenet New Orleans James Carter, J.D. New Orleans V. Thomas Clark Jr., J.D. Baton Rouge Philip C. Earhart Lake Charles Glenda Erwin Shreveport Rosemary Upshaw Ewing Quitman Kenneth Gladish, Ph.D. National Paul M. Haygood, J.D. New Orleans William Jenkins, Ph.D. Baton Rouge Kevin M. Kelly Burnside Sarah Kracke Baton Rouge Henry C. Lacey, Ph.D. New Orleans Melinda Mintz Monroe Anil Nanda, M.D. Shreveport Lawrence N. Powell, Ph.D. New Orleans Drew Ranier, J.D. Lake Charles Margaret M. Ritchey Lafayette Edwin R. Rodriguez, Jr., CFM Metairie Philip A. Rozeman, M.D. Shreveport Mary Ann Sternberg Baton Rouge Renee Vanover Berwick Michael Sartisky, Ph.D. President/Executive Director Summer 2008/LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES 3 http://www.arthurrogergallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=38 http://www.leh.org/artofjohnscott/js_index.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008 Contents Friends Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities George Rodrigue’s Louisiana: Cajuns, Blue Dogs & Beyond Katrina The Historic New Orleans Collection After The Flood Faubourg Marigny: The Creole “Suburb” Preserving New Orleans Jazz, One Generation at a Time: Conversation & Music with Tom Sancton Louisiana Foodways Louisiana Architecture Baton Rouge Photographs, 1863-1910 Jazz Notes The Ogden Museum of Southern Art Louisiana Association of Museums Nature of the “Beast” Louisiana State Museum Bookstand Sound Advice Forum

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Summer 2008

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