FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN: One of our favorite places caught fire in the night...

I woke up early this morning; had to make sure the property was ready for Saturday's business. The TV news was on and I heard--as I poured my first cup of coffee--about a fire in Canton, Tx. 

Freezing in my tracks, I waited to hear details, but all they were saying at that time was that it was near 1st Monday Trade Days area...Then I saw the video and knew for sure.

Of course, the whole town is, more

Canton, Texas 1st Monday
Trade Days, on the first
Monday of every month...

or less, 1st Monday Trade days once a month, and has been for over a hundred years. My worst fears were confirmed

I painted this scene, one of a collection
painted: Impressions of The Mountain
This one is among the first to inspire me
to pick up the brushes and get busy.

later when it was reported that indeed fire had ravaged THE MOUNTAIN, and my heart just sank.

Many of you

The other end of the same street,
now devastated by fire.

have read my blogs about life up on THE MOUNTAIN, where Feathermaye and Yours Truly were sheltered by the many good folks that called the place home--if only for a few days a month, but many full time.

Back in the 1980s an artist named "Wild Willy" (he was a sculptor turned promoter) started up The Mountain.

 He invited several of his artist friends to join his little movement, and like a bunch of kids with scrap lumber and a pocket full of gumption, they began to assemble the grandest bunch of shacks and tree-forts you ever saw.

My wife and I felt the unusual energy of this place when we first set foot on it; magical, whimsical and down right

imaginative. A place filled with fellow starving artists and part-time entrepreneurs with a shared dream and a lot of hopes.

Mountain Cat by Feathermaye

Feathermaye's photography and my own impressionist paintings came to fruition up on that old hill and we came to know so many good people that gladly

linked their lives with ours.

Our very dear friends The Ziebers, Laurie, Dan, and their sons Keith and Randy offered up a roof to put over our

Sugar Britches Night porch

heads when we were laid off two years ago.  It was THE MOUNTAIN that they had only just discovered themselves, and invested in; Sugar Britches on The Mountain, as well as a cute

Mardi Gras B&B

little B&B called The Mardi Gras, where we were housed the first few months at the end of that long, hot summer.

From what we can tell, everything on
the right side of the street and behind
is destroyed...

Later, Laurie insisted we move on into Sugar Britches, where we helped that old building go through many changes, working

side by side with the Ziebe

r family, until the building had evolved into what it is now. Today, Laurie and Dan live right there; they bought the little Gingerbread hou

se next door and that's where Dan and Keith put on Karaoke on 1st Monday Friday and Saturday nights.

From behind Marty's place, the old
board walk is all but ashes

The fire, it seems, broke out somewhere down the lane I painted that summer.  Our good friend Marty, a woman who had been on The Mountain since the beginning, who

More Impressions of The
Mountain, I did a lot of
these as well as a few
commissions folks had me
paint of their buildings

knew Wild Willy himself, and who can tell you more stories about the old days, opened up her hospitality to us often.  For several months of that year she stayed up on the hill and would always come by, or have us come down to use her WiFi, sitting on the open breezeway of her building--that's where I broke Feathermaye's laptop one night when we were the only two people out there (it was mid month and hot and the place was otherwise deserted).

When I saw the first pictures of the fire damage, I knew at once that it was Marty's place I was looking at, all four shops that she and her son owned, tucked into the side of The Mountain, were burned to the ground.

Both Feathermaye and I, even though we were in different rooms at the time, searching for news about the fire, thought about the painting I did of the little street where Marty's places were situated, along with so many others: testaments to a time now long gone.  From Sugar Britches, I would often sit and look down that street, taking in the crazy shapes of buildings and poky-limbed cedar trees pushing up through overgrown oaks all the way down to a lone door, which was the only thing that looked back at me, other than Marty's little white sign.

That door and her sign kept speaking to me until I set up a canvas and painted the street; a street that just invited you to walk down its length, to see what was on the next porch.

Some are already saying that this

will be the end of The Mountain. But, knowing the folks there, and knowing the magic of that place, not to mention the sheer will and determination of so many of the fine folks involved, I'd be willing to wager that this Phoenix will rise from the ashes in some new form.

I've seen the Kemah Boardwalk

(just off the ship channel, down in Houston) rebuild and rebuild, time and again after a big storm knocked it to shreds. My hope is something similar will take place here, where we called home, at least for a magical while.

When it was off market, The Mountain was so quiet, that Feathermaye and I used to sit out on the porch while she ticked away on her laptop and I

played guitar and sang along with the night birds. Like I said: it was is a magical place; where

Waiting In The Wings
photography by
Feathermaye

magnetic ley lines criss-cross and Native American tribes once gathered; where later the settlers came together for want of a place to assemble and trade horses, supplies, pocket knives and stories; a place to go to see someone else's face, in a time when the next neighbor was miles and miles away.

I'm linking my many other blogs that I have archived here at 'as told by', for you to go back and get some idea about this place and how it affected The Fabulous Feathermaye and Yours Truly.  Take your time and look them over; maybe you'll get a little of that magic yourself... 

New Year's Eve Market 2011

Mountain Art Blog

Inspiration on The Mountain

ARTs Cool on The Mountain

A Mountain of Subject Matter

Photo Explosion on The Mountain

The Mountain It's all about the Porch!

B&Bs On The Mountain

People and Places on The Mountain

Calling All Starving Artists

How The Mountain comes to life

First Impressions of The Mountain

There are many more Mountain Blogs.  To find them go to my archive link HERE

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ARK LIFE: What the Hell are we doing and why? Part Deux

So let me make this clear: ARK LIFE can be

lived anywhere, any place; all one needs is what you carry with you...

This is especially good if you are, like Feathermaye and me: starving artists.

Between our writing, painting, photography and jewelry design, we have a lot of keen interests which, along with sixty-five cents, will get us a cup of

"Waiting in The Wings"
Photography by
Feathermaye

coffee...Just not at Starbucks.

The pursuit of ART is not only solitary, it's most often unrewarding, financially.  Ergo, one needs the proverbial day job to pay the expenses, which we try hard to keep minimal.  

S. Bond Herndon's New Novel
Coming Soon

We did a year of cruising through the great wilds of East Texas, taking photos, writing great American Novels, blogging about it all, and selling our wears at one of the oldest swap meets in the

1st Monday Trade Days
Canton, Texas
One of the oldest swap meets
since the late 1850's

country.

This got us a lot of material, but as funding ran low, we had to get back to our jobs: Self-Storage Resident Managers.

For us, it's the perfect fit.  You see, The Fabulous Feathermaye and Yours Truly enjoy each other's company more than anything else, so working side by side, day in and day out, living without neighbors or distractions just works.

Plus, our ARK LIFE STYLE leaves us with

Many of the residences we've been
housed in have huge, open space
great for studio work.  Paint, photography
music recording, we do it all

plenty of space in the apartment (usually included with this job), so we turn that space into a studio.

If you stop by our place to visit, we'll happily set you up on an air mattress--don't knock it, we slept on them for two years--right next to paint canvasses and drop cloths.  You'll get to look through stacks of photos, paintings and we'll probably talk your ears off when we're not watching something on ROKU.

You'll get to dine on fine, Gluten Free cuisine,

and if you want to hit the town, we take the train (station is just behind the property) into downtown to take in museums, music, parks etc. 

It's the simple life, with focus.  

More about that focus, as well as a lot of tips on ARK Living in future posts...

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New Year's Market Days: More Art on The Mountain

Not sure how many others are doing it, but Yours Truly will once again be out on the porch painting during Market weekend.  

Weather Underground says we should remain clear, sunny, highs from 58-65 and lows in the upper 50s.  Real good weather, folks, the kind to make you want to jump in the truck and come to Canton!

The fabulous feathermaye will be working on our papier mache projects--more about that later...

Stay tuned to the blog next week to get your updates from this weekend. 

Remember, ART HAPPENS HERE!
"ART'S COOL"

Shop Canton, experience The Mountain.

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Art Blog: To freely go after your ART, if you dare...

The free pursuit of ART is a demanding task.  Everyone of us who has ever exhibited talent in one artistic form or another understands this, pretty much instinctively.  The comforts of Suburban life add stress to these demands; comfort levels offered to us by the "American Way of Life" pose both logistical, as well as character issues that must be dealt with before we can set out in our pursuit.   


But, once you have cleared the way for you to finally get your ART on, there are a few things to remember...

We should all do well to remember that MOST artists live in obscurity.   Those accepting that fact move on with their WORK, stepping into, perhaps, their true roles in life.  


Today's artists must work their ART, regardless of circumstances (typically among the poorest, financially); it is a magnificant obession that will often collide with life in the 'real world', such as it is...


Artists are attracted to each other, since misery loves company; we find joy simply pushing our elbows together over a bottle of cheap wine; hours pass speaking of perspective, or subject, composition or point of view.  Philosophy is wrapped around our discussions, having understood that most of the great philosophers were also, practically speaking, without great means.


Artists are very familiar with pawn shops and flea markets; possessions are merely funds we carry around and use as long as we can, then sell when survival is at stake.  In the America we find ourselves surrounded by today, ART is, for the most part, too soft a subject to think about buying into.  Lay offs, industrial closings, mortgages that can not be paid and how our childred all seem to have developed A.D.D. are far more important subjects, they are the snarl that kills the ART in most of us.  Few of us ever, move beyond those limitations.


Taking one of Walt Whitman's walk alongside nature with notebook under arm and no care about shaving, apperiantly, is merely a romantic notion, until you try it.  To step out into the raw world without the protection of "The Herd" strikes terror in the hearts of most suburbanites.  The folks one might encounter 'off the grid' are not, generally speaking, the sort you want to find sitting beside you, or sharing a bottle of cheap wine at that cozy bistro table on that favorite sidewalk you know so well... But they are the salt that flavors the world, the subjects of our expert eyes.  


It's ours to record, or illustrate or sing about in one way or another.  We are leaving the details behind that someone, one day, will find and study.

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Photo Blog: Making our Business Sign from green-pickings...

About a week away from our third Market Weekend here on The Mountain, The Fabulous Feathermaye and I finally landed on a name for our new ART Shop:

ART'S COOL

We thought it would be a great time to start working with recycled items; why not start out green?

We walked around The Mountain and picked
up random junk and dead fall...

 

Some stuff, like this old broken table, had to be taken apart...

Once that was done, we assembled it with
other debris to make this...

Really cool (green) sign...

Art really is cool, at Art's Cool
Canton Mountain, Canton Texas


Shop Canton, Experience The Mountain!

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ON THE MOUNTAIN: Inspiration is a very close companion...

On quiet nights, the trees up here will speak to you.  Some here call the phenomenon "The still, small voice", while others nod, take a deep, involuntary breath and...let go the contented sigh.  

You can see the ideas running around behind their eyes; I should know because everyone I met when I first came saw it in mine...and still do.


If you are aware that you are searching, the feeling hits you, as it did us, as soon as you put a foot on the ground here.  It is hallowed ground the many who have been here for years.  


Inspiration, we've come to find, depends upon limitations. The "Slip-stream of consciousness" that artists dip their imaginations into can often harden its approaches, barring entrance until you say the magic word.


We came here with our limitations: Out of work and homeless sums up the situation.  The kindness of friends and the love of family has helped us find this perch, where we can gather what we will before we leap back into whatever life has in store for us.  

We discovered a remarkable truth about this place: despite our limitations, our lack of funds and even the limited ability to cook, eat and do dishes in the same building, our focus keeps gravitating to inspiration, rather than all that might hold us back, circumstantially.

We've found no barrier here.  Rather, we've opened a limitless source. We can dip into these waters at any moment. A constant flood of ideas, continuously scrawled on whiteboards, notepads and even napkins, come like ghosts who've finally found someone who can actually hear what they are saying... Inspiration speaks here.


Not everyone is affected as such.  We've met those who set foot here and can ONLY SEE PROFITS.  Sadly, the rest of us already know they are doomed, and they will, eventually fall away as so many others have over the years since those early days when this place was first conceptualized.

The ghosts of those originals haunt this hill; ghost hunters come on a regular basis to photograph orbs, collect what evidence they can of the beyond; who knows if it's really the ghosts of some artist, or some old settler still looking to trade his horse, or even some Native American who would love to see his sacred grounds left undisturbed.  When you are up here on The Mountain, you can feel the energy, all one needs to do is... Tune in.




Shop Canton, experience The Mountain!




As always, we wish to thank you for following this blog.  You can always find us on facebook as you stumbleupon the web looking for stuff to digg. If you would be sweet and give this one a TWEET!

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ON THE MOUNTAIN: Art's Cool debuts and I try my hand...

I've always wanted to sit outside, on some crowded sidewalk, painting as people come and go around me.  This past Market Days weekend I did just that.

S Bond outside of Art's Cool

For weeks, I had been looking down the street that extends to the left of our porch (Here at the Little Red School House).  There is a door down there, the only thing along the view that is truly Perpendicular to the street. The other doors and windows are all facing the street, and thus nearly hidden from view.  


Just how to paint that special doorway has been on my mind a lot over the weeks leading up to Market.  I took pictures to study, in various lights, and then put together a simple paint kit, something akin to Bob Ross meets Jerry Yarnell and they fight to the death, sort of deal... Anyhow, I had paint, brushes, and a good idea, I hoped.

I figured, quite obviously, that to become successful with ART here on The Mountain, I need to get plenty of material on display.  The Art Buying public can be a fickle lot; one never knows when or where they will be moved to purchase.  I can only count on the fact that THE MOUNTAIN calls people up here in some special way, and that what I'm capturing, hopefully, calls them to take it home with them, a part of The Mountain to call their own.
.
We had a few pieces ready as Market came:

Plus some of the awesomeness that can only be Feathermaye:

as we opened the new studio/shop: Art's Cool...

Sign made entirely of random debris we found laying around on the hill

So, after two afternoons, I had this finished:

Porches on Lazy Days Lane
by S. Bond Herndon

It's clear that we've got a ways to go yet. We need walls full of Mountain, and that's what we'll spend this next month working on...


Once again we thank you for following this blog.  You can always find us on facebook as you stumbleupon looking for stuff to digg.  Please be sweet and give this one a TWEET! 

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