Tony Reynolds: Issue 1

The Landscape work

The Landscape

I have come to the landscape as an

artist as I’m sure many others have

come…in great awe. And like most

artists, I suspect, I cannot leave well

enough alone. I need not only to look,

observe and celebrate the landscape, I

need to ask some questions and pose

some thoughts.

Having arrived in Arizona in early 2005 I

was at first struck by the stark contrasts

within the state and the obvious

dichotomy between what I thought I

knew of the desert Southwest and what

I was now immersed in.

Although I had just recently come from

Southern California, the middle of the

San Fernando Valley and very close to

Los Angeles, I don’t ever think I felt I

was “from the big city”.

Los Angeles

If not actually rural, my surroundings

were at least sub-urban. Concrete was

not ever- present beneath my feet, I

lived in a house with a place for growing

things not an apartment, cheek by jowl

with other urbanites. All be it small,

there was still wild life

about…occasionally. We breathed…well

the air was cleaner than downtown LA

or as my grandmother had observed, “If

you look straight up you can see blue

sky.”

I was delusional. A compensatory myth I

maintained to protect myself from two

hour commutes, intense crowd

submersion and a view of general

brown-ness.

Our move to Arizona…Actually our

move “to someplace other than

Southern California”, was a long time

coming. I think my wife and I began

thinking about it only a few years after

our wedding. With each vacation or trip

we would “think about” what it would be

like to live elsewhere. But never

actuating that “what if”. You know the

ususal reasons; the kids, the job, the

parents, the cost and the one reason

special to living in Southern California.

“What if we’re wrong and we need to

move back?” “We would need to start all

over; no job, no house (a certainly more

expensive house than the one we would

sell to leave since home prices only go

up in California.” (As I said, we were

delusional; but we had a lot of

company).

As fate would have it our grandson was

born and in of all places, Arizona.

Phoenix

Having helped our son move to the

greater Phoenix area a few years

earlier, I had made the observation that

‘I would never live in such an awful, dry,

pseudo-Los Angeles part of the world’.

The opportunity to take a vacation (the

first in four years) presented itself with

the birth but three days into the stay and

surrounded by Los Angeles on steroids,

bad steroids, and I was ready to kiss the

baby goodbye, pack up the Volvo and

head home for some familiar smog.

“Just go North, a little, Dad,” my son

suggested, “Go see Prescott or Flag.”

Through the haze of high bloodpressure

and a Tums controlled heartburn I could

see my wife of 30 years with that ‘Oh,

hell dear, we’re this far why not take

some more time off, what do have to

lose?” She had said something very

similar about our relationship before

saying yes to my marriage proposal so

who was I to disagree?

We spent a week in Prescott, then

several long weekends back and forth

from So. Cal. Then, no more than a few

months later I resigned from my job as

CEO, my wife resigned and founding

Director of her school and we were

packed up in a moving van, the house in

LA sold, and on our way to a new home

in the center of the state I swore I

wouldn’t be seen dead in. And I certainly

don’t regret that decision at all and no, I

don’t worry about going back.

It’s more than just ‘NOT THE CITY’

Those taking on a new religion or

changing political parties or becoming

citizens of a new country seem to take

on a new fervor and seem to be more

committed to the resulting change that

those born into it. True? I am certainly

not ‘born again’ into rural life but I know I

have an intensity of appreciation that is

similar to that. An appreciation of the

landscape and what it does to those

upon it.

We often speak of rural life being

slower, sometimes laid back, although

that’s phrase I heard as a description of

the frantic beat of Southern California.

There does seem to be more time here

away from the city. It has to do more

with rhythm than pace. Things are still

urgent here. We are still connected and

aware of the whole interconnected,

internetted world, a dollar still only goes

partway here just like everywhere else.

But the space between here and there

allows for reflection, for breathing.

Maybe that’s a good way to think about

the landscape, ‘the space between here

and there’. It’s the journey between the

from and the to. It is the frame and the

stage upon which our lives fit and the

rhythm of the environment we find

ourselves in is a metronome regulating

our hearts.

The Work

My first landscape pieces grew out of

two processes and one personal

directive on how I “do art”. The first

process was that derived from pottery

and clay. I had retired to Prescott with

the idea of making a few dollars doing

pottery in a very visitor oriented town.

Not a totally unrealistic thought, actually.

I honed my skills as a potter, getting

forms to conform to my wishes and

being able to produce “saleable” work.

Form was important as was technique. I

did find out that not only were there a

number of potters in town, many were

and always would be, better than I

would ever be. I had to differentiate

myself from them and so I came to the

second process, the crystalline glaze.

Crystalline glaze work is fairly

specialized both in technique and in

audience. The technique demands an

inordinate amount of attention to firing

the special formulas of glaze in cycles of

high temperature, lower temperature,

high temperature in order to “growth the

crystalline structure” Larger than normal

losses in the firing process are not

uncommon with this work but the

results, spectacular.

As I said, the audience for this work is

somewhat specialized and part of the

“doing” involves educating that audience

and building an appreciation for work

that is out of the mainstream “hippy

stoneware tourist mugs” For a while the

thin porcelain with beautiful crystalline

glazes was a good juxtaposition to the

rugged expressionistic bucolicness of

heavier stoneware mugs, vases and

plates.

Toto

I found that I liked the storytelling

opportunities that art and pottery could

present and so some of my pieces

diverged from classic utilitarianism into

whimsy, narrative and a bent towards

the decidedly un-utilitarian. I also had

begun developing a personal art

directive, that it was more important to

me to do something different, new,

original than it was to be commercially

successful although that certainly wasn’t

shunned. Pieces like “Toto” and

“Tortoise and the Hare” found an eager

audience with their stories , while

pottery based whimsies appealed to

others.

Tortoise and the Hare

The Arizona landscape is well

represented in photography (Arizona

Highways Magazine), painting (George

Phippen and the Cowboy Artists)

drawing and print. Well respected as a

genre, well practiced by hundreds if not

thousands of visual artists and

celebrated by western writers. For the

most part though, any mention or hint of

the landscape in sculpture is as a

supporting role to the horse, the

cowboy, the native American. I wanted

to address that vacuum and challenged

myself to look to my own art to

represent the landscape as a main

character rather than a supporting role.

Within the structure I had been working,

porcelain forms with a overglaze of

crystalline mysteries I approached the

challenge in a series of abstracted

landscapes. I felt that trying to capture

the essence of the landscape from a

realist or naturalized approach,

especially in porcelain and a gaudy

glaze would lead to kitsch at the very

least. Abstraction and storytelling might

lead elsewhere. The glaze would step

into the background, subdued and

secondary and naked, iconic house

forms grouped around or near trees cut

with a jeweler’s saw from copper, steel

or silver would provide the narrative.

These wouldn’t be Arizona specific but

rather “Everyman” abstracts of the

landscape.

Five Trees, Seven Houses

A common theme, the incursion of

development into the forested

landscape. Loss of the primal base, the

huddling of society into neighborhoods,

the cookie cutter choices of dwelling

versus the uniqueness of the tree, any

tree.

Some pieces struck my audience in

personal ways like the mother who

chose the piece “Acacia” for her

daughter and new husband because it

represented to her the joining of two

lives.

Acacia

A word about the narrative or genesis of

my work. Ambiguous. I have learned

that the vision or concepts of work that I

begin with rarely flow through execution

and final presentation totally intact.

There may be a thread, a sinew

contained within but even that fades as

a new set of eyes and hands takes in

the piece. For me, as the maker, the

piece will present itself in one persona.

To others, many varied flavors and

perspectives. Even as my work has

progressed through a more realistic set

of work, I expect this rubric to stand

true.

Mountain Village in the Trees

After a while of developing this series I

began a more “naturalistic” approach

and looked to form as a central focus.

The adopting of a more realist approach

opened up the opportunity to look at

landscape forms as sculptural

abstractions. The approach changed,

the materials changed to raw fired and

waxed redware and the work began to

become heavier, rooted deep in the

earth.

Canyon

Courthouse, Sedona

Spire

Mitten

Peavine Trail

Grove

Phallacy

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