Columbia Restaurant/Ybor City/Tampa

Mississippi Sunset and Gravel Road

Google image /Greg Cartmell/Painting

Cuban Bread Vendor, Ybor City/Florida

A Sense of Place




No matter who we are or where we are we all have a sense of belonging to an area we grew up in or one we claim as our own.  


You may hail from the desert, the mountains, the beach or the tropics it becomes a part of you.  It is more than the name of the village, town or country you come from or live in now.  It is a part of your soul, it is a part of your being whether you choose for it to be or not.  You can feel good about it or be repelled by it, but it is a part of you.  The brain is such that it records and reflects your experiences.  I think we are also finding out with quantum physics that time and place are much different places that we have ever perceived before.  
Artists are sensitives.  They pick up so many different senses on so many levels that people at times refer to us as shamans in our ability to reflect and express the world and environment we live it.  

Highway Men/ African American Artist of Florida

Here is a personal example of what I am referring to.....I was born in the red clay fields of North Eastern Mississippi not long after the end of WWII in a time when civil rights had not yet happened.  I remember the people, the place, the time in pictures in my mind, but more so I remember the smell, the glint of the sun, the feel of the damp humid cold winters, the smell of a hot iron hitting starch with a hiss, red clay on my shoes, flies stuck of fly paper, flood water lapping upon the furnace, the smell of cigarets and pot belly fires in general stores, the lilt of a Southern drawl, the sound of black gospel music on the radio, the whirlpools in the river where moccasins lurked, and the sound of a cane pole lure hitting the water hunting for catfish....I moved when I was 7 to the tropical beaches and palm fronded landscaped of Florida to a multicultural town of Cuban, Italian, and Spanish immigrants and languages as foreign to my ears as the food odors that wafted from the cafes.  

Bette Saar, Artist

It all became a part of me, and became a part of my art, how I express my ideas and self in this world.  You also will remember a smell or the toss of the wind in your hair or the feel of the sun as your walked with your Mother or Father or Brother...you may remember your Grandmothers gnarled hands or the smell of wood in your Grandfathers shop... the sounds of the subway or vendors yelling out in the market, or the feel of sand between your toes as you walk the beach....it is our human experience.  We feel and sense our environment. 

Magnolia Bloom/Mississippi

 I can reject the prejudice I remember as a young child in Mississippi with the smells of the men's white starched shirts as they yelled out, get back boy to a young black man who happened to be opening a door to a my Dad's store before them.  I can have a senseless physical reaction to a place because of a memory associated with it, but it will always be a part of me, as well as, the good and tender moments.  They are however more than memory....if you are like me you have flash back triggered by a smell, a sound or sensation...back to another time and place or emotion.  It is a part of you, it is your sense of place.  If time is not linear as The String theory suggests...if we can cross from one time to other without knowing...it opens up a whole different perspective of place and our senses.  

Euodora Welty, Wrtier/Photographer/ Mississippi 

Tomas Hart Benton/Art of the South

My only objective in writing this piece is to foster creative thinking and how artists as sensitive people express and reflect the environments they move through.  I would appreciate any feed back or further discussion this may generate.  You may leave a comment in the blog or email me directly at rabbits5@aol.com.
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