OCEAN SPRINGS, AN SMALL TOWN THAT IS ALL ABOUT ART

SHEARWATER POTTERY

Peter Anderson founder of Shearwater
Pottery

Most of family has participated in making Shearwater Pottery.  Peter founded the Pottery with his parents who had moved from New Orleans to Ocean Springs where that had bought a large plot of land on an inlet to the Gulf.  Today many of the descendants of Peter's and Andrew's family still make pottery

Shearwater Pottery show room 

Alligator excellence

Shearwater Pottery show room is natural woods and rustic and speaks of the natural elements of the island it sits on

AAARGGH!

You may be two minds about the African American figures that are for sale,  but they do reflect the time period in which they were created and a culture that existed.  Even Whoopie Goldberg has a collection for her Wall of Shame.  

Pelican who filled his bill as fast as his belly can!

The Anderson family compound is still a working community of artists

Supplies are well stock right now, but disappear fast.

Alphabet cards from  wood block designs

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Springs,+MS/@30.4041945,-88.7894028,13z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x889b8b0855fd698b:0x4269255cf68f01f2?hl=en

THE NEWLY EXPANDED WALTER ANDERSON ART MUSEUM

WALTER ANDERSON ART MUSEUM
AN AMERICAN MASTER/post 1 of 3

New entrance to the Walter Anderson Museum  with the gift shop to the right.
 Photo by Elizabeth Gordon with permission of the museum.                                                                                                      

The stunning new entrance is expansive and majestic.  It opens up to the trees and sky as Walter Anderson would have liked. Nature was  with all its creatures, an  anchor in his life.   In living things he found a world he became almost one with as he lost touch with reality more and more.  He fought mental illness a long time in his life. As he grew older and life challenges harder, he was in and out of mental hospitals like Whitaker in Mississippi. There are even a set of drawings he did of himself and his torment in the facility.  In a way it reminds one of Van Gogh.  They both continued to be highly productive in spite of their mental difficulties Walter Anderson was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia, but his family was told if he had freedom he could function in the world of men.  So the family let him be, he had his own cabin and came and went as he wanted.  In his good periods he would sometimes visit the family and his children, but those times became rarer and rarer and his times away longer and longer. In his era mental illness was not well understood and he was just thought of as the towns crazy person. He had married another artist when times were better and had six children. As he slipped into his own world he saw his family time less and less.

Walter on his skiff sailing to  Hog Island                       Photo with permission of museum

Anderson was born in New Orleans and came from a family of well educated people.  His Mother helped to start Newcombe College. Newcombe also became well known for its school of ceramics and a unique style of pottery.  
He was trained at the Pennsylvania College of Art, and traveled to China and other countries.  The family wanted to raise their children to be artist, so they bought average in Ocean Springs and formed Shearwater Pottery in which all were employed.  Peter, the oldest, ran the pottery and Walter worked developing designs and forms, he called "widgets".  

Walter Anderson's Bicycle

If he was not riding his bike, he was rowing his skiff off to Hog

He was often seen riding his bicycle through the little village of Ocean Springs which drew many artists and writers. 

Detail of Walter Anderson paining of map of bay area of Ocean Springs
Island or Round Island in the Gulf of Mexico.  After his death in 1965 many of his drawings and water colors were found in the sands on the island.  

Hallway from entrance to main part of museum

With the tall ceilings natural lighting pours in from the skylights.
photo by Elizabeth Gordon with permission of the museum.

"BOB" ROWING HIS SKIFF TO HOG ISLAND

Gallery hall way leading to left wing

The Famous Skiff that made many trips to Hog Island in all kinds of weather

Turtle Diptych 1960 watercolor with permission of Walter Anderson Museum

Turtle Diptych 1960 watercolor  with permission of Walter Anderson Museum

Alligator Gar  detail

close up of detail of Alligator Gar

detail of Alligator Gar 1960

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WALTER ANDERSON MUSEUM OF ART

Sailors on the High Sea

HOW DOES YOUR LIFE EFFECT YOUR ART?

Biology 101  by Elizabeth Gordon              Clay tile with photo transfer printing inks   2012      
 
The clay tile above is a piece I created this year at Hyde Park Art Studio.  With my friend and teacher Kathy Pena we experimented and created a type of ceramic ink that we could use on low fire clay.  In this piece I had experimented successfully I think with overlays.  The idea for this piece came from my Mother's love of biology and nature.  She studied science in college and taught biology and chemistry in high school.  She taught me and my brother the love of all living things as children.  She formed stories around different kinds of insects to help us learn about their lives and habits so we would understand them and not be afraid of them.  I grew up fascinated with all insects.  Growing up in a tropical environment like Florida one becomes used to being surrounded by bugs of all kinds.  And more recently spending summers in the mountains of the Blue Ridge Mountains I have widened my knowledge of various insects.  Their colors can be brilliant and their structure complicated and fascinating.  From my Mothers' love of science and nature comes my interest that transfers into my art.  Sometimes it is conscious, other times I think it is not.  If you think deeply about how you grew up, what influenced you, what your parents did, what you were surrounded by..you might surprise yourself with what you discover that influences your art.  Sometimes it can be the most minute of things...we are complex organisms ourselves....where a hint of a smell can whisk us back to a childhood memory...like riding down a gravel road in Mississippi, windows down in a 1940's Hudson and red clay dust whirling in...will I make a piece of art from those memories or have I already?
Think, remember, think, recall, and you may just be amazed!

Wood Carving for Printing by Sean Starwars          photo by elizabeth gordon

ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Rabbit's Moon Studio will be on the road again Wednesday.  We will be going back to the Big Easy (New Orleans) for a week, travel through Mississippi for a few days, and then on to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for a longer period.  So it will be a virtual trip for you as well.  We will be sampling the art and culture of the South as we go.  Get packed and ready, ROAD TRIP!!!  Americans do love a good road trip.  

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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