July 20, 2010

In the research for From Ireland With Letters, I have been looking at the
Giotto Frescos in the Bardi Chapel. I will need to confirm this but it looks
as if the overpainting was removed in 1852, and then the frescoes were restored
by Gaetano Bianchi. This is what Hiram Powers might have seen in progress.
But, the restoration did not exactly follow the original, and in 1959, the
"restorations" were removed, so now in the Bardi Chapel, Giotto's paintings
of the life of St Francis are as close to the original as possible.

Powers' early years in Florence are where I will begin writing, but am also
continuing on the trail of Walter Power in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Had envisioned him stepping off a ship in 1654, the year of his arrival,
but it is more likely that he was stolen from his family and sold off the
ship when he arrived. It would not had been an easy passage.

I had wondered how he worshipped, if as presumed, he was Catholic, and found
that in 1647, a Puritain statute forbade Catholic Priests and Jesuit orders
from entering the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The punishment for the first offence
was banishment; the punishment for the second offense was execution.

In the Catholic Encyclopedia, there is an explanation as to why many of the early
Irish in America appear to have English names and why there is a discrepency in
the records of where they came from:

"Near the close of the reign of Charles I, however, the forced emigration of the
Irish brought many of that race to these shores; their number is hard to estimate,
first, because the law made it obligatory that all sailings must take place from
English ports, so that there are no records of those who came from Ireland with
English sailing registry; secondly, because the law, under heavy penalties, obliged
all Irishmen in certain towns of Ireland to take English surnames--the names of some
small town, of a colour, of a particular trade or office, or of a certain art or craft.
Children in Ireland were separated forcibly from their parents and under new names sent
into the colonies. Men and women, from Cork and its vicinity, were openly sold into
slavery for America."

Had not expected the research for this work to be so harrowing.

On Friday, I went for a painting hike in Marin. A fine day, and I painted a cluster of pine
trees with blue sky in the background, as I sat in the green grass and enjoyed being in a
lovely place. Bought some cheese on the way home and had a late lunch of bread and cheese at home.

July 27, 2010

Am about ready to begin outlining the plot of From Ireland with Letters. At the moment,
(sometimes this changes for various reasons) the main characters are Máire Megan Powers,
an Irish musician who is researching her family background for a song cycle about early Irish
immigrants to America and Liam, an art historian who is researching Hiram Powers. They are
named for Walter Power's first born son William and his wife, Mary, but are not related to
each other. In Ireland, there is a special name for the Virgin Mary, Muire, and that name
cannot be used. Thus, Máire. Liam's family came to America during the potato famine,
which will also provide a continuity of narrative of the Irish in America. (Haven't yet
decided on his last name.)

Am thinking about a structure somewhat similar to that I designed for The Yellow Bowl where there
are parallel streams of text that intersect. Narrative tension will be created by Máire and Liam's
separate narratives, their meeting, and the way they and their narratives eventually come together.

For Irish Music background, I'm reading Irish musicologist Chevalier Grattan Flood's
A History of Irish Music. (Dublin, Browne and Nolan, 1906)

A paper by Robert E. West confirms the fact that British records concealed both the original ports of
departure and the names of the passengers on Irish Slave ships. (Robert E. West, PEC Illinois
State Director "England's Irish Slaves", originally published in the newsletter of the
Political Education Committee, (PEC) American Ireland Education Foundation.)

Looked at a photograph of Santa Croce and saw where Hiram Powers would walk to
see the in progress restoration of Giotto's work in the Bardi Chapel. Thought about the
Italian Theory Composers (while working on Authoring Software) and found that
Eleonora M. Beck has done some research on the connections between Marchetto da Padova's
music and theory and Giotto's work in the Arena and Scrovegni Chapels.

A lot of research for From Ireland With Letters; much more to do,
but today I went to a cafe, sat outdoors and began writing.
It was wonderful to actually start on a new work.

August 6, 2010

Once a narrative is begun, creating the characters and their story becomes a fine part
of a writer's life. However, the preliminary writing is exploratory, by which I mean
that it may evolve as the story is created; the words and cadence are not yet
polished; the story may change.

I have just begun to write about Máire Powers:

The fiddle was on the table beside her.
She should perhaps return it to its case,
but she prefered to play the music as she wrote it.
She picked up her fiddle and played a line of melody,
fitting the melody to the words she had written.
Then carefully she transcribed the music on score paper.
Wrote the words underneath.
It was a beginning.

The story was continually changing as she researched it,
and she was aware that she might have to start again.
But the weeks of research had been difficult,
and she wanted to hear some music.

Although I did not know this until I looked up Irish musician and musicologist
Chevalier Grattan Flood, today is the anniversary of his death on August 6, 1928.
In remembrance of his remarkable contribution to a reclaiming of Irish cultural history,
this story, one of many continuances of Irish music, begins.

In addition to a library copy of Flood's 1906 A History of Irish Music,
I also have the shorter version published a few years later, so as to reach
a wider audience: Sketch of Irish Musical History - A Compact Record of the
Progress of Music During 1000 Years.

Sketch of Irish Musical History begins with a drawing of the
1621 Fitzgerald Harp and is dedicated to:

"the musical sons and daughters of Ireland
scattered all over the globe -- the children
of the "Land of Song"

August 12, 2010

As the writing for From Ireland With Letters continues, Liam is in his University office looking at a
photo of Giovanni Dupré's statue of Giotto in a niche in the Uffizi in Florence and
at a photograph of the statue of Benjamin Franklin that Hiram Powers created for the
Capital building in Washington.

If he hadn't been side-tracked by the restoration of Giotto's Bardi Chapel frescoes, he might
never have discovered Dupré's 1845 sculpture of Giotto. It was exactly what he was looking
for. The two works are superficially nothing alike, yet it is possible to see the influence of
contemporary 19th century Italian sculptors on Powers' work and perhaps Powers may also have
been influential on their work. The contemporary dress: Giotto is not wearing the customary
neoclassical toga in Dupré's sculpture; Powers actually borrowed some of Franklin's clothing
from his descendents to create his sculpture; the woodcarved sculpture feel to the way the
clothes flow: Dupré was the son of a woodcarver. One cannot always accurately know
how artists influence each other At its best, it is a fine process of sharing the development
of styles. (with respect for individual vision)

The possible influence of the work of Italian scuptor Antonio Canova on Powers' The Greek Slave
is also of interest. But that comes later in the story.

Last week Indian food with art friends; this week beer with my son.

On the BBC's Composer of the Week, Donald Macleod devoted an entire week
to New Hampshire-born composer Amy Beach, and I heard for the first time her
Romantic Gaelic Symphony, recorded by the Detroit Symphony.

And on "Jerry Day", I went for a hike, worked on the finishing carpentry for
the June trails book, and listened to an historic Grateful Dead concert on the Internet Archives.

August 21, 2010

Spent some time last week tracing the genealogy of the family of Trial Shepherd
the woman whom Walter Power married in 1660 or 1661, wondering how a young man,
who had probably been an indentured slave in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony,
married the daughter of early Massachusetts Puritan settlers.

She was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts on December 19, 1641. Her Father was Ralph Shepherd,
probably born in 1606 at Limeshouse, Stepney, Middlesex, England. Her Mother was
Thanklord Perkins Shepherd, born in England in 1612. Ralph and Thanklord were married
at St. Bride's in London on May 21, 1632. They sailed to Massachusetts on the Abigail
and arrived in Boston in July 1635. Trial had four brothers: Thomas, Isaac, Abraham,
and Jacob, and one younger sister, whose name was Thanks.

At this point the story is still conjecture, as is the story told by Máire Powers, an
Irish American Fiddler who is writing a romantic song cycle on her Powers family in America.
In her ballad, Walter and Trial are very much in love and find a way to spend their
lives together. They are both, so the story goes, brave, remarkable, and resourceful. And
Trial's parents are tolerant for the era, eventually helping the young couple to purchase
land and make their home further West in what was then Concord.

The details of how they met and fell in love have not yet been told. But we do know that
there was a Puritan statute enacted in 1642 that said that if a man and woman
made love without being married "they shall be punished either by enjoyning to Marriage,
or Fine, or corporall punishment." And so, Máire Powers relates, Walter and Trial
made love, made it be known, and were married. Or perhaps, the times being what they were,
they only said that they made love in order to get married.

This is a true story. According to a transcript of the 1661 Middlesex Court Records, Walter and Trial
were "convicted of fornication by them committed together before marriage". They were married
by the time their conviction for violating Puritan statute 23 came to Court, but Walter had
to be in the words of the Court: "openly whipped with 15 stripes by the constable of Cambridge &
to pay a fine of fifty shillings for his wife or else she to be whipped also." The Court also
records that Trail's Father Ralph appeared in Court, and paid the fifty shillings to Middlesex
County Court "in behalf of his son-in-law".

Among other intertwining threads of research this in the past week, I have also read about
the Irish Revival in Boston -- how Boston College hired Irish fiddler Séamus Connolly
to head its Irish Music Department, how Boston College created The Irish Music Archives.

And I also read how Hiram Powers began working in the reading room of Cincinnati Hotel
at age 15. He had access to newspapers from all parts of the country, which was important
because he did not have much education. His peer, 19th Century sculptor Horatio Greenough,
had studied at Phillips Andover Academy and at Harvard University. Meanwhile, at the Cincinnati
Hotel, Hiram's only remuneration was his board, and he was forced to leave the job because
he had to wear decent clothes and had no money to buy them. In 1823, he became an apprentice
to Luman Watson's clock and organ factory, where he invented a new machine for cutting clock
wheels, made an improvment in the organ reed-stop, and created in wax the figures of trumpeters
and bellringers.

It is a Renaissance story about a man, who later went to Florence, Italy,
and became one of the most famous 19th century American-born sculptors.

I also now need to get an facsimile of Middlesex Court record MCR 1:189; MCF Folio #28,
remembering as I search for the address, that my Father, W. Langdon Powers, was Assistant District
Attorney of Middlesex, County.

August 30, 2010

Thinking about the construction of Máire Powers' narrative about
Walter Power and Trial Shepherd, I turned again to Flood's A History
of Irish Music and in particular to his quoting of Irish artist and
musician George Petrie's description of the sonata-like construction
of ancient Irish songs:

"These melodies are all in triple or three-four time,
and consist of two parts, or strains, of eight bars each,
and the same number of phrases, divided into two sections.
Of these sections, the second of the first part is, generally,
a repetition -- sometimes however, slightly modified --
of the section preceding; and the second section of the
second part is usually a repetition of the second section
of the first part -- sometimes also modified in the first,
or even the first and second phrases -- but as usual in
all Irish melodies, always agreeing with it in closing cadence."*

A good starting point, so it is time to listen to music.

It is also a good time to walk, paint and draw in the hills and forests of
Northern California, work on Authoring Software, and Art California
and -- as the characters and plot of From Ireland with Letters
are developed -- do a lot more draft writing. Meanwhile, in this online notebook,
exhibitions or lectures probably won't be reviewed for a while, although
I will sometimes write about music that is particularly applicable to the
creation of polyphonic text structures.

* (Flood p. 36; probably from Petrie's Ancient Music of Ireland, 1855)

September 3, 2010

Labor Day celebrated early, on Wednesday with a trip to Marin --
coffee, pastry, and painting on the beach, and then a short hike in the woods
and pen and ink drawing on the trail.

While awaiting the arrival of 8 reels of microfilm of Hiram Powers' letters,
on Interlibrary loan from the Archives of American Art, I began to follow
the research trail of the first Italian National Exhibition, held in 1861
after the Unification of Italy. In this landmark exhibition, Powers exhibited his
work in solidarity, alongside the work of the Italian artists.

The book I sought -- Albert Boime's The Art of the Macchia and the Rissorgimento:
Representing Culture and Nationalism in 19th Century Italy -- was not then
available, so I took a side trail and checked out one of the few available
English Language books on Italian Sculptor Antonio Canova. (1757-1822) --
Christopher M.S. Johns, Antonio Canova and the Politics of Patronage
in Revolutionary and Napoleonic Europe (University of California Press, 1998)

Perhaps it was the best research trail to take first because this book lays
the groundwork for the complex cultural politics of the Rissorgimento -- through the
life of a most extraordinary artist, Italian Sculptor Antonio Canova, who so
generously supported the work and lives of other artists in the perilous times
of the French occupation of Italy, including the Treaty of Campoformio, in
which France traded Venice to Austria and Canova's home City of Venice was
looted on orders of Napoleon. Later, it was Canova who went to Paris and
negotiated the return of many of the works of art stolen from Italy during
the Napoleonic occupation.

Looking also at which of Canova's works Hiram might have seen in Florence, I
came unexpectedly back to where the trail began, for he certainly would have
seen Canova's Monument to Vittorio Alfieri (1806-1810) in the Basilica
di Santa Croce. Italy is personified as a female figure in this memorial for Alfieri
-- whose writing was influential in the struggle for reunification and who has
been credited with being the first to use the word "Rissorgimento".

Fittingly, for the first Italian National Exhibition held in 1861, the year
also of the beginning of the Civil War, Powers exhibited his sculpture America,
in which America is personified as a female figure, trampling on the chains of slavery.

Have also been looking at some of the "blogs" of the day -- travel histories by
literary figures -- for instance, Camillia Crosland's Landmarks of a Literary Life,
1820-1892. (London, 1893)

Writing about a visit to Powers' studio in 1857, she describes him as
"an unaffected and interesting man, in the prime of life"

"His studio," she writes, "like so many in Italy was situated in a garden some
distance from his house, and with no more disturbing noise about it than the
rustle of the trees, not yet bare of their leaves, though it was the middle
of October." She describes some of his work, contrasting the expression of
The Greek Slave with the more joyful expressions of his other sculptures.
And she wishes him lasting fame.

September 12, 2010

Trip to the Sierras. Beautiful day to hike and paint.
Lunch of cheese and crackers, sitting on the rocks beside the clear water.

Reading The Melodic Tradition of Ireland by James R. Cowdery.
(Kent, OH, Kent State University Press, 1990)
Background for the story told by Irish American Fiddler
Máire Powers in From Ireland With Letters.
Thinking about the interface for this work. For reasons of coherent
vision, I generally begin with an interface that I previously designed.
I'd like From Ireland with Letters to be accessible, so am
thinking of working with the interface for Dorothy Abrona McCrae but using
two or three parallel rows of polyphonic "lines" in the right hand column,
so that the reader can either page through the story sequentially or explore
the parallel research trails of Liam and Máire through polyphonic
"lines" poetry. This will allow me to create a story that could work in print
but that has a more poetic dimension as new media poetry.

September 20, 2010

The story Máire Powers is telling will begin in 1654, the year that
Walter Power arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was the second year
of the Transplantation. The Irish had been defeated by Cromwell, and
the land of those who fought Cromwell's brutal takeover was confiscated.
The Irish who opposed Cromwell were given until May 1, 1654 to leave
their homes and move to an isolated part of Connacht between the ocean,
the Shannon, the Erne, and the bogs of Leitrim. "To Hell or Connacht," were
Cromwell's words to the Irish people. Those who were not sold as slaves
in Barbados and America could choose between being hung or going into exile.

It was 1654 when the slave ship Goodfellow landed in Massachusetts with
Irish and Scottish young men and children, who had been stolen from
their families and were sold into servitude. (That they were stolen as slaves and
did not come voluntarily is documented by a court case, available on the website of The Gilder
Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale --
http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1168.htm)

Máire cannot be sure that Walter Power was the real name of
the 14 year-old whose story she is telling because to hide what
they were doing, the British changed the port of departure, and in some cases
the names of the Irish children they stole from their families were
changed to English names, so that no one -- possibly not even the colonists
in Massachusetts -- knew that those children had not volunteered to become
indentured servants but had been taken by force from their families.

Power was a common Irish Norman name in Waterford, where they came
originally as Norman Warlords in the 12th century but assimilated as Irish in
the following centuries. If that was indeed his real name, Walter Power probably
came from one of the many Catholic branches of the Power families that fought Cromwell.
There were 19 Powers listed in the Waterford families of leaders of the
rebellion who were "transplanted" to Connacht in 1653-1655. They were
Pierse Power, (Clonea) Stephen Power, (Ballinamontragh) Peetor Power, (Culfin)
Morris Power, (Curraghkells) Peirce Power, (Lissnegerigh) Nicholas Power,
(Killballykilty) John Power, (Georgestown) Willyam Power, (Kearnleagh)
Willyam Power, (Bellalogh) Peirce Power, (Knocklafaly) Nicho. Power,
(Danemrattin) Walter Power, (Carrigestine) David Power, (Smore or Kilbolane)
John Power, (Donoyle) Peeter Power, (Colefin) Walter Power, (Fenmore)
Morris Power, (Adamstown) David Power, (Ballyskanlane) Pier Power,
(Knocklafala) and Richard Power, his brother. (listed as "died at Ballindrimmy").

However, if the British records were not reliable in the case of the slave ships, they may
also not be reliable in the Transplantation lists. For instance, although his name
appears in the list above, John Power's (Donoyle) name does not appear in
"The Connaught Certificates". Lord John Power defended his castle, Kilmeaden,
against Cromwell. After Cromwell destroyed Kilmeadan, many sources say that
Cromwell hung Lord John Power from a tree outside his castle. Since Cromwell
had shown no mercy earlier in 1649 in the Siege of Drogheda and in the
sack of Wexford, this seems likely.

Lord John Power was married to Lady Giles FitzGerald, the daughter of
John FitzGerald, of Dromana, Lord of the Decies. (The Decies were
an ancient Celtic people) As was the custom with Celtic women, Lady FitzGerald
took command and defended the family Castle at Dunhill against Cromwell,
after Kilmeaden was destroyed. Giles Fitzgerald might have been able
to hold Dunhill, if she had not been betrayed by her chief engineer. Probably he had
rigged an opening in the defenses. (The legend that he was angry because she sent
the men buttermilk instead of beer only makes sense if he had already prepared the way
and was angry that the men were not occupied with drink at the planned time of the attack,
for if, as reported, he gave Cromwell's Army a signal, it had to mean that he had already
prepared a place to breach the castle's defenses, and they were waiting for his signal.)

The Walter Power who arrived in America in 1654 could have been the son of any
of the many Powers who were transplanted as rebel leaders. If Power was his name,
it might have been to humiliate the Powers family by sending their son into slavery,
bearing their name. Indeed, the family had a Jacobite history. Later in the century,
on October, 14, 1690, Richard Power, who had taken part in a Cork Jacobite Uprising,
died a prisoner in the Tower of London.

Among the transplanted Powers, Walter, William, David, or Stephen would be possible
as Walter's father because they are family names in the dynasty he started in America.
(Stephen was the name of Hiram Powers' father, and my family is descended from Walter Power's
first born, William.) Or he could have been the son or grandson of Lord John Power
and Lady Giles Fitzgerald. Walter Power would have been about nine years old when John
and Giles died defending their family castles in 1649.

At this point Máire doesn't know any more about who Walter Power was, and neither do I.

September 24-26, 2010

In The Melodic Tradition of Ireland, James Cowdery talks about the Céilí
-- music making at home and/or with local community -- and about how some professional musicians
transformed their life experiences of gatherings of family and community into their public
performances. There was also a tradition in Ireland of travelling musicians.

Máire Powers comes from a family where making music at home was a part of growing up.
Her Father also played the Irish fiddle. Her Mother had a fine voice, and in the evenings,
the family would gather in the living room to sing songs and tell stories. I saw her character
more clearly after I read Cowdery's descriptions of the Céilí and envisioned
the making of music in the home where she grew up. Thus, writers of nonfiction
inspire writers of poetry and epic. And the research trail for From Ireland with Letters
continues.

Simultaneously working not only on the details of the character's lives, but also on the
development of the interface for From Ireland and on tracing the trail Hiram Powers
might have followed in Florence -- including Giovanni Dupré's statue of Giotto that
he probably saw in a niche in the facade of the Uffizi and the restoration of Giotto's
Bardi Chapel frescos of the life of St Francis that he probably observed in progress
-- I read "Marchetto da Padova and Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel Frescos" by
Eleonora M. Beck (Early Music 27:1. 1999 pp. 7-24)

The way that the work of Giotto and Marchetto da Padova influenced each other is of interest
to a creator of new media literature, who sometimes looks at the structure of the work polyphonically,
exploring different ways of notation for a developing art form, as did the Trecento Theory Composers.
At the same time, because new media poets create on a screen where color and design can be
core components of the work, we often look at organizing poetry and fiction in a visual way,
I thought, as I studied the images of Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni chapel and was --
with amazement and pleasure, although I already knew that a lifelong fascination with multiple
panel altarpieces had seeped into my work-- surprised at the correlation with some of my own
interfaces.

Eleonora Beck notes that Giotto was probably in Padua from 1303-1306. Marchetto worked
in Padua as Cathedral choirmaster from 1305-1308. It is also of interest that Dante was
in Padua in 1306. (Dante was in exile at this time) She looks at the connection between
Giotto's mulitiple images in the Scrovegni Chapel and Marchetto's motet "Ave Regina
Celorum". Before considering this in depth, I'll see if I can find a copy of Alberto
Gallo's Music of the Middle Ages, v.2 and finish Eleonora Beck's book
Giotto's Harmony: Music and Art in Padua at the Crossroads of the Renaissance,
(Florence, Italy: European Press Academic Publishing, 2005) which I got from the
library this week along with Albert Boime's The Art of the Macchia and the
Rissorgimento: Representing Culture and Nationalism in 19th Century Italy.
If it sounds like a lot of reading, it should be noted that I am reading for
narrative background, approaching each source in a spirit of exploration.

I like also to look at the backgrounds against which Renaissance painters set
their narratives and wonder if they took their sketchbooks to the hills, mountains,
and fields, the way I plan to do after I finish writing these words.

In From Ireland With Letters, Liam, who is researching Hiram Powers,
will meet Máire Powers when he sees her name on a poster and goes to hear her play.
On that evening -- singing and playing of what happened to Ireland in the years 1649-1654 --
she will perform the prelude to the epic ballad she is composing about the
story of Walter Power and the family that he and his wife, Trial Shepherd, began
in America.

How the narrative has evolved can be seen in this online writer's notebook where, (below)
on September 20, her story is planned to begin in 1654, but after working on the background research,
it became clear that the story really begins earlier -- with Cromwell's destruction of
Drogheda, the sack of Wexford, and the subsequent destruction of the Irish who resisted,
including the Power family, whose castles at Kilmeaden and Dunhill were besieged and destroyed.

In retrospect, I began to worry about whether or not this part of the story was the way
that Liam and Máire should first meet. Yet because each of them brings a new
story, it could set the stage for a fine narrative -- how Walter Power and Trial Shepherd,
the daughter of a Puritan family, were married and her family gave Walter land in the
New World; how Walter and Trial raised a large family; how Hiram Powers, the descendent
of their third child, became an Internationally known sculptor, whose work was influential
in showing Americans the evils of slavery. Or I could begin, as originally planned,
with the story of Walter Power's arrival in America being the ballad Liam hears when he
first meets Máire. Then, they could together discover what happened in Ireland
between 1649 and 1654. This does not have to be decided yet.

My Father, Lang Powers, and his brother, Walter Powers; Home from the War

October, 8, 2010

I've designed a draft interface and cover for From Ireland With
Letters, and drafted a series of opening lexias. Creating a
parallel column of "lines" works well because readers can move
between the two narratives in an intuitive way. In the past I have
done this with parallel male and female lexias displayed simultaneously,
but in this work, one lexia will be displayed while (slowly) the
"lines" on the right -- access to Máire's creation of a song cycle about
Walter Power and Liam's research of the life and work of Hiram Powers --
will display in counterpoint, creating a kind of dance between the
interfaces for the separate stories that changes the main lexia when
the reader so desires. When Liam and Máire meet, there
will be three columns of "lines" representing Máire, Liam
and Máire and Liam, in a kind of text trio sonata composition.

Hoping to have a draft of Part One finished by the end of this month,
at which point it will be posted it on the Web. But a
static layout of the interface and four lexias are now online

Meanwhile I have been making pen and ink sketches on East Bay trails,
working on Authoring Software, solving some computer problems, making
Irish Bread, studying Biblical miracles, and continuing to read
about Italian art at the time of the Risorgimento. (Albert Boime,
The Art of the Macchia and the Risorgimento, Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 1993)

Boime notes that Hiram Powers "closely identified his interests with
the Florentine people and the Risorgimento and quotes Powers as
saying in a letter "We Italians have been doing something in the
way of Revolution." But I don't know whether or not Powers
sometimes went to the Caffe Michelangiolo on Via Larga (now Via Cavour)
in Florence where the "Maccchiaioli" artists met regularly to talk
about art and politics.

Today I spent some time with an information treasure in the
Library stacks, exploring the Journal of the American-Irish
Historical Society, beginning with Volume 1, 1898. The Journal
of the American-Irish Historical Society is a fine record of
early Irish American history, with an emphasis on Colonial
America. Early volumes have no table of contents, so I paged through
each volume stopping to read articles such as
Thomas Addis Emmet, "Irish Emigration during the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries". (v. 2, 1899, pp. 56-70)
in which Emmet confirms that Irish captives appeared in
Official (British) records as English.

I had gone to the Journal of the American-Irish Historical Society to
begin reading papers by Michael J. O'Brien but was
pleased to discover that there were also many other papers of interest.
Some of this Journal is available on the Internet, (where I will now
continue a part of this research) including on the
Internet Archive, But it is a pleasure to hold the actual
volumes in one's hand.

October 17, 2010

Last weekend I hiked to a stream in Marin. A beautiful day to be walking
in the woods. Began a sketch that I am working on slowly because of
the need to concentrate on writing the first draft of Part One of From Ireland with Letters.
Beginning the tandem process of writing the words and designing the interface
of a new work is always difficult. But after a while, the tone and interface
somewhat fall into place, and it becomes a little easier.

Art Excursions : Heard the Del Sol Quartet play Kui Dong's Spring, Lou Harrison's
String Quartet Set, Osvaldo Golijov's Tenabrae and Elena Kats-Chernin's Fast Blue Village;
heard New Yorker critic Alex Ross lecture on the state of Music criticism;
heard artist Mark Tribe lecture on his remarkable Port Huron Project and other work
and saw a fine exhibition of the work of Bay Area artists - Gifted Hands: the Fine Art of Craft
at the Hearst Art Gallery at St Marys.

Late supper and performance and new media art conversation with artists and writers.
Long telephone call with Sonya Rapoport, who is busy preparing for her retrospectives
at Kala and Mills College. We talked about conceptual art and the making of conceptual art objects.

Working on my archives -- entertaining letters and graphic artwork from mail artists,
printouts of surprisingly erudite early online art talk on Art Com Electronic Network,
no longer readable Apple II floppy disks with mysterious labels.

Art Research : A large amount of time now needs to be spent reading letters to and from Hiram Powers.
Was concerned about reading his handwriting but the letters have been transcribed
and typed by the Archives of American Art, which has included both the original and the transcript in the
microfilm records. Am currently reading letters from 1842, the year he began modeling The Greek Slave.

October 22, 2010

Michael J. O'Brien's Pioneer Irish in New England (P.J. Kennedy and Sons, 1937)
arrived in the mail, and I am reading it slowly.

On page 240, O'Brien observes that "...if it be true that 'Walter Power lived at
Salem in 1654', the assumption is justified that he was one of the Irish 'captives'
who came in the Goodfellow from Kinsdale, Ireland. " (p. 240)

O'Brien, as noted, has the British Slave Ship Goodfellow as departing
Ireland from Kinsdale, in County Cork. A license was granted on September 6, 1653
to take 400 Irish children and carry them to the plantations. The ship docked in
England before sailing for the New World on October 28, 1653. He writes that
"The Goodfellow arrived in January, 1654, at Marblehead, Mass, where the
master of the vessel disposed of part of his human cargo
and then proceeded to Boston." (p. 38)

In (in the same week) reading about the Irish captives who were sold to Ipswich masters,
and looking through my exhibition records as a young artist, I remembered bicycling around
Ipswich when I lived there and stopping to paint the beaches and waterfronts. And I wondered
if any of the young men and women stolen from their homes in Ireland, had lived on East Street
where I lived.

Enough writing has been done on From Ireland with Letters to work on the "lines"
counterpoint in the interface, which I plan to begin next week.

Meanwhile for Authoring Software, I'm reading Macintosh pioneer and musician Jef Raskin's
classic work on Interface design -- The Humane Interface, New Directions for Designing
Interactive Systems and I'm expecting a copy of Nick and Noah's New Media Reader
from MIT Press.

November 8, 2010

Continuing to read microfilmed letters to (and a few from) Hiram Powers ,
I followed the progress of The Greek Slave on exhibition in London
and then by ship with Minor Kellogg to America.

In 19th century Florence, Hiram's wife writes to her Irish-born Mother. She has
learned to cook Italian food and seems much more at home in Italy then she did in
her earlier letters. The family has acquired a piano, and there is music in the Powers' villa.

On Authoring Software, Chris Funkhouser writes about how he used Eugenio Tisselli's MIDIPoet software to create a series of songs based on vast databases.

In the University Art Museum, it was a pleasure to see my old friend Carl Loeffler's name and also Art Com Electronic Network on the interesting video and film timeline that is part of the documentation for the book Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-2000. I wished that Carl was still alive to see this. In parallel activity, working on my archives,
I relived the early days of Art Com Electronic Network through faded printouts of email from Carl, Fred Truck and Jim Rosenberg. Email was so magical in those days. And sometimes it still is.

Stopped by the Art Practice Faculty Show at The Worth Ryder Gallery. The show was not yet open, but it is always interesting to see a gallery when a show is being installed (while in my archives I found an entire notebook that listed all the supplies and hardware I needed for an installation at SITE in San Francisco in the era when Australian media artist Jill Scott was the director.)

Then, last Wednesday, in a busy information-dense week, the University Baroque Ensemble's noon hour concert at the Cal Music Department was a peaceful interlude of works by Johann Sebastian Bach that I would like to hear again, including lovely arias from the Cantatas "Was mir behagt" and "Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe" and a favorite Brandenburg Concerto. Davitt Moroney directs the UBE. The musicians played and sang well; the sound was otherworldly, by which I mean that the baroque era instruments and the authentic performance created the feeling of a group of musicians playing together in 18th Century Germany.

Took time for hiking and began a drawing on a trail where the woods alternates with views of the hills.

November 17, 2010

There are autumn leaves against the dark pines and views to the hills
on the trails of the East Bay and along a stream on Marin.
Unfinished drawings were started in all these places. (I'm working on research and writing)
On rainy days, it is nice to have unfinished drawings to return to.
Have decided to set up a large sheet of watercolor paper and -- using these
sketches and memories of blue and bluegreen mountain lakes and words --
to create a series of small paintings on one large piece of paper that I can work on in the winter.
This way of working requires more precision. Might be what I need to do at this time.

In research for From Ireland with Letters, from Rome
a sculptor suggests to Hiram Powers that they exchange daguerreotypes of their works.
Daguerreotype was a new process in the 1840's. Hiram's answer is not recorded
in the letters I am reading. And I purchased a book with pictures of reproductions of Early American
dinnerware and pewter in order to better describe the homes in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Have done enough writing so that I can spend more time on the Interface and (as is usual in my work)
have started some notes to accompany the work.

November 30, 2010

The three reels of Hiram Powers letters I had been reading have gone back to the
Archives of American Art, and I am expecting more later. Appropriately for
Thanksgiving week, the last roll contained praise for his wife's pumpkin pie.
In 1854, a correspondent writes to Hiram in Florence for the recipe.

Here it was also a week of baking, dinner rolls like the kind that were
served in New England homes at Thanksgiving when I was growing up, corn bread --
and then a fine family get together for Thanksgiving dinner.

Did the necessary first editing of what I have written so far on From Ireland
with Letters; followed research trails (in books) into the Irish countryside. Time to work on the interface.

Bought the paper to make a somewhat more conceptual large painting with words and images,
in order to tie the work I have done in the past years or so into my earlier work.
The vision is coherent to my way of thinking, nevertheless sometimes one
has to demonstrate this.

I recalled Sol Lewitt's Sunrise & Sunset at Praiano. (while looking at my art books)
It is a good example of lushly beautiful conceptual art using gridded photographs taken
in Praiano, Italy on the Amalfi coast. The book was influential on my early work.

And I made a place to paint indoors. (where for December I put a live Christmas tree)

December 8, 2010

Last Friday night in Berkeley, I heard the University Baroque Ensemble play a beautiful program
of music by Bach, Corelli, Jakob van Eyck, and Antoine Boesset among others.
It was an evening where every piece was significant; the musicians played with resonant skill
and with an understanding of the music as it was originally written and performed.

The arias from Bach's Cantatas "Was mir behagt" and "Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe",
that I had heard the University Baroque Ensemble play a month ago
and were at the center of what I described as "a peaceful interlude of works",
were this night -- in an enchanting performance -- replayed/sung again.
The soprano in these and other arias and songs was Alana Mailes.

On the recorder, Andrew Levy created with virtuoso skill a flowing solo by Dutch flutist,
bell-maker, and composer, Jakob van Eyck

With fine flute solos by Vincent Shin and ensemble contrapuntal perfection,
Bach's interactive "Second Orchestral Suite" was an exquisitely prolonged series of dances.

Then there were French songs of love and an aria from Bach's "Gott mann lobet dich in der Stille".

The University Baroque Ensemble is directed by Davitt Moroney, who brings to this role
a renowned musician and musicologist's ability to inspire vision of Baroque and Renaissance Music,
in such a way that the players can by themselves take the stage
and recreate the music.

Soloists and musicians not yet mentioned were Morgan Jacobs, (recorder soloist, flute)
Brian Canatsey, (violin) Wei Ke,(violin, soloist) Yvonne Lin, (violin) Chance Tseng, (violin, soloist)
Norman Cahn,(violin) Mejin Leechor, (violin, soloist) Catherine Yu, (violin)
Hannah Glass, (viola, soloist) Daniel Pasternak, (viola, soloist) Andy Su, (viola)
Eren Bilir, (cello, violone) Timothy Choi, (cello) Seth Estrin, (cello, harpsichord) Isaac Pastor-Chermak, (cello, soloist)
Robert Clarke, (lute, soloist; lute solo) Omar Khan, (guitar)
and Joyce Chen. (organ, soloist, harpsichord)

String coaches are Carla Moore, (violin) Elisabeth Reed, (cello) and John Dornenberg. (violone)
The flute coach is Louise Carslake.

And the evening closed with a favorite Brandenburg concerto.

On a clear night when the wind blew my green silk skirt around me on the
long way to the concert, there was a moment when I knew that the dance would continue.

Writing; interface work; the transfer of my archives; Authoring Software
statements, reviews, and interviews; links to musicians on Art California;
Christmas wrapping, painting, and baking; Christmas walks -- many enjoyable creative projects are on my list.
Thus I will soon close this blog for a while. But it has been a fine way to create a
writer's notebook and will resume with a record of new writing and research when it is time.

Tonight with a candle lit for the birth of Mary, I wish everyone the happiness of the season.

words and images are copyright 2010, 2011 Judy Malloy