Art: A Landscape of Pleasure

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

At this moment I am pleasurably enveloped in an ivory colored satin quilt in my own room with a view, at my daughter, Hadley’s, house in Atlanta. Beau, the elegant, velvety, warm blooded, chocolate colored companion that is my dog, is curled around my legs. It is the beginning of Thanksgiving weekend and I am writing in bed, my very favorite place to write, and well, my favorite place, I think, in any house. Certainly I am surrounded by new landscape, about which Proust speaks, away from the Carolina Lowcountry and well, yes, Atlanta is admittedly one of the Great Aunts of the American South. In the spirit of the weekend, I feel renewed and I see again, with new eyes, today, that Proust is just right, oh so right, about what matters.

What a delightful American holiday this is, a day dedicated to gratitude and the splendid pleasures of the table. As I packed yesterday to travel, I tucked into the red leather traveling bag that this beauty loving daughter gave me, another gift from her, a copy of the original Proust Questionnaire, in Marcel Proust’s own handwriting, in French. She gave it to me, because every holiday season for years we’ve circulated a family questionnaire amongst the large and blended family that is mine. The questionnaire we make is usually twenty questions or so, like “If you could have dinner with anyone who would it be?” or, from the original, “What is your idea of happiness?” (Proust’s answer was ” To live in contact with those I love, with the beauties of nature, with a quantity of books and music, and to have, within easy distance, a French theatre – all of which would be mine exactly! – except having access to film now, instead of French Theatre).

Completing the questionnaire is a gift of connection, or listening to each other, the one element that somehow began to be missing as the holiday became so centered around gifts and shopping. Our own family questionnaire has taken a life of its own and now, each Thanksgiving, one family member begins and circulates the questionnaire beginning on Thanksgiving weekend, by email, even though I value those old paper compilations, especially the one my sister did in her own beautiful perfect and loose handwriting, so passionately detailed in the food category. When she died, all the foods she listed as her favorites – and her list ran around the page to fill up the back (it included Duke’s mayonnaise which those from the South will understand) were gathered and cooked and served by my son’s wife at the gathering of family and friends who came to my house after the funeral.

But ah, Proust! – whose passion, curiosity and genius inspires all lovers of the arts. Virginia Woolf, the legendary writer, identified the highly sensual nature of Proust’s prose as the Proustian effect, a rejuvenating energy, the intense pleasure that we find in great art. The root of the word “aesthetic” is to feel, to be alive; it is about art that so dazzles one’s spirit that it consoles: Joy, I think, is the word.

Included in that is to feel overwhelmed with gratitude. For the pleasures of love and food, for the pleasures of grown children who now create the feast, and the birthday celebrations and the blessings of grandchildren. Proust’s own words mark the refrigerator here in Hadley’s oh so sensual home. (It is a fridge magnet her mother gave her). “Let us be grateful to people who make us happy: they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

The two warm ham biscuits, on a gold rimmed porcelain plate, delivered to my bed as I write, by my amazingly beautiful and talented daughter, illustrates it all. Amen.

A Painter and a Poet speak of Serpents

Poets and Painters inspire each other. Mary Oliver’s poetry is my intimate companion. Recently I painted this picture which is about Edisto Island, South Carolina, our small undeveloped barrier island, the last sea island in South Carolina and one that has escaped the developers, so far. Snakes are a large part of Edisto, as it is thick with the jungle brush of native canopy. Charmingly we have a real Serpentarium on the island, built by two brothers, Ted and Heyward Clamp, who capture the healing venom, educate the public about snakes, and provide natural habitat for the reptiles.

painting by Charlotte Hutson-Wrenn '09

The Black Snake

by Mary Oliver

When the black snake
flashed onto the morning road,
and the truck could not swerve—
death, that is how it happens.

Now he lies hooped and useless
as an old bicycle tire.
I stop the car
and carry him into the bushes.

He is as cool and gleaming
as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet
as a dead brother.
I leave him under the leaves

and drive on, thinking
about death, its suddenness.
its terrible weight,
its certain coming. Yet under

reason burns a brighter fire
which the bones
have always preferred.
It is the story of endless good fortune.
It says to oblivion: not me!

It is the light at the center of every cell.
It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward
happily all spring through the green leaves before
he came to the road.

Sea Cloud Circle Sojourn

“Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Pay attention. Attention is vitality.” – Susan Sontag

Once upon a time, a poet and a painter embarked on an eight week sojourn. They drove in the rain out a two lane road to a tiny little undeveloped sea island on the Carolina coast, the one called Edisto, arriving finally at their rented rooms. On Sea Cloud Circle. The purpose of the pilgrimage was to capture and define those practices which sustain the creative spirit. They limited their reading, and chose only three books each to study, ones they thought would nurture their vision. The poet chose to re-read the memoir by the Greek writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco. The painter picked the memoir by Karen Armstong, The Spiral Staircase. Together, they re-read Poetics of Space by the amazing French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard.

Inspired by the writer, Susan Sontag, they tried to follow her advice. She taught her students this: “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

That was three years ago. I now live on this sacred island, which is also the land of my ancestors. I am the painter, and the poet was Chuck Sullivan. The eight week retreat was so successful that it inspired me not only to keep painting, but to write everyday, to begin this blog, and to move here. There were more magical moments during this eight weeks than I can record on this one page, but the following principles are a few of the ones that we tested then, and which I now practice and believe are lasting and genuine tickets for keeping one’s creative spirit alive.

We wrote and I painted out on borrowed docks, and we gave away the work. Chuck taught the children free classes at the school. In return, we were showered with pounds of fresh shrimp and the open arms of the community. Not only did we awaken to ourselves and our artistic vision, but we made lasting friendships that continue to this day. The small watercolor below is of the house that still stands at Middleton Plantation on St. Pierre Creek, owned now by the very dear Caroline Pope Boineau.

Middleton/ C.Hutson-Wrenn 2006

The Lessons of Sea Cloud Circle

* Keep a journal and write three pages in longhand every morning upon waking (thank you, Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and Vein of Gold)
* Walk three miles everyday (with eyes wide open)
* Practice Gratitude
* Make friends
* Give stuff away – for generosity of spirit
* Eliminate distraction (tv, especially the news)

The Sea Cloud Sojourn was pilgrimage, which Phil Cousineau defines as “poetry in motion, a winding road to meaning”. Edisto Island is often referred to as a sacred place. The word sacred originates from sacrifice. Living here sometimes requires some of that. Highway 174 is a winding sixteen mile path of a road from the Edisto bridge to the the ocean. A winding road to meaning. The experience of this sojourn was even more. So much more.

Dave, the African American Slave Potter

“Give me silver or give me gold/though they are dangerous to our soul /27 July 1840″ – Dave (slave potter) Edgefield, SC

photo by Gavin Ashworth /for Ceramics in America

Living in South Carolina, with an ear open to authentic local craft and art, one hears often of the Edgefield District, known for its distinctive traditional stoneware. South Carolina is rightfully proud of her two native crafts, the carefully woven Sea Grass baskets, made in the traditional style by the Gullah people, African Americans, who were formerly enslaved on the coastal Sea Islands, and also for its stoneware pottery, which is most significantly, tied to a slave named Dave who inscribed his massive pots with poetry. Dave’s legacy has grown not only because of his superlative technical skill but also because he dared to write poetic couplets on his pots, and to sign his name, which was bold, brave, and daring. His pots now fetch six figures in the antiques market.

The Charleston Museum, was, in 1919, given the first inscribed jar by Dave, by a contributor named Stoney. The massive forty gallon jar so inspired the director at the time, Paul Rea, that he wrote, a few months after it arrived, that “the jars should be collected…to prepare a history of the old potteries.” That did not happen until Laura Bragg, subsequent director of the Charleston Museum, visited the Edgefield area in 1930, learning about the one legged potter who worked in the area all his life, from 1834 to about 1870. The Edgefield pottery collection at the Charleston Museum is a testament to Bragg as a preservationist. Bragg offered an article about the history of the South Carolina jug and pottery for International Studio, which had previously printed her work, but the pottery piece was never published.

Dave they say, lay on the railroad tracks when he learned he was to be sold and relocated to a plantation to the west. The train severed his leg, making him less valuable to the buyer who then refused him. Dave, now one legged, continued his work as a potter, working with am able bodied companion, named ‘Baddler”: the latter works, which can be seen at the Charleston Museum, were signed “Dave and Bladdler”. The great potter stayed and worked in South Carolina all the days of his life. He continued to produce pots – large, great pots, inscribed with short phrases of poetic wisdom, and bravely inscribed in his hand and signed with his name, a testament to an undaunted spirit.

The following couplets are some of the poetic inscriptions, on the pots of Dave, the slave potter, of Edgefield, South Carolina.

I made this jar for cash
Though it is called lucre trash
22 August 1857

I made this for our Sott
it will never – never – rott
31 March 1858

This noble jar will hold 20
fill it with silver then you’ll have plenty
8 April, 1858

When you fill this jar with pork or beef
Scot will be there to get a peace
(on the other side)

This jar is to Mr. Seglir
who keeps the bar in orangeburg
for Mr Edwards a gentle man
who formerly kept Mr Thos bacons horses
21 April 1858

Blossoming at any season: the Confederate Rose

Lowcountry Confederate Rose

There is a pink flower abloom in the Lowcountry right now, in crisp October. Lanky, tall, and wild, the bush and her flowers are surprising us and flashing their opening pink pedals amidst tree size bright green branches, all over Edisto Island. The grand shrubs remind me of Hibiscus, except for the unusual, and well, yes, Chinese looking, huge graphic leaves, which feel modern and and fresh. And they also grow in sandy, shady spots giving them a certain wildness.

Turns out it is not a rose as all, but indeed a unique Chinese shrub that happens to grow well in the Southern states that once seceded from the Union -The Confederate States - and our dear South Carolina is her queen it seems, having been an insistent voice. The name for the flower is a popular one. The flowering shrub is also referred to as the cotton rose, I suppose for the same regional reason.

According to the horticulturalist, the flower is properly identified as hibiscus mutabilis, and it grows on plants that are shrublike and can grow to a height of twelve to fifteen feet. The Confederate rose has the unique property of changing color during the course of the day. The bloom on the rose opens in the morning as a beautiful white or a subtle pink, and gradually darkens during the course of the day. By evening, the petals typically achieve a deep red appearance. The individual blooms are usually within four to six inches in diameter, with the petals possessing a delicate and somewhat billowing appearance. In deeper portions of the southern United States, the shrub tends to grow larger. Around the perimeter of the region, the rose tends to function more as a perennial, and may grow to a height of six feet, and typically, Confederate rose shrubs will feature a large number of blooms at any one time.

All I know is that the blooms made me squeal with delight and scramble for cutting scissors and a ladder to look up close and beg them inside for closer inspection. Turns out they do fine in my vase, and the new tight buds can be coaxed to open, and all morning I have been thinking of what Anais Nin said about blossoming buds…. ” And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

What a lovely metaphor for fall. A reminder for us that as a pink flower we may blossom in any season.

Amy Lowell, the poet, on Charleston, South Carolina

…”Commerce, are you worth all this?”
Charleston South Carolina. A poem by Amy Lowell, 1874-1925

Fifteen years is not a long time,
But long enough to build a city over and destroy it.
Long enough to clean a forty-year growth of grass from between cobblestones,
And run street-car lines straight across the heart of romance.
Commerce, are you worth all this? I should like to bring this case to trial:
Prosperity versus Beauty,
Cash Registers teetering in a balance against the comfort of the soul.
Then, to-night, I stood looking through a grilled gate
At an old, dark garden.
Live-oak trees dripped branchfuls of leaves over the wall,
Acacias waved dimly beyond the gate, and the smell of their blossoms
Puffed intermittenly through the wrought-iron scroll-work.
Challenge and solution —
O loveliness of old, decaying, haunted things!
Little streets untouched, shamefully paved,
Full of mist and fragrance on this rainy evening.
“You should come at dawn,” said my friend,
“And see the orioles, and thrushes, and mockingbirds in the garden.”

“Yes,” I said absentmindedly,
And remarked the sharp touch of ivy upon my hand
which rested against the wall.
But I thought to myself,
There is no dawn here, only sunset,
And an evening rain scented with flowers.

- from Literary Charleston, A Lowcountry Reader
Curtis Worthington, 1996, Wyrick & Company, Charleston

Tidal Creeks of Change

Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee. – Marcus Aurelius

Carolina Lowcountry Waterways

Cool sunshine lights up the Carolina Lowcountry today, hinting of Autumn. The wind is carrying a message of freshness, of change. Soon the tall grasses of the marshes lining the winding tidal creeks will dance with golden mellow colors unlike the vivid greens of summer. Autumn is subtle here, all the more meaningful when it calls us to pay attention, to appreciate, to fearlessly embrace a cycle of change in our own lives. The natural world suggests to us in her own seasonal circular way, that change is inevitable, even guaranteed. The cycle of new growth, decay and death is something we know, but I wonder why we humans seem to resist change so fiercely. Often the unfamiliar feels frightening and new. Perhaps we will be unprepared! Perhaps we will be surprised and found out to be lacking. Opening my door on this day, greeted by the freshness of this air, I was simply reminded to trust the elements, to have faith in this circle. I will embrace the changes that I hear blowing in my own life. I will welcome these crystal autumn winds, blown in from the marshes of these seasoned ancient creeks. I am here, at home, in my beloved country, in the Carolina of the South.

Dear Sir. Letters in history and today.

Botany Bay Road in Winter, Edisto Island, SC

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Briefly, in the dreams of the early South Carolina colony, a perfect little island south of Charleston, was picked by the Lords Proprietors, and a plantation was planned, to be managed by Lord Ashley’s relative, Andrew Percivall. The plantation never materialized, as the founders later picked land for Charles Towne that was more easily accessible, where Charleston lies today, just north; and John Locke, the great philosopher from England, never set foot on Edisto Island, which bore his name on early maps of Carolina.

Locke and Dr. Henry Woodward, explorer, interpreter, first English settler, wrote letters to one another. Locke, insatiably curious, longed to learn the religion and customs of the native American Indians. Quite the letter writer, John Locke left an astounding 3,637 surviving letters, written to him and by him. (The most famous letter-writers of the ancient world, Cicero and Augustine, left only a few hundred each) Correspondence in the form of letter writing, in mid 17th century, was a practice central to English culture. Letters were read out loud, and it ’served also to rescue people from intellectual and personal isolation’. It is what social utilities like Facebook, do, too, in today’s culture, attractive because we Americans have become self isolating, the result of our convenience filled, independent lifestyles. My own life on this remote island is enriched by my online connection and correspondence, and I wonder it is not an effort of our culture to renew our lost connections to one another, like letter writing did in the 17th century, something one writer called a “phenomenon”.

Just who was the man who dreamed of living on the eden isle, the paradise called Edisto Island?

Palms and dunes on Edisto Island

STOP TRAVELER. The epitaph of John Locke, the philosopher, at his burial place at High Laver, a village in the Epping Forest district of the County of Essex, England, begins: “Near this place lies JOHN LOCKE. If you are wondering what kind of man he was, he answers that he was contented with his modest lot. Bred a scholar, he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. You will learn this from his writings, which will show you everything about him more truthfully that the subject praises of an epitaph. His virtues, if indeed he had any, were too slight to be lauded by him or to be an example to you. Let his vices be buried with him. Of virtue, you have an example in the gospels, should you desire it; of vice would there were none for you; of mortality surely you have one here and everywhere, and may you learn from it.

That he was born on the 29th of August in the year of our Lord 1632

and that he died on the 28th of October in the year of our Lord 1704.

This tablet, which itself will soon perish, is a record.”

How intriguing is the man who also dreamed of this island, a place that still boasts so much of the natural beauty it had when Locke imagined it, thanks to many committed people, the preservation efforts of The Edisto Island Open Land Trust and The Lowcountry Open Land Trust who work to preserve and keep sacred these great open spaces of South Carolina.

Historic Point of Pines Row-ud, Edisto Island

It’s not a dirt row-ud now. It’s what an Edisto islander once called one of those newly paved main roads. In dialect so distinctive of the sea islands, Point of Pines Road would have been called a “rock row-ud” once it was paved. The road begins now, off of Highway 174, at Store Creek, near where a small section of old Kings Highway also intersects, as Wescott Road. At the end of the long, narrow, east facing road is one of the largest privately owned parcels of land on the island. It fronts the North Edisto River, and on this land are the oldest ruins on Edisto, thick slabs of tabby

Grimball House Tabby Ruins

that remind us that Paul Grimball, in 1683, received a grant for 1290 acres of land. He and his family were the first documented white settlers on the island.

Before the English arrived, the story is an even more fascinating tale, that of the ‘Edistowe’ Indians, a peace loving, gentle tribe, who were eager to befriend the English, hoping that they would help defend against the more aggressive tribes nearby. The ‘Edistowe’ surely had first picked this favored spot favored before the English arrived.

The story, which starts at ‘the Point of Pines’ is illustrated in the Narratives of Early Carolina 1650-1705 by Alexander Salley. Captain Robert Sandford, and a small company of (gentle) men arrived on Edisto Island, from Barbados, in the year 1666. They begin at a beach near where the vessel anchored. According to Gene Waddell, author of Indians of the South Carolina Lowcountry 1562-1751, he thus was probably at the Point of Pines, which is the only beach of the North Edisto for eight or more miles beyond Ocella Creek, and which is about four or five miles inland or near where Sanford first saw the Indians from the Edisto village.

“… here a Capt. of the Nation named Shadoo was very earnest with some of our Company to goe with him and lye a night att their Towne (which) hee told us was but a smale distance thence. I being equally desirous to knowe the forme manner and populousness of the place as alsoe what state the Casique held (fame in all theire things preferrring this place to all the rest of the Coast,… foure of my Company… Lt: Harvey, Lt: Woory, Mr. Thomas Giles and mr. Henry Woodward forwardly offring themselves to the service… haveing alsoe some Indians aboard mee who constantly resided there night & day I permitted them to goe with this Shadoo they retorned to mee the next morning (with) great Comendacons of their Entertainment but especially of the goodness of the land they marcht through and the delightful situation of the Towne. Telling mee withall that the Cassique himselfe appeared …(his state was supplyed by a Female who received them with gladnes and Courtesy) … – they alsoe assureing mee that it was not above foure Miles off, to goe and see that Towne, and takeing with mee Capt George Cary and a file of men I marched thither ward followed by a long traine of Indians of whome some or other always presented himselfe to carry mee on his shoulders over any the branches of Creekes or plashy corners of Marshes in our Way. This walke though it tend to the Southward of the West and consequently leads neere alongst the Sea Coast….

So where was this round house, and ‘town’ of the Edisto Indians on Edisto Island? Professor Waddell surmises, “At this point Sandford has supplied enough information to determine the approximate location of the chief village of the Edisto. He set out from at or near the Point of Pines and traveled along a path in roughly a WSW direction for about four miles. This would put him at or just beyond the site of the present junction of Edisto, South Carolina which is on the headwaters of Store Creek and is near the center of Edisto Island. From the Point of Pines, the northern edge of two strips of marsh form nearly a straight line running in a WSW direction; he seems to have closely followed its “plashy corners.” Although the Indians he first encountered said their village “was within on the Western shoare somewhat lower down towards the Sea” ) …their village could not have been on the South Edisto. This part of Edisto Island is eight to ten miles across, so Sanford had to be near its middle. The Indians must have meant that the only access to it “within” by water was from the west side of the Island. When Sandford finally got through to the west side and on the South Edisto River “ome from the Town by Land (emphasis added) indicating that the town was some distance inland.”

Charles Town Landing Display

I cannot help but think, each day when I pass this spot, of this story of my ancestor, Henry Woodward, who, eager to do so, stayed on Edisto Island, learning the customs and languages of the Indians, even after he was captured mid-stay by the Spanish, and taken to jail in St Augustine. Shadoo, a “Captain of the Nation” eagerly got on Sandford’s ship in a sort of cultural exchange, and returned with the English to Barbados, as he had some years earlier with explorer William Hilton. Henry Woodward returned to South Carolina with the ship Carolina, and the earliest colonists, having hitched a ride from Nevis, after a stint as ship’s surgeon with the pirate Robert Searle from St. Augustine, who had freed him in St. Augustine. He would go one to establish the trade with the Indians of South Carolina and to travel extensively making connections with the Native Americans. It is through his efforts that the colony survived. The Native Americans who call themselves The Edisto (they were also known as the Cusabo) say Henry Woodward is the man they would most like to interview now. And at his death, the story is that a long trail of Indians carried him home on a stretcher, ill, to die at home, on land just north of this place called Edisto Island.

Home by another way. A sense of Place.

One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. – Gaston Bachelard

Aren’t we all looking for home? For that one place that wraps us up in familiarity and nurture, a place that will ‘wait up for us’ and take us in? Exactly like we are? My search was long and winding, exciting and heart wrenching. I am headed into honest territory today, inspired by the writing of Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love and The Last America Man. Her writing is dazzling, and has me talkin’ honest. This is the story of how I came to be right here, in the Carolina Lowcountry, happy as that black clam my Gullah neighbor, Fred, claims only he knows how to dig for out there in the pluff mud.

The quote above is by the French philosopher, Gaston Bachelard, whose book The Poetics of Space explores home by talking about sea shells and turrets and our memories of childhood. He speaks of the irony of pulling away while staying rooted, which is no small feat. I am a grandmother now, a Nahna: lucky, thrilled, pinching myself happy at my blessing. I am also, deliriously and contentedly, home.

For what felt like forever, my driving desire was to get away from home, away from the Carolinas of my childhood, from tradition, from what I felt were narrow boundaries of propriety. As the third child in my family with four, I somehow had more permission to go, and as soon as I could get married legally, I did, the only way that I knew, then, to get outta town. I spent blue warm winters in the American tropics, where oranges and key limes grew in the yard, where exotic lizards as big as cats climbed in our backyard tree that bloomed with so many flowers in winter it looked like a giant orange umbrella. In subsequent years, hungry to taste and smell everything this world had to offer, I loved a Canadian photographer I met in Maine because he lived on a perch in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and could cook and set up camp, so I got to see Canada and Colorado under the stars. Another travelin’ man took me to dream islands: Martha’s vineyard, and to Baja, the spit of California, that in renegade fashion meanders into the Pacific. I made pilgrimage to Paris with a musician; and a travel writer, knowing my hunger, let me bring a brand new poet lover when cancellations opened at the last minute on his small tour to Italy, where we found a poem about lemons by Pablo Neruda posted on a wall in a lemon grove in Amalfi and where I found fragile hand blown, red, glass cherries to carry home on my lap to remind me of Venice, a place whose magic helped me to recognize the sheer power of one evocative place.

Mine was a rich and rewarding traveling life. Until I was stopped in my tracks. The sound of home was calling to me from a place whose fragrance and flavor echoed generations of my grandmothers and grandfathers and who lived where I do now. From those very traditions I shunned earlier in my life. I was ready to see, to embrace, to love the history and values that yes, are about continuity. But I see it all more clearly now for having gone away. I do not take it for granted and I am surely more flexible for all the challenges of change along the way. This history is fresh to me now; the traditions are my own.

Eudora Welty, the Pulitzer Prize winning Southern writer from Jackson Mississippi, wrote about knowing one place well. She lived and wrote all her life in the one house in a small town. Flannery O’Connor, whose work is also deeply dazzling, said to write about what you know, and she did just that, in Milledgeville Georgia, a small town (worth a pilgrimage). There is so very much to explore in this one very small place in the world, so rich in history, beauty, inspiration. Who knew that all I wanted was right here at home, all along? Ah, to have eyes to see and ears to hear! That is the blessing!