The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I was recently introduced to a stranger the other day as ‘the artist who did …’, a designation that invariably makes me squirm in my underwear. I don’t go around introducing my friends as Joe the accountant or Wendy the professor or Ralph the serial adulterer. No point in tying them to a preconception, putting them in a neat well-defined box and leaving them to futile extrications. The person I was introduced to said, “Oh, I saw your glass in the train station….” And then she asked where I’d taken my art studies, expecting, no doubt, some university or salon, possibly an apprenticeship under Chihuly.

“I took a night class at Stanwoodopolis High School,” I said, giving the answer I’ve given since the first time I was asked this. “Went to one class and came home with just enough information to be dangerous.” I lived in the shack I bought in 1977, a place with plastic on window openings that needed to be boarded up or filled with conventional paned glass. But since I didn’t know then how to frame a house or remodel a window opening to make a used window frame fit into the wall, I got this eureka moment when I saw a stained glass class offered in the local night school. Why learn framing when I could make a window that fit exactly the opening where the plastic was?

I know, I know, I could’ve just as easily learned woodworking and carpentry, but I didn’t have much faith in my skills on that front and anyway, I didn’t own tools either. So, like always in my life, I took the easy route instead, rolled into town for a night class, figured one hour was plenty, bought some glass the next day and a glass cutter, then went to work. By the next class I had one window installed and a six foot doorway filled. Why go back? I was practically a pro. So what if it took me decades to learn what I didn’t learn by finishing that class?

But a funny thing happened on the way to my career. I learned how to frame a wall, learned how to build a house and learned how to cut glass. I made a few windows, but being poor, the glass cost a fortune and those windows got smaller and smaller. By then I’d gotten kind of hooked on stained glass, all that color, all that sparkle, all the magic of it, corny as it sounds. And I hated working small. I’m the sort of guy who could never be a clock repairman. Those tiny parts would drive me nuts. Doesn’t help that I have ten thumbs.

So I started selling stained glass windows, much as I hated to given my disdain for all things commercial. Victorian designs, roses, cute iris windows. Do a few of those and you too might venture toward doing your own stuff even if it was odd or bad or semi-weird. The woman I’d been introduced to said ‘you must have a natural talent.’ I replied that she hadn’t seen my first attempts, otherwise, she would know I didn’t.

But … I’m living proof you can learn. All this mumbo-jumbo of right brain, left brain, maybe you buy that. Okay, but keep this in mind: we all got a brain and it has both sides, no assembly required. Doesn’t cost any extra to use both and the funny thing is, they get better the more you do.

We got a little Art Tour going on this weekend on the island, about 50 artists, then about 50 more who’d rather ride the coat tails of the ones who advertise and promote this event. Since I was one of the original artists at the beginning some 19 years ago and watched it grow into a successful regional event, you might think I’d resent all those artists who avoid dues and meetings just to profit from the work of others.

But I don’t. It warms my cockles to see the entire island — for two weekends — celebrate art. Sure, there’s the profit motive, but the island is in America, land of capitalist excess, a fact even us artists can’t ignore though we try our damndest. My old shack (let’s call it a studio) was on the Tour for 9 years at the beginning. Had four of us starving artists down there and by the end we had 3000 visitors in the 3 days we were open back then. For you non-math majors, that’s a thousand people a day who drove clear to the South End for aesthetic entertainment.

I didn’t sell much except the notion that the island was the Art Island, plenty enough for me. Folks wandered the acres of gardens the mizzus had planted, saw how we lived, how artists lived and maybe where their inspiration came from. What we wanted, of course, besides getting filthy rich those few days, was offering a glimpse into our own creativity, how art isn’t so much just an art form, a blown glass vase or a pastel painting, but a way of seeing the world, then creating one. Gardens, tool shed architecture, found object sculptures, hand built houses, all of it a tapestry flowing from the imagination.

What we hoped was to inspire others to explore their own world. To the folks who told me they didn’t have one single artistic bone in their body, I always said sorry to break the news, but we all create our lives, some consciously, some not. We’re all of us artists, but some of us fools try to make a living at it.

The Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate that owns Budweiser brewing announced that they would now call this country’s best selling beer America. America the Beer, not the beautiful. Actually the best selling brew in the United States is Bud Lite. Somehow America Lite doesn’t have the same panache, although judging by this year’s political campaign, America Lite sounds about right. Less filling, fewer calories, but drink enough and your head will swim.

Now … I’m a cynical person. But naming your alcoholic beverage our country, well, even a cynic winces at this. Of course all the patriots will flock to the new red white and blue watering hole in a can while profits flow overseas in a global tsunami of misplaced jingoism. I know, it’s just dog eat dog capitalism, but for the luvva Abe Lincoln and Tom Jefferson, are there no limits to the crassness of advertising?

I think we can assume the floodgates of branding are now wide open. Get ready for Jesus, the SUV made by Honda. Gets 23 mpg highway and comes with GPS showing shortest routes to Heaven. United States, a low tar cigarette both filter and menthol. God, the new moniker for the GOP, only need to change one little letter and virtually no content appeal . Land of the Brave, the real estate company formerly known as Century 21, already an old and tired brand but once was forward leaning. You know, back in the dead 20th.

Naturally there will be some confusion. When the presidential candidates refer to America, which one do they mean? ‘We will make America great again?’ Is the candidate suggesting Budweiser wasn’t? Can he be sued for slander? Has he got Trump Beer coming out and this was always a marketing ploy to undermine his competitor? Or did he buy stock in a foreign corporation, to make it great once more as an offshore dodge, and now he doesn’t want to show his tax returns?

I don’t know about the rest of my fellow Americans, but I want the name changed back. Either that or we change the country’s name.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
Budweiser! Budweiser! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

I know, kind of a nice ring to it.

Some of the boyz down at the Marina got to talking about that Ma Day Studio Art Tour that’s been building steam since before the turn of the century, hauling traffic in for 19 years and now has expanded not just to 3 days instead of the original 2, but 2 weekends instead of 1. Before long, Cap’n Jack worried, it’ll become the Mother’s Day to Father’s Day Art Tour, an entire month of traffic backed up from the South End Diner to the Stanwoodopolis freeway exit, all those art lovers and their U-Hauls for carrying back their purchases to Bellevue, Seattle and beyond. They remember when the Tulip Festival was just a small bulb in the imagination of the growers …. before cars eventually outnumbered the flowers. And it makes em nervous.
It should! The South End Economic Development Council holds secret meetings at ReFlux Realty, scheming to sell properties to art aficionados who, in turn, will become artists themselves in the primordial paint soup of the South End, buy easels and brushes, learn raku, break glass and build stained glass panels, sculpt auto wreckage and ultimately double, triple, who knows, the size of the Tour. It’s a self-replicating Beast. And when they all begin to starve through overpopulation, they’ll still need to pay those mortgages on their dream studios. The only other ‘jobs’ here, of course, are real estate agents. So the vicious circle completes itself. More artists, more art, more wannabees, more starvation, more real estate agents, more sales, prices rise, properties subdivide, underwater mortgages swell …. and so the bubble becomes bigger than the egoes of the artists who planned this Tour back in the 90’s.
Some of the Marina layabouts wanted to stop this in its tracks before there was no turning back. Keep the missuz from going studio to studio Mother’s Day weekend. Course, the Tour was planned from the Get-Go to be their default escape from marital duties. Let Ma go traipsing through the art while they’d watch some ballgames. And now, 19 years later, they’re only starting to realize the true price of their mistake. Too late, guyz!! Way too late now!

If you’re like me, you’ve just finished doing your taxes. You’ve grumbled, you’ve broken a few pencils, you’ve cursed the IRS for making these forms hard to use without a certified public accountant, you’ve exhausted your deductions and your patience both and now you have to write that check to the Department of Revenue. Ted Cruz campaigns on a platform to eliminate the IRS and you think that sounds about perfect. No taxes, no government, no headache next April 15th. Why not? A couple more beers and Ted’s got your vote.

No taxes for corporations ought to bring prices down to rockbottom, right? You hear every day how American companies have to move overseas or offshore to spare them the 35% tax on businesses. Zero taxes ought to keep them here. Course, 27 of the Fortune 500 don’t pay anything now so it won’t help them much. And we haven’t factored in the gov’t. subsidies and the local tax breaks and all the rest of corporate welfare … or incentives, if you prefer. For every dollar they spend on lobbyists, they average about $1400 in tax breaks. Not bad. Maybe next year you should hire a lobbyist.

Or a CPA… Boeing, that shining example of corporate job creators, got half a billion dollars over the past two years to stick around and make more jobs. Course, it didn’t quite work out that way. Too bad for us Washingtonians, but hey, we didn’t make them promise to keep their word. Kind of in too big a hurry to get the bill passed before they moved to Carolina.

Some of us Job Creators on the South End are considering making that same threat to the Legislature. Move our art studios and marijuana growing operations to Idaho, see what deals we can get to stick around and fuel the island economy. Wouldn’t take a quarter billion per year, maybe a tenth of that would do it. Course, once we get our corporate welfare check, not guaranteeing I’ll be making any more art. And if this blogsite suddenly goes dark, you’ll know the deal went down and my check made early retirement inevitable. Can you blame me any more than Boeing? If nothing else, you can rest assured I’ve created jobs for a virtual army of accountants to manage my affairs.