Stephani Stephenson on thu 16 nov 06
Sometimes your perspective can just flip flop, invert, somersault.
as in
'style is sooooo, soooo shallow'.
on second thought
are you sure about that?
In my mom's day, the style was circle skirts, pony tails, crooners ,
dreamboats, gettin hitched and settling down.
things brown or handmade reminded her of the depression or distant
echoes of old poor folks from a poor place.. She was part of something
new and shiny and modern and ...streamlined. Our cups were modern,
short and sparse, cleanly designed, black.
. I remember the feel and look of fabrics and prints from that time.
My aunt had drinking glasses that were tinted colors, made of
aluminum. which even tasted metallic . It seemed appropriate. And
plastic , of course, was exciting, along with lovely black and yellow
57 chevy wagon. colors and textures and materials all part of that
time, though I preferred the deep upholstery, dusty color and
comforting smell of my grandparents Packard.
I knew there was a civil rights movement and a folk song movement and
a brown pot movement going on . the echoes of it reached us via the
Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary records. And there was an odd
artist guy in the town who made pollack like paintings and sometimes
imbedded things like cigarette butts into his paintings. His name was
bill. we had one of his paintings.
We stood and watched John glenn in orbit in the night sky. Later we
had a 63 VW bug . Even later my sister and I got go- go boots. we
embraced the modern.
If I could have chosen a cup then , it would have been a lime green
and hot pink plastic tumbler.
I remember when I was a teen , then a young 20 something
I thought everything was so profound.
I was seriously committed to saving the planet , changing the world,
right now!
my first backpack was green and white striped with an 'ecology' logo on
it. (It actually was never stylish. It was dorky. )
only the most intense, searingly honest and idealistic notions
mattered.
In high school I taught a fifth grade class about ecology. I drew a
diagram on the board that explained global warming.
I dragged the fifth graders down to the swamp so they could see litter
and polluted water.
we also found some homeless guys there.
we sang a song that went
'don't use a kleenex, sniff instead. don't use a napkin, use a piece
of bread. Don't flush the toilet every time you pee! do your bit for e-
coll-o-geee!"
now that was revolutionary :)
....
I was acting on some of my core beliefs.
now I look back.... look back at that yearbook. early - mid
1970s......row after row of brown haired girls with long hair parted
down the middle.
on days we wore dresses or skirts, they were so short they ended
right about the same altitude where our hip hugger jeans started, on
the days we wore jeans. and then there were the days we wore granny
skirts,( which were different from the days we wore platform shoes )
but WE weren't about STYLE, you understand. STYLE was VAPID,
ESTABLISHMENT! ohhhh noooooo!
em. I recall though , the main battles in high school were," Could the
girls wear PANTS to school"? Then it was, "could the girls wear JEANS
to school"? and "how SHORT could a skirt or dress be and still be
legal?" (get down on your knees and measure up from the floor, it had
to be 3" or less). for BOYS it was hair, hair, hair. "Above the eyes ,
the ears, and the collar" Two members of the student council, boys with
long hair. wore their hair to school in a bun, which was , of course
'above the eyes , the ears , and the collar". Um ,that didn't go over
to well with the powers that be,...
This was a school between an army base and an air force base. Many
dads , boyfriends and brothers were in Viet Nam. There was still a
draft.
We had bomb scares fairly often at school.
There was angst, but most of us were still kids . So we did battle
using style as a weapon, an expression to delineate ourselves as
distinct from the peer group preceding us, Style and , in an very
American way, style included music as well as dress as well as
material culture..
we lived and died by rock anthems. It seemed a creative exploration
of the boundaries of sound. Or was it a bunch of dopey
kids, engaging in that most primal dopey kid thing.... the shared peer
group experience?
Time passed. the draft ended, the war petered out.
. guy's hair got long, got short, got curly and even blow dried
(briefly ). beards came , beards went.
Unemployment had been high and it was hard to get a job. my first job
was working at a gas station. this was during the oil embargo summer.
My second job was washing dishes, third job, driving combine and
working in a cannery, and a few stints as a waitress. there were some
CETA jobs, but the older hippies got those. .
So it kind of made sense that for many, the style turned into , 'back
to the land'. Was it our deeply held values or was it because, there
appeared nowhere else to go, economically or altruistically ?
so we grew gardens , gleaned fruit, got chickens and goats and other
livestock, made solar structures, canned, dried food, started food
coops , played music ,
wore natural fibers, baked bread, heck grew grain and ground grain and
baked bread ...in ovens with wood from the trees we harvested.
used pottery. boycotted ...uh I can't remember what we boycotted. oh
yes, smoking herb was a big part of the values, i mean , the style.
The coops and everything were generally run by the older boomers, you
know the ones who were 30 or even 35 or even ,god forbid, 40.
For us young pups, we unloaded the trucks, and filled the bins and
such. it was all very natural. we dressed like it too.
some of us were more outdoorsy . some of us more urban.
then John Travolta shimmied onto the screen in a white suit, jimmy
carter had one heck of a time, big grocery stores moved to capture the
food co-op market, everyone got tired of protesting and things, er
shifted. after disco, the music got a bit of an edge to it..hair got
quite wild in a very controlled sort of way
things brown were completely out of favor. money was in. cups were not
in favor. in some circles ,tiny straws and spoons were the tableware of
choice, and urban culture stole the limelight.
some brown types either made their stand in the wilderness or
backwoods, some hid out in grad school, others were navigating the
raising of families
together or alone. In cups? styrofoam, baby. for us natural type, give
me a Stanley thermos, because it may have to last me for awhile.
were those values or was that style?
and then what was it everyone was doing a while back? , in the 90's
...cocooning?
Does the style reflect the values or do the values reflect the style?
(note to self: something that transcends style , cuts across social
trends: Some people are wonderful and true and some people are
jerks, whether they hold a styrofoam cup , or a clay mug. )
The Arts and Crafts movement was spawned by many influences.... they
say it was because people were recoiling , reacting against the
industrial age. polluted cities, crowded with immigrants and disease.
Architects and others envisioned 'the city beautiful ' . the great
city parks and national parks were born. Yet those immigrants brought
skills which grew those cities and built the roads which led to those
parks..
There was a growing middle class so now there were people who knew
the next meal WAS coming... and the one after that. They had a bit of
income so they could lift their heads up from the plow or the sewing
machine or the course of brick, long enough to think about a walk in
a park or what they might like to set the table with. Women were now
keeping the home and it seemed more gentile perhaps than helping jack
drive the oxen... women had some more leisure time and women weren't
just doing the wash, they were also thinking about getting politically
active.
women took art classes and attended pottery groups and even started
pottery companies . In the new style, indigent or ill young women
could sometimes go to places like Ariquepa and get some good air to
help with their TB. Exercise and health . And they could make pots,
to earn some income and engage in the arts .
And among some: was it the new middle and upper middle classes, or
was it the poets , the writers, the dreamers, the artists?
Among some there was a fervent desire to return to a time where things
of beauty were made by hand and used.... deeply held values, reflected
in the styles of the times...
but, at the same time the subdivision was born. and all those new
houses had romantic, alluring architecture,even for those of common
means: and all those subdivisions wanted to offer something new , yet
'handmade'.
Also, more people were traveling abroad and bringing back stories of
exotic places. People would go to the world expositions held in
different cities to get an idea of what the very latest styles or
trends were. Not only would they see new inventions in technology and
science, they would see Rookwood pots and Grueby tile and tiffany
lamps and amazing, exotic architecture . At the panama exposition n
1914, there was exotic Spanish architecture,( continuing the romantic
notion that the west coast was this halcyon land, a faded but shining
outpost of a highly romanticized Spanish empire, where Indians,
padres, caballero's and senoritas tended ranches and grew wine
grapes.. the western outpost of empire)
was that romance , pride, imperialism, or style?
In the park there was also a Mayan style building . an entire Pueblo
complex, and a futuristic modern building. There was a complete wild
west town , (which caused problems because people really lived there.
Everyone kept getting drunk and gambling and fighting and engaging in
other activities commonly associated with life in the wild west. )
there was even a nudist colony . It had a fence around it , but the
fair promoters drilled plentiful holes in the fence so fairgoers
could see actual buck nekkid nudists , including Lady Godiva herself,
frolicking in a very earthly garden of paradise.
And , if you felt mortified upon having viewed the nudists , you could
always go to the revivals held by Aimee Semple McPherson to get
yourself uplifted again.
the styles of architecture, the tile cladding, the exhibits people
saw at these national and international expositions became the rage and
always introduced the next big thing. The marvelous new motion
picture and the car brought the world closer to the individual, the
exotic styles of other cultures and periods in history , imaginations
of things grand and futuristic as well.
it was romance and economics and events and oh yes, land
speculation...
Do those reflect values? style? or simply forces of nature and change?
.
. take any part of the country at any time... there is a mythology.
there is a shared sense of the pervading , what, mood? how we feel
about those times. how we express it.
sometimes it inevitably boils down to what you do in your own
sphere... "you can't change the world, but you can ....(fill in the
blank)..."
In this country most of us have time to think about things like that,
or at least we, maybe without even thinking ,
respond to it, we are IN it
Maybe , with the exception of situations and times where people are in
dire straits, in the grip of extreme poverty and crisis , that has
always been the case .
?
Stephani
Stephani Stephenson
steph@revivaltileworks.com
http://www.revivaltileworks.com
Kathy Forer on fri 17 nov 06
On Nov 17, 2006, at 2:14 AM, Stephani Stephenson wrote:
> it was romance and economics and events and oh yes, land
> speculation...
> Do those reflect values? style? or simply forces of nature and
> change?
> .
> . take any part of the country at any time... there is a mythology.
> there is a shared sense of the pervading , what, mood? how we feel
> about those times. how we express it.
> sometimes it inevitably boils down to what you do in your own
> sphere... "you can't change the world, but you can ....(fill in the
> blank)..."
> In this country most of us have time to think about things like that,
> or at least we, maybe without even thinking ,
> respond to it, we are IN it
Or as Archibald MacLeish wrote in 'Dover Beach, a Note to That Poem',
"it's we will be under it."
"Dover Beach, a Note to That Poem" -- Archibald MacLeish
The wave withdrawing
withers with seaward rustle of flimsy water
sucking the sand down, dragging at empty shells
The roil after it settling, too smooth, smothered.
After forty a man's a fool to stand in the face of the
Sea and wait for the full force and roaring of
Surf to come over him: droves of careening water
After forty the tug's out and the salt and the
sea follow it: less sound and violence
Nevertheless the ebb has a beauty of its own
Shells sand and all the whispering rustle
There's earth in it and then the bubbles of foam gone.
Moreover -- and this too has its lovely uses
it's the outward wave that spills the inward forward
Tripping the proud piled mute virginal mountain of water in
wallowing welter of light and
Sound enough -- thunder for miles back. It's a fine and a
wild smother to vanish in: Pulling down
Tripping with outward ebb the urgent inward
Speaking alone for myself it's the steep hill and the toppling
lift of the young men I am toward now
waiting for that as the wave for the nest wave
Let them go over us all I say with the thunder of
what's to be next in the world!: it's we will be under it.
--
Kathy Forer
www.foreverink.com
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