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It has been a while since I posted any of my flounder drawings on this blog, but don’t worry, ever since my art show back in August I have been working as harder than ever at drawing and sculpting allegorical flatfish. Indeed, I am working on a new show with some spectacular projects…but more about that later. For right now here are two small fish drawings. The first, above, is titled “Haywain Flatfish” and is meant to evoke the splendor of harvest season. A bewhiskered yokel carries off a sack of millet as the pumpkins ripen in the golden fields. An industrious beaver has been similarly productive and sits beaming beside his perfectly constructed dam. Although the scene conveys bucolic tranquility, the hollow black eyes of the fulsome flounder (and the circling vulture) speak of the coming austerity and darkness of winter.
This second image “AlienHeartSole” shows a flounder/sole with what looks like a big-hearted alien tentacle monster flying upon it in a personalized saucer. Although the alien seems benign, the imbecilic sphinx with a javelin, the bomb, and the tattered angel throwing a dart all suggest that this is an amoral and perplexing galaxy. Only the laid-back rooster offers a modicum of sanguine confidence…and it is unclear whether the gormless bird understands what is going on. If you enjoy these little tragi-comic images, you should follow me on Instagram (where Ferrebeekeeper goes by the sobriquet “GreatFlounder”). There you will find a great trove of colorful and enigmatic flatfish art. As part of the project which I mentioned above, I am trying to bring my various digital /web content into a more tightly networked gestalt, so I would be super appreciative for any Instagram follows!
Ceres (Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1717-1718, oil on canvas)
In my many posts about art and painting, I have shamefully slighted the wonderful 18th century. Here is a masterpiece by one of the greatest painters of that era, Jean-Antoine Watteau, whose career was all too brief. Watteau bridged the gap between Baroque and Rococo by bringing the naturalistic color and movement of Correggio to the rigorous classical tradition of great French masters such as Poussin and Lorrain. This beautifully painted oval composition portrays the fertility goddess Ceres shimmering among the lambent clouds in the long pink evenings of summer. Her garb of gold and shell color perfectly suits the joyous abundance of the season. Around her, youths are gathering the precious life-giving wheat while the astrological beasts of the summer sky gambol at her side.
Artist’s conception of the Dawn spacecraft
Of course I did not just pull this choice of subjects out of some crazy 18th century hat! As I write this, the NASA spacecraft Dawn is hurtling through the asteroid belt toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt. Ceres (the dwarf planet) is located in the strange region between Mars and Jupiter. It is large enough to be spherical due to its own gravity but something seems to have gone horribly wrong there. It appears to be the shattered core of a world which either never quite formed or which was destroyed during the making—a miscarriage four and a half billion years old. Scientists have speculated about what the little world is composed of and how it was created, but telescopes have only revealed so much, and no spacecraft has visited prior to Dawn. This is a time of true exploration like the 18th century! Already Dawn’s cameras have spotted bizarre ultra-bright reflections from Ceres. Are they sheets of ice or metal…something else? We will have to wait till the probe enters orbit in April to find out, but I am excited to learn more about the formation of Ceres (which is to say the formation of the solar system) and to finally solve some of the mysteries of this under-appreciated heavenly neighbor.
This image of Ceres was taken by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft on Feb. 19 from a distance of nearly 46,000 kilometers (29,000 miles)
Of course I am also heartily sick of this endless disappointing winter. The sooner Ceres (the allegorical figure of abundance and warmth) brings life back to Brooklyn, the happier I will be. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for exciting news from space and for the return of life and growth here on (the north part of) Earth after a long winter. Also anybody who wishes for the return of classical beauty and allegorical subtlety in the dismal world of ill-conceived & poorly-executed contemporary art will have my heartfelt appreciation and best wishes!
Ancient Greek stone carving of the goddess Ceres with poppies, shafts of wheat, and snakes
Coppicing
Yesterday I wrote about beheading as a theme in gothic art. It’s a chilling subject because if a person (or other vertebrate) is so fundamentally cut apart…well that’s pretty much it for him or her except for obsequies and obituaries. However this weakness is not universal among organisms. Many invertebrates like worms, jellyfish, and sponges can be cut apart and continue to thrive. The animal world is not really the direct subject of today’s post though. Certain plants are particularly good at regenerating despite trauma. A large number of common forest trees can be entirely cut down and still regrow from the stump. This fact formed the basis for coppicing, a practice of woodland management which involved harvesting certain trees by cutting them down for firewood or timber and then waiting for the living stump (which foresters call a stool) to regrow.
This method of forest harvesting/maintenance was most effective when different parts of a wooded land were kept at varying stages of regrowth. Certain areas of trees would be cut back to ground level. Other trees would be back to full mature size. Most trees were somewhere in between. The cycle depended on the location and the sort of trees being harvested but it was apparently a favorite way for communities to have their woods and burn them too. Chestnut, hazel, hornbeam, beech, ash and oak were all frequently coppiced. The process was extremely common during medieval times but seems to have fallen away as mercantilism (with its emphasis on shipbuilding) and industrialization took hold.
This is a shame because coppicing was not as environmentally devastating as clear cutting. To quote an online article at The Great Escape Treehouse Company:
Coppice management favours a wide range of wildlife, often of species adapted to open woodland. After cutting, the increased light allows existing woodland-floor vegetation such as bluebell, anemone and primrose to grow vigorously. Often brambles also grow around the stools. Woodpiles (if left in the coppice) encourage insects, such as beetles to come into an area. The open area is then colonised by many different animals such as nightingale, nightjar and fritillary butterflies. As the coup grows up, the canopy closes and it becomes unsuitable for these animals again but, in an actively managed coppice, there is always another recently cut coup nearby, and the populations therefore move around, following the coppice management.
Forests that can survive and thrive despite coppicing probably evolved to do so in conjunction with animals. Beaver are infamous for cutting down forests both as food and as building materials. Deer and related artiodactyls are also hard on forests (though not like elephants—African and Indian trees must be hardy indeed).
Woods which never had to deal with any of these animals are susceptible to vanishing when tree-cutting invaders appear. When beavers were introduced to Patagonia they caused an ecological crisis, both from flooding caused by their dams and from cutting down trees with their teeth. The local trees could not survive coppicing and quickly vanished before the onslaught of the industrious rodents.
A Black Turkey, also called the Spanish Black, the Dutch Black, or the Norfolk Black (photo by Mike Walters)
We’ll jump right into this continuation of last week’s two-part post with the the Black Turkey, which was a European variety of domesticated turkey. The original Spanish conquistadors found that the Aztecs had domesticated a subspecies of wild turkey Meleagris gallopavo gallopavo. The ravenous Spaniards carried some of these off (along with every single valuable thing they could find) and took them back to Spain.
Spanish fashion: this is an unusually colorful outfit for Spain during that era.
In accordance with Spanish fashion, the new turkey farmers of the old world selectively bred for all black feathers. The black turkeys spread first to the Netherlands (then under Spanish control) and ultimately throughout Europe.
A Bronze Standard turkey
When English colonists arrived in the New England, they brought black turkeys with them and crossed the European domestic birds with the wild turkeys they found in the forest. The resulting variety had beautiful dark brown feathers with green and copper sheen. These turkeys were called Bronze turkeys and the standard bronze turkey was the most common turkey throughout most of America’s history.
A Buff Turkey in Australia (courtesy of S. Lim)
In their turkey breeding experiments, the colonists also obtained Buff turkeys, one of the original breeds of domestic turkeys in the United States. It was a medium sized bird with lovely dun/beige colored feathers. Unfortunately, due to the ascendancy of larger turkeys, the breed went extinct in 1915. But all was not lost: to quote The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy “Interest in creating a buff colored turkey returned once again the 1940’s. The New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station at Millville initiated a program to develop a small to medium size market turkey. This is one of the few instances where a new variety was developed in a methodical manner….”
The Bourbon Red Turkey
In the early 1800’s a Kentucky poultry farmer named J. F. Barbee crossed Buff, Bronze, and White Holland Turkeys to obtain a pretty roan colored turkey with white wing and tail feathers and light under-feathers. Unfortunately Barbee christened his new breed as “Bourbon Butternuts” and the turkeys did not sell at all. Only later when he renamed the bird “Bourbon reds” did they become popular. Even old-timey Americans were slaves to marketing! The Bourbon red turkey had fallen from favor but lately the breed has become a mainstay of the organic back-yard turkey movement.
That concludes my overview of turkey breeds. I’m sorry I told it out of order, but hopefully you have pieced together the strange tale of Aztecs, Spaniards, 19th century showmen, and factory farms. It is curious how some breeds died out while others burgeoned in accordance to the strange ebb and flow of fashion and taste. It raises curious moral quandaries about the nature of farming. Livestock breeds are created by humans for human convenience and whim. If we don’t eat our farm animals, they vanish (for it is the rare farmer who keeps turkeys purely as a hobby). Isn’t it preferable for these creatures to exist and reproduce even if destiny means that they end their lives as the object of our great annual feast? Perhaps it is best to return to the mindset of the first turkey farmers, the mighty Aztecs, who understood ceremonial annual sacrifice and made it a cornerstone of their culture. Look around you this November and see big proud domestic turkeys staring at you from decorations, television shows, brand labels, and cartoons everywhere. Now think about the red step pyramid, the howling augur, and the flint knife–for you must consume domestic turkeys, the sacred bird of our harvest feast, in order that they may live on. I, for one, am up to such a task! And in addition to looking forward to Thursday dinner, I am eager to see what new varieties of domestic turkeys crop up in this coming century…
ferrebeekeeper 