Up and down a dirt road, off of route 23 in Blandford, is a white farmhouse which has been there long enough to seem part of the land. Gerry Wise had been teaching drawing at Mankato State University in Minnesota before moving here with his family.
"I was tired of living in suburbia, being surrounded by others and having a way of life forced on me where I was unable to act freely. I didn't want my behavior to be obviously inappropriate or offensive to my neighbors. I want my home, yard and garden to look like my own, not an extension of some neatly manicured neighborhood policy. I want my life and my home to be as one struggling with nature, not dominating it. There is much time and energy spent in maintaining the illusion that man is in complete control."
"Living out here is a challenge. You can't farm it commercially, but you can raise a garden. I heat with wood and find the aerobic effect of splitting wood and working in the garden balance the concentration and discipline which I wouldn't impose on anyone else."
His art, detailed ink drawings of his visualizations, demand this kind of concentration. He feels things with his eyes, then cares very much that he gets the drawing just as he conceived it.
"It isn't just the appearance that I want to get down. To represent things exactly is a kind of joke. In the end, you construct what you think anyway."
His pictures represent the thought and feeling behind the appearance. For this reason, as we talked, the conversation wandered to thoughts on ecology, the balance of nature and the effect on the land of everyone feeling that so much is necessary to sustain life.
"Everyone throws away what loses popularity, 'the old stuff,' along with mounds of cardboard and paper and plastic used to package the latest popular items."
Some of his pictures show people immersed in their own junk. The drawings were done long before the garbarge barge brought this problem to our consciousness.
"Ideas exist in our unconscious and can be visualized and projected long before they are expressed. Images in the artist's mind emerge from the unconscious source when anxiety or fear bring them to the surface. Anyone seeing a potential problem or threat to his existence feels compelled to do or say something about it. This artist is a loner, but cares deeply about the survival of humanity. His art sometimes is considered subversive, since to create new forms or a new way of seeing, he has to attack existing forms. The artist is always mistrusted in two ways. To have an original idea or pursue his vision, he must be alone, which makes him suspect. Secondly, when he is alone, away from social and economic pressures, he finds that social and economic reasons are precisely what keeps most people from seeing anything beyond these limits. In other words, to see life in a new way, one must be beyond the limits of time and place. This, of course, makes the artist an outsider and further suspect. This is where the artist must remain if he is to maintain integrity."
We walked out into the garden. He said that his garden meanders like his drawings. Serpentine mounds, accommodating the rocks too large to move with the design, accentuated with smaller stones. With the top soil concentrated in the mounds and enhanced with manure from his neighbor's sheep, flowers and vegetables grew luxuriantly.
"You express yourself with your garden. Nature bends you, allowing you to assert yourself, but controlling the final outcome with seen and unseen forces."
To be able to observe from these hills, to experience the light through the trees with the exaggerated seasonal differences, as the sun swings low on the horizon during the winter months is a privilege to Gerry Wise. To perfect his technique and to keep pushing to communicate with his art, he works long hours getting the light and dark of his drawings just right.
"Opaque patches of cloud and fog give an entirely different perspective. You get back unexpected forms. With these contrasts and the adjustments your eye must make, your mind remains open and you really see. If you look at a forest and estimate board feet, you may never see other things that make it a forest."
He said that, because we feel insecure, we look for images that make us feel comfortable. Television feeds these images and creates more. Repeated, these pictures have a numbing effect. TVs become our gravestones, as our ability to see for ourselves is deadened. This thought is graphically expressed in the drawing titled, "Grave Markers."
Another of his drawings, "Malestrom," suggests uncontrolled change. It depicts people being sucked into the un- known along with the products of our culture. Some seem to struggle and hold back. Others use escapist measures. Others seem to be enjoying the ride.
I drove away behind a large road scraper, which was making the dirt road passable. It took the man who drove the scraper only one morning to do the work of a whole crew. There was no aerobic effect from the work, no chance to communicate with fellow workmen as there would have been in the days when the Wise's farmhouse was built. Would we want to go back to those days? What is the ultimate result of becoming dependent on these industrial beasts? How will nature's balance be maintained? I drove away thinking of these things, feeling that I was really seeing.
"I was tired of living in suburbia, being surrounded by others and having a way of life forced on me where I was unable to act freely. I didn't want my behavior to be obviously inappropriate or offensive to my neighbors. I want my home, yard and garden to look like my own, not an extension of some neatly manicured neighborhood policy. I want my life and my home to be as one struggling with nature, not dominating it. There is much time and energy spent in maintaining the illusion that man is in complete control."
"Living out here is a challenge. You can't farm it commercially, but you can raise a garden. I heat with wood and find the aerobic effect of splitting wood and working in the garden balance the concentration and discipline which I wouldn't impose on anyone else."
His art, detailed ink drawings of his visualizations, demand this kind of concentration. He feels things with his eyes, then cares very much that he gets the drawing just as he conceived it.
"It isn't just the appearance that I want to get down. To represent things exactly is a kind of joke. In the end, you construct what you think anyway."
His pictures represent the thought and feeling behind the appearance. For this reason, as we talked, the conversation wandered to thoughts on ecology, the balance of nature and the effect on the land of everyone feeling that so much is necessary to sustain life.
"Everyone throws away what loses popularity, 'the old stuff,' along with mounds of cardboard and paper and plastic used to package the latest popular items."
Some of his pictures show people immersed in their own junk. The drawings were done long before the garbarge barge brought this problem to our consciousness.
"Ideas exist in our unconscious and can be visualized and projected long before they are expressed. Images in the artist's mind emerge from the unconscious source when anxiety or fear bring them to the surface. Anyone seeing a potential problem or threat to his existence feels compelled to do or say something about it. This artist is a loner, but cares deeply about the survival of humanity. His art sometimes is considered subversive, since to create new forms or a new way of seeing, he has to attack existing forms. The artist is always mistrusted in two ways. To have an original idea or pursue his vision, he must be alone, which makes him suspect. Secondly, when he is alone, away from social and economic pressures, he finds that social and economic reasons are precisely what keeps most people from seeing anything beyond these limits. In other words, to see life in a new way, one must be beyond the limits of time and place. This, of course, makes the artist an outsider and further suspect. This is where the artist must remain if he is to maintain integrity."
We walked out into the garden. He said that his garden meanders like his drawings. Serpentine mounds, accommodating the rocks too large to move with the design, accentuated with smaller stones. With the top soil concentrated in the mounds and enhanced with manure from his neighbor's sheep, flowers and vegetables grew luxuriantly.
"You express yourself with your garden. Nature bends you, allowing you to assert yourself, but controlling the final outcome with seen and unseen forces."
To be able to observe from these hills, to experience the light through the trees with the exaggerated seasonal differences, as the sun swings low on the horizon during the winter months is a privilege to Gerry Wise. To perfect his technique and to keep pushing to communicate with his art, he works long hours getting the light and dark of his drawings just right.
"Opaque patches of cloud and fog give an entirely different perspective. You get back unexpected forms. With these contrasts and the adjustments your eye must make, your mind remains open and you really see. If you look at a forest and estimate board feet, you may never see other things that make it a forest."
He said that, because we feel insecure, we look for images that make us feel comfortable. Television feeds these images and creates more. Repeated, these pictures have a numbing effect. TVs become our gravestones, as our ability to see for ourselves is deadened. This thought is graphically expressed in the drawing titled, "Grave Markers."
Another of his drawings, "Malestrom," suggests uncontrolled change. It depicts people being sucked into the un- known along with the products of our culture. Some seem to struggle and hold back. Others use escapist measures. Others seem to be enjoying the ride.
I drove away behind a large road scraper, which was making the dirt road passable. It took the man who drove the scraper only one morning to do the work of a whole crew. There was no aerobic effect from the work, no chance to communicate with fellow workmen as there would have been in the days when the Wise's farmhouse was built. Would we want to go back to those days? What is the ultimate result of becoming dependent on these industrial beasts? How will nature's balance be maintained? I drove away thinking of these things, feeling that I was really seeing.
