Reminiscing about Danville Bridge

I always go home for the holidays.  I grew up in Tennessee Ridge, which is where my wife and I spent our Thanksgiving last night with my family.  This entire area of the mid-state is very rural.  The instant I cross the county line, I'm flooded with a full range of emotion and nostalgia for my late teens and backroad-driving, woods-tromping, creek-swimming good times.  I find it no coincidence the work of art which I chose to finish up tonight: an illustration I sketched out months back inspired by a bridge a few of us know about and had some candid moments around, on, in, and occasionally (for some) climbing on and/or falling off of.  I'd always wanted to do a drawing of the actual bridge, but here is the work inspired by it...



The Danville Bridge doesn't exist any more (as far as how we knew it.)  A bridge at one time crossed Kentucky Lake and connected Houston and Benton Counties.  I'm assuming when trains stopped running the tracks, Benton County demolished their side.  What was left was a framed bridge which ran about a quarter of the way out into the lake and stopped.  Well, we thought this was the coolest damn place in the world to sneak out to and hang out when we were in high school (and shortly thereafter.)  The walk to the edge was scary as hell considering at some point they had taken out the planks for about the first twenty yards from the water's bank to discourage people from venturing out onto it.  Some wonderful (and acrobatic) soul had remedied this at some point before we came along by welding a steel mesh walkway out to what was left of the bridge.  Heading out, you're looking straight down through this 18 inch wide mesh to the rocky lakeside, which was upwards of 40-50 feet below.  With no guard rails and nothing on either side of you but a loooooong drop down, hold your breath and keep looking forward.  A couple years ago, a local family purchased the land now and has since blocked access to the bridge from the public, isolating my experiences of this infamous spot to those which have already been played out.

In early 2000, I had abandoned my visual arts skills for those of the pen and paper and the limitless verse swarming in my head.  I was never to be found without a notebook (and I filled several in a three year period.)  Writing is a young man's sport and I figured I had to get my practice and drills in every chance I caught the fever of words in my brain.  One late night, I ventured out to Danville Bridge with a few of my close friends, we were on the tail end of an LSD trip and wanted to see the sun come up somewhere beautiful that morning.  Here is the poem inspired by the experience from my collection of poems entitled Dip and Trip .45, which you can preview and purchase here at Lulu Press.

bridge

walking about the gloom of blue shade

          and picking seeds

a softening pattern of graffiti

    on the palimpsest stomach of the bridge

names and stipulation-

hyperventilating hodgepodge of remembrance    

          speaking quiet languages

a collected ground

          tenacious spirit

timeless in the undulated blackness

chimps limbering about the caged casing-

          a rust iron skeleton

edges of eternity

          with the clause

          that an edge is not an end

          nor a barrier

the stars grew and withdrew

          blue highlights of cloud

          made love to the horizon

i became

the sun winked over miles

          and with feathery breath,

gradated color

          into nativity

i beheld grass growing from wood planks

          at the lip of conception

This was a very small and intricate work, so I got a perspective shot.  It's hard to make out all the detail in the scan, especially the tiny eyes throughout the sky I did with a .005 flesh-tone pen... 

 

UPDATE 12/07/10

I just found a blast from the past... I had forgotten all about it!  This illustration was composed using a reference photo I took of the bridge about ten years ago.  The drawing is from 2005...

Fright Night Film Fest

Well, I got Con #2 under my belt this past weekend in Louisville, KY at Fright Night Film Fest. I knew the weekend would be fun and I'd be turning my head frequently when I hopped out of the van to check in to the hotel- I took my first double-take at the slashed-throat corpse on the lobby bench (in reality a girl with her head down texting and in full zombie get-up- the head drooped down like that got me though!)

Two weeks ago, I was compelled to draw a portrait of the festival's guest of honor, early B-movie pioneer Roger Corman. Corman was off the beaten path in his time. He directed Jack Nicholson in his first movie, the original Little Shop of Horrors. Later, he went on to direct one of Nicholson's few scripts, The Trip (of which I'm more familiar than most of Corman's work -thanks Ryan!-).



In the movie, Peter Fonda's character takes his first dose of LSD as a self-journey and the basis of the entire movie (the acid is given to him by Bruce Dern via Dennis Hopper, who plays the drug dealer). The film is a very mature and realistic look at the drug experience itself. One of the main reasons for this is that Corman didn't want to make a movie about something he in fact hadn't experienced. So He, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper dropped some LSD in preparation for the project. The first thing you'll probably notice about my illustration (as many did over the weekend) is the famous plant. The part I like the most is the hit of blotter in the corner inspired by The Trip. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Corman in Louisville and talking about the movie early Friday before things kicked off. He seemed surprised when I brought it up, which led me to assume that it's not one many people ask about. I urge you to check out this true gem of rebel cinema. Roger had pleasant things to say about the print of this work which I gave him. I thought it would be neat to give him a souvenir since he's usually on the giving side signing autographs all weekend.


During set-up Friday afternoon, I was humbled with the compliments of a guy who stopped in his tracks when my work caught his eye. We spoke for a minute before I realized he was Jeff Gaither, an artist who's work I've admired for some time. Jeff is a self-taught artist (as am I) who has been making his sick art professionally for thirty years now. He has made album covers and art for hundreds of musicians including The Misfits, Guns 'n' Roses, and Stone Temple Pilots. I ended up trading him one of my new Third Eye books for a nice poster print.

Saturday night, we drove down to Shepherdsville to see my long-lost friend Stacey and his wife. Stacey had been harboring a few paintings I'd left behind when he and I lived in Nashville back in 2001. I think he was just happy to unload some junk! The visit brought the artistic experience full circle seeing work I'd done almost a decade ago.

Sunday, we took the down-time of a slow day to get around and meet some of the other incredible artists who were present. I lugged around one of my new print books (holding the nearly 70 prints I have stocked) and traded prints with some of the guest celebrities and filmmakers in attendance for autographed pics and DVDs also.

Aurora with Mike Christopher who played the Hare Krishna Zombie in the original Dawn of the Dead...



Rochelle Davis (Sarah from The Crow) was a really sweet gal and had some wonderful things to say about my art!



This guy ain't that scary for being the Predator!



If you think this is frightening, you should see her when she's mad. Aurora at the Shadowland booth...