This print was taken from a vintage photo from the late 1960s in Lufkin, in the deep East Texas. My uncle and cousin playing baseball in my great-grandmother’s yard, dodging pine trees to catch the ball. Somewhere in front of them, there must have been a batter and a photographer. No cameras were harmed as far as I know!
I recently joined a Facebook group of family members’ on my dad’s side, which is and was full of preachers and have even had their own church for generations. This is not a side of my family that I know very well, so it is interesting to get to know them and the family history.
This piece is based on a photograph I found there, showing a river baptism probably around the 1950s or so. The people are not identified, but I would guess that the person doing the baptism is an uncle of mine.
I’ve started working on larger monotype prints, which is fun. It takes a little bit of problem solving, since I don’t have a large format printer and wouldn’t want to spend money to have something printed professionally that’s just going to be a reference piece. So, in order to get the photo large enough, I open Adobe Acrobat and print as a poster, which enlarges across multiple sheets of paper. I put them together sort of like a puzzle under my large plate (or plates if the finished product will be larger than 16X20.) It is a little extra work, but I love how these look at a larger scale when I can bring out more of the entire scene.
While most of my immediate family have been laid to rest in one cemetery, my home community has many, many others, which hold not only my long-ago ancestors but also those of my friends and neighbors. Growing up, cemeteries were a part of life and close to home. A place to go and feel closer to past loved ones, to tend to their grave sites and spend a peaceful moment. There was nothing scary about cemeteries, and aside from the occasional spook-tacular fall hayride, they weren’t particularly amusing, either. They were just there. They were places of reverence, peace and community touchstones. I’m not even one for zombies or skeleton imagery. Even at Halloween, I prefer to decorate with things like black cats or silly monsters. There are a few reasons for this, but it’s mostly from being a realist. Because no one knows what our souls are capable of, but our bodies are where they are going to be. Once they’re interred, they’ll never sit on a bench, chase a teenager or hug a pumpkin again. (Sad, but true!)
Texas has many historic cemeteries, defined as “any cemetery 50 years or older that landmarks the presence of a family or community.” In my family story, I can think of at least eight, and I am sure there are more. The largest and most modern one is still in use, but we still visit and maintain the ones in the outlying areas, too. In many cases, the cemeteries are all that’s left of those communities. Some are named after the places they commemorate (such as Homer, Huntington, Rocky Hill) and some are named for families (Renfro, Durham.) The Texas Historical Commission is a great resource for learning more about and preserving these places in the state, and Saving Places from the National Trust for Historic Preservation has valuable information, too.
And there’s nothing morbid about researching, studying, or visiting them. These cemeteries and their place in my community have been very helpful in my creative genealogy projects and interest in Texas history.
Before I committed to an ancestry.com membership, I did a lot of research through Find a Grave, an online ancestry records search tool that is free and quite useful for genealogists, historians and family history search. Not only does it deliver results for names and locations of current and historic graves, it also publishes obituaries, along with names that the original record might be linked to. Here’s my grandmother’s record as an example. Lots of info, although she’d be incensed that a photo linked to her good name had an overturned plant in it. Who knows when this photo was taken or who the photographer is, but I feel like I should drive home immediately and check to make sure that plant has been fixed.
I also look at burial records in the ancestry.com portal. Here’s a page with best practices for finding death, burial and cemetery records in its database. Digital Vital Records, in the National Archives, are also helpful.
But, as with everything else, the best sources of information have been my family. As I mentioned before, I have been so fortunate to have had long-lived relatives, and few older folks who are living still. On my last trip home, I went to three East Texas cemeteries, two with my grandfather who happily pointed out his (and I suppose, my own) family members: grandparents; great-grandparents, aunts and uncles, and his infant brother who I had not known about before now. I visited the resting place of my great-uncle Sherman McBryde, saw his honor plaque, and learned that while he never married, he did have a sweetheart in Boston. That he was a kind and gentle person who my grandfather really loved. Some of these things I could learn by researching or reading, but for the best parts, as they say, you just have to be there. Or as close to being there as you can when you’re getting know family who lived generations before.
This “cemetery tour” covered my maternal grandfather’s side of the family. My dad has been making phone calls and setting up meetings for me and other family historians, and next time I’ll visit two cemeteries that hold his paternal ancestors. Later in the fall, when it is not boiling hot (just regular Texas hot), I’ll continue on to Renfro Prairie, Rocky Hill, and Mount Hope, if I can find it. Perhaps I’ll be able to circle back to the tiny and old McBryde Cemetery, but that will be more difficult because it’s on private property now.
And there’s another, not insignificant reason for my Texas cemetery tour. As I have spent the better part of last year looking through, learning about, and making art from these people’s lives, photos and personal documents, I realize that I owe them a great debt.
In the literal sense, I owe them my life, because who are we of, if not of our family? All the nice people and mean people, hard-workers and hucksters. The multitudes that they contain. Those who we find commonalities in interests, temperaments and hobbies and those who make us say “I would never!” Ancestors who gave us our pretty eyes or our hard-to-comb hair. Family who only our oldest relatives can remember and even those who are now names in stories, or even a database.
More personally, I owe them thanks for the gifts that the Pine Curtain Project has given to me. Through it, even those who are long gone are still helping their granddaughter, great-granddaughter, great-great-granddaughter, so on and so forth. They still have so much to share. It’s like a complicated group project with some really remote contributors who you can never align time zones with. But it works.
So, when I walk through a historic East Texas cemetery, I say “Thank You” to Beatrice, who loved me before I could really know her. To Charlie aka Grandy who lived long enough for his youngest great-grandaughters to fistfight at his feet and imperil his oxygen tank. To Paul aka Paw who I am more like than I realized in his lifetime. To Pete and Ernestine, for who, though they recently left after long and beloved lives, there are still not enough Thank Yous. I say “they never forgot you” to the infant who lived for a day in 1927; and “Well, you’ve certainly caused a stir” to the alleged backwoods Lothario from the 1800s. “I think I understand” to my great-great-uncle in the late 1930s whose story I am eager to tell when the time is right.
I say “none of you people ever threw anything away, and I have come from your future to vindicate you for that.”
How do you connect with a loved one? Go where they are, wherever they are. Above ground or below it. Maybe their only known place is in your heart. That’s okay, too. But go there and say “Thanks.” Say “I love you.” Say “I’m here.”
As soon as my extended family, husband and I were vaccinated and past the CDC recommended waiting period, we said goodbye to the cats and headed to East Texas for the weekend. The Pine Curtain Project didn’t start in quarantine, but definitely gained speed, depth and focus over the past year when I had more time (for better or worse.) So, it was exciting to finally get to go home, not only to hear stories directly from surviving elders, but also to collect more research items and photographs, and to walk around outside around community landmarks before it gets too hot to do so.
Researching online is great and very productive, but there is so much value in being able to learn things first hand. Our large and busy community has dwindled over the years as older people pass away and ancestral land changes over to new community members or is sold to the new businesses that have been encroaching over the past few years. (A new twist on an age-old song: “They paved the horse pasture, put up a port-o-pot lot.”)
I’m lucky to still have two surviving grandparents: one on each side of my family. My grandfather is 86, and my grandmother is 91. They live within a mile or so of each other and my parents, so a lot of their stories overlap. They’re at various levels of mobility, but they are both very interested in family and community history in their own way. So, I was able to spend an hour or so with my grandmother going over her stash of collected family stories, notes and photos, then an afternoon riding around with my grandfather and walking around family cemeteries.
Both outings filled in some blanks for me, and helped me visualize the places I learn about. In many cases, I was able to add names, context, and detail to the stories I have heard over the years.
Over the weekend, a few people asked why I was interested in this history: why now, and what were my plans for it? Those are valid questions. I have always loved my family and community, but I couldn’t wait to leave it when I was 18, and like most young adults, I didn’t always fully appreciate it. I knew from my fashion magazines that big cities had the good shopping and at the time, Lufkin was no place for someone who desired exotic items like boot cut pants. (I can still hear my confused mother asking, “…like Poppa’s Wranglers?” No mom. Like Poppa’s Wrangler’s but way more expensive. Gah.)
Anyway, like any other place, it contains strengths and challenges, and it took a little while for those to balance out for me. But, better late than never, right? And, a real personal benefit of the project is that it has been a great opportunity to form stronger relationships with my family. We may not agree on everything, but we can all agree that some late-great ancestor sounded “crazier’n an outhouse rat,” haha.
I don’t have kids and at nearly 45, that ship has sailed. I am an only child, as well. In many ways, I see this project as a way for me to not only better understand some of the family, community and cultural dynamics that make me who I am, but also to leave a record so that it doesn’t disappear with me.
As I have mentioned before, the Pine Curtain Project is loosely themed around the idea of Ghost Towns and Ghost Stories: what happens in a place and what remains, and to the degree that anyone can know – why.
I have been gathering information over the past few months, and have made decent progress on documentation around the larger ideas on my roadmap for this year.
Images, names and dates are starting to turn into timelines and rough biographies. Over time, these will evolve into narratives. Maybe the project will remain a series of smaller stories, or merge into one big one; I don’t know the answer to that yet, or what form any of it might take beyond my visual art and this blog.
Anyway, I have a new stack of things to parse through this week, and plan to post more art and Curated Histories starting next week. In the meantime, enjoy these images that show just a few of the nearly pristine vintage treasures my cousin found cleaning out her late parents’ house this weekend. I didn’t come home with much of it, but the Barbie trunks are going to hold art supplies now. I REALLY want that Atari but their grandchild gets first refusal. As is appropriate for such a prized heirloom.
This week, I am returning to archive photos from the Diboll History Center. This is just one comprehensive source that I use, and it does a great job organizing its images into historical sets, so it is easy find images from the same era, activity or theme and put them together to document and build larger stories.
This image is “Two Mule Skidders and a Man,” from the Southern Pine Lumber Company, in 1903. The last time I worked from a vintage photo of East Texas loggers, it was a team from the 1930s, if that tells you how long this area has been working with timber.
These photographs at the History Center were part of a larger project by American Lumberman, a weekly trade journal established in 1899.
“The American Lumberman photographs of the Southern Pine Lumber Company consist of 255 gelatin silver prints made by American Lumberman photographers during visits to Diboll in 1903 and 1907. They document the lumber company’s management, logging operations, Texas South-Eastern Railroad, timber, lumber camps, sawmills, commissary, and social life. The photographs provide insight into the early twentieth-century community life of a Texas sawmill company town and connected logging camps.” – American Lumberman Photographs of Southern Pine Lumber Company in The Portal to Texas History. University of North Texas Libraries.
I didn’t know what a “mule skidder” was until today, and when I Googled it, images came up for heavy machinery, not animals. But back when the animal was the machinery, a driver would position the cart over felled logs, where dangling tongs would then raise the end of the log off the ground. The mule, oxen or horse team pulled the tong forward, allowing the log to “skid” along between the rolling wheels.
The photo caption notes that the actual skidder is not shown here, so it looks like the guys in this photo were suiting up for a hard day’s work. Or maybe resting between tasks. Either way, all three were in the middle of a very important job.
It’s a snow day week here, and my studio feels a bit daunting and too cold to relax in and get into the zone. So, I’m spending the day organizing some research I’ve found lately. I have been going through old Diboll Free Press newspapers. There are a bunch of them with a lot of good information – some historical but most of it in terms of “slices of life” as it published mostly unedited citizen reporter news from the surrounding counties. I’ll say more on that later on, but in the meantime, here are some fun vintage newspaper ads I’ve come across.
I’m always interested in how creative people structure their time, so I thought I’d share a little bit about how I work. Especially since what so many people see is just the finished product, and that is just the tip of the iceberg!
My artwork takes a long time to do. Not as long as, say, a photorealistic oil portrait, but it is very process heavy and needs a lot of protected time, as it is not work that I can start, stop and come back to. If the acrylic dries on the plate, it is unusable for my process, and if I try to rush through and end up with an off-center or flawed print, it’s back to the proverbial drawing board, or literal printing plate, to start over again.
So, printing the art itself is something I usually batch over one or two dedicated days of the week in my studio and in that time I can print roughly four pieces depending on the size and level of detail. (It also helps with cat control, as the kittens still aren’t allowed in there and I don’t like having to shut them out more than necessary. One, it makes me feel bad and two, they bang on the walls and rattle the door. I think the house panther is about three “aha” moments from unlatching the doorknob.)
When I’m not actively printing or hand-embellishing completed prints – either for my own work or commissions from others, I do a LOT of research. I would say that a typical week is 50 percent creating the art, 40 percent research, and ten percent admin/marketing/operations which includes things like invoicing, cleaning my work space, looking for and responding to promotional opportunities, updating digital platforms and responding to commission requests (not all of these tasks need to be done each week, thankfully.)
My days are structured like any other workday, usually getting started around 9-10 am and finishing around 6 pm for family and TV time with the kittens.
I sometimes work over the weekends, and I’m always reading on my off-hours, and some of that is research time as well. On weekends I try to recharge and work around the house or go see shows by other artists for inspiration. But during the pandemic I have been mostly at home.
Because my work centers on the Pine Curtain Project, I am always on the hunt for compelling vintage images with compelling stories, ideally that contribute not only to my own family history, stories and memories, but also to the larger cultural history of East Texas. As I wrote in a previous post, I’m focusing on a few main topics this year, which is not to say that other images and themes aren’t included as well. But, I am finding so much information just on these topics, that I am very busy researching, reading, cataloging and analyzing information.
Combining my art so closely with writing and research complicates things in some ways, but in most ways, I feel that it leads to a more rewarding experience for me as the artist, and hopefully for the viewer as well. As a person who likes a little more structure in the day, I feel that this project lends itself well to providing that structure while still leaving plenty of room for the flexibility needed for the creative process to do its thing.
The early prosperity of East Texas started with trees, and the region had (and still has) plenty of those. There’s a reason I named my work “The Pine Curtain Project.” The part of East Texas where I am from is dense with pines – The Piney Woods. It is so much a part of the region’s identity that even today, the local university’s mascot is a Lumberjack, a popular local coffee shop is Java Jack’s, the best-known festival is the Forest Festival and the main drag in Lufkin is Timberland Drive. At the same time, the density of trees can either isolate or protect, depending on how you look at it. Like…a curtain. I imagine this “curtain effect” was even stronger before the timber industry moved in, cleared away and changed the physical, sociological and cultural landscape.
This image makes me think of the beginning of the end of an era, which I feel evolved over generations. It was a double-edged sword, or saw if you want a more thematically accurate metaphor. On one hand, clearing the trees made way for unprecedented economic and civic progress. On the other hand, once the curtain was pulled back, things would never be the same.
As I am more of an artist and less of an academic historian, please explore these links for citations and further reading:
Image Source: “Paul Durham, Sr. Hardwood Logging Crew,” The History Center.
“Aldridge Sawmill“, Texas Beyond History.com
stephaniekhattak.com 