Who Then Shall Name You?

I am curious if this is what makes an artist an artist.

In 2018 two of our Juke contributors - Norway-based writer Damon Falke and Montana painter Tabby Ivy - met via a “fortuitous click" on Facebook. As Charlie Pepiton wrote in his foreword, "What followed was nearly two years of close, mutual consideration for each other’s work" which ultimately led to an art exhibition and book: Between Artists, Life in Paintings and Prose. The book includes Damon’s essays, Tabby’s paintings, and selected emails exchanged during their long-distance collaboration.

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The Grain Elevator (2020) by Tabby Ivy. Oil on Canvas. 20x16

21 November 2020
Email Exchange

Damon:

I hope you find your way into a new painting. I know the feeling of not finding a way. I suppose all of us who work in the arts have these stale periods. Sometimes they are long, sometimes they are short.

You and I will hope for short. Strange how often these unproductive times, even difficult times, cause me to want for one good line or one good scratch of prose. I know they are right when I feel free in them, or more accurately, when they liberate me. Then my mind and heart are free to wander and to believe that one world might open another.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been leaning toward things that are already close - the skulls on my bookshelves, the collections of knives and duck calls, the paintings.

They have all given me something before, and if I lean close again, maybe they will return something more.

Tabby:

There is so much in this email. It is beautiful. It is hopeful. It is truth. It speaks to the tension within an artist.

The fine line. The pushing up against then thru the space between inspiration and expression. The artist’s touch that puts words on paper or paint to canvas.

This is our world, and oh but how we are blessed/cursed to live within this dilemma. I think painting is helping me yield to what has always been there pressing against me, but I had steeled against letting it in.

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Who Then Shall Name You?

Yesterday I made the trip to town. It was snowing, and I didn’t want to leave my house. I could have stayed indoors and kept the woodstove going. I could have waxed my skis and fiskerbeina up the ridge across the road. But there were errands to run, and from my house, I can catch either a 6:30 a.m. or 8:30 a.m. bus.

The bus stops in front of my mailbox, which stands at the top of a little hill where our property meets the road and where a path leads to my front door. It takes an hour to get to town from my house, with the bus traveling from the island where I live to the island that is the city. The nearest grocery store is 25 kilometres away.

There are villages between here and there, populated with a few barns and a few houses. Predictably, the houses cluster together as the road nears the city, but there are views of the sea and mountains. Because I am a foreigner, there is a regular tide of cultural misses and misadventures. There are translations to be made, though practically everyone speaks English. When you live in another country, you have to relearn how to do things—how to argue with a doctor, how to use public transportation, how to accept that “maybe” means “maybe” and that “maybe” is not another way of saying “yes” or “no.” Where I live, a person should understand that asking “how are you?” is not another way of saying hello, but is asking, sincerely, how are you?

Friends have suggested I purchase a car and avoid the long bus ride to town. It’s possible I will do this someday. For now, I am happy to take the bus. I sometimes read. I sometimes scribble notes or make sketches. Mostly I stare out of the windows. There are dilapidated barns, mountains, valleys, and red boathouses—what locals call naust—all the way to town. All of these places are in some way connected with the sea. I am not someone who longs to be at sea, but there are few moments more beautiful than when watching the snow fall over water.

I sometimes think of Tabby’s work while riding the bus. I am reminded how many places along the bus route could be translated into one of her paintings. Tabby has told me that she tries to paint her emotions. She tries to paint what she feels, as well as what she sees. I am curious if this is what makes an artist an artist. For an artist, the land beyond representation is a place of feeling, and the art is what guides us there.

I mentioned to Tabby in an email that I became a writer when my father assured me that I was a writer. Dad did this one afternoon when I was living outside a town in Southwest Colorado. Back then, I was working as a fishing and hunting guide. Dad was in town that summer for a couple of weeks. He was working with a Baptist church, though he lived in Texas, and because of this, our opportunities to see each other were limited. But for those couple of weeks that summer, Dad shared time with me. He has done this for me all of my life. When I was a boy, Dad regularly took me to lunch at The Red Dragon Chinese Restaurant in Beaumont, Texas. I was crazy about Chinese food as a kid. Dad liked Chinese food, too, though I think he indulged my tastes more than he liked chow mein. This, too, was a gift from my father.

To recall that summer afternoon in Colorado, I see Dad and me standing in front of the old hotel where he stayed with the church group. The cottonwoods along the street flashed shades of green. The sun passed low on the horizon, and Dad needed to catch up with his church group, but he stopped to talk with me. I’m not sure how we arrived at a conversation about my being a writer, but I remember Dad listened to me. He listened to my concerns and ignorance. He stood there, patiently, looking at me, a man looking at his son with tenderness and love for what the son cannot understand.

Then he said, “You’re a writer. Accept it. Don’t struggle with whether you are a writer or not. You are a writer. Accept it and get on with being a writer.”

This morning, unlike yesterday, I didn’t need to go to town. Instead, I stayed home and pecked away at various projects, though eventually I walked up the hill to check the mailbox. I rarely get mail, but I like checking anyway. I sometimes stand in the road after I do. Out where I live a half-hour can pass before a vehicle comes along. I stand in the road to celebrate the fact that I can stand in the road. And this morning snow fell in the valley that lies due east of my house. Above the valley the peaks melted under clouds or heavier snow.

I stood in the road and stared at all the life and country around me. I felt lucky and alone and surprised I could be in any of this. Then I walked back to the house, wondering what Tabby would have seen.

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This work appears in Between Artists, Life in Paintings and Prose, by Damon Falke and Tabby Ivy. You can order from the second printing of the “Between Artists” book (the first printing sold out!) at tabbyivy.com/books.

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Damon Falke is the author of, among other works, The Scent of a Thousand Rains, Now at the Uncertain Hour, By Way of Passing, and Koppmoll (film). He lives in northern Norway.

Tabby Ivy now lives and works in Carlton, Oregon. Painting came late in her life. Her home studio is a sanctuary for working, and reading her extensive collection of art books. Learn more at www.tabbyivy.com.

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