Oct 20

Peter Ralston’s article “Betsy Wyeth’s World is an Island in Maine” and Paul Theroux’s essay “Art Notebook: On Allen Island” both focused on Betsy Wyeth and how she made her vision for Allen Island a reality. Paired with the readings from Daniels and Cosgrove, it made me think about our discussions over the semester about place, time, spacetime, and authenticity. Allen Island was definitely a space before Betsy bought it in 1989, but was it a place? For the two fishing families that Ralston mentions, yes it was, but only during certain months of the year. The island would come alive during the summer months when the summer school was in session, but lay dormant during the rest of the year. The question I struggled with is if Betsy improved this place or if she made it her own – a completely different place. Ralston says, “Betsy’s vision was that of resurrection, of reestablishing a community at sea.” In this sense, yes she changed it. However, she did so with a gentle hand that made sure to not disrupt the sacred feel of the island; the elusiveness and isolation that the island radiates. This is evident in her use of the the sail loft as the museum of the island. The building holds the artwork and history of the island within its walls, while holding the history of the surrounding area in the wood and bricks of the building itself. Betsy did put her own stamp on the island but did so carefully, trying to maintain authenticity she feels of the island. Just as the canvas was Andrew Wyeth’s mode of artwork, the island itself is Betsy’s.

The very title of Peter Ralston’s “Betsy Wyeth’s World is an Island in Maine” immediately compelled me to reflect on Stephen King’s “The Reach”. I couldn’t help but draw parallels between King’s protagonist, Stella, and the very real character of Betsy. Deeming an island someone’s “world” is no small thing; it holds implications of isolation, obsession, and greater disconnect with the mainland, both in physicality and ideological concept. Yet unlike Stella, who clings to her island home with fear and contempt for mainland, Betsy has found a home in island life by choice; in fact, the illustrious life she has led in both urban and rural mainland spaces has served to texture her relationship with the island and enrich her appreciation for it. This is well communicated in Ralston’s work, in which he describes Betsy’s two worlds (that of the islands and mainland) as sources of “creative tension” that define her work as a perpetual work in progress, unlike Andrew’s paintings, which eventually reach completion (Ralston 2). This raises the question of how Betsy’s “islomania” (a word coined by my great grandfather to describe the enchantment many people, tourists and locals alike, experience when setting foot on an island) has been shaped by her position as a “person from away” (another Maine-ism). Unlike Stella, and many Maine island residents, Betsy now chooses island life within the context of enormous wealth and personal as well as professional success. She has the privilege of making Allen and Benner Islands her “projects” because she can. Yet it’s unfair to say that Maine’s island-borne folk don’t have projects of their own. My question, then, is can island life truly compose a life’s work? And if so, how does the composition of that work change depending on personal standpoints of geography, wealth, and concept of home?

Peter Ralston says that “Allen and Benner Islands are Betsy’s ‘other man'”, and such words caught my eyes when I first read through this piece of work. Of course, I understand what Ralston is trying to tell us: Betsy is so passionate about the Islands that they are almost as important as her husband for her. But I do doubt that for a woman with such a strong willing and clear vision to create her own world on such a feral territory, is it an appropriate comparison?

In the Iconography and Landscape, Daniels and Cosgrove define landscape as “a pictorial way of representing, structuring or symbolizing surroundings. ” Betsy is definitely constructing a landscape under this definition. She put her home on the island, making the unoccupied island that is 6 miles away from the coast into her “ultimate refuge.” She reconstructed the sail loft on the island to make it serve as a museum that displays the history of fishing in this area. She is turning the island from a “space” to a “place”  following her own wills. Her husband Andy is painting with brushes and watercolors, while she is “painting” with buildings on this landscape. They are working in concert and creating harmony and is in no way being disturbed by her passion toward the island. In fact, they both love this place. That’s why I believe that “other man” is a highly improperiate expression.

For my groups Timeline JS project we are looking at the history of the island through the lens of ownership and use. Paul Theroux’s Art Notebook: On Allen Island gives a fairly detailed history of the sail-loft-turned-museum that sits on the edge of the island. In class we have been discussing the power dynamics that can shape a space or place. I think the sail-loft’s history when viewed through the lens of ownership and use tells a interesting narrative of power dynamics and the institutions that may control them on the island and in the mid-coast region as well. It began as a store in Port Clyde; then is was a sail loft, and when the trade became obsolete it was converted again. The building was eventually converted to a co-op, where is “amounted to almost a club, the men gathering, smoking and talking.” (Theroux). When the company insuring the building decided that the activities that took place in the building were not controllable they stopped insuring it and the building fell into ruin. In a sense when the building stopped being profitable to the group insuring it, they decided to cut their losses. This, to me, is an example of how Power can affect/control power. The sail loft as a co-op held a strong social power in the community—at least for the fishermen of the region. However in a area where fishermen have a strong social and economic influence the power they hold is quite significant. And yet, even with the power of fisherman, the power of institutions, like insurance companies, reins supreme. When looking a place, it is important to be aware of the power dynamics and institutions that affect these power dynamics. This plays a pivotal role in the way ownership and use of a space are viewed.

A valuable lesson I got from Daniels and Cosgrove’s, “Iconography and Landscape” is that “various humanistic disciplines” are necessary to formulate an interpretation that probes beyond just the surface. The essay includes a very rich sentence that contains the definition of what discovering a “deep meaning” is, “by ascertaining those underlying principles which reveal the basic attitude of a nation, a period, a class, a religious or philosophical persuasion – unconsciously qualified by one personality and condensed into one work”. That last part was especially interesting to me, it seems to convey the idea that, whether intentional or not, anything creatively produced contains some sort of message or reflection of the time period it was produced in.

 

Another snippet from the essay that I found to be very relevant was “the concept of symbolic form.. a study of changing modes of perceiving and representing space, not as mere ‘conventions’ (to be taken up or not at will) or as true or false beliefs, but.. as ‘symbolic forms’ which structured the world according to specific cultural demands”. This sounded to me much like the description of what American Studies is.

 

 

When Daniels said “Every form of existence has its source in some peculiar way of seeing, some intellectual formulation and intuition of meaning.” I thought of spacetime and the field of flows. There have been many different ways of interpretations of landscape throughout history. Clifford Gertz, for example, said culture is a ‘text’ and ‘diagnosis’ that can tell us about the values and cultures of a society.  Every interpretation comes from the field of flows, they use past experiences and knowledge to make a unique understanding of landscape. These unique interpretations help us learn more and can create new ways of thinking about a topic. However, Daniels also explains that today there are less of these interpretations going on because in many situations we are being told how we should interpret something. “…every object converted to an image with a specific label or signature. “(6) This way of thinking is becoming increasingly prominent in todays society  similar to Daniel’s description of late 20th century art no longer being a unified/organic area but a “grab-bag of random raw materials and impulses.”(5) As cultures and societies advance, there seems to be more definite ways of thinking than individual interpretations using past experiences and knowledge.