The Killing Floor

Time Capsule: Intricacies of the Lost Wax Process

Time Capsule is a series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons


Pair of Leopards
[Edo, Benin Kingdom, Nigeria, ca. 16th Century
brass, left: 50 x 15 x 79 cm; right: 49 x 14 x 77 cm;
National Commission for Museums and Monuments, Nigeria]

Intricacies of the Lost Wax Process

Nothing but black coffee through morning, early afternoon, where digital clocks around the room look like guardians at attention at 1:11. Trying to wrap my head around the intricacies of the lost wax process & lost cities of Africa. A pair of copper-alloy leopards from the old wooden Edo city of Benin, (since razed), reveal exemplary models out of the mold. Fine, aligned, concentric-circle spots on the skin identical as snowflakes. The seventeenth-century Dutch geographer, (there’s a street named after him in Amsterdam, an African museum in Paris), Olfert Dapper describes the ritual where a procession of tame leopards, along with a number of dwarfs & deaf people perform for the Oba, or King. Now, I’ve seen these leopards, not in Lagos, Nigeria, but on loan to the National Gallery in DC in 1991. Let’s just say I was in awe then. To bring it even further up to date, let me add that although most of us, when we think of the art of Benin call up those bronze heads from the classical period, so there was similar awe involved when an international student walked into the library to apply for a job where I was hiring work-study help. The young man’s head configured perfectly to the art of which I’d done some study. Later conversations confirmed his grandfather once a leader in the country. Granted, the old Edo Oba was deposed by the British at the end of the nineteenth century, & granted, Osayi Erhabor’s constant joviality (am I only now reminded of ritual scarification?) separated him from the stoic visage of the bronzes, but the genetic physiognomy, there & then, instantly self-evident.

FURTHER STUDY:

Lost-wax casting
Olfert Dapper

Time Capsule: First Snow, Not Yet Winter

Time Capsule is a series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons


Daryn Slover/Sun Journal (Lewiston, ME)

First Snow, Not Yet Winter

Out what they still call blinds, snow can be seen interrupted by white wooden slats covering kitchen bay window, not as white as that first flutter, but they go hand-in-hand today. White white sky & white white ground two days before the holiday. First snow, not yet winter, came down unseen overnight, a dusting, then stopped short at morning light. While she practiced in the attic yoga room, it resumed, & I wanted to interrupt her to watch the event together. But resisted. Wondering if she too saw it from up there. Descending the stairs, snow was the first thing she mentioned. Then watched it fall through what they still call blinds. Could have been one dark November day without open blinds, hers & snow’s descent.

Time Capsule: Vortex of Writing

Time Capsule is a series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons


Railroad Train
[Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967), 1908
oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 29 in., Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA]

Vortex of Writing


Train Glasgow to Edinburgh. Same Mexicali to Guadalajara. Munich-Salzburg. Peroni Beer truck Rome to Genoa. Mail boat Rijeka to Split, bus Split to Belgrade, plane Belgrade to Venice. Barge Paris via Moret-sur-Loing to Sens. Drive all night from Memphis to Elk City, Oklahoma. In rental over high pass to Calistoga, or down Route I-5 out of Seattle with Mount Rainier forcing its way into corner of eye all the way to Olympia. Chauffer-driven van with assembled film crew all the way from Mexico City down to Veracruz. Even the inferno of Sunset Boulevard will well up with sixteen-year-old in the back seat, track marks visible on her arms. However late in early morning today, the deep desire for mechanical, physical, imaginal transport toward ecstasy, where travel & freedom (time & liberty as Apollinaire might say) merge into the vortex of writing. Walk down narrow rue Jacob, or Bertin Poirée by accident, or filled with purpose. Sentences in steps. Fragments up out of train tracks. Single words culled out of rancid diesel on anonymous Dublin Street. Shivering in a Glasgow café with luggage in storage at cheap hotel we can’t get into for another five hours, happily embracing. Wishing I could envision a seat at the Maestranza arena in Seville, (similar to our box above the orchestra in the Parterre at the Met?), or at the bar at the Ritz in Madrid before standing in front of Goya’s Black Paintings in the Prado. (Granted, I once turned the corner unprepared for Picasso’s Guernica in New York’s MOMA.) Once claimed to have left my past behind, but not today. Dive into Mediterranean in Nice to cure aftermath of sweet vermouth served at gallery opening the night before. Don’t even mind university professors boring me stiff in Edinburgh, what with all the time in the world to let their babble fall on deaf ears. But listen to Axel in Bremen, or Manuel in Oaxaca, or Bent at the Louisiana Museum outside Copenhagen, & one knows why one roams & wanders on foot, or by train, or bus, boat, plane, truck. Proust via involuntary memory hearing tap on lip of teacup calling up hammer against locomotive wheel.

FURTHER STUDY:

Guillaume Apollinaire

Time Capsule: Documenting Dream & Real Life

Time Capsule is a series featuring the writing of Robert Gibbons

Documenting Dream & Real Life


Climbed Peary Mountain at midday, after a long night of camaraderie culminated in storytelling round a campfire. Granted, just two & a half miles rising to thousand-foot height, but the terrain bordered on pure wilderness for this Soul long out of touch with Nature. Carpet of pine needles & steps of roots & rock ledges along the trail, shaded canopy above, until reaching the peak, bald with solid granite. 180-degree view northeast & southwest held each of us in thrall. Tonight, I dreamt of examining a book by Thoreau on the Sub-Marine Life of New England, while the same shop/gallery hung a framed copy of a map of the coast centering on Gloucester & St. Lawrence waterway, somehow displaying three-dimensional elevation of land’s northernmost reaches, documenting dream & real life.

FURTHER STUDY:

Peary Mountain