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Jerry WagnerRhode Island (born 1939) Jerry Wagner was born April 23, 1939 in South Providence, RI. His father was a tailor and had a great influence on Jerry's life. As a child, Jerry was enthralled by the cultural creativity of the postwar 40's. He loved radio programs, especially The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Superman, Sam Spade, Amos and Andy and Jack Benny. “When I was young I thought that life was like Henry Aldrich and Ozzie and Harriet. That’s not life. That’s just a fantasy, a media fantasy.” In the 50's, Jerry was deeply inspired by the music of Fats Domino, Little Richard and Elvis. Music, especially the Blues has been vital to him. He studied forestry at University of Rhode Island. Though out of his element as an officer, he reached the rank of First Lieutenant while stationed in the Army's Special Service Office in Heidelberg Germany 1962-1964. He was married at that time and had two children. Upon returning from Germany, he lived briefly in Greenwich Village where he performed at The Bitter End and other venues as an acoustic blues guitar player and singer. He later divorced and lived in Woodstock, New York for much of the rest of the decade. When his father died in 1971, he channeled his grief into the study of the Torah. He studied for four months at the Yeshiva in Morristown. He says he came to realize that he didn't have what it took to be a Rabbi. From 1972-1974 he sold his possessions and "took a walk" from Maine to Connecticut. In the ensuing years, he spent time in Miami, New Orleans, and walked the California coast from San Diego to Monterey; all the while meditating on the Chumish and his own interpretations of the Torah. He ended up back in Bar Harbor, Maine and continued to work odd jobs, such as dishwashing. In 1977, Wagner was stricken with a debilitative physical disease. He returned to Rhode Island and underwent several major operations over the next decade. It was at this time that he began to keep detailed journals of the natural and spiritual worlds. He became very private. He says, "I slowed down and became concerned with balance. I was just trying to survive." He used his art to that end, never intending to show it. It was a means of self-control. Over the course of thirty years, he has spent every day outside, no matter the weather at the same few spots along the coast. In a typical day, Wagner leaves home very early to go to a favorite spot where he observes, meditates, writes, draws, carves, composes collages and practices t'ai chi chuan until he heads home at 4:00 PM for supper. Wagner has been disabled from work since 1985. He lives simply with few possessions, mostly in silence. He has no TV or musical instruments. He has a small radio that he only uses to listen to one local news station for six minutes at six AM each weekday, befitting of his orderly lifestyle. So he is informed of headline news. Interestingly he is unaware of music, literature or art from the past 25 years. "Gradually (in recent years) I let the wall down so I could communicate on a verbal level. I was deep in a primal energy struggle for survival. I was practicing patience and learning to endure. It is my struggle to find out what life is all about. I'm making some progress. My work allows me to integrate my thoughts and to be critical and deliberate. I take the scenes from earlier drawings and let them evolve. I move to new styles as the drawings seem to move me. I do things over and over. It takes years for me to finish things." Wagner’s body of work consists of hundreds of collaged drawings, wood carvings, notebooks, and older yet uncollaged drawings. His notebooks contain sketches, poetry, daily recorded weather and temperature, timelines, abstract ideas, and observations on nature. Each page is filled with diagrams, abbreviations, codes, cryptic acronyms and personal formulas which are mostly concerned with spiritual aspects of life and primal intellect. He is particularly fascinated by the parallel beliefs of the ancient Hebrew and Hopi. Early in 2005, Wagner began to collage varying elements of his copious notes and drawings from the past thirty years. The drawings include landscapes, houses, enigmatic scenes, figures and designs for wood carvings. Wagner feels that he is better able to "inhabit" his drawings through the process of collage. The collages are personal meditations on places, forces, and ideas. They are inspired by American Indian lore, religious philosophy, and mysticism of all kinds. The media is paper, ink, pencil, cray-pas mixed with spit, and acid free rubber cement on found cardboard (often from his stash of thirty years worth of saved cereal boxes). Many have a rich patina from age and handling. The scale of his work is similar to that of James Castle. During the composition of a work of art, Wagner’s attention often disappears from conventional reality. His creative process involves reaching an intense state of displacement from our cultural window of perception which allows him to tap artistic inspiration. This goes beyond typical notions of an artist's creative concentration or spontaneous improvisation. “I just detach and say I’m going. I get tired of being in the same place all the time. That’s how I’m able to do that (referring to a drawing). When something interrupts me (when I am working), I have to drop down from where I’ve been, down into the physical. When I finish a piece, I just take a breath and see what it’s saying.” Integral to Wagner’s art is his philosophy. “We’re corrupted by calendars. There is no longer the timelessness of the eternal mind. The migration and the memory maps are gone. 40,000 years ago man reached his highest climb to survive versus just existing.” “A sanctuary of the spirit is a hard thing to build. It takes every thing that you are to put it together, every emotion, every darkness, every light, every failure and every success. Only a full commitment of body, spirit and mind can build it.” “It’s a problem planet. It’s how it’s designed. Resolve your problems. You can’t hold on to anything.”
George Jacobs Self-Taught Art |
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