Poole in Arles

Dad wandered around the town of Arles like a kid in a candy store, stopping and holding his hands, formed into a frame, up to his eyes....he could see what Van Gogh, his hero, saw. He alternated between hooting with glee and openly weeping at the emotions running through him.

This painting is titled "Plaza at Arles," from a photo he took during that time.  I believe this to be the beginning of his Van Gogh-influenced pieces.

We were there in 2001, during a 3-week hiatus from my tour with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Mom & Dad came to Europe, and one of our most memorable stops was Arles, a beautiful town deep in Provence, where Van Gogh spent the majority of his time and painted some of his most memorable works.

In fact, Dad, in typical Poole fashion, deviated from The Plan and decided to stay in Provence, to see for himself the landscapes seen by his heroes, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, etc.

So Mom and I went on to Barcelona.  But that's a story for a different day.

Thanks for reading.

Nicole

Stalking en Plein Air

A chocolate-fueled ninja expedition leads to an unlikely encounter... A lot of you knew Poole as a serious man with passionate beliefs and a driving vision. He was that, for sure, but he was also keen to play, with a wicked sense of humor and an enormous, infectious laugh. He rarely let his playful side out except for his closest friends, but when he did, you knew you were in the presence of genius. Nutso, perhaps, but genius nonetheless. I'm glad to say that I was his life-long Huckleberry.

On one of Dad's visits to New York, I suggested we go to SoHo and knock around some of the galleries.  He got sick of seeing large white canvases and uniform lumps of sculpture, so I took him to one of my favorite chocolate joints, Jacques Torres.  This place is, for NYC, the Palace of Chocolate. Handmade, devilishly good.

Dad being a lifelong foodie (he would actually grunt like a water buffalo when he ate something that pleased him), we had to sample just about everything; the dark, spicy hot chocolate as thick as pudding, gold-leafed truffles, chocolate ice cream sandwiches made of chocolate chocolate chip cookies - you get the idea.  We GORGED on chocolate.

Taken shortly after the encounter. Apple Store selfies.

An hour later, we were both on a sugar rush that would've killed a diabetic. We got into one of our giggly, collusive moods, which we did often, but this one was fueled by sugar, so it was hysterical.   Skipping down the street, past stilletoed women and well-groomed men, without words, we decided we were spies.

We started hiding behind cars and trying to spook each other. We were playing, and it was glorious. If you've never seen a short round man shaking with laughter as he's trying to hide behind a light pole, I encourage you to imagine the scene.

After just a few minutes of confusing the people of SoHo, we spot a painter with his field box on Prince Street, and Dad's army instincts took over. He starts giving me hand signs that mean "KEEP EYES ON HIM! GO! OVER THERE! HIDE AND WAIT!" He does the same. So we start stalking this painter, both of us with wide eyes and insane smiles on our faces. Imagine cats stalking a paper sack.

In the meantime, the painter is calmly watching the sky while adding precise strokes of paint to his canvas. He was actually very good, which excited us all the more.

Guy had no idea what was coming.

Dad ran his short legs quickly behind another light pole as I did the same.

Hearing a snort and heavy breathing, the painter turns around, and looks directly at Dad. Dad froze, wide-eyed, the remainder of an idiotic smile on his face.

The painter says "Poole?"

It was Gregg Kreutz, one of Dad's oldest painting friends, an immensely talented guy. He was painting a cityscape, and I will never forget the encounter. (Maybe someday I can afford to buy the piece he was working on!)

We both nearly peed our pants at the coincidence. Worlds collided, Dad's cover was blown, and we laughed about that story for years. He was around 67 at the time, and could still play like the best of 'em.

I think that's my lesson for this week. Playing is good for the soul, and can open you up to chance encounters. That, and chocolate can make the world a brighter place.

Hope you've enjoyed. More later.

Nicole

Behind the Mask

"It must have been hard for you, to be this swirly, sensitive, Dionysic creative thing...stuffed into a John Wayne suit."

I said this to Dad at the end of March as he rested in his favorite old recliner; he was beginning to "head for the barn," and was sleeping constantly, but preferred to be in the living room rather than in his bed so that he could feel like part of the action.  I often rubbed his temples to soothe him, and our discussions during these periods will always stay with me.

In response to my musing, Dad grunted and grinned, mustering his strength to say, slowly, "honey, you have no idea."

This came to me today, fitting, as it marks the 4 month anniversary of Dad's one-way trip to Happy Mountain.  Masks were a recurring theme in Dad's work, and I've been doing a lot of thinking as to why.

Joseph Campbell wrote: “To become—in Jung’s terms—individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one’s various life roles."

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Dad was born in Marlow, Oklahoma and raised in Bradley, Oklahoma, both small farming communities. With his own father out of the picture, Dad's views of what a man should be were fomented by the people around him. They worked hard, went to church, knew how to tell a good joke, protected their families and served their country. Life was hard, but simple by today's modern standards.  The community supported each other, and your roots were known by nearly everybody. Honesty, humility and a willingness to help others defined "a good man," the highest compliment. Only a few went on to college, and most stayed in the area all of their lives.

This is still a way of life in Oklahoma, and can produce some of the finest people you'll ever know.

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During the late 1940's, Dad stumbled on an art "contest" on the back of a matchbook, advertised by the Art Instruction Schools. He sent in his submission and was accepted.

My Grandmother, a schoolteacher in a one-room school house, somehow scraped together around $300 to enroll him in the course, and he dedicated all of his free time to mastering the techniques sent to him.

A few years later, Dad went to the University of Oklahoma for a degree in art, because, in his words, he had "bailed enough hay." He graduated in 1957, entering the wide and fast world of advertising and suits and society. He moved to Virginia, briefly, to work in advertising, but homesickness got the better of him.

In Oklahoma, Dad was a powerhouse, creating one the state's leading advertising agency at the time, Poole-Hobbes, Inc.  He also created the Oklahoma Art Directors' Guild, and  some of the finest artists in the nation came to his home.  Dad hosted workshops with Fritz Scholder, and we have personal work given to him by Mark English and Bernie Fuchs. More importantly, Dad began to see artists living their lives through their art, and the allure was too great for him to ignore.

When I was around 4 years old, Dad got rid of the suit and crewcut, grew a beard, and bought OJ, his beloved orange Volkswagen camper. He began to study with R.V. "Dick" Goetz, a great painter, instructor and one of Dad's lifelong friends, and he began to live the life of an artist.

This departure was so far from his origins - where his closest friends were still on the farm, struggling with the demands of the land, Dad had an orange VW camper, a turquoise ring and flip flops. He painted naked ladies, went to crazy parties and argued incessantly about reforming politics and religion.

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Dad struggled constantly with the man he had been raised to be and the man he was becoming. I think that struggle is what made him truly unique, but it also haunted him.  He couldn't embrace the "uppity" world of fine art, and yet he couldn't be satisfied with small town life. So he painted, and painted...and painted.

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The O. Gail Poole Collection is Dad's diary of his most intimate thoughts, joys and struggles.  I hope to be able to find a place to host a retrospective, as it's extremely powerful to view the images that fueled one man's life.  Dad's work goes beyond the personal to represent, in a way, the masks with which we all struggle.

Dad was in the final stages of his cancer on Saturday, April 13.  Thanks to his friends, a Comanche elder came that morning to lead the most moving ceremony I have ever witnessed.

The day before, recognizing the signs, I called people from far and wide to come squeeze his hand, and they came. FedEx packages and letters had come pouring in from artists and admirers from the world over, and visits from some of the best people I'll ever know drowned the house in scotch and laughter. I read all of the letters and e-mails to Dad as I held his hand, and I played one of his personally curated CDs on my laptop next to his bed. (Damndest mix of Abba, Renee Fleming, Jesus Christ Superstar!, the Kings Singers, Dave Brubeck, Waylon & Willie, John Lennon and Charlie Poole, but I swear to you he recognized and responded to each one.)

On that day, each chapter of Dad's life was represented by at least one person, if not several, all knowing a side of him that only they could know. I wonder what it must have been like for him, for all of his masks to collide and mingle in such a real way.

Finally, on Saturday afternoon, "The Bradley Boys," the guys he had gone through grade school with, all came to visit Dad. They told stories and EJ, his high school hero and subject of many paintings and sketches, played guitar and sang to him.

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At exactly the hour of evening when the sun painted its own masterpiece of uncapturable light, Dad became, as Campbell so eloquently put it, "a released individual," and all of the masks slid away.

O. Gail Poole Memorial Travel Fund

Travel is so much more than packing a case and going somewhere. The French for “travel” is “voyage,” which I believe describes it much better. Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” Dad understood this and his extensive travels informed every aspect of his life and work. Each time he found himself feeling complacent, he planned another trip. My father was born in Oklahoma, and though he traveled the world extensively, he always returned to Norman. That's not nothin'.

It was Dad's love of travel that made it important for me to begin the O. Gail Poole Memorial Travel Fund.  Norman artists should be afforded every opportunity to broaden their horizons. It is my hope that the fund will allow recipient artists to come back to Oklahoma with a new sense of perspective on her beauty and a deeper understanding of the world around them.

I began the fund with what I could afford, and I am encouraged and heartened that contributions continue to come in. As I am determined that this continue as an annual fund, The Norman Arts Council has created a page to donate online.  All donations are tax-deductible.  Too, once the O. Gail Poole Collection is fully documented and catalogued, I will donate portions of sales to ensure Oklahoma artists continue to have the opportunity to widen their perspectives and come back home to share those perspectives with us.

I imagine Dad would be both tickled beyond words and deeply humbled that his legacy could impact the lives of future generations of Oklahoma artists. For this round, 3 Norman artists of merit will be awarded $500 each for travel. If you are interested, you can download an application online; submissions are due August 30.

While I'm on the subject - no one becomes an artist because it will lead to riches. We do it because we are driven to creative expression. On being an artist, Dad was fond of saying “if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.”

In America, it is difficult, if not at times seemingly impossible, to sustain a life in the arts without the patronage of people who believe the arts are necessary.  I personally would not have made it through college without scholarships and awards; in fact, to raise funds for my college trip to London with the OU Theatre Guild, Dad created limited edition, hand cast and painted Shakespeare cameos for me to sell. Only a few years after that, I toured with the Royal Shakespeare Company. You never know how far your help will go.

And why should we support the arts?  I can’t speak for the world-at-large, but for me the arts are important because they represent the human struggle to touch the divine, and they give us hope that, based on the strength of our response to art, that contact is possible. As support for this argument, I ask why some pieces of music move us to tears? Why leaps of dancers make us feel as though we can fly?  Why words on a page help us tap into a deeper understanding of ourselves? Why bits of pigment come together to give us a sense of longing or release? I think especially in modern society these moments are to be cherished, if not downright chased. Artists provide the material for these feelings.  We need to provide materials for the artists.

If that zinged you at all, please consider making a donation to the O. Gail Poole Memorial Travel Fund.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Norman for the support they have shown to me and my family during Dad’s illness and in the wake of his considerable loss. Norman is a special town because of its people, and I am so grateful that the community has institutions such as the Norman Arts Council, the University of Oklahoma and the Norman Transcript to support them by providing exposure to our artists.

Norman Transcript Article: Travel Fund Honors O. Gail Poole

Norman Arts Council

Cataloguing the O. Gail Poole Collection, Part 1

Being the daughter of a prolific and wildly talented painter has been, and continues to be, an honor.  Dad left hundreds of works in oil, encaustic, pastel, watercolor and pen & ink (not counting the dozens of sketchbooks), and it is my job to figure out what to do with them. As I've said before, each of those paintings represents his voice and soul and I've been protective of them all of my life.

Dad was an artist and had his own sense of organization, which honestly I'm still trying to figure out.  In addition to one of the bedrooms in his house being stuffed floor to ceiling with paintings, they adorned every square inch of wall space AND a giant outbuilding in the backyard.

In his final days, I tapped every connection I had to contact Ghislain d'Humieres, the former Director of the Fred Jones Museum of Art. I asked Ghislain and Assistant Director Gail Kana Anderson to come meet Dad and to see all of the work in situ. It's rare to be able to do this, as so often when we see works of an artist, he or she is already in happy mountain, and the collection is already tagged and organized. Seeing how an artist actually lived is a pretty cool thing.

The paintings in the spare bedroom.

Ghislain d'Humieres, former director of the Fred Jones Museum, with Julie, looking at the paintings in the shed.

Ghislain, Gail & Dad. Recognition for a life in the arts, long overdue.

When Dad died, I had my hands and heart full of The Things You Do When Someone Dies. Though I knew it had to be dealt with, I couldn't fathom how to tackle the collection on top of everything else. Luckily, Dad had a lot of truly extraordinary friends, and I had my Amazing Michael and Dear Alissa. Here's what happened.

Julie D., one of Dad's friends, also happens to be a professional registrar. She and Michael worked together to determine storage solutions and what archival materials were needed to preserve the piece.  Julie then went to work developing a complex system to document the works, while her husband, Farrel, who happens to be a database engineer (and a fabulous musician), went to work designing a database to store and organize the information.

Michael researched climate-controlled storage spaces large enough for the collection, then rented one (I thank the Universe nearly every day that we passed over the one in Moore.) He bought and installed shelving that would house everything. Dear Alissa, an old friend I love fiercely, put out the call to a bunch of her students at OU, who came for several days to organize and prepare the paintings for transport.  Michael then rented a giant truck which, alongside Dad's F150, was filled with paintings. and Michael, the students and I  hauled every piece to storage.

I bought more pieces of cardboard than I ever thought possible, and began work on unwrapping the paintings and arranging them with cardboard in between so that they wouldn't be damaged banging up against each other.

Julie organized a team of Dad's traveling buddies, two of which are professional photographers, all the salt of the earth. Mark, Becky, Cathy, Susan, Keith and Julie worked their asses off in the heat each day for several weeks to sort, photograph, measure, describe and document first few hundred paintings on canvas and board. (Oils on paper and pen & ink coming in the Fall/Winter.)

The gang at work. If you look closely, you can see their wings.

Each painting has a paper record noting its location in storage, size, description, materials, condition, title if known, provenance if known (they'd holler at me while I worked to ask about stuff).

Each painting is assigned a unit number.

From here, I'm not sure what will happen, other than continuing work on the cataloguing and on fattening the database with historical sales and other records.

My goal is to curate several small collections of like pieces for traveling exhibits to Europe and the Southwest, the Big Goal being to find a very lucky museum to host a retrospective.  I'm not in a hurry to sell off the collection - but each of these works needs an audience, whether they be buyers or the general public.

As we move forward, I hope each of you will find something you like about this blog or Dad's work to pass on to your friends and contacts. The more we can get his name and his life's work out into the world, the more settled my soul will become.

In the meantime, through the grief, I realize how extremely fortunate I am to be surrounded by such great friends. Dad was fond of saying "to have a friend, you have to be a friend..." I hope some day to be able to come close to giving back what I've received.

More soon. Actually leaving the house to wander around The Latin Quarter.

Nicole

On Embracing Grief

I deflect beautifully when I have a list of "shoulds." Deadlines inspire me to clean out the closet, mundane errands jolt me into stealing away for a peek at a park, an impending visit from Mom tempts me to put a pillow over my head and avoid cleaning, etc. So now I have this thing. This very big space in my life that is now empty, a phone number I can't call anymore, a laugh I can't hear, advice I can't seek, a constant lump in my throat and fluctuation between feeling bittersweet, moody and numb.  How on earth do I deflect? What do I do with this thing that feels so much larger than me?

Every book and website advises me to exercise, spend time with friends, think about Dad and how he'd like me to live my life, take time to really feel my emotions, take freakin' fish oil, blah blah blah.  Even Oprah has advice for me on how to live my best life ever.

However, armed with all of this multi-sourced knowledge, I'm getting pretty good at devising ways to just stay in the house, sit in front of the computer and nap. Yes, I'm on antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication and muscle relaxers because my shoulders and jaw won't stop cramping, and I'm seeing a shrink to help with the process...but I'm in Paris for God's sake, and I should be soaking up every beautiful thing this city has to offer, not becoming a shut-in. There are people starving in the world and people who can't get out to do what I am able to do, and yet here I am. Unproductive and flabby.

The American in me is freaking the hell out.  I'm not accomplishing enough. I've wasted the month-long subscription to yoga, I should be painting, drawing, dealing with receipts and paperwork, making plans for Mom's visit, organizing dinner parties, turning my body into a well-oiled machine and visiting every street in this beautiful city...but dammit, I don't seem to be able to sustain any sense of motivation. There are too many shoulds for me to comprehend and I feel too inadequate to face them.

There are easy days and tough ones (today's a toughie)...the tough ones seem to come out of ignoring the lump in my throat.  But I don't want to embrace the sadness. I don't want to embrace my grief because a part of me feels that if I do that, I'm letting go of Dad. And dammit, I still need him.

Oh thank heavens, I've finally started crying, which is apparently what I have needed to do for several days.

...huh...that just changed the course of this entire post.

Funny. After decades of desperately trying to convince the world that "I'm doing great!," it's profound and humbling to discover that only by allowing myself to feel completely exposed am I able to embrace my grief. Sharing it with others allows me to finally feel rather than deflect.

This is a lesson I guess I had to learn by doing. The fish oil can wait.

Thank you so very much for being here. I hope to do the same for you some day.

Nicole

Poole and Van Gogh Part 1

This morning I awoke from a vivid dream about one of Dad's paintings, "Cypress and Night Sky," which hung in my bedroom at his place for years. It's an enormous southwestern landscape (53x53) inspired by Dad's hero, Van Gogh.  It hung near my bed and I could spend hours looking at how many vivid colors he managed to get into each brush stroke.

It always touched me that, while the rest of the rooms in Dad's little bungalow constituted a rabbit's warren of art supplies, boxes of slides, photos and genealogy information, new and old electronics, camping gear and bottles of wine to take with him to his friends' parties, my room remained pristine.  He kept it off limits for his clutter and it was always the same, which was a comfort each time I went home.

On to Van Gogh.  Dad did about as much research on dear Vincent as he did on his own family, which was considerable.  He saw his works first hand whenever he could, poured over his letters to Theo and had dozens of books.  He never thought Vincent was insane - Dad believed that he and Van Gogh shared the same passion and obsession of finding expression on canvas, and that like himself, Van Gogh was simply misunderstood because of his lack of ability to express his true self any other way.

In the year 2001, I was touring with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and had a 3-week hiatus between shows.  Mom and Dad came to London and we traveled together to France.  I was able to take them to Arles, the town in France where Van Gogh did most of his work.

I watched my father standing on bridges and in fields with his hands held in front of him like a frame, weeping uncontrollably.  He saw first hand what Van Gogh saw and he wept at the enormity and personal understanding of what Vincent must have gone through trying to express such beauty.

Dad began searching for his own voice through Vincent's style around 1997; the works he created during that period, southwestern landscapes, self-portraits and other sundries, represented one of his most passionate phases. The self-portrait he did in the style of Van Gogh is what I chose to display on his field box when we scattered his ashes under the Blackjack Oak tree in the Bradley, OK cemetery.

The note on the back of "Cypress and Night Sky" states:

"The influence of Van Gogh on this painting is very evident. He is a constant influence on my work. Even my license plate is "Van Gogh." He is a hero of mine. He had enough faith in what he was doing to continue, even though the general public scorned and laughed at his painting. Though he was offered rides, he chose to walk through the countryside, saying that he couldn't closely observe Nature while riding."

Today I will walk slowly through Paris and make a frame with my hands to see the world in a different way.  All artists, no matter how they are perceived, can teach us lessons about our brief life. This morning, after my dream, I thank my Dad and Van Gogh for this one.

A Family Tradition

Dad's father, Woodrow Orville "Woodie" Poole was a painter at some point in his life. Dad had a few of his pieces in storage that Grandma apparently hung onto. Mostly landscapes, woodland creatures and a couple of angels. They're all on rough board and look like they could be hanging in a saloon in Deadwood. And surprisingly, they ain't too bad. What's profound to me is that my Grandfather could find materials and take the time to paint in the "Dirty Thirties" of the Dust Bowl.

I don't know the story, but Woodie left when Dad was around 5 years old. For some reason, a photo was taken of Dad on that day, which I only discovered after he died.  The title of this photo is "the day my father left ca1939."

Dad never talked about Grandpa, and I don't believe they ever had a chance to meet.  I wonder if Dad's decision to become a great painter had anything to do with pleasing his own father, if he was just genetically driven to express himself with paint, or a combination of the two. I can guess, but I'll never really know.

As I try to come up with things to write about, for the most part I sit in front of the screen, staring at a blinking cursor that dares me to try to summarize a man's entire life and my own reactions to his loss.

The reason I write this tonight is because a cousin directed me to a website they've put together for the Poole/Sharp family.  It's truthfully the first information I've had on the Poole side of things, other seeing our family name scrawled on the prison walls inside the Tower of London, having vague memories of mention of County Tyrone, Ireland, and knowing we come from Samuel Cephus Pool from South Carolina. (The names alone are worth the visit. Somewhere I have an ancestor named "Verb," and a Great Great Grandmother named Missouri Eddy who was full Choctaw Indian.

Got me to thinking why I don't know anything about an entire side of my family.

Some hurt never heals, I suppose. I hope mine eventually will.