My Grandfather -- Part 3 of 4 (Mature Audiences Only)

Warning:  This blog contains stories with sexual content and nudity.  If you are under the age of 18 you must go and ask your parent's permission to read it.   If nudity offends you, please return to Part 4 tomorrow. 
____________________________________________________________



By BAGMAN

Whoo hoo!  Oh Man!  Mark's grandfather absolutely loved women!  And sex!  In fact...

MARK and BUTLER both interrupt violently:  "Hold it!  Hold it!  We're not going to let you just destroy that wonderful man's reputation that easily!"

BAGMAN: But you promised I could write this piece!  And how does the fact that an artist likes women destroy his reputation?  How about Picasso?  He was an artist, dammit!  Go away and let me write it.  You're too close to him.  I know you're scared of showing a photo he took of your grandmother modeling is too much for you. 

"YOU'RE NOT PUTTING THAT ONE IN!!!"

BAGMAN:  Relax.  I'll only use the classic pose, the R-rated one.  So what if she is
a little nude...

BUT SHE WAS MY GRANDMOTHER!!!

And neither of them would have minded if they were alive today.  You still get hung up between his spirituality and his sensuality.  The question never came up with him. 

With GREAT trepidation, I step back to let Bagman tell this part of my grandfather’s story.

BAGMAN (getting back the reins):  "Okay, most of this stuff is second hand from people who knew him because he didn't share everything with his innocent little grandson.  No!  Wait a minute!  The best story was precisely because he shared a lot with his innocent little grandson!

YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TELL THAT ONE!

Oh yes!  It's a legend.  From the beginning he was wide open about talking to you about sex! In fact, when you were only in kindergarten and asked some innocent question about babies, he gave you the straight scoop about intercourse and described it detail.  No storks for you! 

Mark: "But he drew storks..."

BAGMAN:  Stop changing the subject.  Anyway, the next day your little friends in Kindergarten class were trying to tell you about the stork and, armed with the details, boy, did you set them straight!  Now I wasn't around then and being five or six you had no real concept of a girl’s anatomy and even less concept of semen. So you told your friends that the stork was a lie and that babies are really made when a boy urinates in a girl’s anus.  Yes, you had an advanced vocabulary and those were the words you used. A logical interpretative mistake on your part.  But the next day when your friends returned to school they had notes from their parents to your kindergarten teacher telling her not to allow you to play with them anymore. 

(embarassed silence)

He was a master of the human body and painted lots of nudes.  And here come some pictures.   Not another word, Mark!   He was an artist.  He painted nudes.  You can't do a blog about him without showing some. 

This last one was one of his favorites because of the legendary practical joke he played on everyone.  This one hung in the foyer at the front door of the Wrentham House.  Whenever someone new came for a visit, he wouldn't mention it but sometime later in the evening he would always ask them if they noticed the picture in the foyer. They would admit they did. Then he would ask them, "Do you remember if the man had a mustache?  Nobody knew.  Everybody blushed.

Hanging in the livingroom was his Adam and Eve, the perfect expression of his combined spirituality and sensuality.

And he loved the Greek myths.  He loved Pan, the satyr. 

And the myth of Leda and the Swan.

  Early sketch

Another study

The finished painting

Your grandmother often posed for him. And you might not want to admit it, but she was really built! Take a look at these two old photographs he took of her!

YOU SAID YOU WERE ONLY GOING TO POST THE CLASSIC ONE!

BAGMAN:  And the one below is my favorite!
(Editor’s note: I’ve deleted the second one out of decency and respect because it is too revealing)

BAGMAN:  Don't get too high and morally mighty, Mark.  You kept the photo!

And then there was your mother!  Several of your friends mothers who were high school friends with her used to talk about skinny dipping at the lake.  She would have loved Woodstock.

This one is impressionistically modest because

she was his daughter, after all!

And he not only loved women himself but he loved to play erotic jokes on others.  My favorite was the one your father told you about
(Come on, Bagman, don’t tell that one!)

Yah yah…anyhow your Dad told you about how he had sent a friend of his, a young Puerto Rican man who wanted to learn to paint, to your grandfather for lessons. The guy arrived at the studio and your grandfather set him at an easel and had a young woman there posing in the nude. Then after awhile, he said he wanted to make some sketches himself and asked the guy to pose too. Also nude. So when the two people were both standing together nude, your grandfather turned and walked out of the studio turning out the light.

(I’m not sure I ever really believed that story.)

Of course you did! It was right up your granddad’s alley. He loved to stir things up. Remember when you were in high school? He was doing portraits on commission, many of attractive young women…

(They were always proper formal portraits!!)

Of course, Mark, you doofus! But while they were posing he had lots of time to talk to them and often got around to suggesting that they should sleep with you…

(DID NOT!!!)

Don’t lie just because you’re embarrassed! Heck! A couple of them told you about it. In fact one of them thought it a good idea.

(Nothing happened!!!)

Because you were too dumb to read the signals and I hadn't entered your life yet!

(I think I made a mistake in letting you write this segment. It’s not right! This is my grandfather we’re talking about!)

Yes. And he was a great man. But he wasn’t a priest – he was an artist. And he was a product of Paris’s Left Bank in the roaring 1920’s and, believe me, that makes your hippie dippie 1960’s make love not war stuff look like Kiddy-land! He had his share of lovers…

(Don’t say that! He was married to my grandmother!!)

Calm down, Mark! And tell Butler to shut up too because I can hear him screaming from his room! Your grandparents loved each other totally and were committed to each other for over fifty years until his death did them part. You know! You grew up with them and they had one of the best marriages you’ve ever seen. But they both had a very open marriage.  They both traveled alot for art commissions or music tours and neither of them had an ounce of jealousy.  They accepted each other for who they were and it might not have worked for other people but it worked for them.

But I want to tell about the one about when he was in his eighties and...

(No. I think this is a good place to end.  But I do have to admit that he was a very sexy guy in addition to being a great artist.)

BAGMAN:  That's how you ended up with me in your life...lucky you.

And they really did love each other unconditionally until death did them part.

My Grandfather -- Part 2 of 4

Things I learned at Grandee's knee.

“Understanding where words come from is important.” Wherever we lived, right beside the dining room table was a huge ornate metal stand supporting the gigantic Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. I can’t remember a meal going by when we didn’t have to stop and look up something or other.


"There is a God. God is real. But everybody talks about Him in different ways.” In Wrentham we attended Trinity Episcopal Church. In Washington we attended the Golden Lotus Temple. Every night when I went to bed, he would come in and we would do a short reading from a spiritual text. The Bible, of course, but also the Koran, the Bagivad Gita, and esoteric texts I can’t remember.

He believed that the problem with some religions was that they got hung up on their own definitions of God and, therefore, missed the infinite around them.

“The basic foundational rule of love and sex is – never hurt anyone.” Grandee’s Bagman had infinite love which was not always bounded by conventional morality. But it was kind. Sex was caring and, if not always monogamous, respected the need for monogamy in others.

BAGMAN: "Hey!! I was going to write about that tomorrow!  You're stealing my thunder!

BUTLER:  "Yes, Mark and I are both very concerned about your blog tomorrow."

“You can be passionately interested in anything you choose.” I learned this when I got a “C” in algebra and tried to explain that I wasn’t interested in it. He told me I could be interested in it if I wanted to be. I was 14 and didn’t really understand it but I gave it a shot and have loved math ever since. Sometimes when I’m bored, I chose something at random to be interested in and I’m off and running on a learning jag, thanks to him.

“Your body and mind can do far more than you think they can.” He practiced yoga. Once I came back from a biology class full of wisdom about how the brain keeps the heartbeat at a certain rhythm that can’t be consciously changed. He invited me to sit with him when he meditated and to listen to his heartbeat. I’ll never forget hearing it get slower and slower until I became frightened that he was dying. Then it sped up again, he opened his eyes, and said, “Tell that to your biology teacher.” I don’t think I ever did.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”  No, he didn’t invent that maxim. But he always pointed it out to me. Because of him, I grew to be able to see beauty everywhere. And since his Bagman was often the one pointing it out, I quickly lost the Barbi / Fashion Model stereotype and could admire and be attracted to women of all colors, ages, shapes. This piece of wisdom probably helped me get in trouble too much as I got older.

“The only thing you ever photograph is light.” Hanging out with him, I learned to stop seeing things and to start seeing how light played over them. Unfortunately, I don’t often do it…but I can. And when I do I get better results.



“There is life after death but it is not what you think or like anything you could imagine, so don’t try. But it’s nothing to fear.” I don’t know how he knew this. Or how I know it. But it sunk in pretty good and I can’t not believe it anymore.



“Tree trunks are not brown and the sky is not blue.” I got this lesson when I was using crayons to color a tree in a coloring book. He took me outside to look at a tree and pointed out at least fifteen different colors in the trunk. Burnt sienna, cadmium yellow, ochre…I’m sure we probably looked these up in the dictionary over dinner as well.



“Love is stronger than war, water is stronger than stone, and turning the other cheek is a sign of great strength.” I think he read everything that Gandhi ever wrote. I wish he could have lived to see the movie.

"Sometimes the greatest thing you can give someone is to let them give you something."  He told me this when I was eight or nine and asked him what I could get my grandmother for Christmas.  I'm not sure I still understand this completely, but I'm working on it.

I’m sure there was a lot more. In fact, in almost every situation I find myself in, something bubbles up from inside me that applies.

I also wish I had had a chance to know my mother better.  I suspect she learned much of the same things when she was at his knee.

My Grandfather -- Part 1 of 4

My grandfather (on my mother’s side) was Joseph Goss Cowell but I always called him Grandee. He was born in Peoria, Illinois on December 4th, 1886.  But I’ll try not to get into a dry chronology of his life.  There is a little information on the net.  Not much since he preceded cyberspace.  But if you want a little background. there is a pretty good one on the Trinity Church Website in Wrentham, Massachusetts -- http://www.trinitywrentham.org/joscowell.htm.

He was an artist -- painter, sculptor, woodcarver. Before the Great Depression dropped the bottom out of new church construction, his specialty and love was creating alters. The one I know the best is the Children’s Chapel in Washington’s National Cathedral. I did not take the photograph below and apologize for any copyright infringement – but I don’t have a picture myself and it was what I could find.

Cathedral artists never signed their work but he used to talk about it. When I visited the Cathdral a few years ago – unfortunately without camera – I was wondering which chapel was his. But even from a distance amid several other chapels in cathedral alcoves, I knew it immediately when I saw it.  I can’t explain how. I guess, having lived with his work all my life, I just recognized it.

This is another of his alters (I don't remember where I took it)

He always did all the wood carving as well as the painting

In Boston, he shared a studio with John Singer Sergeant.  For a long time, he had one Sergeant's pallettes, cracked down the middle (which is why, I suppose Sergeant parted with it) hanging in his studio.  Years later, my grandmother, whose memory was beginning to fade at the time, threw it out. 

Mostly now, I find myself recognizing parts of his being imbedded in myself.  He was my primary influence due to the fact that Jean, his only daughter and my mother, died when I was 6.

My mother and grandmother

If you click on the painting above and look closely you will see two little pencil drawn hearts in boxes that I drew, as a child on his painting.  My grandmother was upset at first but Grandee said he thought it added alot to the painting.

My Dad (who I’ve talked about in earlier blogs) was an alcoholic, was unable to raise me after my mother's death, so I grew up with Grandee and Gramzee (Helen Cowell, my grandmother who was also a larger than life character for another blog at another time).  All the kids in the neighborhood knew them as Grandee and Gramzee.

Before his death (1970, I think) he instilled more of himself into my own soul than I was aware at the time.  Butler and also (I fear to say) Bagman are both direct descendents of his. In fact, I’m going to let Bagman, himself, write about Grandee’s wilder side in Part 3 although I may have to censor some of it. And Butler will provide a tour of some of his artwork on Hometown Photo Shootout Friday.  I know the theme is "My Faviorite Things" but his artwork certainly qualifies for me.  Besides, Friday is Grandee's birthday. 

And tomorrow I’ll share some of the things he taught me.

It’s odd because growing up, I thought of him as overly strict. But in pictures I can tell that I was usually the target of his overwhelming love. 

Frosty, Grandee, and my dog Skippy

Always the artist!  Being a kid, I was remember being embarrassed by this snowman at the time because I thought it should look more like a regular snowman.

He gave me my first camera that had adjustable speeds and aperatures.

Grandee, my first camera, and Mark Cowell

(Another Mark Cowell, my uncle (or cousin) who we called Mickey)

I have another confession to make.  Back then I was grateful for the camera but I blew off some of his suggestions about photography.  After all, great as he was, he was an artist from another era.  Photography was the new art.  What would an old painter and sculpture know about cameras. 

I'd seen the picture above many times.  This is the marble bust of my mother that Butler may mention later.  But it was only a couple of weeks ago that I took it carefully out of an album to scan it and on the back, Grandee had written:  "Taken for photography class."  Duh!  Now I'm thinking big bellows cameras, glass plates.  Of course he developed and printed everything himself.  Heck, he used to make his own paint sometimes.  

So I went back and found another I had remembered and looked at it.  Sometimes I have to be reminded to look at things.  I'm sure he could have told me alot about photography.  

"But now I do Digital and Photoshop," my ego proudly tells me.

But, thinking more, I just play with it really.  Grandee would have mastered the science behind it, the conversion of light to data, to pixels, to dots of ink...ah well. 

He believed in studying the bones and muscles behind the flesh.  He said, "How can you draw a body if you don't know what is under the flesh."

 

And he had insight into mortality as he did it. I always laugh at the sketch from his notebook below.

Finally, I remember most the smell of oil paints, linseed oil, wood chips that permeated every place I ever lived. 

Over the next three days, I want to cover some of the things I learned from him, some of his art and on Thursday, I really do need to cover his sexual nature...Bagman will help write it.  I considered not talking about that because he was, after all, my grandfather...but like Picasso and many other artists, his passions were part of who he was and I felt a certain honesty would be missing if I didn't mention it. 

Art, Eisenhower, the Army, Obstetrics, and World War I

Part "½" of 4

I have been planning to start a 4 part series on my grandfather (Grandee, to me) on the first of December.  I thought it would be simple but I also decided to see if I had any old stuff out in the shed and...

KABOOM!  I knew lots of stuff that I had sold, lost, or given away over the years but had forgotten stuff I've lugged around.  So I keep finding things that don't quite fit in the series as I had planned it.  So here is an out-take.  (Actually I'm afraid the out-takes will be better than the series)...at least more spontaneous.

I do wish I’d asked more questions when I was growing up with my grandfather. I wish I’d listened more. There is so much about my grandfather’s history that I know only in bits and pieces but not how they connect.   Like the war.


He joined the army near the end of World War One. I don’t know what he did in the war except that he told me that he never saw any action. I know that he was in England and France. I even found his passport!

I also know that he served in the Tank Corps under Dwight Eisenhower, long before he became president. Eisenhower, that is.  He -- my grandfather, not Eisenhower --designed a logo for the tank corps and worked with some other soldiers to make a sign for the headquaerters.

I remember this because when I was 7 or 8 (or maybe 9 or 10) before we moved away from Washington, Grandee took me to Eisenhower’s retirement home in Gettysburg to give him these little documents. An aide came out to receive them and later Eisenhower wrote, through another aide, a note returning them with thanks.

Although my grandfather said he never "saw action," he saw the results of action in France and said he'd never forget it.   In the shed I found some photos he had taken.

Years later he painted a very large painting of Rheims Cathedral, beautiful even in destruction.

Some people used to ask him why he didn't show it in it's glory and he used to say that he felt it had glory even in destruction.  I wish I had been a better photo-copiest when I shot many of his pictures along time ago because I did not do justice to the frame.  He hand-carved all his frames and this was magnificent but I can't find any slides that show it.  Except for this detail of at the bottom.

This was a wall-sized painting, probably 6 feet tall.  It was one of several that my grandmother and I could not get placed in museums after he died and then, after she passed away, I had to sell them because (a) they were too big for me to carry around or hang, (b) because I was an alcoholic and needed the money, and (c) because I was an idiot.  

But back to my grandfather, I don’t know what Grandee thought about war before he joined the army or why he joined in the first place, but I know he hated war afterwards. In fact during a short and very a strange surrealist period in his career – nothing like the vast majority of his work – he painted an almost Hieronymus Bosch-like anti-war painting.

It is probably my lack of knowledge but it seems to have been a strange army and a strange war because Grandee also seemed to have spent most of it studying art under various masters in Paris and London.

And it appears that a lot of soldiers were doing the same thing! Everyone was in uniform!  (Well, not everyone).   I looked at this closely and finally found my grandfather. If you blow it up (and don't look at the model!) my grandfather is in the back row, his head covering the lower right hand corner of the painting of the model's face. 

Finally, unlike today’s army, he brought his wife (my grandmother) along with him. And while he says he never saw action and that the war was almost over when he got there, they always told the story about how my mother was born in London in the middle of a German Zeppelin raid, with bombs shaking the windows of the hospital.

I also realized he was a pretty damn good photographer as well.  Long before the days of digital.  1914-1915?  What kind of camera did he have, I wonder?

And he must have been in London (and /or France) for several years because in the picture below, she is clearly no longer a newborn.

Yes, I really wish I had asked him more questions about that time in his life.  There must have been a wealth of incredible stories. 

Preview, 1886, and emotional intensity

If I had time to do it all over, I would probably change my places of worship post tomorrow and add this and a few more like it.  But to give you a preview of tomorrow's post, it will be nothing like the photo above. 

I'm still researching where this church alter is (or was) but it was carved and painted by my grandfather. 

I wasn't going to post today at all.  In fact, after writing my letter, yesterday, to Barry and reading the comments, I was emotionally exhaused.  But since Barry's last comment was "see you tomorrow," I had to at least post something to let him know I was still alive.

My grandfather was born on December 4, 1886.   Ever since I did a series on my Father, the Hermit of Panther Key, I've been thinking about doing a series on my Granddad.  Yesterday, I got started on it, figuring I'll post it on December 1,2,3, and 4.  Coincidentally the Friday Shootout coincides with December 4th and the theme is "My Favorite Things" and I figure my grandfather's art qualifies. 

So yesterday, after wiping myself out reading all your comments, I figured that since I was already dealing with feelings, I'd dig out an old storage box from the shed that contained stuff I've been carrying around for years.  Old photos, writings, stuff from my grandfather.  Whew!! I had forgotten what was in there.  The series might run to 5. 

This one is worth a click to blow it up and look at what he was working on.  Because it is a good metaphor for him.  He was sketching a cathedral alter and he had pinned it over a nude woman he had been painting.  If you think there is something of the Bagman / Butler dichotomy here, you are right.  Grandee was the genetic source of these guys, big time.   In fact, I'm going to let Butler write one of the series episodes and will risk letting Bagman write another.  I'll have to post an adult warning, I suppose, because there will be nude paintings involved. 

And speaking of nudes, wasn't I a cute little boy?

Ain't life grand! 

And not I need to become a mature adult and go to work.