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.