Something to look forward to - The  Reckoning is a planned podcast and public radio series which will examine ways in which America continues to be affected by its long history of racism and discrimination.  To give the story immediacy for a Kentucky audience, the project will chronicle the history of two Kentucky families and interview its members, one descended from a major slave trader who was also one of Kentucky's largest slave owners, and the second descended from two of the enslaved people owned by that family.

The Ohio River was key to the Kentucky slave trade. Kentucky was the number two exporter of slaves to Deep South cotton plantations. Slave exports from Kentucky skyrocketed in the 1850's, when the prices for enslaved African Americans nearly doubled and the slave trade became a very lucrative business.  Louisville was a key shipping hub for both slaves and the products of slave labor.

The Reckoning has been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but AFLOAT will publicize the airing date for the series as soon as it is decided.  The executive producer for the series is Dan Gediman, who has a long career of award-winning public radio programming.

Additional information is at reckoningradio.org

Photo credit: Hank Willis Thomas, Raise Up, 2014, bronze and concrete, National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, Alabama

Mayor's "Give-A-Day" Week of Service
Volunteer Clean Up at
Garvin Brown Preserve
Tuesday, April 21st
10 am-12 pm and
2 pm-4 pm

Help make the Earth beautiful for her 50th Earth Day Celebration and join us for a volunteer clean up of trash and other debris at the Garvin Brown Preserve. We will be having two sessions on Tuesday, April 21st, 10 am-Noon and 2 pm-4 pm. The Garvin Brown Preserve is located right on the Ohio River and has been open to the public every day for over 20 years. We want people to continue to be able to enjoy this area as the weather gets nicer! We are very grateful for the many volunteers that regularly help us keep the Preserve clean and in good shape and we would love to have you join us along with your friends and neighbors during the Mayor’s “Give a Day” Week of Service.

You can sign up here or by emailing vanessacastle@riverfields.org. Pertinent information, including directions, will be emailed to those who sign up.

---

River Fields invites you to the Wildflower Walk at Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm
Sunday, April 26th, 1:30 p.m.

To thank you for your support and to celebrate spring, River Fields invites you to join us for a guided exploration of the wildflowers at Wolf Pen Branch Mill Farm, Sunday, April 26th at 1:30 p.m. Nestled on 412 acres of undeveloped land along Wolf Pen Branch Road, the farm features an endangered plant species and a historic water-powered mill and mill complex. The farm and the mill are forever preserved through a conservation easement co-held by River Fields and the Kentucky Heritage Council.

Sallie Bingham, noted writer and founder of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, owns the property and donated the conservation easement in 1999 so the property would remain undeveloped and protected for future generations. The walk fills up very quickly so interested participants are urged to make reservations as soon as possible. The roughly 2-hour walk is through varying terrains, so sensible walking shoes and appropriate dress for the weather is strongly suggested.

Free for members. Non-members may participate with a $25 donation to River Fields, which includes a one-year membership. For more information or to reserve a spot on the walk, please contact Vanessa Castle at (502) 583-3060 or at vanessacastle@riverfields.org.

A kaiju is a movie monster who destroys cities, like Rodan and Godzilla.  Louisville has two kaijus emerging from the Ohio River in a mural by Wilfred Sieg III.  The mural is in the performance space at Kaiju at 1004 East Oak Street, Louisville.  It is worth visit for the well-stocked selection of beer, the video games and the music ( I heard alt-country stand-outs, Nick Dittmeyer and Tyler Walker Lance Gill) and the other touches of Japanese culture - - but most of all for the Ohio River monsters in the back room.

Peter

In June of 1850 Ralph Waldo Emerson made the first of his lecture trips to Cincinnati and the “West.” (He got as far as Galena, Illinois on the first trip).  The transcendentalist philosopher and author was impressed by the Cincinnati Water Works:  “the people do not let the Ohio River go by them with using it as it runs along.  The water works supply the city abundantly & in every street on these dusty days, it is poured onto the pavement.  The water offered you to drink is turbid as lemonade, & of a somewhat grayer hue.  Yet it is freely drunk & the inhabitants much prefer it to the limestone water of their wells.”

Emerson was eager to visit Mammoth Cave, and thirteen people he met in Cincinnati decided to join him. The party left Cincinnati on Tuesday, June 4th headed to Louisville on the steamboat, Ben Franklin.  Arriving in Louisville, they learned that the mail coach to Bowling Green, the nearest city to the cave of any size, could only hold nine passengers and had left for the day. So, after having bought all the available Roman Candles in Louisville for shooting off in the natural wonder, they departed on the steamboat, Mammoth Cave on Wednesday, June 5th, arriving in Bowling Green on Saturday morning, June 8th, after travel on the Ohio, Green and Barren rivers. The final leg from Bowling Green to the cave was an all-night trip by stage coach. 

Emerson remarked on signs of flooding above the first story of houses along the Ohio, and observed on the Green River that every tree had a water line, 12 or 15 feet above the ground, marking the height of the last flood.   Emerson’s observations of the Green River are intriguing:

“In the Green River, we disturbed ducks all the way before us, who clambered with their young up the banks, & wild turkeys flew before us from tree to tree.  Where the river widened occasionally, lay long strata of dried leaves solidly matted together, deserted by the water, and when these are disturbed by thrusting a pole into them carburetted-hydrogen comes out in quantity, and if lighted, burns all over the river, & very dangerous accidents have repeatedly occurred.” 

What Emerson called “carbureted-hydrogen” we call methane (CHч) and his description is accurate.  Wetlands hold enormous amounts of methane: 30% of the methane in the atmosphere comes from wetlands.  It is caused by the slow decomposition of plants and animal life.  This microbial decay makes the water anaerobic.  Methane is formed rather than COᴤ.   But what wetlands store in COᴤ far outweighs the emission of methane environmentally.  Not only do wetlands store COᴤ, they also absorb excess water from storms, provide a reserve during droughts, and supply fish and wildlife habitat, among other good they do.

The lock and dams on the Green River are now being removed, which will restore the extraordinary 50 foot depth of the Green River.  The Kentucky Waterways Alliance is a key player in this effort.

For more on the benefits of wetlands and their storage of methane, see https://massivesci.com/articles/methane-trees-greenhouse-gas-wetlands/

I am grateful to Professor Tamara Sluss and Dr. David Wicks for assistance with this note.

100 Days in Appalachia is an outstanding  West Virginia-based independent, non-profit news outlet.   In January, 100 Days in Appalachia published "High Waters, More Hazardous Cargo in Ohio Watershed Complicate Keeping Waterways Safe," as part of the series, Good River, Stories of the Ohio. This is a must-read for anyone living near the Ohio River, and a wake-up call for citizens, legislators and government officials.  

Kentucky along the Ohio: From Paducah to Ashland

(click on the blog post title up top for best view of this article and photos)

The aerial photographs of the Ohio River seen in this virtual exhibition are by Ted Wathen, who took them with the aid of architect and pilot Jeff Smith.  The photographs are a joint project of the Kentucky Waterways Alliance and the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project.

The Kentucky Documentary Photographic  Project was started as a The Kentucky Bicentennial Photographic Project in 1975, and ran until 1977 with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Kentucky Arts Commission, The American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, and corporate and private foundations.  The partners, Ted Wathen, Bob Hower and Bill Burke, photographed in every county in Kentucky.  They were inspired by the Farm Security Administration photographers who were employed during the Great Depression as part of FDR’s vision to share the plight of rural America and let the public know that the Roosevelt administration had their interests at heart.  Ben Shahn, John Vachon, Russell Lee, and Marion Post Wolcott were among the very gifted photographers assigned to Kentucky. The Farm Security Administration ran from 1935 to 1943. 

Other models for the original KDPP photographers were Robert Frank and August Sander.  Frank’s seminal work, The Americans, was a fresh look at documentary photography through the eyes of a Swiss immigrant.  August Sander (1876-1964), attempted with a sociologist’s zeal to photograph every profession and every level of German society. He called his project, “People of the 20th Century.”

Working into 1977, the Project changed its name to the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project.  The Project’s “final” show was exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York and subsequently at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, where it is in their permanent collection.  The museum will put a selection of the Kentucky prints on view later this year.

Following a very successful showing of the original Kentucky Documentary Photography Project in a 2011-2012 exhibition titled “Rough Road,” Bob Hower and Ted Wathen decided to revive their county–by-county look at the Commonwealth.  And, they evolved a broader more ambitious project to re-look at Kentucky every 40 years.  Starting in 2015, the Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project began photographing Kentucky anew.  Wathen and Hower are still very actively involved,  but they have recruited a diverse group of younger photographers with varied viewpoints and fresh eyes.  The new photographers include Alyssa Schukar, Brittany Greeson, Zed Saeed, Ross Gordon, Harrison Hill, Rachel Boillot, and Sarah Lyon.  The intention is to plant the seeds for another iteration in 2060 or thereabouts, continuing a visual survey of Kentucky every 40 years.

The Ohio River borders Kentucky’s northern and western borders, flowing along more than 450 miles of the state’s perimeter.  Will portions of Ohio River shores remain heavily industrialized?  Bob Hower remarks, “photographs are time machines. They gain value as time passes.”  Wathen adds, “we are making visual history,” and comments on their current use of aerial and drone shots, which greatly expands the potential information the Kentucky Documentary Photography Project can impart.  The ambition to celebrate the beauty of the Ohio River, to heal the River, and to fulfill its unmet potential will rely on visual records like these Ohio River images.

Junction of Cumberland River and Ohio River just upstream of Paducah

US 45 bridge crossing the Ohio river from McCracken County KY to Brookport IL.

Islands, Livingston County KY

Hurricane Island, Crittenden County Kentucky, opposite of Elizabethtown, IL

Looking downstream, Lewisport, Hancock County Ky is in the foreground.

Horseshoe Bend overlooking Hancock County KY. Cannelton locks and dam are in the background.

Riverport, Jefferson County KY

Coal barges that broke away from their tow, Ohio River dam at Louisville

Cardinal Harbor, Oldham County KY.

Markland Locks and Dam. Gallatin County KY.

Boone County Ky, across from Aurora IN.

Ohio River at Cincinnati, Newport and Covington

Walter H. Zimmer Power Plant adjacent to Moscow Ohio

Carntown, KY looking down river toward Moscow, OH

Marathon Refinery at Catlettsburg, KY looking toward the confluence of the Big Sandy with the Ohio River at Ashland

 All Photos ©Ted Wathen / Kentucky Documentary Photographic Project / Kentucky Waterways Alliance.

Another KDPP exhibition, which includes some of the views of the Ohio River, is on view at Louisville’s Metro Hall (Formerly the Jefferson County Courthouse).  “Looking at Kentucky Anew…The Kentucky Documentary Photography Project” remains up until through February 29, 2020.

An update from the fine folks at Ohio River Recreation Trail:

"It's official... Ohio River Recreational Trail is now a project of the National Park Service Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance Program! It is just an exciting development: The 34 Ohio river towns working together to promote a healthy lifestyle, a sense of pride in our home towns and our river.

In other news, The River Heritage Conservancy is moving forward with their plans for a 400 acre riverfront park in Jeffersonville by the Falls of the Ohio. Check out their wonderful video.

Finally, we are excited that one of the other projects awarded technical assistance by the National Park Service is the John Muir Trail, which will run from West Point, KY to the Gulf of Mexico. Their trail starts where ours ends so we will be doing lots of collaborative work with their leadership."

Male High School Students participated in the Belleload of Knowledge Boat tour on September 22. A long video is in the works,

On Sunday evening, September 22, more than 450 Ohio River fans embarked on the Belleload of Knowledge for a cruise to the east end bridge and back.  There were conversations, music, food and drink on all three decks of the Belle of Louisville. Sharing enthusiasms for our river, learning new things, recruiting new volunteers for organizations dedicated in making our connections to the river stronger were enjoyed and celebrated by the cruisers.

Thank you to everyone who came together to make such a pleasant evening.

If you have photos to share, comments to make, ideas to pass along, please send them to afloatontheohio.com so we can post here.

There are many more AFLOAT exhibitions, events and activities to come throughout the balance of the year, stay engaged in celebrating the Ohio River with AFLOAT.

Incorporating clips from the Hubbard oral histories that Joanne Weeter conducted in the late 1980s with images found in the collection, UofL student Emma Davis completed an independent study project on Harlan Hubbard, found here.

Ohio River City Paddlers Combine Efforts to Develop 274-mile long Ohio River Recreation Trail

The Inaugural Ohio River Recreation Trail Paddling and Cycling Adventure will begin

June 1 in Portsmouth, Ohio and end June 9, 2 pm in Louisville, KY

The Ohio River Recreational Trail

What is it that connects Cincinnati, Louisville and many other rivertowns?  Why, the Ohio River, of course!  And it is because of this connection that groups of avid outdoor enthusiasts and paddlers have joined forces to create a recreational trail on, and along, the Ohio River.  The Ohio River Recreation Trail is an initiative undertaken by members of Louisville’s River City Paddlesports and Cincinnati’s Paddlefest organizers to support and encourage people to explore the Ohio River from water, or land, and to find recreational adventure locally.  “I’ve paddled the 133 miles from Cincinnati to Louisville more than 15 times, sometimes in my own kayak and other times with 10 people in a voyager canoe, and the beauty and tranquility of the Ohio River never ceases to amaze me,” says David Wicks of Louisville’s River City Paddlesports, and the driving force behind the development of the Ohio River Water Trail.  “What we are trying to do is open peoples’ eyes to the beauty and majesty of the Ohio River and to provide the opportunity for them to find adventure in the environment that exists in their own back yards,” added Brewster Rhoads, recreational trail co-convener and founder of Cincinnati’s Paddlefest. 

The Inaugural Ohio River Recreational Trail Paddling and Cycling Adventure will begin June 1 in Portsmouth, Ohio and end June 9 in Louisville, KY.  One Voyager Canoe with 10 hearty souls will paddle from Portsmouth to Cincinnati (June 1-5) and three Voyager Canoes with approximately 30 people will complete the trip paddling from Cincinnati to Louisville (June 6-9).  A team of cyclists led by Cincinnati cycling enthusiast Jene Galvin, will also make the journey, documenting bike routes and land-based points of interest along the way.  River communities have graciously offered to host paddlers and cyclists for dinner and overnight camping.

The Ohio River Recreational Trail will begin in Portsmouth, Ohio upstream of Cincinnati, and end 274 miles away in West Point, Kentucky, just downstream of Louisville.  There are numerous historic towns along the route, as well as two major metropolitan complexes for travelers to enjoy and explore.    The Ohio River Recreational Trail will…

• Promote tourism, safety, respect for private lands, and Leave No Trace (TM) ethics while facilitating both long distance and local paddling, sailing, power boating, fishing, and cycling along the Ohio River.

• Provide increased access to the Ohio River by collaborating with local governments, recreation organizations, and commercial user groups.

• Coordinate with county and municipal travel and tourism entities to ensure the largest possible impact on retail, lodging and food sales while providing a high-quality experience for paddlers, cyclists, anglers, and boaters.

• Work with the state wildlife and natural resources agencies in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio to promote Ohio River fishing, boating, hunting, cycling, bird watching, and nature appreciation.

To support users of the trail, the Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) has been developing the Digital Guide to the Ohio, a GIS-based on-line mapping system that will help paddlers, power boaters, cyclists and even motorists plan multi day adventures in and along the Ohio.  Phase one of the Guide should be available to the public later this month. It will contain information regarding numerous points of interest, river and weather conditions, lodging, restaurants, safety information, and much, much more.  In addition, REI has awarded a grant to support the development of the trail.  “As an avid paddler, outdoorsman and Community Outreach coordinator for REI, I am thrilled that we were able to support the development of this trail,” said Owen Nyswonger of REI, and one of the few paddlers that will make the entire 9-day, 274-mile journey! 

Inaugural Ohio River Recreational Trail Adventure Travel Schedule

Start Saturday, June 1 in Portsmouth, OH

Destination River Miles Camp location

Vanceburg, KY   355 - 378 Travel Miles 23 Veterans Park, Vanceburg

Sunday June 2  

Manchester, OH 378 - 396 Travel Miles 18 Campground,Manchester,

Monday June 3

Augusta, KY 396 - 427 Travel Miles 31 RosemaryClooney House, Augusta, KY

Tuesday June 4

Thomas More Biology Station 427 - 451 Travel Miles  24 Thomas More overnight accommodations;

Tour Ohio River research lab

Wednesday June 5

Cincinnati, OH 451 - 475.5 Travel Miles 24.5 Gilday Riverside Park

On Thursday, June 6, 20 additional paddlers will join us at Gilday Riverside Park in Cincinnati for the second leg of the adventure.  A launch celebration will be held at 7:15 am.

Thursday June 6

Rising Sun, IN 475.5 - 506 Travel Miles 30.5 Rising Sun - Denver Siekman Park

Friday, June 7

Vevay, IN 506 - 538 Travel Miles 32 Vevay City Campground

Saturday, June 8

Westport, KY 538 - 582 Travel Miles 44 Woodland Farm-Westport

Sunday, June 9 Arrival 2 – 4 PM, est.

Louisville, KY 582 - 603.3 Travel Miles 21.3 Louisville Waterfront Park 

On Sunday, June 9, 2 to 4 pm there will be an arrival celebration at the Louisville Community Boat House, 1321 River Road, Louisville, KY.   

An open free celebration with discussions about safe recreational access to the Ohio River Corridor.

Contact:

Jerry Schulte, Ohio River Recreation Trail Media and Safety Coordinator jerryschulte@jerryschulte.com 513.260.8249

or David Wicks, Louisville dwicks1@gmail.com 502.671.3595 

 Media Opportunities: In-studio interviews with paddlers and conveners of Ohio River Recreation Trail prior to June 1 departure. 

Remote: Interviews with paddlers and conveners of the Trail available prior to, or as paddlers complete, their journey. 

Contact David Wicks, dwicks1@gmail.com, 502.671.3595 or Susan Schneider susan.schneider.esq@gmail.com, (704) 701-8840 for Louisville-area studio and remote interview scheduling and further information. 

On-water video/interview opportunities may be available for media from a powered 18’ safety boat which will accompany the paddlers from Cincinnati to Louisville.  Contact Jerry Schulte, Media and Safety Coordinator, jerryschulte@jerryschulte.com, 513.260.8249 for more information. 

Ohio River Recreational Trail links:  https://ohioriverrecreationaltrail.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/OhioRiverRecTrail/       Info@ohioriverrecreationaltrail.com

From: Harry Stone <hstone@orsanco.org>
Date: Thu, May 9, 2019 at 11:31 AM
Subject: Ohio River Basin Research and Education Goal
Colleagues,

Thank you for your efforts related to research and/or education in the Ohio River Basin. For those of you with long engagement with the Ohio River Basin Alliance (ORBA), this communication is an update. For others, please consider this an introduction. For each of you, this is an invitation to participate. I am able to report to you that the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), with $150,000 from the Commonwealth of Kentucky, have signed the $400,000 Planning Assistance to States (PAS) agreement "For Development of an Ohio River Basin-wide Strategic Plan.” Laura Mattingly, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)/Louisville District is the Project Manager. I am serving as the ORSANCO/ORBA lead. 

There is coordination and interest across USACE including the Great Lakes and Ohio River Basin Division and the four Districts in the Ohio River Basin - Pittsburgh, Huntington, Louisville, and Nashville. ORSANCO’s eight member states approved the project and are expected to significantly engage, and ORSANCO is reaching out to engage other states in the Basin. 

From ORBA’s perspective, the outcome of the project will be used to establish a collaborative strategy that enables the region to speak with a unified voice in order to help ensure the protection of the incredible natural water resources that make up the Ohio River Basin, grow our economy, and secure critical funding to accomplish our shared vision. 

While some details on process are still being worked out, I am providing this “heads up” on where I think we are and what I anticipate will be the next steps.

Context:

The mission of the Ohio River Basin Alliance (ORBA) is to “Maintain a successful collaboration that will recommend strategies and coordinate actions to address complex water resource challenges and priorities in the Ohio River Basin with a unified voice.” ORBA has collaboratively developed eight strategic goals related to: water supply; flood control and risk reduction; economic growth; healthy ecosystems; world class nature-based recreation; water transportation; research and education; and change adaptation/resilience. 
 
One goal in the strategy is to: “Ensure that research and education adequately informs Ohio River Basin-wide economic, social, and environmental decisions; enhance the profile of education organizations in the basin; and synergize efforts to garner effective public involvement in the stewardship and management of the Basin’s resources."

While I know some of you have interest in other goals as well, this e-mail is focusing just on the research and education goal. (Please let me know of other goal areas where you want to be engaged.)

First Steps for Focus on this Goal:

Identify Stakeholders for this Goal. “Stakeholders include any member of the public that might be able to affect, are affected by, or are interested in the results of the (…) planning process.” 

Here is the first place we need your help. Clearly we need to reach out to various state and Federal agencies, but what other organizations, collaborations, and individuals should we include as stakeholders in this regional goal? Can you help us reach out to them? (Contacts and/or introductions would be appreciated.) You can respond to ORSANCO@usace.army.mil.

Focus Group: After we expand our stakeholder group, USACE will hold charette-style planning sessions to clarify the priorities and strategies for the goals. You can expect an invitation to participate.

We welcome your input on the content and implementation of this collaborative strategy. You may also share this communication with others.

Thank you again for considering participation in this exciting initiative for the Ohio River Basin - and for the research and education that you champion. 

To receive updates on the PAS and other ORBA activities, you are invited to become an ORBA Member (free) by clicking here:  ORBA Member Registration. For more information on ORBA visit our webpage at OhioRiverBasinAlliance.com

Respectfully,

Harry Stone

ORSANCO/ORBA PAS Project Manager

hstone@orsanco.org

*Image - This summer you may notice several blue barrels floating by the Dam. Those barrels are part of an ongoing mussel study that is being conducted through a partnership between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

The Song of the River

Saturday, May 11, 2019 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM

On May 11th at 8Pm, at Whitney Hall in the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, the conductor of the Louisville Orchestra, Teddy Abrams, will present the world premiere of his song cycle, “The Song of the River.”  It will be paired with Beethoven’s “Symphony No.9.”   

Beethoven’s 9th charts the passage from anguish to joy and from doubt to hope and is plea for the unity of all mankind.  Abrams’ s composition is no less broad in its scope.  Abrams is very eclectic in his musical tastes, and takes his inspiration from a wide variety of composers and artistic modes.  In concept, “The Song of the River” pays homage to Wagner’s “Ring” cycle. Wagner’s epic musical drama charts the heroic struggles and ultimate death of the Norse gods: the Rhine ring holds the power of life and death.  Abrams imagines the Ohio River cataclysmically flooding and covering the whole earth – not as a disaster but as a release. The river rises, falls, cleanses and overflows.  Abrams has described the composition as “a celebration of the human species –the totality of our story – quasi-biblical and quasi-Dr. Seuss-not a requiem, but a celebration of humanity.”

Abrams stated “I imagined a final, futuristic day when our beautiful Ohio River has risen to such an extent that the totality of human creation and expression is reflected in its waters, and just before the last day ends the River itself offers a song that honors the legacy of humanity.”

The 35 minute composition for soprano and full orchestra consists of an introduction, 12 cantos and an epilogue.  Abrams wrote the composition in December.  The words came first.  The genesis of the piece came in response to the anxiety and overload generated by the massive onslaught of the information age: “in an age of incessant digital iconography and truncated discourse, I found myself (and most of my generation) in an exhausted anxious loop from bearing the heaviness of our daily dose of information, much of it negative and a great deal of it inconsequential.  The creation of my work was both a cathartic self-therapy and an exploration, zoomed out as far as possible, of the confusion and awe that I continue to feel in equal measure at the state of our species.”

“The Song of the River,” then is a retrospective look at human achievement, musically ranging across the capabilities of a full symphony orchestra, but including cantos that adopt the styles of folk music and rock n’ roll, oboe, cello and celeste solos, and Wagner-like E-flat  sonorities.  Each canto treats its grand theme with a questioning of eternal verities.  The singer adopts a variety of roles.

In some of the settings, she is a witness to the end time, in others a commentator, celebrator, or questioner.  In Canto III, entitled “Consumption,” she begins as a violent demonic force and becomes gentle and romantic:
“I will consume you

I will consume the air around you

I will consume the very body that holds you

I will consume the unknowable forces that

make you

Is this need, or want

Or Love?”

Other Cantos celebrate pleasure, power, the unity of mankind as seen from airplanes, the affirmation that comes from stargazing,  nostalgia, building, balance, and the Golden Age.  “The Song of the River” is heroic in its scope and daring.  Kentucky is fortunate to have a conductor/composer willing to undertake such a bold endeavor.

RAY KLEINHELTER: RIVERSCAPES

Bryan Warren wrote about Martin Rollins’s 2017 “Town and Country Exhibition” at the BDeemer Gallery that “for those of us who make the city of Louisville and fields of Kentucky our home, Rollins’ images are places we know.  The artist uses this familiarity to explore them, revealing a passionate interest in what we know and how we feel socially and historically, while maintaining a strong sense of the present.  They are more than frozen moments. Instead, they are like fleeting memories playing on a loop.” Ray Kleinhelter’s subject matter is the Ohio River, rather than urban and suburban settings, but, like Rollins, Kleinhelter has an preternatural ability to make the familiar unfamiliar and the local transcendent.  Warren also extolled “the tension between image and process” in Rollins’s work, and Kleinhelter as well re-orders the immediacy of topographical notation with a rigorous painterly logic and a firm notion of color-space. Both artists provide the special pleasure of re-envisioning for their viewers the local and familiar.

Ray Kleinhelter has two shows on view through May 4th, at the Kleinhelter Gallery at 8th and Culbertson in New Albany, and at Galerie Hertz at 1253 Preston in Louisville.

Kleinhelter’s recent evolution has been from a bejazzed jigsaw depiction of landscape with thickly-brushed saturated colors to a very open, bright palette of   startling hue gradations depicting clouds, sky, hillsides, banks and water. The older work had a Stuart Davis-like density and dynamism. Kleinhelter’s 2017 show at Sotheby’s Lenihan Real Estate, (up at the same time as Rollins’s), depicted riverscapes with dissonant color chords and strong light-dark contrasts, for example in “Riverbank #20.” (oil on canvas, 48”x36”). Spare, concise pen and pencil drawings in that exhibition suggested a new direction.

In his current work, Ray Kleinhelter still employs a geometricizing and generalizing translation of visual data into a language of interlocking trapezoids and rectangles, but at a very different tempo.  Sometimes these geometries overlap, as in “Liveaboard,” (oil on canvas, 30”x40”) creating a measured illusion of recession into the distance.  A compression of forms on the left contrasts with the expansive openness on the right. Colliding passages of yellow, orange, beige and mauve occupy the lower portion of this classically paced work and suggest not only the play of light and shade, and the reflection of clouds on the water, but also, the flow of the river’s current, and sun and sky as protagonists of this restrained, languid drama.

  The watercolor study for “Mile 589” (watercolor, 10”x14”) is absorbed in describing particularities of place: the delicate inflections of the profiles of ridgelines, the drama of the sky and very intense observation of a range of hues in the landscape. The oil version is bolder and more emphatic, more open and more spacious.   (“Mile 589,” oil on canvas, 30”x40”).  Although a depiction of nature, Kleinhelter’s vocabulary is very much of the moment: the sweep of the view is punctuated with right-angle geometries that evoke a machine part generated by a 3-D printer.  Kleinhelter’s secondary and tertiary hues create a progression leading downriver in open water towards discoveries that lie beyond the next river bend

Ray Kleinhelter converted a cabin cruiser into a floating studio.  He lives riverside and so his subject has a continual presence in his peripheral vision.  There is ample art historical precedent for working from a boat: J.M.W. Turner often did views from an offshore perspective, the better to immerse the viewer in Romantic Era subject matter of storms or unusual light effects.  The pre-Impressionist Charles Francois Daubigny converted a ferry to a floating studio from which he made etchings and paintings.  Manet painted Monet and his wife in Monet’s floating studio, and Winslow Homer’s obsession with the power, cruelty and inconstancy of the Atlantic is one of the epic sustained narratives in American art.

What all of these artists’ practices have in common is an undermining of traditional perspective.  The late Don Nice, who focused on the Hudson River in his art, noted, “The old or traditional approach of the Hudson River School painter was to break down the landscape in terms of foreground, middle ground and background.  Painting from a boat eliminates the foreground, which minimizes the notion of Renaissance space.” The watery entry point at the lower edge of Kleinhelter’s compositions is both a field for abstract improvisation and a more accurate plein-airism: less explicit representation leads to a firmer and more complex concept of space, atmosphere and light.  And what extraordinary light it is! Crystalline, lucid, a perfect match for a sense of freedom adrift. Planes of color glide together in different directions, sometimes off-kilter, being and un-being, forming and un-forming, like the motion of daylight itself. W. H. Auden, in his poem “A River Profile,” refers to “water, the selfless mother of all especials.” Kleinhelter’s geometric generalizing yields, ultimately, an uncanny specificity.

Kleinhelter’s new manner evolved from his works on paper, especially his watercolors aboard his floating studio.  His painting practice was to cover every square inch of canvas, whereas his watercolor practice was exactly the opposite: to leave as much white space as possible. The delicacy of tints in the new oils and their unfinicky, elongated dashes and blocks preserves much of the spontaneity of the works on paper. 

Sense of place is a discredited notion in contemporary criticism. Late-stage capitalism seems to be much more about a cacophony of mass-market, standardized erasable nowheres than any particular place.  But Kleinhelter gives his works exact locations: “Mile 588;”  “Mile 581;” “Chute 18 Mile Island;” “12 Mile Island;” “Toward Westport.” (The mile titles are navigational references to locations on the 981-mile stretch of the Ohio River).  Like the work of Martin Rollins, one of its pleasures is its re-definition of the local - but also its carefully crafted tension between artistic methods and ends, abstraction and representation, and the inevitable, deeply freighted, universal conversation about the state of our natural resources and their future.

“Ray Kleinhelter Paintings” is on view at the Kleinhelter Gallery, 701 East 8th Street, New Albany, Indiana, through May 4th.  “Ray Kleinhelter: Views from the River” is up until May 5th at Galerie Hertz, 1253 Preston Street, Louisville. The Kleinhelter exhibitions are participants in “Afloat: An Ohio River Way of Life.”

Morrin’s review also appears in the latest issue of UnderMain - http://www.under-main.com/

Voyageurs traveled the length and breadth of Canada and Northern United States on a network of lakes and rivers, the great highways of trade and discovery. These early travelers were the backbone of the developing economy: their canoes were the pioneer tractor trailer trucks. They used their voyageur canoes to transport trade goods into the wilderness returning each year with a bounty of furs and stories of this great land unfolding before them.

 In 1670,  René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle   made his way from the Great Lakes into the Ohio River Basin and according to his records made it down the Falls of the Ohio, and the future site of Louisville    The Voyageur Canoes explored much of the mid-west. The early trading routes and voyageur activities are actively interpreted by the Feast of the Hunters’ Moon Festival in Indiana on the Wabash River.   The Canoes were actively used by both sides in the French and Indian Wars and the War of 1812.    

Currently four of the Voyageur Canoes are operated by River City Paddlesports.  The first two Voyageur Canoes were purchased by the Jefferson County Public Schools System in 2002 with a grant provided by the late David Armstrong, then Mayor of Louisville.   Two additional voyageur canoe where purchased by Dare to Care to support the annual “World Voyageur Championships” on the last Saturday of July.    The boats are used in an urban Watershed program, including environmental education along the Ohio River and its tributaries.   The boats based out of the community boat house are also active with the Mayor’s Hike Bike and Paddle, a bi- annual celebration that brings together almost 10,000 Louisvillians.     

Come out and explore Beargrass Creek and the Ohio River with us! It is an adventure!

Check out this lovely article at www.under-main.com by Afloat’s Peter Morrin on how the regional collaboration of Afloat came to be, and the importance of preserving the history and culture of the Ohio River.

http://www.under-main.com/newsletter/afloat-an-ohio-river-way-of-life/

This morning, Peter Morrin and I had the opportunity to talk with Keith Waits, host of the Louisville Visual Arts “Artebella on the Radio” on WXOX -lp, 97.1 FM, streaming at ARTxFM.com, about “AFLOAT": an Ohio River Way of Life” as well recognize Ann Stewart Anderson’s immense contribution to the Louisville visual art scene.

To listen to the program, visit https://www.louisvillevisualart.org/blog?category=PUBLIC%20Radio

JP Begley, March 14, 2019

My favorite museum label of all is at the start of the historical text at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York:

“In the beginning, shortly after God created heaven and earth, man and woman, there were stones to throw and sticks to swing.”

A second favorite was at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the 1990s, in the Department of Classical Art, but long since taken down:  it accompanied a 5th Century BCE Greek kylix krater, depicting two ithyphallic satyrs greeting a voluptuous maenad:

“A maenad is greeted by two satyrs, who are obviously excited to see her.”

What a pity that there is not more often humor in museum labels!  The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles is an outlier in doing a good job in this regard.  Some contemporary artists, like Josiah Mcelheny, have effectively borrowed the authority of museum labels to tease out profound issues of the interaction of modernist templates and their presumed dependence on platonic ideals.  

My first art museum mentor, Agnes Mongan, disliked all explanatory labels because she believed that they distracted from a deeper contemplation of the work of art, and viewers’ openness to their own discoveries and personal associations.  But current museum opinion is strongly in favor of labels, especially labels that contextualize a work of art and engage the viewer, often with questions that serve as pathways into a work. The core text on the subject is by Beverly Serrell, Museum Labels, An Interpretive Approach (Second Edition, 2015). Serrell covers everything from “making words and images work together” to “production and fabrication.”   Serrell’s  Ten Commandments” of labels are common sense guidelines that are very frequently ignored:

1. Labels should begin with concrete, visual references to the objects they interpret to bring them to life.

2. Labels should relate to the big idea of the exhibit, not ramble without focus or objectives, or contain sub-sub-subtopics.

3. Labels should emphasize interpretation (offering provocation) over instruction (presenting information).

4. Labels should know their audience and address visitors’ prior knowledge, interests and/or misconceptions.

5. Labels that ask questions should be visitors’ questions.

6. Label design should reflect the label’s content or context and be part of a recognizable system of label types.

7. Labels should be written with a vocabulary that is within reach of the majority of visitors.

8. Labels should be short and concise, more like a tweet than a tome.

Angie Reed Garner

shantyboat #7

60 x 48” oil

I like very much Angie Reed Garner’s labels for her exhibition, “Shantyboating,” at the garnernarrative contemporary fine art, until March 29th.  Garner states that her work is “inspired by Harlan Hubbard’s insistence on a life of dignity and self-determination” and that her work “reflects on forces in opposition thereto.”  The forcible destruction of homeless camps in the Butchertown neighborhood in the fall of 2018 profoundly affected Garner.  She devised a set of symbols – shantyboats, imported but now invasive species of fish, plants, and mules – to represent the negotiation of forces, good and evil, as seen in the historic setting of the Ohio River, on the riverbank, “a liminal site of liberation, revelation, pollution, and opposition.”   It is germane that “The Point,” the nearest shoreline to Butchertown, was the traditional site of the shantyboats and their dwellers, often living a marginal existence, unable to afford more traditional housing or surviving on fishing, basket making, and harvesting mussel shells for pearls or button manufacture.

“Shantyboat #7” depicts a giant carp leaping over a shantyboat, as it dives into a swirling cosmic whirlpool, socks drying on one end of the shantyboat juxtaposed with a luminous cosmic background of  a ringed sun and white letters afloat above the misted green waters. The text that accompanies the oil painting states:

“We live out consequences intended or not.  I think about Asian carp, brought here for reasons in the 70s and thriving but now mostly hated. Then I think, we should support every possible effort to control and abate Ohio River pollution. We might need that water clean and those fish healthy, someday.”

By bringing us into her own ruminations, Garner in effect prompts the viewer to think about a host of issues:  the regional history of environmental missteps, the value of all forms of life, the distortions caused by a good-and-evil approach to the natural world, what the artist believes the painting is about, and how it pertains to a universalist perspective on how our fate and the carp’s fate are united:

“We might need that water clean and those fish healthy, someday.”

A great write up on Insider Louisville by Mark R. Long about Afloat!

Henry Dutchin’s shantyboat, shot by Rogers Clark Ballard Thruston in 1922 | Courtesy of the Filson Historical Society

…“What we’re really able to draw out here is life on the river, with a focus on shantyboats, but also contextualizing them with the people who are working there, or having fun on the river, or patrolling the river,” said Jennie Cole, the Filson’s manager of collections access.”

Read the whole article HERE