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***UPDATE***
SALMAGUNDI CLUB 41st Annual Open Exhibition in Painting, Sculpture & Graphics
Best in Show Award Jay Eisenberg, “Sunset on America”
Sunset on America
The roadside noise quieted abruptly as I walked down the sloping, stony, deep rutted path. The stillness now was almost eerie, yet alluringly tranquil, as everything living seemed to disappear behind me. The cornflowers, Joe Pye weed and phlox that followed me down the path stopped and did not venture further fearing their death. Standing before me was a chaotic open-air gallery of art and design. Like huge headstones heaved and arched from an uncountable time, they stood as monoliths protruding in and out of the earth being enveloped by nature. Trees and vines seemed to take control and were intertwined among the ruins. I could hear life in the distance; birds far-off, but here everything was dead, clinging to one another.
I was in an auto graveyard, a junkyard, of assorted nineteenth and twentieth-century vehicles of every description; haphazardly dropped, pushed, plowed, or craned into place. Almost creating a ring of towers rivaling Stonehenge. The ground crunched and crushed underfoot revealing dried pink puddles of transmission fluid tinged with acid yellow-green antifreeze.
Dismantled elements stacked like totem poles raced skywards locked together in a rusted embrace, fused, as if welded by Mother nature herself. The now-dead trees had done their best to survive growing in and out of broken windows or creating their own path through opened hoods and trunks; meandering in art nouveau arches to create their own destiny. They drank from the ground where they were bound and over time dried and died, drowning in their own tears.
There were countless dreams here for me to adore since I was a worshiper of all of the elements of industrial design. And the pinnacle, the paragon of art design that was America herself; was the automotive design of the mid-twentieth century. Buicks, Cadillacs, Corvairs, Fireflites, Studebakers, Metropolitans, Fords and Chevys of every description; even the remains of some true wagon wheeled cabriolet buggies, flared their skirts of long ago desires.
I opened my sketchbook began drawing and taking notes. So much to see, to remember, to capture. The strewn hood of a Duster, paintless, with weather eaten puddles etched as if by a great sculptor creating his last patina. Ford truck lights, socketless, trying to peer where once a brighted lens paved paths through fog. Buxom Cadillac bumpers protruded revealing more than Marilyn Monroe did for an eleven-year-old boy. No sagging steel, just chromeless and beckoning. I worked quickly in ink with little patience trying with precision to capture in strokes, the elegance of a curved tail fin or a bulbous fender; as time brought on twilight on the brisk November day.
Knowing I’d return I looked back and noticed a car I had only glanced at. It was one of the most complete. A mid-fifties Chevy. Stuck in a fender and what appeared to be the only living thing there, was a small American flag occasionally fluttering, as if waving to me and with its last breath calling for help; as the sun with its orange glow faded between the trees exaggerating the fact that this might not be just another sunset, but Sunset on America and its once great hopes and dreams.
