Jacki Lyden

Around The River Bend, A Flood Of History

Jacki Lyden — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:18:00 +0000

The Bark River is my backyard, childhood river. And yet, in a lifetime of travel, I'd never explored it.

I knew it carved the land from the Ice Age to settlement times, from the Black Hawk War of 1832 (in which young Abraham Lincoln appears) to the era of grist mills. But the Bark also flows past impressive Indian mounds.

The Landscape Art Legacy Of Florida's Highwaymen

Jacki Lyden — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:40:00 +0000

If you traveled by way of Florida's Route 1 in the '60s and '70s, you might have encountered young African-American landscape artists selling oil paintings of an idealized, candy-colored, Kennedy-era Florida. They painted palms, beaches, poinciana trees and sleepy inlets on drywall canvases — and they came to be known as the Highwaymen. The group made thousands of pictures, until the market was saturated, tastes changed, and the whole genre dwindled.

Roadside Innovation

The story of the Highwaymen is one of beauty and heartbreak.

Meet Al Black: Florida's Prison Painter

Jacki Lyden — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 07:15:00 +0000

In the 1960s, Al Black could be found cruising up and down Route 1 in his blue-and-white Ford Galaxy — with a trunk full of wet landscape paintings.

At the time, he was a salesman who could snatch your breath away and sell it back to you. As artist Mary Ann Carroll puts it, he could "sell a jacket to a mosquito in summer."

"A salesman is a con-man," Black readily admits himself today. He's a storyteller. And does he have stories to tell.

Black was born on a plantation in Mississippi. One day, he says, a crew boss came by, needing more hands to pick crops.

The Highwaymen: Segregation And Speed-Painting In The Sunshine State

Jacki Lyden — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:24:00 +0000

In the 1960s and '70s, if you were in a doctor's office, or a funeral home, or a motel in Florida, chances are a landscape painting hung on the wall. Palms arching over the water, or moonlight on an inlet.

Art, Race And Murder: The Origins Of Florida's 'Highwaymen'

Jacki Lyden — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 09:08:00 +0000

The story of The Highwaymen is one of biracial friendships and lingering racism, of painting and a murder — culminating in a contemporary clash over an artistic legacy.

Only loosely allied, they are credited with churning out some 200,000 landscape paintings in the area of Fort Pierce, Fla., since the 1960s. The strategy behind their enterprise: Paint a lot, and paint fast. Often, the oil paintings were sold before they had even dried.

Chanticleer: A Botanical Distraction From Daily Life

Jacki Lyden — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 20:03:00 +0000

Ever wanted to just disappear into a secret garden of earthly delights, of twists and turns of evocative ruin, exuberant tropics, the Zen of a Japanese teahouse?

Consider Chanticleer, in Wayne, Pa. It's part of the old Main Line ring of estates around Philadelphia. In fact, right across the street from the garden is the former home of Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, the heiress portrayed by Katherine Hepburn in Philadelphia Story.

Chanticleer is, quite simply, one of the most delightful gardens in the world.

Athena's Library, The Quirky Pillar Of Providence

Jacki Lyden — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 11:10:00 +0000

With a bit of reverence, librarians carefully wind an antique library clock near the circulation desk in a temple of learning called the Providence Athenaeum.

This is one of the oldest libraries in the United States, a 19th-century library with the soul of a 21st-century rave party. In fact, the Rhode Island institution has been called a national model for civic engagement.

A bust of the Greek goddess Athena surveys her realm from the open mezzanine above the main floor. Shafts of light fall gracefully through an atrium.

Iraqi Refugees Struggle For Peace In America

Jacki Lyden — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:16:00 +0000

The Iraq War may be officially over, but for thousands of Iraqis who fled to America during the conflict, there's no going home. Many left successful careers to settle in Detroit, where finding their future is a challenge.

The U.N. estimates several million Iraqis are now refugees — either inside Iraq or outside the country.

The Simple Joys Of An Old-Fashioned Datebook

Jacki Lyden — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 22:47:00 +0000

What if you could hold on to time in your hands? You can, you know. You can crack open, on this New Year's Eve, the unsullied, unhurried, un-trammeled pages of an old-fashioned datebook — the kind that still arranges seven days into a week; the kind you write in with a pen and which never, ever, beeps at you to remind you of a meeting or errand.

I have two friends, who have been making date books, by hand, for 30 years. Their small company Purgatory Pie Press, in lower Manhattan.