Tag Archives: Idaho

A Silent Genius

In mid-September a few years back, I chanced upon news of James Castle Days in Crouch. The name didn’t ring any bells, but a banner over the old arts center announced the schedule of festivities. A curator from Boise drove up to share Mr. Castle’s life and work with our community, the place Castle too, called home. My dear friend who specializes in art history, joined me at the talk.  

We attended that presentation at the Community Center, and became acquainted with James Castle’s unique story that began here, in Garden Valley.

Born in 1899, young Castle appeared to have joined the world profoundly deaf. He never spoke or learned to read or write, though he attended a school in Gooding. But the boy could draw. As a child, he produced drawings and objects crafted from materials he scavenged around the family homestead in Garden Valley. To view the original location of his home, it was set on the west side of the Middlefork between the new, white barn entrance, and the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Later the family relocated to a farm in Star, then to a home near Hill Road down in Boise. Despite the moves, James pursued his art, every day from garbage inspection, to finished compositions. 

Like poet Emily Dickinson, Castle shared only a few of his works with family and others. For the most part he squirreled away pieces in unlikely spaces at each location. Behind walls, under floorboards, and any other secreted hideaway he could find. Like Beethoven, James worked in the utter silence of his internal fortress. Instead of symphonies, Castle produced images of his world.

Wrappers, labels, cardboard, blank pages from books, and even old Christmas cards were among the organic materials that made up Castle’s preferred medium. What most people considered trash, Castle manufactured into his vision of his universe. The curator explained, in her presentation, that though he was given sketch pads, and art pencils, the silent artist kept up his scrounging ways, perhaps finding unusual materials a part of his creative process. 

The artist made use of stove soot he scraped from a wood stove firebox, then mixed it with his saliva, drawing with sharpened, pointed sticks. Interiors, exteriors, letters and lists, anything that happened to catch Castle’s eye. Through other small bits of debris, he fashioned mobile objects, and though his works may appear primitive, it is his artistic experience we embrace as authentic. 

Somehow James Castle’s style appears flat, and boxy, bordering on Rocky Mountain Byzantine, but that impression is misleading. His compositions were not only complex, but depicted the interiors of empty matchbooks or canned food labels. This artist managed to duplicate what he saw into precise, complex, miniature representations.

In particular, Castle played with letters and numbers. In some pieces the precisely drawn symbols are in some kind of familiar sequence. Using small memo books the artist depicted tiny ink calendars in a conventional format, but Castle’s letters and numbers often lack a familiar order. Perhaps in his world, it is not sequence that has meaning, but atheistic precision in duplicating the shapes.  

In the 21st century, a time of aggressive social media, artists compete for attention in the overcrowded cyber world. The market is fierce. So it is almost a miracle that Castle’s creations were discovered at all. One source maintained that his work would have been, without a doubt, relegated to unappreciated oblivion if Castle hadn’t given some of his creations to his immediate family. Castle found fame due to a nephew attending art school in Oregon. This young man showed his instructor a smattering of Castle’s work, and this event introduced Castle to the art world. 

The teacher, intrigued, requested more of the collection, and an exhibit opened in Portland, then moved on to Seattle. Castle’s anonymity in the art world ended.

Still, this artist didn’t create for the critics, or for any recognition at all. True to his expression, Castle created art for its own sake, and would have continued working either way. His surrounding world remained his muse where the substance of his vision concerned recording the life he observed around him.

After his 1951 discovery, Castle’s pieces appeared in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitney in Manhattan, and even in Madrid. The Smithsonian American Art Museum has exhibited a lion share of Castle’s art, in the museum’s folk collection. Another art exhibit is in Boise, located in the last house in which he dwelled.  The beauty of the collection is that it is open to the public, meaning we all can share the vision of an extraordinary artist born along the Middlefork. Here in Garden Valley and we have the privilege of living in the same locale, along the same river, the same trees, and the same mountains that inspired Castle. 

James Castle’s life spanned through the 20th Century, America’s formative years. Wars and economic hard times ebbed and flowed, and he created. Man landed on the moon, and James continued to create. We met the Beatles, and watched color television, and Castle explored his soundless world, generating the visual snapshots he perceived in his Idaho landscape. 

At the end of the curator’s presentation, she introduced two bearded men in bibbed overalls. These elderly gentlemen were two of Castle’s nephews, and grew up with their Uncle James in the house. They mentioned that Castle happened to enjoy The Red Skelton Hour on CBS. Other than that Tuesday night slot Castle showed little interest in other shows. That struck me as rather interesting, since I, too, liked Skelton. And the difference? The comedy hour rested on Skelton’s amusing pantomime skits. So, of course Castle tuned in with the rest of the family—he could laugh along. 

The surprise of Castle is how he transcended place and time. For a child born in a tiny settlement in the Idaho mountains to emerge as an accomplished artist is remarkable. Though hearing impaired at birth, and forever silent, James Castle’s story is our unexpected Garden Valley treasure.

Gail Chumbley is the author of “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight. Chumbley also has written two plays, “Clay” exploring the life of statesman Henry Clay, and “Wolf By The Ears” examining the origins of racism and slavery in America.

gailchumbley@gmail.com

Vision

Along Highway 55, northwest of McCall, Idaho, lies a stretch of highway winding through breathtaking mountains. The terrain tinges a powdery blue, set against traces of white from the previous winter, while the Payette River churns beside the roadway. This route isn’t fast, but the scenery more than compensates for the slow pace. 

After a steep descent from the mountain town, the highway straightens and a number of cabins and trailers are visible. Trump signs abound, (not unusual) along with flags emblazoned with Don’t Tread On Me or, the black, blue, and white version of the Stars and Stripes.

One particular double-wide sits near the highway’s edge, where bikes and snowmobiles sit forgotten in the tall grass. Passing that property always catches my eye. Cemented between the gravel shoulder and the dirt driveway stands a mailbox bearing the Confederate flag.

The irony of that dated symbol on a rural mailbox, is that the Confederate mail system had actually broken down by the end of the Civil War. Any Rebel correspondence between battle front and home became haphazard at best. Often soldiers, who were able, walked letters home for their comrades still fighting in the field.

At the same time, the Northern mail system witnessed an important innovation. The grim number of Union dead, posted publicly in northern town squares, grew too long for privacy and decency. Families had been forced by circumstance to endure their devastating losses in the company of an entire community, an unseemly breach of 19th Century etiquette. Congress responded to this situation by requiring mail delivery to be private, sent to each home.

Needless to say, that stenciled mailbox, standing along the highway struck me as absurdly ironic. Those in our state, who peddle in conspiracy and fan contempt for the Federal Government, would collect no mail, nor enjoy any other public-funded service.

An expansion bridge those residents must cross to reach Boise, was constructed by agencies of FDR’s New Deal back in the 1930’s. The forest fires that increasingly threaten that little enclave of homes, are fought through funds from the Department of the Interior. 

More national programs underscore the paradox of that small protest of painted aluminum. Flood control, WIC nutrition, Title 1 Education funds, Medicare and Medicaid, all making life better for those residing in that remote, road-side residence. 

The South lost the Civil War because intractable people and their leaders lacked both organization, unity, and vision. These “dissatisfied fellow countrymen” to use Lincoln’s phrase, understood only grievance and fury. For example, hard-pressed Jefferson Davis in Virginia could not persuade the Governor of Georgia to dispatch fresh reinforcements to stave off Robert E. Lee’s ultimate defeat. 

In the end, the politics of simmering outrage and division is unfocused and unproductive. State leaders who promote incendiary hogwash for short-term gain, leave followers pointlessly aggrieved, and easily manipulated, exactly where agenda-driven politicians want them. And this pressure-cooker style of propaganda and defiance quickly deteriorates into blind violence, destroying much of what Americans wish to preserve. (January 6, 2021 comes to mind.)

So express yourselves, my fellow Idahoans, let your freak flags fly. Though emotions and symbols do not violate federal law. However, if political leaders agitate an overthrow of the system, that is treason. And we all would all lose more amenities than you realize.

Including an empty mailbox.

Gail Chumbley is a history educator and author. Her works include “River of January” and “River of January: Figure Eight,” both available on Kindle. Chumbley has also written three historical plays, “Clay,” “Wolf By The Ears,” and “Peer Review.”

gailchumbley@ymail.com

El Dorado

 

Image

In the far west lay the Kingdom of Idaho. It is a vast, lovely realm; rich in scenic wonder, mountainous regions covered in timber, and a verdant plain of abundant fertility. The kingdom, in truth, a land of ceaseless beauty and bounty.

And the people are free in this land. And if a subject ever questions that truth, they only need ask Idaho’s barons who, every two years, remind them of their autonomy.

By regularly invoking the peasants liberty, these insulated aristocrats have much to gain.

The lordly use many devices to sway the masses. These powerful figures often array themselves in the garments of Idaho’s historic past–recognizable symbols of western freedom. Stetson hats, Tony Lama boots, lasso and horse in hand parading potent images of liberty to the populace. These cagey barons cleverly propagandize, through these symbols, the peasants good fortune in living in such a utopia.

And the powerful do not suffer challenges from the foolish–other non-barons holding competing beliefs. In fact, the most strident pretenders are set up for mockery, and honest contenders are marginalized and disenfranchised. These barons know what is best for their Kingdom.

Meanwhile the realm decays. The highways and byways, prove perilous, pocked in ruts and potholes. The young are packed into schools in overwhelming numbers, to be promoted through the education system with no regard for learning. The vulnerable, the sick, and others outside the barons’ understanding have no voice in this Kingdom of Idaho.

Still the barons persist in flourishing the images of freedom to placate the peasants in the domain. Indeed these humble folk predictably embrace this idealized portrait of their land, and reassured, most gleefully continue to support the Kingdom’s seated nobility.

The subjects residing in this beautiful realm live satisfied that they are, indeed, the freest, and luckiest, and the most independent folk around.

Their leaders, flourishing the domain’s revered symbols every two years, remind them so.