Jeanne Wilkinson: June 2011

Our trip begins at the the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 42nd Street. No trains to Allentown; we both hate driving so we're on the slow-boat-to-China, sorry, bus. If we were Amsterdam-ers, we'd just hop on our bikes for the ninety mile trip.

Why Allentown, you ask? I'm in an exhibition in a new gallery called "Soft Machine."

I've exhibited my work at Allentown's Muhlenberg College,

which is how the gallery director, Eva Di Orio, found me.

We leave the city behind us in a sullen mist.

The New Jersey "Meadowlands" are one part meadow, fifty parts not meadow.

The remains of the old Penn Station lie around here somewhere - one of the most beautiful buildings ever torn down to make way for one of the ugliest. A social crime.

Old Penn Station, new Penn Station (stock photos)

New Jersey may be the garden state, but here in the Meadowlands

plants don't produce tomatoes.

Comments from Frank: "Actually, elsewhere in NJ, they do. The great 'truck' gardens of Jersey produce fabulous tomatoes ( really). One hears of these red tangy round treats boasted about in Paris, albeit by pompous, bloated, jerkoff American a-holes - yeah, nothing like those Jersey tomatoes! - all the more annoying because there is a kernel of truth in their guttural ravings!"

We travel on a Trans-Bridge bus, and I can't believe my eyes when I see this

bizarre logo on the rear end - isn't this kind of cartoonish stereotyping, if not illegal, at least

really stupid?

Hi - Yo, the Indian scout? I've found a website that tells the grim tale like it is:

http://nativeappropriations.blogspot.com/2010/10/trans-bridge-bus-lines-mascot-hi-yo.html

Going through Bethlehem, we see the dramatic remains of the old steel mills.

Industry, we hardly knew ye...

(stock photo)

The good ol' days of molten metal, when men were men...

Next we breeze through Easton, a stately town, even in the rain.

The bus makes numerous stops - at Clinton our driver announces that the man in the front seat is going to get off and buy a ticket, so nobody better take his seat because, sez Mr. Driver, "he'll be seriously bent out of shape, and I'll be even more bent out of shape.

Somebody'll be sorry, and it's not going to be me!"

Frank and I puzzle over his meaning.

As we enter Pennsylvania, I look up and meditate on a gigantic cloud-flower.

Then I look down and meditate on a gigantic problem, depressing evidence of an voracious vine invading the east coast, taking it down one plant at a time. I've seen it in Montauk, Massachussetts, Rhode Island, and now Pennsylvania. I can't find the exact name of the vine

(anyone know?), but it's not unlike another invasive monster called the

"Mile-a-Minute" vine, which is pretty descriptive. It climbs onto other plants and trees, rare or common, steals their sun and their nutrients. Like kudzu in the south, it's a greedy green demon obliterating the world, leaving a bizzare, blunted and sterile landscape behind.

This plant has snaky tendrils that wave in the wind, sticking up like the fingers of wicked witch of the west, searching for prey. Come here, my pretty!

Let me devour you!

We enter Allentown - later we hear that parking lots are a major growth industry.

A tree grows in Allentown.

We visit Katie Heffel in her amazing space right next to the bus station,

75,000 square feet of old factory space that she's planning to set up for use by artists.

Wow! See her website for further info: http://silkcitystudios.com/ and also her blog: http://silkcityarts.blogspot.com/

Right now she's putting on a screening of video artists, including yours truly.

She takes us on a tour that goes on forever! Allentown is wide open with tons of old factory space available. Now if they would only reinstall train service, just like in the days before virtually the entire commuter rail system was dismantled in favor of highways,

about the same time the old Penn Station was torn down...

Here is the gallery space called "Soft Machine" where I am showing three pieces in their

second-ever show. A beautiful space, full of light and art. They have built a room

within a room, called the Tube,

where my piece "Gravitational Fields" is displayed.

Frank carefully studies the business card of the contractor in charge of renovating the building.

Good conversation at the opening

while the sun sets outside the window.

Later, we go to downtown Allentown where strange characters fill the sidewalks in the

fabulous "Freak Fest."

where we have a glass of wine and wach fire dancing to the music of "Post Sputnik."

We stay overnight at the Holiday Inn with its helpful pool warnings and plastic trees.

Numerous houses in the area are surrounded by parking lots.

On our way back, we see the swollen Delaware.

In Bethlehem we come upon the remnants of a parade:

the Latin American Motorcycle Association, and

and a lnie of cars labeled MAFIA and emblazoned with the Puerto Rican flag.

Back in the Meadowlands, it appears the sun never shines.

In his song "State Trooper" Bruce Springsteen called this area

"where the great black rivers flow."

(Frank argues this point, saying that the rivers Springsteen referenced were further west.)

Our Transbridge bus flows right past all these cars,

maybe because Hi-Yo is guiding us.

Maybe they could use another tunnel to NYC, oh, wait, NJ's brilliant Guv' Chris Christie nixed that one.

Back in the big city. A three hour bus ride for a 90 mile trip! Why are there no westbound trains????

Well, thanks all you Allentownians for a fabulous and iteresting trip!

(Pics by me, Andrew & Jennifer Keeley Yonda and Frank Lind)

June, 2011, Andrew, Jennifer and I spend a sunny afternoon in Dumbo, Brooklyn...

Then we take off for Montauk...

A Walk On The Beach, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923)

...where we do a photo shoot, research for Frank's latest series of paintings inspired by Joaquin Sorolla, the Spanish artist whose former studio we visited in Madrid.

Picking beach roses for the shoot.

Pinning the rose.

Andrew checking his costume, a Talbot's size 12 women's beige linen pantsuit from the Downtown Brooklyn Goodwill. In certain poses, it has kind of a funny fit,

reminding us of the episode of "The Office" where Michael finds out he's wearing a women's
suit. Unfortunately I forgot the boater-style hat so Andrew wears a stand-in.

Being Sorolla-esque.

A guitar break at someone's amazing beach castle complex. We wonder if the locals who drive their SUVs on the beach at sunset will fall into the moat!

The next morning Frank finds a box turtle walking next to our motel and worries that it's going to get run over on the highway!

We decide it's a she, for no apparent reason, and bring her up to the park, Camp Hero, at the very eastern tip of Long Island, to give her a better home. We name her Ginger because of her fancy footwork and beautiful eyes.

After we see her off into her fabulous new life,

we run into (metaphorically speaking)
yet another box turtle, this one crossing the road. Why? We can't imagine.
Frank, a turtle afficionado, is awed - it's a two-turtle day! He takes this one and turns him back to safety (we decide it's a him for no apparent reason) whereupon he clomps along at a good pace on only three legs (the turtle, not Frank).
We name him Fred, for obvious reasons.

The fourth limb is totally gone, but it looks like an old injury (a war wound?) and he seems to have adapted to his 3-legged status. We hope that Fred will find Ginger and they will dance away into happy-ever-after-land, turtle style.

Camp Hero used to be a WWII base - here's an old gun emplacement, now boarded up, formerly housing a big honkin' 16 inch gun to protect the East Coast from

U-boats and the like.

Here's the space alien that watches our every move...oh, sorry, the Cold War radar tower, now deteriorating.

A paste-up pin-up on an old barracks building in the fake WWII "fishing village" says: "The Ideal Female Body - Deformed by Tight Corsets." Oddly, no other graffiti is to be found. When this base was active, the inside walls of these buildings might have been covered with
pin-ups, but none of them too concerned with women's health issues.

Andrew relaxes before the second shoot, looking like a drug lord who just pulled off

the deal of a lifetime. He's picked up a new hat at White's in downtown Montauk,

which has everything the 21st beachgoer could ever dream of, and a few items for 19th century beachers, too.

I'm an excellent actor.

Striding atop the hoo-doos.

Now on the rocks...

...with the lolli-crab.

(Really a horseshoe crab, which isn't really a crab at all - more related to a spider than a crustaceon.)

Last year it was my sister Sherry and Brett on the hoodoos.

Another inch and they'd have been on the rocks.

Sherry helmeted herself with a horseshoe crab, sometimes called a living fossil (the crab, not Sherry). As so much else in our beleagured world, their numbers are declining because of habitat destruction and over-harvesting (for use as bait and fertilizer).