Charles Kaufmann – The Never-Ending
I have the feeling of the never-ending of which I am the beginning.
—Paul Gauguin (1903)
In 1936, Charles Ewing (1872–1954) painted a landscape, Boathouse, which shows two of his sons felting the roof of a boathouse on Timber Point, where the Little River Estuary empties into Goosefare Bay.
Charles Ewing, Boathouse, watercolor on paper, 21 x 14 in., 1936 (photo: courtesy of the Ewing Family).
In Ewing’s watercolor, the boat seems to want to burst through the open boathouse door and bellyflop into sunny, tumbling surf. The painting speaks of plein air and summer afternoons.
Why is fog white, and the undersides of clouds gray? How do you capture in a few watery brushstrokes the gloaming over the Atlantic just after sunset? What color defines the absence of color in winter? The soft-hued spring? The bleariness of autumn?
Ewing’s son, David, had purchased a Coast Guard lifeboat at an auction. It had needed repairs and the boathouse was being built to house it. David never finished the repairs. Twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant David Maskell Ewing’s body was lost at sea in April 1944 when the USS Lansdale was torpedoed by the Luftwaffe off the coast of Algiers.
At some point the lifeboat was removed from the boathouse and left in the open air.
I took a run out along Timber Point Trail on a snowless December morning in 2023. Here was an old dirt road, moss-covered stone walls, lightning-shattered white pines, and a neglected boathouse looking like a hideout for wandering spirits. Through the trees, the waters of Goosefare Bay shimmered gray and cold.
To the left of the boathouse was the skeleton of the large wooden boat that was David’s lifeboat. Eighty-two years later, it seemed to me as if this weathered longship was opening out its ribs to take one deep, final breath.
It was a lucky discovery. A few weeks later, the powerful storm of 13 January 2024, which caused historic flooding along the Maine coast, ripped the old boat apart and scattered its timbers across the marsh grass into the surf.
Charles Ewing’s watercolor—and, unexpectedly, my own—perceive the never-ending of which we are the beginning.
Amy Ray – View on Time
I cannot look out at the ocean around me here without remembering my past. All that has happened here remains, lingering in the houses and bluffs, the brambles and old oaks. While I work in my studio I reveal the layers of not only my history, but the history of the island itself. I seek to uncover the legends and truths. I never start with anything more than a color, a mark, a texture. The story reveals itself and I listen to what it tells me to do, where it asks me to go.
Amy Ray, So Much Love, textile assemblage, 53 x 50 in.
The violence of past winter storms and lightning strikes remain in the landscape, as do past joys and delight in the way that a woman plants her garden. Scars and trauma linger at Sipayik. The birth of fawns and humans fill deer and humans with hope. The bridge that has been removed is still visible, hidden in the illusion of time.
Each and every sunrise leaves streaks of color, invisible to the naked eye, but present nonetheless in memory and reappearing in stories and songs, in paintings and poems.
Amy Ray, Search for the Source, textile assemblage, 45 x 56 in.
My ancestors and those of strangers walk down Water Street for eternity, peddling fruits and pies. They are mending nets on the shore, building piers, and embracing a friend.
Amy Ray, Do Not Live Too Quickly, textile assemblage, 43 x 46 in.
I stitch and cut, add and remove. There are layers and layers of old fabric revealing a narrative. I sit back and look at what I have done. In thread and wool I see the past, present, and future.
Time is not a linear flow, as we think it is, into past, present, and future. Time is an indivisible whole, a great pool in which all events are eternally embodied.
—Frank Waters
Mildred Bachrach – The Shape of Time
Mildred Bachrach, When the Door Opens, photo.
Since man has walked the earth, what happens to his essence has been an infinite topic in all civilizations and cultures.
I have seen many people die: some peacefully and others fighting to the end. Most religious beliefs are centered around an afterlife. Many have strong convictions on what you have to do to end up in a positive place for eternity. I have no answers. One has to come to their own conclusions.
Ave Melnick
Ave Melnick, Paris Plage, archival inkjet print, 12 x 18 in.
I feel this fits the Shape of Time theme since this is a “decisive moment” in the Henri-Cartier Bresson style of street photography. It was taken in Paris along the Seine during a heat wave, when the riverbanks were lined with sandy beaches—the plage—and misting coolers were set up along the embankment for the children. I waited and photographed while the children ran in and out of the mist. I wanted to capture the moment of joy and movement that evoked the spirit and sense of the place and time. The moodiness of the mist, the wall, and the ring are offset by the boy racing through in a sprint of self-absorption and happiness. The red of his shirt and the standing boy’s cap in the background are a counterpoint and contrast to the soft misting atmospheric. In my street photography, I seek frequently to capture these snippets of time and place to convey the temporary nature of our existence; yet demonstrate how we can stretch that out by a single snapshot. If I’m lucky: “something rich and strange.”
Image at top: Charles Kaufmann, Old Boat, Timber Point, watercolor on paper, 15.375 x 11.375 in., 2025.