Concrete reindeer

During the months of January and February, when we were still getting regular sizable snowfalls, Jeannine and I would go out and do a little cross-country skiing in the woods near our house. She was more adept at it, having used her skis like this for many winters, whereas I had not gone out on skis for at least ten years. 

So when she wanted to try a different route than we usually travelled, one which went down a long and pretty steep slope, I decided to put on my boots with their slip-on ice cleats, and walk along with her (at least until she started down the hill, where I would have to watch as she receded into the distance). It was a nice day, all snow considering, and the walk by myself through the woods was pleasant and quiet.

The route we took was one I'd been on many times in previous years, back when I would go dirt bike riding with my friends. It was what they call in these parts an "unimproved road" -- meaning that in certain areas it was mildly rutted and passable by just about any car, but in other sections you would need a gnarly off-road vehicle, a dirt bike, or something with feet to safely make it through. It was a nice five or six mile loop around a small mountain to the north of our house, and Jeannine only skied on the first mile or so.

So maybe if I had been on my skis, and trying to keep up with her, I might not have noticed this odd little artifact off to one side of the path, behind a single strand of barbed wire:

I am not completely sure what it is meant to be, but it sort of looks like a very stylized reindeer, rendered in concrete, between three and four feet tall. It is cracked in places, and the paint on it is faded and peeling. It looks as if it was created in a mold -- if not, quite a bit of care was taken to radius the edges for a smooth, rounded look. A large capital "M" protrudes from one side (there may be one on the other side too -- I did not look when I took the photo), chunks of the letter broken away, revealing in one spot a metal reinforcing bar (or "rebar" in the vernacular of the construction trade).

Near this artifact, there is supposedly a hunter's cabin or something of that ilk, back in the woods. I have never seen it, and have no idea who owns and/or frequents it. But I wonder if whoever has the hunter's cabin brought this strange thing into the woods for some reason. Perhaps the letter "M" is an initial for the owner of the cabin… or maybe it has nothing to do with that person -- maybe instead this reindeer was built as signage for a long-dead business, and someone found it in the trash and hauled it back here.

I have no idea.

But in its decrepit, decaying state, this odd little beast fits my definition of a ruin. -- PL

"A Study in Decay", the term paper

I guess you could call this the first real formal expression of my fascination with ruins.

This term paper was done for an art history class when I was an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA in the early 1970's. It was in that class that I was first exposed to the concept of "constructed ruins", and I found that idea extremely intriguing -- so much so that I used it as the basis for this paper (which, if memory serves, garnered me an "A"… probably the only one I got in that class).

I don't really remember doing the research, or writing the paper, but I do recall doing the drawings. I don't know what inspired me to render the entire text part of the paper in hand lettering (something I've never been that good at), but it did go well, I think, with the illustrations. The entire thing was created on plate-finish Bristol board illustration paper, and I used some kind of dipping pen -- possibly with a crow quill, though it could have been a larger nib -- to draw the ruins and do the lettering.

It was the only time in my life that I endeavored to do a term paper this way, and that's probably because doing that much hand lettering and trying to keep it neat, even and legible was an enormous pain in the neck (literally).


Here's the entire paper, with cover page and bibliography. You'll note the graphic on the cover page is the one I am using for the heading of this blog. I'm not really sure where the phrase "a study in decay" came from -- I may have made it up myself -- but I suspect I may have run across it in my research for the paper.



(Note: Because pages 4 and 5 are a two-page spread, I am using a smaller image of both pages together to show how they were meant to be seen, and then two separate images for both pages for easier reading.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of all the ruins mentioned in the paper, I think my favorite was the house in the "Désert de Retz" park in France, made to appear like the base of a huge, shattered classic column. There is something bizarrely whimsical about the notion of a house built to look like that. -- PL