Tag: Jeanne Seagle

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Art Art Feature

Jeanne Seagle in “Of This Moment”

Photo: Abigail Morici

If you’re even the most casual reader of the Memphis Flyer, you’ve seen Jeanne Seagle’s work. Just turn to the weekly “News of the Weird” column every now and then, and you’ll see one of her quirky illustrations. But this week, if you head to the Medicine Factory, you’ll find the work she’s proudest of — her drawings and her watercolors of Dacus Lake, across the Mississippi River in Arkansas.

Seagle has been fascinated by this area for years now. After all, it’s where she started to get to know her husband Fletcher Golden, who lived at a fishing camp in the area at the time. “We would just wander all over that land while we were dating,” she says. “It was so much fun.”

Often, she returns there — to hike, to paint with watercolors, and to let her surroundings wash over her as she takes photographs to reference later in her drawings. She thrives in nature, she knows.

“I just love going over there. I love these scenes. I love these landscapes. That’s my spot,” Seagle said in an interview with Memphis Magazine last year.

Jeanne Seagle (Photo: Courtesy Jeanne Seagle)

Today when we speak about the Medicine Factory show, “Of This Moment,” which features new works, she notes how she hasn’t tired of the subject, especially with its ever-changing qualities. “In this show, I have a picture called Fallen Tree, and I have drawn that tree several times in other pictures when it was still standing,” she says. “That’s the thing about drawing landscapes, you can just focus on one spot and nature takes over and changes things constantly. … I find it endlessly fascinating.”

For three or four hours a day, she draws scenes of nature from photographs she’s taken at Dacus Lake, just a drive across the river from her Midtown studio. Sometimes, she’ll play blues CDs to fill the space with the rhythms of the Delta as she stills her focus on rendering the smallest of details — grooves in tree bark and wisps of grass — with careful marks in charcoal and pencil.

These black-and-white drawings take weeks to complete, sometimes up to two months. She’ll fold over the Xerox copies of photos she’s taken in some places, making entirely new compositions, adjusting the wilderness to her aesthetic liking. From these gritty images printed on copy paper, Seagle gleans details that an untrained eye would not recognize. She knows this art, inside and out, just like she knows these woods, harvesting their most innate qualities from her memories.

Unlike her illustrations that favor stylization, Seagle renders these images realistically, leaving no detail spared. The scenes are still, out of time. A sense of wonder remains in her drawings, inviting the viewer to slip into nature’s serenity, only a few miles from the grit and grind of Memphis.

After decades of working as an artist, Seagle has slipped into a serenity of her own, as if all her prior artistic endeavors have led to this moment. She’s experimented with styles and challenged herself many times over, she says, and now she’s found a subject that is uniquely hers — one that she’s emotionally attached to, that she’s excited to render in a style and medium that feels right, not like one she’s trying on.

“I have always liked to draw more than paint, and I just feel so much more comfortable doing that,” she says. “When I was a little girl, I was not exposed to paint media. When I was a little kid, I just colored with crayons, and I kind of just kept on doing that.”

Even as she continues in this phase of her life and art with these landscapes, Seagle can’t help but think of her childhood. “Just thinking how ironic it is that my parents were all about trees, too. My father worked with trees at his job as a forest ranger and my mother loved to take photographs of trees. It’s just kind of natural that I’ve just kind of slipped unintentionally into this little niche here.”

But it’s a niche Seagle plans to stay in, perhaps one that’s been in her genes all along. “I have spent most of my career doing color pictures for illustrations magazine and book illustrations,” she adds. “And now I’m doing what I want to do.”

“Of This Moment” is on display at the Medicine Factory. It features drawings and watercolors by Jeanne Seagle and paintings by Annabelle Meacham, plus works by Matthew Hasty, Jimpsie Ayres, Alisa Free, Claudia Tullos-Leonard, Anton Weiss, and others. Hours are Thursday, June 6th, noon to 6 p.m.; Friday, June 7th, noon to 6 p.m.; Saturday, June 8th, noon to 4 p.m.; and Sunday, June 9th, by appointment only. To schedule an appointment, email art@sylvanfinearts.com. Seagle will give an artist talk on Saturday, June 8th, at 1 p.m.

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Cover Feature News

Give Memphis! Great Local Gift Ideas for the Holidays

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

If 2020 has proven anything, it’s that we need to come together to support our community — the health, happiness, and longevity of our fellow Memphians count on it now more than ever. While we may not be able to gather with friends and family for gift exchanges like we have in the past, we can still lift their spirits with thoughtful presents that help our local restaurants, retail outlets, and entrepreneurs keep doing what they do. Think local this season!

A Box of Magic

Have a giftee in your life who seeks to better understand their own power, to look within and outside for growth and restoration? Give them a box of magic, or as Sami Harvey, owner of Foxglove Pharm, calls it: a Coven Box.

“I’ve always been amazed by Mother Nature’s ability to heal, and I love finding new ways to use her ingredients to solve my problems,” Harvey says. “I started Foxglove Pharm in 2017 because I wanted to share some of those solutions with my community.”

Each subscription box ($40/month) includes a rotating variety of handcrafted herbal “remeteas” (About Last Night: Hangover Tea, Out of the Blue: Third Eye Tea, and others), scented oils, Resting Witch Face skincare products, rituals, and more special items that “honor the moon, the current astrological phase, and a featured plant.”

Sami Harvey

Each month, she partners with another local maker or small business to spotlight their wares. For her Foxglove offerings, Harvey is “the only witch in the kitchen,” so the products are small-batch and made with “ethically sourced, organic, sustainable ingredients.”

Regarding the rituals included in a box (or separately on the website), Harvey says, “These aren’t like supernatural spells that will destroy all your enemies and turn Michelle Obama into your BFF. But they’re ways to meditate and channel your energy into manifesting a better reality for yourself. The real magic ingredient is you and your intention.”

Visit foxglovepharm.com to order a Coven Box and shop products. — Shara Clark

Feed an Artist

The old cliché about “starving artists” has seldom been more true. Buying art is often the last thing folks are thinking about during tough times like these, but our Memphis painters and sculptors and photographers — and their galleries — have bills to pay, just like the rest of us. That’s why this might be a great year to put a new painting on your wall, or gift someone a work of art so they’ll be reminded of you every day.

Courtesy Jay Etkin Gallery

Untitled by John Ryan

There are many fine galleries in Memphis. Here are just a few: L Ross, David Lusk, Jay Etkin, Crosstown Arts, Orange Mound Gallery, Art Village, Cooper-Young Gallery, and B. Collective. Artists featured include Matthew Hasty, Jeanne Seagle, John Ryan, Mary Long, Roy Tamboli, Eunika Rogers, Cat Pena, Yancy Villa-Calvo, Hamlett Dobbins, Anne Siems, Tim Craddock, and many, many more. In addition, many galleries are featuring special holiday shows.

End what has been a nightmarish year on an upbeat note: Buy a piece of art. It’s good for your heart. — Bruce VanWyngarden

Let Them Eat Cake

I’d be happy to receive a Memphis Bourbon Caramel Cake from Sugar Avenue Bakery, either in or out of my stocking. This is the Sugar Avenue collaboration with Old Dominick Distillery.

Just listening to Sugar Avenue owner Ed Crenshaw describe the six-inch cake makes me crave a slice or three: “The cake is four layers. Each layer is literally soaked in a bourbon caramel sauce. And then our caramel icing, which we make from scratch.”

Courtesy Ben Fant

Sugar Avenue cake

Sugar Avenue worked with Old Dominick’s master distiller/senior vice president Alex Castle to come up with the perfect blend of cake and bourbon. Old Dominick’s Huling Station Straight Bourbon Whiskey was chosen for the cake, which has “a great hint of bourbon flavor,” Crenshaw says. “We add bourbon to the icing and ice the cake with it.”

To help you get even more into the holiday spirit, Sugar Avenue Bakery recently began adding two-ounce jars of extra caramel sauce with every bourbon-flavored cake.

Memphis Bourbon Caramel Cakes are $55 each, and they’re available at sugaravenue.com. — Michael Donahue

Accessorize in Style

When Memphians need to give the gift of stylish living, they turn to Cheryl Pesce, the jewelry and lifestyle store in Crosstown Concourse. The store takes its name from its owner, Cheryl Pesce, a jewelry maker, entrepreneur, and all-around style guru.

This month, Pesce opened a second store in the Laurelwood Shopping Center, giving Bluff City-area shoppers double the chances to find — and give — stylish accoutrements. “I’m banking on Memphis,” Pesce explains. And Memphis seems ready to support Pesce. “We had a grand open house, social distancing into the parking lot, and it went well.”

Courtesy Cheryl Pesce

Handmade jewelry from Cheryl Pesce

The store opening story is just the tip of the breaking-news iceberg, though. Pesce tells me excitedly that she’s been in touch with fashion designer Patrick Henry, aka Richfresh, about his newly designed Henry Mask. “I spoke with him today and — drumroll — we will now be carrying his masks in my Laurelwood store.”

But wait! That’s still not all. The ink is still fresh on a deal for Pesce to carry Germantown-produced Leovard skincare products. “I will be his only brick-and-mortar store in the country,” Pesce says. “So there are a lot of cool things happening, most of them local.”

In the smaller store in Crosstown, Pesce sells hand-sewn baby items, masks, Christmas ornaments, and anything with the Crosstown logo — she’s the official source for Crosstown-brand goods. Laurelwood is larger and a little more deluxe. “One of the focuses for that store is local and regional artisans,” Pesce says. She carries Mo’s Bows, Paul Edelstein paintings, and, of course, hand-crafted jewelry. “That’s really my wheelhouse.

“My studio is at Laurelwood,” Pesce says, “so not only is it made in Memphis, made by me, but it’s all under one roof now. The store, the studio. You can literally come pick out your own pearls — ‘I want this pearl on that earring’ — and then I craft it for you right there.”

Cheryl Pesce is located at 1350 Concourse Avenue, Suite 125, and at 374 Grove Park Road South, Suite 104. Find out more at (901) 308-6017 or at cherylpesce.com. — Jesse Davis

Good Reads

There’s something that comes from holding the edges of a book and being taken to a distant land or wondrous world. Whether it’s due to happenstance or the crazy and confusing world in which we find ourselves now, I have been reading more and more as the months drag on. To fuel my ever-growing hunger for words and phrases completed on the page, Novel has been my go-to place.

Novel is proof that when you are doing something you love, the results will follow. The bookstore, founded in 2017, is the go-to for other local book enthusiasts, too — and with good reason. Their staff will go to the moon and back to help you find the book that fits you just right, and if you’re looking for something specific, chances are they will be just as excited about it as you are.

Matthew J. Harris

of what gift to give this season.

Many of their aisles have felt like a second home to me the past few months. And with books in every genre, it is often easier to ask them what they don’t have, rather than what they do. Personally, I love their new-this-year home delivery option, which offers a safe way to give the gift of literature this holiday season. — Matthew J. Harris

Hit the Boards

This year has given us plenty of time to learn new skills. And what better way to get your mind pumping in both a constructive and competitive fashion than with a game of chess?

The Memphis Chess Club recently opened its new café/headquarters Downtown at 195 Madison Avenue, and the three levels of annual memberships make for a great gift, whether someone is looking to seriously pursue an interest in the game or just learn a few tips and tricks.

Samuel X. Cicci

A Memphis Chess Club membership isn’t as risky a move as the Queen’s Gambit.

The social membership ($50) allows members to play chess in the café area at any time, with tables, pieces, and clocks all provided. The full membership ($100), meanwhile, affords all of the social perks but provides unlimited and free access to all classes and tournaments, which are held at the club weekly. It also offers discounts on merchandise, and members are able to check out materials from the club’s chess library, which contains old magazines and strategy books.

For whole families looking to kickstart an interest in the game? The family membership ($150) contains all full membership benefits and includes two adults and all the children in a household.

And, hey, if chess isn’t your thing, the spacious café is a great space to just hang out or study while sipping on some brewed-in-house coffee or munching on one of chef Grier Cosby’s specialty pizzas.

Visit memphischessclub.com/join for more information. — Samuel X. Cicci

The Gift of Grub

Food is fun and helps define Memphis culture. Those who make that food and fun are in trouble.

Restaurants have maybe suffered more than any small business during this pandemic. Restrictions on them have come and gone and may come again soon. Memphis restaurateurs have shown amazing resilience in these ups and downs. They’ve shifted business models, adapted to the latest health directives, and adjusted staff levels (laying off workers and hiring them back) to match it all.

Memphis Restaurant Association/Facebook

Support local restaurants — so they can stick around.

However, we forever lost some Memphis favorites, like Lucky Cat and Grove Grill. The National Restaurant Association said nearly 100,000 restaurants across the country closed either permanently or for the long-term six months into the pandemic. Nearly 3 million employees have lost their jobs. Help restaurants out and have food fun, too. This holiday season, buy gift cards from our local restaurants.

At the pandemic’s beginning in March, we told you about a national push to buy “dining bonds” or “restaurant bonds.” Many Memphis restaurants jumped in — many selling gift cards at deep discounts. For restaurants, gift cards are quick infusions of cash, helpful in tough times.

So instead of that scarf you’re kind of on the fence about, spend the same amount on a restaurant they love. It’ll be unexpected and, yes, come with some delayed gratification — delicious delayed gratification. Present it not as a gift card but as that dish they love from that place they love.

Sing it with me: “Everybody knows, a burger and some mistletoe help to make the season bright. Memphis foodies, with their eyes all aglow, will find it hard to sleep tonight.”

Gift cards are available at almost every restaurant and for almost any amount. Check websites and socials for details. — Toby Sells

Music to Their Ears

Remember when giving music was a thing? Physical things like LPs, CDs, and cassettes could be wrapped. But now that everything’s ethereal, there’s still a way to give the gift that keeps on giving: Patreon. Musicians are embracing this platform more and more, and it’s working for them. A subscription to their accounts may just be the perfect gift for the superfan in your life who already has everything.

Mike Doughty (Soul Coughing, Ghost of Vroom) relies on his Patreon subscribers for both income and inspiration. As he told the Detroit Metro Times, “Doing a song a week is amazing, and that is really what, if I had my druthers, I’d do for the rest of my life.” Patrons can subscribe at different levels, each with premiums like CDs and T-shirts, but everyone paying at least $5 a month can access Doughty’s song-a-week and more.

Greg Cravens

Other Memphis-affiliated singer/songwriters like Eric Lewis, J.D. Reager, and (coming in December) Marcella and Her Lovers also have accounts. And last month, label and music retailer Goner Records began offering Patreon subscriptions that include access to the Goner archives and exclusive music and videos.

Patreon’s site notes that “there isn’t currently a way to gift patronage,” but if you get creative, you can search for an artist on patreon.com and buy a subscription in a friend’s or family member’s name — and they can thank you all through the year. — Alex Greene

Support Arts and Culture

“A plague on both your houses!” cried the dying Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, and it seems the COVID-19 pandemic took that sentiment to heart, emptying out our theaters and concert halls and thinning out attendance at museums. But still they persisted. The organizations behind the arts we love are still at work online, virtually, distancing, and striving to keep the arts alive — especially in programs aimed at young people.

You can help the old-fashioned way by getting season subscriptions and memberships for whenever the lights come back on — and they could use that support right now. Or make a simple donation. Help keep Memphis culture alive by giving gifts on behalf of the following, but don’t be limited by this partial list — if you have other favorites, give them a cup o’ kindness as well.

Jon W. Sparks

Spring, Summer, Fall at the Brooks Museum by Wheeler Williams

Performing arts organizations:

• Playhouse on the Square (playhouseonthesquare.org)

• Theatre Memphis (theatrememphis.org)

• Opera Memphis (operamemphis.org)

• Ballet Memphis (balletmemphis.org)

• New Ballet Ensemble (newballet.org)

• Cazateatro (cazateatro.org)

• New Moon Theatre (newmoontheatre.org)

• Hattiloo Theatre (hattiloo.org)

• Tennessee Shakespeare Company (tnshakespeare.org)

• Memphis Black Arts Alliance (memphisblackarts.org)

• Emerald Theatre Company (etcmemphistheater.com)

Museums and galleries:

• Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (brooksmuseum.org)

• Dixon Gallery and Gardens (dixon.org)

• National Civil Rights Museum (civilrightsmuseum.org)

• Metal Museum (metalmuseum.org)

• Stax Museum of American Soul Music (staxmuseum.com)

• Pink Palace Museum (memphismuseums.org)

• Children’s Museum of Memphis (cmom.com)

• Fire Museum of Memphis (firemuseum.org) — Jon W. Sparks

Basket or Box It for a Gift That Rocks It

Need something sweet for your honey this holiday season? Thistle & Bee has the gift that gives twice. A relaxing gift box contains raw Memphis honey, a milk and honey soap bar, and a pure beeswax candle ($20). Every item is handcrafted and directly supports women survivors to thrive through a journey of healing and hope.

Social enterprise director at Thistle & Bee, Ali Pap Chesney, drops a stinger: “We partner with other businesses, too. Feast & Graze uses our honey.”

Feast & Graze/Facebook

Feast & Graze

The cheese and charcuterie company Feast & Grace is co-owned by Cristina McCarter, who happens to co-own City Tasting Box. Boxes are filled with goodies promoting local Black-owned businesses like Pop’s Kernel and The Waffle Iron. An exclusive limited-quantity holiday gift box, Sugar and Spice, just rolled out for the season in two sizes — regular ($74.99) and ultimate ($124.99).

Memphis Gift Basket is owned by Jesse James, who says he is rolling out a new logo this week. Along with the new logo are new products for baskets ($55-$100) that focus on diversity by including more women- and minority-owned businesses, in addition to local items with iconic names like The Rendezvous and Memphis magazine. Guess what else you might find in a Memphis Gift Basket? Thistle & Bee honey.

Now that we’ve come full circle, check out these gift box and basket businesses, as well as partnering companies, for errbody on your holiday list — including that corporate gift list.

Visit thistleandbee.org, citytastingbox.com (use code SHIP100 for free shipping on orders over $100), and memphisgiftbasket.com for more. — Julie Ray

Lights, Camera, Action

A lot of businesses have been hard-hit during the pandemic, and movie theaters have been near the top of the list. With social distancing-limited theater capacity and Hollywood studios delaying major releases into next year in the hopes a vaccine will rekindle attendance, theater chains like Memphis-based Malco have been in dire straits. The exception has been drive-in theaters, like the Malco Summer Drive-In, which have seen a renaissance in 2020.

If you want to support this local institution and give a treat to the movie-lover in your life, you can buy them a Malco gift card. Available in any denomination from $10 to $500, the gift cards can be used for movie tickets and concessions for any film now or in the future. You can also enroll in the Malco Marquee Rewards program, which allows frequent moviegoers to earn points toward free tickets and concessions.

Greg Cravens

Malco has taken extraordinary steps to ensure the safety of its patrons, including mandatory masks, improved air filters, and non-contact payment options. And if you’re not comfortable sharing a theater with strangers right now, there’s a great option: The Malco Select program allows you to rent an entire theater for a screening of any film on the marquee — and that includes screenings in the massive IMAX theaters at the Paradiso. Prices start at $100, which works out pretty well if you want to watch Wonder Woman 1984 with your pod this holiday season. And if the person you’re buying for is a gamer, Malco has a brand-new option. With Malco Select Gaming, you can bring your system to the theater and play Call of Duty or The Last of Us on the biggest possible screen. — Chris McCoy

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We Recommend We Saw You

The Horse and Fletcher Golden

‘Three Legged Horse’ by Fletcher Golden



Fletcher Golden’s first big adventure was when he ran away from home in the third grade.

He was caught smoking at school. “I got with another boy who also was accused of smoking and we got on the bus and went Downtown and walked across the Memphis/Arkansas bridge,” Golden says. “We got caught at that weigh station. My dad came and got us.”

Golden got “a whipping” for that adventure. His second big adventure was when he was 30 years old and he rode a horse 2,500 miles from California to Memphis.

His love affair with horses can be seen in his new exhibit, “The Poetry of Horses,” at Palladio Antiques. The exhibit features 14 horse-inspired sculptures.  “A lot of them are steel-framed armatures and with partial armatures exposed with some plaster collage. They represent maybe the horse’s main torso and have stick legs. Pecan branches from pecan trees. I live in Midtown. I’ve got all these pecan trees in my backyard.”

Fletcher Golden

Also in the show are watercolor horses by Golden’s wife, Jeanne Seagle.

A native Memphian, Golden, 72, who is one of eight children, was ordained an “adventurer” when a series of photographs of him appeared in 1951 in The Commercial Appeal. Once again, he was caught by his dad, but this time without any repercussions. Photos begin showing Golden climbing the stairs of the slide at Maywood Beach and end with his father catching him when he hits the water. “The headline referred to him ‘Three Year Old Adventurer.’”

Majoring in marketing at Memphis State University, Golden was drafted during the Vietnam crisis, but he didn’t go overseas. “I had a sense to see the world,” he says. But he ended up “babysitting AWOL kids” about his age as the stockade guard at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.

He went back to MSU after he returned to Memphis, but he realized he wasn’t ready for school. He got a job working at TGI Friday’s franchises around the country. While working at one of them in Shreveport, Golden met a young woman.

Golden followed her to California, where she was going to school. He got a job and took a finance course, but then he decided to quit the job and the finance course. And he thought, “You’ve got to hurry up and take a vacation here. See some of this California stuff.”

He thought about biking, hiking, or motorcycling. “Then I came up with the idea of the horse. That’s how the horse trip came about. That way I could see the country.  I could meet the people on the back roads. People that lived beyond the asphalt interstates or the highways. That was part of my dream.

“When I thought about where to go, I thought, ‘Why not go to Memphis? You know people there. It’s not just going to Memphis. It’s what you see in between.’”

And he thought, “If you don’t do it now, you’re dead.”

 “You outgrow the early weaning of Roy Rodgers, the plastic pistols, and the fast draw in front of the mirror. It’s still in you, but there’s no access to demonstrate it. So, I think maybe that horse trip alone did that. Knowing I’d chicken out if I didn’t hurry up.”

Golden only had slight horse experience. “My grandad had a farm in Raleigh off of James Road. So, growing up, my family would go out to his farm. About 25 acres. And he had a palomino, so I had exposure at his farm.”

After he figured out his destination, Golden’s next step was to find a horse. “I looked in the yellow pages. And outside of Berkeley — Danville, California — there was a horse operation.”

The man at the ranch showed him several horses after Golden told him his plan. “He let me try the Tennessee Walker. I put her through her paces. I galloped her and saw how smooth she was. So I was committed to her.”

Golden sold a 1958 TR3 convertible he was restoring and a motorcycle and bought the horse. “I was thinking about that convertible to drive down Highway One to Pebble Beach and go on to Carmel and play golf, scuba dive, and smoke dope.”

But he sold the car and bought the horse along with a saddle and saddle bags. He named the horse “Brooks” after a family friend.

Golden, who used U.S. Geological Survey maps, went East from the beautiful, lush area of the Sierra Nevada on  to the high plateau desert. “I was told by people, ‘Don’t even think about going South. Stay on this high plateau area for the horse’s survival. You’ll die.’”

Fletcher Golden and Brooks

The maps included notations of where ranches were located. Golden stopped at the ones that looked the friendliest and he offered to mend fences or do other work in exchange for grain, hay, and water for his horse. “They would invite me in and tell me their life story, and I was a good listener.”

 He learned the country motto, “Pass it on.”

“They were super hospitable to me and all they wanted was for me to be generous to someone else.”

Golden went through a daily routine. “Every day I would walk about three miles holding the reins. And after three miles I’d get tired of walking and get up on Brooks and ride another three miles until I got tired of doing that. I’d just do that all day long.”

There were thrilling moments during his trip. Like the time he rode saddle broncs in rodeos in Utah. “I flew off in maybe two seconds. In the second rodeo, I lasted maybe four. They were really incredible experiences of disorientation: looking at the ground, at the sky, and then flying. And then you check your body out: ‘Oh, God. Everything is there.’”

There were idyllic moments. “I got to swim with my horse in a little pond area in the desert.”

And he met people he still keeps up with, including a guy he ran across in Lenopaw, Oklahoma. “I was going down the road and this guy saw Brooks was limping a little bit. The guy was about my age. He invited me to rest my horse. They had a cattle operation.”

He asked Golden “if he smoked dope” and offered him a joint. “He was such a wily character. I was enamored by this guy. Willie Howell. I still call him up every once in a while.”

Golden managed to get by, but, he says, “I was with the horse. And I had some credibility by getting that far. Whatever I needed as far as re-shoeing my horse or food or whatever, it was provided.”

Before the trip, Golden “had that desire to be somebody without doing the work. Just be somebody.”

But, he says, “I was forced to be more in the now. It was the first time in my life where I had to care for a living being. I had to watch that horse every second. Make sure she didn’t hurt herself in a gopher hole, glass. I had to put liniment on her legs all the time.”

Golden, who began his trip June 5, 1979, made it to Memphis on December 5, 1979. His appearance changed during the six-month trip. “I was able to grow my beard. I had a little bitty cute beard when I started, like maybe an inch and a half. And I didn’t touch anything on the whole six months. When I got to Memphis, I had a really big beard, nice strong wavy hair.”

Fletcher Golden and Brooks

He soon moved back to California, where he ended up living in a trailer on five acres with Brooks in the Berkeley Hills. “Then one day Brooks went colic. I called the local vet. He said, ‘Take her up to the University of California Davis.’’’

Golden and the vet got Brooks in a trailer and took her to the veterinarian center at the university, where she was put in a paddock. “She’s lying down. They put a tube in her nose. It goes down into her stomach. I was there with her for about two days. And after two days I told them, ‘I’m going to go get something to eat.’ And when I came back they said, ‘Well, she died while you were gone.’

“I go in there and put her head in my hand kind of thing. I cried. I usually don’t cry over animals. But this thing was so big. It really touched me.”

They loaded Brooks into Golden’s truck. He met two rangers who told him to follow them to Briones Regional Park. “They take me down to this meadow area.”

He and the rangers buried Brooks under a Mayberry tree.

While at UC Davis, Golden asked for his horse’s heart, which they removed for the autopsy. “If you’ve ever looked at a horse’s heart, it’s like looking at a gigantic rugby football — just smooth, and no contours. Not like a human heart. It’s just a big muscle. White muscle.”

He asked a friend’s girlfriend to go with him to bury the heart in the Pacific Ocean. “She and I climbed up this little rocky path-like cliff looking down at the ocean coming into the bay. And I had the heart in Brooks’s halter. She read a poem, ‘Remembrance,’ as I did a Grecian discus throw to get it way out so it wouldn’t hit the rocks down below. When it hit the water we saw seals go up and dive back down, assuming they were going to eat that heart. Then I looked to the west and the wind was coming in like a constant breeze.

“It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to.”

Golden created his first horse sculpture after he took a job in 1995 at the Maria Montessori School in Harbor Town. “I kept that job for 20 years. I was the outdoor guide at Maria Montessori. So, I taught kayaking, how to use tools, nature appreciation with nature walks.”

He and the students created sculptures for the school’s fundraisers. “The kids and I would go and collect driftwood on the river at Harbor Town and bring it back and there we would come up with a sculpture for our silent auction.”

The pieces were “just abstract. They weren’t anything figurative or realistic. Just form and color. And really jazzy. The driftwood was really talking.”

In 2009, Golden, then 61, took a return trip by car from Memphis to California, using the same maps and visiting as many of the ranches as he could from his original trip with Brooks. “I had my names and addresses of people that helped me.” 

And, he says, “They either remembered me and the horse or they didn’t remember me but they remembered the horse.”

After that trip, Golden was inspired to make a horse sculpture with the students for the silent auction. “I wanted to do the homage to the horse. We go back with Radio Flyer wagons to collect wood. I saw one big old log. I thought, ’This might make the face of a horse.’ A lot of the kids thought it looked more like a pig than a horse. We whittled away enough of the rotten pieces that it was possible as a horse’s head.”

They used “pretty good sized” crepe myrtle limbs for the body. 

Golden had Friday off, so he finished the piece himself. “I created a big temporary crane to hoist the thing up at the event. It was a Saturday night. Maybe five minutes into the event, six o’clock at night, I finished.”

The horse sold for $1,800.

Memphis abstract artist Jeri Ledbetter fell in love with the horse and asked Golden to make one for her. He told her, “If you really like it, it will be $3,000. If you kind of like it, it will be $2,500. And if you don’t really like it, but you’ll take it, it will be $2,000. But you’ll have to wait because I’ll have to build a workshop and collect tools.”

Golden hired a friend to sing cowboy songs at the unveiling of the horse statue in 2013 at Ledbetter’s home.The three-quarter size horse had one of its three legs, which were made of steel rods, stuck into a limestone base. The leg came up to the horse’s carriage, which was made of car springs and driftwood. Two more legs stuck out toward the viewer. “I had to make a head out of three-eighths steel rod. And I attached little pieces of driftwood that gives a balance of positive and negative space.”

In 2013, Golden exhibited seven of his horses at L Ross Gallery. “Some were plaster with cement coloring agent in the plaster. All of these were with steel frames. Every one of them was a take off of the elements of a horse or the impression, but none of them were really staying close to the realism of horses.”

His current show ranges from his nine-and-a-half-foot-tall “Calligraphy Horse” made of wood and steel to a little seahorse made out of seashells. “Some really good big ones and some small ones.”

He also included 16 steel silhouette figures showing different movements of the horse based on Eadweard Muybridge’s “The Horse in Motion” photographs, and three glazed ceramic and steel  horses  that he calls ‘Noguchi’s Horses’ based on the “flavor” of sculptures by Isamu Noguchi, who used various materials in his work. 

‘Shadow Horses’ by Fletcher Golden

To date, Golden has made about 40 horse sculptures, most of which are in private collections. But, he says, “I’ve not nearly scratched the surface of interpreting these horses in ways that portray the relationship various people have had with horses. And the mystique of being a child and learning how to relate and ride and work with the horse.”

Golden loves “the idea of the horse. These guys let you get on them and ride them. That’s fantastic. To get up and all of a sudden you’re looking out and your eyes are about nine feet off the ground. You’ve got the rhythm of the horse, the snorts it makes, the great, wonderful smell of the horse. It has these wonderful neck muscles.”

Was Brooks and his trip with her the inspiration for his horse sculptures? “Absolutely.”

And, Golden says, “That was the biggest experience of my life. I got to keep an animal alive for six months. Putting liniment on her legs every day, you feel her fetlocks, how they line up. And just getting local opinions from people. That was their business. Taking care of their animals, their land, their machines, and their family. We were able to share.”

“The Poetry of Horses” is on view through November 6th at Palladio Antiques at 2169 Central Avenue; (901) 276-3808

Fletcher Golden and Brooks

Categories
Cover Feature News

Beside Still Waters: The Life and Art of Jeanne Seagle

CREDIT: Fletcher Golden

Jeanne Seagle’s favorite Bible verse begins, “He leadeth me beside still waters and he restoreth my soul.”

“I’m not religious; don’t get me wrong,” Seagle says. “But I had to learn my Bible verses as a kid. And I remember them. I really like that one.”

Her own still waters are found at Dacus Lake, the subject of “Beside Still Waters,” Seagle’s first one-person art show at L Ross Gallery.

Fletcher Golden

‘Jeanne In Fog’

“My subject matter is the land inside the levee right across the Mississippi River from Downtown. Dacus Lake,” she says. “I have a great affinity for that land. I’ve always loved to go across the river, from the time when I first moved to Memphis. It was so much fun to go ride around in the fields and go down to the sandbars. I go over there a lot. It’s just a great getaway from Midtown Memphis. I can drive over the bridge and be over in the wilderness in 20 minutes.”

Seagle’s show includes 11 large black-and-white drawings and 11 watercolors of the Dacus Lake area. She takes photographs, which she uses for her drawings. “They’re very precise. Very photo-realistic drawings. It takes me about a month to do each one.”

Jeanne Seagle

of Humor,’ News of the Weird illustration for the ‘Memphis Flyer’

During her art career, Seagle, 72, has worked as an illustrator for ad agencies and publications, including the Memphis Flyer, where her cartoons illustrated News of the Weird for many years. Her public art can be seen at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, and Methodist University Hospital. Books that feature her illustrations include Mickey and the Golem by Steve Stern and Mommy Without Hair by Selene Benitone.

But Dacus Lake has flowed through her artwork for decades.

In the mid-1990s, before they were married, Seagle and Fletcher Golden spent a lot of time at Dacus Lake, where Golden lived for a while in a mobile home. “I’d just go over every Friday night and ride through the bean fields. I really got to know the land over there. I house-sat for him, and I would just go down to the river and paint and draw.”

The area was a new world for Seagle, who was born in Pueblo, Colorado. “All of my art was about going out to Colorado to visit my family,” she says. “I just did brightly colored paintings of mountains and canyons and mesas and that kind of thing. I’d go out there every year and ride around and paint.”

When her elderly relatives died and she stopped making the trip to Colorado, Seagle was at a loss for subject matter. “I was not all that crazy about the flat Delta land. But little by little I started seeing all the subtle beauty and the surprises you find when you get up close in the swampland and the waterways. And I started making pictures of this Delta land.”

It never stays the same, she says. “It floods every year. It’s inside the levee, and that makes the landscape change. The waters rise and recede. It’s a great place for all kinds of water birds and animals to live. And because it floods every year, it’s not developed. It keeps the humans away. Because of that, there are animals that just roam up and down the Mississippi for hundreds and hundreds of miles. 

“If you go early in the morning, you see these animals. I saw a panther one time when I got up early and was sitting quietly doing some watercolor painting.”

And then there are the trees. “Because it floods, the roads are elevated so that trees grow up around them, but the trees take on very strange shapes, too, because of the Delta tornadoes that come through and tear off the limbs of the trees. They’re all raggedy-looking trees that are so unusual.”

Jeanne Seagle

charcoal pencil on paper

The area does attract some eccentric people, Seagle says. “When Fletcher lived there and I was visiting on a regular basis, there was a bait shop on stilts. It was kind of a community gathering place.”

And, she says, “There were other people living over there at the fish camp — people who don’t like living in civilization. They were people who are close to the land, people who hunt for beaver tails. Just very earthy, country people who have known all about the country, and the last thing they want to do is live in civilization. We got to know them, and that was really interesting.”

Seagle’s love of nature began when she was a child. Her family moved from Colorado to Mississippi when she was very young, then they moved to the woods of Arkansas when she was five. “My father worked for the department of forestry, and he got a job as a forest ranger in Western Arkansas in the Ouachita Mountains. As a little child, I was living in this forest. An only child.”

Seagle spent time drawing and walking through the woods by herself. “Being all alone with no brothers and sisters out in the country was probably a big influence,” she says. “If I’d been living in town and had lots of people to play with, I might not have become an artist.”

She was known for her art ability in school. “I remember in the first grade I would draw tattoos on little boys and I’d draw paper dolls for the little girls. I charged a dime. I kept on doing that all through school. I was the class artist.”

In high school, Seagle took an art class trip to Memphis Academy of Art, which later became Memphis College of Art. “I saw these kids in there that were beatniks. I loved that. I really wanted to be a beatnik. So when I got old enough to go to college, I came up here.”

She moved to Memphis in 1967. “By this time, the Art Academy had all the great people: Ted Rust, Bill Womack, John Mcintire, Burton Callicott, Ted Faiers, Veda Reed, Bill Roberson. Murray Riss started teaching when I was there. It was just wonderful to be around these people, and I got to take classes from all of them.”

Seagle majored in illustration. “When I was a little girl, I loved looking at my mother’s magazines. I really was not exposed to art galleries. We lived in the forest ranger station in Western Arkansas, so the art that I saw was in my mother’s magazines. And I wanted to be a magazine illustrator, a children’s book illustrator.”

Her schooling was interrupted after she married her first husband, a medical student. “My first marriage was very brief — to somebody that I met here in Memphis, and we moved to Los Angeles.” That was “a different lifetime,” Seagle says. “He was gone most of the time, being an intern at the hospital.”

Jeanne Seagle

Jeanne Seagle and Pomegrante Studio

After her divorce, Seagle returned to Memphis, where she completed her degree at the Art Academy.

She took a job as assistant executive designer with Dobbs Houses. “I dressed like the young executives. I wanted to be a young executive. I worked at Dobbs Houses in the interior design department and went to work in a high-rise building and dressed up with hose and skirts.”

Then, she says, “The director of my department was found to be embezzling from the company and the whole department was fired. That’s when I changed. I was fired from the executive track and so I just kind of totally changed then and relaxed and became more of a Bohemian, I guess.”

In 1973, Seagle got a job working with a couple of her classmates, Ellis Chappell and Jim Williams, at The Grafe, the in-house graphics agency for Stax Records. They created and produced Stax album covers.

When The Grafe downsized, Seagle became a founder of Chappell, Williams and Seagle, an illustration studio in the Timpani Building, an old cotton warehouse. The Malmo & Associates ad agency was their biggest client. After five years, they sold the building.

“We made a bunch of money,” Seagle says. “So I just went to Europe, traveled around, went to all the art museums. I came back and I started doing fine art.”

When her money ran out, she went to work for Malmo & Associates.

In 1993, Seagle became a freelancer. A major client was Contemporary Media, Inc., where she became a regular illustrator for the Memphis Flyer. She illustrated the Flyer‘s News of the Weird column for 20 years. “That was great training for what I’m doing now,” she says, “which is obsessive black-and-white drawings.”

Her Flyer illustrations were composed of “little tiny dots,” she says. “You had to be obsessive-compulsive to do it. And that’s exactly what I’m doing now in my landscape drawings. I’m just doing these tiny little marks that take forever to do. Everybody looks at them and says, ‘Oh, my God. You just have such patience to do that.'”

Seagle also began doing public art, landing UrbanArt Commission grants to create mosaic murals on two trolley stops on Madison.

In 2012, she created the 16-foot sculpture, I Can Fly, at Le Bonheur: “It’s a giant obelisk with mosaics on all four sides depicting the seasons with children playing, climbing trees. On top is a giant bluebird about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle with a little kid riding on top of it.”

The next year, she created the 16-foot-tall Genome Kids sculpture at St. Jude. She describes it as “a giant DNA helix with whimsical-looking little children climbing it.”

She then did a series of 6-foot square paintings, including “giant painted quilts,” at Methodist.

“I made a lot of money,” she says, “and I was able to, pretty much, retire from commercial art work and turn to fine art.”

She began booking shows, beginning with a one-person show at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena. Then, she says, “Linda Ross called me up and asked me to be in one of her shows. That was really a great turning point in my fine art career, to be able to be in a well-respected gallery. I’ve been in shows with her for five or six years.”

Ross, now retired from the gallery, says, “What has always attracted me to an artist is the movement, the feeling, of the line work in their art. So it’s no wonder that I found Jeanne’s body of work so compelling. She has such a deft hand, whether it’s the broader brush strokes in her quietly moving watercolors or the delicate-layered markings in her stunning penciled landscapes. Simply masterful.”

Jeanne Seagle

‘Flooded Shoreline,’ charcoal pencil on paper

Seagle’s current show at L Ross Gallery was supposed to open in the spring but was pushed back because of the pandemic. Originally, Seagle thought the “the fog, the water, and these stark winter trees” would be “too depressing” for a spring show. “Then, as it turned out, with the pandemic, I don’t think pretty pastel-colored pictures of things would be very appropriate for our world right now. These mysterious, dark pictures are very appropriate.”

“The level of detail and technical skill in these pieces speak for themselves,” says L Ross Gallery owner Laurie Brown. “But, to my mind, what really sets Jeanne’s work apart is her ability to capture the quiet, ephemeral moments of life so exquisitely. You can almost hear the breeze whispering through the branches or feel the cool dampness of the fog.”

As for future plans, Seagle says, “I want to make bigger pictures, and I really want to start being in museums.”

Seagle and Golden, who have been married almost 20 years, live on an acre of land in Cooper-Young. “It’s made the pandemic much more bearable to have all this land, all these trees in our backyard. It really looks like we are living out in the country.”

Seagle still makes the trip to Dacus Lake. “I’m still totally fascinated with this landscape. It’s always changing. The water conditions are always changing. The floods and the water rising, morning and night, and the light — it’s just full of ever-changing subject matter that thrills me.”

“Beside Still Waters” is on view through September 5th at L Ross Gallery.