The following essay is in 3 parts

Don Mabie and William Blake: A Celebration

 

“Where any view of money exists Art cannot be carried on, but War only”

                                    (William Blake, “The Laocoon”)

 

 

            The region in which I live has many gifted artists, but none more powerful than Don Mabie (aka Chuck Stake). What I propose here is a celebratory look at Mabie’s work alongside the work of the poet, painter, illustrator, engraver William Blake (1757-1827). First, full disclosure: I know little or nothing about the visual arts, with the possible exception of cinema, although I do know something about literature and language. In other words, I am hardly the person to be commenting critically on the visual works of either Blake or Mabie, but I note that both language and literature find a place in their visual work. Both of these artists incorporate words and, indeed, textual matter into their paintings, drawings, or engravings, effectively transforming the verbal into the visual thereby pointing out just how invested our language is in artistic expression. When language ceases to express beauty, when language itself loses beauty, when language ceases to be communicative in a multi-dimensional way, when language becomes one dimensional, what we have is dullness of the kind Alexander Pope wrote about nearly 300 years ago. We have the triumph of political dissolution, political failure; we have the fall into conformism; we have a colourless existence. Both Blake and Mabie are, ultimately, artists who understand and manifest the connection between politics and art and language and beauty.

            I begin with a brief biographical excursion. In his teenage years, William Blake served a seven-year apprentice as an engraver, and then studied briefly at the Royal Academy, an institution he later criticized for its deleterious effect on art. Blake lived in relative obscurity in his lifetime, eking out a livelihood by engraving for publishers such as Joseph Johnson and selling work to a few patrons. He gained a reputation as “Mad Blake” among his contemporaries for his complex and unorthodox views and work. He was married to Catherine, and the Blakes did not have children. They lived a quiet life away from the artistic mainstream, and for the most part, they lived an urban existence except for what Blake refers to as his “three years slumber on the banks of the Ocean,” when he and Catherine lived in the small seaside village of Felpham in Sussex. 

Don Mabie, on the other hand, is a well-known artist, although like Blake he does not enjoy the kind of life an artist whose main concern is selling art has. Grant Poier puts it this way: “Don’s ongoing investment and involvement in a broader collective and milieu are obviously not driven by expected fame or fortune.” In a similar vein, Donna McAlear notes that Mabie has “deliberately skirted the borders of the prevailing state gallery’s sanctioned paths to mastery.” Both Blake and Mabie are less interested in making money from art than in making art for both personal and political reasons. Mabie and his wife, fellow artist Wendy Twogood, also do not have children. Without children, both Blake and Mabie have devoted their lives to art. It is worth noting, in passing, that both Blake and Mabie have an affinity for as well as an understanding of children. This is famously apparent in Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and it is also apparent in the collections Mabie has gathered over the years, collections that include children’s toys and games. Having mentioned Mabie’s collections, I note that both he and Blake are multi-dimensional artists. As I said before, Blake was not only an engraver, but also a poet, a painter, and an illustrator. Mabie is a painter, collage-maker, performance artist, rubberstamp and buttonwork artist, among other things. For Mabie, even his listings of books he has read during any given year become works of art. For both Blake and Mabie, making art is life itself. This is not so much art for art’s sake as it is art for humanity’s sake, art for the sake of human survival.

            On the political front we have a couple of things to note. Blake was notorious for an incident that took place on August 12, 1803. On this day, Blake encountered John Scofield, a Private in the First Royal Dragoons, drunk in the garden in Felpham where the Blakes were living as part of their sojourn by the sea. Blake asked Scofield to leave, but he refused. Blake proceeded to kick the fellow out of his garden, and in retaliation Scofield went to the authorities and accused Blake and his wife of treason. A trial for sedition ensued and Blake was acquitted on January 10, 1804. Scofield thereafter appears in an unflattering manner in Jerusalem, a work Blake began in 1804. As for Mabie, his foray into politics took place when he ran for parliament as leader of the Boredom Party of Canada in the early 1980s. Both Blake and Mabie are politically on the left, the far left. Their commitment to art has little to do with making money and much to do with building community, forging a world in which equality, justice, and acceptance of others are paramount. Blake’s stand against empire finds commentary in David V. Erdman’s Prophet Against Empire (1954). More forceful are Blake’s own words:

Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field,
Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bright air;
Let the enchainèd soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years,	45
Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open;
And let his wife and children return from the oppressor’s scourge.
They look behind at every step, and believe it is a dream,
Singing: “The Sun has left his blackness, and has found a fresher morning,
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night;	50
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease

This passage derives from Blake’s poem, America (1793), one of Blake’s first considerations of revolution. The plate with mother and child, cannon, and darkness drawing down is a harrowing indictment of the “oppressor’s scourge.” 

Mabie expresses his attitude toward government succinctly in the drawing, “WHY IS IT YOU ALWAYS END UP VOTIN’ FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS?” This work refers to the Alberta provincial election of March 1979, or even to the Canadian Federal Election a couple of months later that year that ended 11 years of Liberal government. Mabie’s wry comment is evident in his rendering of the words, “campain” and “candydate.” His choice of “votin’” rather than the more formal “voting,” suggests a common voice, the voice of the average voter perhaps. His use of black and white points out the contrast between parties, a contrast that is semiotic only, not substantive. The small maple leaf with the dollar sign parodies political insignia and foregrounds the importance of money in the political system. And the design with the large dark map of Alberta has the look of a political poster. Another work, CAMPAIN 84, is perhaps even more explicit. Mabie describes this work on his Facebook page: 

I think this was one of my most interesting and successful Correspondence/MailArt projects: CAMPAIN 84. Over the years I did a number of CMA projects focusing on politics and elections, but this was probably the best of the lot.

One evening in Calgary, during the Canadian federal election of 1984, I was watching the TV news when they broadcast a video of Liberal leader/Prime Minister and candydate John Turner arriving at the Calgary airport. As Turner entered the airport a heckler yelled out: "We don't have any choice. The Conservatives and the Liberals --- it's all patronage and baloney. The system stinks." I thought that was an excellent comment on the election and the next day I produced a drawing of that quote as well as a quote of Brian Mulroney's, then leader of the Conservative Party, "Let's face it there's no whore like an old whore. If I had been in Bryce's [Bryce Mackasey's] position, I'd have been right in there with my nose in the public trough like the rest of them." After I completed the drawing I had fifty coloured Xeroxes made of the drawing. I then purchased a large package of baloney and took fifty slices of baloney and wrapped each one in Suran wrap and put each one in a Ziploc bag. I then put each bag of baloney, along with one colour Xerox, in a hand decorated envelope and mailed them off to media outlets across CanaDaDa. So, depending upon how long the envelope took to arrive at a particular person, the baloney was in various stages of decomposition --- this reinforced the heckler's statement about baloney and that the system "stinks."

I got a lot of positive response to this mailing from the media .… I did a number of projects like this over the years and part of the process of the projects was to engage the media in covering what I was doing in order to amplify the extent of the mailing and reach a larger audience. In this case the coverage in the Calgary Herald reached potentially tens of thousands of people. I thought of the article in the Herald like an artist's print, not hanging in an art gallery but published in a newspaper.

Don Mabie – Facebook, November 13, 2020.

This work serves as an example of the multi-dimensional aspect of Mabie’s work. Even his Facebook page is a work of art. Facebook is as good an expression of Mabie’s notion that art is for everyone and ought to be available to everyone at minimum cost. It does not take money to view art and even to practise art on Facebook. Art appears just about everywhere, if only we look for it.