ÿþ<html> <head> <title>Busser Howell | Book</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <meta name="description" content="" /> <meta name="keywords" content="Artist, New York, Blind, Large, Abstract, Busser, Howell, Collage" /> <link href="bhdotcom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" topmargin="0"> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center"> <tr align="center"> <td><table width="500" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="galleries.html" class="whitenav">gallery</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="exhibitions.html" class="whitenav">exhibitions</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="book.html" class="whitenav">book</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="press.html" class="whitenav">press</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="bio.html" class="whitenav">bio</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="catalog.html" class="whitenav">catalog</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="essay.html" class="whitenav">essay</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="contact.html" class="whitenav">contact</a></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr align="center"> <td> <table width="400" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> <tr> <td> <p class="bushead">Busser Howell</p> </td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr align="center"> <td><table width="600" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td><table width="500" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr valign="middle"> <td height="10"> <table width="60%" height="1" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#999999"> <tr> <td height="1"><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="1"></td> </tr> </table> <div align="left"></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="20" align="right" class="pageheads">book</td> </tr> <tr valign="middle"> <td height="10"> <table width="70%" height="1" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" bgcolor="#999999"> <tr> <td height="1"><img src="images/spacer.gif" width="1" height="1"></td> </tr> </table> <div align="left"></div></td> </tr> <tr> <td height="30" valign="top"> <div align="left"> <p class="whitebody"><br> <b>BEYOND VISION:</b></p> <p class="whitebody"> <b>An Artist s Journey into a World Without Sight </b> </p> <p class="whitebody"> By Busser Howell </p> <p class="whitebody"> Chapter One Childhood in Farmland Ohio (1946-1967) </p> <p class="whitebody"> I grew up on the edge of a working farm in the Midwest. The original farm, a 240-acre land grant carved out of the Ohio Territory in 1798, had been a gift from George Washington to Aaron Tullis, a surveyor, who served in the Virginia Militia during the Revolutionary War. For a century and a half, it had been part of the rural landscape, west of Troy, Ohio. </p> <p class="whitebody">By the 1950s, when my family moved to the area, the farm had shrunk to a third of its original size and was surrounded by the town on three of its borders. The fourth side consisted of an old riverbed whose bank formed a high ridge. </p> <p class="whitebody">During the Victorian era, the ridge had served as a summer retreat for the well-to-do citizens of Troy. Summer houses lined the ridge, allowing a few families to stay cool as they perched high above the downtown area and the Great Miami River. By the time my parents came along, most of the summer cottages had been turned into year-round homes. The riverbed had been converted into a street, connecting a sprawling residential development to the business district below. </p> <p class="whitebody">After World War II, my parents bought a meadow on the ridge and built a year-round house, which they named, rather importantly, <i>Ridgemead</i>. In 1951, when we moved in, there were still sheep wandering up to the fence. But soon the sheep were gone, replaced by horses, which occupied the old box stalls and grazed in the pastures. An apple orchard stood between our house and the barn. </p> <p class="whitebody">The farm itself consisting of the old Tullis house, the barn and fields had been bought by my great-uncle, who arranged for a tenant farmer to work the remaining acreage. The rest of my family lived nearby, in what was essentially a small family compound. In addition to my great-aunt and uncle, I had cousins next door. Isolated from the bustle of downtown Troy, the farm and its fields formed a private world. </p> <p class="whitebody">Troy, in those days, was a small but booming town, surrounded by wealthy, independent farms. Although it is today part of the Greater Dayton area, 72 miles north of Cincinnati, the town was so important in the early 1800s that it was designated the county seat. A guidebook published around the period <i>(Drake s Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country)</i> points out that by 1813, the town already had a public library, a post office and a school. The coming of the Erie Canal in 1837 and the railroad in 1850 marked the beginning of a new era, with steel, manufactured goods and agricultural products all streaming in and out of the area. </p> <p class="whitebody">My mother s family, the Hobarts, arrived in Troy and opened their first factory there in 1890. The company initially produced electric mixers and other food-related equipment, serving the surrounding agricultural community. Of the 25 employees, five were women. My great-grandmother carried the payroll in her purse and doled it out each week. </p> <p class="whitebody">Although many Americans today don t understand this, the Hobarts and thousands of others like them were the standard bearers of Midwestern culture. Manufacturing, to them, was a creative process, one that relied on invention. At the same time, they believed in frugality. They worked hard as much as 80 or 90 hours a week regardless of how much money they made. People like my grandparents spent a lot on education and frequent travel to Europe, but they didn t buy original art. They were proud to hang reproductions on their walls. Two of my great-aunts were artists one was a sculptor and the other a painter but they didn t expect to sell their work, since no one, in their world, would buy it. My grandmother, Rachel Cahill Hobart, who was a member of the class of 1916 at Smith College, appreciated fine art, but neither she nor any of my relatives could imagine anyone turning art into a career. </p> <p class="whitebody">In 1917, the original Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company was sold. My great-grandfather and his three sons created a new entity, <i>Hobart Brothers Company,</i> which was family-owned until it was bought by Illinois Tool Works in 1996.</p> <p class="whitebody">My father, William Busser Howell, known as Bill, went to work for Hobart Brothers when he married into the family. (He and my mother, Marcia Hobart, met in Dayton during the War.) Bill became head of sales, taking the company from a mail order operation to a major international distributor of welding materials.</p> <p class="whitebody">Although he was a newcomer to Troy, my father came from an even older American family. His forebear, Edward Howell, arrived in the Massachusetts Colony in 1639 and founded Southampton, on the Long Island Shore, a year later. The Howells were as inventive as the Hobarts. Instead of building a wind mill, as everyone else was doing in those days, Edward was determined to use water. He created the first water mill in the colony in 1644, allowing him to preside over the grinding of grain into flour regardless of whether it was windy or calm. The mill still stands, 367 years later, in a corner of Southampton appropriately called Water Mill. </p> <p class="whitebody">When I came along, in 1946, I was named William Busser Howell, Jr. The second of five children, I was called Busser, for my father s maternal grandparents, from the very beginning. At the time, we lived in a steel house one of 22 built by Hobart between 1932 and 1941 on Penn Road in the center of Troy. The houses, which are now on the National Register of Historic Places, were constructed entirely of welded steel. Built at the factory on West Main Street, they were moved to their respective sites on flatbed trucks, much like other prefabricated houses today. Although they were considered very  modern, they were noisy and uncomfortable to live in. Ultimately, the wartime shortage of steel put an end to their construction. </p> <p class="whitebody">I was five years old when we moved to the farm. Shortly after that, I had my first eye examination. Years later, my mother admitted that the ophthalmologist had warned her that I might be blind by the time I was a teenager. But neither she nor my father took this seriously, perhaps because it wasn t part of their Midwestern  can-do philosophy. I was given a prescription for corrective lenses and was told to wear glasses for reading or watching television. Like many children at the time, I was not happy about it and avoided wearing my glasses whenever I could.</p> <p class="whitebody">Despite the diagnosis, I was not aware of any real limitations in my daily life. I had a horse named Penny, whom I rode daily. I rode a bicycle to school and swam indoors in the winters at the YMCA. In the summers, I water skied on Walloon Lake, in Michigan, where our family had a summer place. Team sports, such as baseball and football, were impossible, but people simply assumed that I was uncoordinated. Despite the glasses, it never occurred to anyone that I couldn t see the ball. </p> <p class="whitebody">My vision took a sudden turn for the worse when I was 10. This time, my father took me to see an ophthalmologist in Columbus, Ohio. The doctor, a former fraternity brother at Ohio State, was someone my father trusted implicitly. My condition was diagnosed as <i>Iritis,</i> a severe inflammation of the iris. Although <i>Iritis</i> is one of the world s leading causes of preventable blindness, most eye doctors, even today, are not trained in its treatment. </p> <p class="whitebody">I was immediately bundled off to Ohio State University Hospital where I was subjected to a battery of tests. The medical students infuriated me. An entire class would gather around my bed and peer, one at a time, into my eyes. Although it was not physically painful, the process, for a 10-year-old, was torture. After seven days, I was sent home, armed with prescriptions for eye drops and pills.</p> <p class="whitebody">When that treatment didn t work, I was subjected to another week s stay in the hospital. The outcome of the second round of testing was a regimen of massive doses of cortisone and steroids which lasted for four years. In addition to being hospitalized in Columbus once a year, I was taken to see other specialists, at other teaching hospitals, across the country. Every hospital visit involved more testing as well as being examined by hundreds of ophthalmology students, interns and residents. They experimented with different drugs, and appeared to shrug it off when I became delusional. On one occasion, at Johns Hopkins, I was given a hundred skin tests on my back. On another occasion, I was injected in the eye with a hypodermic needle, which stands out, today, as the most horrible pain I have ever experienced.</p> <p class="whitebody">In the beginning, I was taking more than 350 pills a week a combination of cortisone and steroids along with drops every half hour. Since I was constantly dilated, I was required to wear bifocals in order to see the blackboard and read up close. Despite the drugs, my eyes continued to weaken. Every year the glasses were made stronger and the lenses thicker and thicker.</p> <p class="whitebody">Though I hated the treatments and the thick lenses, I did not think of blindness as a possibility, nor did I consider loss of sight a problem. Despite the medications and yearly trips to hospitals around the country, I thought of my diminishing sight as a temporary condition, much like measles or the mumps. I never thought of it as permanent, assuming instead that it was just something that I would outgrow or that the doctors would ultimately defeat.</p> <p class="whitebody">Ironically, it was the onset of vision loss that led to my lifelong involvement with art.</p> <p class="whitebody">The frequent trips to doctors and hospitals along with the fatigue that accompanied the cortisone gave me a lot of time alone, which I spent learning to use watercolors and pastels. I was encouraged in this activity by two role models. One was my aunt, Lucia Hobart Bravo, who had also studied at Smith (she was in the class of 1944). The other was my older sister, Lucia Howell, who was a gifted artist and a natural-born free-spirit. </p> <p class="whitebody">The summer I was 13, my aunt Lucia decided that it was time for formal lessons. She arranged for my sister, cousins and I to study oil painting with a well-known local artist, Gratton S. Condon, who had a studio in nearby Piqua, Ohio. Each week, my aunt drove us the eight miles there and back. Mr. Condon, as we called him, was an American Impressionist who specialized in romantic scenes of the winning of the west. He was also a prolific illustrator for the <i>Saturday Evening Post</i> and other popular books and magazines, where he depicted military combat during World War I.</p> <p class="whitebody">Mr. Condon, who was 72 at the time, expected us to paint seriously. Taciturn but supportive, he set up a still life for our group each week and instructed us in basic oil-painting technique. We learned how to prepare the canvas with gesso, create a composition using charcoal and then apply paint, using turpentine or linseed oil to adjust its opacity. We were all required to buy boar s hair brushes of varying sizes and to clean them after each use. </p> <p class="whitebody">The most exciting aspect of our lessons, however, was learning about color. Mr. Condon, being a traditionally-trained turn-of the-century painter, taught us to understand the color wheel, and to lay out our paints on a paper palette in strict order, alternating primary colors with complementary ones and ending with black and white. The discovery that one could mix two different colors and create a third was magic. Even now, when I can no longer  see, I can sense the radiance of color in my mind. The act of squeezing out a brilliant, jewel-like tone from a fresh tube of oil paint or of removing the lid from a jar of acrylic is a moment of bliss.</p> <p class="whitebody">Mr. Condon also taught us to see color in a new way. Looking at a pewter pitcher, he showed us how the metal looked gray at first, but then, on closer inspection, was revealed to be made up of oranges, pinks and greens, all reflected from the objects around it. (To this day, I  see colors in my mind, and will think about the reflection of shadow and light, from other objects, as an intrinsic part of the surface being painted.) </p> <p class="whitebody">This reinforced a lesson learned from my aunt, who taught me to do crayon sketches when I was about seven.  The colors under your chin, she explained,  are reflected from what you are wearing or maybe even the grass where you re sitting. She reminded me of the children s game of putting a dandelion under your chin to see if you liked butter. The dandelion creates a yellow reflection within the shaded area of the neck. Picasso, I learned years later, used a similar technique, taking the tinted shadows of refracted color, breaking them into separate shapes and then using them to create patterns in his work. </p> <p class="whitebody">Although we all painted the same still life, the results were quite different. My sister s work was hard-edged, while mine was distinctly Impressionistic. (See plate __.) This is not surprising, since many of the Impressionists Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne among them were near-sighted. Edgar Degas suffered from retinal disease and Mary Cassatt had cataracts. Even El Greco is believed to have had astigmatism. Vision loss may be a mechanism that allows artists to look at things through a different lens. </p> <p class="whitebody">The lessons ended with the summer, but I continued to work at home and school, painting on every surface I could find. Burlap feedbags, used for the horses oats, were particularly satisfying. Most of my work consisted of still life compositions, using objects found in the house. </p> <p class="whitebody">I learned wire sculpture the summer I was 15, following my freshman year of high school in Troy. An art teacher taught me to wrap copper wire around the handle of a wooden spoon to create cartoon-like animals. The project intrigued me. Once school had ended, I set out to find a kind of wire that would allow me to create a stronger, more long-lasting shape, without the wooden spoon. </p> <p class="whitebody">At the time, there were no art supply stores in Troy, but we did have an old-fashioned hardware store that sold everything from farm equipment to hooks and nails. There were kerosene lanterns, tractor parts, horse collars and tools of every kind. Buried in all the clutter was a collection of different kinds of wire. I chose three widths--baling wire,  stove-pipe wire and a very thin hair-like wire and then took them home, where I tackled the task of trying to construct a more life-like figure that would keep its original shape. </p> <p class="whitebody">Starting with the baling wire and using pliers, I made an armature that formed the skeleton of the structure. For a horse, for example, I created a two-dimensional outline, then added depth by running wires through the horizontal plane. Once the armature was finished and could stand on its own, I used layers of stove-pipe wire to create muscles and flesh out the form. I used my fingers to mold the finest wire into the details. </p> <p class="whitebody">Many of the wire sculptures were horses. I had been riding since I was five and had studied thoroughbreds as well as quarter horses, so I really understood the anatomy of these animals. I also created skaters and dancers, based on photographs of sculptures by Degas which I found in a book belonging to my grandparents.</p> <p class="whitebody">The wire sculptures led to my first exhibit at a gallery or museum. Burton Closson, one of the most famous dealers in fine arts and furniture in the Midwest, came to our house one day in June of 1959. After looking at my collection of horses and skaters, he asked if I would mind making a sculpture while he watched. I agreed. At that moment, a baby duck happened to wander across the yard, and Mr. Closson suggested that I use the duck as a model. It took barely an hour to produce the finished product. </p> <p class="whitebody">Satisfied that the work was really mine, Mr. Closson selected 15 sculptures, including the duck, and took them to Cincinnati, where they were on display at Closson s Gallery for about two months. In the fall of 1959, the collection was moved to the Hunt-Morgan Museum in Lexington, Kentucky, where it remained for one month, then returned to Closson s, where nearly every piece was sold. Today, the duck (plate ____) is in the Whitney Family s private collection. The horse (plate ____) is owned by the Closson Family. </p> <p class="whitebody">I spent my sophomore year at a boarding school in Arizona. The school, which was part of a working ranch, had an excellent art program. In addition to academic work, all the students were expected to look after their horses and take part in after-school activities, such as music and drama. </p> <p class="whitebody">Although I continued to function in the classroom, I was finding it increasingly difficult to see at night. Walking back to the dorm after an evening rehearsal, I would often bump into trees or posts. At home for the Christmas break, I told the doctor in Columbus, but he found nothing wrong. My parents, as always, shrugged it off. </p> <p class="whitebody">Finally, back in Arizona after the Christmas break, I went to see the local ophthalmologist. This time, he performed a simple test. Covering one eye, he asked me what I could see with the other.</p> <p class="whitebody"> Nothing, I said,  not even the wall. I was totally blind in that eye. </p> <p class="whitebody">It turned out that all the years of taking mega doses of cortisone had destroyed the optic nerve, producing secondary glaucoma. I had no vision at all in my right eye and a very tiny field of vision in the left. </p> <p class="whitebody">How could this have happened? That is the question that everyone asks today. But 40 years ago, the possibility of glaucoma a disease more common in the elderly than in someone my age had never occurred to any of the doctors. The diagnosis, which seems so obvious now, was overlooked. </p> <p class="whitebody">As for the cortisone, it was believed, at the time, to be a wonder drug, and few people, even in the medical profession, gave a thought to its risks. Who knew that a  miracle drug could damage what it sought to protect? Side effects were dismissed. For those like my parents, the idea of blaming the doctor or the drug company was unthinkable. </p> <p class="whitebody">Sitting in the doctor s office in Phoenix, early in the winter of 1960, I wondered why all the fuss. I knew I couldn t see, but I assumed the problem was temporary and I wanted it to be fixed. Meanwhile, the doctor had called my parents in Ohio. I remember worrying that my father would be angry and that I had somehow done something wrong. But when I was put on the phone, my father sounded unusually kind. Then I spoke to my mother, who said that she would meet me in San Francisco the very next day, and that arrangements had been made for me to be seen by the top glaucoma specialist in the world. </p> <p class="whitebody">After a few more phone calls, the doctor took me home for dinner with his family. I was puzzled that his wife seemed sorry for me. From my point of view, the trip was a lark, a chance to get away from school for a couple of weeks, smoke cigarettes, sleep late and skip homework. I was not the least bit curious about my vision, since I was confident that it would improve. </p> <p class="whitebody">The next morning I arrived in San Francisco and was delivered straight to the hospital, where tests confirmed that I had lost all the vision in my right eye and about 96 percent in my left. Fortunately, the  good eye had retained an almond-shaped field of vision straight ahead. With lenses, it could be corrected to about 20/40.</p> <p class="whitebody">The doctors recommended that I be placed in a special high school for the blind, but I refused to accept their verdict. In the end, I agreed to finish my sophomore year in Arizona and then attend a boarding school in Ohio, close to the doctor in Columbus, for the rest of my high school career.</p> <p class="whitebody">Six months later I was enrolled at the Marti School subsequently renamed the Miami Valley School in Dayton, Ohio. Although MVS is well-known today as the best private school in the region, the main attraction for me was its proximity to the Dayton Art Institute. My happiest hours in those years were spent wandering the museum and taking classes, weekends and summers, in print-making, ceramics and painting.</p> <p class="whitebody">Painting, of course, was my great passion. At Dayton, I had the good luck to study under Jay Milder, a New York Abstract Expressionist. Jay, who was in his late 20s at the time, introduced me to the idea of applying paint in layers, creating a three dimensional effect that is literally the opposite of Impressionism or Realism. </p> <p class="whitebody">Under Jay, I began experimenting with techniques such as using the pallet knife to create impasto, or layer upon layer of thick paint. </p> <p class="whitebody">One day Jay came up to me in class and said,  You have the making of a painter. I was flattered, but uncomfortable. I lacked the confidence that many of the other students seemed to have.</p> <p class="whitebody">The turning point came toward the end of our summer painting course, when I had run out of most of my colors. In order to use up the remaining paint, I chose a palette made up of blues and greens. We were studying live nudes, and working with a black female model. I spent two hours painting intently, then left to go out for a smoke. When I returned, I found Jay and many of my other classmates gathered around my easel, raving about the painting. Even the model said something about it. I was bewildered. I looked at the work again and did not understand what they saw. Then I realized that it must have been the colors. How odd, I remember thinking, that a change in palette could produce a different vision.</p> <p class="whitebody">A year later, I graduated from high school and left Ohio to study art at Boston University. However, I was resigned to the fact that eventually I would have to join the family business. When the time came, I moved to the West Coast, where I worked at Hobart Brothers and continued painting on the side. Most of the work produced during that period was sold through galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. My vision remained more or less the same, requiring constant medical attention in order to stave off the steadily encroaching glaucoma. </p> <p class="whitebody">When I was 40, the doctors realized that the glaucoma had advanced too far. Rather than simply slide into blindness, I opted for a radical form of surgery in the hope of salvaging some shred of vision. But it was too late. The surgery was unsuccessful. </p> <p class="whitebody">Since then, I have been completely blind. Sometimes I can see a faint light, but most of the time it s like being in a dense fog. </p> <p class="whitebody">That was 25 years ago. But I have painted more in the intervening years than I ever imagined possible. For a long time, I continued working in a figurative vein, moving from abstract expressionism to political satire and investing both with images of folk art. After the destruction of the World Trade Center, my work became increasingly abstract and dark, reflecting the sense of mourning that I could feel around me. </p> <p class="whitebody">Today, my painting is focused on color and form, using collage and impasto to create textures on the canvas. Although I am blind, I  see every stroke I make in the visual cortex of my brain, which is literally the  mind s eye. Oliver Sacks has written extensively about the separation of vision and sight. Every blind or visually disabled artist I know shares this awareness. Like them, I paint from memory and perception, translating an inner vision into something both external and tangible. </p> <br> <br> </p> </div> <div align="center"></div></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td> <table width="500" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="galleries.html" class="whitenav">gallery</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="exhibitions.html" class="whitenav">exhibitions</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="book.html" class="whitenav">book</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="press.html" class="whitenav">press</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="bio.html" class="whitenav">bio</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="catalog.html" class="whitenav">catalog</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="essay.html" class="whitenav">essay</span></a></td> <td align="center"><a href="contact.html" class="whitenav">contact</span></a></td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> </table> <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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