Rockwell Kent "Wilderness" Centennial Journal

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018-19 Part I - Carl Ruggles & Rockwell Kent July 2-8, 2019 ABOVE – At left, American composer Carl Ruggles. At right, Rockwell Kent. BELOW – A Dec. 30, 1913 letter from Ruggles to Kent. Wikipedia photos. Letter from the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institute. By the fall of 1919 Rockwell Kent’s Alaska book is in the publisher’s hands. On Aug. 8 th from “Egypt” he writes to his good friend, composer Carl Ruggles (1876-1971) apologizing for his unanswered letters. He had met Ruggles, conductor of the local symphony, in Winona, Minnesota, in May1913 while overseeing the construction of two mansions. He traveled west in 1912 with his wife, Kathleen, and the two children, Rockie and little Kathleen. Near the construction site they found an abandoned schoolhouse where they settled. As a member of the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in America -- ...

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018-19 Part 7 – Flight from the City: Vermont & Olson Replies to Kent’s Letter June 27-30, 2019 ABOVE – Lars Matt Olson’s waterfront pass. Seward was the terminus of the new Government Railroad. During the Great War security measures were put in place along the Seward waterfront. By 1918, the date of this pass, the tracks did reach Anchorage and were progressing north toward Nenana and Fairbanks. Construction would be completed in 1923. Resurrection Bay Historical Society Collection. A New Consecration -- The Hopes of an Unsaved World "A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the standpoint of art can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology...gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour...