October 19-22, 2018
ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL 100 YEARS LATER by Doug Capra © 2018 Oct. 19-22, 2018 A mixed day on Fox Island 100 years ago these days – “windy…raw…cloudy…mild…sunny,” Kent describes it. On Oct. 18 th , three men visited Olson on the island, one of them Charles R. Emsweiler, “a well-known guide of this country,” as Kent writes. Now they were gone, and Kent is relieved – though he did enjoy their company and there was nothing objectionable about them but -- their presence “somehow did violence to the quiet of this place to have others about.” Perhaps Kent used the word “violence” because that day, at Olson’s request, Emsweiler had slaughtered one of the goats. For the artist there was something special about their Fox Island trinity – Father, Son, and that holy something or other, Lars Matt Olson. Perhaps it was Kent's reading of William Blake’s poetry – Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Kent stands in the middle of that sequence, astut...