Making a drawing can give anyone a fresh perspective, and it’s one of the surest indicators that a new project is underway. Putting pencil-to-paper helps move things along, even if it’s a metaphor, perhaps, for bridging the gaps in the day-to-day and helping manage the mundane workflow of a 1,001 details. Maybe it’s even a respite from work or part of something bigger. But whatever it is, drawing helps iron out the wrinkles.
High mid-season is when the remoteness of Ponte Vedra Beach is more about mental awareness than physical endurance. Some of the best ideas emerge mid-summer. Guests from Manhattan are still making their way south for their August sojourn, and for locals, the annual motto this time of year is simply, “Slow and easy wins the race.”
PV is far less remote now than it was in the ’70s and the decades before that. Late July has always been a time when everything, including the surf, seems to be heading for a flat patch daily from 10 to 2. How did early Ponte Vedrans endure the heat?
For long-time residents, the ones who recognize this time for what it is, they’ve always known cooler weather is ahead. Their experience emerges out of action, and there is something very satisfying about a sharp No. 2 pencil and the marks it makes on a page as lines, numbers, figures and calculations.
Summer is the time for planning, and out of leisure comes creativity. In some cases, the very act of writing something down makes it real. It compresses and expands possibilities in ways that science can’t fully explain.
But those old industrious “vagabonds” 100 years ago understood the importance of “where it all comes from and where it all goes.” Ford, Edison, Firestone and Burroughs would populate Seminole Lodge and the Mangoes in Ft. Myers and others would follow suit. PV in its earliest days would host similar names and those taking advantage of the summer calm to bring ideas to light and projects to the table without any need for exaggeration or explanation. “She’s a Rockefeller, you know.”
Sometimes, scribing ideas is more of an art than a science, and honestly, when it comes right down to it, most things worth doing are. But who has the confidence to define art with any degree of certainty? Some have gotten close, and others in their attempts, by default, have turned to defining instead what they know art is not. These are the ones with the fewest ideas. Some settle with simply, “I know it when I see it.” Others rely solely on the reports and dispatches from Art Basel, via New York Magazine, The Art Newspaper and the L.A. Times, depending on their level of interest about what should and should not be considered art.
Drawing is an action, while sketching will always be considered an exercise. Drawing is deliberate, and it can be both a noun and a verb. Much like when we draw water from a well. It is nourishment and it is work. There is very little automation in the physical act of drawing, of making a mark. That is, with the single exception, perhaps, of the muscle memory involved in executive function.
Our nature as human beings pulls us in the direction of mark making. The urge to leave our mark can be powerful, and in some cases disruptive. It can surface with immediacy or lie dormant for decades. “Take only photographs and leave only footprints," is an oversimplification of our role as participants in the world around us. Leaving things much better off than how we found them is the broader philosophy at play, and one worth contemplating.
Rule number one is the simplest: use what is already there. Rule number two, accept what is given. And rule number three defines the action fully. Proceed on the basis of what has already happened.
The page is blank. It receives a mark. The second mark is in response to the first. The third mark is in response to all three: the second mark, the first mark “and” the blank page. This is the way it works and writing a letter by hand shares this same rhythm.
We fill the blank page, and when our work has been completed to our greatest satisfaction, our role has been fulfilled. Now it’s time to enjoy the work of art, the fruits of our labor, the souvenir of our interaction with that particular moment in time. Is it a souvenir or is it a trophy?
In the 1970s, Trigger Alpert and his wife, Connie, first began spending time in PV, renting the Van Kennen’s house next door to us on the Boulevard a mile and a quarter south of the Club. Trigger and Connie would plan their arrival for some time before Easter and would stay until the summer heat would nudge them back up to Darien, Connecticut.
Trigger had a routine of sitting on the beach in a folding chair during the late afternoons with a pencil, paper and a book as a desktop. He marked down just about everything that came to his mind in that moment. Sometimes he used words. Sometimes those words were just pencil scratches meaning little to anyone except him. But either way, this was his method of recording the moment and keeping time with the waves in front of him.
Trigger’s career as a jazz bassist touring with the Glenn Miller band in the 1940s had evolved into photography by 1970. His studio in Darien helped pioneer prints-on-canvas long before the fine art archival printing method became the commercial norm it is today.
Each year, Trigger’s work would premiere with receptions at the Inn and Surf Club. He captured many Ponte Vedrans in comfortable signature poses in outdoor settings. “Always in the shade.” The colors were rich and vibrant and pressed into canvas before being mounted on wooden stretchers by technicians in Connecticut. Today, a few online clicks can deliver a similar product within 24 hours. But in the 1970s, the wait was part of the allure, and it was an exotic mysterious process that few understood, and one that Trigger wisely kept to himself by never revealing the exact details about how the works were produced.
But for me, as a young teenager, it was Trigger’s mark making that interested me the most. It was the notes, the scribbles and the calculations that made up the archives, which traveled with him, and which would fill two of the front bedrooms at the Van Kennen’s where he would spread out like all artists do when given space. His marks captured something very real. Something fleeting. Something that created its own environment from which his work would emerge fully developed.
Trigger’s notes recorded times, shadows, surrounding trees, reflections, foliage and backgrounds of his favorite portrait locations around PV. He knew that if the sun was in one particular spot one year, it would be in that exact position the following year. Clouds and weather would sometimes reduce the windows of opportunity for good light, and a storm could delay a session for days, but it was all part of the process. Slow and easy wins the race.
Trigger wasn’t just capturing images of clients, he was setting a stage for them and serving as their audience. They were the attraction and Trigger allowed them to be themselves and enjoy the moment. Trigger’s contribution was the creation for them of a souvenir of the experience.
These were not snapshots. These were compositions and arrangements using the same creative process that Glenn Miller used with his orchestra but simply executed in a different medium. “Take five” was Trigger’s not-so-subtle nod to Dave Brubeck when giving advice on how to take photographs. “Then,” he would say, “take your time.”
The creators of the finest souvenirs are ones who understand the importance of commemoration and who are able to acknowledge, with complete certainty, that its the place and sensations contained within it that deserve the credit for the quality of the experience. Capturing this essence is capturing something that can move forward in time being shared with others. The commemoration is no longer just a memory, but an integral part of the story.
Trigger understood that if his portraits could extend that experience of the captured moment as far into the future as possible, his role as a photographer would be fulfilled.
Summer is more than just filling in the blanks or checking off a list, trying to squeeze as much in as possible before September. It’s about commemorating the experiences, forming the memories, selecting the souvenirs and having the assurance that things from our interaction with this moment are left better off than how we found them, in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach. Slow and easy wins the race.
