“Chesapeakery”

I just read the hilarious and thought-provoking essay Goose Art by Cambridge Maryland author John Barth, in which he explores the popularity and prevalence of Chesapeake Bay imagery. It seems everyone from photo essayists to TV documentarians, from souvenir makers to artists to authors are profiting from the popularity and nostalgia the Bay conjures up.

Image courtesy Zazzle.com

There are professional Chesapeake artists:

• folk singers
• folk talers
• wildfowl decoy carvers
• tidewater arts-and-craftsers

… authors, writing:

• texts of coloring books
• cruising guides
• videocassetts
• coffee-table photo ablums
• feisty ecological polemics (Tom Horton’s Bay Country)
• Pulitzer Prize-winning natural-historical/sociological ruminations (William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers)
• blockbuster commercial novels (James Michener’s Chesapeake)

Middle River MD Decoy from christopherevansantiques.com

Barth goes on to explain the two typical reactions to this:

• Disgust, because:

When the skipjack and the blue crab and the screwpile lighthouse attain the status of commercial logos … the way of life they vaguely symbolize is passing from vigorous, unself-conscious existence into merchandisable nostalgia.

Courtesy prosportstickers.com

• Pride, or:

“Look, ma, we’re an industry!”

I admit it: I’ve given Crab House Crunch to Maryland ex-pats as a last-minute Christmas present. (Embarrassed, but enjoyed it thoroughly) …

Courtesy Blue Crab Bay Co.

… and my own children can often be found wearing or playing with dubiously depicted blue crabs.

Goose Art gives a great sailing metaphor to explain how those of us who live here can come to dislike all of the attention the Chesapeake receives (even when those who learn about it come to love it):

Every cruising sailor knows the feeling … of having a favorite little-known secluded anchorage ‘discovered’ …. There are certain prize spots that some of us won’t even tell our fellow sailors about lest word get around …

When (someone) writes to tell me that she or he hopes to visit one day the scene of my fiction, I am duly gratified - while at the same time recognizing that in my small way I have become part of the problem.

Barth notes that it’s odd, possibly even “kinky” to plaster the wall with photos of your beloved when you are in her embrace. He reveals his house rule, that no “Goose Art” should be displayed in his home near the Bay.

So why tell the tales of the Chesapeake … over and over and over? Why plaster our walls with photos of sunsets, or our mantels with decoys?

Barth’s explanation for why he broke his own rule and went on writing about the Bay is twofold:

1. Pedagogical
2. Aesthetic

1. Pedagogical. As does Barth, I find myself constantly referring to a huge map on our wall when disoriented out-of-towners (or navigationally-challenged locals) visit our house. Barth describes the convenience of mapping out a day’s sail using place-mats ”not intended for navigational purposes”. (Horror: this prompted my own — fruitless — search for souvenir plates with a map of the Bay! This one is available on Ebay, but seems to more completely map Norfolk VA’s highways):

Here’s an example of a local brewery teaching folks about the importance of clean water with their beer. Commercialization of the Rockfish image, but in partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and for a cause I can get behind. Also, making me thirsty.

2. Aesthetic. According to Barth, truly artful rendition has a value, even a reality, transcending the value and reality of the thing rendered. “Artful” is a matter of taste, but I think you’ll know it when you see it. As evidence I give you BayPhotosbyDonna‘s amazing capture of a Great Blue Heron. Who can argue with that?

There you have it. The bar is officially raised.

If you’re going to create art that celebrates the Bay, do it well. Do it beautifully. Use it to teach about the environment. Depict or describe the life of that crab or bluefish or bunker accurately. Inspire us to take better care of the delicate ecology around us, and preserve the beautiful thing you’ve shown us.

If you’re going to use Chesapeake Bay imagery to sell something, do it in a way that has never been done before. Use your proceeds to save the Bay and in conjunction with industries that truly support our waterways. Show us how you’re going to take better care of the place we know and love, and help us take steps to do the same.

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