Tobacco Sticks
The Kneapler Stick
Sep
It was the evening of John’s 60th birthday. The occasion needed a marker.
The Kneapler Stick
2018, 52″x 1″ sq., acrylics and mixed medium on wood.
I painted this tobacco stick expressly for him. I designed it to work with his new home interior choices — sea-foam couch, darker woods and silver tones.
It was a surprise gift, well received.
Update 2020: The Kneapler Stick Has Landed.
My friend’s slice of joy, The Kneapler Stick, ultimately landed where no art in his home had gone before. A corner of a main room.
A corner. Unexplored.
The Kentucky family of the farm where the sticks came from said they’d never seen sticks painted with such devotion, individually, as I’d done. To me they were doubly appreciable. Form and forsaken, solid and ready for a next chapter. They were also an opportunity to try painting many pieces of the same size that ultimately wouldn’t take up much space. Space in NYC is of great value.
As it turners out, my sticks gravitated to small spaces.
The Kneapler Stick and the blue stick below are examples. Art’s presence without density and mass footprint. I love the combo.
What was once a tree, likely standing during our country’s formative days and, itself, a seedling of the trees and land that existed here before us, comes life in the form of these painted sticks.
First painted in 2011, my farmer friends were tickled when in 2012 the sticks won an NYC Arts Award for most successful use of recycled materials. A Kentucky/NYC winner.
They are straight-backed strokes of joy. All are roughly 1″ by 52″, pointed at both ends. And coming to a corner near you.
