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    James Grashow Documentary Focuses on Life, Death and ‘The Cathedral’

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    The process of making a wood sculpture of Jesus Christ took the artist James Grashow four years to complete.There are some weighty topics — both biblical and personal — that are explored in the documentary “Jimmy & the Demons,” about the sculptor and woodcut artist James Grashow.First there is the art, which is inspired by religion. Grashow, 83, is the titular “Jimmy” in the film, which will debut on Sunday at the Tribeca Festival. The documentary tells the story of his quest to complete “The Cathedral,” his five-foot-tall wood sculpture of Jesus Christ bearing a cathedral on his back while sinister creatures — many of them demons — flock around his feet. It is playful and surreal and obsessively detailed.Then there is the personal: Grashow’s ruminations about life, or more accurately, death. The film captures the artist’s view about the sculpture possibly being the “grand finale” of his career and his belief that he is “in the bottom of the ninth” of his life. The feeling of mortality is strong. Even more resonate, however, are Grashow’s passion for his craft and love for his family.Grashow in his work space that is featured in the documentary “Jimmy & the Demons,” which follows his quest to complete “The Cathedral.”Jennifer WastromDuring a video interview last month, Grashow expressed mixed feelings about “The Cathedral” being finished. “It’s an unbelievable relief,” he said. But elation over completing the project was balanced with another emotion: “At the same time, there’s sort of an emptiness,” he said. “Where do I go now? And what do I do?”“Beginnings are the most difficult,” he said. “Being in the process in the middle of the project is phenomenal.” He likened his creative experience to an enormous spiral. “The fist steps are unbelievably sluggish, but as it quickens and the vortex keeps spinning around, you can’t wait to get up in the morning and approach the work.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      For Freeman Vines, Guitar Making Is a Way of Life

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      Art of Craft is a series about specialists whose work rises to the level of art.Freeman Vines was chasing a sound.He couldn’t remember where he’d heard it, but it reverberated in his mind. His attempts to replicate it on mass-produced guitars were fruitless, so Mr. Vines took matters into his own hands: In 1958, he started to make guitars.“I didn’t care how the guitar looked. I didn’t care what color the guitar was,” Mr. Vines said in a 2020 documentary called “Hanging Tree Guitars: the Art of Freeman Vines,” produced by Music Maker Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Southern artists like Mr. Vines. “I was looking for a tone.”Freeman Vines in his store, with some of his creations. Mr. Vines, now 80, never did replicate the sound, but along the way he crafted dozens of unique guitars, using wood from barns, troughs and other unexpected — and meaningful — sources. A series of his guitars featured in a traveling exhibition (currently at the Maria V. Howard Arts Center at the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, N.C.) came from wood extracted from a tree that had been used to lynch Black people.Mr. Vines, who now works out of a storefront in Fountain, N.C., grew up on a plantation in nearby Greene County during the Jim Crow era, working alongside his mother in the fields for meager wages. When he got older, he toured for a bit as a jazz musician. But the quest to recreate that one sound proved to be the animating force of his life. He carved guitars in different shapes, with specific designs and electronic configurations. Some are crafted to look like traditional African masks.“These guitars here got a character and a sound of their own,” Mr. Vines said in a video accompanying his exhibition. “To somebody else, it’s just some wood glued together. To me, it’s something else.”Chris Bergson, a musician and associate professor at Berklee College of Music in Boston, said there had been a big jump in independent guitar-making in recent years. “You’re going to get something really special and unique, like the opposite of a guitar you just buy off the rack.”Mr. Vines has multiple myeloma but hasn’t slowed down. “He cat naps a little bit and just keeps working, keeps creating,” said Timothy Duffy, founder of Music Maker Relief Foundation.Mr. Vines was recently discharged from a rehab facility after a stint in a cancer ward. “They really wanted him to stay there,” Mr. Duffy recalled. “He said, ‘Look, I can sit here and be bored. Or I can go back to my shop and tinker around. They say I’m dying, but you could be dead in three minutes. I’m living now.’”Mr. Vines said it’s important to “let the saw do the work” in shaping guitars.“It’s just like making biscuits. Ain’t no two biscuits look alike.”The wood used to make the “hanging tree guitars” has a “characteristic of its own,” Mr. Vines said. “All that stuff in there, people thought I carved and put in there — I didn’t do it. It was in there.”Mr. Vines’s storefront in Fountain, N.C.His sketchbook. On the right is his vision for an unusually shaped lap steel guitar.A photo of Mr. Vines, circa 1960.“Wood talks to me,” Mr. Vines is quoted as saying in the book “Hanging Tree Guitars.” “Wood has a character.”“There’s spirits in each one of these woods,” Mr. Duffy said of Mr. Vines’s philosophy.One of Mr. Vines’s creations.Mr. Vines, in his wheelchair. He toured as a jazz musician when he was younger.A wooded pond near Mr. Vines’s storefront. More

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      in Music

      Tree Rings Shed Light on a Stradivarius Mystery

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      Analyses of 17th-century stringed instruments suggest that a young Antonio Stradivari might have apprenticed with a particular craftsman.History is revealed in tree rings. They have been used to determine the ages of historical buildings as well as when Vikings first arrived in the Americas. Now, tree rings have shed light on a longstanding mystery in the rarefied world of multimillion-dollar musical instruments.By analyzing the wood of two 17th-century stringed instruments, a team of researchers has uncovered evidence of how Antonio Stradivari might have honed his craft, developing the skills used in the creation of the rare, namesake Stradivarius violins.Mauro Bernabei, a dendrochronologist at the Italian National Research Council in San Michele all’Adige, and his colleagues published their results last month in the journal Dendrochronologia, and their findings are consistent with the young Stradivari apprenticing with Nicola Amati, a master luthier roughly 40 years his senior. Such a link between the two acclaimed craftsmen has long been hypothesized.In the 17th and early 18th centuries, Stradivari created stringed instruments renowned for their craftsmanship and superior sound. “Stradivari is generally regarded as the best violin maker who ever lived,” said Kevin Kelly, a violin maker in Boston who has handled dozens of Stradivarius instruments.Only about 600 of Stradivari’s masterpieces survive today, all prized by collectors and performers alike. A Stradivarius violin currently on the auction block — the first such sale in decades — is predicted to fetch up to $20 million.An 18th-century depiction of Antonio Stradivari, the Italian crafter of instruments.World History Archive/AlamyStradivari likely learned his craft by apprenticing with an older mentor, as was customary at the time. That could have been Amati, who, by the mid-17th century, was well established and also living in Cremona, a city in what is now Italy.“Some people assume that because Stradivari was Cremonese and he was such a great violin maker, he must have apprenticed with Amati,” said Mr. Kelly, who was not involved in the new study.But evidence of a link between Stradivari and Amati has remained stubbornly tenuous: One violin made by Stradivari bears a label reading “Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis Alumnus Nicolaij Amati, Faciebat Anno 1666.” That wording implies that Stradivari was a pupil of Amati, said Mr. Kelly, but it was the only label like it that has surfaced.With the goal of shedding on this musical mystery, Dr. Bernabei and his team visited the Museum of the Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella in Naples and analyzed the wood of a small harp made by Stradivari in 1681. Using a digital camera, the researchers precisely measured the widths of 157 tree rings visible on the instrument’s spruce soundboard.A small harp by Stradivari from 1681.DeAgostini/Getty ImagesThe pattern created by plotting the width of tree rings, one after the other, is like a fingerprint. This is because the amount that a trees grows each year depends on the weather, water conditions and a slew of other factors, Dr. Bernabei said. “Plants record very accurately what happens in their surroundings.”The researchers compared their measurements from the Stradivari harp with other tree ring sequences measured from stringed instruments. Out of more than 600 records, one stood out for being astonishingly similar: a spruce soundboard from a cello made by Nicola Amati in 1679. “All the maximum and minimum values are coincident,” Dr. Bernabei said. “It’s like somebody split a trunk in two different parts.”The same wood was indeed used to make the Stradivari harp and the Amati cello, Dr. Bernabei and his colleagues suggest. This was consistent with the two craftsmen sharing a workshop, with the elder Amati possibly mentoring the younger Stradivari, the team concluded.Perhaps that is true, said Mr. Kelly, but it is not the only possibility. Instead, Mr. Amati and Stradivari might simply have purchased wood from the same person, he said. After all, luthiers in 17th-and 18th-century Cremona belonged to a small community, said Mr. Kelly. “They basically all lived on the same street.” More