Tribute To the Trailridge Dollar Theatre

I was watching a movie the other day  with my wife, streaming it from an online service. In the struggle that happens with my wife in selecting a movie on Netflix, it gave me the thought that, as far as picking out a movie goes, online digital selecting is just as annoying as selecting at the video store was back in the day. I should know, I was a projectionist at a dollar theater when I was 16, and worked at three video stores (not at the same time) up until age 19.

In my mind at that age, for some reason those were the ideal jobs for me. Maybe it was the fact that my family got a VCR for the first time when I was about five or six years old. I understood then, that now we could pick our own movies out, and to me that was amazing. Looking back I suppose those were the best jobs for me. I have always considered movies as one of my main sources of artistic inspiration. I am far from the first to talk about how movies can transport you to other realms. They are even magical sometimes if you are a child, and sometimes when you are an adult too.

I enjoyed working around movies and people who enjoyed them. I liked being able to see and recommend eclectic, unique, movies and most of all I enjoyed seeing the best parts of all the movies each time I projected them. Seeing that plethora of movies at that time in my life affected my painting style and viewpoint as an artist in ways I am sure I will never fully realize. It was a great time in my life, even if to some people, it was just a few crappy video stores and an old dollar theater.

The videos stores were fun, but the projectionist job had the most impression on me though. I don't even know when Trailridge Theater was built; for as long as I can remember I always knew it as the dollar theater down the street that my friends and family and I would go to. I saw Return of the Jedi there, and Karate Kid, amongst others. (The original Karate Kid with Mr. Miyagi). It had old, barely working projectors from the early 1970's; which must of been the last time that theater was current, (I worked there in the mid 90's). Running them when I was 16 and 17 was really fun. Learning how to seam the 6 reels together onto the projection platter and then break it down when it was time for the movie to go, threading it through the projector, etc. One projector had a missing cover for a section of buttons. Once in a while I would forget to grab a pencil with an eraser to push the one malfunctioning button and it would shock the shit out of my finger.

Then or now it is hard for me to imagine the theater running first run shows, or being new, or clean, or functioning properly or efficiently. I will never remember Trailridge Theatre in any way but musty, out-dated, old-fashioned, dusty; reeking of a smell consisting of ammonia mixed with ancient-sticky-pop and sickly buttery popcorn. The smell that no matter how much you cleaned it never came out. No matter how much you scrubbed the floors, they would always be sticky. But that is why it was glorious too. It had a kind of rustic, spooky, tragic, charm to it.

Going there as a kid I was still  thrilled about it even though I knew it wasn't a first run movie theatre. It had that Stephen King-like feeling about the place. You know; something about childhood friends meeting at the old local dollar theater where they discuss such and such phenomenon or something. That's how I thought about it anyways, a musty, glorious relic of the near past. The metal squeak of the seats covered in a slightly sticky red fabric, with every 12th one or so somehow broken; the sound system that still worked well, with good acoustics. The yellow and orange walls and dark brown wood, the multi-stained carpet, I remember it well. Changing the Marquee with a set of mismatched, odd letters, using letters for numbers and vice versa when necessary. Who knows or even cared the last time the set was current; little things like that throughout the whole building made it somehow creepy. Like we were stuck in an episode of  Scooby Doo with a mystery at the old haunted movie theater in a backwoods town, or something.

I am not one for ludicrous ghost stories but the other employees that worked there will also tell you of odd things would happen from time to time. Footsteps in the projection booth when no one was up there (a hallway above the main lobby), lights seeming to flicker when ghosts were mentioned. It did have an odd energy about it, a kind of pathetic, last truck stop, end of the world, nothing to lose vibe about it. And that's not just me, the other people that worked there felt it too, we were part of it. It was awesome and odd to go there as a kid, then work there as a young man.

I went back one day years later to see it, and some Russians who barely spoke English had bought the place and were still showing the crappiest, oldest, movies. Soon after that it became some kind of bingo hall or church or something, I don't know. It didn't matter at that point, it was no longer Trailridge Theatre, one of the magical portals of my childhood and young adult life.

The Synchromism Link Between European and American Modern Art

There was a very short lived painting movement in 1912 to about 1916 started by two Americans living in Paris, it was called Synchromism (which means colors together, blended with the word symphony).

It was the first modern American art movement with organization, a manifesto, and a particularized aesthetic. The group had a huge impact in breaking down more traditional color theory in American art.

Still Life With Bananas, Morgan Russel 1912-13

Started by Stanton Mcdonald Wright and Morgan Russell in June of 1913. They would  exhibit their work in October of that same year in Germany, but had been experimenting in similar techniques for several years prior. They also exhibited in New York in 1914 and 1916. The group was part of an overall effort to extend the work of the neo-impressionists, breaking down form and color further towards complete abstraction.

Synchromism, legacy-wise, has almost a direct link from impressionism, post impressionism, neo-impressionism, and the Fauvists (1900 - 1910). It is this short lived movement that seeded change in American Art towards a more modern evolution.  In addition to Stanton Wright and Russell, two other Americans in Europe were considered synchromists: Arthur Burdett Frost and Patrick Henry Bruce. These were both students of Henri Matisse (one of the great figures of modern art). Matisse was heavily influenced by Van Gogh, Gauguin, and his contact with the neo-impressionists, among others.

After Matisse and the neo-impressionists (Seurat, Signac); Picasso and Cubism became another influential painting style in Europe. Orphic Cubism was a cubist style painting with a more lyrical style content. The Orphic painter Robert Delaunay was an influence to the work of the synchromists, although the two styles could be said to have emerged at around the same time. Morgan Russell's interest specifically in a fully color composition was found to exist prior to his meeting with Delaunay. Another influence was from 1911 to 1913, when the two (Wright and Russell) studied under the Canadian painter Percyval Tudor-Hart, who worked with color theory in relation to expressing aspects of music.

The relationship between painting teacher and student, brings me back to a common point I make about why I like Art history. Let me use the following metaphor. Sometimes in athletic sports there is a big thing about a coaching and playing legacy associated with team or school. For example at Kansas University the great basketball coach Phog Allen had Dean Smith as an assistant, he would become a North Carolina coaching legend. His assistant was Roy Williams, who coached at Kansas, on and on. Some of the style and knowledge of coaching becomes a kind of legacy associated with a time and place. So it is with famous painters and their mentors.

So Matisse was influenced by the post-impressionists and then the neo-impressionists for example. Matisse taught the two Americans Arthur Burdett Frost and Patrick Henry Bruce. American Thomas Hart Benton was also in Paris at this time experimenting with the group. Benton's exaggerated human figures had roots in Macdonald-Wrights own fascination with the musculature of the human body. And of course Hart Benton would teach Pollack for a short time. So you can draw an evolutionary line from Matisse to Pollack. From one Jedi to the next one.

One perspective could be that these seeds planted by the synchromists, provided that link from Europe's modernist styles of painting, into America. Seeds that would reach full fruition in the 1940's and 50's in New York. This is when the Abstract Expressionists (Jackson Pollack, William DeKooning) would force the shift of the center of the art world to New York, the first time in a long time it was not in Paris, France.