My old man and his guns

It's hard to believe Richard's been gone so long. Maybe you get over the death of a parent. Maybe you don't. I'll let you know when and if it does (or doesn't) happen. So far, it still hurts like it happened this morning. But like anyone, I try to balance it out with happy memories and Richard's faith, along with my own, that death is a new beginning. And of course, I think often of the things Richard loved most.

Including guns: Richard would shoot anything, and I mean that in two ways. He'd shoot any weapon he could pick up second hand and he'd level it at whatever looked like it would be fun to blow to smithereens. On weekends, Richard, Charlie, Dirk, my brother James and I would head out to some undeveloped land on the edge of the Florida Everglades, way out past Krome Avenue, to blow the crap out of whatever targets we could invent.

My father gave me one course in gun safety.

He stacked up 12 telephone directories, one in front of the other, and fired a black powder rifle at the one closest to us, from about 15 yards. The bullet passed through 11 phone books and stopped in the middle of the 12th. He said, "If a bullet can do that to a dozen phone books, imagine what it could do to your head." Without another word, he packed everything up and we left. I understood it was a lesson.

We shot everything from two-liter bottles of tonic water, to the carcasses of old American muscle cars left to the rust vultures under the South Florida sun. There were high-powered revolvers, sawed off shotguns, small caliber rifles, my grandfathers M1, and black powder weapons. At some point, my father got hold of some armor piercing bullets somewhere. We used them to punch holes in the engine blocks of those old cars.

My old man was a reloader. He cast his own bullets from blocks of lead and mounted them inside cartridges containing measured amounts of gunpowder.

One of his favorite side-arms was a Ruger Super Black Hawk. But he complained that it was no fun to shoot all afternoon because of its kick. So he put together a bunch of half-powder charges so he could shoot all day without getting his arms sore. I remember coming home in those days and the house would smell like molten lead. He had a little, electric cauldron to melt the metal. I never understood the whole process, but like many things in his life, it became an obsession for my old man.

Obsessions make life worth living.

Our Lady of Mercy

Richard Sevigny, working at Our Lady of Mercy Roman Catholic Cemetery, where he spent more than 10 years making and repairing monuments.

Pregnant woman

This wood sculpture, made at our home on 69th Street in South Miami, was purchased by, or simply given to a neighbor.

Richard Sevigny, photographer

This picture shows Richard, probably at Matheson Hammock in the late 70s or early 80s, carrying one of his many Pentax K-1000 cameras, or a clone of one.

Richard had a full darkroom and made tons of prints. He taught me the basics of photography -- the Sunny 16 Rule, and the rest.

Baptism of Christ - oil on canvas

Scheistmeister von Treblinka

This painting dated August 14, 1985 is an example of Richard Sevigny departing – to a degree - from religious themes to depict deep, historical cruelty.

It was inspired by Jean-Francois Steiner’s controversial 1966 book Treblinka, an “inspiring story of 600 Jews who revolted against their murderers and burned a Nazi death camp to the ground,” according to the jacket notes of Richard’s copy.

Treblinka reads like a thriller. It begins with Jews being shipped to death camps in rural villages in occupied territories. One was Treblinka, where nearly a million were killed. It ends with a violent prisoner uprising in which only 40 men survive.

As the story progresses, with escape attempts, the constant arrival of trains full of prisoners bound for a thousand different kinds of deaths, and the revelation that the liquidation of the camp is drawing near, Steiner offers us a picture of a cruelty that became almost normal to the prisoners.

The episode that inspired this piece reportedly took place after a camp commander, fearing prisoners were conspiring in the cramped bathrooms or perhaps out of pure cruelty, decided to post a watchman in the latrines. Of course, the Nazi guards didn’t merely assign a prisoner to work as a guard. They turned it into a perverse game in which the guard would be called the Shit Master and wear an absurd costume.

Richard filled the background with passages taken directly from the book, starting with a mess-hall conversation between camp guards:

“He will be dressed like a rabbi,” said one.
“He will wear a Russian cap,” said another.
“No, a top hat,” outbid a third.
“Yes, yes, a hat,” shouted the listeners.
“And we’ll give him a whip.”
“And we’ll make him grow a goatee.”
“And we’ll tie an alarm clock around his neck.”

“Cantor or rabbi,” either way it is the same shit.”

The “shit master” had instructions to only let five prisoners enter at once and to make them leave after three minutes.

“Rabbi, how goes the shit?”
“Very well, sir, it stinks.”

Even the Jews could not help laughing at him. “I beg of you,” he would say. “Do it for me, come out!” The prisoners could not help laughing, but it was themselves they were laughing at, it was their religion they were mocking. For the shit master was one of them and his costume was part of their religion.

Christ removed from the cross

In this oil painting, Richard Sevigny used an almost EC comic-book style to portray Mary taking possession of the body of her son after his gruesome execution.

This is another example of Richard looking to inject time-worn Biblical episodes with graphic power. But here, Richard appears to depart sharply from Scripture on a number of points, as we shall see.

Blood flows down from the cross in widening rivulets and Jesus Christ’s hand, raised to his lower chest or throat in agony, suggests he is still clinging to life, or has died in Mary’s arms. The gospel has Christ “giving up the ghost” while still on the cross.

When I was a child, I asked my father, “Who is the man that’s holding Jesus?” Indeed, Richard portrayed Mary’s face so contorted with grief that she almost looks masculine. Mary, “full of grace,” bears no resemblance to the woman we know from Sunday school pictures or church sculptures.

She holds her son’s body, almost displaying it or offering it up to the world, or to heaven. The palette is interesting, too, and classic Sevigny. Apart from the red blood, the cloth of the same color across Christ’s midsection, and Mary’s blue shawl, the entire scene is rendered in warm, earth tones.

There are two figures in the background but Richard offers no hints as to who they might be. Are they executioners cleaning up after the job is done? Are they curious onlookers? Or are they apostles, gearing up to make a run for it?

In any case, the figures and the general sense of movement in the background suggest that Richard imagined this moment as one taking place amidst a more generalized chaos. It’s the absolute opposite of the isolation we see in Abraham and Isaac.