Marshall Blevins / "Church Goin' Mule"
It was raining; puddles collected in the yard and dripped from the oak trees that surrounded the house. They pooled and rushed towards the bayou, cold clear January rainwater. It was one in the after-noon, but the sky was dark, night was approaching, thunder rattled the doors. Sitting at my drawing table, I painted a mule beneath a barn that was looking a little worse for wear. “Heavenly Day (rough weather)”. The mule had a pair of wings on its back and a glad smile on its face.
"I stood at the screen door, heart pounding, the music sweet and echoing around me. Lightning flashed and a line of people in baptismal gowns were in the corner of my vision, heading down the trail, and gone."
From January to March, I sat at that table, in all kinds of weather, largely alone with my dog, Wilbur. And on days like that rainy day I began to feel like I was in some other world. Carefully adding raindrops and highlights to the puddles in the painting, it seemed as though the whole world fell silent and still. A chorus was rising ... singing voices of simple folks with sincere beliefs, the sounds of church. Eyes wide, I looked over to Wilbur, sleeping on the couch. He couldn’t hear it. Studying the wide picture windows that looked down the trail to Old Fort Bayou, I didn’t see a single leaf move. But the voices were climbing. I walked as quietly as possible to the back door and opened it slowly. The choir sounded like a warbling record, near and high above at once. I stood at the screen door, heart pounding, the music sweet and echoing around me. Lightning flashed and a line of people in baptismal gowns were in the corner of my vision, heading down the trail, and gone. I stood there for a long time. Wilbur began to snore.
Strange and beautiful things will happen to a person when they are alone, making art in the woods, listening to music, reading books, wandering trails and bayous. They might begin to think they know Providence personally, that they have a particular insight into Mother Nature, that the world has become a more intense and vivid and magical place. The trees might become protective parents, turtles might become good omens. They might even begin to learn the names of plants and to distin-guish trees, they might prefer to roam barefoot, to know the night creatures crawling on the roof might not be ghosts, to fall asleep in the arms of trees, to lose track of where dreams meet reality.
Marshall Blevins/ "Church Goin' Mule"
That’s the sort of thing that a Twelve Oaks Artist Residency offers—the long and short of it summarized in the phrase “rediscovering childlike wonder.” The miracles of the woods happen daily, if not hourly: nature is increasingly strange the more you go into it. Turtles stack themselves up on logs to sun and warm each other. Snakes sleep high in the branch. Foxes come right up to the back door. Living as I did back home, apart from the woods and the water, I had long since forgotten turtles and their piercing dinosaur eyes, how all of nature works together in its cycles, and how it will continue to work without me.
"Strange and beautiful things will happen to a person when they are alone, making art in the woods, listening to music, reading books, wandering trails and bayous."
The residency is an arm of the Twelve Oaks Nature Preserve & Trail, which is a part of the Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plains. Funded in part by the Mississippi Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, the program invites artists of every kind—painters, photographers, poets, sculptors, and more to work and make art inspired by the land, nature, and the history of Twelve Oaks. Among the residency’s most recent artists are painters Carmen Lugo and Mary Hardy, along with writer Mary Ann O’Gorman and sculptor Spence Kellum.
Marshall Blevins / "Church Goin' Mule"
I had the incredible opportunity to be the artist in residence for 2020. Wilbur and I moved in January 3. That morning, we left Sunset, Louisiana in the pouring rain. The deluge only intensified as we travelled I-10, taking the split to I-12 and onwards toward Mississippi. The thunder growled and rolled, the rain made the roads slick. My ’93 Ford truck has had a history of dying abruptly if the undercarriage is splashed with too much water. Gripping the wheel, Wilbur blisfully unaware, we covered 216 miles in pure downpour.
Believing it too good to be true, we stopped at the Land Trust office, the clouds still drizzling rain. Shaking hands, smiling, Wilbur loudly greeted everyone, and we got our keys to the house.
Marshall Blevins / "Church Goin' Mule"
Hidden off of Highway 90 in Ocean Springs, Twelve Oaks Nature Preserve & Trail is the original residence of Johanna Blount, who saved enough money while enslaved to purchase the property after attaining freedom once the Civil War had ended.
Twelve Oaks is hidden off of Highway 90, truly an unintentionally well-kept secret. We arrived in bright sunshine. We had paid the toll through the rain and storm. We made it, and the sun let us know our dues were done. Time to begin.
In the first week of my stay, a feller came to fill up the propane so the old house might be warm through January and February. He exclaimed he had not only been in business forty years, but had been born in Ocean Springs, and had never known Twelve Oaks was there at all.
Twelve Oaks truly existed long before he was born, older than suffrage, as old as emancipation. Johanna Blount was an enslaved woman who had saved enough to buy the acreage after the civil war. She might have been the woman to plant the twelve oaks that gives the property its name, though some claim the trees are as old as four hundred years. Upon establishing her household, her former owner came knock-ing—impoverished, having lost everything—including her husband. She wasn’t doing well. Can she stay? Johanna, it is said, exhibited the very soul of forgiveness and invited her into her home.
"Much of the art I make is concerned with stories, with love, with concern for the generations past and what they have left us. To walk in Johanna’s shadow and memory was a blessing to my art and my soul."
Johanna sold off parts of property for taxes, gave land to her family, sold some to be used as a Methodist Episcopal camp. Research is muddy for many reasons, not just because of time but because of race, and many of the stories of Twelve Oaks are anecdotal. Some stories claim baptisms were held not far from where the house stands now, down in Old Fort Bayou. Much of the art I make is concerned with stories, with love, with concern for the generations past and what they have left us. To walk in Johanna’s shadow and memory was a blessing to my art and my soul.
Marshall Blevins / "Church Goin' Mule"
The time I spent at Twelve Oaks was a dream. Wilbur and I walked the world of Ocean Springs every day. Front Beach, East Beach, downtown Ocean Springs, day after day we walked to the Greenhouse on Porter for fresh biscuits and pour-over coffee. And of course, we walked the land at Twelve Oaks each day. The property’s entrance itself is breathtaking, especially at the peak of spring when camellias and azaleas are blooming, the oaks gigantic and timeless surrounding the house, leading the visitors to the short trail to the bayou—a journey through the home of the coast’s creatures: eagles, pelicans, turtles, foxes, lightning bugs, and so on. Barefoot, in the rain, in the chill of a coastal January, we were wandering. We watched the tide roll out every morning and come in every evening. We searched the woods looking for magic. Well, Wilbur was looking for squirrels mostly, but nearly the same thing. Learning the trail took a week, to be really comfortable, and then I could let my mind wander as my eyes studied for wildlife and light. It seemed like a miracle to have the chance to watch the world change from a sleepy winter to a sonorous spring. The ferns came first, their di-nosaurian fists rising from the swamp day by day, unfurling like birds of paradise and fanning out, encouraging spring to keep on. It seemed too beautiful to be real, to watch the light filter through the old oaks every morning into the night. After a few days it began to feel as though the oaks, whose branches stretched over the roof of the house, and their roots surely below, were centurions keeping me safe from storm, bad luck, and ill-willed strangers. They kept me safe from ghosts and late night raccoons scratching on the roof.
Marshall Blevins / "Church Goin' Mule"
When we weren’t outside, we were inside working and dreaming. Wilbur slept and dreamed of chasing his squirrels. He watched the windows to see who was going down the trail. I spent time writing, painting, drawing, learning, photographing it all. I made about two hundred paintings during my two-and-a-half months there: countless sketches, prints, photos, zines. At the time, the idea of lockdown couldn’t be imagined. The time spent at Twelve Oaks was a spirit set free, time all my own to make art, a blessing unfathomable and now so many months separated from the experience, it seems like a very far away dream.
"Wherever you are, I hope you have the opportunity to get outside, spend some time really seeing the world around you and creating, re-discovering that childlike wonder we sometimes seem to have forgotten."
As we are in the heart of fall now, along the coast and in the south, there has never been a better time to get outside. Twelve Oaks is waiting, open from dawn to dusk, to share the trail, the bayou, and all the crea-tures who call it home. The trees have their arms wide open with waiting. The house has a spirit of creativity and love living in it, meaningful to witness. Wherever you are, I hope you have the opportunity to get outside, spend some time really seeing the world around you and creating, re-discovering that childlike wonder we sometimes seem to have forgotten.
You can find out more about Twelve Oaks Nature Trail & Land Preserve at ltmcp.org. The author and artist Church Goin Mule can be found at churchgoinmule.com.
