The Bulk of the Work

I’m being unkind, but realistic, when I entitle this the bulk of the work. What I mean to say in the most loving way is that Bolton’s creative output was far beyond his means to fulfill. When his studio was emptied there were thousands of drawings and sketches from projects never completed. Many were never paid for, but in some cases, he never found the emotional strength to complete them.

This marvelous figure drawing was for a great Rood beam he spent many many hours designing for the Washington Memorial Chapel at Valley Forge, PA. Other drawings from this set exist as he produced quite a stream of them for what was a very exciting project. Sadly, he had been mislead by well meaning people who dreamt they could actually afford to pay for such a large and elaborate project and he was never properly recompensed for his time. It shows his considerable power as a draughtsman.

One thing I should say is that my scanner could not scan the entire piece, hence some missing fingers. It’s shameful to loose those bits and I hope one day to have it properly scanned and preserved.

Tâches Modestes

A small sketch I own shows what I think is St Bernard of Clairvaux, though I had thought I remembered Bolton saying it was St Martin of Tours (?). Clearly it shows what I told him was the influence of the Cubists (much to his dismay) this was, as I recall, intended as a program cover design for an ordination probably for an eponymous parish. He did many drawings and sketches for program covers and ordination cards. It’s a lively sketch and unknown and is a tiny sketch – smaller than the image you are seeing.

He loved the term “tâches modestes” which he took from a French liturgical artist whose name I forget – describing the modest tasks of a liturgical artist. It was his choice as a title for his retrospective exhibition.

Incident

Though the color doesn’t properly reproduce here, this charming egg tempera painting is a good example of something that delighted Bolton Morris – incident.  When he first would speak of incident, I had no idea what he was talking about, but in time I began to see that the richness of what was “going on” in a painting was very important to him. No vast empty spaces, in fact hardly anywhere to rest the eyes. He wanted to delight the eye as a novelist might fill the page with bits of color.

This odd scene took place in Norristown PA where he lived – down by the railroad tracks where there were structures not unlike Stonehenge along with various other industrial buildings. All together they were full of incident like a Siennese panel – and Bolton was very keen on tempera painting. The medium itself encourages incident – painterly incident – in the layers of brush strokes, color upon color. The figure is just one little bit of lively incident, though it’s not a good example of his skills at figure drawing which were considerable.

The Kitchen Table

Bolton worked under the most difficult conditions. In some ways this was of his own making, but on the whole it was due to his Franciscan lifestyle – a Holy Poverty that he embraced. Much of his design work, in fact most of it, was conceived and thought through on the kitchen table. The tuna fish sandwiches would be shoved to one side and out came a scrap of paper. This drawing was produced (as far as I recall) for the cover of an ordination booklet.

The Prodigal Son was the gospel of the day. Here in his spare, almost Japanese, drawing he shows all the essential elements of the parable.

The Poor Clares

This is one of a series of 20 or so painted panels, the above showing St Francis preaching to the birds, the series devoted to the lives of St Francis and St Clare. These were executed in acrylic paint on plywood panels for the refectory of the Monastery of St Clare in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. They are delightful examples of his imaginative interpretation of late gothic Italian primitive art.

The borders of each panel are different, inspired by but not copied from, the Romanesque church in Zilis in Switzerland.

Rejected

Rejection is hard – really hard – for artists. In one of his many attempts to help his own parish church, Bolton took on the job of designing a new daily mass chapel. As always his first thought was “How inexpensively can we do this?” 

This crucifix was designed, then, for this daily chapel and he made up the framed panel himself. The design is of course based on many early Italian crosses – particularly those of the “Master of the Blue Crosses”. Here, though, he stretches the standard form to include Adam and Eve and the Tree. Note how he places Mary and the Beloved Disciple together to one side and scatters the moon and sun to create interest and what he called “incident”. 

The whole project was nearly compete when a new pastor decided he knew better (they teach them that in seminary) and asked for the project to be completely re-done. In fact he asked me to make all new pieces for the chapel. I refused. Bolton was crushed as his love-offering, which is what it was, had again been turned aside as unworthy. Unworthy in the mind of that particular priest meant not expensive enough.

The Church

Completed and commissioned by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia for the 1976 Eucharistic Congress. This detail, from the tapestry series Lauda Sion, of the Church personified by a woman hangs in the archdiocesan offices. The tapestries are machine embroidery on appliqué fabric. They were produced in a tiny alcove in the bathroom of Morris’s residence on a simple Singer home sewing machine. I had the privilege of cutting up many of the bits and pieces while Bolton frantically attempted to finish the project on time. This was not to be as he habitually gave far more in terms of art and craft to every project with no regard for his economic security.

Processional Cross

Bolton Morris made this processional cross for a liturgical art exhibition in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ca 1955. Like many of his works, this piece may no longer even be extant. Working often for little or no remuneration, but out of devout love for the Catholic Church, his pieces were often destroyed by neglect, but even sometimes willfully.