Concepts Concepts Concepts Concepts Week in Concepts

Aeronautic Adventure

Perhaps there is nothing more pleasant than spending time in Gano Park—whether it’s taking in the pickup basketball games, the intrepid runners that make use of the biking path no matter the weather, the community garden, the overgrown baseball fields, or the rusting bridge.

This week, this Indy writer went down to Gano Park for a few relaxing afternoons—and in hopes of witnessing the most important aviation event in Rhode Island since James Allen inaugurated the state’s aeronautical history with a hot air balloon in 1856.

The takeoff was to be utterly clandestine. No one was to know about it besides the aircraft launch crew—until a source close to the operation subtly informed a concerned Fox Point resident who, in turn, via letter composed in invisible ink, left a tip for the College Hill Independent. Unfortunately, most of the letter didn’t make it to our mailbox—whether by subterfuge or pure accident (there seemed to be indication of animal bite marks, but our laboratory wasn’t able to confirm before print).

The only substantial information that was left of the missive was the location of the launch (Gano Park), a fragmented description of the type of aircraft (a plane), and its color (a light red hue).

I can say I know Gano Park well. Once, when I wasn’t able to fall asleep, I decided to wait until the early morning hours to catch the sunrise at the park. Besides the people working at Dunkin’ on Gano Street, the only person I came across was a neighbor with his sprightly dog, Haverford. The air was crisp when the sun rose. A hazy line of orange started to peep across the horizon, softly glazing the rusting Crook Point Bascule Bridge over the Seekonk River.

Although insomnia no longer lays claim to me, I’ve gained valuable field insight into the park’s terrain from daytime strolls since then that have made me more than prepared to catch this launch.

Without information of a specific date or time, I decided to head down to Gano Park every day until I caught sight of the launch. I skipped the rainy days—no good for any launch, aeronautic or otherwise—and stuck to the afternoons when the sun was most available, as any aerospace technician worth her salt would know.

The first day passed without incident. So too the next day. The day after that, I decided to wait for the leaves on the branches to grow back on the trees instead.

Did the crew know? Were they playing an elaborate trick on my addled brain? (The plane, in all its redness, was all I could think about—I kept having dreams about missing airline flights.) Had they changed the location of the launch? Or had they already launched the plane under the auspices of night? The Fox Point community—and I especially—needed to know what had either happened already or was just about to happen.

On the fourth day, like the days prior, the field was clear. The weather couldn’t have been any better, the sky any clearer. Then—I caught sight of the red aircraft! … Only to discover that—aerodynamic as it was—it was no larger than the laptop used to draft this dispatch, and of even less sturdy material. The plane was plated with styrofoam. The crew was near non-existent—two people. The young pilot, only barely taller than the plane’s length, waited for her wizened counterpart to give the go-ahead for the dominated by a rectangular table with seating for audience members on either side. The Cogut Institute for the Humanities was hosting their annual Political Concepts Conference; this year’s was the Literature Edition. Fourteen scholars from diverse fields and universities were invited to share their papers exploring concepts drawn from literature to deconstruct, recast, resignify our current political climate.

My English professor delivered the opening remarks. The atmosphere was friendly, even sporting. They presented their papers in panels two at a time, each on a concept—“Dialogue,” “Greatness,” “Scrap,” and so on— followed by a lengthy Q&A. I had arrived for the final panel of the conference. In the small, adjoining room there were tables laid out with coffee and pastries. It was possible to, while getting a scone, look to the left and see a professor getting a muffin, and later watch him sneak bites during a panel. This was a window into an academia I hadn’t before seen. After the two papers, the other professors immediately jockeyed to get in their questions: stunning questions, long, theoretical and detailed, seemingly endless.

I sat in the front row and crunched loudly on my ice cream cone. It was the loudest bite I have ever made and I was horrified to be seized by a flight of silent, hysterical laughter. This was amplified every time I made eye contact with my friend, who had come with me and was also holding an ice cream cone. I prayed that my English professor wouldn’t notice. We crunched. We dissolved again. He was readying himself to present his own paper, tall, hunched, nodding vigorously. His topic: “Incoherence.” launch. He watched just a few steps behind his daughter (her coat the same color as the aircraft) as she hobbled along, plane in hand. The flight time was short—only a few seconds—and the plane, carried by the wind, looped back on its flight path before touchdown.

I walked in holding a Ratty ice cream cone. I realized that this was a mistake. We had followed the signs upstairs. Each bore an image of a snowy owl in flight, casting its elegant shadow on a page of text. Now I was in the room: a great big room in Pembroke Hall with high, sloping ceilings

After the talk, we were all invited to join the scholars for dinner at Flatbread. The promise: “great” “dialogue” over “scraps” (pizza) which would hopefully not be “incoherent.” My head swam. “This made me realize that I’m meant to use my body, not my mind,” said my friend, outside. We were talking strangely fast and loud. The air stole our breath, leaving white scrolls drifting between fuzzy specks of rain. The warm, electric glow of Thayer Street felt like light coming from another world. Steady. Mist landed on our faces, in our eyes. We traded the snowy owl for an abstracted, white songbird—meaning, we went to my house and sat on Twitter for several hours.

Saraphina Forman: How did you get started in art?

Leonard Jefferson: We painted in kindergarten. I just liked it and I stuck with it.

SF: When did you start making art once you were incarcerated?

LJ: As soon as I could get access to the materials. They had an arts program inside the prison, in the maximum security building where I was in 1974. I had a flute, and I was able to obtain some materials to produce art.

They taught classes, but the instructor was only there for like an hour or so. So basically what they did was they would show you a technique and they would provide the materials for you to work with.

SF: What is your artistic process like? What makes you start a piece?

LJ: Generally something that attracts my attention. A lot of times, it’s things that are happening socially. I might see an image of something and say, “I would like to reproduce that,” to try to sharpen my skills. Can I paint that? Can I make it look right?

SF: Is your process fast or slow?

LJ: Pretty much everything slow. Like I say, I have two speeds: slow and slower.

SF: Who do you imagine as an audience for your pieces? Do you make art for yourself?

LJ: Pretty much I make it for myself.

SF: Did you have any collaborators in prison? Was there any sort of artist community?

LJ: There were people who, just like me, were in prison. And they took advantage of the access to materials and they painted and they drew. There was a studio only when the instructor was there. So that would be like an hour or maybe two every week when we would all get together.

SF: And then otherwise, would you just work—

LJ: Isolated in the cell.

SF: You mentioned magazines that you would draw from. What other art inspiration was coming in from the outside?