A Ralph Heilemann 90th Birthday Fable: Operation Xmas in Japan

by Gregg Chadwick

My father in law Ralph Heilemann is in hospice care at home with my sister in law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As Dad Heilemann gets ready to move on to another form, space, or place — I wanted to post this highly fictionalized tale of his US Navy days that I wrote for his 90th Birthday.

Fair winds and following seas, shipmate. We have the watch.

MarySue Heilemann with her dad Ralph Heilemann — August 2021

Mission Classified. Possibly originating from the harbor of Yokosuka, near Yokohama just outside of Tokyo, in post World War II Japan on Christmas Eve.

Official Mission Logs Redacted by order of Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) General MacArthur, Acting Headquarters, Dai Ichi Life Insurance Building, Tokyo.

The United States occupation was in full swing and Ralph Heilemann was there. As an electrician onboard a United States Navy cruiser on a hush-hush mission to map the entirety of the Japanese coastline, Seaman Heilemann was deep into the electronic guts of his naval warship. Or was he already an Ensign — difficult to tell from the still hidden logs of his mission.

A long way from Milwaukee but close to Akihabara, Ralph Heilemann knew that he had to replenish his electronic stores before setting off for more remote harbors. Skilled at bartering from his days on the farm in Helenville, Wisconsin — Seaman Heilemann gathered his Naval rations and exchanged them for much more than a bag of beans. Dodging the white striped helmets of the United States Military Police and with Transistor Tubes in hand, Heilemann skulked his way back on board his ship rocking gently in the grey night. Close by, the giant Buddha of Kamakura stood watch as it had for hundreds of years.

Gregg Chadwick — Buddha of Kamakura, 36"x48" oil on linen 2010

Morale was low onboard ship and among the defeated Japanese populace. Rations were cut, food was scarce, water was hoarded. But a desire to keep living still beat in the hearts of all in this lackluster Christmas season. Somehow Heilemann knew that this Xmas was up to him. Tele-typed from high command perhaps? Or whispered along the docks at night? Or maybe Nat King Cole had slipped a recording to the ship’s crew before it set sail. (https://youtu.be/jcttnJQBzQ0) But that cold Japanese night much more than sweet potatoes would be roasting. Heilemann had chestnuts and musical notes in store.

With bartered electronic parts in hand, Heilemann slipped into the conning tower of his ship and relayed a hot wire to his newly acquired turntable. Levels were set on high. He barred the door to keep prying eyes away and set the needle on a spinning platter. With a hiss and a scratch, a voice burst forth across the bay. To this day some say it sounded like a choir of angels:

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
Jack Frost nipping on your nose,
Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,
And folks dressed up like Eskimos.”

Before the second verse, the Lieutenant was banging on the door. But the music played on across the harbor. Many say it grew louder -

“Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe,
Help to make the season bright.
Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow,
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.”

Before the third verse, the Commander was banging on the door. And the music played on across the harbor. Many say it grew even louder -

“They know that Santa’s on his way;
He’s loaded lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh.
And every mother’s child is going to spy,
To see if reindeer really know how to fly.”

Before the fourth verse, the Captain was banging on the door. And the music played on across the harbor. Many say it grew even louder -

“And so I’m offering this simple phrase,
To kids from one to ninety-two,
Although it's been said many times, many ways,
A very Merry Christmas to you”

And after the final verse, the Admiral was on the horn. “Keep that music playing Heilemann”, he said. And many say it grew even louder as everyone on shore and onboard ship sang together.

All I know is that Ralph Heilemann needs to keep on singing. Keep playing that music Dad! Happy 90th Birthday!

Gregg Chadwick, I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph Heilemann — Madison, Wisconsin) 18"x9"oil on linen 2008

Night Painting

By Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

Bookseller's Night

oil on linen 2019

   

I lift three brushes wet with paint. Each brush holds its own hue- ultramarine blue, glowing amber, and a cool black. Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime AroundMidnight” plays on headphones tethered to my iPhone. The room spins like the song. I almost dance as each brush moves across the linen. Wet paint slurred into wet paint. I search for the light in the dark in a painterly chase through the night.

I paint in a refurbished airplane hangar, the night glowing darkly through the skylights above me. Alone in a vast space, my thoughts travel back to years of painting at night: from a loft in SoHo during New York’s “Bright Lights Big City” years, to a small makeshift space in Tokyo, to a studio in a reconfigured office building on a block of San Francisco’s Market Street that Edward Hopper would have appreciated, to now in a building at an airfield where a fake town was suspended over sensitive areas of the field during WWII to mislead a possible aerial attack. 

Like camouflage draped across an airfield, night changes the way we see. Distance is obscured. Color shifts. We see blue tinged black and white under the stars. At night, humans and most vertebrate animals are colorblind because the most sensitive light receptors in our eyes, called rods, detect only black and white. But geckos are different.  Painting in what was a military airbase, especially as my mind drifts in the quiet of the night, I often think of the pet gecko my father had in his quarters while stationed in Okinawa. As I struggle to truly see, I wonder what colors my dad’s gecko saw. Geckos evolved from creatures that were active only during daylight, so they did not have rods for night vision. Over time through evolutionary adaptation as geckos shifted to nighttime activity the color receptors in their eyes became more sensitive and enabled full hued night vision.

Gregg Chadwick

In the Ginza Rain 

oil on linen 1987

Over the years, perhaps with geckos in mind, I have honed my ability to see subtle nuances of color both during the day and at night. I collect moments in my memory by standing still and taking in the sensations of an evocative evening or a cool dawn. I often begin a painting with the intention of capturing one of these remembered moments and its particular atmosphere of color and light. Before I paint, I lay my colors out on the palette in a range from light to dark and warm to cool. As I mix my paints, I think about light. I want an interior light that emerges from the painting. Painting night reveals the contrast between light and shadow in my artwork and emphasizes the luminosity within the painting.

Gregg Chadwick

The Azure Hour

oil on linen 2014

My oil on linen work The Azure Hour combines a certain sense of beach light and air with the dreams and memories of the urban night. On evenings in Southern California when the cool ocean breezes bring a blue fog into the night, it sometimes seems that anything is possible. The painting took over a year of work to finish. It progressed in a series of layers, scumbles, and deletions that created an evocation of the complex nightscape in my mind. I find it necessary at times to paint at night under subtle illumination to see if the effect that I am reaching for has begun to take hold. When the light is too bright it is difficult to see the range of tones from dark to light in a painting. The darkness itself helps create the light. One cannot exist without the other.

Gregg Chadwick

Occupy 

oil on linen 2013

Recently, I stood outside in a clearing of a Monterey, California forest near the coast in the middle of the night with my brother and René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator  at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Unlike the skies in Los Angeles, we were able to see the stars in the night sky and of course thought of Vincent Van Gogh’s painterly evocations of the glittering night. Van Gogh was able to capture the night in his paintings with his skillful use of midnight blue and starry yellow. Gazing at a Van Gogh painting of a star filled sky, it seems as if he knew that the lights he saw in the dark night had traveled from the deepest reaches of time. According to physicists, as we gaze at the stars, in essence we are looking back towards the beginning of time.

René Boitelle, senior paintings conservator  at the Van Gogh Museum
photo courtesy  René Boitelle

Later that week, I stood with René and another conservator, Devi Ormond, before a Van Gogh painting of a weaver; the painting was laid out like a patient on a table in the Getty Museum’s conservation lab. The work seemed so fragile, yet at the same time sturdy and timeless hearkening back to an era of firelight, candlelight, and moonlight. Soon after Van Gogh painted his weavers, the advent of electricity would completely alter the character of the night. . Perhaps in every painting of the night there is a hint of this loss, echoing the shadowed forms in the artwork. I am reminded of the nights many years ago when, before painting, I would put Miles Davis on the record player. I would drop the needle on the first track and listen to the hiss and crackle as ‘Round Midnight began to play– the music always muted, blurred as if it emerged from a smoke filled room.

Gregg Chadwick

After Puccini

oil on canvas 2013

Early in my career, as an exhibition of my paintings closed at a gallery in Osaka, Japan, a fellow artist turned to me and somewhat derisively asked, “So what’s next? Will you travel from city to city painting their nights?” I didn’t come up with a quick rejoinder then. But I know what I would say now, “You can’t paint the day without the night.”

This Essay, Night Painting, by Gregg Chadwick is included in Burning the MidnightOil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day, edited by Phil Cousineau.  

For Alex Eliot on his Passing - "Oriste!"

“Life is a fatal adventure. It can only have one end. So why not make it as far-ranging and free as possible?” Alexander Eliot

I received the sad news yesterday that my dear friend, art writer and mythologist, Alex Eliot passed away. Born April 28, 1919, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Alex would have turned 97 this week. Alex was the art editor at Time Magazine from 1945 until 1960. During those years Alex crafted numerous articles about the modern art scene. Alex always held us spellbound with tales of meeting the major artists of the period. Alex especially loved to tell the story of meeting Salvador Dali in New York and that Dali became a close friend because Jane Winslow, Eliot’s wife, had lived in Catalonia and spoke Dali’s native Catalan fluently. 

For his 90th birthday, Alex's talented daughter, the writer Winslow Eliot, asked me to craft an appreciation of Alex. I have revamped this essay a bit to reflect on his passing:

In Alex Eliot's marvelous essay in Frederick Franck's book, What Does it Mean to be Human?, Alex recounts his journey to the Greek region of Karoulia and his encounter with the "very holy fellow" Simon. Like many of his fellow Orthodox monks from Mount Athos, Simon retired to a cliff side residence in Karoulia. Perched high above the water, these monks spend their later years in solitude with the meeting of the sea and sky as their constant companion.

Alex was invited by a fisherman from Mount Athos, who spoke of Simon as a holy fellow, to make the journey with him by sea to visit the monk. With the fisherman's boat bobbing in the waves below, Alex climbed a series of steps carved into the rock face with only a series of chains spiked into the cliff to hold onto. The fisherman had said, "If those chains will hold you, it is as God wills" for Alex to meet with Simon. At the end of his climb, Alex explains that he lay drenched in sweat, gasping like a beached fish until he felt a cool shadow break the heat and there was Simon, "sparkling eyed" with his arms spread wide, exclaiming "Oriste!" meaning "Welcome, what can I do for you!"



Forgive me if I break Alex's engaging narrative at this point. As I write these words, I am sitting in my studio surrounded by a series of new paintings inspired by a recent trip with my family to Japan. The siren of these images is calling me. And I can't help but wonder what Alex and Jane Eliot, who also traveled with their family to Japan, will think of this new work. I don't have to risk my life scaling a cliff to reach the Eliots. I just need to make my pilgrimage out my studio door and down Ocean Park Boulevard, Diebenkorn's old haunts, to Venice, California to visit this couple who always greet my friends and family with wide open arms and profound insights. Like Simon's greeting, Alex Eliot's welcoming words nourish and inspire me.

Alex Eliot and Gregg Chadwick at the Getty Museum Malibu

Alex Eliot turned 90 on April 28, 2009. In his fruitful life, Alex met with and wrote about the great artists of his age, including Picasso and Matisse. One might think it would only be natural for a man of such wisdom and experience to be a bit haughty. Instead, Alex shares the old monk Simon's gentle and generous spirit as well as his great wisdom and love for life.

While on that cliff in Karoulia, Simon offered Alex a piece of caramel candy. Alex, graciously accepted the gift and then when the monk was preoccupied, Alex, feeling that the seemingly undernourished monk needed all the calories he could get, slipped it under Simon's plate. Alex then bowed and scooted out to climb down the cliff to the boat waiting below. The sun was setting when Alex reached the fisherman who lay asleep in the boat. The sirens called. Alex disrobed and dove into the sea only to be startled by a basket hurtling down the old monk's supply cable which linked his aerie to the world. In the basket was the caramel. "My candy had come back! I put the caramel straight into my mouth and like a child once more I tasted its burnt sugar elixir right down to my toes."

And then Alex opens up to the mythosphere - "Never before in this life, possibly, had my poor spirit taken nourishment. I stood dripping upon the shore of time and Simon waved to me from eternity."

Like Simon's candy, Alex Eliot's friendship gives my poor spirit nourishment.

Let me break again from my essay to speak directly to Alex:

Alex, I thank you for your wisdom, your profound words and feelings, the inspired love that you show to your wife - Jane - and your talented children. Alex - you are a lifeline, an example, and a challenge. I am proud to be your friend. 

Gregg Chadwick

Study for a Portrait of Alex Eliot 

8"x13" oil on wood 2009

Throughout my years as I stand with my wife, MarySue, and my kid, Cassiel, on the shore of time I will see Alex and Jane Eliot waving to me from eternity and exclaiming, "Oriste!"

Alex and Jane Eliot
photo courtesy Winslow Eliot

More at:
Alex Eliot's Website
Jane Winslow Eliot's Website