Post Cod

Post Cod, o/p, 24" x 24", Steven Rhude


Local fishermen long ago devised their own methods for shaping the future. To steer his children away from fishing, Gloucester fisherman Al Cottone says he decided to deny them any taste of its addictive freedom. Cottone, 47, says his son went fishing with him twice. After that, the father rebuffed his requests.
“I didn’t want him to get the same fever I did,” he says. “I didn’t tell him the reason why. I just said, ‘It can’t happen.’ ”


- from: Last of their Kind, Boston Globe, Jenna Russel, June 16th, 2013


Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS

Comments

  1. Laura Kenney Rugs9 March 2015 at 15:36

    Yes..that cod is looking at me. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Steven Rhude9 March 2015 at 16:17

    He is a post cod man looking into the eye of his time. He recollects, yet can't quite fathom what has happened. The cod looks back, yet mirrors the image of the post cod man. The man is perplexed, he wants to see into the soul of the cod, yet he can't. The cod has no emotion, or morals, or ecology, or view on the issue of its possible extinction resulting from the man's fallibility and greed. However, the post cod man continues to stare and eventually sees through the eye to himself, that is the last vestige of a once great collective agreement between man and ocean, now reduced to a family fun day or two, commonly referred to as the Recreational Ground Fishery. He takes a picture of the cod, fillets the cod and celebrates the great cod with a last supper of sorts. He then makes a painting of the cod with the image of the post cod man mirroring his predicament. The cod does not die though. Rather it lives in the post cod man as he grapples with the image of his time through a fish's eye he concluded long ago has no soul - because he can't see it. However, he is a post cod man and must contend with the emotion, morals, and responsibility now within him, placed there by the presence of the cod. The post cod man has no choice - the cod has spoken.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Laura Kenney Rugs9 March 2015 at 16:29

    Maybe he should have skipped communion.
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Steven Rhude9 March 2015 at 16:33

    Ha! That's what the cod said!

    ReplyDelete

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