Painting Horses

When I got called in for a job with vsavt, I didn't realize I would be involved with painting horses. What a canvas! We all gathered at local Watertower Farm. While some of the students rode the horses, other students got to know horses on a different level; painting with temperas mixed with liquid hand soap, we painted with curry combs and even our hands. Painted ponies in Vermont! The Appaloosa was a beauty with her painted coat and she was such a love about the handling, even her tail. The children were from a special summer school session and this was the final day...one they would remember complete with painted horses and ribbons as reminders. It was a success all round.

Rejuve nation

Bruce and I are carving out a small niche at Camp Meade with our cabin, the garden, and now the yurt is coming up. It is our rejuve nation and we do feel rejuvenation when we make our way there and spend some time. Some days I drag out painting supplies into the air as the cabin is not a place of light and air. Mostly I have been preparing surfaces hoping the day of clear inspiration will come to me...sometimes the surfaces get several layers before the painting comes through. I was working with yellow--the color of courage-- and the words "trying to be brave" kept coming to me until they found their way onto a flag. We planted a garden where a cabin had been uprooted. Soil is undernourished, but with so much rain to keep that sandy soil moist, crops are coming in. The zucchini is lovely and the arugula we are letting go to seed for the next crop. This writing was interrupted with a call from Ruth, friend from high school who is visiting from her home in Ashdod, Israel. We have invited her and her spouse to visit, so cleaning is in order and these pictures will have to speak the promised 1000 words.

Observation

Steamed, washed, ironed, and now hung on a wall at the museum building at Camp Meade where I could take its image. Amazing to me how grey I made the background of the white silk. Has a different energy than the collage. Tells a different story and somehow the heart of the original doesn't find its way into this enlarged "copy". It all was a good test and I am still keeping it under observation. Any comments? The piece is 44x72 on paj silk, very fine, light and shiny.

I felt the challenge

Okay, time for some more words, a new post. This image shows the silk piece still pinned to the 4x8 padded table drying. To get it framed in the camera screen I took the shot from the balcony above. The piece isnow steamed and washed but not ironed and where will I find a large enough wall to take a photo of it? The piece is 45x72 on paj silk and is an enlargement of a collage I did a while back and posted on this blog. Working through Flickr I placed the image of the vertical collage in a horizontal space which produced a large painting affect with 3 viewers seated before my large painting and my friends in flickr challenged me to paint it large for real. Well, I didn't have a large canvas or the space to paint it, but I did have a sunny day and a large piece of silk. Now working with dyes is so very different than working with collage, torn elements of paper composed upon a surface, embedded in wax with some lines scratched upon the surface with oil pastel. Collage is a build up, an exploration. A discovery. Silk painting is movement, water and flow, and when on a large surface, a lot of dyes mixed to cover in a brief time because drying and change is occuring rapidly. It is intense and absorbing. To copy a small piece only 11x14" vertical to something large 45x72 horizontal is a real challenge and exciting to attempt. I am grateful that I have a group of artist friends who are seeing my work through images and making comments and challenging to me to surpass my own intentions and go for a challenge. What do I feel about the result? So many feelings, and that I haven't even ironed the piece and really looked upon it puts the result still into the future. Some of making art is the concept, some the process, some the challenge. That I have no large spaces to spread my art is a discouragement to making large art, but perhaps another challenge is before me--to find some large spaces.

News from Africa

While the silks are steaming, I have been thinking of my son, Ezra, now living in Cameroon, Africa with his girlfriend who has some prestigious grants, like the Fullbright for one. Shannon is doing her dissertation on Bush meat which can put her in odd places and definitely might have some taste to it. Ezra, having lost his environment job in Santa Cruz, CA because after the furlough, the mid-management was cut, was in need of direction and Shannon pulled him to Cameroon. What was to be a visit has turned into a job working with Bacca people in the rainforest. Gosh, he just wrote me a detailed email talking more of this job, but I guess I will have to reread it because I am not able to tell a very detailed story here. Mostly I have just been thinking how proud I am of him to take what could have been defeating and make an adventure of his life at this point. He has so much knowledge and a winning way about him, generous and caring, with an incredible love of the earth and all its growth which he had from crawling baby days when he was just starting to crawl and would crawl backwards into the unlit firepit of the Tepee we lived in for the summer. This is a whole other story, but I am certain our rustic summer had an impact. I also see my influence in the bag slung over his shoulder and the fabric drapped, perhaps it is a hammock...oh, that Christmas we shared in Mexico when he went on a serious search for the "best" hammock! So glad he has that camera I got him for Christmas this past year and is taking photos--he has always had a good eye-- and now he is someplace where the photos will have so much meaning to him and to others...I just had to share--proud mama, that I am.
In the words of Ezra

Back in Yaounde I am helping an NGO out with forestry
work (biomass and vegetation inventories, and GIS
mapping) in two tropical forest sites.  This work has
brought me to rural, forest dependent communities in
the middle of lowland rainforest.  The Bacca people are
quite something.  They are called “pygmies” because
of their short stature and are one of oldest peoples
in all of Africa.  As part of a team we are working
with them to map out their forest resources quantify
the amount of carbon in their forest to sell to companies
in the west looking to offset their climate change
 and private sector from Europe (it’s> funded by the
UK government and managed by a few Scottish groups).

Words do Influence

This piece was done during the improv session with Michael Arnowitt on piano. He said he would make a piece to the theme of January Thaw, but just before he played Janet spoke of the show she had curated at SPA called Circus. I knew about this exhibit and didn't think I was paying much attention, but instead was preparing for the next piece of music. I positioned the album of Ray Charles Singers called Memories of Romance on my easel. I had previously adhered wall paper onto the album cover image. The music began, the audience went away, and I painted, burning away the snow with the brightness of the thaw, but now looking at it I see "Circus!" When Michael finished his improvised piece, he admitted that circus had kept popping up in his mind also. How is it that our intentions were so transformed by the mention of Circus? How powerful is Circus? Or is it perhaps more easily visioned than January Thaw? So many questions can occupy the mind. All this came up again to me today because I shared this piece with my art group and the story unfolded itself, so I make this writing as part of my documentation of the improv session and the curious mind.

silk scarves even for summer

There was once a sunny day and I celebrated by painting silk scarves on the back deck trying to capture the light and the flow of the air. Alas, I had my heart set on a sunny day today for another glorious painting time before my clerking slot this afternoon, but I am sitting at the computer waiting still--and thus, this posting. The wedding I attended this past weekend featured a lot of scarves and shawls. It was chilly when the sun wasn't out and the dresses were bare at neck and arms. In my imagination I dressed the women in my silks to correspond with their outfits. Of course, I was also deconstructing all the dresses also...in my mind. What a busy mind I have working for me. Anyway, these scarves are available for purchase at Artisans Hand or through me. Please let me know which one would be your favorite. They sell for $38 to $70 depending on size, make great gifts and are easy to send.

Fwd: pictures from Wedding of Will and Courtney

Wedding of Will and Courtney

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From: http://eyedbycolormuse.shutterfly.com/26

Crack in the Foundation

I am feeling that crack in the Foundation and the rain is making it larger. Such rain keeps coming. The ground is saturated, slugs and snails are eating their way through my garden. My soul pines to paint but the weather defeats me. I crave warm sunny days. My painting situation craves warm, sunny, and dry situations. Silks do not dry in this moisture because of the baking soda in them and my cabin studio has little light and no electricity. Am I letting this get me down? Such little problems in the scope of the world's turmoil. I am feeling some disappointment, I must admit. I thought I had sold a large and important silk hanging. I had been to the client's home and established the hanging in its place, but left without a check as she had not gotten one from her husband. Should I have noted this as a warning? I took the piece home to freshen, iron, and to wait for the table to be installed. Yesterday I heard, via email, that she had placed her table and the painting and thought the room didn't need the hanging. Okay, I can understand on some levels. The hanging is very powerful visually and would draw attention from the painting and the table, but still I had been so pleased that the hanging had found a home, a place to be enjoyed, where it could shine and be admired. Instead it remains rolled, 44x90 inches of silk dyed and expressive, but hidden still. What is the hardest part about not having this sale go through? That I am not able to spread my work out into the world? That I can not "let go" of this piece for lack of a place for it to live? The name of the piece is "Letting Go" and it was made for the exhibit of hangings which showed at Vermont Supreme Court in 2006 and it was a feeling of "letting go" in the making, but "letting go" of the work proves harder than I had thought. Ah, sometimes, it is good to let out the words, now I must move on.