The mighty mongoose and its brush with extinction

By Miika Silfverberg (MiikaS) from Vantaa, Finland (Flickr

Because I felt I didn't have enough brushes, this little guy's life hung in the balance. In my search to refresh my well worn collection of synthetic mongoose brushes (Monarch) (Princeton 6600).  It occurred to me that if I liked the synthetics so much, maybe the real thing would be even better. Natural, organic, traditional, like the old masters used in their ateliers, probably made in an ancient European workshop by a one of the last few craftspeople who know how to roll the hairs precisely into the ferrule. I looked them up and was surprised that they weren't much more expensive than synthetics, now losing their appeal. After all, synthetic just a fancy name for plastic–-artificial, factory made, so practical.

But then a thought burrowed into my conscience like a mongoose chasing a cobra. "How do you think they get the mongoose hair from the mongoose into your precious brushes?" So I did what anyone would do, I googled it. And found they were endangered, cruelly dispatched, and more in need of their fur than I was.

So, little mongoose, run free
it's synthetic mongoose for me,
Chase the cobra and the weasel,

I don't need the guilt when I stand at my easel.

My studio is a star...

I'm madly getting ready for my AIR in the Grand Canyon, packing a box of art supplies to take to UPS tomorrow to arrive at the north rim ahead of me, but taking a break to post my thrill of the week, having my studio featured in Hyperallergic's "View from the Easel" series. If you've never visited Hyperallergic, I highly recommend it, it has interesting tidbits about the art world several times a day.

 http://hyperallergic.com/74471/a-view-from-the-easel-26/

Shrimp on ice

My studio was encrusted in snow and ice last weekend, but after running my little propane stove for a few hours I did manage to get the temp up to 50, which is a fine temperature for painting. It was also warmer than my house was all day Saturday, after the blizzard wiped out our power. Fortunately the heroic linemen of National Grid brought the power was back by Sunday to give me enough light to finish my painting, The Shrimp Net.

While we tooled around Prince William Sound on the Dora Keen during my Alaska residency the rangers dipped a shrimp pot into the fiord. "Dipped" being about 500 feet. That's a lot of cerulean blue rope. But 10 minutes of hoisting it back onto the deck rewarded us with dozens of these lovely creatures. As fascinated as I was by their glowing orange bodies and endless legs, equally fascinating was their disembodied heads, eyes no longer waving on their stems, and turning from ruby to black. I was not able to watch the part in between. Barbara and Tim popped off their heads as quickly as respectfully as the doomed shrimps could hope for, and put them on ice for a delicious dinner. Here's to you, little shrimpies.

Racking my brains

It's kind of weird how I haven't posted in so long. I just lost my blogging impulse, even wondering if I should drop the whole thing.  Then life at my job...well, the less said about that the better. So I look for solace with my imaginary, (and some not so imaginary) friends in blogland. 

And since I'm feeling rusty with posting, I'll just post yet another studio upheaval installment. 

I was very disturbed recently to discover some of my oil painting adorned with little puffs of mildew, probably due to a very humid summer. This made me rethink my painting rack system. I had built a sturdy two tiered rack in the corner but my inventory had outgrown it.

 

Because I don't have time to organize a clearance sale, I have to expand my storage, and also build in some space around my work to keep air circulation going. 

So I took everything out and came up with this ingenious system using wire shelving for the base and another piece on the wall, making nice slots to accommodate wood dividers.  I also offset some wood rails to keep the work from butting right up against the walls.

 

I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out, the only problem is that I still have more work than will fit in the rack. So I will have to build more racks and probably install a dehumidifier.

  

I should also purge some of my old work and studies, but I'm not the kind of artist who builds a bonfire and throws their entire oeuvre on it in a fit of pique. Sounds awfully toxic anyway.

This of course is really cutting into my almost non-existent painting time, but with the holidays upon us it's a losing battle anyway. Looking forward to January!

Insulating myself

 

You can only insulate yourself so much against the slings and arrows of this life, but I've spent the last few weeks insulating my studio against the cold weather, which, though it's been strangely warm for November, will arrive one of these days.  This year, in addition to mounting insulation panels on the garage door I'm going to try dividing my studio in half using this sheet of heavy plastic. My theory is that it will hold the warm air on the painting-side of my studio. 

If so, I just might be able to paint all winter. 

In theory, anyway. 

Family has taken a lot of my energy lately, both good and sad. So as little time as I thought I had to paint before....well, it's less now. But hopefully things will settle into a new routine and I'll get back to my selfish self-centered life soon - can't wait!

I have managed to get some painting in though, both on my animal series and Alaska paintings. I was also asked to take on a high-school intern who wants to learn oil painting. At first I thought great! She can help me get some things done in the studio. Then I realized that any oil-painting-type-tasks I needed to do were those I wanted to do myself.  I have more blank canvases than I can fill right now, so stretching canvas is out, as is grinding paints and painting in backgrounds and angels, traditional duties of studio assistants. What I could really use is someone to help me with promoting my work, but that's not what she wants to learn. (Anyone who knows of any agent-types, I'm all ears).

She came by last week though, and I think it's going to be fun. She's talented, hardworking and smart and makes me think about how I began as a painter myself, since she's about the same age as I was when I first worked in oils (17). I'm going to teach her how to set up her palette and begin a painting, and give her some pigment samples to research. It's nice to see that there are young artists who want to learn some of the timeless techniques like oils, without approaching it "ironically".  I just might end up liking this teaching thing...

Actual vs. digital

 

It doesn't really seem that long ago that I developed my ideas for paintings by shooting dozens of photos with my heavy SLR, then sending off the rolls of film in little prepaid mailers, then waiting to receive that fat package of 3x5 photos in my mailbox. If I was feeling flush, I might have ordered the 4x6 size. But that must have been long ago, since I had no problem seeing the details in those little photos. But since cameras have gone digital and my eyes have gone south I've been shooting my reference photos with a pocket-sized digital camera and printing out nice big 8x10's on my inkjet printer.

Lately I've somewhat guiltily started skipping the printing process altogether and setting up my laptop next to my work area. I don't know why, but it feels a bit like cheating to me. I like that I don't have to deal with a finicky printer and feed it expensive paper and even more expensive ink.  I can also merge photos and zoom in for detail (sometimes a mixed blessing). And I don't really mind getting paint on my keyboard.

But am I'm heading down the slipperly slope of becoming a {{shudder}} digital artist? I don't think so, my pleasure in the materials is too strong. Give me a 1939 blank canvas and I'm thrilled. A chance to take a woodcut class from an 85 year old master instead of hitting the "print" button? Sign me up.

So I think I'll continue working from printed reference photos and just occasionally supplementing with the laptop for now. I won't let go of the ritual of sorting through stacks of photos easily. There is something contemplative about flipping through the 8x10's and working from them till fingerprints of paint obscure the corners, the information they provide gleaned and translated, and they are dropped to the floor to gather dust and footprints.

Frosted

 

It nearly killed me to put the insulation up (see last post) but post-blizzard I'm glad I got it done. Believe it or not the studio is looking very inviting, and now that Christmas is over, I just might get in there.

Pretty in pink

CLICK TO SEE THE THE AFTERMATH  INSIDE

Somehow in the chaos of painting every first floor wall of my house and the usual holiday insanity I managed to find time to insulate my studio for the winter. I was lucky to get a relatively mild day off so opened the big garage door and proceeded to cover the screened wall with those big pink planks of insulation, the ones with the pink panther printed on one side. I did the neighbors a favor and put the printing on the inside, leaving a beautiful pepto-bismol hue facing the street. The panther smiled approvingly as I trimmed the pieces to fit and used lattice strapping to mount them snug against the screens. Hours later I finished, exhausted and relieved to finally be able to hit the switch, close the garage door and go inside for a nice cup of tea.

CLUNK!*. mmMerrMMaaMMmaahrMMm

That was the sound of the door hitting the panels and jamming the motor. I quickly shut if off. This door doesn't go back up till it goes all the way down, so I had to pry the panels loose to free the door. Not that I jumped right to it. I first had to fight the urge to say to hell with painting in the studio and decide to just draw in my house all winter. But it was getting dark outside and unless I wanted to try again on a frigid day in January—it was now or never.

Luckily I had another plan, or as I like to call it, my original plan, which was to mount smaller panels inside of the screen windows. Which was a great plan until I had the brilliant thought that it would be easier to mount the panels over the entire wall since there was PLENTY of clearance.

So after another few hours the panels were up again, I held my breath and closed the door. It cleared. And I hadn't burned the motor out. Now my studio is better insulated than it's ever been for the winter, and although it will still take a few hours to heat it from its winter temp in the low 30's to a workable 50's, it should hold the heat longer. I just wish I was able to hold the brush longer!

From the studio of Louise Marianetti

June 16, 1939, the year she left the Art Student's League in NYC, 23-year old Louise Marianetti stretched four linen canvases. She coated them, along with several panels, with white lead gesso, preparing them for paintings that, in the next 70 years, never made it onto the canvases. Which is not to say she stopped painting, for according to Cathy Bert of the Bert Gallery, Marianetti returned to Providence in the early 40’s, reconnected with her RISD friends (she earned a degree from RISD in 1936), joined the Providence Art Club and continued to paint and exhibit.

Why this sudden interest in Marianetti? It's because I am fortunate to have "inherited" those canvases along with oil paints with ridiculously low price tags still attached, brushes and assorted tools from her studio. Louise Marianetti died last year and her family is working with the Bert Gallery on an exhibit focusing on the years when she stretched those canvases. They wanted to pass along her unused supplies to artists who would use them. I was thrilled to be one of those artists. 

The exhibit will take place early next year. She doesn't have much of a web presence, but I've seen two of her egg tempera paintings, unframed and protected by yellowed glassine paper. They were portraits of women that reminded me of Botticelli, that is, if Botticelli had moved to South America and become a surrealist. I'm looking forward to seeing more, in the meantime, I will have to paint something really special on those canvases.

Social studio

It's awfully nice to go into my studio and see evidence of a congenial gathering of artists. I had a nice group from Dartmouth, Warren and Fairbanks over for dessert, coffee and stories last evening. I wish it could happen more, but I guess it's my own fault if I don't invite anyone! It's just that old time thing, time in the studio is so limited, I'm always feeling I need to be putting paint on canvas.

But quiet studios do provide perfect environments for some very interesting critters, I may have to paint this one.

Getting there

I've spent about a week and a half making boxes for my paintings and stashing them away in the rack (at right). To box some of the paintings I had to buy some even bigger pieces of corrugated at RISD Metcalf store. At 7 bucks a sheet it was kind of pricey, but I was informed that they were The-Only-People-Who-Had-Them. I remember, though, buying large sheets years ago from a warehouse in Pawtucket for considerably less, but I couldn't remember exactly where, and had no time, so I hauled 7 sheets across North Main Street and barely fit them in back of my pickup. Thank goodness it wasn't a windy day.

So my studio is getting a little bit more organized, and I no longer have to maneuver a narrow path like some hoarder with 25 cats. Not that I'm not guilty of the "but I might need it someday" syndrome , but I only have one cat, so that disqualifies me.

I've also been working on my Great Sand Dunes painting, there on the easel. I changed the composition, which put me back a few weeks, but it's a better painting for it.

With all my cleaning and moving I've made the acquaintance of dozens of spiders, including one "dead" spider that I found crushed between sheets of cardboard. So as not to damage the limp little corpse, I picked him up with tweezers and added him to my dead bug collection (I am NOT a hoarder—I just might need dead bugs someday). An hour later I noticed he wasn't so flat. If I didn't know he was dead, I'd say he was standing on his feet. After another hour passed, he seemed to move slightly, then suddenly started making a mad dash around his container. I let him go, far from the studio, since he looked like he had potential to be a biter. Unlike this elegant long legged beauty I found in the garden this morning.

Overgrown Studio

Not sure I should post this pic, it's kind of embarrassing. But this was the state of my studio right now, BEFORE I retrieved over a dozen paintings from Roger Williams University on Tuesday.  Somehow my old studio in Warren, though tiny in comparison to my "two-car garage" space, seems spacious when compared to all this clutter. Things have reached a critical stage, and a major gutting and purging of the studio is necessary, so I'm looking forward to organizing this weekend, the first days I've been able to have any studio time in WEEKS.

The first thing I have to do is find a way of fitting 10 pounds of paintings into a 5 pound rack, so to speak. I have no room to build another rack, so I bit the bullet and bought 30 sheets of big corrugated cardboard to use to create custom boxes for my paintings, which should save some space. Right now they're lucky to get a poorly-fitting recycled box scavanged from the Utrecht dumpster, with the accumulation of half a dozen painting titles and yards of ragged tape.

I'm keeping a corner in painting mode though, to keep working on my Great Sand Dunes Painting which is getting perilously close to using up its year's deadline.  It will feel great to slap some paint on canvas for a change.

Backbone

A spinal column is a difficult thing to paint.

Mountains to climb

Ahh, the good old days (last week) when I was too busy painting to blog. This week I was too busy to paint. Sometimes it's less frustrating just to give into it and not even try to get into the studio.  But I'm lucky, because what's keeping me busy besides the usual Work and Chores are good things, like my dear father's approaching 80th birthday, hosting a cheering section for 2 brothers who are running a marathon that's going right by my house, and planning for a hike up Mt. Monadnock.

I did these paintings in 1997 from a previous hike up to Monadnock's granite summit. The top one was used as a book cover for The Cambridge Introduction to Sylvia Plath.
I know. Classy. Cambridge and all. I would have been happy to have it used on "Mountain Climbing for Dummies" considering I was contacted out of the blue by the editor who saw it on the internet. I only needed to send a slide and cash the check. I'm getting to like sending these paintings out to earn their living, or at least their rent for the space they take in my studio.

Next week I'll wrestle with the big painting again. Now that it's May, my deadline seems much closer. Until then, I have a mountain to climb.

slogging on

My computer really should keep a safe distance from my studio...

OIL PAINTERS - FREE BRUSH

Just for taking a W&N short survey about brushes. Just sayin.

Living for the weekend

I had a good weekend, the kind where I think, if only I could continue on this way, maybe I could actually be an artist.

Friday I went to the opening of the 2010 RISCA fellowship recipients exhibition at Imago Gallery. It was packed, so much so that it was hard to actually see who beat me out for the grant. From what I could see, it looked pretty interesting, although nothing made me stop in my tracks. Some good people there to talk to though, and the glass of white wine in the little plastic cup hit the spot after a full day of work and pilates class.

Saturday it felt really good to get back into my studio, despite the fact that my tubes of paint were icy cold and it never warmed up to more than 50 degrees, even with the propane stove running full blast.

I'm reworking the big (almost 4x5 feet) painting that I had envisioned as the finale to my Shoemaker series. Even though I had already exhibited it, I was never really satisfied that I had pushed it as far as I could have. So I'm going at it again by changing some large areas and ramping up the color. The only problem is that when I finally get a chance to heat up the studio and spend a few hours working on it, it's a bit hard to connect back to it. But it might help that now I have a deadline that will force me to make it more of a priority. I have to deliver a painting by June 9 for the Art League of RI's members show at the RISD Museum and I'd like to submit it, being a big museum show and all. It's the first, and probably only, time my work will grace those hallowed halls, so I hope I can pull this painting together.

Sunday I took a break to spend with my valentine. We went on a snowy winter hike in Borderland State Park. I had never been to the 1700 acre park before, which is just north of Mansfield MA, but it's a beautiful spot.

We started out the hike by heading towards the mansion. I wasn't especially interested in it, until I found out that the couple who built it were a botanist (Oakes Ames) and a painter (Blanche Ames). Born in 1878, Blanche actually designed the mansion after firing the architects who were making it too ostentatious. From the distance it looked pretty square and unremarkable, but closer up was full of surprising patterns of granite, a huge bell imported from Cuba on the roof and stained glass windows. Unfortunately the mansion wasn't open, but I looked up Blanche online when I got home and found she was a really neat person. She illustrated her husband's book of orchid research, painted in oils, and worked hard for womens rights, especially for access to birth control, all her life. She engineered the dams that created the lakes in the park, and received a patent for inventing an antipollution toilet at the age of 90. All this while raising 4 children.

After peeking in the mansion's windows, we walked around the ponds and over the earthen dams. The biggest pond was frozen over and people were walking across it inspecting several ice fishing holes. We skirted it instead, to avoid a cold wind. Otherwise I was perfectly comfortable in the mid-30's temperature. We walked for about 4 miles, but only explored a small part of the park. I'll have to return to see how it looks in the spring or summer.

• • •

A good article in the NY Times on Sunday. Enough with Minimalism, how about some Maximalism for a change? (my headline)

Back to work

Bert Gallery,  up until Feb. 12

On Sunday I finally made my way back into my studio. It seems like it's been forever since I've been there, and it was great to be back even though the temperature, which started out at 30 degrees, only made it up to about 48 no matter how much I cranked the propane stove.

Once suited up in 53 layers, with a hot pot of coffee on the stove, I decided to rework the largest painting from my shoemaker series, which is about the only one not safely on exhibit now. Even though its been signed and shown, I was never really satisfied with it. It has some difficult areas, and the color needs work, but it's much too nice of a canvas to give up on.

•

I'm filing this under Things I Wish I Had Time To Do, That Could Lead to Interesting Paintings.  Roger Williams Park Zoo needs volunteers to spy on frogs.  I know, pretty exciting....but it involves a commitment of time, and a nearby pond. Ponds I got. Time, not so much.

Oh well, someday I'll be a little old retired lady hiding behind a rock on the bank of a marshy pond with a notebook. I'll be the one who's also packing a sketchpad.

Exhibitionism

Well, 2010 (just realized that number is fun to type, a good portent), is starting out very unusually busy on the exhibition front. Yesterday I packed the truck full of paintings and delivered them to the Bert Gallery before I had to report to my job. This is the first time breaking in the new truck for exactly what I bought it for, a painting transportation vehicle.  It did well and by the end of next week, when I deliver even more paintings to another exhibit I just finalized, it should settle in to saddle.

The Bert show opens on January 13, with a reception on January 16 (2-3).  I'll be showing 12 paintings from the Shoemaker series, and I have to say they look pretty good on Bert's freshly painted raw sienna walls.

Another show, which came up suddenly and out of the blue, is at Roger Williams University Law School Library in Bristol, RI.  I'll be showing a variety of work from the last 10 years in the second floor atrium lounge. More details to come.

Then in March, I'll be installing my church paintings as part of the Providence Art Windows project. My window is on Fulton street, just to the left of City Hall, and right next to the wonderful Big Nazo Puppet windows. You can see my space above the black pickup (currently exhibiting work by Amy DiPlacido).

As a result, most of my paintings will be out of studio storage for awhile. I'm looking forward to seeing the empty racks... even if it's only temporary.

Snowbound

A nice mini-blizzard this weekend has completely snowed in my studio. Although it's just a dozen steps from my back door, it doesn't seem worth shoveling out, at least until after Christmas.  I'm trying to not let that depress me. The fact is, I haven't worked in my studio for awhile. Between Christmas and one, possibly two, shows coming up in January,  I'm not sure when I'll get back in there.

I'm thinking February. I'll fight the cold and dark, fire up the propane stove and PAINT.  I can't wait.