Exhibit update

Three little paintings (Gouache on Paper, 7inx5in) of the trees left by the Long Mesa Fire of 2002 in Mesa Verde National Park where I was Artist in Residence in 2008.  They are currently on exhibit in my show at the Bert Gallery. I will be at the gallery on Saturday, February 22 from 2 to 3, if you are in the neighborhood, stop in and say hi!

Year in Review - 2009

I spent my New Year's Eve sitting in front of the fire drinking a little champagne and reading over my last year of blogging.  My memory is notoriously bad, so being able to review the year this way makes me glad to have posted over the last 12 months, even if no one was to read it. But I've also made some good connections along the way, which makes me happy that some people have read it, so if you're reading my blog now...thank you and Happy New Year!

I have to say, for all the dissing of 2009 I've heard, it was not a bad year for me, and for that I'm grateful. Even though I often fantasize about ditching the day job, I survived two rounds of layoffs and I know, intellectually, it's a good thing. Unemployment would not mean more time in the studio, it would mean more time on interviews. If I was lucky enough to find another job, would probably mean longer hours for less pay. So I guess I'm glad I kept my job.

More importantly though, those I care about are doing ok. Although I would wish better health for some, we are all still here, still supporting ourselves and still getting along.

The most disappointing thing this year has been in my work. After three or four years of intense work on my last series, I haven't produced much substantial since my show at the end of 2008. I have been thinking a lot, but haven't found the same kind of focus as I had with my Shoemaker Series yet. I do have some ideas floating around, and found a special dune-ish inspiration last summer, so paintings will follow...

So where did all the time go? Let's see...

In January I went to classes at the Museum of Natural History in Roger William's Park called "Drawing from the Collection" and learned to love taxidermy.  I focused on owls, and it gave me some ideas about incorporating these little spirits into my work.  It was also very cheering (if freezing) to hop on an overnight bus to attend the inauguration in Washington. It was a great experience to feel so hopeful about the shift in direction our country chose, and although everything is far from wonderful, I still feel hopeful to have someone leading this country who can think in more than one dimension. I had washed my hands of the judgment of the American Public, so had to promptly unwash them.


My friend Mary Grady was the one who got me out into January's cold on those adventures. Her's usually take place up in the sky, so check out her site if you like all things aviation.

In February I said goodbye to my 1989 Toyota pickup. You would think swapping it for a new 2009 version would be exciting but I still feel a pang when I think about it and wonder if I did the right thing. The new truck is much smoother, but bigger and not nearly as friendly. But I gave my old truck to my college-age niece, so I get to take it for a spin once in a while. I have to admit I'm amazed at how stiff, pokey and noisy it rides now that I'm used to the other. But it served me well for 20 years and delivered a lot of paintings. 

In March I found out that one of the national park artist residencies I had applied for had accepted me. In fact, I was to be the first AIR at Great Dunes National Park.  A few weeks later, I got a phone call which told me that my name was chosen in a lottery to stay in dune shack on Cape Cod.

Quite a coincidence, and it was nice to be able to anticipate hiking barefoot through the dunes to get me through the blustery chill of March.

As excited as I was about planning my next residency, I still owed Mesa Verde a painting from my 2008 residency there. I finished it in June,  just over the year deadline. Those at the park were very patient and resisted showing up at my studio door with their flat rimmed ranger hats and crisp khaki uniforms to seize what I owed them. I'm glad they like it when it finally arrived. 

In August, after a little angst about whether I could get the time off work, and keeping a nervous eye on Hurricane Bill which was charging up the coast, I was dropped off at the dune shack Thalassa and spent an idyllic week there, hiking over the dunes and along the shore, watching the huge waves kicked up by the hurricane, drawing, swimming and entertaining a few guests.

Thalassa

I hardly had time to shake the sand out of my shoes before heading out to Colorado and  Great Sand Dunes National Park in September.  The dunes were much higher there, but worth the climbing. I'm still working on posting my journal, but the first two installments can be found here.



The rest of the fall was spent in getting my application out for Denali National Park (rejected!) and happily sorting through some exhibition opportunities which have come my way. I drop off the paintings for the first one, at Bert Gallery in Providence, tomorrow and will have more details soon.

It will be nice to move some of my paintings out of the cold studio and into nice warm gallery space.  And it will be nice to move me into the cold studio to make more...

Here's to 2010, it's going to be a good year.

A painting for Mesa Verde National Park

This morning I finally shipped my painting to Mesa Verde National Park as my donation and thanks for my time as Artist in Residence. It's been over a year since I had a chance to live in the park and explore the cliff dwellings, so it's a bit late, but the ranger in charge of the program, Coella Drenske, was very gracious and patient about it.

This was my second attempt at a full sized oil of the cliff dwellings. I posted the sketch for the first here but ran into trouble with it and it just wasn't interesting enough as a painting to struggle with. Sort of like having an argument about a subject that doesn't interest you. So I decided it would be better just to start fresh, and this is the result. I hope they like it.

Studying Mesa Verde

I've worked in my "winter studio" (a room in my home with heat) for the last few months on interactive acrylic paintings and drawings from my Mesa Verde residency. I'm very late this time in donating a painting to the park, but the exhibit I had in November left no time for other subjects. I will ship an oil painting off to Colorado before the 1 year deadline is up though, and before I head back out to Colorado and Great Dunes National Park in September.

It's really good though to revisit my impressions from the park, and I'm well along on a painting from the study above, as well as several others. I'm back in my garage studio, working in oils again and thinking about ochre and sage, big skies and the dry, rocky earth...and space....

Flirting with Spring, thinking of the West

It was starting to seem like it was not too premature to anticipate spring, so last Saturday I heated up the studio to about 50 degrees and started an oil painting of a Mesa Verde scene, my first oil painting since my show, and a step toward fulfilling my promise to donate a painting in appreciation for my Artist Residency last May.

The next day a blustery storm began which dumped about a foot of snow and big drifts in front of my studio door. So much for spring! But the sun looks strong on the snow and even though the temperature is only in the teens, spring is still on the way.

This weekend it's supposed to be milder, and I'm glad, because it was really nice to be working in oils again, and I need to process my Mesa Verde work, especially since I'm applying for new residencies for this year. Coincidentally, the first two I've applied to are so close to Mesa Verde I'll probably get my groceries in the same supermarkets.

One is at Great Dunes National Park. Who knew that the tallest sand dunes in North America are at the foot of the Rocky Mountains? I thought the dunes in Cape Cod National Seashore were big when I did my residency in 1997, but it would be very bizarre to draw even larger dunes with snow capped peaks behind them instead of the ocean.

The other is San Juan National Forest, My husband and I drove through the San Juan Mountains on the Million Dollar Highway (US 550) on our way back to the airport in Denver last May and the scenery was incredible. The housing looks very cool too, in the historic Aspen Guard log cabin which was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, 12 miles north of Mancos, Colorado over a dirt road and tucked into an Aspen grove.

It will be a few months before I find out if I get chosen for either one, in the meantime, I'll probably apply for the Petrified Forest National Park and Grand Canyon residencies, just to hedge my bets.

Hello 2009

Well, so much for temperatures in the 60's. The new year is starting with fresh snow and freezing temperatures. But it's all good. It's time to plot new explorations and the indoor months of January and February are a good time to do it.

New Year's Day is a wonderful unstructured holiday with time off but no mandatory rituals. So today I had the luxury of time to think about how I'm going to approach fulfilling my Artist in Residence obligation to Mesa Verde. I need to send them a picture, but Mesa Verde is very difficult for me to make my own somehow. The park has such an identity with the people of the cliff dwellings, their architecture and pictorial language. I mean, how can I hope to express myself as well as Pueblo native Verda Toledo does in her fabulous pottery (I was lucky enough to by this from her while I was there).

It's going take some thinking about, that's for sure. And it's good to shift my focus from the shoe machines and stretch my mind in another direction. I may even try to interpret the park through printmaking, and finally book some time in AS220's printmaking studio.

The wonderful 70's

I'm scanning in a bunch of slides for another Blurb book, this time as a Christmas present, and I came across this one of one of my first one-person shows. This one was the Gaspee Days Art Festival in 1975. The kids on the right are my brother Matt and sister Tess, seated is my sister Nancy. They still come to my shows.

Making books on Blurb is getting addictive. I'm now thinking of making a book of my national park artist-in-residence journals. It would be a good project to work on while I work on my painting to send to Mesa Verde.

Flashback to Mesa Verde

Here's a video of me during my artist residency at Mesa Verde National Park. It's a bit goofy, but gives an idea of the feeling of wandering through the ruins alone. That is, alone except for my filmmaker husband John, who took the footage.

Catching up

This drawing is one I did from the Nordenskiold Trail on Wetherill Mesa. As I was drawing a very gusty wind picked up and it began to sprinkle. I turned the drawing over to wait it out and it soon stopped, but the clouds turned darker and began to smudge to the horizon, so I decided to pack up up. Sitting is a forest of dead trees on a deserted mesa at 7,000 feet is no place to be in a lightening storm. The wind almost blew me off the trail on the way back to the car, and it was hailing by the time I got home, so I knew I made the right decision. I finished the drawing in the hogan.

I find it amazing that it is taking me so long to catch up after being away for only 2 weeks, but such is the case I'm afraid. I've decided not to try to finish the Mesa Verde journal in this blog, but I will wrap it up and post it in my "words" section soon I hope! I'm also working on creating a photo album on Picasa to store my Mesa Verde pictures. I'll post the link when the captions are done. I figure that's the best way to let people pick which photos they might want to view, since I took almost 300! Meanwhile I'll try to bring the blog up to date, but my lunch break is over so I'll have to post again later....

Mesa Verde life

It's true, there is no internet or cell phone coverage in Mesa Verde, but a leaking tire on my car has made a trip into Cortez necessary. It wouldn't do to be stuck out on Wetherill Mesa with a flat. The compensation, though, is a stop at the Spruce Tree Cafe, a cool little internet cafe on Main St. And, as it's been snowing and hailing for the last couple of days (It was 85 degrees when I came) I'm going to see how the weather goes today before I head to Wetherill Mesa. So here's a chance to catch up....



I left Parker, CO and my cousins house on May 19 an hour later than planned, but I knew I would. But by 8 am I was headed south on 285 on my way to Mesa Verde. The views were incredible on the drive though the Rockies foothills, then across flat farmland and irrigation circles like those I had seen from the plane. Another winding climb through the San Juan Mountains and I then headed west. Finally the massive rock formation of Park Point came into view and I knew I was close to the entrance of Mesa Verde.

The park was quiet when I arrived at 7:30, as I would find it is every evening after the tour buses and RVs leave. Turkey vultures roosted in the trees and circled the canyon behind headquarters, and in watching them, I caught my first startling view of a cliff dwelling, Spruce House, in the setting sun of the canyon wall opposite. Every one of the red sandstone park buildings was closed and I wandered, looking for anyone in a stiff brimmed hat to ask where I could find historic hogan #37.
Finally I remembered one of the rangers in charge of the program, Coella, had said she lived in stone house #4 if I needed anything. Across the street from headquarters were about a dozen square stone houses, so I walked among them till I found #4, knocked and got directions to a service road I had passed. I drove the short rutted dirt road reading the numbers on the small round dwellings. Number 37 is nearest the road, but set below and hidden in the trees.

I entered a dark, low ceilinged porch with a stone slab floor and a primitive fireplace at the far end. The door of old dark planks was padlocked, but on further examination, it wasn’t clicked shut so I slipped it out and entered a clean, sky lit white interior.

Monday I met with the rangers to file the required paperwork for my backcountry privileges and found that not only did I have a key to my hogan, but the other keys on my chain unlocked the gates to any road or cliff dwelling in the park! All I had to do was file a backcountry permit and notify dispatch where I was going. Of course I couldn’t enter the spaces in the cliff dwellings that were roped off, since they are too fragile for foot traffic, but I can have a cliff dwelling all to myself after the tourists go home. In fact, this week I can have an entire Mesa (Wetherill) to myself since the road is closed until the 25th. But I have the key to the gate! This is a rare privilege that I hadn't expected but am very grateful to the park for.

After paperwork was taken care of, I did the touristy things, took a Balcony House tour, wandered around headquarters looking for a good place to have my charcoal drawing class I am giving as part of the program, toured Spruce House, drove the Mesa loop and got out at every overlook. It was 85 degrees and I could feel the water evaporate from my body as soon as I drank it.

I returned to the hogan and decided it was time to begin work, so I brought my watercolors a few hundred feet from the hogan to where the Spruce Canyon Trail exits the canyon. There the sandstone curves to close off the canyon and I sit on the flat rocks at the canyon’s end. It’s then that I notice how quiet it is. I never realized how much noise birds wings make -- I hear the fluttering before I see them and almost feel if I should duck, they sound so loud. And I don’t thing there are more flies than usual, it’s just that I hear them coming ten feet away. No traffic, no electrical hum, no airplanes. Just the wind and the occasional critter.

On Tuesday I returned to the Spruce Canyon trail and found a ledge just over the trail that was cool and sheltered and worked for a few hours on a charcoal drawing.


Then it was off to headquarters again to file backcountry permits, submit a press release for my class, and be introduced to the staff. Although all the other parks I have been in have been very accommodating, this has got to be the friendliest park I’ve been to. Everyone seems genially happy to meet the “artist-in-residence”.

After dinner I decided to try the Interactive acrylics in a really cool abandoned picnic area in between my hogan and the “official” picnic area. The picnic tables are sagging, but still have their faded plastic red checked tablecloths. An old chuck wagon is parked on the canyon rim. It’s almost spooky here, the ghosts of picnics past seem to hover in the fading light, and the signature Mesa Verde question comes to mind...why was this place, once so full of life, suddenly abandoned?

Wednesday was my first trip “backcountry”. This was the first time my rental car decided to show a CHECK TIRE PRESS warning on the dash, and I debated the chances of getting stuck 14 miles over winding mountain roads on Wetherill Mesa. But I decided to risk it since my tires looked fine and I did have a park radio if I really got stuck. I drove to the Wetherill Mesa gate, two NPS vehicles were parked just up the road inside. Four padlocks locked the gate. I had only two keys. I got out and probably looked confused so one of the big white pickups backed up the road to the gate and another friendly park ranger got out and showed me how to unlock the gate. I still find it rather amazing that they seem happy to have an artist cluttering up the joint when they have work to do. So off I went, over the winding road that went steeply up and down, then overlooked Cortez, where I could get an amazing good cell phone signal, my first in the park.

Eventually I reached the end of the road, deserted parking lots and the tourist shelter. There one usually has to board a tram to the cliff dwellings, but since the trams weren’t running, I headed down the one lane road in my car. A wild fire had killed most of the trees on the end of the mesa, and the shapes they left were bizarre. Like driving through a house of horrors in limbo. At Long House I found a place to pull over, next to another shelter. Apparently the feral horses liked its shelter as much as the tourists did, as it was littered with piles of manure.

The walk down to Long House begins with a set of stairs, and then a paved path. The sandstone wall the path hangs from is carved in swirling shapes. Long House was quiet and beautiful. Two wheelbarrows and some buckets were the only sign that anyone had visited. From the dwelling I looked out to a beautiful view down the canyon. There was still water in the spring on the back wall, in many dwellings the springs had dried up due to drought. I sat at one end and drew for a few hours, reveling in the rare experience of spending time in a cliff dwelling, no one, as I thought, within miles. Then I heard 25 people laugh. I jumped up and looked over the edge and saw a ranger-led group just turning the corner on the path to the dwelling. I quickly dipped back in and continued to draw as they made their way closer, until the ranger’s head appeared at the top of the ladder that led to where I sat. It was the same ranger who had given the tour I had taken on Monday, and he told me that the group were seasonal rangers in training, which explained why they were there. I stayed for part of the tour, then headed back up to drive the rest of the loop and check out Kodak house and the overlooks. There is a one mile hike through the burnt trees on the Nordenskiold Site trail and I realized it was the perfect place to be able to sit and draw the trees. I sat on a fallen log and drew till a fierce cold wind picked up and it began to rain. I headed home, determined to return.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Denver

It was a very clear day for flying and taking pictures on my way to Denver yesterday. I really enjoyed seeing how the patterns we humans have made on the face of the earth interacting with those we have not yet erradicated. Even in the hundreds of miles of plowed fields the natural patterns of the earth's surface seem more obvious than the grid pattern that farmers have etched over it.

The irrigation circles are always fun to see too.

After spending a great afternoon and evening with my uncle and cousin's family I'll begin the 7 hour drive to Mesa Verde. From the window I can see the snow capped Rockies on the horizon and I'm really looking forward to seeing the landscape from the road.

Art supplies to go...

Here is another travel set I've made up for watercolors. I used a small cigar tin, but it also works well with a metal CD case, like the kind AOL used to send out way back when. I cut off the ends of the paint brushes, and stuck a little velcro on the handles and on the box so they don't move around and get bent bristles. A sliver of a flat sponge is also held on with velcro. This set will easily fit in a pocket, just add water and a small watercolor pad!


I've also made up 10 charcoal sets for the class I am going to teach in Mesa Verde. Each has soft, med and hard charcoal pencils, some soft vine charcoal, 3 kinds of erasers, a blade for sharpening, clips and some wipes for getting the charcoal off your hands after class. After all, charcoal drawing is a dirty business.

My tripod easel is coming along. I found t-nuts that fit the mounting bolt at the hardware store, and have attached one to a lightweight board, which I will mount to the tripod head. I think it just may work, and will post photos of it when finished. It should be pretty light and portable, more so than any of the travel easels I've owned or looked at.

Packing for Mesa Verde

This is the kit I've come up with for my Mesa Verde paintings. I'm going to try using a new product, acrylic "Interactive" paints by Chroma. I think they'll be more practical to travel with than oils, even though I never liked acrylics. These have a nice satin finish though, not plasticy at all, and can be wet down and reworked for about a day. I used an old cigar box and filled film canisters with my colors (If you go to a photo lab, they'll probably be happy to give you all you want and if you can find the canisters with the clear tops it makes it easy to find your colors) If the paint dries around the lids, it peels right off. I put a pack of palette paper in the lid.

Now I'm trying to rig up the perfect lightweight easel. I'm probably going to go with a modified tripod.