Spring Meander

A leisurely stroll through the hills of Sugarloaf Ridge State Park may have to become a Spring tradition. The vistas are bucolic. The colors, intoxicating. Brilliant yellow-greens of the budding leaves. Bright scarlet and yellow wildflowers. Small seas of lupines that the kids couldn't help plundering. Handfuls of dark purple with their grape candy scent. The oaks are just leafing out in tender reddish ruffles. The streams still flash and sing before the heat of the summertime sucks them away. Enjoying it before the dry cicada-hum days of rattlesnake anxiety is the way to go.

Intrepid Quail

On our fence yesterday morning was a surprise visitor. A quail! I haven't clapped eyes on such a sight in years! And never in a suburban backyard. They seem to be quite rare these days even in the rural areas. The first year we moved to the Sebastopol countryside over ten years ago we would stir up whole frantic families of them when we traipsed through the tall grass in our orchard. Maybe it was increased activity under the trees, cutting the grass or the presence of cats that was to blame but after just one year they had disappeared for good. Strangely though, I never see them anymore even when we go hiking. So where did this intrepid little guy come from? He was in some kind of exchange with a big blue jay and really stuck around long enough for me to go dig out my camera, creep out stealthily onto the deck and model for a few shots before the jay scared him off. Odd.

A Good Friday and A Magical Easter

Friday seemed strangely auspicious. Besides reportedly being a rare convergence of various holy days, it was also the first full day of Spring after the Vernal Equinox, a full moon and a culmination of weeks of focused work in the studio. My personal day of hanging had arrived, an unambiguous ending of some kind. It was blessedly warm and golden which soothed my jangled nerves. Rob steered me through a mild panic over what seemed like a hundred tiny loose ends conspiring to overwhelm my presence of mind but all were eventually trimmed and forgotten or nicely woven in. Packing and transporting large works and so many was a challenge but we rose to it, with strategic leaning and some gentle rope tying. Hanging the pieces went smoothly and the canvases that had filled the inside of my wee studio were absorbed into the large space with alarming ease. Actually they looked more at home in their new temporary digs. They are more outgoing than me and craved some exposure. The day was rounded out with an evening of jitterbug dancing which I abandoned sooner than I wanted just because of sheer exhaustion.

Saturday was a frantic rummage through the shops collecting shiny bits and candies for the girls' Easter baskets, something I usually do in a casual way over a period of a few weeks. Between Rob and I we assembled an attractive pastel colored mess that was well received on Sunday morning, which began too early for me. The afternoon came on slowly and opened beautifully like poppy buds in a warm room. Mom and Dad hosted lunch and had the family table set out under the wisteria. Dad made what we proclaimed to be the best mac and cheese in the universe with Spring veggies, greens and bread. The meal was exalted by a '96 bottle of Clos du Val Cabernet, Mom's lightly chocolate Pavlova crowned with cream and fruit for dessert and a family meander through the neighborhood under flowering trees. Yes, a really lovely weekend. Now some rest.

Photo: My studio this Spring.

Thus Far

After developing the circle of figures with opaques and refining details, I finally feel very close but have to set it aside to "set up". Like a jello dessert. The last stage will require a fresh outlook and renewed energies, so I worked on something else for awhile. Clearly this is shaping into some kind of creation and celebration. A breaking and a birthing. A new story.

This photo is an odd angle because the canvas is actually resting vertically against the slider door.

More Color and New Shapes

I laid in more color and gave the shard shapes a soft dove gray shadowing which makes them recede temporarily. I am bringing them back by buffing in some more white. The outer edges cried out for something and these orbs and seed shapes began to orbit. Now I see planets and eggs and microscopic entities.

First Colors

The ghosties begin to get their first garments of various hues. At one point I began to almost hear the colors that wanted to be included. Something reminiscent of a dawn or dusk. Blues, golds, soft purples with touches of coral, bronze and pink. I think this image is about a birth of some kind. An ending and a beginning.

Taking Shape

A bit blurry but more coming through.

Emerging

Since I've been putting in some serious hours in the studio, I thought I'd post some pictures of my progress. I have several canvases in stages of progress but for this one in particular I have burned the candle to a nub. From a sea of blue an egg emerged. Well, shards of white, cupping some kind of tumult. This is the early stage. Allowing whatever it is to shine out. I used to call this process "ghosting in". Laying down the thinnest of veils until some shape becomes substantial enough to recognize and thus develop. A gentle capturing of the spirit of the thing.

Free Hugs

I first saw this over a year ago and loved it. I came home from another long day in the studio and found it had been sent my way again by a friend so I thought I'd share it. Sincerity can still shine in a jaded world. I think humanity has a pretty good shot. Creative and uplifting.

Cultural Program Alteration

Here's quintessential trippy dude Terence McKenna talking about culture as a kind of operating system of the mind that can be overwritten by a deeper, more "vitalistic" program through shamanic practices such as ingesting psychotropic plants. This is akin to my own take on culture, religion, capitalism, evolution, the world...ever since age 19 when a series of temporary mind alterations ("perturbed brain chemistry") wiped clean the old hard drive. To experience stepping off a bus, exhaled into the cityscape like a gush of seawater from a great whale to hear the trees in the park singing my name while they tossed the moon like a ball and the gutters rang with bells...well. I never went back to Kansas. I became the smallest weed cracking through the sidewalk and the farthest star winking in the fog. It flashed through my body: it's all more beautiful, alive, connected and simple then I could know with my head. That's been my stance ever since, seemingly outside the cultural norm but deeper inside something more real. A place where old cliches like "love makes the world go 'round" are reborn to their original radiant profundity. In those days I came upon a shattered store window and plucked a shard from the wreckage. It became an icon for me, a piece of my old world view that showed me where I'd been limited and now had broken free. I still keep that hunk of glass upon an altar of bird nests in my studio and still revel in the beauty of this elegant universe and my place in it.

This clip has some fine far out art by the likes of Alex Grey and Mark Henson, among others, and a rather eerie soundtrack.

Big and Blue

Gray skies make for good painting conditions in the studio, diffused light and an excuse for a blazing wood fire. I've settled into working on several pieces at once which seems to assuage creeping anxieties about producing enough work. I work with a canvas until I've poured as much juice as I can into it. Then I abandon it for another and then another until eventually I'm back to the first with fresh perspective and invigorated inspiration. And so on. This rotation lets me go with the flow easier. When a piece is really asking to be worked, then I dive in. Like my houseplants when they ask to be watered, it's an almost audible sensation. I've been developing this one image in white on black, veering from liking where it's going to despair that I'm ruining it (standard procedure for me). Finally I let it rest. I was laboring and I'm not keen on that feeling. I prefer ease and excitement. So I lay it aside and face the waiting mob of white before me. I'm surrounded by big blank canvases and if I don't do something, they will bring me down. My favorite remedy for this situation is to play. I either sketch a bunch of loose ideas out on paper or, even better, just fool around with color on these big intimidating hunks of gessoed substrate. I find it supremely relaxing, enjoyable and I think I'm good at it. The results are always satisfying to me, at least. Apple green smudging into citron misted with grey and tinged with brilliant red. Or a warm mottle of tangerine and dark pink struck though with browns. Today I tackled the big kahuna. My four by six footer. I muscled it onto the easel and dug out a pint of ultramarine I plucked from Grandpa's studio detritus when we moved him to the nursing home. I slashed though that cruel white with big globs of brilliant blue. Smearing and blotting and buffing out. It took awhile and as I was working I got to know a whole new Blue. Not at all cold. Exciting. Deep. Radiant. Big and blue, like a new world. I think I like this wide open territory and I am enheartened. All is good.

Garbage Vortex

Since "feeling like crap" has been the beat at home lately, it's not surprising that this newsy tidbit surfaced on my radar. I wasn't aware until the other day that there is a Garbage Vortex twice the size of the continental United States floating out in the Pacific ocean. Yes, two enormous patches of plastic crap stew, swirling out there on either side of the Hawaiian Islands, held in place by the North Pacific Gyre ocean currents. The world's garbage has always migrated to this coagulation of debris only to eventually biodegrade but the world's plastics do not break down quickly enough so we are left with 100 million tons of flotsam comprised of every plastic doodad manufactured in the last 50 years. No matter the origin, every Happy Meal toy or ballpoint pen or summer flip flop ever made will end up there. It floats underneath the water's surface so it cannot be detected by satellite photos. Lurking like a mythic deep sea creature it roams the waters "like a big animal without a leash" barfing up garbage when it hits land. Another wonderful creation of modern humankind.

Photo of an albatross carcass from Algalita Marine Research Foundation

More haunting photos here.

In Flew Enza

Gone viral. It has been a trying week dealing with that ancient beast, the Flu. It stampeded through, brutally trampling birthday plans and ruining Valentine's Day. Dad went down first and freaked us all out. Then Mom. Then Eden. Then my brother. Now Rob. Witnessing it firsthand, I can testify. It is bad stuff. Raging fever, bone-crushing pain, torturous headache, tubercular cough, nausea and, scariest for me with Eden, delirium. Looking right through me with these big fevered eyes, jabbering nonsensically. I just hate that. So far I have remained the unscathed nurse feeling my own life expectancy pared down by the blunt edge of worry, garlic-eating like a Sicilian and drinking raw vinegar to stay well. Casa de plague. I wouldn't wish this on anyone. Stay well, everybody.

Picture: Supersaturated superimposition of birds over a microscopic photo of the influenza A virus- by me.

Uncle Don

My Uncle Don passed away this afternoon. My dad's closest in age brother, he had become somewhat estranged from his family, living for many years in a remote area outside of Spokane near the Idaho border so I don't have any recent memories. He was a more frequent visitor in my childhood and I have vivid recollections of him showing up out of the blue with his guitar and the hours-long playing sessions he and Dad enjoyed. A relentless stream of country and blues filling the house, beer and cigarettes, cousins clamoring around and it always seemed to culminate in a full on barbecue with milkshakes or some other looms-large-in-a-kid's-mind kind of spread. It always seemed like something special when he turned up. So I'm posting this photo of Don here with my aunt and cousin Ray in about 1971 or so. He doesn't have his guitar but this is just like I remember him. Hanging out, thoughtful, a little distant but with lots of music. So long, Uncle Don.

Devoted To Voting

Even when I have mixed feelings about who and why. When I turned eighteen I was a self-identified anarchist. I chose forthrightly not to "participate in the system". In other words, I didn't vote and spent the next eight years grappling with Reagan reality. After four awful years, I did my civic duty though it made no difference. Even so, I have never failed to vote. Even when my faith in the integrity of our elections was shaken in 2004. This election holds so much weight. Bush almost gone. Almost gone. The nightmare will end but who will be the leader to guide the cutting edge of change? As much as I like the idea of a woman president as a symbol of a new era, I do NOT want an old-school, business-as-usual, wife-of-Bill whose most powerful attribute is her ability to inspire folks to vote against her. (I have actually seen Stop Hillary bumperstickers !) If anyone could mobilize a disillusioned Republican from a sit-it-out mentality, she could. I'm sorry but she is just too Last Century to lead the charge. Early on, I briefly played with the idea of voting for Ron Paul in the primary because I wasn't excited about any of the Dems and I'd love to see the country riding on a choice between two decent candidates. He at least elevates the discourse on the Republican side, a breath of fresh air stirring up the stale flotsam of rhetoric. A committed Constitutionalist, he speaks with sincerity, intelligence and conviction despite some crackpot ideas. His Libertarian leanings conjure my old freedom-loving anarchist "the best government is no government" ideals which I still carry except where it distinctly does not address the elephant in the room: corporatism and its corrosive effect on our democracy. So my serious vote has been veering toward the guy who's been talking straight up about all the stuff I worry about: John Edwards. Even though he's a wealthy Southern white guy whose name will always remind me of the 2004 debacle, he met the pertinent issues head on: break up corporate media, make universal health care a priority, reinvigorate the middle class, support small business, ease poverty and end the damn war. But now he's tossed in the towel and I'm left looking at maybe the only candidate who really has the potential to be the change we need. Young, energetic, black, idealistic and genuinely inspiring when he speaks about "strengthening the pillars of a just society" or "building accountable institutions, strong legislatures, honest police forces, free presses". Potent language. About coming together, building, guiding. Renew our standing in the world. Be the change we want to see. All good stuff. But words alone won't make it happen. Can inspiration? Our good old American tolerance and spirit of goodwill has been frayed under the strain of fear, suspicion and the us versus them fracture so methodically cultivated these last seven years. The time has come to reclaim our ideals as a country and I think Obama has the vision to see it happen. He has my vote.

P.S. 2/1/08 State Representative Mark Cohen, PA summed up my feeling when wrote in his Daily Kos piece The Coming Obama Explosion:

"An Obama victory would re-establish the Horatio Alger inspired myth that any American can grow up to be President. A Clinton victory would offer the more limited lesson for many that any relatively young wealthy former first lady with experience in high elective office can become President.

An Obama victory would be a victory for a fundamental change in direction. A Clinton victory would be a victory for political change when justified by a detailed study of the facts and careful reading of the political winds and the interests of wealthy campaign contributors".

Graphic of silkscreen limited edition print from OBEY Propaganda Engineering.

Full Rotation

After literally three months of pain and limitation from an inflamed rotator cuff, I am back in full swing. All my angst about "deterioration", "fraying tissue" and "ultimately, surgery may be necessary" has washed away and I am reveling in full mobility. It's been less than 48 hours since I went to see our friend and fabulous bodyworker Susan McDaniel with an office in Sebastopol (susanmcdaniel@yahoo.com). She is an orthopedic massage therapist and knows the human musculature and joint system like a mama knows her baby. She gently rocked my entire shoulder, methodically reawakening every little muscle from it's traumatized trance. The big problemo was actually the very common condition of weak supraspinatus, infraspinatus and teres minor muscles probably exasperated by poor computer posture, painting and relentless guitar playing which led to "impingement" which is just a fancy way of saying hot barbs of nagging pain. She gave me a long stretchy rubberband thingy, called a Thera-Band, and told me just how to pull on it to easily strengthen those little guys. Three movements, five times each. That's all. It actually felt so good to do it the first time that I had to pace myself to keep from overdoing it. By nightfall I was 75 percent improved. Today I feel almost completely free. I am so grateful to Susan for her expertise. Hallelujah! I really don't know why I didn't go to her sooner. Now I can get my new year off to a better start.

Rosette from ancient Roman fragments as depicted in a hand-colored engraving published by Carlo Antonin in 1781.

Open Territory

I just bought my first BIG canvas. A few, in fact. One of my resolutions this year was to start to work larger. I was researching substrates online and tracked down some biggies for around $130 each (not including shipping). Rob, the ever thrifty, called around town just to compare and on a fluke Riley St. was having a big 50% off sale. So this beauty is a gallery-wrapped whopping 4 feet by 6 feet and I got it for a song. 57 bucks. It was too big to fit in the car and it takes up a big chunk of my studio space. That's a lot of white for me. I've only painted up to 30" x 40". I also got two in a 38" x 48" size. So, my work's cut out for me. Painting new territory. It's giving me some crazy dreams and not a little anxiety but the time is ripe.

Timber!

After enjoying some extended cheer gazing upon our glittering Christmas tree these past rainy gray weeks, we finally stripped it down a few days ago and toted it outdoors to become fragrant explosive kindling for the studio woodstove. Shhh. Don't tell Eden I posted this, she'd be mortified but it's just so funny. She's in the habit of sketching her feelings out on paper and then leaving the snippets tossed around for parental eyes. I guess she was none too happy about taking the tree down even though we kept it up two weeks into January. (Not an unheard of tradition in some parts of the world...Mexico, for instance). This was before the deed was done and she had me pegged as the likely culprit. Rob actually did the thing. I don't know why I'm wearing my glasses or what the frown means. Focused ill intent? Malevolence? That's our homemade angel looking on, aghast. Probably Eden's stand-in. She's seems to be over it now.

Brochure Torture

Last Friday I began work on putting together a long overdue new brochure for the biz. For a few years now we have been sending stores a growing collection of product sheets, postcard add ons and desktop printed price lists with order sheets. Very agitating to my aesthetic and professional sensibilities but slick little booklets cost money and we still have lots of the other motley mix so we've put it off. Now that we have some new designs, I set to it with a fresh New Year's goal-busting attitude. I want to streamline. Simplify presentation. Pull it together with a consistency of design. An eight page booklet seemed an easy feat last week but it has waxed into a little hair pulling stress fest. I have decent Photoshop skills but when you are dealing with dozens of images of different dimensions, getting the color right, making sure code numbers are correct, accounting for full bleeds and trim lines, making constant design decisions which may or may not pan out a day later when you bring in another element, well...it can get a bit ugly. Adding to the mix is my shoulder's "stop clicking that mouse" pain nag, general household interruptions and desire to make it look more than just a bunch of stacked rectangles. I am reminded so vividly why I did not stay in the graphic arts field. So, I'm almost done. The brochure is... OK. But, boy, do I appreciate what you pay graphics folks for. I'd almost pay money not to do it. Maybe next time I should.

Body Rhythm Goddess

I painted this image for the cover of Kris Freewoman's DVD, a "Body Rhythm Goddess-A Dance Ritual for Body and Soul", a different kind of workout incorporating Yoga, African Fusion dance, Pilates and deep relaxation created with the intention to reconnect us with our own inner rhythms and inspire us to step into the "magical circle of joyful fitness". Sounds very juicy. She wanted the four elements active in the image which I think I accomplished without being too contrived. The shapes in the border were also inspired by the elements. More info about the DVD, where to purchase it and all can be found at her website.

The blue border looks curved because I just took a photo of the booklet.