Call me corny and predictable, but I’m a huge devotee of Monet.  I know, there are a thousand bathrooms in a five mile radius where a Monet poster hangs.  I know.  But I fell in love at 13, and I never recovered.

My parents took me to NYC that summer.  We went to the Met.  The way I remember it, and the way I describe it to my 14, 15 and 16  year old students is:  coming around a corner in the museum, my eyes glazed over from Masterpieces,  I saw my first live Monet.  All my synapses fired.  I went into shock.  The way I remember it, it was a small painting, with color like a bucket of jewels.  I’d never seen color act as a participant in a painting like that before.  That was what it was ABOUT.

I know– color is the easiest way into  a work of art.  Everyone, except for possibly the color blind, can be touched by color, regardless of their insensitivity to the other aspects of a work.  But, in my soul, I am a colorist, and that little painting was screaming in my language.

On my last trip to France, five years ago, I had some pilgrimage duties planned.  I went way out of my way to visit Giverny.  And I planned to end the trip at L’Orangerie.  I was devastated to discover that the restoration of L’Orangerie was still ongoing and it was closed.  So, on this trip to France, I set aside one afternoon to make up for that missed opportunity.  I had seen isolated pieces of Les Nymphaes at various museums all over the world, and I’d seen studies for them.  But I had never seen them as Monet intended them to be seen,  all together.

I felt a real rush of empathy when I saw the sign at the mouth of the gallery  ”Silence”.  Indeed.  I wanted to allow my soul to drop down into wordlessness and to float into this work.  Nobody else seemed to have that impulse, however.  I kept wishing I had a special pass to come after hours and stand in that space alone, and allow it to subsume my field of vision and sweep me up.  It had to do that in spite of elbows and voices and cameras and other folks with a more relaxed interest.

Over the years I’ve read a lot about this particular work– the work of Monet that I’m most interested in.  I’ve read that it moves toward abstraction possibly because he was quite elderly and his vision was failing.  But seeing  the ensemble live I was shocked at  the explosiveness of the abstraction.   In my journal I wrote that they were “more wildly and vigorously abstract than I’d expected– as violently flung down as a Pollock or a de Kooning .”  They had a topography that surprised me as well.  Encrusted and multi-layered.  Thought and rethought.  I took photographs of abstract details.  But at a distance the work locked together like the dials on a safe.  They were definitely not the work of an artist whose vision had failed.  They were infintely sure-footed and wise.

I sat down and found myself settling deeply into the trunk of  a reflected willow tree.  It held me for an inexplicably long time– not billiantly colored, simply a dark textured vertical.  It was sinewy, rope-like, male and archetypal.  There was more in this shrine to nature and art than I had expected .

How nice to still find surprises in one of my oldest relationships.

Before I settle down to a summer’s work it’s good to do a little gypsy roaming.  I just had a great break from my routine, exploring Provence.  At first I enjoyed the companionship of wonderful friends at Le Beaucet in a delightful country home. We saw the sights, enjoyed the regional foods and wines, and were expertly guided, tended and fed by Mary James and Xavier (www.maryjames.net) .

In my journal I made a list of sounds and sights and smells that were especially vivid.  And of course, tastes.  There were many.  It was a sensual feast from morning until night.  Lavendar and garlic in the markets, wild thyme disturbed by my feet on a hike up the hill,  patinas that were rich and complex, cicadas in the heat, a tomato reduction dressing an eggplant that I will not soon forget.

The second week of my journey I took off by myself with my tent and sleeping bag to explore more unknown territory.  Mary James equipped me with a giant map that I’d stop and consult about 40 times a day.  Thank goodness France’s signage is very logical and finding one’s way is made simple.  The un-simple thing is navigating a 10th century road in a car if anyone else decides to come from the opposite direction.

I circumnavigated Mont Ventoux and walked the streets of more hilltowns than I can recount.  I also took some afternoons to sit beside swimming pools in the intense heat.  I chose campgrounds with pools that had splendid views so I could swim and paint and rest all at the same time. I’d paint a while, then fall asleep in the heat, water  sounds lulling me.  Then I’d wake up and paint some more.  Camping allows for a lot of intimacy with the nature of a place.  I loved going to sleep to the sounds of the cicadas, and waking to the dawn birdsong.  Or seeing the moon through my tent’s little window.  In the hotel  at the airport all sound was muffled in thick carpet, and all moonlight masked by drapery.

What did I bring back?  Recognition of how I love to sit by water.  Recognition that French food is wonderful, but in the same way that North Carolina food, or any food grown and prepared with love is wonderful.  I brought back a fascination with the textures of ancient surfaces– the way a thousand year old piece of cypress used as a supporting beam gets eaten away, but stays strong;  the surface of stucco when it chips and peels and changes color;  the immense shade cast by trees when they’re allowed to grow as tall as they want without being cut down for “progress”;  the elegance of women who listen to their own inner voices instead of enslaving themselves to some kind of commercial standard of beauty and rightness; the energy,  imagination and wildness of Cezanne’s landscapes, which made me feel timid by comparison;  the brilliant engineering of the Romans, seen up close and still functional;  the logic of good national road planning;  the kindness of strangers;  a few new words added to the vocabulary;  a newfound love for the afternoon glass of French rose– if you’d told me I’d love it six months ago I wouldn’t have believed you.

But waking up this morning, thinking I was still in France, I realized I took away something else.  Because I traveled alone, in the absence of conversation–in silence– I took into my body a group of  kinesthetic impressions from the hundreds of miles speeding by under my car, the archs of the many roundabouts, the textures under my feet, the buzz and  hum of the life around me, the cyclical movement of the sun and moon.

Because I stopped each day to paint the place where I was, to examine it with care and attempt to represent the feeling of it, I brought it deeply into my conciousness.  There was a kind of oneness that occured between me and that lovely place  that went deeper than tourism.  This all came to me in a rush, before I’d really opened my eyes to the day, believing I was still in France .  Swinging my feet out of bed  I  felt the smooth texture of my bedroom’s heart pine floor and that texture told  my body I was not in France.  Returning from a camping trip when he was 3 years old , my youngest son Stewart announced “I miss my tent”.  I know exactly what he meant.

Early June is about as paradisical as North Carolina gets.  There are thousands of flowers around me– probably a hundred roses that I can see from my kitchen window.  The first tomatoes have just appeared in the garden.   There are glossy eggplants and cool cucumbers.  It’s steamy and overwhelming at midday, but gentle and ravishing at 7a.m.  I often end up planning a trip to somewhere else in June, and missing a portion of this time.  What bad planning I always end up telling myself.

The Ruin has reached a lovely state of maturity.  The rock walls I built last summer now mark the borders of a couple of painterly and colorful beds– one filled with organic and heirloom vegetables, and one with flowering plants.  I’m puttering with some antique sections of iron fencing, trying to give the Ruin  a sense of enclosure.  More and more my entertainments end up in the Ruin.  It has an irresistable pull.  A couple of weeks ago friends from Greensboro came for supper and we started there, evolving into the dining room, and finishing out the evening on the front porch.  I read an article about the guy who came up with the idea for The Moth, on public radio.  He had great memories of story telling on a screened porch in the south on summer evenings, and transplanted it to NYC and public radio.

I share those great memories, adults rocking in a half dozen big old oak rockers, while the children played leapfrog on the lawn and caught lightnin’ bugs (not “fireflies”– lightnin’ bugs ).  I decided to rededicate my front porch to story telling.  So I told my dinner guests to bring a story.  I’m finding we’re a bit rusty in the story telling department, but I intend to work on that.  You think up a great story and so will I.  And next time we’re sitting somewhere in the semi-darkness of a summer evening, let’s bring it out and try it on our friends.  Let’s keep all the good stories, and more importantly, the tradition of telling the stories, alive, whether we’re sitting in a roof garden in the city,  beside a campfire in the forest, or in a rocker on an old front porch.

yum

Tonight my brother called and invited me to pick my own strawberries.  His patch has reached the point where it’s scantily filled and not worth hiring labor to pick it.  So, at dusk I went to take a look.  He told me that the end of season berries are the best.  He was telling the truth.  I ate the first strawberry I picked and it was the best  I had ever tasted.  His fruit has the added benefit of being organic, making the flavor even more intense.

I picked until it grew so dark I couldn’t tell which ones were spoiled.  Kim handed me a gallon of their wonderful milk, and told me where to find the fresh squash.  On the walk home I found a few squash that still had their blossoms clinging.  A friend told me one afternoon, after a particularly tough teaching day, to “go home and make yourself a squash casserole and pour yourself a glass of wine”.  Sounded like a good southern girl’s prescription for a return to sanity.

The walk home was  in the quickly deepening darkness.  Looking up I noticed the lopsided waxing moon, crisp and white against the sky.  At that moment the sky was light blue, but dusky, in that indescribable passage that is so hard to capture in a painting.  By the time I crossed the road darkness had taken over.  Strawberries and milk before bedtime.  Windows open with their screens in place– healthy bug and frog sounds to attend my sleep.

Last night John Borden Evans opened at the Christa Faut Gallery. It was great to see his newest work in the company of his many friends and fans here in the area. His work always has a strong resonance for me, because we have both chosen rural lifestyles and our environments have much in common.

John often creates diptychs. I recall one from a show several years ago that was immense, and divided in two parts so it could be transported. In this exhibition he had one diptych that was a small work on paper, and another that was midsized. It amused me that it hung next to a painting that was on a single canvas, but split in half by the black line of a tree trunk, so it read like a diptych as well.

This work had John’s usual wonderful quirkiness and intense sense of texture. There were paintings with his own iconography I’ve come to expect– the stars and their auras, abstracted in this show to look like jewels. There were animals arranged in pastures. But there was also a new thing going on– a quieter, more serene and restrained approach to the land in several of the paintings. They were empty of animal life, and focused on balance: of verticals and horizontals, of  smooth with rough, of darkness and light. A favorite was a snow day painting, as usual, abstracted with abandon, but all the same, reading with the truth I recognize as a student of the landscape. It conveyed the way the snow peaks out and exposes the contours of the forest floor normally hidden in the grayness of a thousand bare tree limbs. The texture he created to describe the trees in the foreground was perversely horizontal, when the obvious direction for them to have been painted would be vertical or diagonal. It married serenity and intensity,  smooth and rough, white snow sky and darkened forest,truth and the myth.  All were suspended in  quiet equilibrium.

A couple of weeks ago, I took an evening off and went to Greensboro to a workshop at the Weatherspoon.  There was a short component for teachers, followed by a kind of community-wide invitation to make a sculpture– or three, to be exact.  My one word description of the evening was “fun”.

The current exhibition of the installations and sculptures of Leonardo Drew were the jumping off place for the workshop.  The work is very dense and rich.  The palette is restrained– the white of paper, the red of rust, the brown of wood.   Much of the work is compartmentalized– assemblages of found objects.  Even more wonderful are the cast paper objects that appear in the work.  Like toys and tools constructed from eggshell they fascinate with their fragility and exactness.  Some of the work evokes  Pollock, with skeins of cast paper or other materials, put together in relief.  Real space instead of implied space.  The scale is monumental, in many cases.  Particularly arresting were, however, the small framed paper reliefs, influenced by the artist’s travels in Japan.

The workshop exercise involved retired doctors, engineers, moms, artists, students, professors and who knows what else rubbing elbows.  We were given three mason jars to serve as compartments, and told to bring found objects to work with in creating three pieces.  I was so irritated by the mason jars with their little embossed apples and pears on the surface that I worked hard to lose the jar, dignify the jar, deny the jar.

Teaching a sculpture class has sensitized me to the use of color in sculpture, so I worked with a stack of white paper lunch bags and transparent beads to make an  piece that was a kind of polite explosion.

A second piece became an illuminated cloud when I put a light source inside the jar and enclosed the jar in a blown up  bag.  Over the cloud flew a found goose.

The third piece I covered with masking tape, stacking component parts of the jar and lid to make as tall a totem as I could.  She bore a half of a face I’d found on the ground in my school’s parking lot.  She had breasts that were a milagro, slightly rusted.  I had golden paper wings in my stash– just in case I might ever need them.  The were attached to the totem’s back.  Twigs made arms and legs,  she looked perfectly ethereal.

One of many full moon paintings inspired by this place. This one: "Full Moon with Cedars" 2005

It’s a new day in a new year, beginning a new decade.  I’m grateful for that.  We talked today, at Kim and Grier’s table, over blackeyed peas and collard greens, about how we all, in our own ways, managed to miss the clock turning over.  But I think we all felt keenly this invitation to newness and change.

I marked the close of last year by writing out my intentions for the coming year.  This is much more productive than making resolutions.  I’m bad at resolution-keeping.  But if I name an intention it rides around in  my unconscious all the time, and often  has a way of making itself reality.  Looking at last year’s intentions, they seemed a bit vague, though I did notice that most of them had happened.    This year’s are very concrete.  I celebrated them with a brandy and dark chocolates that Carla had brought me.    Then I called Rodney– my friend since college days, and we tripped over one another’s sentences, talking for an hour about past, present and future.

This morning, to celebrate the newness, I could only think of taking a walk back into the woods.  Lacking tractors and chainsaws I often resort to third world techniques for getting a job done.  With my machete, bought in Central America for $1.50, and sharpened by my sons, I cut the briars out of my path, finding my way to the back of my little farm.  It was warm and the woods were a hundred soft grays.  All the recent rain had made the  mosses brilliant and lush.  I found a little spring-fed creek I’d never seen before.   After lunch I could only think to go back to the woods.  This time I brought back a sapling that had fallen and developed beautiful lichens.  Tonight, on this first night of the new year I noticed it took darkness a little longer to arrive, and when it did the white disk of the moon rose slowly up behind the bare branched trees as it has hundreds of times in my life here.  It was so beautiful it brought  tears along with thoughts of dear friends scattered and far away, and my never-ending deep gratitude for this earthly home.

A snow day in the balmy North Carolina of global warming times is a rarity.  I have always loved this experience.  The highway grows quiet.  The woodstove snaps and pops and talks back, baking one end of the den.  The cat sleeps the whole day.  Crystals are on all five million tiny tree branches.  Black crows come out to bring some contrast.  If I’m up early, the sky throws in some color– pink and yellow.  This year it’s happening just before Christmas.

In North Carolina these rare snowfalls are considered excuse enough to retreat and give in to hot chocolate and fireside sitting.  One of my favorite memories is being on the farm with three little boys, the power  having been knocked out by a terrible ice storm.  We had no water, but we had the woodstove to cook on and sit beside.  At night,  we lit the pair of antique candleabra from a time when people counted on candlelight.  Ten candles is sufficient to read by, I learned, so I read to my boys until bedtime.  My nineteenth century house seemed made for the lack of electricity.

I have grown bored with my over-decorated Frazier Firs for Christmas, so for the last couple of years I have harvested a bare branched sapling from my woods and brought it inside, hung a couple of glass icicles and crystal raindrops from it’s branches, perched a bird’s nest from my extensive collection in it, and called it the Christmas tree.  It’s an abstraction of the intense loveliness  I see out my window this morning.

Merry, cozy, beauty-filled Christmas to us all.

The grandfather oak

Driving by my house on the way from school to an appointment I was shocked to see that the oldest tree in my yard had come down in Wednesday’s hard winds.  The trunk still stands, but the yard is filled with the top,  limbs larger than most mature trees. 

This oak had been struck by lightning 40 years ago, and hit squarely by a truck in the late 70’s, in a brutal accident that killed the driver.   It had survived Hurricane Hugo eighteen years ago, losing a giant limb, but it stood otherwise intact.  Its six ancient  companion oaks had all toppled over the years, unexpectedly, striking blows  like earthquakes . 

Under this tree we had built snowmen.  My sons remember shooting their bows at a target balanced against its trunk.  We had thrown a big party beneath it to celebrate my brother’s marriage.  I had stood in its shade in my own wedding gown, as had my aunt before me.  

I had come to watch its canopy obsessively, looking for signs of sickness, and dreaded the day I knew would come.  Its canopy had been lush this past year, and it cast so many acorns on the lawn it’s impossible to walk there.  It had even taken to sending limbs down toward the ground– as if to attempt communication with its human family. 

Its trunk still stands  25 feet tall or so, with the lowest limbs  intact, but its sheltering limbs are gone.  I found myself feeling exposed,  my shelter  gone.  It reminded me of the emotions I experienced when my father died in my 20’s.  I no longer felt protected.     The man I imagined to be the strongest person on earth was gone.  The tree that would take four men’s arms to encircle is gone.  The sky is empty where there was  complex tracery.  Empty. 

My brother reminded me of my good fortune to make me feel better.  He’s right, of course.  “If this is the worst thing that happened to you today, you are okay”.  But on the phone later, calling each member of the family to announce the death, I realized we all grieve the loss of beauty.  Born before the American Revolution, witness to the life of my family for six generations, and to another family before that, this tree will have no replacement .

Today was what I always refer to as “the best day of the school year”–the day I take a group of students to galleries and museums.  These students are members of the Art Club at my school, the purpose of which is to explore the work of artists out in the bigger world. Sometimes we get lucky and we  meet artists, walk into their studios or listen to their stories and explanations.  Many times this is the student’s first trip to an art museum.  I hope that when these young people graduate they will have a high level of comfort in art venues and will continue to  enjoy them and share them with their own children.

It’s hard to beat starting your day at the hospitable McColl Center (www.mccollcenter.org)  with two towering costumes by Nick Cave  backed up by videos of the costumes dancing.

A. The moves are good  

B. The costumes are both ravishing and goofy– an unbeatable combination.

My students were enchanted.  That was a hard act to follow, but we forged ahead.  We were spellbound by the giant woodblocks by Kenichi Yoknono.  Instead of creating prints from them, the blocks  stand as the finished work.  They are 6 feet tall, inked in red, and beautifully tactile.  

One of my students got up close enough to read the text inside the KKK hoods created and decorated by Willie Little visible through the tiny eye holes.  The hoods were treated coyly as if they were as innocent as  a halloween jack o’ lantern.  They still engaged her hours later.  She was unsettled by the angry/sad messages hidden inside.

Having explored the subject of quilts in class this past week, and Gee’s Bend Quilts specifically, we saw a  quilt show at the Craft and Design Museum.  Part of my problem is that after seeing Gee’s Bend quilts I will never be the same again, or  ever again be intrigued by “pretty quilts”.  I pointed out to the girls who were looking with me though, the tedium, and the intensity of the work ethic involved in these quilts.  

I always see some yawns and perhaps even have to listen to complaints when we delve deep into an art historical era as we recently have the Harlem Renaissance and its aftermath.  But I heard no such complaints when we stood in the midst of a comprehensive exhibition like the Lois Mailou Jones show at the Mint Museum on Randolph (www.mintmuseum.org).  Carla Hanzal, curator of contemporary art,  has assembled a whole visual biography of this important artist who defied so many conventions.  

Lately I have been doing small paintings of the vegetables that have survived the first frosts, against the background of various textiles I have.  That seems to have really forged some neurological connections for me.  For that reason, I believe,  the textile designs of  Jones’ early career pulled me in. At that place she and I  met and merged as artists.  I wanted to wander around those patterns for hours.  It felt like some kind of meeting of the minds– beyond words and deep in the land of color.   They were painted in velvety gouache.  My students and my colleague pointed out to me the complex skin tones, and her remarkable command of color in her  portraiture.  One of my students asked (astutely I thought– as we’re just finishing up Cezanne) about how Jones’ landscapes painted in Europe relate to Post Impressionism.  What serious fun for the two of us, teacher and student, to dig into the painting and list every way we could find.  

Nothing in art is ever more fun than hearing the reactions of the young learner and seeing that tiny glow become a flame– of curiosity and respect .  It’s the beginning of the ignition of new and freer ways of thinking.  It’s the birthing of a mind encouraged to listen to its own voice and the reaching across time and space  of one artist to another.