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.

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.

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.

tree trunk in the maritime forest

It’s Monday back in the real world.  I’m attempting to pretend I’m all here, but I still have one foot on an island.  Yesterday’s sunrise, which seems a continent away and a month behind me, was a battle between blackened hovering clouds and peach colored light thrown at the edges of billowing cloud formations.  It came and went, shifting back and forth.  I sat in the sand and tried to paint a seized moment here and an arrested cloud there.  Sand blew low and hard, needle-pricking me.  It completely filled my paintbox and scattered itself on my page.  My brush, new and sharp-pointed- became frayed and full of sand particles.  My hair blew so hard across my face I couldn’t see.  The waves tossed spray high above the horizon line.  A heron flew overhead.  Then a peregrin falcon.  It was altogether a spectacular and peculiar sunrise.

The night before, at dusk, we had traveled to a roosting site, hidden away from the public, to watch perhaps one hundred or more egrets and ibises rocking up and down on tree limbs suspended over a perfect mirror of a pond.  The mosquitoes lit on our faces and arms and drew blood in spite of toxic doses of bug spray we’d bathed in.

Part of that day had been spent in the maritime forest, learning about plant species.  The woods were scattered with deadwood more extreme than any sculpture.  We were irresistably drawn to touch it and photograph it from every angle.  Yesterday morning we took a walk in the marsh and sat long enough on an ancient dune, now covered with cabbage palms and live oaks  ( called a hammock), to observe the behavior of fiddler crabs.  I had time enough to do a lightning fast sketch of the underbrush on the hammock.  I learned new words for the plants  and creatures that fill the marshes– spartina, sea lavendar, periwinkle snails.  Mike picked up a glass lizard, the only legless lizard I have ever seen.  Empowered by my previous night’s experience of petting the belly of a California King Snake I attempted to do the same to the glass lizard, who struck at me.  No harm done beyond the embarrassment  of my own reaction–  abject bone-rattling fear, which greatly amused my fellow adventurers.

There was butterfly catching, seining, lots of drawing to record what I saw.  I was swimming in a soup of sensation.  It made me delirious and carried me out of myself and back into union with the earth.  It is with reluctance that I bring myself back to electric lights and cars, billboards and cellphones.  I looked back at my journal from last September’s trip to this island.  In it I said that I’d had the revelation while there that the secret to living this second part of my life was to live it like a poem.  “order it and edit it and take time to live it consciously”.  This year I plan to remind myself everyday that I am in the midst of a poem.

I’m just back from the last summer vacation– a long weekend at the coast.  My friends, BJ and Rodney Cooper joined me there.  We started the weekend by staying up until 3 a.m. talking, but as time passed I unwound, and the weekend became more restful.  We bought shellfish and enjoyed cooking.  Rod made a tomato tart I can still taste if I think about it.  I took long early morning walks and spent as much time as I could outdoors.  The sunshine stupor set in, which disables thinking and forces relaxation.

Rod and I visited a small local gallery and left feeling like we’d overdosed on candy– the color oppressively bright and sweet.  One wearies of beach  cliches.  Having painted dozens of pieces in that environment I know how hard it is to find a fresh and unexpected approach.  Sometimes I give up and just paint what I see, just to be painting– no clever twist, no new idea. 

But later, back on the beach, I realized how many odd and lovely things  there were to look at.  The skies were deeply patterned wtih buttermilk clouds.  I found the perfect round black stone.  A gull walked by with a small crab in its beak.  Someone sculpted a sea turtle in the sand and paved its back with scallop shells.  The marsh was remote and romantic.  Chartreuse butterflies flocked to the wildflowers on the dunes.  They hovered next to trumpet shaped blossoms that were both orange and fuschia.  We found a dune covered in bay bushes and crushed the leaves to smell them.  Today, back in the classroom, I passed out broken seashell fragments, chosen especially  for their unexpected  qualities, and told my students to draw them, exploring them as abstract forms.

Rebekah's animated hand impression

Every year I look forward to the fall opening of the Visual Arts Center at Davidson College. It’s the occasion of the faculty show, and a lot of fun, seeing old friends and new art.  It’s a last vivid summer art memory before the chill of fall sets in.  Tonight was appropriately sultry and rich.  http://www3.davidson.edu/cms/x25463.xml

RebekahTolley is new to the faculty and was exhibiting tonight.  She is a printmaker who is concerned with exploration.  I was privileged to hear her very brief but evocative talk.  In just a few minutes she managed to spark my imagination in a dozen ways.  She touched on the idea that printmakers today seldom make editions, being less inclined to quality control and consistency than to experimentation.  Also touching on the role of the found object in her work, she showed a piece of worm-infested wood she had rolled up with ink and layered over an image of her hands.  The key word she played with in the talk was “impression”.  One piece recorded a crab’s shell– “the impression the crab has left of itself”,  just as prints are referred to as “impressions”.  Rebekah also talked about her use of morphing software to create  progression, taking her images in the direction of animation.  I was particularly taken by an elegant piece with moving hands.

Cristina Toro, who lives in upstate New York, was showing her new paintings in the smaller gallery.  Cristina is a friend, and I knew her work would be wonderful, but I wasn’t prepared for how wonderful it would be. Turning into the gallery felt like walking into a jewel box or a sultan’s tent.   Like everyone in my family, she is fascinated by pattern, and her work is a combination of the balancing of bright, but modulated colored boxes, on which appear fanciful figures.  There is dancing rhythm, humor, intimacy, narrative, all rendered in fields of flat color covered  with pattern …  Persian miniatures writ large.  There were passages that might have been whole paintings, but instead they rested in the midst of a crazy quilt picnic blanket laid for a feast.  It was the Coat of Many Colors.  It dazzled.  Best of all, it exposed something of the life and times of Cristina.  It felt like a heart-to-heart talk, like reading her journal.

detail from a painting by Cristina

On Saturday I went to Atlanta to attend a party for my friend, Becky.  Becky was retiring after an illustrious career in business.  We’ve been friends since high school, and for some time she has been a major collector of my work.  Going to Becky’s was going to be an interesting trip back in time and experience for me– seeing intimate moments removed by a number of years and hung on unfamiliar walls.

I left home early so I could stop at the High.  It had been 40 years since I’d visited that museum  so it was overdue.  I arrived so late in the day I only got to see half the museum.  Highlights:  the Oldenburg peach and pear sculpture.  The pears had been removed for some reason, but the peaches were terrific and memorable all by themselves.  The museum had a three panel Waterlily on loan from MOMA, and  judging from the way it was hung, in a kind of curve,  I would guess it was originally intended to hang in a curved space, as were the 22 panels in the Orangerie.  I enjoyed falling under the spell of the Waterlily panels.  I found myself wondering if Rothko was similarly affected by the Waterlilies.  The mood that comes from communion with the Waterlilies and with a Rothko have a lot in common, not to mention the similar experiences of very pure color.

The High had a strong collection of African American work,  and in several cases I was seeing the work of these artists live for the first time.  I loved the three pieces I saw by Tanner, strong, sophisticated and lyrical.  The Elizabeth Catlett bust was a knock out, with its clarity and cool geometry.

The party was wonderful.   By the end of the evening there was lots of laughter and story telling.  The food was wonderful– beautifully made or carefully chosen.  To cap it off there were grapefruit and blueberry sorbets, homemade by Mike.  My paintings seemed to have a harmonious home, just right, as if they’d been intended for those spaces.  I visited with them like old friends, and felt just as much at home.

blue sky day

Why does this day seem so wonderful?  The sky is that washed-clean intense blue after it rains.   It’s July—it’s supposed to be torrid and unbearable and instead there’s a cool breeze blowing.  I have the studio door open and the ceiling fan stirring things up.  Whatever I play on the stereo suddenly seems like the right music, and what’s on the easel seems fascinating for a change.  I’m spending a few days putting the late spring’s work to rights.  It was plenty flawed, with hundreds of sequences that jarred or disappointed.  I’m painting back into it with this breeze and some wild jazz behind me like a tailwind.

Why is this day blessed?  Because it’s early morning and the day stretches before me with no commitments. I can dress like a slob and work until I want to quit.  I can sit in the shade in the ruin with some cold mint tea and just lapse into dreamy thought.  Maybe by the end of this day three paintings will be finally resolved and finished… until I wake up the next day and notice a few more places that aren’t syncopated, that fall flat.

The day is special because Marie sent me a photograph to bless it: her mother planting flowers in the garden with her granddaughter, 5 years old.  They both seem completely unaware that they are being photographed. What arrests me about this photograph is that there is no less sense of discovery in the face of the grandmother than in the face of the child.  It’s a photograph of a state of being that is extraordinary– to be expected in a five year old and hardly ever observed in someone in their seventh decade. That image has stayed with me all morning.  It has inspired me to look at this day with wonder.

home-- photograph by Mike Carroll

It’s been a quiet week of work,  so quiet I lost track of what day it was by Thursday.  Looking for a hook to hang a story from, I’d  resigned myself to not writing anything this week, it seemed so mundane.  Later I realized that the reverse was true. It was a  week lived on the highest plane.  It was a week spent as an artist.  Nearly all my hours were wrapped around a painting I’d started last week.  It was a reflection of the intense beauty of the land around here, plants growing exuberantly, the sky deeply blue, the patterns in nature more complex than any oriental rug.

Between stints in the studio I enjoyed visits from  friends.  John, who lives in California, surprised me by appearing at my doorstep.  John has been a part of my life for a long time, all the way back to driving me to the church on my wedding day.  We talked for hours, sharing who we are now and remembering who we used to be.  On Sunday  Linda, whose laugh lights up the room came by, and she and I sat in the ruin talking well into the night.  At the end of the week my step-brothers John and Tom and my mom came for a summer supper.    The food at the end of this artist’s day is a final act of art-making.   The dinners this week have all included my homemade mozzarella cheese with Grier’s organic tomatoes, Kim’s basil, and a bit of my best olive oil.  There was organic cabbage made into cole slaw and Bradford Store corn which has its own fan club.   We dined in the ruin, Cat rubbing against our legs, hoping for a handout.   John described a funeral he’d attended in the Sandhills last week, of a venerated family friend.  It ended in a meal of chicken salad.  So many occasions I’ve attended in that region culminated in chicken salad, including my own great aunts’ funerals.  When Grier and I were little we went to visit our great aunts in their intricate Victorian homeplace.   Beneath the glow of a stained glass window they served us tiny lady plates of chicken salad, pickled watermelon rind and little biscuits.  Growing-boy Grier was somewhat amused by this meal.  But I will always associate chicken salad with the Sandhills.

Blackberries are ripening on the edges of the woods.  The cantaloupes are coming in.  It has been a wonderful week , after all, of art, friends and summer food, enjoyed in the best of places– home.

little Woodstock

How did you celebrate your independence?  I cut myself free of my everyday life and went on a trip back in time, and due west  in space.   I went to beautiful Black Mountain, NC.  After locating an old friend on the web,and a 35 year absence from the annual July 4th celebration in Black Mountain, my name was once again on the guest list.

I have dim memories of a communal effort to make pounds and pounds of cole slaw some 35 years ago on July 4th in the old location of this party– The White House.  I remember our young faces, and the good feeling I always had being with this group of people. It meant a lot to me  to be joining them again for the celebration.

Nowadays we look substantially different from our 20-something incarnations, but the spirit is the same.  I really do believe our young selves are still alive, wrapped inside our current selves.  The girl is not gone– she is at the core of the woman.   The humor was just as loving and gentle and knowing as I remember it.  The friendships have held true among this large group of people, and the thread that connects me to them is as strong as if I had nurtured it.  They are of such a loyal and inclusive stripe that I was, even in long absence, at least a little bit present, it seems.

Just like long ago, I still enjoy the quick wit, the practicality, the earthiness and the loving hearts of my Black Mountain friends.  And they really know how to throw a party.  Their fourth was conceived of as a three day affair, in a big open field in the valley, beside the Swannanoa River.  Sobol, Sneed and Allison masterminded a projection screen for movies, a volleyball net, a pond for swimming, and an bunch of barrels for their own unique sport: gocart bowling.  There was a grill, lovingly tended by  Pate, covered in pork coated with a secret barbecue sauce he’d imported  from Alabama which was, I swear, magical.  The Barbecue Brain Trust of Black Mountain has apparently spent years attempting to decode the recipe, but it cannot be done. Sneed says Thomas has Pate bring him a gallon each year which he hides away.  Sneed  is  pictured on this year’s White House tee shirt, and Patty, his  wife organized the Eleanor Roosevelt luncheon for the ladies as well as the tee shirt production and  marketing.

These people, the souls  of hospitality,  erected a huge tent and a smaller tent, brought in a refrigerator to hold the food, and must have shopped for days.  I can’t begin to list all  that went into this amazing extravaganza.  But there was barbecue, corn, marinated cucumbers, savory baked beans, and slaw, so lovingly prepared they’d make you swoon.  And at the same time, we enjoyed live bluegrass music,  a bonfire, kids chasing each other, 80 year olds dancing, tiny babies  being cuddled and old friends’ memories ( or lies).  And this was the 36th time they’ve done this for 100 of their closest friends.

One of the best parts.

That night I got to sleep at Patty and Sneed’s with the window open, beside a creek that rushed through my dreams all night.  In the wee hours when it started to rain the noises were even more beautiful.  In the morning my last view was of small fat white clouds breaking up against the blue green mountains.  It was really hard to point my car east and slip back down that mountain.