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May 24, 2010

strawberry moon

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.

May 9, 2010

John Borden Evans at Christa Faut Gallery


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.

April 20, 2010

subject matter

The newest piece on the easel is a large painting I started a month ago.  It’s been a slow and delicious process bringing this piece together.  It’s slow, because I’m using tiny brushes on a large surface to create the kind of texture I want.  It’s delicious because it’s about very early spring and the colors involved have the aura of magic about them– delicious because it reminds me of earlier times.  Its edge is its subject matter.  It’s a painting about a barn.  I tend to shy away from barn painting because that subject is so hackneyed and sentimental that it offends.  It did occur to me that those sentimental barn paintings’ emotional source is the same source I’m tapping into– a sense of loss.

The barn I’m painting isn’t anonymous.  It’s Fred Washam’s barn.  Fred and Sarah were my dear neighbors for 30 years or so.  When I was a young mom I had a studio and office on the second floor of the front of my house and I could look down on Fred as he drove up the highway on his tractor to his brother Joe’s farm, and then watch Joe do the same going the opposite direction.  The brothers farmed until they couldn’t farm anymore.  Fred, always wearing a smile, was the kindest person.  A photograph of him hangs in the Bradford Store– Fred as a young man beside a team of mules.  He died of Parkinson’s Disease and grieved us all.  Joe lived into his nineties, in the house where he grew up, just leaving us this past year.

Sarah, Fred’s wife,  was the consummate farm wife.  Her flowerbeds were spectacular and the subject of many of my paintings in the 80’s.  When it was Halloween she would invite my children to come for treats and there would be homemade cupcakes and candies.  She even made, from scratch, the host we used for communion in our  church.  I know it’s a strange comment, but it was a lovely and evocative host, with character.  There was something of  the Mystery baked into it. Not at all like the cardboard chips in other churches.

To paint this barn is not to say “look at this sad remnant”.  In my heart it says their legacy lingers.  The love and kindness these neighbors invested in me, my children, and in all the neighbors and their children is not lost or forgotten.  The barn still stands solid and generous  upon the land, and Sarah’s cherry tree blooms  in glory in front of it.  The big oaks that sheltered their family, their lives and laughter are still there.  As long as I’m here to paint about it, in some way they are  still with us.

March 21, 2010

Leonardo Drew at the Weatherspoon

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.

February 2, 2010

Small pleasures

An unusually deep snow fell here over the weekend.  It greeted the beginning of the weekend–starting just a few moments after I left school, and quickly and magically covered my whole world.  I stopped for provisions, filled the woodbox before dark fell, and planned to be forced to relax, eat well, and paint for a few days, without interruption.

All that happened.  The days that were gray made the woods look soft and mysterious.  I’ve been challenged, in my paintings, to figure out how to represent the dove grays of the woods– so thick that no light shows through–tiny limbs interlaced and overlapping.  The texture of limb on limb is subtle, and varies in different lights.  The snow showed the lay of the land more clearly than I usually see it.  At night the moon was nearly full and I got to see the shadows cast on the snow from its light.  The air was so clean and the sky so clear that I was enchanted by the movement of a plane overhead at night– its warm light gliding over the landscape like some slow motion comet.

In daylight I got to observe crazed bird and squirrel behaviors.  Birds came from everywhere, and hung like wild earrings from the tree limbs.  The cardinals accent the winter world like holly berries, the bluebirds like pieces of clear sky.  A leopard spotted bird appeared, with some red markings and turned out to be a Red-naped Sapsucker.

I kept the woodstove loaded and the house grew cozy.  One night I cooked venison for dinner , and brussells sprouts from my brother’s farm.  Another night my dinner came from the boat of a Gullah shrimper, the former husband of a dear friend.  I went out into my own winter garden and cut icicle covered broccoli heads to go with it.  Cat got the leftovers and amused me by tackling the remains of a sweet potato.  He has learned to love my cooking, I tell myself.

I washed all the bed linens and dried them in the arid heat of the wood stove.  For three days I worked on a seemingly insoluble painting problem.  It remains to be seen if I will succeed.  But I do know this much– three days of quiet, all imperfections hidden under a white sparkling glaze, long soaks in a claw foot tub, home cooking and art can be very restorative.

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January 11, 2010

The Party of the Season

I would never have predicted that the Party of the Season would be tonight–with my family– in “the deep midwinter”.  But it was.

My brother and sister in law, Grier and Kim, threw a party tonight on their farm, while my family was all gathered for the funeral of my dear aunt,Betty.  It was a party full of good will, humor,and reminiscence.  I don’t expect to see its match for a long time– until we are all gathered again.  Tonight would have been the 50th birthday of my cousin Homer Harris Ragan– Hobey.  He died at 48 of lung cancer.  I remember the wonderful party when he turned 30.  Tonight we celebrated him again.  What a commingling of sadness and gratitude for good fortune.  With a lot of laughter, over a variety of carefully prepared  southern food and drink , we toasted to our memories of both my aunt and my cousin.  As the evening passed  many stories of grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings and cousins were pulled out for sharing–especially the funny ones.

There was lovely delicate she-crab soup, and catfish stew, as well as barbecue.  Tracey, Hobey’s true love, brought wonderful green beans.  When we asked for the recipe she said you “just cook the fool out of them”.  There were  babies, and little boys lost in wonder at the stars hanging over the bonfire.   We wrapped up, two or three to the blanket, for the hayride, bundled against the fierce cold, seeing the farm all blue, black and gray under that clear sky. 

There was shared wisdom about the next generation of cousins we are raising.  There was a lot of humor over the bar, set up in the workshop out back, alongside the woodstove and hundreds of tools.  My precious young first cousins–once removed– Hobey’s beautiful daughters– shared their  wit and humor.  I got to see their enthusiasms and their talents.  Their father and grandmother would be so proud– with good reason.  What miracles of grace and warmth they are.

It occured to me, in our serious mutual enthusiasm for tonight’s gathering, how lucky we are.  We are about the business of setting in motion the future trajectory of our family.  We are establishing the bedrock of comfort and strength, love and respect.  We will  see one another into the new times to come with the same love, loyalty, and connectedness that was given to us by our flawed but open-hearted parents.  I hope our open hearts trump our flaws as well, and that we are no less human and  no less funny than our predecessors.

January 2, 2010

New Day

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 mind 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.

December 19, 2009

White Christmas

snow sceneA 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 wood stove 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 wood stove to cook on and sit beside.  At night,  we lit the pair of antique candelabra 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.

December 16, 2009

lost shelter

The grandfather oak

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 in my lifetime.

November 20, 2009

Conversations against a brilliant background

 

 

Nick Cave Soundsuit 2007

Nick Cave Soundsuit 2007

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, 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 the comprehensive exhibition of the work of Lois Mailou Jones 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.