low fire porcelain-- work in progress
The pattern of summer days is finally falling into place. Once the school year is over it takes me a few fretful days to find my place in such freedom. I’ve closed my classroom and come home to clean out my studio, readying it for long summer days of work. Next comes a difficult day or two of wheel-spinning. I’ve done this through enough seasonal cycles that I’ve learned the ways to trick myself into the change. Get up early. Get some exercise to lift the spirits and focus the mind. If starved for inspiration, a walk in nature helps. Then head to the studio. I wind my way through the morning doing whatever painter’s chore needs doing. Yesterday that was creating dark green areas of negative space between plants I was painting. Today it was building the rough form, in clay, of a magnolia blossom I took from a neighbor’s tree. The one I took two weeks ago is thoroughly and commitedly dead, in its own lovely, peculiar way.
Lunch time means tomatoes on crusty bread with mayonnaise that true North Carolina natives love—Duke’s. You can tell you’re in the home of a transplant if they produce mayo of any other brand. I have a few friends who love to cook as much as I do, and we all feel compelled to tweek the southern tomato sandwich. We add arugula. We plop on the goat cheese. But you will still find Duke’s as the mortar that holds that experience together. I’ve been using the tomato sandwich ritual for so many years to announce the presence of summer and life as a full-time artist that on these first days of summer I get out the ingredients even though the local tomatoes are not yet ripe. I eat the communion food of summer even though it’s not quite the real thing yet. At least it still has Duke’s at its core.
Today after lunch I started a small painting of the dead magnolia blossom. Its petals litter the floor and are as brown as tanned leather. Its leaves have become a lovely nut brown, and pollen peppers them.
oh elizabeth, i finally found the time to sit down and start your blog. inspirational.
that’s my favorite description of you, for me, inspirational.
and i just picked my first tomato! jay asked me what i was going to do with it and i said, “tomato sandwich, of course!” and, dukes, of course!
ps…having trouble accessing your “kitchen” entry…? can you help? i have a feeling it will be one of my favs!
Thank you so much, Cary, for the kind words, and for taking time to read it.
We share so many of the same passions!