Holiday In Oregon or Recovering From An ArtFest

What a great day our friend Donna gave us today in and about Wilsonville, OR.  The Monday following an art festival is always our "hangover" day - sleeping off the effects of standing on our feet for 10-12 hours, chatting with prospective clients, smiling, smiling and more smiling.  The idea of course is to give the art festival goers the impression that we are completely relaxed, happy to be there, ready to explain our techniques and styles to the inquisitive, even if it's someone's five year old or a would-be artist wanting some info about tools, colors, how did you get this or that effect.  So, by Monday we are shot.  No two ways about it.  Mostly we don't have the energy to research the area we are showing in so we don't know that there is a terrific museum or a trail to a swimming hole or a collection of antique sculptures of miniature crab apples (just kidding - don't think I would go out of my way for that).  So, when we stay with Donna and she plans the Monday for us, makes omelets for breakfast, does the driving, AND takes us to wonderful places to just "be"with the natural beauty that is Oregon, it's pretty special.

Here is a place that was not only nature at its best but an artist at his best, as well.

 

Donna

This is Jim Barton's Pudding River Studios, Aurora, OR...but we didn't know that we were doing anything but walking down a forest path....until we began to come upon these beautiful wood sculptures, mostly done from fire damaged wood.  They stood as guardians of the forest, sentinels, plates of a sort of Buddhist armor on healthy trees, silent prayers of Quan Yin, invitations to wander further...and then there he was, standing at the edge of a large fork lift which held the rough beginnings of a long table bench, filling a small crack.  Tall and skinny, shaded by the canopy above him, he smiled and gestured for me to come closer so he could hear me.

The sculptures speak for themselves.

 Jim is open and sharing, at home with both trees and people. Read some more about him in this article from Conversations. From his property we walked on through his neighbor's (with her permission) only to be delighted by a different kind of nature - acres of mown pasture that was home to many sheep until a flash flood of the Pudding River p them.  No signs of the misfortune remain except the water line high up in the trees.  Today the pasture was alive with singing birds, dandelions, and about a half mile of wild blackberry bushes grown high above our heads.

 I think I picked (and ate) enough berries for a large pie!  There were no cell phones there, no iPads, no ear phones...just blackberries, sun, the river and a good friend who wanted to give us a special day.  Thanks, Donna.

Blooms

 Summer, glorious in all its steamy heat and languid nights, is full upon us.  Greens in deepest shade are darkly purple, midnight blue, cooling our sun-shot eyes and bringing a moment's respite of breeze through the leafy canopies.  Salmon pinks, coral reds, butter yellows, cadmium orange with lemon and glaze of alizarin in riots of poppies, hibiscus, roses, honeysuckle, daisies, and lilies in a myriad of variety fill us with love for  this season of endless visual delights.  We breath in the perfume of summer wishing we could store it to warm ourselves come those cold November nights.  I am compelled by blooming Nature.

Artists & Health Care

People often ask me if the dust and particulate from the gourds I work on is toxic.  Do I wear a mask, they ask.  Yes and yes.  I am self-employed and have been for many decades.  I work in a field that is woefully unsupported by the corporate luxuries most people have experience with in their work-a-day worlds.  Though I am now old enough to be on Medicare, and grateful to be so, I was totally responsible for my health insurance until Medicare.  I take good care of my health but my insurance was still over $600/month pre-Medicare.  I bring this up because I opted to carry insurance regardless of the cost.  I have collected Unemployment Insurance once in my life in my twenties.  I pay my taxes.  So, yes, I am thrilled by yesterday's confirmation of the Affordable Care Act by the Supreme Court.  Below is a link to an article about artists and insurance.  


What I ask is that next time you are thinking of buying a piece of art for your home, remember that we who are professionals in the field have expenses and take risks that you may not ever have to think twice about.  We choose to be in this field.  We choose it because we love what we do.  We are willing to pay the price.  So, enjoy the work you purchase, but remember the person who created it for you and remember the others with whom you have exchanges when you cast a vote this year.  Ask what corporate entity makes the luscious paintings that hang in your living rooms, the sumptuous handwoven throws over your ottoman, the bronze sculpture at your entry.  None.  Just a lot of dedicated, passionate, driven, self-employed artists committed to making the world, theirs and yours, a place of creativity and beauty.


And thanks.


"Under the ACA, states will set up group exchanges by 2014, which will organize the insurance market and allow individuals and small businesses to band together to form groups, just like if they were part of a large corporation. "

 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/811251/how-artists-will-be-affected-by-the-supreme-courts-decision-to-uphold-obamas-affordable-care-act

Giving A Hand To A Friend

Meet my friend, Pam Creamer.  The picture is not the "real" Pam.  It's Pam With Lyme's Disease.  The "real" Pam is a talented painter, lover of animals, vivacious, energetic, loving, generous, independent, gracious, FUN, loyal....and....painfully ill with Lyme's Disease.  She has fought it for years, handling it on her own (with her partner, Anita) until all of their income and savings, including their business, is gone.  But here's the thing...she has begun a series of IV treatments in NYC because her friends have opened a website  to help raise funds for this staggeringly expensive treatment.  There have been so many, many donations and she is moving through the treatment protocol like the champion she is - it is very painful and debilitating, but it is working!  This is an ugly disease that takes a horrible tole on the body, not to mention the mind and the spirit!  But Pam is a fighter!  We believe she will conquer this and be able to paint again - and painting is how she has always made her living and paid her bills.

The thing is, and why you are seeing this on my blog, is that we have stalled out on the donations, and we have a little ways more to go to finish the treatments.  So, I am asking all of you reading this, all of you who have loved my work, supported me with your purchases, taken classes from me, been inspired by my work or my words, to please show that today by clicking Pam's picture, and making a donation to this wonderful team effort to get Pam well.  I know we all get asked all the time to donate, donate, donate.  But, if you will make a donation of $10 to Pam, I will send you a packet of greeting cards with pictures of my gourd sculptures as a huge thank you for joining our team (that's a $20 value for your donation of $10 - not a bad deal).  Just leave a comment here on my post or email me through my website and I will get the cards in the mail to you.

Think of this as paying it forward, of being an angel, of sending some love like a pebble thrown in the pond - making ripples that go on forever.

Thanks for your help!

 

http://www.gofundme.com/o36z4

Paper Exhibit At SECCA

If you are in or near NC, make it a point to visit SECCA, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, in Winston-Salem.  "Paperless" is the name of their current exhibit of art made of paper - not paper as a surface for painting and drawing, but the material for concept.  On opening night they allow the audience to take photos, which I did, though my camera wasn't up to the low light challenge.  A few are in the slide show on the right - hopefully enough to tempt you to visit this very interesting facility.  There is also an accompanying exhibit of large sculptural cast glass work done by Stanislav Libensky and Jaroslava Brychtova in the 70's - 90's I believe.  In addition, on the way from the paper exhibit to the glass upstairs, one passes through an experience which I will leave for you to find by yourselves.

This piece of cut paper was in many ways, the most beautiful and the most thought provoking for me.  I am always struggling with the question of what beauty is and what makes it so.  The artist has created a seemingly simple cut paper work, but asks the question, "what draws us more? The image/absence (in other words, the living position of the colorless negative shape) or the presence/specter (the living color of the dead positioning of the poppies)?" (Italics are my words.)  I kept returning to this piece, aware each time that the upright position felt more alive to me, though somehow sad.  I liked that what appears to be simple and beautiful was not just so.

The Music of Art

What does an artist do when she is not going to art shows or festivals? Go to a music festival - what else? Along with 16,999 other people on Sunday, we spent a gorgeous NC day in Wilkesboro at MerleFest listening to Alison Krauss and Union Station. See that tiny bldg way at the back of the picutre? That's the stage. Fortunately someone in the reserved seating up front didn't show up to exit me from their seat that I borrowed, and I could actually see the group, and see them close up on the big screen.  Which begs the question, why would a huge festival like MerleFest not have a screen on both sides and perhaps one mid-way back as well?  Woulda been nice.  Nevertheless, hearing them live, and seeing Jerry on the dobro was too good!

Music - the great meditational, mind bending, universal touch of muse - the way IN, the way up and the way down - the road to sin and salvation. For those times when I'm stuck in a  rut, too bogged down by the relentless sadbad news spewed out of any media source one picks, stuck in the pressurized kettle of show deadlines, I turn to music for a quick exit.  Doesn't matter it it's Union Station, Bach, Elizabeth Kasius & Heard, Motown, or Mississippi blues - it's all good, it all transports me somewhere, it all ignites the spark.  My profound thanks to all musicians, players and writers, anywhere and everywhere for adding to the sound of the universal muse.

And, by the way, check out MIM in Scottsdale, AZ for a remarkably memorable museum experience!www.classicalarchives.com/bach.html

Couch Surfing in Denton, Texas

Couch surfing has become our new way of traveling across the country, meeting new people, sharing what we do and learning about what they do.  CS has been around for about 30 years, bigger, I think, in Europe than here in the States.  Syed got us started on it last year by trying it out in Nashville.  With no small amount of skills of persuasion, he got me to agree to host our first couch surfer in our home in NC.  Our guest was 50-something, about to get married, and on business here in Salisbury.  In the morning he made us omelets and fruit for breakfast.  Our next guest was a lovely woman on a driving adventure throughout the southeast.  She was 60-something and a wonderful conversationalist.  We got so engaged in conversation that after a few hours we were surprised when her phone rang...it was her son, worried that she hadn't called to say that her host family (us) was safe and ok!

It was, therefore, no surprise to find that we were enjoying ourselves immensely with our hosts Chuck and Ginger in Denton.  They had opened their home, a small apartment, not only to us, but to another guest, Anne, a journalist from Sweden.  And of course there was Ruby (almost 3) and her brother Enzo (almost 2) who clearly loved having the company.

Couch surfing is a casual B 'n B (breakfast being optional on the part of the hosts) type of hosting travelers.  No money is exchanged.  It's a pay-it-forward kind of deal.  One's bed may be a real guest room with bath, or as basic as the couch.  It's up to the guest and the host, via the website, to come to an agreement regarding the stay.  Everyone puts up their profile and both guests and hosts write reviews of their experiences on the site.

Our conversation in Denton ranged from school systems in the States and in Sweden, our respective jobs, learning Spanish, living in Amsterdam, photography, music, raising kids in a foreign country, GMOs, organic food, the Midwest, and so on.  Chuck and Ginger are about 30 and their enthusiasm for living a simple life, spending lots of time with the children, and for the work ethic made me feel fortunate to have met them, and hopeful that we will again cross paths.  We'd like to count this family in our circle of friends because it feels like knowing them would add immeasurably to our own lives.

Anne is traveling around the States, interviewing folks on a whole range of topics, taking photos, getting a feel for America.  To be both outspoken and light hearted is a magical combination and so I hope she will take up my offer to contribute to this blog while she is here.  She expressed disappointment in how little many people seem to know about President Obama's accomplishments, or how well he is viewed in Europe.  And to hear her speaking about paying her share of taxes in Sweden as being part of her community made me wonder (not for the first time) why Americans are always complaining about high taxes while they scream about all the good roads, good schools, good parks, good postal service, etc. that they want their government to pay for.  We can seem a selfish lot to those looking in.  She isn't criticizing us, merely observing.

Here are a few pics of our trip home - bicycle wheels decorating a tree in one Couch Surfing host's back yard, Syed changing a flat on the way to Denton, the Denton town hall, Syed with our new Couch Surfing friends in Birmingham (lovely breakfast!).  Now we're here in Salisbury and ready to start working but wondering if we'll get a request for hosting a Couch Surfer soon.  Check out CouchSurfing.com.

Bicycle Art In A Tree

Denton, TX Town Hall

Syed, Richey, and Yao in Birmingham

Dramatic Glass Work by Syed Ahmad

As we work our way across the country to Syed's next show in nashville, I watch him sketching ideas for new series based on weather and another on trees.  The drawings are very much in the vein of graphic design.  The color is in his head until he gathers multiple sheets to begin the cutting and layering process.  I try to cut curves and get shards.  He cuts curves and gets undulating forms, moving liquid, rippling light!  You can see him at www.SyedArtGlass.com.

"Weather" One section, approximately 20" x 11" - May be used singly or in series for larger installation.

"Schooling" 15" x 15" x 4" each piece Ten pieces in the series.  May be hung in horizontal line or randomly spaced as a larger installation. 

"Flame" 10" x 24", relieved from wall 3"