In the Studio

The walk to the river a few days ago.  And then a few trips to the nursery resulted in planters and ferns.

The purple finch just flew off but I did catch the goldfinch staying to check out the dogwood blossoms.

My yardman came this week and fed my winter-weary plants some extra food and trimmed out the dead wood. We talked about adding a stone path between mulched areas and grass/driveway. It would give it more of an Asian garden look and prevent the mowing men from doing wheelies too close to the mulched areas. He will also harvest some bamboo to make some short garden fence to place along the back side of the raised garden and pond out the window. Something that will say this is the end of my space and give a nice look behind the dogwood, etc.

This morning I unwrapped the two shirts I bundled with Eucalyptus leaves and pods. Gave them a good hand wash and ironed them.

Here is the pale grey linen one I made several years ago. More mottled look than leaf print. But more interesting than it was.

And then this recycled men’s shirt I bought from Aukje Boonstra several years ago in Australia. She had colored it with rusting patterns in a striped look here and there. So it was dark brown on a taupe tone cotton. Now this.

The leaves showed up better on this loosely woven cotton than the tight linen above. And the rust marks took on a greenish yellow tone.

Aukje’s shirt took on more of the iron in my bath to tone down the beige-ness of the washed out color it had turned into. I am happy with them both and am saving all the leaves used to add to fresher ones the next go round of contact printing. I could not resist buying four meters of a finely woven white linen for some more summer shirts. Maybe one of those will get the leaf treatment.

I know better than to print pants after a man at a nursery several years ago assumed I had fallen into the mud and wanted to offer assistance.

There have been so many opportunities to meet different people here in Hayesville. Sometimes I will walk around the block with a neighbor and get cooking tips or planting ideas. I am actually talking more to them than their dogs these days.

And the other afternoon one of the younger men at the ‘coffee in the morning’ meetings took me up on my offer for us to continue conversations here at the house over his favorite type of wine. We sat at the dining room table for over two and a half hours sharing opposite political views. When he returned home he messaged a thank you and a thought that he might be able to bring me over to the dark side. I replied that I was equally sure that I could enlighten him to a more generous way of thinking. We agreed that it would take another bottle of wine. I look forward to the next time. Maybe since he likes to cook and is Italian, I might get some lasagna out of it by having him cook a meal here.

I asked him over because he always thanks me for the conversation when he leaves the coffee shop. I think there is always more to say and more importantly ask….so he accepted my invitation. He is one year older than my daughter and seems to have well-considered opinions.

His taste in wine is a sweet moscato red that I was surprised how much like a bubbly Kool-aid it tasted. Don’t you just love our differences! I switched to a Pinot Noir while he enjoyed the sweet red.  The meeting ended in a hug. Can’t beat that.

Til later….

Coming into the neighborhood these blooms have popped out. And my first dogwood bloom on the tree in the back.

Signs of serious Spring out there.

And more dogwood at the river….

All these pictures of my river walks will feed in to how I try to capture the river in this prepared Chinese Dragon Scale Book. I avoided the extra small folios by gluing the spine folds of each folio together by just a half inch….each of the twenty some were also carefully measured to be one half inch apart. This was a big challenge because the book had to feed from the left, then reach underneath to do the pasting along a metal rule while it was being fed back over my hands to the left again. All without tearing the fragile paper.

I am thinking of doing the illustration of the scenes along the river directly on the 12″ high by 10.5″ wide first folio and continuing the scene along all the 1/2″ exposed folio folds at the foredge. When flipped the other way (to the left) it will be an illustration of the rivers underwater. That will leave me the unseen parts of each page (unless you turn them individually) for drawing artifacts from the river. Such is the plan.

The other day was poetry meeting day. I read another poem, The Position of Periphery. It was well received. They are very encouraging and told me that even though I know nothing about how poetry adheres to certain parameters for different types of poetry, I am doing everything right and to please keep writing. So I will. I did learn about ellipses, though.  The little series of…should not exceed three and not have spaces before or after.  So I will go again next month.

This morning I went out to get myself some hot cross buns and a chocolate bunny to bite the ears off Sunday morning. There was also a small bag of jelly beans that needed to come home too. Then I went to the garden center and bought some romaine lettuces, rosemary and a few plants…mostly shade lovers for the pot out front.

And the other day I decided the frames were just fine the way they were and popped the small stitched animals in them to hang behind the studio door until I decide how to get rid of them.

My friend Marla is wrapping up her trip to Australia and I am enjoying seeing  the pictures. She is now in her last city before flying out from there tomorrow. Sydney.

It is time for a glass of red but a walk around the block first because the rain has stopped.

Til later…