Too Many Pictures to Wait

Posted on by Sandy Webster

We will start with the walk to the river near my house. It is filling up as the dam gets adjusted.

And wildflowers coming up by the river…

The violets inspired me to get back to the six way opening book that I was painting flowers in.

Next to this book on the shelf was this old attempt of mine to replicate Lorraine’s eucalyptus contact print books that she has sent me. The paper is not the best. I must have folded it against the grain because it is all ruffly on the fold. My leaves were not the best. But I just went ahead anyway and painted in some of the flowers that were blooming that Spring of a few years ago.

I am going to keep this book handy because its crudeness has a certain appeal. It already feels and looks worn out. Just the thing to paint in when I feel the same. Sort of a tattered collaboration.

The Meadow Book was opened again to capture the wintery feeling before Spring arrived.

I used different brushes and washes to get the tall dead cold grasses and a chilly mourning dove.

And another couple pages in the Sticks and Stones Book.

I promised myself to get out more by taking myself out to dinner every other Tuesday at a favorite restaurant of Lee’s and mine. By coincidence they sat me at our old booth. It was such a lonely feeling sitting there with no one across the table from me, and brought back other memories of the friends Lee and I always had dinner with there at that booth.

But I am going to return in two weeks with a friend from here in my new neighborhood. She used to live in our town before I moved here, and would stop by Lee’s and my workshop in town to say hi. Then life took her someplace else and then back to here where she would stop by Lee’s and my booth to still say hi. We shall have a good visit over dinner and remember things and people that used to be.

In the meantime I will keep busy here in my studio drawing, painting or stitching.

There was a nice view over our houses the other morning when I was walking back from town.

And an interesting, agitated sky that afternoon.

It was soon after the poetry reading at the library and my head was full of words in columns that spread through emotions.

Just now the delivery man left boxes that hold my new table and two chairs for the porch. I was hoping they would come all assembled and carried by two jolly fellows to wherever I wanted them. Instead I got one jolly fellow declining my request he stick around and put them together. So off I go with expectations that all pieces and parts are there. I will take my rubber mallet with me to give additional encouragement to misalignments.

Til later…..

Rainy Few Days

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I took no walks these past few days. Rained every day! So I baked some more and read a book.

Pecan/apricot scones to take to a neighbor’s yesterday to have with our coffee and chat. It was a good visit. Also had a phone visit with someone I hadn’t seen in years. That was also nice to catch up and hear about friends we had in common.

Nothing looked so good in the dreary dampness as a lit fireplace and an easy chair.

So I started the latest book from Australian writer, Jane Harper.

Her books are very hard to put down and this morning I asked my daughter how I could get the movie made from Harper’s first book, The Dry. Then I settled my cats.

Made a bowl of popcorn, poured a glass of Aussie white, paid my $10 and got comfortable.

I had read the book so knew the story but so enjoyed getting sucked into the vast landscape of northern Victoria. The crookedy forests of Eucalyptus are the best. The weathered lined faces and shear meanness of the bad ones played against the confused kindness of the good ones. Jane Harper writes a good story and when placed in her native Australia where landscape is a main character, it is the best alternative to a super bowl ball game.

Aside from that, I was noticing a lovely old ikat-dyed briefcase I have had for years that was shoved in with books on a shelf here in the studio. When I unzipped it, it was filled with handwritten notes from books I had to read in graduate school and artist statements from exhibits, and more.

So to tidy things up a bit I pulled them all out, I opened my laptop and started a document titled, From My Notes. Now that entire stack of loose handwritten sheets is in the bin and I have several typed pages of what I was all about.

How about this beauty?

“Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for an echo.” – Don Marquis     Actually I think it is more like blowing the puffs of a dried dandelion into the wind. But that could just be the difference in our poetry…..

And I must have loved putting phrases in cursive as part of an artwork like, “so much clearer here – so still – so unbothered..”

And this: I looked it up. bereft means deprived. 

And several from James McConkey’s Anatomy of Memory  – an anthology.

“Memory is responsible for our identity; it is the faculty whereby we perceive connections between past and present, thus enabling us to make sense of our surroundings; it underlies our creative achievements.”  – Patricia Hampl, the Writer and Her Work Vol II

Several on memory and memoir…nice I took the time to write them down.

And several from this piece done for exhibition, titled, One Year Away.  A running dialog between myself and the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Anne Morrow Lindberg. It was all about home and a need to be somewhere else. I would write down something they said in my journal and then my response to that with a drawing from where I was at the time…..”Alienation has a freedom”...

And from an artist book I made many years ago titled, Is the Journey Really Better….“So is the journey really better? Is the state of longing a better condition than holding the longed for in our searching grasping hand? Is the journey really better?

Anyway, there was quite a bit in that old case. Now it holds just poetry, mine and others who sent their words on to me. I will carry it to the poetry meetings.

Then the final one that I found was this one….and have no record of who said it, but has a ring of truth to it.

“You can discuss anything with people who know.

You can discuss anything with people think they know.

But you cannot discuss anything with people who believe.”

Tomorrow is going to be a sunny day, so back to walking. For now I have found a scone recipe for ripe bananas with nuts and a maple drizzle frosting. I am going to bake them for the boys tomorrow morning….and have another wine with Jane Harper and her latest.

Til later….

 

 

Floating on Too Many Surfaces

Posted on by Sandy Webster

The past several days I have been making an effort to finish something…anything. I went back to Burke and Wills in hopes of wrapping the story up. Three more drawings have been added,

So if these are the pictures, fourteen in all, then what are the words? And shouldn’t the words be in rhyme form? The pictures say, “children’s book” so easily read lines in vertical rows seems right. The pictures do not look like paragraphs should be next to them  So, I am trying to rhyme the story. It is not easy. In fact it is a pain in the backside to make it look as easy as children’s books usually are. Maybe I will put this on hold and dig out my children’s books to see how the writing is paced and spaced. Shel Silverstein would have gotten to the point with one picture and very few words that make the reader smile. Did Beatrix Potter write in rhyme? I will check the book shelf to see. Anyway I need to pause on this. But for me, once an idea pops into my head, I act on it. With no thought that it will have to be wrapped up somehow. A somehow for another time.

Later this afternoon I go to the poetry meeting. I will need to make copies of another one from the Trusting the Tether Line book. They appreciated the one I read before and seemed interested in more.

Yesterday I went to visit and tour the art department of Young Harris College. It was so good to be surrounded by artworks that mattered enough to to be completed. And visit with a few students busy making and building forms that tell their story. I found myself looking for more, but was reminded that this college offers a Bachelor of Arts degree – not a Bachelor of Fine Arts where more in depth study and producing is given more time.

But there was an etching press in the printmaking room with a couple of wood blocks. Tools are minimal. The classes are designed to be introduction level only. Senior year students have more exploratory time for what they were introduced to earlier. But in the meantime there are other classes that are required to get that degree and their time is divided. For me, it felt good to be in the spaces of art making and seeing a couple of permanent pieces from former art group members.

So back to laundry…maybe the vacuum. It only takes 15 minutes tops to vacuum the floors here, After the poetry meeting I think I will get a new bottle of wine. It seems to be the only thing I am short of right now after baking more scones for the freezer and a nice quiche.

Fresh farm eggs from a friend needed to be photographed. Such a luxury to have beautiful large eggs.

No walks this week due to endless days of rain.

Til later…..

Back to Drawing

Posted on by Sandy Webster

This morning walking back from the corner. My day started with the gym, grocery store and coffee on the corner with some fresh bran muffins.

Last Friday I had a delightful six hours with an old friend from the basket making world. I rescued a bunch of broccoli to make a nice creamy/cheesy soup to serve with my latest spinach scones for lunch before picking her up and bringing her home. Judy comes into the area once a year to teach and this was the first time she has seen my new home. Lots of chatting, finishing with a couple of scotches before I took her back. This Wednesday another visitor from the before is coming to visit. A student in several classes over the years is back in town taking another workshop and wanted to visit. I am excited to catch up with her.

In the studio the past few days I have been working on the latest book with basket samples inside. I finished up the double page drawings of a way to start a base.

A bit more writing with the sample…

Turn the page and start again…with some favorite materials of shifu threads and a tiny hammer I bought at a market in St. Andrews, Victoria while staying at Baldessin Press Studio.

I took all the spoke pieces and made an overhand knot in the center, then hammered it down to flatten. Next selected earth pigment colored shifu threads to weave the base. These threads were found in the bottom of Anna’s basket that I drew on the first page of this book. Again using a favorite tool from Wafu Works in Hobart, Tasmania. I used it for packing rows of weaving.

More writing and a window..

I was recalling that this group of basket makers in Tasmania used to mark off sections where the Native Hen had made deposits so I could rub papers to spin into colored threads later in the day.

So naturally I had to draw a Tasmanian Native Hen and put a couple scraps of the paper dyed with their beautiful green.

I never spun this sheet into thread…probably because dampening it brought back the smell.  So now it is folded back up and stuffed with other threads made using Tasmanian soils for color back into Anna’s basket.

Speaking of earth pigments, Thursday evening a friend took me to the opening of another art exhibit at the nearby small liberal arts college. It made my heart soar to see such massive canvases encrusted with local pigments. It was appropriately titled, “Place”. The artist is a woman who seemed to share the same passion for marking place in this way. I was glad I took one of my Earth Pigments books to pass on to her. She was surprised and happy to have it. We will hopefully get together and talk more about the thrill of working with gathered color.

Friday we go back to visit classrooms and see what students are doing. I did meet a few of them at the opening and it made me feel good to see such energy and passion in another generation making art. Two of the men in my former art group have affiliations with this college and I hope to run into them again. Oh, to share a bottle with those two and hear what they have been up to these past few years….

A glass of Madeira I treated myself to remembering these favorites from art group.

Then yesterday I decided I needed to get back to Burke and Wills. Judy encouraged me to read some of my stories and show her what I was working on. After reading The Stoat Story, Down the Rabbit Hole, and others, it caused me to bring out the Burke and Wills drawings. This morning I did another that needs to be painted, and started another… hopefully the words will come to put it all together.

Here Wills is getting too big to fit in the house Boris and Belinda, the river rats, left them when they moved south. Not sure where they go next before ending up in the elderly care home.

I must say that it feels good to just lose myself in the lives of an owl and rabbit.

Til later….