Wild Flower Friends

Last week I took a quick drive north or Kewaunee and Door counties to see my dear aunt and my sister-in-law.  I had an urge to see visit them both, see Lake Michigan, and get some more smoked fish before fall.  My sister-in-law has lots of naturalized gardens filled with mostly native plants, and these photos are from her flower beds. The trip was good for my soul in all sorts of ways, and I think they were relieved to see me looking well.

I also have had a number of friends gifting me with all sorts of things - scarves to cover my bald head, nice hand written notes, vintage pottery, and sometimes old books they think I might like to include in my art.  One woman friend gifted me a small volume of poems published in 1931 that had belonged to her mother, and this poem was in that book.  The style is not modern, with all the lines capitalized and a regular rhyme scheme, but I liked the sentiment and appreciated the gift.

Wild Flower Friends
by Emma Peirce


One of our rarest joys
   When we country roads explore,
Is to welcome wild flower friends
   Of the seasons gone before.

They come crowding all about us
   As if with welcome too;
They give high lights of color
   To every distant view.

They are clambering up hillsides,
   They are massed in meadows sweet,
They are roaming through the woodlands,
   They are right here at our feet.

So true they are and loyal,
   We can always count the day
When we will find them ready
   To greet us on our way.

Some are shy, in hiding,
   For those we have to seek:
But we're sure to find them waiting; --
   We know the very week!

So individual are they,
   For all occasions meet:
Though different in myriad ways,
   They all are passing sweet.

They are marvels of shape and contour,
   Through the gamut of color they run;
Oh! They are wonderful pals of ours,
   These children of the sun!

While radiating beauty,
   They are serving their own ends:
But they make us more than grateful
   For those hosts of flower friends.

Thinking Big - Er

It's funny how circumstances can conspire to point a person in a new direction.  I have always liked abstract art, admired the ambiguity, the boldness, and the grand scale of paintings by people like Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn, Franz Kline, or Helen Frankenthaler.  Last winter and early spring I found myself reading books about Abstract Expressionists, and my fascination increased.  So, I decided to take a chance and sign up for a class in abstract painting taught by Emmett Johns, at the Peninsula Art School in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, two hundred miles north of my home.

I had admired Johns' paintings for years, and over Memorial Day weekend I dropped in to his studio to look at his work again, chat with him, and get a feeling for what a class with him might be like.  I felt optimistic after that, and went home to read, gather together materials and make arrangements for the four day class.  It was last week, and I am recovering nicely, thank you.

Emmett Johns is a fine painter, and an amiable man.  Peninsula Art School is a well appointed facility, conveniently located 10 minutes from my brother and sister-in-law's house, where I get to stay and socialize.  The class was comprised of a good mix of men and women, a range of ages, and as far as I could tell, all people of good will.  However, at the end of four days I had a pitifully small pile of pitifully small nonrepresentational abstract work - far less than anyone else.  This is not me being self-deprecating. I speak truth.

What happened?  I am still mulling it over, and have lots of questions.  Am I just too timid?  Are the physical movements too unfamiliar to me, working on a much larger scale?  Am I too parsimonious, too cheap with my materials?  Am I disoriented by an unfamiliar environment with people talking around me, my paints and brushes hiding in new places?  Is it a combination of all these factors?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

I should know by now that I process and implement ideas incrementally, often over months and even years after a workshop.  It has happened before, and probably will again. But still, I felt bad, like I made a bad showing.  Gotta get over that, and gotta play more with working larger, even if it means working on the basement floor sometimes.

These are a few photos of Emmett going to work on a demonstration piece, painted with acrylic, on a large piece of rag board (mat board).  The final piece looked nothing like what I thought it might, and was more attractive than my photo indicates.

Mother and Daughter

For the past few days I've been working on a six by six inch canvas for a fund raiser for the Hardy Gallery in Door county.  The event is called the Community Mosaic Project.  The Artists Guild art supply store in Sturgeon Bay supplies the tiny canvases free, then volunteers each paint one.  All submitted canvases are hung at the gallery and people buy one for about $30.  Thing is, they can't pick or choose.  They get what they get. 

I picked up my blank canvas at the store last week, as well an assortment of other goodies I decided I had to have - some textured rice papers, a delicious red TomBow pen.  Then I thought about what I might paint for the project.

I finally settled on doing a small version of what I've been doing all winter, which is adhering wallpaper to canvas and then painting people based on vintage photographs I find in second hand stores.

6x6 inches, oil on wallpaper

I remember finding the little black and white snapshot of these two women, who I imagine as mother and daughter, in an antique mall in Lake Geneva.  I used one piece of patterned paper in the background, seen mostly clearly in the areas to the right of the figures and below their feet.  But the same pattern is apparent in the standing woman's dress, and to a lesser extent in the siding behind them.  The pattern unifies the painting.  There is something warm and inviting in the smiles and close postures of the woman.

Now they just need to dry well and then they can be varnished and sent off.  Maybe they will bring a smile to their new owner.

On the Road to BS Corner

This week I did a "flash" trip north to visit my aunt in Algoma and my brother and sister-in-law near Baileys Harbor.  The weather was good, and I wanted to break winter routine and get out of the house for a few days.  I also wanted to drop off a couple miniature paintings with my aunt's neighbor, who will deliver them to the gallery owner who wants them for an upcoming show.  And, we are out of smoked fish, and I needed to visit Bearcats to restock.

This early in the season very few tourist places like galleries and custard stands are open yet, especially midweek, so when I made it to Door county, there weren't many distractions.  Sandy and I drove to Sister Bay to see if the Door County Creamery was open, but no luck there.  Then I remembered that her husband had talked enthusiastically about a nearby family who has a maple syrup operation. Could we visit?

Bingo!

This was the first time I ever saw a real sugar shack outside of a magazine article or in a book.  Louis and Betty Sohns have a farm with a shed dedicated to processing maple sap.  According to Louis, he has been involved in making maple syrup since he was a child, tapping trees and hauling the sap by cart to his neighbor, Bertha Reinhard.  He'd haul the sap, and then later take back home the finished syrup.  Later on he worked with them, learning the craft of making syrup, and now the WW II vet has a sophisticated operation, tapping over 800 maple trees each spring.  His father made syrup for just the family, but Louis learned commercial production from the Reinhards.  He and his son and daughter sell maple syrup to a list of dedicated customers, including my brother and sister-in-law.  Sohns told us it takes 40 gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup.

No photograph or written description can do justice to the experience of being in Sohns' sugar shack.  There is the scent of the wood burning in the sap evaporator.  Then there is the maple scented sauna steam that rises in the air, condenses on the ceiling beams and drips back down.  I have never smelled anything like it. And I was not expecting to be offered maple tea.  Louis dipped into the boiling sap in the evaporator, a liquid half way between clear watery sap and thick brown syrup, ladled it into a cup, and popped in a tea bag.  Heaven.  He offered to add rum, but I declined, though I did sample some from Ed's cup.  I was stupid to turn it down.

The operation uses a combination of old style equipment and new technology.  Each tree has old style taps and 12 quart buckets, just like Berta Reinhard used to use.  But Louis also uses a four wheel drive vehicle with a vacuum device to collect the sap.  In one field he also has a system of plastic tubing to collect sap, all of which empties into waiting collection tanks.  My impression was that Sohns invented many of the labor saving techniques himself.

Sohns seems genuinely pleased to meet new people and tell them his stories.  He hefted up this cross section of a windfall maple that he chopped and split to fuel the fire  in the evaporator.  He explained that each of the marks was a scar from a tap, a permanent mark for each spring season in the tree's long life.

OK, so what about bullsh*$% corners?  I've know for years that a nearby crossroads in the township had that earthy name, but Louis told us why.  Today the corner has a building that houses a weaver's retail establishment, but once the property was the location of the area creamery.  Local farmers would haul their milk there to be processed into cheese or butter, and would settle in with their neighbors to wait and shoot the breeze until it was ready.  Makes perfect sense.

So - an unexpected pleasure early in the season before the out of town tourists roll in.  It'll be a while before I forget the pleasure of drinking maple tea and soaking up stories.

Painting The Blues Away

8x10 inches, oil

The AC Tap, in Door County, WI

Yesterday and today have been cold and rainy, more like autumn than spring.  I've been gloomy too, thinking too much about my elders who are passing away more and more quickly all the time, and missing my mom.  I am too lazy to exercise, so I painted instead.  This is the sign for an old tavern near my brother and sister-in-law's house.  It's one of those places where a person can get cold beer and hot food, and there is a jar of pickled pigs' feet on the bar.  Since they always let me stay at their place, this will be a gift for next time I visit.

Crossing Another Off the List

Ivory Billed Woodpecker

vintage trading card

OK, I didn't see an ivory billed woodpecker. If I had, I think all sorts of universities and birding groups would be here interviewing me, since the bird is so elusive and rare. What I did see on Christmas Day at my sister-in-law's house up in Door County was a pileated woodpecker, which looks rather similar to the bird on this old card.

I've been saying I wanted to see one for several years. I'd wistfully comment that I wanted to see a pileated woodpecker and people (my aunt, the sister-in-law, whoever) always would tell me they had seen the bird. Ho hum. Where have I been? But a personal sighting eluded me. Two summers ago I thought I saw one at the top of a tree in Oregon, but I was a passenger in a car, and the look was too quick to be certain. On Christmas Day I was upstairs on the telephone to my aunt when I heard the group downstairs calling to me to look out the window, and there it was, a monster woodpecker with a red brush cut hanging on the suet feeder. Woody Woodpecker himself. I got a good look, and was well pleased.

That was a really fine gift, seeing that woodpecker. I'm fifty-nine today, with lots of Christmases and birthdays under my belt, and it's getting harder and harder to see, hear, or taste anything very new. The Christmas Day sighting of this wonderful creature was about as good a gift as I could want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_Woodpecker

My Extended Weekend "Up North"

The past few days I've been having fun "up north." I signed up for a painting workshop at the Peninsula Art School for last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but left a day early to spend a day with my aunt in Algoma. People sometimes call the small town on the shores of Lake Michigan the "air conditioned city," and in the summer it is almost always cool. I have been visiting there since I was a child, and have a pile of photos from the little harbor. It used to be lined with commercial fishing boats and tar paper fishing shanties. Most of the shanties have been torn down to make room for condominiums, and now there are only two left. This one was refurbished and moved to its prime location near the red lighthouse. I managed to crop out the condos.

After a good visit with my aunt I headed to Fish Creek for my workshop at the Peninsula Art School. My aunt doesn't like coffee, so when I got to Fish Creek Thursday morning I popped into the Blue Horse Cafe and bought a latte. I was charmed by the smiling face in the foam and was sure it was a good omen for the day.

I have always been fascinated with the Mexican celebration of Day of the Dead, and the gallery of the art school had several shrines filled with food, photos, artwork, religious symbols, and these wonderful calaveras (sugar skulls).

The main reason for the trip was the painting workshop, and it turned out to be a winner. The instructor, Shelby Keefe, paints by using an acrylic under painting in complementary colors, then the main part of the painting is done in oils. She demonstrated part of each morning, then we had lots of time to work on our own. She was helpful and encouraging, and I was happy with my first attempts at working this way. Actually I worked all in acrylics, since I didn't have a way to transport wet oils and didn't want to smell them for the entire two hundred mile trip back home. I got mostly finished with three small paintings, which I felt good about since I tend to paint rather slowly.

I hope to post pictures of my finished paintings later this week.

November Scenes, a Poem, and a Workshop

Our pumpkins are on a fast downhill slide. Too ripe when they were carved, the squirrels are nibbling on the the soft Jack-o-lanterns. Dick's "snowman" looks like he has been lethally shot from behind and is on a slow pitch forward toward the deck.

I was glad to have a sunny day, because I needed some more reference photos for a painting class I'm taking this week two hundred miles north in Door County at the Peninsula Art School in Fish Creek. Shelby Keefe, an artist who paints mostly urban landscapes in oils with acrylic under paintings is the instructor. I've been collecting materials, painting in acrylic, and assembling reference photos in an effort to be prepared for three intensive days of painting.

http://www.peninsulaartschool.com/

This shot of an old brick barn on the Tallman House property appealed to me because of the lines, and the single fall leaf against a window.

I liked this photo of downtown Janesville for the geometric shapes and bright colors. You can't see it, but the Rock River runs along beside these old buildings. I will be back on Sunday, and I hope to have some interesting paintings to show.

If you'd like to see some of Shelby Keefe's work, check this link to her website:

http://www.studioshelby.com/

Just for fun, here's a poem from the 2009 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar to celebrate the start of November.

Before the Fall

by Alice D'Alessio

We brake against the earth's spin,

clutching this lush

and gaudy day; spiral

of hawks against the blue

and sumac spreading fire

in tallgrass prairie.

We gather apples

from the last tree --

lumpy rejects, they burst

with cidery exultation

on the tongue. Then

pause once more

by the beaver pond

where fresh-gnawed sticks

arrest the stream. As if by

peering deep into the murky

bowl we could unlock

time's secrets.

A single yellow leaf drops,

Somewhere the night begins.

Scenes from Door Co. and Dickinson

Pleasure craft replace fishing tugs in Algoma's harbor.

Multicolored chairs brighten a shade garden in Ephraim.

The sunset at Bailey's Harbor as seen from the breakwater

Graffiti at the Francis Hardy Gallery

A Western Fox Snake near Woodwalk Gallery

I love taking a few days every summer to head north to visit my aunt and drive around Door County, the thumb shaped peninsula that sticks out into the water between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. This year the weather was nice, so I took the convertible, and enjoyed the sunshine, lake breezes and scents of fields and gardens. I also like to take photographs, either to just remember the weekend, or as potential subjects to paint. These altered photos show some of the sights.

The fox snake surprised me in a couple ways. I almost stepped on him, sunning himself near a former dairy barn, now converted into an art gallery. I surprised myself at not being frightened. There are no poisonous snakes in Door County, though this bad boy shook his rattle-less tail at me. He's a constrictor whose diet is birds eggs and small mammals. No "zero at th e bone" this time, just admiration for a beautiful creature.

The Snake
by Emily Dickinson

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him,---did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun,--
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,

Attended or alone,

Without a tighter breathing,

And zero at the bone.

Weekend Update

At the Flying Pig, a garden center and gallery  outside Algoma, I spotted a birdhouse filled with a nest of noisy tree swallows.  The parents flew in a constant tag team to feed their fledglings, but the impatient youngsters couldn't wait for the next course.

My aunt has a robin who returns each year to raise babies in the shelter of an aluminum awning.  These young birds are nearly ready to fend for themselves.

When I visit Door County I like to visit art galleries, including the Francis Hardy Center for the Arts in Ephraim.  The building, located on the Anderson Dock is a historic warehouse, and boaters are invited to paint messages and designs on the clapboard siding.  Since the weekend seemed to have a bird theme, I took this photo of part of the building's constantly changing decoration.

Every summer I drive 200 miles north and spend a few days with my only aunt. She kindly agreed to be my "substitute mom" after Mother died, calling to see how I'm doing, providing a place to stay when I visit, and not caring a hoot if I raid her refrigerator.  I try to combine this visit with the Algoma doll and bear show, held at the high school.  She always works at the fund raiser, baking brownies and delivering lunches to sellers.  We have fun looking at old family pictures, eating out together, and generally catching up on each other's news.  I sometimes rummage in her basement for my cousins' old dolls.  Sometimes I buy a vintage Tammy or Barbie doll for myself, or sometimes I just find and clean up an old doll for my aunt's five-year-old granddaughter. That is what I did this time,  and we had a good afternoon sorting through plastic tubs of old doll clothing, looking for just the right outfit for the Madame Alexander baby who saw the light of day for the first time since about 1965.

Home Again

The harbor in Algoma

Goats on the roof of Al Johnson's Swedish restaurant in Sister Bay

I don't seem to stay home much these days, even though this time of year is one I enjoy in my house and garden. I drove north Friday with goals to meet up with friends and family, to do some doll shopping and some gallery hopping. I hate to use the phrase, but mission accomplished.


On Friday I packed my bags and drove to the Fox River valley to meet an online friend, a woman with whom I have discussed books on AOL. She wasn't the first; over the past decade I have met a dozen or so fellow readers in person. It was frightening initially, and exciting. Would I recognize this person? Would we get along? Was the individual actually who he or she claimed to be? But my worries have disappeared as each person has turned out to be very much whom I expected, and in each case it was a matter of meeting an old friend for the first time. This time too we fell into talk of family and books that lasted through lunch and on into the afternoon.


Saturday was the Algoma doll show, an event I have attended the past several years. Usually the show has been in July, but the earlier date suited me. For one thing, the Door County area becomes clogged with tourists about the 4th of July, so this time was less crowded. The show was only one day this year and there were fewer dealers, but I still managed to find a pretty little composition Shirley Temple. I also drove over to Forestville to buy some dried cherries and some chocolate covered dried cherries for snacks. Later on my aunt and I managed to get in some catching up, some eating out, and some girl time together.


Sunday I headed out to do my annual tour of Door County art galleries. The trip started out with a first. As I was driving the county road headed toward Sturgeon Bay I had to put on the brakes. Traffic both ways was stopped, and it took a moment to realize why. A fawn just losing its spots stood uncertainly at the side of the road, considering whether to sprint ahead or to turn back toward the field and distant woods. Four cars waited and watched, and the fawn turned chose the field. Everyone was on her way. I wandered through several favorite galleries in Fish Creek, Ephraim, and Sister Bay. It's inspiring to me to visit art galleries, to occasionally recognize favorite artists, and to wonder if my own work might ever measure up to some I saw exhibited there. At the end of the day I planned to drive to my brother and sister-in-law's house. They currently live in the Milwaukee area, and have been building their retirement home in Door County for years. Recently they added a garage and master bedroom, and my goal was simply to see the progress. I was really surprised to see their name on the marquee of a local tap, announcing a family reunion. So I did a U turn and crashed the party. My trip to see their empty house turned out to be a good visit and a full tour.


I never like driving home on Sunday because of the heavy weekend traffic, so Monday was my travel day. I love to take the scenic route home through small towns and rolling countrysides. There is a beautiful view of Lake Winnebago from a wayside on highway 151. The road drops away, and the wayside shows a vista of farms, trees, and the lake in the distance. I have stopped a dozen times to snap pictures that I later tried to paint. Monday I just got out and sketched for a half hour. I told my aunt about this place last year, and she startled me. Her grandmother, my great Grandma Smith, had a summer vacation home on the shores of that same lake. I wonder where it was. I like to think it was near my favorite spot.

Headed Out (EDM #37)

This morning I'm headed out of town, for my annual solo journey up to Algoma to see my aunt, attend a doll and teddy bear show, and tour the art galleries of Door County. The pen and ink drawing is of my key ring, complete with Bucky Badger. I love this yearly journey, a chance to savor the beauty of Wisconsin, from rolling farmland to the sparkle of Lake Michigan. My aunt, whom I have always loved, is my surrogate mom now that Mother has passed away. A former phy-ed teacher, she knows everyone, still loves to do water aerobics, and is perfectly willing to sit up late to talk and join me in an old-fashioned (recipe follows), and a snack of crackers and cheese. She always bakes brownies for the doll show, which is fund raiser for her church. I have bought lots of old Barbies, Kens and Skippers from her basement, the ones my cousins left with her, and no longer have any interest in. Even though I am trimming my own collection these days, I wouldn't miss the chance to visit, talk dolls and family, and sip a summer cocktail.


Aunt Ellen's Old Fashioned Cocktail


Take a bottle of bitters, and shake enough in to cover the bottom of a tumbler.
Fill the glass with ice.
Add a shot of brandy.
Top off with diet Sprite.
Garnish with an orange slice and a cherry.