Two More Online Challenges

5x7 inches, for Illustration Friday: Expired, pen and ink, watercolor

I thought I'd post a couple of small illustrations I created in my watercolor notebook this week for online art challenges.  I've been interested in Illustration Friday for ages, since it is so well organized and so many people post their work on the site.  While some challenges are very specific (draw your shoes), the ideas at Illustration Friday are all open-ended.  They can be interpreted lots of ways, and they are!  This week the topic  is "Expired."  I thought about lots of things that expire: dairy products, coupons and sales, parking meters, people.  In the end a broken doll I had been saving for some sort of mixed media assemblage (yet to be created) called out to me.  I drew her amongst the twigs, dead leaves, and green shoots in my garden, a sort of plastic armless Venus.  Her life as a play toy has expired, but she lives on here.  The most challenging part of participating on this site for me was creating a 50x50 pixel thumbnail.  It took longer for me to figure that out than it did to draw all the teeny circles on the illustration.

5x7 inches, pen and ink, watercolor acrylic ink, created for Inspiration All Around Us

Another online challenge to try is a fairly new one entitled Inspiration All Around Us.  An Oregon artist named Dana Marie has begun posting reference photos every other Tuesday for people to interpret in any way they want.  In order to participate in this site you need to send her an email and ask to join the group, then you can post your drawing or paintings.  I did this little piece fairly quickly in my Moleskine watercolor notebook, first a pen and ink sketch, then watercolor for the waterlily blossom and leaves.  I did a dark blue background at first, but decided that I needed a darker value to set off the white blossom, so added a wash of black acrylic ink, letting some blue layer peek through.

I'm having a good time participating in these challenges, though I doubt I will participate in every one, every time.  For one thing, in order to get comments from other people, it's just courtesy to leave comments for other posters. That takes time.  But giving and receiving feedback is half the fun of joining these groups in the first place.  The other half is having a practically unlimited stock of ideas for creating art.

My Friends' Playhouse

I belong to the Wee Travelers doll club, though I have stopped actively collecting. These days I have no real desire to acquire more dolls, though I like them for their artistry, their history and for their place in children's lives.

Recently our club met on the farm owned by one of the members. We had a potluck supper on the lawn and talked about favorite dolls. The best part of the evening was seeing her playhouse, an old shed cleaned out, furnished with white curtains, inhabited by old dolls, both from her childhood and collected more recently. It was a small, quiet space, and I wanted to share.

Sounds From the Past, part 2

Anna Bernice Adams, later Bernice Ann Smith

I've been continuing the slow process of transcribing the tape my mother helped my 92-year-old grandmother make back in December 1994. My husband says it's strange hearing their voices coming from the studio where I work; I guess it is. Like ghosts, almost. At the beginning she is still talking about living on the "Big B" ranch, which was in the southeastern part of Washington, not far from the Columbia River, and the Tri-Cities area today.

Bernice Tess interview pt 2

We had more horses than cows, because cows were purely for our own use. The horses were for sale and for breeding purposes. We had a lot of horses, and a lot of hired men and a great big lot of land. Four square quarters of wheat. I used to ride on my special mare all around the acres. It seemed like we’d go forever and still be on “our land” I called it, because to me it was our land. It eventually did become our land because my mother ended up marrying the manager of some of the land, the son of the man who owned it, and that was a turning point in my life.

It was my eleventh year. Everything seems to have happened in my eleventh year. My real father was shot and murdered when I was eleven years old, and six months after that my mother told me she was marrying again. The only son that was managing the ranch. Which was not particularly good news to my ears because I didn’t think he liked me, and I knew I was very much afraid of him, because I had been taught to be afraid of him. Because he didn’t like children. Well of course I would grow up. 

So, then I was sent away to school. To a Catholic school, and I was the only Protestant in the whole school. In the questions that my granddaughter Sherry asked, she wanted to know some of the people who had had a big influence on my life, and that I admired. And even though the girls were so hostile to me, there was one of the sisters. Because it was a Catholic school with sisters and priests, they went out of their way to be very very nice to me, and they really made up for it. – the coolness of the Catholic children. And this one sister, I think her name was sister Teresa, she encouraged me very much in my English and my composition. And I remember her telling me one time that she hoped some day to read an article or a novel or a piece of fiction, that I had written with my name on it because she was sure I would become a great author. Of course I would have disappointed her, because I never went on to college, and I never wrote anything that outstanding. I loved to read, but it was other people’s writings I enjoyed, not my own. That lasted, I was in the academy one full year, practically.

At the end of it they came and took me to Hillyard, no I think we went to Spokane first. I know that we lived very near the Jesu Church, and they told me there that next to that church was were there was a little house , not very big, and they said that was where - what was that singer? Bing Crosby was born, just a block from where we lived. And I always thought that was very exciting. Our house there was very small, not pretentious at all. But it was wonderful to me because I’d never had an inside toilet before, electric lights before. It was the first time in my life I’d ever had electricity or any of the nice things about living.

Carol: How old were you then, Mother?

Oh, I was eleven years old yet; that was my eleventh year. That’s my daughter, I’m glad they’re asking me questions, because that’s what I want .

My best friend died while I was still eleven. She was – I considered her my best friend. She lived next door, and she as a lovely sweet Catholic girl. But she didn’t hold my being a Protestant against me. She was, we were, very very close friends. And she played tennis with her brothers one morning and fell against the wire that was put up between the two poles. And I never understood how, but somehow she hit her head on the wire and died instantly. And that was a terrible shock to me. So I had lost two dear people that year, that I loved. 

Then I had the news given to me that I was to have a new baby brother or sister. Well, I was pleased about that, I guess. In the beginning it was such a shock to me I couldn’t hardly comprehend what was happening. But I was, later, it made me very happy, and I always enjoyed having a brother. It was wonderful, because I’d never had a sister or a brother. And I, I thought as much of him as I possibly could, of a real, full brother. And he never wanted me to call him a half brother. He was really angry with me if I said that he was my half brother. He always said, “There are no halves in our family, just wholes.” And that’s the way it was, all through our lives. 

I’m sorry for the interruption, one of my daughters just told me that I hadn’t told my brother’s name. His name was DuRell. And that was a family name from Dr. Smith’s side. His mother was a Durrell. She was French, French Dutch, or Dutch French; I don’t know which it would be. I always considered her more Dutch than French.

Carol: Is that the diamond that Sherry has?

Pardon me, Carol’s asking something.

Ellen: Is that her diamond that Sherry has?

Yes, Sherry has her diamond. And it was mine for a while, and before it was mine, I guess it was Dr. Smith’s mother’s. Yes. 

Carol: You never said who your stepfather was either.

Carol said I never said who my stepfather was. 

Carol: He wasn’t a doctor then.

He was not a doctor at that time. But that’s when we came back to Milwaukee he decided to become a doctor. And we had eleven long years ahead of us. And they were not easy years. We had DuRell to raise, and we had ourselves to take care of. Because his folks did not approve of him coming out there.

I wasn’t happy about leaving Hillyard, It seemed as though my life was just a series stops and starts m strange people, and losing friends, making friends and losing them. So I was very unhappy about the trip way “back East”, as we called it, although really it was only half way. But, we boarded the train. I couldn’t take any of my toys.

Speaking of favorite toys, Sherry once asked me which one was my favorite. And I did have a favorite doll? I had very few toys as a small child, because we moved so much and I never had a place to keep them. So, this doll was very special. The last time I ever saw my father, he brought the doll to me. Mother and I went to Seattle, no, we went to San Francisco, right after the fire, and the earthquake. And we went to a big hotel, ‘course most of the hotels were burned out then, and we could still see the black skeletons of them, and the ruins of bricks that were left, and the burned out houses. I can remember asking my mother what happened, and she said that they’d had a terrible fire after an earthquake. Anyways, afterwards we met my father at this hotel, and he had a big present for me. And it was a doll, a walking doll, and big, came up to my knees you know. And I treasured that doll more than anything I ever had, but I had to leave it behind with all the rest of my things when we started out for our new life in Milwaukee. 

Being on the train was an experience. We had a baby, of course, DuRell was very small, ten months old when we left. And we had to get our own meals. We had just what we could buy at stops. The train would stop and we could get off and buy things to cook on the stove, which was an old coal stove. The conductor put coal in, and some people heated up soup. And we heated up DuRell’s milk on it. And, the smell, of the coal smoke was not nice. We could, everything in the car smelled of oranges and coal smoke. Because so many of the people ate oranges to get the taste of coal out of their throats. And I always well remember that smell - coal smoke and oranges, mixed. To me, that’s train smell. And the conductors were very friendly, They’d come around very often, and set and talk, and play with the baby. But it was a very hard trip with a small child. And we had lost so much that we left behind that I was very sad.

I wasn’t happy about going to this new city. When we finally got there it was a long trip,, we slept in relays. We had just the chairs that we made into a bed at night, with a curtain that came round them. And we’d sleep for a little while, and then somebody else would get up and they would sleep, because we only had the two seats. Double seats. For the three of us. No, four of us, with the baby. So it was very cramped, very uncomfortable, And we were glad when we crossed the big muddy river, and finally landed in Milwaukee. The muddy river was the Mississippi. And I remember they got me up out of sleeping to go and look at it, and I was so anxious to see the Mississippi, all the things I heard about the mighty mighty Mississippi, and how beautiful it was. And I looked at it and was so disappointed. All it was, it looked like mud, like a river of mud. A big wide river of mud. And of course further on it looked much better, but that was near the big cities and it was very polluted. So I was disappointed in that.

The Adams Family in Fairfield

HH Adams, Charles Adams, Aunt Minnie holding Dan, Doll, Annie L. Adams (Fairfield, WA)

Annie Lucretia Moore Adams, my maternal great great grandmother

Main Street, Fairfield, Washington, Summer 1908, from the cover of Early History of Fairfield: Glimpses of Life in a Pioneer Farming Town, published by Ye Galleon Press, 1960

I have written here before about my efforts to unearth family pictures and stories. Why I couldn't have been more interested when my mother and grandmother, who loved family history, were alive I cannot say. Perhaps it's just that now that I am retired I have time available, and the internet makes sharing information easier. At any rate, coming up in three weeks I'm taking a two week trip with my sister-in-law to Washington state, where my grandmother was born and lived as a child. Besides a chance to gawk at the Cascades and the Columbia river, the trip is an opportunity to visit places she lived, and meet a couple distant cousins.

Grandma Tess often spoke of her Adams family, though I didn't pay enough attention at the time. She was born Bernice Ann Adams, and her paternal grandparents were Herman Heinrich Adams and Annie L. Adams. Her father, Len Adams, was a handsome railroad engineer who eventually was shot by a coworker. Bernice's mother, Nellie, remarried the son of a wealthy businessman in Spokane, but that's another story. Until her death Bernice corresponded with her cousins in Fairfield, though she never saw them again. I think she'd be pleased that I'll see Fairfield, visit family graves, and meet at least one of the surviving Adams clan there.

Among Grandma's papers was a book published by her cousin, Glen Adams. Adams founded Ye Galleon Press that specialized in local history. The paperbound book Early History of Fairfield has several stories about the Adams family. Here are a few excerpts that show a little what these folks were like, and what it was like to live as a pioneer:

With the coming of the first permanent white settlers from the Willamette Valley of the Oregon Territory and various parts of the Midwest, early social life settles around Fairfield was limited to the companionship of the members of the family among themselves and an occasional visit with some other pioneer passing through the area for the first time. As years went by and several families took homesteads in the Rock Creek area or the Rattlers Run area, for instance, each family sought companionship with neighbor families and found Sundays the best day for visiting each other. A neighbor family might be invited to dinner and to spend the rest of the day. The elders visited together, or perhaps men might go out in the wood shed or kitchen to play cards while the children played games and in winter turned to coasting down the snowy hills or skating on creek ponds.

Mrs. Hermine (Adams) Holt and her brother "Bert" Adams, remember that even the Indians liked to call upon the white families and often wanted to spend the night at their home three-fourths of a mile southeast of what is now Fairfield. These Indian guests never knocked at the door, but were always offered the shelter and warmth of the hay loft in the barn. In one instance the old medicine man named Peter Sam spent all night with his bed near the stove in the house after aiding Hermine's and "Bert's" ailing mother with a tea he had made from chokecherry and rosebush roots.

from reminiscences of J.W. (Bert) Adams, written in November, 1960

I was born February 24, 1875, on a farm near Eugene, Oregon, so I will be 86 years old on my next birthday. My sister, Minnie Holt, will be 91 on her next birthday; and my younger brother, Otto, who lives in Spokane, will be 82. My father, Herman Heinrich Adams, was born in Prussia in 1839; and my mother, Annie L. Moore, was born in Indiana in 1846. They were married in 1886 after my father had recovered from bullet wounds he received in the Civil War. Father bought an 80 acre farm in Eldora, Iowa, and farmed there for six seasons. My older brother Will was born there, and Lem, Minnie, and a little girl Annie Mary, who died in infancy.

It used to get very cold in the wintertime in Iowa and Father thought that it would benefit Mother's health to move to a milder climate, so they sold the house in 1873 and went to California on the train, then up to Portland, Oregon, on a boat, finally settling in the Willamette Valley near Eugene. My father rented the land at Eugene and worked hard to make a go of things. Mother was busy looking after the children. Besides, the three children they brought with them from Iowa, I was born in 1875, then Roy in '77 and Otto who was the baby of the family, in '79. The older children went to school a little in Oregon but I never did, for we moved from western Oregon when I was five... Father found it hard to harvest wheat in a rainy climate. Machinery was crude in those days and rust got in the wheat.

I was just a little chap when we went over the Cascade Mountains, but I remember it alright. We went east, winding up along the McKenzie River, the wagons going through the deep timber so that it was kind of dark, and then finally we went through the McKenzie Pass and got into eastern Oregon where it was drier. Once we drove for several miles across lava rock and I heard my father talking about it being hard on there horses' feet. It jolted the wagon pretty good and the wagon tires got all shiny from rolling over the sharp rock...

There weren't many houses along the way so we did not often get to sleep indoors, but just camped along the trail, and we children liked it fine if it wasn't raining. We left Eugene late in the year, after the crop was harvested, and got clear across the mountains to Baker City before winter closed in. Father thought about going into the cattle business in eastern Oregon, be really didn't have enough capital for that. There were large herds of wild range cattle in all colors. Once we met a huge bunch that might have been two or three thousand head and Father thought they might stampede right over us, but they shied off and went around...

We lived in a house over the winter of 1880-1881, but it was just an unpainted abandoned house that no one wanted. Father was anxious to find some land he could settle on, but it was pretty wet in the spring so the roads were very soft and it took us some time to get up into the Palouse country. Mother had a sister, Mrs. Joe Beattie, living on the farm where my sister Minnie lives today, so we all came up here, arriving in the Fairfield area on June 12, 1881, too late to get a crop in that year.

Joe Beattie had taken up a homestead and a timber culture claim, each of 160 acres. After reaching the Beattie place, Father could not find any desirable land to homestead, so he traded almost all his horses to Joe Beattie for his homestead right. When they got through trading Father had just a span of mares, one colt and a good black riding mare that my brother Will had ridden all the way from Eugene...

As soon as the trade was made with Mr. Beattie, Father took the team of mares and the wagon on a trip to Walla Walla, where he worked in the harvest to get a little money for the coming winter. That left Mother and six children all alone and at first Mother was afraid of the Indians who kept traveling back and forth between Coeur d' Alene Lake and the little camas meadows along Rock Creek and Hangman Creek. The Indians paid little attention to the time and would drop in at all hours of the day or night, always hoping to be fed. The Indians were always friendly, even the older ones who had fought in the battles with the whites in 1858, twenty-three years earlier. Mother got to be friends with many of them and never had any trouble...

The first school got started in 1884 when I was nine year old. A family by the name of Bibbee that lived on what is now the Reifenberger place got a school district organized and called it Curlew. At the time thousands of birds lived in the prairie grass that covered the hills in Rock Creek valley. There were prairie chickens in generous numbers and they were about our only meat supply in the early days. The curlews were ground nesting birds with long bills and a distinctive call. Thousands of them lived in the tall thick grass, but when the railroad came, so we had a good way to sell wheat, the land go plowed up and the birds disappeared.

Father used to haul wheat to Spokane Falls, just a small place then, but when the Northern Pacific built up through Spangle in 1886, teams and wagons took sacked wheat to Spangle. It took two years after this before there was a railroad in Spangle...

Roy, Otto and I went to college at Pullman, and I taught school in 1887 at Harp School northwest of Mt. Hope. I also taught at Curlew, at Alpine, both east of Fairfield, and then at Albion. About 1902 my mother bought out Pierce Greene's grocery and dry goods store in Fairfield, the store that Fred Zehm started in 1888. Ott ran the store for a year or two then I had the store business. We burned out in 1906 with the old wooden building and that same year put up the concrete block Adams and Co. building... We also built the house where I live in 1906. At first there was no basement, but later Herb Dopke worked with a little team of mules and we dug out a full basement. House and store used to have kerosene lights, but in 1909, some time after the railroad was built through Waverly we got electric lights. I was in the grocery business about 45 years...

Gerald Holt also wrote about the family:

Arn Holt and Hermine Adams were married in April, 1898. After their marriage he followed the carpenter profession, first going to Yakima, where their daughter Carrie was born in 1900, then to Seattle where he worked for contractors. Daniel was born in Settle in 1901. Then the family came back to Fairfield for a short time. Evans was born in 1903.

The family lived at the foot of Mica Peak in a one room cabin and 40-foot tent while Grandpa Holt built a large sawmill for Jim and Emanuel Hansen. After completing the sawmill he brought his family back to Fairfield where they stayed with Herman and Annie Adams. In December 1909 fire destroyed the ranch house. All the neighbors came as they saw the smoke clouds rising. Uncle Bert Adams had his rising horse in a pasture behind the house in town and

never did catch it to get to the fire. Everything burned except the picture of the old buildings which Hermine Adams Holt tossed out the door. The picture with its broken glass still hangs in the house...

In 1922 the family moved to the Herman Adams Sr, farm one mile south of Fairfield, turning over the responsibility of the farm to the oldest son Dan. Grandpa Holt then had time to indulge his favorite pastimes of smoking and cribbage. He owned a car but refused to drive it. He preferred his trusty bicycle and pedaled all over the country on it...

His mother-in-law, Annie Adams, also had a car experience. When she was about 70 she decided she wanted a car. She went to the Farmers' Alliance and told Louise Lindstrom she wanted to buy a big Studebaker. Louie, not wanting to get into trouble with her husband, tried to convince her that she didn't want a car. She walked out in a huff, hopped on the next train to Spokane, and bought the car there. It was delivered to Fairfield and Charlie Adams started to drive it home for her. When they got to the mailbox she decided she had all the gadgets figured out so she insisted Charlie move over and let her drive. She put it in low gear and stepped on the gas. Up the hill they roared, on over the top into the barnyard. That was the end of Great Grandma Adams' driving career...

Vintage Dolls of the World

pen and ink, watercolor in Moleskine sketchbook

We've been home almost three weeks and all my good habits, like working out, like scheduling time in my studio, like housecleaning, are right out the window.  I have turned into a slug.  I read and I take walks outside.  At night we watch movies on DVD. That has been about it lately. Maybe this is just spring fever, a time of transition.

Anyway, today I decided to sketch these little dolls that Grandma Tess gave my sister and me fifty years ago.  She and Grandpa would go on summer driving vacations and then bring us gifts, often dolls of the world.  They never traveled to Peru, just for some reason these dolls appealed to her.  I got them back, along with many others, when Mother died in spring 2004.  They were dusty, but I cleaned them with an old dry toothbrush, and they today look good.  After looking at our Peru trip pictures, I realize their costumes are pretty accurate, too. When we were at Machu Picchu, there was a market near the train, and a lady was selling miniature llamas.  I bought one for the girls, but he didn't get sketched.  Maybe another time.

Happy Birthday, Barbie

pen and ink, watercolor

The Everyday Matters group is sketching a favorite hobby, other than art.  Since it was Barbara Millicent Roberts' big Five-O yesterday, I thought I'd do a portrait of the vinyl goddess.  My original number one doll disappeared long ago, probably destroyed by my younger sisters and brother.  I got this number three doll a few years ago and had her hair restyled and her lips repainted.  A girl has to do a little maintenance to look good after five decades.  I got my original blonde ponytail doll for Christmas in 1959, just a few days before my ninth birthday, Mother and Grandma took the train to Milwaukee and stood in line to get the popular toy. Both of them loved dolls, and they spoiled us girls with Madame Alexander dolls, Shirley Temple, and of course Barbie.  Here is a link to the first television commercial, aired on the Mickey Mouse Club:  http://www.wikio/video/862007

Mother sewed all sorts of little dresses, coats for Barbie, and later Midge and Ken. She even knit little sweaters. The tiny high fashion dresses and accessories made by Mattel were too expensive, except for birthday treats.  Much later, as an adult, when Mother was quite ill, I began getting all the vintage outfits that we couldn't afford before.  That was something Mom and I could share, and I will always remember the pleasure it gave her to see all those little outfits, odes to the 1960s when my sisters and I were children.

Now Mom and Grandma are gone, but Barbie continues. I have a couple dozen different Barbies, and all the original outfits, purses, hats, shoes.  The dolls stand in a book case, and sometimes I think I should just sell them.  Let someone else enjoy them.  But for now,  they are a way to remember some happy times.

Mary Would Be Fifty

      Mary Carol Pierce, about 1960

When Mom or Grandma would get out old pictures and tell stories I used to be impatient, but here I am doing the same thing.  Yesterday my youngest sister Mary would have been fifty.  She died unexpectedly two weeks after her 40th birthday, so it has been nearly ten years.  She was a tender soul whose physical and emotional frailties prevented her from doing many ordinary things.  She had jobs, but never a career.  She loved children but never married. She loved the ocean but never saw it in person.  Some time around her birthday she called me on the telephone.  I wasn't home, so her message was left on tape. It still is, somewhere in a drawer. She wanted us to get together, do something as sisters.  I was busy - really busy - with teaching, coaching, heavens knows what.  I meant to call her, should have called her.  But I didn't call her back in time.  It is one of the great regrets of my life, and I hope she forgave me.

Regret of course, is a useless thing.  All I can do now is honor  her memory and hope I learned the great lesson she taught me about impermanence, and about how important it is to get one's priorities in order.  All I can do is live life as well as I can, work on what's important to me, and remember to put the  people I love first.

Drawing from a Snowy Saturday

5 x 6.5 inches graphite

Nellie and L.D. Smith, Franklin County, Washington

It's another snowy day in southern Wisconsin.  Almost all our snow had melted, but once more we have another six inches, and the sounds of snow plows and blowers fill the dim afternoon. We're not going out today, so it's a good day to draw.  If you have been reading this blog for the past couple years you know that I have been working on putting together as many photographs and details as I can about my family history.  This drawing is a detail from a small black and white photo my grandmother had.

The richest source for historical material is my maternal grandmother, Bernice Adams Tess.   She spoke often of growing up on a ranch in Washington, not always fondly.  She moved there with her mother, Nellie Hodgson Adams Smith, when Nellie took a job as a housekeeper/cook on the Smith ranch.  Nellie had divorced her first husband, Len Adams, who later was killed. Eventually Nellie married the manager of the ranch, the well-to-do son of a Spokane businessman.  L.D. Smith, is the man I remember as my great grandfather.  He became an orthopedic surgeon and taught at Marquette University.  He and Nellie eventually divorced, but I remember him as a jovial white-haired man who dressed in suits, and brought me a doll and a silver cup. Both Bernice and Nellie are buried in Elkhorn, where I grew up.  LD is buried in New York, where he and his family originally came from.

This May my sister-in-law and I are taking an Amtrak trip to Washington state, and I hope to see the places my grandmother lived, including Franklin County.  I think that area, near Mesa, is more of a wine growing area these days.  I know I mentioned before that there was no school near the ranch, so Grandma boarded out with a family in Hanford, across the Columbia River, and attended a one room school there.  That entire area was taken over by the government in World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, so I won't be seeing anything there, but I hope to go through a local museum to learn more about the nuclear reservation.  It seems odd to me that she never mentioned what became of Hanford, and that I'm only learning about it now.  I'm looking forward to the trip very much.

original photograph

Recent Illustrated Journal Entries

Pen and ink with watercolor pencil, from reference photo taken in Door County in June.

Pen and ink with watercolor pencil, from reference photo taken in Door County in June.

I subscribe to a website called "A Word a Day," and this was the quote included from poet Ezra Pound:  "The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work.  To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."

That got me to thinking about why I have done so little drawing and painting over the past month.  One excuse I've allowed myself is that all my sketchbooks were in a display case at the library.  That's foolish of course, because I went out and bought myself a new Moleskine. A person would think that in summer a retired person like me would have all the leisure in the world to make art.  But instead I have been weeding and planting flower beds, baking rhubarb treats, cleaning out the closets and attic and hauling loads to the Goodwill store, driving north to attend a doll show, visiting relatives, and riding my bike.  I got lots more artwork done when the weather was not so sunny and warm. Still, I have been busy, and for me one aspect of a happy life is being able to do lots of different things.

My other excuse for neglecting my drawing is that my little upstairs studio gets hot and stuffy in the summer.  The air conditioning just doesn't seem to reach that room.  It's not so bad when I can have the window open, but on humid days like recent ones, it gets awfully close.  After our recent flooding, painting outside requires heavy applications of bug repellent, since we have an unusually fine crop of mosquitoes.  

So, perhaps the best thing is not to worry too much about how much I'm producing right now.  I can enjoy the extra space in the attic, and now have some room to store the overflow of paintings I just brought home from the show at the library.  Then I can think about doing some drawing in my leisure time - maybe downstairs at the dining room table, where it's cool and mercifully free of mosquitoes.

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.

Spring Fashion Show

My guilty secret is out. I have extensive collection of vintage Barbie dolls. Admitting this has earned me dubious looks and derisive comments from my some of my friends. What is a fifty-something woman doing with a shelf-load of eleven and a half inch vinyl goddesses? Isn't that childish? Don't I realize how damaging Barbie's incredible plastic physique has been to the self-image of generations of real girls? Shouldn't I be doing something more socially responsible with my time?

Forty-nine years year ago, I was an eight-year-old whose mother and grandmother never had enough dolls as children. Their idea of a perfect birthday or Christmas present was a pretty doll. I had baby dolls, a Madame Alexander ballerina, a 17" Shirley Temple, a Little Miss Revlon. We weren't well-to-do, but buying these toys made them very happy. I liked dolls well enough, though I preferred my bicycle, pets and books. I mostly displayed the dolls on a shelf in bedroom that my younger sister and I shared, which accounts for how well preserved they are today.

In 1959 the newest toy being advertised was Barbie, the teenage fashion model. Mom and Grandma took the train to Milwaukee, went to Gimbels, stood in line and bought me a blond ponytail Barbie ($3.00), complete with gold hoop earrings, a black and white swimsuit, sunglasses, black open-toed heels and Attitude. Grandpa disapproved; he could see that times were changing when little girls put aside their baby dolls for a model that needed a clothing allowance. I got a couple store-bought outfits that Christmas, though over the years as my sister and I grew our Barbie collection to include Midge, Ken and Allen, Mother usually made clothes to outfit them. She sewed wee shirtwaist dresses trimmed in rickrack, knitted wee sweaters and hats, even tailored little bitty suits for the male dolls. Sometimes we got the more expensive couture clothing Mattel marketed, but usually our dolls wore home sewn, like we did.

Flash forward to 2000. My youngest sister has died, unexpectedly, just after her 40th birthday. Grandma is the nursing home, and Mother isn't very well herself. It's Mothers Day, and my other sister and I turn the conversation at the table away from sad topics and ask if Mom still had our Barbies? Didn't she use to have our Barbies saved in the cedar chest? It was magic. The dishes were cleared and we were sent downstairs, where we found two old vinyl Ponytail cases, two bubblecut Barbies, two frumpy Midges and two fuzzy-headed Kens. We spent the afternoon looking at treasure, dividing it into two piles, squinting at the tiny dresses with designer labels, wee shoes, hats, and accessories.

I began researching the dolls, and realized that I could have the little outfits I coveted from the old Mattel catalogs. Thanks to eBay, I began collecting vintage Barbies and their marvelous outfits. I started driving to doll shows. I joined a local doll club, went to a couple national conventions. I had some damaged dolls repaired, repainted, even rerooted. But most of all, when I acquired a new Barbie or outfit, I took it to Mom. It was something we both enjoyed, something cheerful, something far removed from aging, illness and death.

That's how I started collecting Barbie. Since Mom's death four years ago, I have mostly gone from acquisition mode to slowly thinning my stash. I've sold the newer Barbies; the Skippers, and the Francies are next. The collection takes too much room, and it doesn't serve the same purpose any more. I'm keeping the the Barbies (1959-1965) and their original outfits for a while. Collecting them has happy associations for me, and it represents an investment of time, cash and emotion. I'm showing the collection to my doll club on Tuesday, then most of them will go back into storage.

China Doll's Head

When I was seven or eight one of our farmer neighbors plowed up this small china doll's head. Lots of things turn up on spring plowing, rocks, grubs, arrowheads, and an occasional treasure like this. Most of her dark hair is rubbed off, and of course her head broke off at the neck. I've often thought she looks serene for having been decapitated. I wonder what little girl missed her dolly? I kept her in my jewelry box for years, then stashed her in a carton of momentos and old letters. Then I forgot about her until I was digging around in the closet last week, and she popped up once more. I wanted to paint her, so I photographed the little head on my dresser and was startled to see how the edge of the embroidered dresser scarf looks like a bit of ruffled blouse.

The Lost Doll
by Charles Kingsley


I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;
Her cheeks were so red and white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,
As I played on the heath one day;
And I cried for her more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay.


I found my poor little doll, dears,
As I played on the heath one day;
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,
And her arms trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled;
Yet for old sake's sake, she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.

Poetry Sunday

I finished this watercolor of my paternal grandparents yesterday. It's 1927, because she is pregnant with her first child, my uncle Gene. I love their Depression era caps, his driving hat and her oversized newsboy cap. She must be wearing his overalls, because the cuffs are rolled. This is the only picture I ever saw of her in pants; she wears a dress in both my memory of her and the other photos I have.

I chose this poem to go with it because the field used to give up little treasures. I have a couple dozen arrowheads Grandpa collected after spring plowing, and also a china doll's head. These artifacts, along with the old photo, help me feel connected to the past.

Discovered
By Shirley Buettner

While clearing the west
quarter for more cropland,
the Cat quarried
a porcelain doorknob

oystered in earth,
grained and crazed
like an historic egg,
with a screwless stem of

rusted and pitted iron.
I turn its cold white roundness
with my palm and
open the oak door

fitted with oval glass,
fretted with wood ivy,
and call my frontier neighbor.
Her voice comes distant but

clear, scolding children
in overalls
and highbutton shoes.
A bucket of fresh eggs and

a clutch of rhubarb rest
on her daisied oil-cloth.
She knew I would knock someday,
wanting in.

1957 Gimbels Santa

These photos are of me and my sister on Santa's lap at the Milwaukee Gimbel-Schusters store (ironically now Macys), about 1957.  Have you ever seen such an awful Santa beard?  I'm sure I thought this was the real Santa item at the time.  I don't remember much about that day except the excitement of it all.  My grandmother and mother got us girls train tickets, and we rode from Elkhorn to downtown Milwaukee.  Gimbels had extravagant displays, and a toy department that was heavenly to a little girl.  I remember going to a movie on that trip, the 1957 re-release of Bambi.  I haven't had the nerve to watch it since.  All that remains in my dim memory is a cavernous movie theater, and the forest fire that kills Bambi's mother.  

This is still two years before my mom and grandma went to Milwaukee without us to shop for the hottest new toy, Barbie. Years later Mother told me that Grandpa was not pleased that we were getting the curvy doll instead of a more age appropriate Madame Alexander or Miss Revlon.  I wish I knew what happened to that number one Barbie.  I suspect her final resting place is our local landfill.  

One more story about 1957.  I was six, turning seven right after Christmas, and I still believed in Santa.  Maybe it isn't surprising, since I started school the next year (no kindergarten for me), and I was the oldest child.  There were no older spoilsports in my life, but I wasn't completely innocent.  I had my suspicions about those Christmas morning piles of Santa gifts. This particular year, though, something happened to make me believe a little longer.  We had a herd of dairy cows, and Christmas Eve they broke out of their fence and left Holstein hoof prints in fresh snow - that's what Dad told me much later.  When I looked outside that day, there was the evidence of Santa's visit, trampled snow around the farmhouse.  I believed for one more year.

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.

EDM Challenge #6 Goodbye, Baby

When I was a girl I didn't care very much for dolls, but my mother and grandmother did. They bought dolls for me and my sister, and enjoyed them very much. Years later I discovered that Mom had saved our Barbies in a cedar chest in the basement, but that's another story.

In the 1950s and 1960s I was a farm kid and liked riding my bike and playing in the barn. There was one doll I liked though, Little Ricky. He was a big doll, almost infant size, with sleepy eyes, dimples, and a nicely modeled face. He came in a yellow sun suit with his name embroidered on the waistband. He came out in conjunction with the I Love Lucy television show, a show I watched all the time. I hauled him around with me, pushed him in a baby buggy, changed his diapers after I fed him water. Somehow he disappeared, and once I started collecting dolls as an adult I bought him at a show. I was excited to show Mom, but by that time she had forgotten him. She loved the pretty dolls, the Madame Alexanders, Shirley Temple. Even when I showed her a picture of me with Ricky she didn't respond. How could she not remember my favorite? Anyway, she is gone now, and we are selling our house. I am reconsidering what I might like to take with me, and Ricky didn't make the cut. I sold him to a lady in Florida on eBay, and today he is traveling. But because I loved him once, I decided to draw him. This is a quick graphite and colored pencil sketch in my little journal.