Sketchbook - Mary, Riding

8x10 inches

graphite, colored pencil in sketchbook

My voice is slowly returning, a little stronger every day.  In general I feel a bit better each day, though I'm appalled at how how this bronchitis has held on.  

I've been doodling and noodling in my sketchbooks, and tried a little more formal one from a snapshot of my late sister Mary, from the 1970's.  I didn't take this picture - I think Mother sent it to me. I was away at school, and my youngest sister was turning into a lovely young woman. 

Life took a hard turn for her not long after this.  Our father became sick with cancer, and the world revolved around him for about five years.  Then she got very sick too, spending weeks at UW hospital in Madison.  She never really recovered her health.  Mother used to say she had twenty good years, and twenty not so good years.  

But the photo is drawing is based on shows a healthy and apparently happy girl, looking forward with hope.  I may want to try some different versions of this, maybe a larger painting that is less a specific portrait, and more a general image of a happy girl.  

Working on it made me happy.

Autobiography - One Coloring Page at a Time

I've been coloring, but I've also been drawing the past few days.  Actually I had the idea for an autobiographical coloring book while I was coloring something entirely different - maybe a page about Zorro.  It occurred to me that a parent and child might sit down to color together, and if the picture had to do with somebody in the family, a conversation might start about who that person is, what place the picture depicts, what pets (or toys, friends) the person had when they were a child.

So, this is me, with one over several pet crows my father kept for a time.  He loved animals, and we not only had the usual farm animals, cows, cats, dogs, but also occasional wild pets like crows and raccoons, and once foxes. All of the wild pets were freed once they reached maturity and preferred a mate to us and our attention. 

This drawing is of me, my father, and his collie mix farm dog, Shep.  I have pictures f Dad with this dog when he was in high school, so Shep was older than I was.  He was a sweet old softie, and when he died, perhaps the first living thing I remember dying, we wrapped him in a sheet and buried him under an apple tree in the orchard. 

So, this isn't painting or anything I'd take to the gallery, but it's entertaining for me.  I've also been doing a few for friends, trying to see if I can make anything interesting out of other people's photos. 

The jury is still out.

New Year

Gotta say, I don't enjoy this time of year, cold and dark as it is.  I don't really like hunkering down in the house trying to stay warm, but there are some good things.  I catch up on my reading, watch some of the old movies that have piled up on my DVR, and I doodle and paint more than any other time of year.

Take this doodle, drawn yesterday in a successful attempt to avoid having to make some hard decisions about a collage/painting that is cooling its heels in the studio.  I had recently read an interesting book about Kurt Vonnegut's drawings, and spent a nice afternoon really looking at them, reading an introduction by his daughter Nanette, and an essay about his art from a critic.  Then I shamelessly copied a few into my sketchbook, since that seemed to be the best way to analyze his style.  For me, anyway.

Then I opened an email from Carla Sonheim, whose fascination with doodling into photos of sidewalk cracks leads to some very interesting, and often whimsical, results.

Anyway, I downloaded her "crack of the month" - which sounds dubious but is quite legitimate, and found myself channeling Kurt's style, more or less.  And I liked it. 

So, this afternoon I will quite procrastinating and go up and see what I can do with that troublesome collage/painting. 

Happy new year.

Midsummer

6x6 inch collage, in my sketchbook

Unbelievable, July is nearly over.  When I was teaching July was the only month that was reserved just for vacation activities - camping, biking, gardening, or whatever was good.  I don't do much of any of those things any more, except a bit of gardening, and that has been curtailed because of my stiff and sore knees.  The  flowers that come back on their own every year are still a source of joy, though. The bee balm has been glorious this summer, as are the lilies.  I try to cut some most every day and bring them inside to enjoy.

This summer has mostly been about the series of cemetery tours that I've been leading in connection with a local group that is restoring the chapel that was built around 1900.  My tours, which highlight interesting people from Janesville and the surrounding area, and old headstones and monuments, is free, although the chapel restoration folks are there every time serving cookies and water, and accepting donations to help pay for the new roof, foundation work, and stained glass window restoration.  The tours, which have been well attended, are fun to lead, but take lots of time to research, plot out, time and rehearse.  I finished writing the last one this week, and I look forward to not having the constant deadline hanging over me. My last tour is August 9th.

I'm also nearly finished with an online workshop centered on composition in connection to collage.  The teacher does work I admire, and I very much enjoyed a one day workshop with her last summer.  I'm not so sure that I'm getting as much from the online lessons, maybe because they were very specific, and there were a lot of them.  So many of them, in fact, that I had trouble keeping up.  That, plus the limits the instructor placed on the materials we could use, began to wear on me.  The class lasted five weeks, and I'm still not finished. I only post some of my completed assignments, because I just used whatever paper I want, which it not what the instructor had in mind.  The little collage at the top of this post is an example.  I just I just have problems following directions. Surprise!

My other summer art involves the community figure drawing studio at UW Whitewater.  I've miss a couple, but the sessions I've attended were great fun.  Thing is, what do I do with stacks of drawings of undraped models?  I suppose I must just look at it as practice, and not worry too much about the drawings, some of which I quite like.

I try to get out and socialize when the opportunity arises.  I spent a week in Kewaunee and Door counties recently, visiting my dear aunt, who is 85, and my brother and sister-in-law, who are a few years younger than I am.  It was fun visiting, going to art galleries, and driving the convertible with the top down.  Seems like there aren't all that many days in the year for doing that sort of thing.

Carpe diem.

Jutta, for Julia Kay's Portrait Party

I have been busy with our whole dying refrigerator experience the past week, and now that the new double door stainless steel gleaming machine is installed and the food is back being safely chilled.  Oh, and I once more have ice for my summer beverages. 

But I had been enjoying a little book of contemporary drawing and sketching called Freehand: Sketching Tips and Tricks Drawn from Art, by Helen Birch.  I checked it out from our excellent local library, but I find myself referring back to it over and over for the engaging illustrations, and then looking up on the featured artists.  It made me itch to try out some new ways of working.

That's what made me try an entirely different style in this portrait of Jutta Richter.  I am filling up a cheap paper sketchbook with tan toned paper for my most recent portraits, so I experimented with drawing outlines with a Micron ink pen, and also doing some simple textures with the pen.  Then I limited myself to white, red and blue colored pencils, dispensing with any shading at all.  This drawing was all about design and flat areas f color.  I hesitated making her face white, but it provided the contrast I wanted. 

The background is greatly simplified.  I added just enough to suggest the outdoor rural winter scene, and I brought dark areas up to contrast with her white skin.  Looking at the results now, it occurs to me that the shapes are simple enough that I could try a portrait using collage - but that will have to wait until later.

Figures in the North Woods

For a number of reasons, I never took a workshop in 2012.  This year I was determined to not repeat that mistake.

So, I signed up for a class with Robert Burridge at Dillmans Resort four hours north of here, near Lac du Flambeau.  The class description indicated that the emphasis would be on drawing an undraped model, then painting in acrylic, and using collage elements, to create abstract paintings.

I spent weeks ahead of time going over the materials list, covering full sheets of watercolor paper with white gesso, figuring ways to get as much as I could into as portable a format as I could. I made sure my electronics were charged, that I had cords.  I took drawing supplies, paint, collage materials, adhesives, a bucket, in short, the works.

There were some issues.  I forgot that there is no cell phone service at the resort - it's remote.  And anyway, even if I was in Lac du Flambeau, or Boulder Junction, my yearly contract and payment was up.  So, the phone stayed in my suitcase.  I had my iPod Touch for checking weather, email, and for showing people wee photos of some of my art, but realized when I got there that I had the wrong recharging cord - for the iPad, instead.  Oops. I was able to borrow one from another student.

My drawing materials were OK, and I had enough paper, but I should have brought my gesso to use as white, and to cover up the things I did that I never want to anyone to see outside the classroom. I definitely should have brought bug spray - the skeeters were fierce.

But it was an excllent week.  I admire Robert Burridge's work very much, and it was a great opportunity to watch him work and solve problems. My roommate, whom I had never met before, was congenial and fun.  It rained, but not so much as to make life miserable.  I got to hang out in a classroom that overlooked a lovely lake, with eagles and loons on it.  People loaned me gesso.  Thumbs up.

My only quibble - many of the tips and stories were repeats from another class.  It didn't hurt to have some of them repeated, but I would rather have had more time with the model - she was lovely, calm, and altogether a professional.

Anyway, I probably made a couple dozen 3-8 minute sketches of her in charcoal, pencil and ink.  These are just a few that I liked. They're larger than I usually work, and I am determined to find a large sketch pad that has toned paper.  For now, I plan to tone a few blank pages for the local summer session of figure drawing that will be held starting Monday at UW Whitewater.

Go Figure

I returned to figure drawing studio after taking a couple weeks off for travel, and recovery from travel. Getting over to Whitewater takes about a five hour commitment by the time I pack up, drive there, clean up and drive home again.  Still, I always have a good time, and I am getting fond of the quick draws in particular,  I find that the longer I labor over a drawing the less I enjoy it, and that shows inthe results.  This is an initial five minute pose, done with conte crayon.

I arrived late, so found myself off to the side, with lots of foreshortened views.  Still, I like the challenge.

Our model Linda always poses in yoga outfits, and I find that drawing a clothed model is just as interesting as an undraped one, and perhaps the atmosphere in the room is a bit more relaxed as well.

I spent a little longer on this, though it really doesn't look it, except for the addition of watercolor to the conte crayon.

I asked and got permission to photograph some of her poses.  I figure next winter when I am too chicken to drive over I will have some of a favorite model to use.

Quick and Silly for Illustration Friday

This week's Illustration Friday idea is "rescue."  My first idea was the old standard of the life saver tossed to the drowning person.  Then I played around with ideas of how to play with that a little.  I first considered a collage with a well manicured female hand being tossed an over-sized diamond ring, then rejected it.  My husband's suggestion pleased me better.  What would Homer want to save his life?

I'm thinking Dunkin' Donuts. Sprinkles, please.

Just a quick note about some art activities that took longer.  I participated in a local "Art Loop and Painters' Frolic"" on Sunday at a convention center here in town.  This was new for me.  I had all sorts of concerns, including the fact that I don't own any display boards.  But the organizer did have some to loan, and I found myself at a table next to one of my former high school students, a lovely girl who paints large oil and acrylic canvases with bright colors and abstracted human forms.  We were supposed to also be painting as well as selling, so I brought along my water mixable oils and did my best to paint a local scene.  A nice man at a local pizza parlor gave me a clean box that served as a carrying case for the wet painting.  It was a long day, with lots of packing, hauling, arranging, chatting, and some painting.  I managed to sell some some items that covered my entrance fee, and I have a couple strong possibilities for sales of larger pieces.  But most of all, I saw lots and lots of friends and neighbors, and I met some artists I didn't know before.  I came home tired, but happy.

A Study of Salome

study of a detail from Benozzo Gozzoli's 1461 painting, The Dance of Salome

Another online challenge site I recently discovered is one called Following the Masters.  Every month the blog's owner chooses a theme.  Last month it was the Ashcan School painters, and this month it is the Italian Renaissance.  She suggests books to help her people learn about the topic, and then followers can draw or paint something related to the topic.   Last month I read Robert Henri's wonderful collection of lectures, letters and essays about art called The Art Spirit.  This  month I re-read Irving Stone's fictional biographical novel about Michelangelo's life, The Agony and the Ecstasy.  I also decided this month to study another Renaissance painter, this time one I didn't know.  I chose Florentine painter Benozzo Gozzoli, whose figures attracted me.

Here is part of original painting:

I Salome's graceful figure and flowing dress, and the way he uses orange/reds, along with grayed greens and some blue in the shadows.  His painting is much more attractive than my study, but I feel I learned something in doing the work.

Now For Something Completely Different - Dr. Sketchy

It was a fun art-filled weekend.  On Saturday I attended the workshop/awards for the Whitewater Arts Alliance WRAA.  The weather cooperated, and the show was judged by a wonderful watercolor artist named Amy Arntson.  Arntson paints large photorealistic paintings of water and waves, and she is a thoughtful jurist.  It was fun to see art friends from around southern Wisconsin, and I was pleased that my watercolor of a Mexican woman qualified for the state show later this year.

               

Then on Sunday I was pleased that an art friend I had seen on Saturday agreed to try a "Dr. Sketchy" field trip to the High Noon Saloon in Madison.  Dr. Sktechy's Anti Art School is an international franchise, life drawing with models dressed (more or less) in saucy costumes, held in bars.  It's informal, and lots of fun.  I had meant to go for months, but either I couldn't find someone to go along, the weather was bad, or I had other plans for the day.  

It helped that I had taken a life drawing class last summer.  I had lots of drawing materials, and I was ready for the short warm up poses, and gradually longer sessions.  It turned out that I liked the results of the short poses best.  The first two here were either one or three minute poses.  The vine charcoal and pastels worked well to capture these quick impressions.  Maybe having drunk about half a Spotted Cow didn't hurt either.

The model, who was advertised as a "fully posable Barbie" didn't resemble any of my collected vinyl goddesses, but she had lots of attitude.  She didn't wear pink, either, but I added pink pastel just because you can't have Barbie without some pink.

This was the result of a twenty minute pose, and I think this was the sketch that won me a box of pastels - yeah!  We had a great time, and the three hours flew by.  I had been a little nervous about heading out to a bar with a bag of art materials.  I thought I might be surrounded by lecherous men (I wasn't) and that I might be the oldest bag there (wrong again).  I wondered how bare the model would be, but she was nothing compared to what I saw later at the Grammys on television.  I enjoyed the intensity of the drawing, the great sound system and music, having a drawing buddy with me, and relaxing a little with refreshments.  

This being retired isn't bad!

Wild Things

pen and ink, marker, in my sketch book

Last week on my birthday we went to Madison to see the amazing film version of Maurice Sendak's 1963 Caldecott winning children's book Where the Wild Things Are. I was mesmerized by the visuals, and charmed by the child who portrayed Max. Unlike Ralphie in A Christmas Story, who is forced by his mother to wear a pink bunny suit, and is the image of misery, Max wears his wolf suit proudly. He is a wolf, a wild child, king of the wild things. I was intrigued by the way Dave Eggers and the other writers built on the basic story, giving it an even more universal appeal. Who hasn't been angry at the slights and limitations of his or her life? Who hasn't wanted to clobber her tormentors? Who hasn't wanted to start a rumpus?

All this led me to remembering my youngest sister, Mary. She was a sweet child, though she and my youngest brother, who was only a little over a year younger, got into plenty of trouble. "Let the wild rumpus start!" could have been their motto for several years. At any rate, in 1960 Santa brought her a flannel tiger suit. Perhaps Mother had been reading Winnie the Pooh, or maybe it had something to do with Kellogg's Tony the Tiger, or even the Esso gasoline ads that promised to "put a tiger in your tank." Mary loved her tiger suit, which at first was too large, so that the feet flopped. She wore it to sleep in. She wore it to play in. She wore it every day, everywhere, until finally she either outgrew it or it fell to rags. Mary earned her nickname, Tiger, a name she answered to her entire life.

I wonder if Sendak had a child in an animal suit?

Last Figure Drawing for the Summer

Janesville artists are represented at the Sweet Spot Coffe Shoppe in Whitewater, Wisconsin. The building was formerly an old hotel, which had become decrepit. But the owners renovated it, and now the building houses this popular place to eat, drink, meet and view local artwork.

This is a group show. My contributions were the red and white striped candy and the two small portraits of little girls.

I think the ochre colored walls are inviting, and make a nice background for these shows, which change monthly. I wonder how many paintings ever sell in places like this? I'm sure it benefits the coffee shop, which always has changing art on the walls, and must draw in some people. I was lucky that a Whitewater friend took my work over to be hung, since I was otherwise engaged the day the show was hung. It was a lot of work for her to transport and hang the art. I hope she at least sold something. I've had art in lots of shows in galleries and in places like this, but I've sold little. The question is always, why? Is it that people don't come to coffee houses to buy art, but rather to drink coffee? Is it the fact I show mostly watercolors, and that medium is seen as less desirable than paintings that aren't framed under glass? Is it the tight economy? Or is it that the art is pleasant but not good enough to compel people to purchase it. Maybe it's a combination of these factors.

The figure drawing class I took in Madison ends next week, but we're leaving for Colorado on Sunday, so this was my last class. All the poses were fairly short this time, none over twenty minutes. If I'd had more time I probably could have built in more contrast here. There were two other poses with props. In one the model sat on a car tire, and in the other she sat in a wooden school chair with a desktop. I learned that these extras distracted me from what I was really interested in, which was drawing the model accurately and creating a good composition. I found trying to get the perspective and shape of a student desk to be very trying, so I concentrated on the shape of her body. I'm not posting the results, which are at best humbling.

July 20 Figure Study

Last night was my figure drawing class in Madison. We had a model, though a clothed one. She was graceful and lovely, though not what I expected. We're still working with vine charcoal, covering the background with a medium value, then adding in darks and lifting out the highlights. She positioned herself for a forty minute pose, and I drew her twice in that time, once in crayon on newsprint, and this one on nicer paper.

There are two weeks left, though I can only attend next week, since we're going away for a week at the beginning of August. We'll see what model we get for next week.

From Last Night's Figure Drawing

45 minute pose, vine charcoal

another 45 minute pose

We had a model for last night's figure drawing session, though we had a substitute instructor. We're still working on this reduction method, laying down vine charcoal, then lifting out highlights and adding darker values. I wish I could have done a better job on his legs in the top sketch; his are sturdier than the ones I drew. Obviously I miscalculated on the bottom sketch, though the instructor called the composition "dynamic." I love it when people dignify your mistakes. Actually, I like the range of values better on the bottom attempt.

I skipped last week, though I had been in Madison all day with my husband. We had intended to take in a couple museums, forgetting that they are closed on Monday. So we had a nice lunch, wandered down to the Memorial Union and sat in the shade by Lake Mendota, then just went home.

Figure Drawing

When I graduated from Elkhorn high school (EHS class of 1969) and headed off to the state university twenty mile from the farm where I was raised, I had two ideas in mind. I would either major in English and teach high school students how to love literature and write decent research papers, or I would major in art and teach high school students how to - what? Love art as I did.

I ended up with the English option by default. My freshman intro to art class was held in the basement of a science building on campus, a cement bunker where I was urged to draw with a black marker and not lift it from the page. We also were required to carve blocks of wood into interesting shapes with a set of Exacto blades. After I accidentally drove the blade into the middle joint of my left pointer finger and fainted dead away onto the cement floor, followed by several stitches in said finger, I decided that writing term papers about Shakespearean heroines was easier and safer. I became an English major.

So - I never got to take a figure drawing class. I like drawing people, but my "models" are usually sleeping people at airports or the library, or the beach. I have drawn the back of many heads. I try to draw people quickly in theaters, coffee shops, whatever I can. But once spotted, people either become nervous or self-conscious and it's over.

I thought I had the answer this summer when I read about a summer figure drawing class in Madison. I had looked at these classes before, but the driving and the timing concerned me. I live 40 miles from the UW Madison campus, and most classes ran until 10:00 PM, which meant I would get home really late (for me). I hate to admit it, but my eyes aren't as good as they once were, especially at night. This class runs until 9:14 p.m., which means that if the weather is good, and road construction isn't too awful, I get home by 10:30 p.m. I keep the cell phone charged,
Anyway, I have enjoyed the evenings once a week devoted just to drawing. On my own at home I tend to work a lot from photos, and this class forces me to use my eyes, to work from a live model.

Ah, a live model. Herein lies the rub. Of the five classes I have attended, only three have had models. Twice no model showed up at all, so we were reduced to drawing each other. I was disappointed. I ran this little pep talk in my head:

You paid your fees. You want to learn to draw from life. You want to learn new techniques. Quit your bellyaching and draw!

Yes, but there is the two hours of driving, the rushing around, the parking fees...

Sherry, quit your bellyaching and draw!

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.

Sounds From the Past

modified contour drawing of my great grandparents when first married

In 1994 when my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I asked for a taped interview with my grandmother. I got the tape that year, listened to most of it, and put it in my tape caddy. Last week I got it out and listened for nearly an hour. There behind the hissing of the old cassette tape, were the voices of my mother, aunt, and grandmother. Grandma and Mom are gone now, and it makes me a little crazy that I cannot ask for more details on some of the stories. Now, after having put together memories with old photos, and having visited the places she lived as a young girl, I know what I would ask Grandma. In 1994 I didn't know, and was probably too busy with teaching to probe for more.

So, little by little I'm transcribing her taped answers to my questions, and when I finish I hope to have it transferred to a CD, and share it with my family. This is the first installment.

Transcript of Interview With Bernice Tess

December, 1994

This is Bernice Tess. We are gathered here with Ellen and Carol, my daughters, to celebrate Carol’s birthday, and while we are all here together we thought it would be a good time to answer some of my granddaughter Sherry’s questions. She has written down quite a few questions on paper that she would like to know about my past. And I think we should start more or less at the beginning, which is a long time ago, because I am ninety-two years old.

And I was born in the Cascade Mountains in the state of Washington, the very very deepest part of the mountains in Leavenworth, Washington, where they cut the big pass for the railroad over the mountain. They had to put two engines on there because it was too steep for one engine. And my father, being an engineer, wanted to live there. So my first memories were of a little cottage, up on a hill, very high up, And all I could see when I was a toddler around the house was snow because the windows were all covered with snow, and we had to have lamps, oil lamps, to see by, even in the daytime. And gradually in the spring, we would see the snow go down, and we would watch it on the windows, because every day it’d be an inch or so when the sun melted, and it was very thrilling to watch the snow go down, inch by inch, until we finally could look out our windows. They were pretty dirty by then, but that didn’t bother me any at the time.

We lived there until I was about three years old and then there was trouble in the household. And my mother and father disagreed, or, agreed to disagree, I guess. Anyways, Mother got me up in the middle of the night one night and said we were going on a train journey. Which was very surprising to me because my father was still sleeping in bed. But we went to the neighbors and the neighbors took us down to a train, and we went to Hillyard, which was quite a few miles and on flatter land. It was a suburb of Spokane. And we went to a friend of Mother’s and stayed with her for a while. Eventually we bought a house there, or my father did; he came back to live with us for a while. But that didn’t last too long either. And this time when we left, we left for good. 

I wasn’t ready for school yet, so I must have been around four when we left the final time. And all I remember from those days were different people’s homes and faces where I stayed while Mother worked. She was a midwife, and she went to various homes and helped with babies being born, she told me. So I, being a very shy little girl, I wasn’t used to staying with all those people; I was very uncomfortable. Especially when I could hear them talking, whispering about my mother behind my back. I didn’t like it very well. So we were not too happy. Mother read ads in the paper, and finally decided the best place for us would be out on a ranch. There would be no people around to be talking about us, and we could live our own lives. So she answered an ad, for a man that wanted a housekeeper, out on a big ranch, in the east, northeastern part of Washington, right near the Columbia River. So she answered the ad, and he was not too happy. He didn’t know that she had a little girl, but he finally accepted me because there were very few people that wanted to go work on a ranch that was fifteen miles from the nearest town. Well, fifteen miles on land. If you crossed the Columbia River you could go to Hanford, and that was only six miles away, but it was hard to get across the big wide Columbia River. 

Eventually I had to cross the river to go to first grade, And then I was boarded out again. But, that year passed, and I was back to the ranch. Then we looked for a school teacher. We had a hard time getting one because nobody wanted to teach out there. It was very wild and woolly.

We had four big sections of land, and it was sand dunes and sage brush, and they grew dry wheat. It was an experimental thing with growing wheat, because it was bare, almost desert like country. Hardly ever rained. If it did rain we all ran out and tipped our heads and opened our mouths and let the rain run in. It was fun. We loved getting wet. We loved the rain.

But, school was not much of a success. We started out in a little one-room shack that had belonged to a homesteader that went broke, as they all did, most of them at least. And they had a woman teacher, but she didn’t stay with us long. When the left they got a man teacher and eventually built a one room school house, that was really a school house. We had an outdoor toilet, that had to do for both boys and girls, and we had a lean-to that did for the horses, because a lot of us rode horses to school. There were no cars of course, and no roads, really, just sand,. We went where there was room to go, there wasn’t a real road. And we thought we were very well off with the new school, though the teacher was rather - different. He taught us all that we didn’t really need to study, because the world was coming to an end, in just probably six months. So, we needn’t worry too much about our grades. He just taught religion to us. He said that was much more important than lessons. And of course we didn’t sleep very well at night, I had nightmares, Finally Mother asked me what was troubling me, and I told her. I said, “We are all going to die,”

“Oh no, “she said, “we’re not going to die.”

I said, “Yes we are, and it’s going to be real quick.”

And so, that was the end of the teacher. He left and we didn’t have any school that year at all, we just sort of took it easy and went without school. It pleased most people, but I was very hungry for companionship and the only companionship I had was at school. So I was pretty lonely. 

Then we got a hired man that was very very nice to me, so that helped a lot. He taught me how to dance, out in one of the hay lofts. It had a hard floor. It was over our jackass. And when we danced too hard he would bray, and make a terrible noise. You could hear him for miles away. But we laughed. That was just part of the fun. But I was never allowed to go near him. He was very vicious, wild. The farmers brought their mares there, but that was all. He had a very special yard of his own that was fenced in with high fences. That was just part of farm life. 

And we also had the only windmill in the country, and the only place that had a well big enough that they could dig down deep enough in the sand to get water. So all the farmers and the homesteaders would come to us for water. And they had water wagons in those days, made out of wood, and the slats twisted and turned like a barrel. Some of them leaked. Most of them leaked, and you could tell their trail, coming and going, by the water leaking out of the slats. But that’s all they had, apparently there was no way to seal the seams because they all leaked. But we never charged them for water. They got it for free. They just had to carry it. 

And we also had a huge big water tank, and that’s where I learned to swim, in the water tank. And then I also learned to swim in the Columbia River. But the current was so swift there that I had to have a big rope tied on me. Because the current would have carried me downstream, and that really wasn’t a very good place to learn to swim. So I really relied more on the water tank for the cattle and the horses.

Recent Illustrated Journal Entries

This blog celebrated its second birthday April 17th. Happy belated birthday to the Late B(l)oomer!

It occurred to me that if I wanted to get better at doing travel journals, I'd better do some practicing. So, these are two pages from a recent trip to Madison's Olbrich gardens. I worked from snapshots, and tried my best to keep them simple. I wanted a combination of sketches, in this case of the garden's beautiful Thai pavilion, and information. I only used a Pitt artist pen and a grey brush marker. My next real chance to do travel journaling will be May 9th, when I travel on Amtrak to Washington state.

On a sadder note, my cousin called me from South Carolina to say that my uncle, my dad's only sibling, passed away this morning. Although he had an accent from decades of living in the South, he looked a lot like my Dad, who died in 1983. I counted on Uncle Gene for that resemblance, and for the family stories he knew and was happy to share. I'll miss him.

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

February Thaw

graphite and colored pencil, from an old sketchbook

The good news here in southern Wisconsin is that the temperatures have risen above freezing the past two days, and it looks like today will be a nice day also.  The rotten old snowbanks are black with road grit, but that same dark color is hastening their melting.  We live on a hill, so rivulets of snow-melt rush down Atwood Avenue.  I drove to East Troy yesterday to meet my sister-in-law and plan a May train trip to Washington state.  All along the way the traffic sent up showers, and I had to depend upon the windshield wipers to see, though the sun was shining brightly. Today I got the storm window in my studio open and shooke out my dust mop.  For months it has been frozen shut.

No new art to show.  I've been doing a little personal journaling, nothing interesting to anybody else.  A fair sized watercolor on Yupo sits nearly done, but not finished.  Ditto for a colored pencil piece.  Fiddle-dee-dee, I'll worry tomorrow.

Rarity

by Michael Belongie, the 2009 Wisconsin Poets Calendar

The ordinary is rarer

than we think, as I walk

in early January thaw, thirty

degrees warmer than norm.

Greened grass reappears

from sand-smudged snow;

the melting invigorates

birds, alighting to feeders.

Stoic snowman melts;

his head eroding as

stick arm tilts down, and

ground absorbs this thaw.