Folklife Festival 2006

Folklife Festival 2006: Seattle's gift to itself in the form of a free festival devoted to music, culture and diversity. What a joy to be a part of this amazing party.

Anyone can come and bring their instrument and participate with others in singing or playing their music. It is a calcophany of sound.

Beautiful people. Every age, race, condition and persuasion. Having fun together.

My good friends Andrew and Terry McIlrath. Terry is a painter too and Andrew is a treasure.

My booth (OK, 2 pictures spliced together with a lots left out but maybe you can get the idea of how much work I usually bring to a fair).

The fair was a huge success despite 3 days of moody Seattle weather. On the 4th day, Memorial Day, the entire city seemed to turn out for a day of sunny pleasure, dancing, making music, playing in the fountain and enjoying all the art and film and musical programs on the schedule. I took a lot of pictures and will share these with you. I really love Seattle. The city has more diversity than any other I know of and the most tolerant, loving attitude toward its multi-flavored mix. This is surely heaven right here on earth; acceptance, kindness, love. I am crazy busy and so I will just post some photos for now to give you the flavor.

Blog Eats Woman's Brain

We leave for Folklife in the morning so I am supposed to be packing, cleaning and all that but no, my friends, I am here because you are here. This is the painting i finished just in time to take to the show. This one was inevidable as where I live there are about 25 non-human animals to every human-animal. They have to sleep outside! Life is so unfair. I know they would love nice houses with central heat but the man draws the line. Only Hermanito gets to sleep on the bed.

I will post some flowers that I shot last Saturday. I did nothing all day but circle the property taking pictures and having an "appreciation" day. To be alive. To have health. To be surrounded by beauty. For beautiful food from the garden and fragrant breezes and friends and family. I never forget that I am pixie dust - here for a very short visit and then quickly again I will depart. We create our lives. Make it a good one!

Red

I remember the day in Basic Design class when we learned about warm and cool colors. Before that day I would have said the color of fire was hot (orange, yellow, red) and the color of snow was cool (blue, purple, white). Not so, to my surprise. The assignment was to get out our tubes of gouache and contrast the warm yellow to the cool yellow , the warm red to the cool red and the warm blue to the cool blue. I remember staring at my tubes of paint going "what the fu ...?"

Well, now of course I know the difference and the subtleties of color temperature and as I worked on my painting "Reader in Red" I thought of that time. I had a huge expanse of red to fill and I wanted to do it in shades of cool red only. I like to think of colors as food sometimes and so this would be the red of cranberries as opposed to the red of tomato soup. Here, then, is my painting in cool colors; a painting of contemplation and peace. This is how I always pictured old age but I have yet to sit in such quiet reverie although my mind is on vacation much of the time.


While I'm at it I'll share another cool red. This is a shot of my "Purloined Rose" that John and I clipped from the side of a pasture about 5 years ago. From that single, fragrant stem has come this huge, sprawling bush that trails 20 feet in all directions and threatens to slash my arms every year at pruning time. I've never discovered the name or origin of this rose but suspect it is an old, hearty variety (hey, like me!) that flourishes in this country on neglect and the fertile soil.



Finally I will brag a bit about the man. This is the salad he made for supper last night out of the wild arugula from the garden with onion, avocado and tomato - dressed with basalmic vinegar and olive oil. With that he prepared corn cut from the cob mixed with last summer's roasted jalapeno peppers, cut into bits.


Our friend Rick had a wine tasting a couple of weeks ago for 12 of his best friends. We sampled 10 bottles of wine in the $20-$25 range and we all agreed that this was the best of the lot. The man who brought this wine had a great laugh on us as it was a bottle he added for fun that was more in the $8 range so I will share my little secret with the rest of you and you can check it out and let me know what you think. Here is the label.



The next few months will be hectic but I will do my best to check in at least weekly. I love staying connected with you here. Feel free to comment. I know you're there!

Mer-Mother's Day

The front of the page is on the left and the reverse is on the right. Fold in the middle. Mailed off my "Crowned Heads" pages to Diane this morning as well as the mermaid book to Bee. Collage; how I love it! Is it art? Is it crap? Who cares! It's fun.

The family had a barbecue at Steff's yesterday to celebrate Mother's Day and I got GIFTS. Whee! The mermaid came from Hawaii (she has seashells in her seaweed hair and her body is acrylic painted on cotton fabric stuffed with something) and the earrings are pearl, up from the briny deep. Arrrrrrr.



Moose and Cooper entertained us for hours playing together, sliming each other and being clumsy, sweet puppies. Of course Cooper is much younger and even though Moose is still a puppy himself he was very cautious and well behaved, and didn't hurt Cooper once.

Then we ate! Feast your eyes. John got Chocolate covered Macadamia nuts and kona coffee toffee covered Macadamia nuts from Hawaii. I ate most of them. Eeeep. Well, it was Mother's Day.


Today I am painting; right now the gel is drying.

Mermaid Collaborative Book

This is the front and back covers of my half of the mermaid books that Bee and I are creating together. She lives on the Atlantic coast and I live on the Pacific so the book will travel a long way in it's journey toward completion. I had no idea what I was doing so I just plunged in and did what was fun. As it turned out, I headed for the old photos of my family and so I decided to tell the story of my mer-mommies and my home. We'll see how that goes.


I did the writing on vellum with walnut ink and used Babblefish for the Spanish translation. I know just enough Spanish to know that the translation was somewhat bogus but that just made me laugh and I used it anyway.


On the "Home" page I used a transparency of a painting of a house surrounded by aluminum tape with scraffiti. Lots of glued paper and embellishments. You can probably figure it out.


This page shows my Great Grandmother and her sisters dressed in their mermaid tails. We owe everything to our mamas, our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers and beyond. Some day I will do a book to honor the men who nurtured us but I have never heard of a merman (well, beside Ethel) so that will wait. Maybe. I'll think about it. It's so much fun just making it up as I go and making it just what I want to. So Bee, it's coming your way on Monday. And I'll be watching my mailbox for her book in return.

Themes and Symbols

One of my art teachers once said that there were only a few themes in art and life; birth, death, metamorphosis, love and a few others that I’ve forgotten. Some artists are drawn to one particular theme and some to another; by deep awareness we each discover the themes that to us are recurring and meaningful.

I dream a lot at night. In a majority of these dreams I am flying, dancing on air, leaping over buildings, having great joy in my body. Floating. Traveling. I am always me; never a bird or Wonder Woman, but I can always fly and while it is thrilling and dangerous I have trust that I will not fall. So it is an act of courage, this flying as well as an act of showing off, for in most of these dreams I think I am doing something special and that people are watching with approval. I suppose that is the child in me that still delights in pleasing others and basking in the limelight.

One of the recurring themes in my paintings is of a lone woman in the act of flight. I have portrayed this activity in various ways. The painting I just finished is one of these in which I am traveling with intention; I have my little boat and I am charting a course for myself by watching for signs and heeding my intuition. This is how I see my life nowadays. I am wide awake and charting a course of my own choosing. I am no longer young and confused.


This painting is on canvas, mixed-media; acrylic, alkyd, encaustic, and collage. After I finished it I remembered an etching I did of a similar subject about 27 years ago. I searched my drawers and found the etching (a drypoint, really, with aquatint etched in) and I will share it. Someone recently called my "style" magic realism. I dont like labels in art as each painting is so individual an exploration, but I think this one is suitable because it recalls one of my favorite authors, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who has always been referred to as a magic realist. The etching now strikes me as the work of a very young artist but I think it is interesting how it fortells the painting I just completed.

I think I may have done this etching in 1977 or 78 and it was only the second one I'd done at that time. I wanted to write a story then of a woman who danced into a rainbow and create a handmade book of etchings to illustrate the story but I never got beyond the first two illustrations. After that I learned how to make etchings in color with multiple plates and turned to a more painterly style.

To sum up: life themes. What is your recurring dream? Or daydream. What do you doodle while you talk on the phone? Where does your mind go while you are pulling weeds or washing dishes? These are the seeds that your imagination can turn into art, be it storytelling, song or pictoral. Save them up and nurture them. You have a story that only you can tell. It is a powerful thing and it will change you and the world.

Friendship

Did you know that Mother's Day is celebrated in Mexico on the 10th of May? We always celebrate it on a Sunday (the Brunch lobby?) but in Mexico it is the 10th, no matter which day of the week that falls on. So I received a phone call this morning from our friend Fernando saying that he and Federico would be by with tamales that Sylvia had made us to honor me on Mother's Day. (swoon) Imagine! Hot green chili pork tamales freshly made this morning for my breakfast. John had purchased a pink Jasmine for Sylvia (we had planned to deliver it Sunday) so everyone at our house is honored and happy as fat puppies with tamales in our bellies.


Monday night I stopped by to see another friend and snapped these pictures in his pristine garden of a family of trolls that we all make fun of. What is it about trolls? They are just weird and kind of scary like clowns. (Just kidding, Benny.) Not.

On Sunday at the Mary Reike fundraiser I purchased this painting from my friend, Sandy Bakken. She is an amazing painter and I am struck over and over by her unerring sense of color and her delicate sensibility. Don't you just love this canvas? I do.


I am working on a painting and haven't wanted to post until I finished it but another friend e-mailed this morning clamoring for a post so here it is with a smooch attached. It is sunny here and my Dainty Bess rose bloomed for the first time this morning so my mood is wonderful. I hope your day is good too. Now to go work on my painting some more.

From concept to canvas

In our quest to learn Spanish, John and I manage to watch a full length Mexican movie nearly every night. No subtitles. Usually not many clues as to what is taking place on the screen. But we are getting better at a few phrases (me) and John can even carry on conversations as long as his listener is patient and talks as slowly as he does. So the other night we were watching one of our favorites about an heiress who runs away from home and hides out with the help of our hero, Luis Aguilar. (thump thump goes my heart) In the course of their adventures she is accosted in a bar by a bluto like sailor who is as coarse as she is refined and the contrast makes for some amusing scenes.

I always have a paper and pencil nearby and was fascinated by the hat the sailor wore (a beret with a bill) so I sketched that, then the face beneath it. Then the striped shirt. The imagined anchor tatoo. And so on. Since the movie was in Spanish I dubbed the foolish swain "El Tiburon" (the shark). And thought how amusing it would be to make a scene between the shark and the mermaid. So more sketches followed. Here they are.



Before I knew it I had an idea for a painting. Gene Flores had given me a set of Loteria cards so the next morning I began pasting those around the edge of the canvas to locate the scene in Mexico. The rest of the painting just fell easily into place.



The thing I did not expect was that the face on the oafish suitor would turn tragi-comic ... a moonstruck calf instead of a fool and in the end I thought that was more fitting. We are all trapped in our bodies and by our hormones after all and no one is really an oaf or a fool. Senor Tiburon is only doing what nature equipped him to do. And Senorita Sirena seems to be enjoying the show.

Eighty degrees

It's nearly impossible to stay indoors in this weather. The air is too fragrant, too warm. Everything is growing so fast that it changes on a daily basis and begs to be appreciated.

The lambs. The figs. The growing tomato plants and peppers. The roses which refuse to open with the exception of Therese Bugnet. The blackberries which sprout up everywhere and bite my fingers when I pull them out by the roots. Blackberries will eat us alive in Oregon if we aren't vigilant.

Then there is my trusty assistant, Hermanito, who pesters me all day long to lie down on the floor with him and tickle and pet and cuddle him in all the approved ways. If you dont do it perfectly you will get the wrath of his razor claws. Otherwise he's a pussycat.

These are beautiful, dont you think? Common little weeds. But so precious.

We brought these irises with us from our old house in Orenco. They are a rather ugly variety but they emit a powerful scent of grape kool-aid which everyone who experiences them agrees is miraculous. Beside that they were given to me by Mrs. Sharp who passed away this winter and so they remind me of her and all the loaves of bread of pies she used to send over when John and I were working late into the night preparing for the next art fair. Her name was Dorothy and she was a great role model for me. She excelled in all the old skills; sewing, baking and child rearing. She could butcher a hog and make laundry soap out of it as well as food for the table. Her stories of the "hard times" were a vivid contrast to the easy lives we live today.

More Paintings

These are the two I completed yesterday. Gracie the cat is another “plaster” experiment, this time with canvas in the center of the plastered area, collaged flowers from a seed catalog and layers of tar gel built up on the surface for a glassy, interesting surface. I like the contrast between the dry plaster and the shiney painting. It really brings out the colors.


The next one is a reverse painting, 16x18 inches overall and I included the frame so you could see how I surround the painting. Since I use the acrylic panel as both the painted surface as well as the glazing material I like to leave a “mat” area around the painting to isolate it on the wall. I am painting with acrylic paint here.


These days have been very busy. Yesterday I met with the author of the book I illustrated this winter. In the coming months I will share those illustrations too but I haven’t wanted to talk too much about it before the publication date. I think the book will be wonderful; it is a memoir of the dust bowl days in Tascosa, Texas and will have a forward by Red Steagall, poel laureate of that state.

I also attended a meeting of Mac Users to discuss website design. Aargh, mine is just a mish mash, it more or less happened rather than being designed. If I find the time down the road I may do something about that but it sure wont be in the next few months.

I ‘m wearing my new iPod that arrived yesterday. I have never had one before and it is a revelation to me. I think it is keeping my brain too busy to think about peanut butter cups and that’s a good thing! I hope you are in a happy place today - I am.