MOSTLY WALKING AND PAINTING

Dearest Readers,

I’ve been walking and painting this week.I stopped by to chat with the current owner of our old family homestead in town. Meet Nancy Jeski next to some of my grandmother's few remaining old hollyhocks. It’s a stalky, leggy flower from another era...perhaps Victorian times.

Etta went to school at 4 PAWS ACADEMY  for one class to curb her separation anxiety. It was really a class for me to understand dog “pack mentality”, their den hierarchy around food, vertical and horizontal space. Retraining her will take some determination.

Nathan and student Etta James

On the 4^th I made a big loop around town hoofing it as the morning misty air lifted. It felt like the beginning of time.

Mist Rising from the Green Mountains

I passed Moon's Brook, gurgling through the lush greenery, 

Moon's Brook from Killington Avenue

crossed the old Rutland Railroad tracks, 

RR tracks from Allen Street

and strode up Gouger Hill past the open door of Christ the King Church.

Christ the King Church from the vestibule doorway

 I ended the day at my neighbor’s house for a cookout on his porch with other neighbors. His kids squealed with sparklers in hand, and tossed little cap-like fireworks that made a snapping sound when they hit the ground. A downpour at 9:45pm probably put a damper on the fireworks display slated to begin at the RutlandFairgrounds right after the Demolition Derby. Hopefully it went on later. Vermont was spared the 100+ heat wave that hovered over the southern and middle parts of the US. With only one box fan in my apartment/studio, I’m grateful that we dodged that bullet.

 *I revised my Untitled Wings#2 painting, swirling the skulls and hearts in the force field of the surging wings. I think this is closer to what I wanted to convey in the piece.

BEFORE

AFTER

    *Completed a new self-portrait entitled Day #14-Sleepy

Day 14 Sleepy,

8-1/2" X 11"charcoal and pastel on paper

*More drawings from the weekly open model studio session at the gallery near my place

*And I completed a proposal sketch for Sculpfest at The Carving Studio in West Rutland Vermont, a sculpture studio on the grounds of four old Vt. Marble quarries. I'd use marble scraps scattered on the grounds and branches from the trees and brush growing near the abandoned quarries.This may be too ambitious for the short amount of time I am in Vermont this summer, but I like the drawing, and thinking about it has given me better ideas for the performance hole dig that I’ve decided to do in Atlanta this winter. Last year I cancelled that plan, but now with this modified, smaller set of two nesting holes, and the addition of a homemade ladder with lashed branch extensions, I’m feeling a greater comfort in doing the project without the danger of a cave-in.

Untitled Hole Project

 The poem of the week commemorates an unseen creature’s life/death struggle Friday night outside my bedroom window.

OUTSIDE MY OPEN WINDOW

A life battle squeals and reels,

Bites hard on a bone,

Sends up a shrill stabbity stab.

Through the thick of summer

Something rolls in the grass

Rises and tumbles.

Yee yow flapp flapp flub.

Yeeoowee bllllrrrr EEEEEEE.

A primal force ebbs, surges,

Fights back until

Only silence and the warm velvet

Curtain of night

Smother the memory of its brave little heart.

-Friday 7.6.2012