LOOKING UP AND LOOKING DOWN

Dearest Readers,

The leitmotif this week is what I saw below my head, or what I found above it.

LOOKING UP

The Dunn Building, Wales Street, Rutland VT 7.13.2012

 This is the Dunn Building in downtown Rutland. Cousins on my mother’s side built this structure for the Dunn Bowling Alley in the first half of the last century. It now houses the Salvation Army. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Dunn as was my mother’s middle name. I hadn’t planned on it, but events occurred this summer that have encouraged some genealogical research, and visits to a couple cemeteries to discover my Irish ancestors. The Dunn and Fagan families arrived in the area after the Irish Potato Famine in the mid 1800's. They started small farms, fought in the Civil War, and worked on the Rutland Railroad while others moved to Buffalo, towns in upstate New York, and Troy to find jobs.

–more on that in a later post.

Center Street, Rutland VT 7.10.2012

 Sky in Vermont has a life force that swings from serenity to anger and back again as the prevailing westerly winds encounter Canadian cold or North Atlantic fronts. Sky is riled and roiled by wind and rains, or pacified by blissful days of dry clear blue, fluffed with curls of cumulus. Nightime affords an array of stars and planets in a blanket of dense quiet.

LOOKING DOWN

Compliant

 I’ve soothed myself by beginning to quilt my 89 vintage printed portrait hankies one at a time, rather than together on a bedspread. This is the view of the first one looking down at my knees sitting on a bench in Main Street Park. An 80 something woman named Esther told me she always walks through the park, but this was the first time she ever saw anyone doing “fancywork” as she called my needlework. It started a nice conversation. She lives in an apartment home formerly known as "Shadowlawn" that my parents rented a room in during the summers in the 1950s.

Academy of St. Aloysius uniform from memory

 At home in my studio I pinned a replica of my Catholic Grammar School uniform to quilting fabric and batting that I had spread on the floor. More to come on these projects.

I leave you, readers with the view on the ground beneath my feet. I’m compiling a botanical gallery of plants that I remember from my Vermont childhood.

This week’s poem at the bottom is entitled Sky. The weekly portrait is #15-Relieved.

Lush Ferns and low three-leaved ground cover

Bachelor Buttons

Black Eyed Susans

Small Brambly Roses (my name)

Brushy Wild Daisies (my name)

Catalpa Tree with seedpods in Main St. Park (flowers have passed)

Orange Choke Cherry Bush (childhood name)

Red Choke Cherry Bush (childhood name)

Dried "Coffee" Plant (childhood name)

Geranium and Petunias in window box

Popular climbing porch vine (name unknown)

Milkweed

Phlox

Pompoms (childhood name for Hydrangea)

Bluebells (childhood name)

Queen Anne's Lace

Roadside variant of Bachelor Buttons

Abundant roadside yarrow-like flower

Yankee Clover (VT State Flower AKA Red Clover)

The three-leaved ground cover in flower

Tiger Lilies

Wildflower pond near the Rutland Hospital on Upper Allen Street

 

Self-Portrait-Relieved

 

SKY

Sky is an internal organ–

Hiding behind the mask

Of weather’s flourish and display.

Sky is a slip-slider

Of intestinal outpourings

And rootless indecision.

Sky, like skin is a membrane

That belies the warren worlds of gastric

Global dimensions beyond the surfaces of

Flat white heat or stunning cold.

Sky breathes out dew and damp,

fire and vapor, snow and smog.

Noisy grumblings leak through her screen

From hollow tunnels, and Hubbellian holes

Expelling atmospheric juices

From ages and ages ago.

Sky burps out puffy plops of gaseous nimbus,

Thunderheads, mackerel, anvil

And accumulating cumulus–

Traces of a bilious otherworld

Of tangled tubular turbulence

Coiled at her celestial core.

-Sunday 7.8.2012

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

SLEEPING WITH THE ARTWORK

 

Dearest Readers,

I moved my bed into the Center Street studio in a brilliant stroke of common sense. Why separate myself each night from the stuff I’m working on, when lying among the artworks fosters dreams and creative inspiration? It’s like a giant projected TV screen on the wall just beyond my toes. In a twist of logic, I can imagine myself stepping into these painted worlds that came from inside myself. As they say, I’m loving it.

Two new paintings on paper this week: The Threshold and Untitled Threshold #2

The Threshold-35"x 39"-Acrylic on kraft paper

Untitled Threshold#2-35"x 39"-Acrylic and oil stick on kraft paper

And a new self-portrait entitled Day #13-Enlightened

Day 13-Enlightened-11"X17"-India Ink and pastel on colored paper

Friend and artist Michael Beale and I spent a day at Mass MOCA in North Adams, Mass...an hour and a half drive south of Rutland VT, just over the border. What a treat!

This repurposed 19^th century mill has 26 buildings on site creating an interlocking landscape of courtyards, bridges and passageways, plus some giant spaces inside that invite installation artists to think BIG. Three group shows and one multi-room installation on view are outstanding. I include a favorite image from each. (Hard to choose!)

 Oh, Canada, a sweeping selection of contemporary Canadian artists working in a range of new and traditional media.

Sand-Light-and-Slo-Mo-Water-Bottle-Windmills, Oh, Canada at Mass Moca

  Invisible Cities, bringing together 10 artists “who re-imagine urban landscapes, both real and fantastical”. The title comes from Italo Cavali’s 1972 book that expands upon Marco Polo’s vivid descriptions of the cities of Kublai Khan’s fading empire.

Compound, by Sopheap Pich, rattan, in Invisible Cities, Mass-Moca

 

 

 

Making Room, The Space Between Two and Three Dimensions, a wonderful show by a selection of national and international artists working in hybrid art that combines new technology with traditional or outmoded analog media.

Harem, by Inci Eviner, video projection on etching_Making Room at Mass Moca

Sanford Biggers' Installation The Cartographer’s Conundrum 

takes its inspiration from the Afro-Futurist painting The Quilting Party by the muralist John Biggers (1924-2001), who may or may not be a relative. The space is huge. Biggers uses musical instruments, church pews, mirrors, plexi, large screen video projections, floor art and a re-purposed pre-Civil War quilt that he beautifully makes his own.

 This week I visited Ginger Birdsey’s home and studio in Ripton again for a lunch by her pond,

and a look at her new wood houses and ladders for the Middlebury Art Fair in mid-July.

Ginger Birdsey in studio with Houses and Ladders in progress

Ginger Birdsey with painted houses

We drove together to Burlington for the opening of Five – artworks by five former assistants to the renowned Vermont printmaker Sabra Field at the Frog Hollow exhibition space downtown. One of the “5”, is the Atlanta printmaker, clay artist and friend, Marie Weaver–nice to see her new clay work, framed prints and book art.

Marie Weaver on right and Ginger Birdsey on left with Marie's books and framed woodcuts_Frog Hollow, Burlington VT 6.28.2012

 I leave you with a poem written this week early in the day.

WALKING OUTSIDE IN THE EARLY MORNING

A memory lures me outdoors

Anticipating something on the rim of remembering.

The smell of keen edged loam

Opens a forgotten channel

That tickles an itch long covered

By neglected thoughts of home.

Released from the logic of sunny days

The skin of sky unloads a sudden cleansing downpour,

Exposing my bundled nest of dirt and dreams.

I stand on the stoop in my quiet pajamas

Inhaling this pungent snarl of life and decay.

-Friday 6.29.2012

CENTER STREET STUDIO

Dearest Readers,

In the Center Street Studio

I’m blissing out here in my Rutland Vermont studio. See 33 seconds of studio snaps at http://youtu.be/ZM3KQJpbwkw

Last Week's Leafy Wings and Golden Heart

My wing paintings are becoming more abstract and muscular. Pardon me, but they are taking flight from safer ground to increasingly unknown places.

Wings 2 This Week

Wings 3

I was gifted a membership to the Chaffee Art Center in town by my friend Michael Beale. Now I am taking an open model figure drawing “class” there on Thursday nights from 5pm-8pm throughout the summer. $5.00 per session. Rotating models. The Chaffee is just three houses from my studio. Can’t beat it, and I’m getting practice drawing the human body with a group of local Vermont artists.

Week One

Week two

 I’m making an effort to meet other artists in their studios while I’m here. It’s a small state and easy to travel around. I usually take the mountainous “scenic routes”. Friday I visited the painter Leonard Ragouseos who has a studio in the woods in Newfane in southeastern Vermont. We talked about his very large ink drawings on Yupo–a type of mylar. Gorgeous!

Leonard Ragouseos in Newfane, VT studio

 On Saturday I stopped in to see the fabric artist JudithReilly who has a studio in her home in the middle of Brandon in central VT. 

She stopped calling herself a quilter because she said people expected geometric patchwork bedspreads. Instead, she creates landscapes and layered “paintings” using bits of fabric, batting and a darning foot on her sewing machine that allows her to draw with thread over the surface of her fabrics. Amazing color, artistry and detail.

Judith Reilly in her Brandon, VT studio

 Last Saturday, I volunteered to help the artist Paedra Peter Bramhall transport a large digital photo montage printed on canvas to a gallery in the Pop up gallery district of Winooski, near Burlington in northwestern Vermont. 

On the down side, three days of over 90 degree weather was hard to take in this un-airconditioned upstairs apartment and studio. 

Kane Portrait_Day12_Overheated_11x17_Charcoal-on-paper_2012

 I bought a big box fan from Wal-Mart for $15.88, and Etta got my little table fan. 

We’re back to good weather- 80/59 degrees today. 

Band Concert-Main Street Park–Rutland, VT

  I leave you tonight to the strains of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever playing outside my window. It’s Sunday evening and the Rutland City band is wrapping up their regular Sunday summer band concert in the gazebo in Main Street Park nearby. They always conclude with this crowd rousing number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4v9Da5DpYo

GETTING MY GROOVE ON IN THE STUDIO

Dearest Readers,

Rutland, Vermont Studio 6.14.2012

After much dipping into and pulling back of my toes from the waters of my home-made Vermont studio, I’m now drawing, painting and writing. It’s a relief. I’m never sure what the big hump is initially that I need to get over, but once overcome, I’m a free bird in my creative element. I’ve finished a new drawing of leafy wings surrounding a golden heart.

Heart Cradled in the Nest of Loving Kindness

An abstracted version is in progress. This week’s portrait depicts the feeling of being “even”...in balance and calm. 

Portrait #11-"Even" (fearless portrait technique)

I learned this two-handed, two-color “fearless portrait” technique this week from friend and Atlanta artist Ginger Birdsey, who spends her summers in the lovely, dark, and deep mountain woods of Ripton, VT– home of poet Robert Frost. Here's how to do it: Stand or sit in front of your paper with one color drawing tool in the right hand and another color in the left. Begin drawing your face from memory, moving both hands and both colored tools at the same time-I repeat at the same time. This seems to free the mind from its worries about perfection. Make minor touch-ups when it is complete. Voila!  Dog Etta came with me to Ginger’s place and romped around a pond leash-less, sniffing bear and wild smells while we spread a blanket over the damp earth and ate our lunch of tomato soup, spicy chicken salad and crusty bread. Thank you, Ginger!

I wake most days at dawn to the raucous sounds of a family of crows with babies that flap and dive around my upstairs apartment. They have an aerie high in a pine tree across the street. They caw, croak, argue and chatter until late afternoon. In an occasional pensive mood, they almost sound like geese with a rhythmic raspy honk.  I tried to ignore their presence. I surrender and honor them instead.

"HeArts of Rutland" Community Artist Project for Flood Relief

One Heart in Situ at Fire Station

I’m walking a lot. Shops, restaurants, supermarket, post office, pharmacy and even a small Wal-Mart are easy to get to on foot here. Last Sunday at noon, Etta and I walked to a show of thirty fiberglass hearts painted by volunteer artists that will be auctioned in the Fall to benefit the victims of the 2011 floods from Hurricane Irene. They will be displayed outdoors throughout the city during the summer.

The community project is called HeArts of Rutland.

Fagan Family Home-90 East Street, Rutland VT

My studio/apartment is two and one half  blocks away from the James and Elizabeth Dunn Fagan family homestead at 90 East Street–my maternal grandparents house and stewpot of childhood memories. It was sold in the 70’s, but still exudes a gravitational tug that pulls me into its field of dreams. The poem Daredevils is set on the sweeping veranda. The rockers exist now only in my mind.

DAREDEVILS

Mommy held me on her lap during summer storms.

We rocked on the porch after dark

Tossed by the wind, sprayed by the driving rain

Like seafarers on the bounding main

Cresting, rocking, diving,

Laughing at lightning as it ripped down the black wall of sky,

Shrieking on cue when the thunder cracked–

Riding that lifeboat up and down

Faster and faster

Wrapped in each others fear and joy.

We dipped and dived until the next blade of fire

Lit up the yard, the triple-decker swallow house,

And every leaf on a row of lilacs.

For a startling moment, the magic of the cosmos

Slashed through the safe life,

And turned my mother and I into daredevils.

I leave you readers with two poems written at dusk...the magic time in Vermont. The pre-night silence for me falls like a blanket wrapped around homes and machines. It is a thing in itself, soothing and surprising–descending invisibly. I often stand in the partial light marveling at where this essence has come from.

  

SILENCE

 Be still. Hear this walking breath

In-then-out astride my rhythmic steps.

Walk along the ridge of Grove Street

Where the brown shingled mansion

With the gambrel roof

Meets the stand of black pines

That muster there like sentinels

Strong and brave.

Oh Spirit of Quietude,

Allow this hallowed mountain town

To wrap its orange silence

Around my stone wall,

Up to dusky clouds,

And out beyond the distant peaks

of Pico and Killington

Spotlit in sunset

Forever and ever Amen.

STILL

Something is in suspension here.

Loud words are muffled.

Motors have been put to bed.

Crepuscular winds roll through the maples

Reciting the mystery of oxygen–

Whistling a tale of deep weightlessness–

While something unspoken is

Holding its breath.