Sava by the Clotheslines

I am really excited about our upcoming trip to my homeland: two weeks back in Northern California in the beginning of July!!! I am bringing some boards out, to start painting my new Americana series (slated for a show next May for the Arts Council of the Valley).  We are going to be camping up north with friends near a river, and then spending a week at the family cabin in the Sierra Nevadas....

This cabin is the loose foci of the new body of work  that I have been dreaming about doing for about three years. It is going to be source from family photographs from my early childhood spent at the lake, and so I hope to find inspiration in the revisiting of the smell and feel of the crisp mountain air, and the lake gently lapping at the shore. I would like to get some of the pieces at least started there.....

But hell, in the meantime... some Virginia is creeping in. I can't seem to wait to get started on this new series. I am getting inspired by images of my daughter, Sava Talulah, playing amongst the gardens and front yards (littered with bunny statuary and bird fountains and decaying front porch couches....ahhh, a different vision of American, but potent and compelling all the same). Here is what is perhaps to be the first painting in the series..... Sava by the Clotheslines...still in progress-  so much to dial in!   But...

I love it.

The other cool thing is that I was looking at the top photo on the computer (the up close painted face), with Sava in my arms, and I pointed to the screen and asked her, "Sava, who is that?" and she looked at it and said  "Saba!".    Which is saying something... I think. For her to recognize herself in blobs of collected paint.

 

Maybe this series is going to be as much of an examination of childhood.... in particular, the mirrored and particular upbringings of myself and my daughter. What has changed... what stays constant? Are we able to experience an Americana that is not utterly personal?

Baby Robin: aka Michael Landon

Whew! It has been a whirlwind of emotions the past 24 hours.... at 3pm yesterday we found a baby robin in the road, and I immediately scooped it up and put it in a box to bring inside and figure out what to do....  it seemed the right thing to do, what with cars zooming down the street and cats prowling relentlessly. We read online that you feed a baby robin canned dog food with a tweezer, and no water, and that you should never ever think about hand raising them (not that I intended to, seeing as how they require to be fed every 20 minutes.)

So I made a makeshift nest from an easter egg basket and hung it from a branch in the general area of its nest, and hoped its mama would readopt him, and rushed off to work. When I got back from work at 10pm, I asked Jamba where the bird was (as we agreed we would bring him in at night to keep him warm) and he said it was still outside. I rushed outside to the "nest" and found it empty. My heart fell crashing to the floor! It fell out of the nest again! It's been eaten for sure.... I searched the ground sadly for feathers and bones, wanting closure, when suddenly my flashlight found my little baby straggler, inching out into the asphalt road again.

And I looked up... and saw Kitty, perched on the car, watching intently. It was honestly, not a moment too soon. So baby bird was scooped back up and I went to the neighbors (girlfriends of mine) and we set up a schedule to all take turns getting up to feed it every hour, so that not one of us would be so terribly sleep deprived the next day. And set my alarm clock for my 3:30 shift, wondering if I was perhaps a bit mad.

So, the next morning, after fractured, non-productive sleep in which i dreamed of gaping bird beaks and cats that swarmed like sharks under the surface of the street, I went online for more research and found this annoying news: 1) baby robins sleep through the night and don't need feeding after sundown, and 2) baby robins with feathers and with talons that can grip onto your finger are called fledglings, not nestlings, which means that the bird was on the ground intentionally, just going through a normal developmental phase in which they hop around on the ground, with parents watching, and learn to fly. This was confirmed by the Wildlife Center, who said to put him back up and let nature take its course.

ugh.

So baby bird (nicknamed Michael Landon last night by Leela, because of its wispy little eye feathers that look like bushy eyebrows) was put back in the "nest" and I made a resolute plan to leave all alone, and stop being so meddlesome and imposing my incredibly strong maternal urges on creatures that don't need me. It has been a meditation, on... what? On, trust. On, surrender. On, giving up control.  As my friend Emi said, (as we rocked on the porch swing drinking mate and (me) watching the trees fiercely) how did she put it? Oh yes,  practicing "compassionate detachment". Not imposing our own egoic attachments on a cycle of nature so much larger than our own designs.

Still, I have been tormented all morning with guilt, hoping that his mama would readopt him, and not sure if she was ever going back to my little easter egg basket. And sometimes being mad and frustrated with her, like "My god, mamabird-  feed him already! He must be so hungry by now!!!"  As he perched on the edge of the basket and squawked, and she flew from branch to branch, circling wide.

So: sleepy and zoned out, I have spent a lot of time at my front window looking out at the basket... and here I will stop telling the story, and just post the videos of what happened next...

New Shows with the Arts Council of the Valley!

I recently followed up on a lead that had been recommended to me by a friend a few months ago.... The Arts Council of the Valley, which sponsors some of the most luminous shows in the area and is in charge of Downtown Harrisonburg's First Fridays. I met with the lovely Cecilia Browne and Rebecca Mussser and I am delighted to report that they loved my portfolio, and we have arranged for not one but two shows! One show slated for this June (read, next week!!) in two of their satellite galleries along Main St., in which I will show my figurative work in one storefront window, and abstracts in another storefront window across the street. I am very happy and have been hard at work finishing up some new abstract pieces for the show...click here to see them in progress:

The third show is a commissioned show for their prestigious Smith Gallery in May 2011, of a series of work tentatively titled "Americana" which will be inspired by some wonderfully kitchsy photos from my growing up in the 70's and 80's, namely of my family fishing and hiking around Pinecrest Lake in Northern California. I am very grateful and encouraged by their support and enthusiasm, and plan to get started on the paintings this summer when I spend a month at our family cabin in July.  Note: this series will be along the vein of this already completed  piece.

April 30th

Things I am thankful for on the last day of my favorite month:

my studio, freshly cleaned and scrubbed and ready for painting sessions:

our garden, starting to burst with life:

Sava Talulah, trampoline champion/sweeper of the universe:

new sunflower shoots:

a husband who confesses "language is the prosthetic for my pain"

my adorable parents:

 

fresh made bread:

and, last but not least:  my new job

Birthday Weekend

What a beautiful weekend. My art opening on Friday at The Artful Dodger went really well- and I got to stay out late and watch a few shows and go out on the town afterwards, which is such a wonderful, out of the ordinary experience for me any more these days. (thanks Jamba for taking Sava home while I got to play!). Saturday was family day, and Jamba took Sava and I to Charlottesville where we had an absolutely beautiful, sun-kissed day walking around downtown and listening to street musicians and going to art galleries, and eating good food. On Sunday we had a big backyard bbq party, complete with a rousing game of kickball. Life is good.......Spring is good.

new abstracts

Thought you might like to see the artistic process at work... in the form of two gradually evolving abstract paintings. ...  for instance, this painting, called Ascending, which I have had "finished" for a few years now, but have grown tired of looking at,

Just got turned on its side and is becoming this: One Theory for How it Began:

                                            .... finished! May 31, 2010




Another one, called "the mouth of the cave" or "arrival of the sentinels"... unfortunately I hadn't taken any photos before it got to this stage.. but you can see the final three tweakings

finished!! also May 31st, 2010, just in time to hang on Wednesday for my new show

things that make me miss San Francisco

California dreaming as of late.......
and I mean that literally -- the other night I dreamt that I was hiking  up in the hills above the city (a somewhat fantastical version of the bay in which it was a combination of Big Sur and Oakland, but with narrow stones paths winding around glittering quartz-like pink and cream rock faces, with the green and mist swirling below, and I just stopped and walked over to the rock wall, and hugged it while I sobbed "I miss California so much!"
Yes, a very mawkish dream. However, as they say, you can take the girl out of California.....

My dream may have been inspired by a recent visit by my dear Philly raised/SF-based friend Nicole, who stopped by on her way to a North Carolina artist retreat. We swung on my porch swing and held each other and reminisced and renewed our ever-present bond, and waxed musingly on the differences between the two seaboards. I think the thing I miss most about the West, that great open chaotic expanse of a place, is the general acceptance- and sometimes exaltation- of the weird and strange. So often out here, I feel like a misfit- never wearing the appropriate types of clothes to the gym, strangely puttering over live cultures in the kitchen- but back home- Damn, I am so normal compared to some of these people! (Whatever normal is anyway).

http://www.crittersalon.blogspot.com/
http://iliveheresf.com/ 
http://www.burningman.com/
http://www.theartexplosion.com  my old art studio at 17th and Potrero)

Relapse

I remember, during my recent flush of energy, fresh from the gym and driving home, thinking "damn, I feel so good right now." It seemed impossible that this feeling of abundance and exuberance would go away, because it felt that I was living in actual reality, as if the sadness which sometimes grips me was an illusory veil that had been triumphantly cast aside. But I knew- I knew as I had the thought that I would look back on this exact moment in the car and chuckle nostalgically- that this momentary bliss would come to an end and I would lose my momentum. The rise and the fall is such a fact of my life.

Well, it took about a week. It took about a week, and a 24 hour flu that tackled Jamba and I to the bed for an entire Tuesday, while the snow fell listless and drearily outside (honestly, the last day of snow that my winter-weary soul can possibly stand) and we took turns getting out of bed to take care of an ebullient and decidedly un-sick Sava. That was a bad day. Nausea just sucks the life out of you. A few days later, I yelled at Jamba over a misunderstanding and it took me an entire week to apologize. A week to start going back to the gym regularly. Then, I put my lovely little sprouts outside on the porch to catch some budding sun, and forgot to bring them in at night. Oh, how I cried at the next day's discovery, in a mixture of sadness and self-loathing. My sourdough starter languished cold and hungry in the fridge while I plowed through three pints of b&j's in as many days.

So, we rise and fall. Seeds planted in a rush of promise and hope need to get taken care of in all moments, and not just at their inception. This is a lesson my Aries soul is constantly grappling with (So good at starting things: not so great at finishing them!)

I am currently doing okay- I am not depressed, but not wildly happy either. I am steadfast: disheartened but resolute. I know to do the things that will eventually restore me to well-being, so I do them: I go to the gym, I pick up the house, I feed my starter, I tackle things on my to-do list without thinking about the big picture. I beat the rugs, I paint, I breathe in the smell of Sava's hair. I can't will myself into a state of bliss, but I can. walk. there.

March Paintings

                                           Ladders. 36 x 48 inches. oil on panel

UPDATE:

Here is Ali & Sava, finished!!:Really happy with how this turned out, especially the wallpaper on the right wall.


In an effort to get ready for my April show and due to the extremely accomodating natures of husband and roommate, I have set up an ad-hoc studio in our dining room til the studio warms up. Here are some paintings that have come out so far.... one that I started awhile ago and am now just finishing, and another that is still very much in progress. I actually stayed up last night until 12 pm- until the point of absolute exhaustion. It felt good.

This painting, still very much in progress (I have already scrubbed the turquoise off the right wall), was painted over an abstract painting I had no idea what to do with. Here is the abstract that is being covered:

 and the end result... well, who knows. Stay tuned! But here is the source photo I am working from: it was taken in a neighbor's house down in Staunton, of my friend Ali holding baby Sava in his arms.

 At some point I would like to do a painting that is more true to this photo, but for now, I am having fun.


Update: today I played around on photoshop.. this is more where I am hoping to go with it:

birds

I have been obsessed with birds lately, and so I thought I would share some paintings from last year,

....while telling you about a new collaborative project I am embarking up on with my friend Rachel Znerold, a wonderful artist living in SF. We will be working on 11 x 17 paper and sending the works back and forth across the continent, in a emerging dialogue about.. yes, birds.
Pictures from the package I mailed off today:

 

I can't wait to see what she does with them!

Mission Statement

This morning, I woke up late to an empty house. Extraordinary, blissful silence. 10 am. Just getting out of bed, and it is 10am. A bathrobe and a shower and a cup of steaming mate (french pressed, whole milk). The whole house to myself. There will be a pregnant pause as you digest the miraculousness of this moment.

This is our survival strategy: we each get one morning of the weekend, to sleep in for as long as we want, with earplugs and a closed door, while the other wakes up at 7 with the chublet and plays and makes breakfast and, in this case, (looks like) goes to the gym. I can't tell you how much, this one single morning per week of indulgent, luxurious laziness, has done to recover my sanity from the horror of an entire year+ of sleeplostness.

And so what, if it is cold and gray and dingy outside, the mountains of snow piled up on each corner becoming graying castles with turrets and ledges that look like they have doubled as horse stables for the season. I don't care. I don't care because yesterday it was 50 degrees, and the sun shone warmly down and the gutters were running with little miraculous trickles of streams and SPRING IS COMING, dammit. I just know it.

I want to answer a few things about this blog, as it is a newborn thing and I would like to talk about it and why it has come into being.

One: the picture which is the header of this blog. I did not take the picture- my mother, an exceptional person, took this up in the Broughton Islands. The picture is not of me nor is it intended as a self-portrait... I am just captivated with the juxtaposition of elements... He of the bald head at once mirrors the shape of the jars as he contradicts them completely. The humor of the moment... his unwitting (and I assume it would be unwilling) contribution to a perfect composition.. there is something in this photo that captures what I have been trying to say all along in my paintings. Irony- discordant elements colliding together in harmony- the introduction (or remnant) of the one inexplicable element that opens up the piece to a world of possibility. It is a little bit like the Japanese philosophy of wabi sabi, (or at least I was powerfully struck by this concept when I learned of it), in which the imperfect is deliberately introduced to a piece of delicate and perfect symmetry, in order to acknowledge that "nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect." So anyways.. as I am writing this, I realize that perhaps the picture is a self-portrait. Of sorts.

Okay, so what else. Why did I start this blog? I started this blog because it has been winter, and I hate winter- struggle every year through this dry, cold time, but about a month ago, while researching ideas and craft projects for my upcoming spring and summer art camps, I came across the blogs of some crafty mamas (see blog list to the right), who were generously sharing their ideas and reflections with the world. I would wake up dispirited and overwhelmed and uninspired, and they would have a new post.... there would be pictures of snow adventures, images of projects taped to the windows that had been created that day- That same day that I had been moping about, these people were living in acceptance of the state of the world, and enjoying it. So yes, perhaps these women are lucky enough not to have to work: perhaps they have live-in-staff. I really don't know how they have such perfectly crafted lives and I will probably never get into the art of Valentine-making with such enthusiasm... BUT I DON'T CARE- They are angels who catapulted me out of my inertia and I am riding an unusual torrent of energy: new blog, new website, new Etsy, new art projects. Suddenly, it is quite valuable that the snow has locked us in.. that in order to go to my freezing studio in the backyard, I have to wade through waist-high snow. Because I am eyeing my desk... the papers and clutter that have not been filed since June. What else I am going to do now, with an empty house and no reason to go outside?

But the real reason I have started this blog, is that I realized that it could be the one place in the world that was completely mine. I share a house with three people and two animals: I am involved in many collaborative projects (including the great adventure of raising a kid): almost everything I do is subject to review or input or design process. Don't get me wrong: I love these projects: I love working in partnership. But since I am not currently in an active painting phase (read: frozen studio, read: massive creative block) I need there to be one thing that I can do without ever having to submit it for review. So this blog is my own damn thing- my room of her own. Maybe it is a way for my feet to find their way back to the studio. Who knows: but I pledge that in it I am going to follow my whim- I am going to practice dancing with my eyes closed, attempting to be unaware of the audience. For example: I am not going to apologize for the inordinate length of this entry. I am going to write with honesty and nakedness. This is it: This is me, elbows out.

And I will end this entry, with an excerpt from a David Whyte book, which so belongs here:

Crossing the Unknown Sea (excerpt)
by David Whyte

You have ripened already, and you are waiting to be brought in. Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly to rot on the vine.

"Tell me about exhaustion," I said. He looked at me with an acute, searching, compassionate ferocity for the briefest of moments, as if trying to sum up the entirety of the situation and without missing a beat, as if he had been waiting all along, to say a life-changing thing to me. He said, in the form both of a question and an assertion: "You know that the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest?" "The antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest," I repeated woodenly, as if I might exhaust myself completely before I reached the end of the sentence. "What is it, then?" "The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness."

He looked at me for a wholehearted moment, as if I should fill in the blanks. But I was a blank to be filled at that moment, and though I knew something pivotal had been said, I had not the wherewithal to say anything in reply. So he carried on:

"You are so tired through and through because a good half of what you do here in this organization has nothing to do with your true powers, or the place you have reached in your life. You are only half here, and half here will kill you after a while. You need something to which you can give your full powers. You know what that is; I don't have to tell you."

He didn't have to tell me. Brother David knew I wanted my work to be my poetry.

"Go on," I said.

"You are like Rilke's Swan in his awkward waddling across the ground; the swan doesn't cure his awkwardness by beating himself on the back, by moving faster, or by trying to organize himself better. He does it by moving toward the elemental water where he belongs. It is the simple contact with the water that gives him grace and presence. You only have to touch the elemental waters in your own life, and it will transform everything. But you have to let yourself down into those waters from the ground on which you stand, and that can be hard. Particularly if you think you might drown." He looked down and read again.

And to die, which is the letting go
Of the ground we stand on and cling to every day

He looked up again, warming to the theme, I was getting a good talking-to. "This nervously letting yourself down, this ängst -lichen Sich-Niederlassen, as it says in the German, takes courage, and the word courage in English comes from the old French word cuer, heart. You must do something heartfelt, and you must do it soon. Let go of all this effort, and let yourself down, however awkwardly, into the waters of the work you want for yourself. It's all right, you know, to support yourself with something secondary until your work has ripened, but once it has ripened to a transparent fullness, it has to be gathered in. You have ripened already, and you are waiting to be brought in. Your exhaustion is a form of inner fermentation. You are beginning, ever so slowly" he hesitated "to rot on the vine."


Fuller excerpt here

The Aesthetic of the Undone

That is the statement that has been floating about in my head today. It was inspired by climbing the stairs with Sava in my arms today, headed for nap-time, and looking at the half-painted stairwell and hall. It was left over from our great big move-in flurry last June. The blue tape framing the trim and doorways has become part of the aesthetic... a certain industrial loft-like chic, I like to think. Or else, I am just getting really good at the art of letting go. I wonder, sometimes, if we are ever going to get around to finishing this one last area in the house.


I wonder.....

For the moment, I am tremendously occupied with planning our garden. I have already purchased most of the seeds -enough for an enormous community garden, really, and without exception every checker has looked at me and laughingly shaken their heads. "You feeling that optimistic, eh?" As the snow falls and falls outside: a record-shattering winter. Who knew Virginia was going to be so cold??? As kids stay home from school for an entire week. But I am undaunted: I have already sketched out the entire backyard plot, including the four directions and the projected path of the sun, researched the most effective companion plants to pair up, and secured a rototiller. If all goes well, we are going to be feasting on tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, brussel sprouts, chard, kale, lettuce, mesclun, arugula, beets, turnips, carrots, radishes muskmelons, corn, beans, squash, peas: Alice Waters eat your heart out! Now, I just have to wait until all this stuff melts.

Snowbound Weekend

February 8th

Last Thursday the entire state was declared an emergency zone, and by Friday morning, the grocery stores had been plundered and shuttered and all residents scurried home to bunker down for a long weekend. The snow fell for two days.. and when it stopped the trees were drooping under a load of glittering finery. The massive pines across the street, in particular, looked like 17th century waltzers sagging under the most ridiculous ballroom gowns.

And I had the most wonderful weekend in recent memory. Moments like these can be thrilling for its sense of heightened importance: neighbors gather together in spontaneous parties and bring each other fresh bread and cookies, because nobody is driving anywhere- your world is suddenly concentrated into the space of your street. It is Sabbat for all: secular or religous- we all get to experience the sacred pause.

I put away my to-do lists and got the house ready for a weekend of crafts, cooking, baking, and planting. On Friday a grieving friend came over and we planted chives, parsley, cilantro, basil and thyme, in little clay pots lined up in a row on the windowsill. Out on the porch, we plunged our hands into the black earth as Sava leaned over our work, curious. She helped: she carried soil from one pot to another in little handfuls. She dumped pots over, so that the black earth was strewn onto the white ground below. We stomped our feet, studied black against white: it felt like ritual. Now, four days later, little green shoots are barely peeking their heads up, and they make me so happy I could cry.

On Saturday two girlfriends came over and we talked and held hands around the kitchen table, and then we mixed avocado with honey and plastered it on our faces, and then took turns in the bath getting rubbed with sugar and coconut oil. Sava leaning quiet against the edge of the tub to watch us work, and then leapt right into the process.... what a wonderful game! Sticking her hand into the amazing mixture (it looked like snow.. but was warm and sweet!) and wonderingly rubbed it in careful circles on my friend's legs. And then she got into the bath with me when it was my turn, and willingly submitted her body to the experience; holding up arms to be scrubbed, standing and watching her plump little belly and legs get done. Sava getting indoctrinated into the circle of womanhood- what a joyful inheritance. Later, while people ate the leftovers of last night's Indian feast (pumpkin curry venison, roasted vegetable gobi, dal and home-made garlic naan) and napped, I stood at the window watching the snow falling in exact tempo to the music playing inside (Rachel's: Music for Egon Schiele) and wept a little, at the heartbreaking beauty of the world.

Everybody is grieving: the world seems to be such a sad place right now- but I feel like we are grieving with the most beautifully open hearts. For right now, all this snow feels exactly right.

-Erin