I got invited plein-air painting this weekend. Someone gave me very precise directions to a very nebulous place, and after an hour of driving I was way in the East mountains, that peculiar area right on the edge of the trees where you can look back and see the Sandias, all blue-green and monumental, and look straight ahead and see twenty miles of yellow rolling plains, and tiny barns and volcanic rocks jutting up against the grass and yucca.

Several dirt roads later, I drove past an unusual house in search of the "lower buildings," as instructed in my directions, and saw them, two very strange round adobe formations with round pointed metal roofs. I got out and looked at them. They were painted orangey-brown, and metal cut into the shape of cupped hands acted as gargoyles all around the edges. Kathleen and Monique and Tonya came walking down a boardwalk, from the direction of the house, and Kathleen toured us around the "lower buildings," which contained a studio, kitchen, and bedroom. There was a bed in every room, which I really appreciated. The place was an artist's residency.

We went to meet the woman who owned the property. She was a beautiful older woman, white hair, eastern European accent, colorful shawl, gave me a hug right away. She was an architect, and her house was full of unusual architectural models, all bright white, some tucked into glass cases, some in shelves, some in her extensive workspace. She handed me a huge pot of soup to carry to the lower buildings, and it smelled good. The others had brought bread and wine, and we heated up the soup, which turned out to be carrot soup, and sat around the table in the strange orange building and talked for the rest of the morning.

Then we all split up and went to find places to paint. The wind was really howling, but I had my heart set on the view from the top of the volcanic ridge near the house, so I hiked up there with my bag of stuff, and walked around til I found a place enough out of the wind, and on a bare enough piece of rock that I could have seen rattlesnakes or ants coming, and with an interesting enough view, and where there was a little patch of mud where I could spread my rug and sit in relative comfort.



Painted for a few hours, came back to the buildings, and Monique had reheated what was left of the soup, and we compared notes and sat around warming back up. It was a great day.

How can I never have known about Guiseppe Arcimboldo? What were my art history teachers talking about that was so much more important than a high renaissance guy who was making portraits out of fish, animals, birds, and vegetables?

This thing doesn't have a name yet, and it needs one by tomorrow (when it gets documented for the juried show catalogue). Somehow naming a painting feels a little like grading students' portfolios.

Anyway, after...how many months? Since July, anyway...I'm about ready to call this thing finished. I'm having some pretty decorative wood shipped to me to frame each panel, and maybe I'll do a little more detail on some of the foreground clothing--I've done a little more since I took these pictures this weekend. I've also textured the grass on that far right panel. But that's it!

Mostly, it's just a relief! I'm proud, and happy, but mostly just eager to get started on something else...something else that won't take quite so long.

( Click for images. )

This week I started doing some little studies to get me loosened up and keep me moving on the big painting (which is nearly, nearly, nearly finished). They've also been nice in that they help me use up the paint that's left on the palette after my day's work. It's fun to get to paint something without reference materials, and choose colors willy-nilly...but it's been interesting to note that I get anal-retentive about the details, even though I started making them specifically so I could play freely with paint as an alternative to my other more structured work.



( Detritus studies )

I can't believe I haven't thought about this sooner. What the hell am I going to be for Hallowe'en?

Okay, leaf stuck last night, mostly. The back looks fine, the ribs are not great because they were wetter, but I can live with that. Painting can begin, and breathing, too. We may just finish this thing some day.

Fred put it on our stoop, in the small space between the front door and the little lockable gate at the top of the stairs, where it can get some sun to accelerate the drying process. More secure than just leaving it in the park, but I still have a premonition that I'm going to poke my head outside to find it being used as a tennis racket.

Yesterday was fun. I took two first-year photography grad students to the Glass Fields--a place along the bosque of the Rio Grande where the city used to dump its glass and ceramics in the (we've surmised) 50's and 60's. You're walking along on one of the many swampy, cottonwoodsy paths down there, and you walk up an atypical rise, and there they are: acres of sparkly, shimmering, deadly, multicolored beauty. There are weird hills and valleys of the stuff, there are unbroken bottles that have been warped into weird shapes by some unknown heat source, and fragments of everything from cobalt glass to royal crown bottles to fragments of delicately-painted floral china to ceramic dolls' legs to the occasional highly-patinated bullet casing. Even the ant hills are beautiful: the little guys have hauled up uniformly-sized fragments of every color of bottle, bowl, or plate imaginable, and created that perfect circle that only ants can create two feet around the entrance. The whole experience is a lot like being on another planet, or at the bottom of the ocean, or six thousand years in the future. Spectrally beautiful, but disturbing.

Ugh, I have a worry that will be of no interest to anyone. I've got the weekend to finish painting the violin (heh); Oil paint goes on, and gold leaf goes on.

When I did my test strips a few weeks ago, I did some painting, then several days later I applied leaf sizing, and put on the leaf. Turns out the leaf stuck to the paint too (I know, you oil painters predicted that. I didn't, I'm used to paint being completely dry in four minutes.). Then when we sanded to see how the aging worked; the leaf on the sizing sanded oddly, with the outline of the sized spots retaining extra gold, whereas the leaf on the paint looked great. So I figured I'd do the leaf areas first using paint as adhesive, then the rest of the paint, so that the leaf wouldn't stick to the paint that should be visible.

So yesterday I put some very thin paint down where the leaf will stick. But on my new test strips...the leaf isn't sticking! I know at this stage it's because the paint is still too wet, but how long will it take to get dry enough? At this rate I won't even be done with the gold leaf, much less with the painting itself, by Monday. Should I put it in the sun? It would be a pain in the ass to babysit it outside, but I'd do it if I thought it would help! And what if drying slowly is not the ONLY problem? What if I didn't use enough oil in the paint? What if my inexperience with this medium screws up this entire project?

Is this because I got cocky? Give it to me straight.

I'm sitting in the sunshine munching on a delicious food-thing. That thing is this:

A brick of rosemary-focaccia bread, topped with oil, crispy-fried slices of turkey, a generous helping of spinach, and the whole thing doused in alfredo sauce.

And I got it for four and a half bucks at the student union building. Fast food has come a long way (or maybe it's come full circle). I think I need to write a nice letter to somebody.

This violin finally looks like

( a violin. )

I have...nothing to add.

Man-oh-man was seeing David Byrne last night cool. Talk about a guy that's aging beautifully, physically and musically. Big wall of sound, which I wasn't expecting; and cute entertaining dancers, which I was expecting, but enjoyed much more than I would have guessed. One of those moments that made me wonder whether it was too late in my life for a career change, because those dancers appeared to be having more fun doing that than anyone else I've ever seen, doing anything, in my life.

As Chris observed, the edge of his avante-gardeness seems to have been worn off a little as time has gone by; but as Fred offered, that could be as much fashion catching up with Byrne than Byrne retreating to safe ground. Either way, it was great, weird, danceable fun.

My dogs can tell when I am dancing and when I am just moving pragmatically. Their ears perk up, and they wag their tails and jump around. In some ways, that's not that startling or awesome, but in other ways, that is totally startling and awesome.

Did my first bronze casting today! Thanks to my recent jewelry work with Juli, I even managed to look less clueless and fearful than usual wielding a torch. I don't think metalwork is going to steal me away from painting anytime soon, but it's certainly a dramatic process. Anything where you get to melt the crap out of something that's usually impervious to your physical efforts is kind of a power trip.

In other news: looking for a new backpack on eBay, I came across a nice old canvas pack. Little external frame, lots of leather strappage, generally legit looking. The seller said that a couple of the pieces were broken, but nothing that would affect the usefulness of the pack. So I ordered it for $20, it got here, and lo and behold, the WEIGHT-BEARING shoulder straps were broken. Making me wonder what the seller thought the actual use of this pack would be. But anyway.

Anyhow, Fred undertook the project of replacing all the leather, and did a lovely job. And I painted an old folk textile design on the flap. It's in working condition and prettier than ever! All in all, a successful weekend.

Yessss! Strangers come through for me yet again.

( Incontrovertible proof: I can ride a bike without falling down )

I have a sunburn that is an unusual shape. I was wearing a gunnysax dress with an odd square-shaped collar. I was also wearing a long necklace with a big chunky bead every two or three inches. Which means my neck and chest looks like a warm-blooded homemade cyanotype.

Also, my left hand is sunburned, but not my right. This is because my right hand was waving the whole time, and my left was cemented to my handlebars, ringing the bell incessantly and trying not to run into the Raleigh tandem in front of me.

I rode my bike in the State Fair parade, representing the year 1968. I think it's one of those events that I'm going to look back at and say, "how did I get involved in that?" and have no answer, except that I agreed that I would.

I've got to start thinking about where I can show my work.

Few things make me feel less attractive and confident than trying to pick out new glasses to have made, but the time finally came today.

Since I mostly wear my contacts these days, I really just needed some emergency back-up spectacles, and as such wanted to go the cheapest route possible. So picked out some funky, cheap, plastic purply frames, took them to the counter. The young woman who took my order looked at the frames, looked at me, said,
"Have you tried these ON?"
"Um, yes."
"Are you sure you don't want to try them on again, just to be sure?"
"Um...yeah. Why? They'll work with my prescription, right?"
"Yes, but, well...they just look a little"--and here she dropped her voice to a near-whisper--"like they're for an old...an older person." I must have looked blank, because she added helpfully, "You know, like an old lady would wear."

Then, as she was taking down my information:
"That's your REAL name?"
"Yup, sure is."
"Oh boy! 'THANKS, mom and dad,' right?"
"Heh, um, well, I've always liked it."
"Oh...well."

Give that girl a customer service gold star!

I apologize in advance for not being able to figure out how to use lj-cut. Seriously, how complicated can it be? And yet it has foiled me yet again.

Well, I've been in school for a week, but I'm not much in the mood to talk about that. In the meantime, here are some hiking pictures!
( Read more groovy hiking pictures )