I knocked off work early last night and sat with Herself in the studio yard where we sipped martinis and watched the stormy sunset then headed home for a movie night.
We watched an old favorite, Strangers in Good Company.
Neither of us could remember how long ago we saw it for the first time, it was released in 1990, but both of us agree that we can now identify much more intimately with the women who form the cast of characters.
It is a magically artistic look womankind.
You can read about the movie and how it was made by clicking on the Wikileaks link (click on the image above) but there’s not much more than the brief outline…eight women on a bus in canada…bus breaks down in the woods…they seek shelter and tell their stories. Simple. Quiet. Honest conversations.
I want everyone of the grandchildren, nieces, nephews, godchildren and godmoose children to watch it. In fact I insist. With cell phones removed from the building.
They won’t get it…yet…but it needs to be on their radars now. And revisited every ten years until their first grey hairs begin to appear and then every two years after that.
So… Amanda, Ben, Isaac, Anna, Melissa, Neill, Johnny, Abby, Emily, Danny, Sarah, All the Decker girls, and yes, even you Zoe…put it on your netflix queues now.
Gran and I will look forward to sitting in the studio yard, watching the sun set, and listening to your movie reviews.
I thought you would appreciate an update on the Wille Sundqvist Movie project. They received an amazing response for their Kickstarter campaign to help raise money to fund their production of the movie to capture Wille’s woodworking genius.
Peter wrote a bit more about his connection to Wille and his road to being the pre-eminant 17th Century Joiner in the modern world. It includes a photo taken at the beginning of that journey … what a bunch of manly men…reminds me from where my hippie roots were so happily planted.
I’ve still got to resist the urge to pick up an axe rather than these tiny brushes as the Granary Show deadline lurches ever closer…but soon…very soon…I’ll get a spoon carving break and my blood pressure will slow accordingly.
From Peter…
I got a note back from Jogge Sundqvist the other day, when I wrote to congratulate him on the immediate success of the kickstarter fundraising. Here’s part of what he wrote:
“YES.
This is just overwhelming!
I haven´t in my deepest imagination ever thought that we should reach the goal so quickly. Within 24 hrs…
This is so helpful, not just the money, it also strengthens everyone involved in self-confidence and trust in the movie to be something really good.
And everyone involved in the film is full of humility and wonder at the response we’ve had to make the film about Wille.
We have a little way to go before our actual budget… I hope you still want to continue to spread the word about the film, every little contribution is incredibly valuable to make a film of high artistic quality and with a clear content.
BUT – you might ask: What’s all the fuss about Wille Sundqvist and some wooden spoons? Ha! You’d be amazed.
Wille Sundqvist spoon
As the years keep ticking by, I often think about connections and chronologies. May times people will think about events in their lives, and how one simple happening might turn your life this direction or that…and I think that without Wille, I might not be a joiner/woodworker today. Certainly not a spoon carver. And yet we barely know each other…
I first heard of Wille of course from Drew Langsner, whom I met in 1980. That was the start of my woodworking career, although you wouldn’t have seen it coming then! I have often told the story of how I got to Drew’s Country Workshops to learn traditional woodworking. I was a mainstay there in the 2nd half of the 1980s and early 1990s (til I got a job…).
But how did Country Workshops begin? Drew has told me and many others the story many times, and a while back wrote it down in one of the Country Workshops e-newsletters. http://www.countryworkshops.org/newsletter31/ (scroll down to “CW History” – and if you haven’t yet, you can sign up for their free newsletter. It always has good stuff in it, besides update on classes and tools, etc.)
The gist of it is that Bill Coperthwaite brought Wille Sundqvist to meet Drew & Louise in 1976 or 77. Drew had a couple days’ worth of lessons from Wille, and was wanting more. Thus the idea of inviting him to come teach a workshop, which led to the Langsners hosting woodworking classes ever since.
Drew included Wille in his first woodworking how-to book, Country Woodcraft, in 1978. That’s where I first saw/heard of Wille.
Wille Sundqvist 1978
Then as I became a regular student at Country Workshops, I often heard stories of Wille’s craft and his teaching, and also saw examples of his work. As it turned out, I met his son Jogge first, in 1988. Then a few years later I was able to attend one of Wille’s classes.
Here is a quote from Wille’s book, Swedish Carving Techniques (Taunton Press, 1990):
“Carving something with a knife or an ax is a very tangible way to get a sense of design. Because the object being made doesn’t have to be secured in any way, it’s easy to move it to different positions and see its lines and shape grow out of the blank. A three-dimensional object isn’t just a picture. It’s an infinite number of pictures, and all of the pictures must find harmony within the object. The lines of the object must compose one unit, congruent from whatever direction it is seen. Carving teaches design.”
And that is really a big part of it. Wille’s spoons are very deceptive. Unlike any furniture work I do, these are subtractive woodworking – you’re cutting wood away & leaving just the right bits. You hope. Each cut means something. There’s so many layers to what Wille teaches – the postures, the tools, the design. You learn about wood and how it grows; and its strengths and weaknesses. Also about the tools, the edge and how it slices. If you have ever seen me use a hatchet, that work comes to me from Wille, some of it directly and much of it through Drew & Jogge.
To me, the spoon carving is a revolutionary act. It helps cut through the mass-produced cheap culture that we have absorbed like zombies. Such a simple household implement, taken to extraordinary heights. Why shouldn’t our most basic kitchen stuff be beautiful? Out with plastic! Think about Coperthwaite and his quote “I want to live in a world where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.”
The kickstarter campaign runs for 4o more days and at this writing is over $7,000. That’s not counting whatever got donated directly to Drew or Jogge. Thanks to everyone from here who helped. If you’re inclined, please spread the word.
And the time honored traditions of the favorite meal of my “salad days” back in Watertown…Mussels and Fiddlehead Ferns…celebrated now in my dotage…
I’m still lifting a glass of the bottom shelf chardonnay in toast to the delicacy…
But nowadays I am using my organically home grown onions and garlic from the studio gardens…
The island fisherman have brought wounded vets to the MV Derby and it’s a good old American Throw Down. I’ve got my money on the Tomahawk piloted by my pal Buddy Vanderhoop…but the waters are deep out there.
I went searching on my website for the pic of this painting to use in today’s blog post and discovered that it had never been added to my portfolio. So I guess I was meant to read Peter’s Blog today, as I do most days actually. I need to be painting…NEED to be painting…but I wanted to quickly let you all know of a kickstarter campaign that he mentioned on his blog and it’s all about… Spoons !
Peter learned spooncarving from Wille, I learned spooncarving from Peter, and carving spoons is just about the most fun a person can have. So they want to make a movie about Wille, who is a national treasure in his home country of Sweden. And they need some money to do this and do this now as Wille is getting on in years. Basically you are pre-ordering the dvd and, as with all kickstarter campaigns, you don’t get charged unless they make their goal.
Here’s a pic for his AAC Feb 2011 magazine article which John O’Hern took of me carving a spoon on the studio porch…
And one of Peter a few years back carving a spoon on the log cabin porch…
So for all my woodworking pals out there…
Since it looks like Peter’s day is as chock full as mine I stole the following right off of his site rather than put it in my own words so you can read below…
and, even though I’m going to have to fight the overwhelming temptation to pick up a chunk of cherry and a knife… now I’ll get back to the easel.
I’m in a rush right now (clean up shavings in the kitchen from last night’s spoons, help get the kids off to school, me to work, etc) – so I will write at length about this later. But let’s get it together to raise this money pronto. Shouldn’t be hard. When you get to watch this video, you will be amazed. Here’s a snippet from the kickstarter blurb
“The biggest risk this project is that Wille Sundqvist is 87 years old. He is getting tired of age but still he is working with craft everyday. Last week when I talked to Wille he said he was in good shape and that he was eager to start with recording the film in June. He told me he is refusing all orders just to make bowls and spoons for the most generous donors. This tells us how he looks upon his own status. But of course everything can happen with a man at his age.”
If you are leery of using kickstarter, you can send a check to Drew Langsner.
It’s this kind of a morning here in the studio yard…although this is a painting of the bluff in Chilmark and those spider webs are over a decade old.
Our spider webs, here in the hollers of Strinestown, are brand new and based on the jungle of gossamer threads that I am pulling out of my face and hair…I have yet to learn this spring’s prime locations.
The experts keep saying our flora are three or more weeks behind this growing season but that is based on the last few years of climate change which has now become the new norm. These long weeks of cool days and cool nights are what I remember as being the springtime of my youth. Slowly warming temperatures and gentle rains gave the gardeners time to ease into the toolshed and let the winter weak muscles wake up gradually.
We did have an early zap of three or four days of 90 degree days and my thriving spinach began to bolt…but almost a month later in which temps stayed 20-30 degrees cooler…it has settled back down and I have been able to test several spinach artichoke dip recipes.
Neighbor Sue and I have noted that this is the craziest grass growing season ever. She can’t keep up with it and she is one who lives to mow.
The peas, radishes, beets and carrots I planted back on St. Patrick’s day are sooooooooo slow to climb up outta the dirt. But the lilacs…oh the lilacs…they are loving this weather and, when I leave the studio late in the evening, their fragrance fills the valley and soothes my tired soul.
So, while the world outside might be three weeks behind and dragging its arboreal heels…inside the studio this artist is racing the clock and hopping.
The countdown is on for the Granary Gallery show this summer…July 21 is the opening date…and I’ve taken on a major challenge which I’ll be telling you about soon. For now I can tell you that the brushes, mostly the tiny ones, are flying from early morning until late and later… and later… each night.
There’s a very large panel on the easel right now and and it makes a hilarious contrast to the tiny brushes that I am using. The detail is electric and the concentration required keeps me so focused that only the thing which has been able to break it is the nuclear bolt of lightening that lifted me off the chair last night.
So…here’s to a real old fashioned spring…
and a face full of spider webs…
and a rich green carpet of grass…
and a studio full of flying brushes.
As the spring flowers bloom all around the studio yard, I am reminded of all the season’s holidays, and weddings that will be just around the calendar’s corner. If you are looking for a unique gift for that someone special…
I hope you will consider selecting a print from our new Etsy shop.
There are lots to choose from for that gardener you love…
and the sports lover…
the woodworker…
the artist…
that beachcomber…
who loves to read…
and yes, even your favorite tea drinkers…
All prints are signed by…me.
And, for all my blog readers, I am sweetening that tea with the offer of a SPECIAL COUPON…
just type in this code…
HNBlog2013
and you will recieve FREE SHIPPING on all orders.
Coupon will be good up until July 21,2013 (Which just happens to be the opening day of THE GRANARY GALLERY show this year !!! )
Happy Spring and, as always, thank you…I am so grateful for your support,
Heather
An arc
Something thrown out into the world
Where it spins and bounces off of life
Then comes sailing back to where its journey began
In this case, two people
brought together by chance…by hazard
then launched into the world
to follow separate paths
in search of creative truths
and now reunited and returning …
Rex Wilder and I started our fling in the late 70’s when we met as students of life attending Connecticut College. He, with ambitions to be a poet. Me, the fledgling artist. On the road to masterpieces, we both carried around sketchbooks and filled them with earnest, if early, scribbles and thoughts. We scoured the streets of New London in search of authentic souls to gleen for signs of intelligent life in the universe. I, the Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote. And many a windmill did we tilt.
Then our trajectories divert and almost 40 years of pursuing our separate arts flies by…Rex becomes that poet and achieves fame and book royalties…I become that artist and get to paint every day.
And now the story comes sailing back to home and we, the seasoned artistes, have collided in one act of creation…
This, his second published collection of poems, is poised to be launched on its own journey…and humbly holding all those precious treasures in place…if you’ll forgive me…Suspended.
On so many levels this is magical. For us both, the circles within circles are joyous and stunning to celebrate and sitting back in my easel chair and pondering how far we’ve both traveled and being reminded of the youthful ambitious dreams that we shared finds me smiling alot these days.
I’m sure there will be much ado surrounding the official book release and I will keep you all posted about that. For now, you can access more information and even pre-order the book on Amazon via this link…click here.
And the original oil painting is currently on display at Gallery 1261 in Denver and you can visit it via this link…click here.
I’m waiting until I have book in hand to read all the poems but I have peeked at a few and they are delightful divertissements… I think you will enjoy.
We didn’t see the northern lights last night.
But it wasn’t for lack of effort…and enthusiasm.
I followed the sites and the live blogs and the gurus and… my instincts…and loaded my family into the station wagon and,
we ordered subs, and waited…and waited …
then toted them to Lake Pinchot and looked out over the glass smooth water and watched three tiny canoes make their way slowly around the edges as the sky darkened and the clouds which had been hanging around all day drifted to the east…
then we drove back over the hill to Reesers and again…
waited…
in a long but happy line for our first raspberry cones of the season
while over our shoulders the sun set behind the last of those clouds,
and then as the sky darkened we drove
and drove
up hills and down
trying to find the best…and safest…vantage point to view the majesty
but as nothing seemed to fit the bill
and the sky was mostly…dark
we circled ever closer
to
home.
I ended up sitting in the studio yard
wrapped in woolen wear
worrying that I had missed the show.
Sue, next door, and Pat were both smarter than I
and were inside at their computers researching just how and where and when
these colors would best be viewed.
So, when they called me on the phone in my woolen pocket
I heeded their pleas and came home into the warmth
and plugged into an online blog party of local skywatchers
who were progressively…albeit geekily…souring on the possibilities for Pennsylvanians
to be in the path of the lights.
I checked every fifteen minutes.
I listened to both my girls snoring happily.
I watched The Killing Fields.
I made it to the first full hour of this Sunday morning.
Then I signed off and tuned out.
The best parts…
we had a fun, if unexpected, date night.
We know all the highest points in our neighborhood.
Our little community came together and enjoyed some social networking time.
And I remain hopeful.
