When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six,
I’m as clever as clever,
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
Now We Are Sixty…
When I take stock
of all the steps
along the road
the people and places
the lessons and loves
the pleasures
and the pains
wanderlusts
and home comings all
what seems to
have most defined my life
the whisper of a wake
in this world that has
so far
been me
it is the things
my hands have made.
I am leaving spoons
and chairs
drawings
and paintings
sweaters
and shawls
journals
and quilts
garden beds
and compost piles
scattered along the road
like breadcrumbs
not to find my way home
but to say
I was here.
There is something in spinning called the long draw.
It can be defined as a technique, but spinners will
understand it better as a Zen-like goal that embodies
both skill and soul.
You aim to pull the carded wool as far as your arms
will stretch, while maintaining a steady rhythm to the
wheel, and a gently tapering thinness to the yarn.
It requires practice, and patience, and when achieved
one is truly balanced with the universe and beyond.
My hands know that place well…
and always get there long before my heart does.
We have one more stop to make in Mystic.
A short walk from the Morgan is a lonnnnnng building
And this is the Spinning Loft,
below which is the Ropewalk at the Mystic Seaport Museum.
There is a short video ...click here...which shows a bit of what this room was all about,
and you can read more of it’s history there as well.
But it really is worth a visit to let all your senses dive into this space.
Resonant with the century old aromas of hemp and salt air,
the velvety soft patine of well worn wooden surfaces,
the sensuous flow of the carded fiber,
it positively sings history.
The perspective isn’t skewed, this building is really 250 ft long,
and it was only one section of the original Plymouth Cordage Company,
which operated until the mid-1900’s and was then moved to the Mystic village.
Here are some close up shots to lure you into the lusciousness of the fibers…
and the long walk back in technology…
And there’s a mystery…
As is so often the case,
when I returned from one of several visits to the museum
and reviewed the thousands of reference photos,
I spied this carving on the giant spinning wheel.
Those frisky muses.
Round about my birthday,
the Follansbee came through on his trek to teach some woodworking down south,
and, being a carver of woody things,
I showed him this part of the painting,
whereupon he said that Plymouth Cordage used to be a company town built around the rope making industry.
I went down a serious rabbit hole after googling it.
I’ll leave those historic details dangling for anyone interested in doing their own research,
but the point here is that many of the old buildings remain in town.
These Painter’s Notes will serve as a reminder to Peter that he said he would look into seeing if anyone in those parts recognizes the building from this carving…
well…from my rendering of the carving.
That should be sorta fun.
For me,
it’s all about the peaceful art…
of spinning.
We have climbed the gangplank and boarded the Charles W. Morgan.
Towards the bow of the vessel, just to the right of the great steering mechanism at the helm, there is a narrow winding passage of stairs leading down below the main deck and into the Captain’s quarters. On the right is a room that slants into the bow of the ship, with an elegant sweep of a settee with room enough for a Windsor chair and a small writing desk. Step down and through a doorway to the left and you enter this chamber.
The private sleeping quarters for the captain…a separate cheerie little chamber having been built for at least one of the captain’s wives up on the main deck where she could be relieved of her claustrophobia and seasickness.
The Mystic Seaport Museum has a sign hanging on the other side of that louvered door on the left …
See at the very end there, where it describes the “gimbaled bed”.
That was a fun thing to paint. It looks funny without legs, and I kept wanting to make it level but that’s how it rolls.
What drew me to spend a few weeks inside this chamber was the light. For a dark and close space, this room was filled with many sources of light bouncing within. I found it a happy place to be but I have seen Master and Commander, many many times, and I’m not sure I would have been cut out to sleep anywhere in that ship…
during a storm…
on the high seas.
I am pleased to invite you all to the island of Martha’s Vineyard for the opening of my 2018 show at the Granary Gallery.
Sunday August 5, from 5-7pm
I’ve been in a full tilt painting sprint since January and I laid the last of the brushes down only a few hours ago.
The work this year takes us to a few new places, has a few new faces, and takes some head long dives into depth and detail.
I’m as eager as I’ve ever been to launch the annual rollout of New Paintings. It will be the first chance I get to see them as an entire show. During the long months of production, the finished works are set aside to dry in stacks throughout the studio until it is time to begin varnishing and photographing. Due to space limitations here, this happens in stages and until I walk into the gallery on the afternoon of the show, the first glimpse I get of them all together is on this blog as I unveil them to you…dear viewers.
So let’s get right to it…
Let’s take a boat to Mystic…
The Cooper’s View – 24 x 28
There are a couple threads of themes which run through the 14 paintings for this year’s show. This painting weaves two of them together. Mystic and Me.
When I was a young girl living in Swarthmore, PA, our family would escape the dangers of Mischief Nights around Halloween and drive up to New England. I have vivid memories of exploring Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. My father loved boats and was building a wooden model of the Cuttysark around that time, and some of those interests filtered down to me…but I didn’t appreciate it back then.
What drew me in was the Cooperage. The Mystic Seaport Museum is a magical collection of all things maritime and wooden boat building and seafaring lore. A historic seaport village, along the banks of the Mystic River, brings maritime life in the 1800’s… alive.
From their website…“The buildings you see aren’t replications–they’re trade shops and businesses from the 1800s that were transported to Mystic Seaport from locations around New England. The village is made up of many bustling maritime trades, from shipsmiths and coopers to woodcarvers and riggers.”
So picture a 10 year old girl, whose three younger brothers are running off the energy from the long car ride, while she walks into the dark and dusty cave of the Cooperage.
( I have added a link here to the museum’s website where you can watch a nice little video and see inside the place for yourself.)
I was fascinated.
A small shack full of wooden barrels, and piles of wood shavings, and a shaving horse…
Fast forward about 20 years or so and look where that little girl was sitting…
I wielded my own drawknife for a decade making chairs and spoons and baskets and such. Then I put down the woodworking tools and picked up the brushes.
Fast forward another 20 years and that little girls has just turned 60.
And, on one of her now regular trips to New England, she returned to Mystic and once again stood inside the dark wooden den of the Cooperage…and turned around.
The Cooper’s View is just that. On this crisp fall day the sunlight bounces off of the t’gallant sails being raised on The Morgan which is docked just outside of the shop.
The Charles W. Morgan is the last of the American whaling fleet and was painstakingly restored at the Mystic Seaport Museum. (here’s a link to the museum’s website with a complete history and chronicle of her restoration…Click Here.)
We will go on board that ship in tomorrow’s blog post, but linger here a while and soak in the salty air and take a closer look at that rigging…
enjoy the playful pastel diagrams drawn inside…
and study the roman numerals carved on the barrel stays…
The artiste has taken license, in an autobiographical way, and added her own hatchet and well worn drawknife to authenticate the pastiche.
It was deeply moving for my 60 year old self to stand in that shop again and realize that I’ve come full circle, and back around yet another one, to complete a creative cycle that my 10 year old self didn’t even know how to dream of.
I was interviewed early this spring by Libby Ellis and the Q and A session has been published for your reading pleasure…click on the painting below, grab a teacup of your choice and get a peek into my studio adventures…
This year’s challenge was to minimize the effects of the Allium Leaf Miner pest which had completely decimated last year’s crop. I can’t even bring myself to revisit the pictures from that devastation, so google it yourselves if you are scientifically motivated.
The local Ag agents suggested covering the crop in the early spring before the creatures emerge. I tried three versions of that. In the cold frame bed featured below, I had the doors closed until mid-April.
In this back bed I used fleece to cover the plants, which the wind and weather rearranged frequently, so there were gaps in time when there would have been access. Image below shows windblown exposure.
In the third bed, (it’s starting to sound like the three little pigs here…) I used a screened tunnel. See garlic growing tall under that screen.
I harvested scapes from all three beds over the last three weeks or so. The bed shown above was curiously the last to form scapes. Possibly the full time cover slowed growth ?
Some test pulling of the plants showed those gnarly wee beasties had indeed begun their invasion. As was the case last year, the leaves were browning early and the bulbs were not forming, or were becoming deformed.
So, this week I yanked them all.
In bed one, 100% infestation. No bulbs were saveable.
In bed two, 60% infestation.
In bed three, the one with the 24/7 tunnel, almost all of the bulbs were untouched.
Out of about 200 plants, I now have close to 60 curing in the greenhouse. If there are some critters lurking within I may lose some of those, but it’s not a total loss.
On the principle of being given lemons… I decided to make lemonade.
Well…garlic scape butter.
I saved all the scapes, which were untouched by the bugs, and yesterday I got out the cuisinart !
The recipe is quite simple. Grind up the scapes, mix them into softened butter, put that into a ziploc bag and spread it thinly to force air out, then freeze. Then it’s easy to break off what you need as you go. It is especially nice to soften and use as the spread for Garlic Bread.
I had enough leftover minced scapes to add some lemon and olive oil and also freeze for later use in sauces and such.
Bonus tip, which I learned from an old blogger whose name I apologize for forgetting, you take the butter wrappers and stack and bag them up and also put in freezer to use as ready made greasers for pre-baking pans.
So, I started this blog yesterday, only to find that my website was down…again. A long frustrating day of dealing with my server resolved the problem late in the evening. When I sat down to write this entry today…down again.
They tell me it is fixed now, for good.
If you are reading this, then at least for now…it is.
You will be hearing more often from me now as we near the big opening for the Granary Gallery Show…This year that date will be August 5.
I’ve been working full tilt at the easel, almost non-stop since last November, and you’ll see the results very soon.
In the meantime, I hope your gardens are glorious, your souls are finding peace, and there is laughter in the air around you.
