She was spotted in the hedges near the road last week. Poor little dear had hurt her front paw and was favoring it gingerly as she hopped to a safer nesting spot.
The boys down the lane saw her next, and then the n’er-do-wells next door to them. Then yesterday, after the ambulance drove down the lane and Pat went to find out what was going on…the rest of the neighborhood came out for a gossip and everyone was talking about the baby raccoon.
Finn got her first look late the other night when the flashlight beam caught them a foot apart .So I worried, because I do, and I called the game warden. He said, matter-a-factly, that it was the time for the babies to be kicked out of the nest and she probably wasn’t rabid since she didn’t try and attack me and that she would just find her way in the world.
Harsh natural truths.
Pat sees her every time she pulls in the drive now and I’ve noticed that every car, every one of the previously obnoxious daredevil speedsters who flew in and out of our lane with completely reckless abandon…well they are now all slowing down and looking for a glimpse of our baby.
When Pat looked it up last night, google told us that they eat berries. So that is probably why she is sticking close to the mulberry tree.
And that is why, after the traditional three day waiting period…during which any animal that crosses my path has the option to disappear…but if they choose to stay longer than three days…well I am obliged to name them. And woe be tied to anyone who messes with her now…because the muses have spoken…
When I settle in to work on a big painting my focus narrows, the creative energy tightens, and all the weeks of slogging through pondering compositional elements and deciding what to keep in and what to leave out, of sketching and panel prepping, and of reworking those sketches and printing out piles of detail reference photos…it all reaches a crescendo and, like the stretching of a rubber band, it suddenly snaps ! …and the first brushes hit the canvas. So it was, all that creative momentum strung taut, when I began the large painting, Severe Clear, for this summer’s Granary Gallery show.
But now, some 300 easel hours later, I am looking back and see, on my camera’s photo stream, that there were some wonderful moments in the spaces between all those long days of lifting brushes. When I paid homage to my most favorite springtime rituals. When I literally stopped to smell the roses, and to enjoy the first of the fiddleheads, and the first grilled pizza of the season, the annual pilgrimage to the Sheep and Wool Festival, to sit of an afternoon in the studio garden with loving family, and to enjoy this wonderful life we have together.
I’ll be telling you about the rest of the project, of which this painting is a keystone work, in little bit, a series of paintings which feature a Marine Hospital on Martha’s Vineyard that is about to open a new chapter in its historic life, but in the meantime…here’s a sneak peak at the big one, Severe Clear, and some of the studio highlights experienced along the way…
The panel is up and ready
The first beach rose blooms
The sky and water begin to emerge
First Reesers of the seaon
Distant details begin
The fiddleheads arrive
Tiny tiny boats
A morning in the sky chair
Deciding to reposition the ferry
First grilled pizza of the season
Couldn’t see the forest for the photos
Sheep break
Flag day came and went
Gulliver’s roses kept me company at my easel window
At four weeks the palette was inches deep
Peg and Sir Sid sit a spell
My pal John delivers the frames
The garlic scapes, the garlic scapes !!!!
In the truck for Herself to take to my other pal John, the professional photographer
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…
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.
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.
from the Painter’s Notes…
I love listening to baseball games on the radio
and when I lived in Watertown Square, back in the 80’s,
I would sit on my fire escape overlooking the 7-eleven and the front steps of the catholic church beyond and tune in the Sox and work on the weekly crossword puzzle,
while watching the woman’s softball league practice in the park across the street.
When I was a much younger girl I played baseball with my friends. My brother Rob was a first class pitcher but he threw the ball way too hard for me. So I moved on down the line of brothers to Scott.
The two of us would play catch in the street out front of our home in Swarthmore for hours after school. I was learning Russian at the time and with each toss I would teach him a new word.
I still have my mitt, and the last time his son Neill visited the studio we got it out, and the old baseball which bears the signatures of friends along the way, and played catch in the yard.
My arm ached for days but the smile lingered in my heart for weeks.
That’s my old bat and glove in the painting. You can just make out the peace sign I taped onto it.
It was the 70’s after all.
But what is missing from the final composition is Gully whose nose was in my lap each time I ran from the camera to the chair to outrun the self-timer. Boy was she pining for those cracker jacks. I almost painted her in…but … the closest she’s ever come to a baseball was chewing off its cover…
or to ironing for that matter….
when, as a puppy, she would curl up in the wicker basket and wait for…
the 7th inning stretch.
