6 February 09
The mid-winter sunshine is melting away some of the sadness in the studio and work and life continues to push me forward.
We had a wonderfully healing visit from my pal Peter Follansbee this week on his way to and from giving a lecture at a furniture conference in Colonial Williamsburg. Many of you know that Peter is THE world renowned expert in 17thCentury Joinery and I got to tag along with him on tuesday as he went to the nearby Winterthur Museum to take a look at a painted wooden box made in 1698. It was a blast to be his lackey and get a rare behind- the -scenes look at the museum and meet their curator and top scientist. Peter has been hired by the MFA, Boston to reproduce the missing top half of a cabinet which is in their collection. The details to which his assembled team is investigating how the original might have been produced and decorated…and the microscopic analysis of the paint samples from the four existing examples of this furniture…are beyond amazing. If you’re at all interested in woodworking you will find his blog entries to be a remarkable wealth of information both historical and practical. www.pfollansbee.wordpress.com
This week also saw the launching of Laurie R. King’s Fifteen Weeks of Bees project. Regular readers of this blog will know that LRK is one of my favorite authors and that listening to her books in the studio has inspired many a painting. So, when she wrote to me a few months ago to invite me to participate in a fun project to help launch the newest installment in the Mary Russell Series…I couldn’t reply fast enough.
The idea is an old one … in the authors words…” Russellscape is an ‘endless landscape’ or myriorama—a series of panels with precisely the same colors at precisely the same places along their left and right edges. If all those edges match, then the individual panels, when laid side by side, form a continuous image…”
In this case she was looking for the illustrations to relate in some way to the MR series characters, story lines or geographic locations in the books. My first thought was of the painting that I had finished last year… The Beecharmer. The idea for which had blossomed many years ago while I was reading the very first book in the series, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. It took a few years of incubation and a larger studio to bring my composition to the panel … and it has taken the same number of years for LRK to return to the hive, so to speak, with her latest novel’s title…The Language of Bees which hits the bookstores on 22 May 09.
So, with a little bit of help from Photoshop… and a lot of artistic license and latitude… here is the image I came up with …
and here’s where you can see how they integrated it into the Russellscape… (Scroll down to the bottom of her home page to see the slide show ) http://www.laurierking.com/ .
It was a lot of fun and a huge honor for this humble artist to be included, so many thanks Laurie.
You too can participate as she is encouraging other artists to add their own panels… so follow the links on her site to find the details. There will be a contest coming up to pick the favorite panel…so get to the library and bone up on your Mary Russell stories and have fun. ” The Games A-foot !”
And, one last plug…the original painting, The Beecharmer can be seen here on my website…and is available now at the Granary Gallery .
And Now… I weave my way from Ye Olde Cabinet Shoppes of the 17th century … through the back alleys of 19th century London… across the moors and back across the pond…to the dune swept seascapes of Martha’s Vineyard…and straight onto a movie set ?
Next up on the easel… a painting commissioned for a movie currently wrapping up production by producer/director Tappan Heher … “Mistover”.
Much more to come on this exciting project soon… but, for now, the muses are calling.
Be well, HN
YORK Mae Millstone, 95, died Friday, January 9, 2009, at her home in the company of her family. She was the widow of Harry Millstone, who died in 1999, and to whom she had been married for 60 years. She was born September 17, 1913, in Philadelphia, the daughter of Hyman and Dora (Shedlovsky) Kaplan. She graduated in 1934 from Pennsylvania State University with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in sociology. She then worked for the National Recovery Administration in Pennsylvania as a special investigator, making sure that workers were being paid the required wages and that working conditions for home employment were not being abused. Later, she was employed as a supervisor with the Public Health Service on a project studying chronic disease in west coast mining towns. In 1936, she moved to Detroit, Mich., for the next phase of the project, compiling information and preparing a statistical report. There, she met Harry Millstone, a union organizer for the CIO. Their marriage in 1938 began a partnership of mutual interest in and work for the labor movement. In Newark, N.J., Ms. Millstone was associate editor of the Fur & Leather Worker magazine. After moving to Williamsport in 1941, she served as education and welfare director for the Fur & Leather Workers union. She moved with her family to York in 1961, where she became the editor of the women’s pages for The Gazette and Daily newspaper. She worked to broaden the range of articles on those pages by including information about nutrition, health, and consumer education. A lifelong activist and supporter of progressive causes, she was involved in voter registration drives, opposition to the Vietnam war, support for the civil rights movement, and women’s issues. In recent years, she was an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq and participated in regular peace vigils in downtown York. She was also an escort for patients at the local offices of Planned Parenthood. She was preceded in death by both her husband, Harry, and her daughter, Amy Millstone. She is survived by a son, David H. Millstone of Lebanon, N.H.; two stepgrandchildren; and two step great-grandchildren. At her request, her body was donated to the Humanity Gifts Registry to be used in the education of medical students. Local arrangements were handled by the John W. Keffer Funeral Home and Crematory, Inc., 902 Mt. Rose Ave., York. A memorial service will be held at a later date. Contributions in her memory may be made either to Planned Parenthood of Central Pennsylvania, 728 S. Beaver St., York, PA 17401; or to the Jane Addams Peace Association, 565 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116. www.kefferfh.com