This cardinal and his mate have been tap tap tapping on my studio window incessantly for …ever.
I have tried closing the blinds, leaving them half open, open all the way, hanging strings in the window… putting up tiny signs that say hush… and still…every day…he and his mate come back a’ knockin’.
I even suspect that this is the second generation because last year the female had a strange growth on her head…probably from knocking it all day…and this year it’s gone.
One morning this winter, while I was eating breakfast, a cardinal slammed into the kitchen door. I mean kamakazi. He didn’t make it and what with the three feet of snow on the ground the best I could do for him was to throw him in the garden. He sank like a stone. Yesterday I found the bright red feathers amongst the brilliant green chives.
Perhaps he was the patriarch and the current pair are keeping up the family tradition of trying to get into the studio…or just to get my attention…
My dear friend Ellen Cryer Gilbert is Director of Advancement at the school and I’m pleased to help support her and the school by including some prints from our New Collection in this sale. The show opens tonight with an artist’s reception from 5 – 8 pm and continues tomorrow from 10 – 3. Following this sale there will be an online art auction which we are participating in as well. Over 30 artists are showing their works … here’s a link to view the list of artists and their websites.
Week three and I finally got a decent nights’ sleep and the long slow climb out of pneumonia is trending upward…
Creeping out of that fog it feels like the world has spun into high gear and I am a bit dazed. After the long cold months of dreaming my way through the winter… every corner of the studio has a new project calling…in some cases screaming…at me.
The new printer has arrived and we are preparing to launch the sale of prints published in our own studio and sold exclusively on our website next week. Emails back and forth with Ross, the webmaster…and testing of the new machine…and producing an announcement to be mailed out have the office hopping…
Outside the next phase of construction is underway in the studio garden… we’re going greener with some new raised beds in which to plant veggies to replenish our weakened immune systems…
Back inside the easel has this year’s mega panel endeavor waiting patiently for my energy level to return to normal. The panel is ambitious and I can’t wait to tackle the intense detail…so far it’s been weeks of building up the ground work interrupted by weeks of crawling back to bed…today for the first time I feel that tide turning.
And then last week my share of the Jupiter Moon Farm fall shearing arrived… this time I ordered raw fleece rather than the processed yarn. It is glorious and I won’t have to wait now until the May Sheep and Wool Festival to sit and spin my cares away. I am going to try and use this as a great big carrot to lead me back to the easel and only after a good days work of painting…allow myself to sit at the spinning wheel and let the healing fibers fly.
Through it all, right at my side, has been my little apprentice…
Finnegan is the healthiest of the bunch around here. She has both of her legs back under her now and is rehabbing nicely. She is more than ready to run with the big dogs again but it will be 6 more weeks or so of restricted exercise before she can really let loose. While I was writing this blog she decided that box of fleece left on the floor in the bathroom should be rearranged… the trail leads through the kitchen, down the hall, and right to my easel chair…
I get the message…back to work !
Stay tuned for updates on all these projects and more… H
There’s a neat new way to find artists in your area or anywhere in the world…
It’s easy to navigate, simple to create your own listing, and FREE.
After I took the tour and created my listing I got this email from the founders, they asked me to share the info…it’s cool and so I will…
Hello Heather,
Thank you for being part of www.TheArtsMap.com, the internet’s first interactive worldwide map focusing on artists, arts organizations, galleries, museums, and more.
The usefulness of The Arts Map will increase as more artists, galleries, museums, arts venues, arts organizations, and other arts related institutions create markers.
With that in mind, we are asking you who have already chosen to participate to help us spread the word about The Arts Map.
Please forward this message to as many folks as possible who you think might benefit from being “on the map”. Please be sure to tell them that Basic Listings on The Arts Map are FREE and will REMAIN FREE FOREVER. They can sign up by going to http://www.theartsmap.com/account.php and filling in the forms.
Thank you.
Cordially,
Robin & Jonathan www.TheArtsMap.com ///// Connecting Artists and the Community
The call came in at 3:30am from the hard working vet that Finn was out of surgery and doing well. I had caved in at midnight so it was early this morning that I got the message. Now my flu ravaged body may still be weary but my spirits are high. By this time next week all members of my little family should be off of antibiotics and we can say good riddance to displaysed elbows and rattling pneumonic lungs and maybe even to … snow ???
I’ve got to pass along our thanks to all of you who have been checking in and offering help and that all important compassionate ear of support… you will never know how those words and gestures of kindness reach in and lift us up.
One person who has done some heavy lifting in that department is our friend Saren. She has talked me down off of many a ledge especially with dear Finnegan’s trials. I was checking in with her early this morning and felt like a corner has been turned. The sun is shining, there is a definite warming in the air, and when I took the time to look I found the first signs of spring in the studio yard…
Can I get a witness ???
Through the darkest days of this long hard winter I’ve been taking myself to one of the happiest and most anticipated events of my year…the Sheep and Wool Festival !
The warm sunny first weekend in May when the Howard County Fairgrounds fill up with color and fiber and everything sheep. The crowd is full of my kind of people…old back to nature hippies who dress in sensible clothes and parade their knitted and woven creations and scour through the straw strewn farm shed stall to replenish their supplies of yarn and fleece and needles and sheep dip, etc.
There are many happy memories there for us and I’m so excitedly looking forward to making that trip this year…we may go both days !
My spinning wheel waits behind the snow shovel…
And I’ve got one great big panel up on the easel that needs to be finished before then…
But by golly I can feel it getting closer…I am dreaming now of coming home with a nice bag of fleece in the truck and oiling up the old wheel and sitting on the warm sunny porch with Finnegan stealing bits of wool and running down the walkway with it flying up over her shoulders in triumph…
I remember sitting at this computer a year ago today…plowing through piles of tax papers and getting an email saying that a litter of 14 pups had arrived…and one of them was our sweet little girl…
So far she has celebrated her birthday with a little run through her snow maze…some zippers around the studio kitchen…whining at the window as she watched Zola get on the school bus…then…on the sly…while I was writing this blog entry…she somehow found the stash of bully stick chews and gave her own self a birthday present.
We have a couple more surprises in store for her today…and I can’t wait to see what others she has for us.
We look forward to many years worth of fun and adventures to come….Happy Birthday Finn.
Sitting here in the studio looking at mountains of snow.
Three days of hard labor with the snow shovels and monster blower machine thingy and I am so grateful that all I have to lift today is a triple ought sable haired brush.
At the height of the blizzard I took this shot from the studio window…
And here’s a look at a painting that I worked on after our first snow storm back in December…almost the same view…just pan over to the right a bit more…
And a look at the labyrinth that I have to shovel out for Finn each time it snows so her mending legs have a better than fair chance out there in the tundra…
And the Apprentice Herself tucked into the snow fort that has melted some but was well over her head a day or so ago…
The good news is that we finally got Miss Pat out of the lane and up to town. Her cabin fever was approaching the red zone so even the laundromat was looking good !
Blueberry pancakes for both of my valentines this morning to fortify another day of winter survival adventures…and I shall be more than content to paint the day away and know that I am so well loved by my two sweeties.
Last week we weathered a trifecta of sad, painful and challenging events. Pat’s father, Frances (Pez) Ritchey 86, was admitted to intensive care and we waited each day to hear news of his deteriorating condition while in the hospital in Hawaii. On the home front our dear puppy Finnegan was scheduled to have the first of two surgeries on her front legs to minimize the elbow displaysia with which she was diagnosed in December. And, along with several other million people, we were following the weather channels who predicted us to be in the core of the blizzard of 2010.
I’m sad to write that Pez died on Saturday. Pat was relieved for him that he was not allowed to linger on machines and that she was able to have many hours of conversations over the last few years about the old neighborhood and adventures that she remembers fondly with him when growing up in Lancaster, PA.
We brought Finnegan home just in time to batten down the hatches for the big snow storm. It has been four days now and she is doing remarkably well. On strict house arrest until her next surgery in a month, she is getting regular therapy sessions and a big dose of love from her buddy and me and ….except for insisting that we refer to her as “You Highness” when she has the Elizabethan Collar on…she’s a model patient.
Today the apprentice returned to the studio for the first time and was beyond excited to see that her toys and bones and her brushes and paints were right where she left them.
Meanwhile I had the pleasure, while taking Finn out several times during the blizzard, to watch it bury our little corner of the planet. We got two feet and more in some spots and the snow blower finally has paid for itself.
Here are some highlights mid-storm and the morning after.
I can report that we made it up to town today to stock up for the next storm which is predicted to be a piddling foot or more moving through here tomorrow night. Restocked the pantry and the wine cellar…so we’re ready.
Every so often I rotate the stack of reference books in the stacks on my studio kitchen table and dip into old volumes to find new treasures. In that way I always find something that I’ve overlooked or was not ready to see before and a window is opened for the muses to shove me through.
Such was the case last month when I was paging through…
I came across a watercolor that my leaky memory has no memory of ever seeing before… Baron Philippe (1981)…
Something clicked and I began to sketch out an idea for a response….
I’ve been working on a series of studio still lifes and this gave me a chance to pull together some of the old props that have been living in the old studio (now renamed the POD ).
The oil lamp was Cousin Ed’s and one of the few treasures of his we were able to purchase back from the auction of his posessions. The empty wine bottle is courtesy of our holiday feast with D and S. The ladies handkerchief was one of Polly’s. The teacup is from Sue’s grandmother. The chair was from the old farmhouse across the road and is a very old shaker style ladderback that somewhere along the way had the rockers sawed off of so it is now a slipper chair. The little porcelain doll in her silky purple gown is a gift from Chris. The cane was a flea market find and has the whisper of a serpent carved in the handle. The bottle was from an antique store purchased on the day we went to the Amish country to pick out Finnegan. The uniform has appeared in several other paintings and was an old hollywood costume found on Ebay years ago. The shell is from Sengy pond on the Vineyard. I don’t remember from whence the table came but the old wooden floor is the very foundation of my new studio. And the rest… is pure folly.
There are homages here to all three generations of Wyeths and I humbly submit my tribute to them… The Baroness.
