I stare constantly at the trees outside, grey branches woven and netted — and finally I bring them into the house with paint, using the brief light while it’s here.
This photo was edited to put light on my painting.
Happy Solstice!
Category Archives: 2009 blog posts
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Solstice Eve: Ashes and Eggs
Bob’s tooth, or at least the crown of it, came off with a bite of cookie two weeks ago. He retrieved it and put it for safekeeping in a folded piece of paper towel, in a water-glass on the windowsill. It sat there for two weeks, while he chewed all his food very carefully and waited for a reasonable chance to travel down to Seattle for the dentist (who would glue it back on for free.)
Finally this week he’d arranged to slip off the island for a few days, and the morning was a flurry of tidying and packing and list-making and arranging. A neighbor’s trash to haul off, and truck keys and rain clothes for the boatride, phone and charger and laundry and lists and gasoline containers to fill. And then Bob went to look for the glass with the paper towel and the crown — and realized that he’d been bustling around in a mindless cleaning fit earlier, and had gathered trash to burn in the course of tidying.
We searched through the indoor trash, through pockets and on windowsills, in drawers and wallet and every other place we could think of. Bob had washed the water glass, and had no memory of even handling the folded paper towel. The boat was about to leave, so I drove him down to the dock. Then I came back home and went through the smoldering ashes of the burn barrel, sifting each soggy handful in my fingers. I found nuts and bolts, pebbles, a zipper top. No tooth. Maybe it melted… I’m sure dental material isn’t intended to be fireproof.
Sigh. It felt about right, here at the bottom of the year, to be squatting in the damp leaves out there, sorting through heaps of wet ashes. So dark this morning it barely seems like day at all.
But…
Today the chickens laid 5 (five!) eggs. This is the first five-egg day we’ve had, since they began laying at the end of November. It’s been so much fun to enjoy the bounty of eggs from the 10 hens, during a season when we didn’t expect any eggs at all. We don’t put heat or light in their house, but we think maybe they’re energized by their free-ranging afternoons. They hike around in the woods, scratching under maple leaves and hopping over downed cedar trunks, and they always seem happy.
So when Bob called me from the ferry, I told him about the eggs, and we both felt a little lifted up. I think we’ll make it through the longest night tonight.
Errands
This photo was taken about a week ago, en route to some ordinary errands. Going to the bank, shopping, just a handful of tasks which I needed to go off-island for. I took the photo looking backwards to the island, because I was sitting with my back to the wind and rain. Our neighbor, who was running the boat, had no such luxury and had to simply face into it. These trips generally take a minimum of half a day, and typically more like a whole day when you include the hauling and then the drying-off and warming-up at the end. I usually manage to only go off about once a month, on average, although this fall I’ve had to leave more often because of some unexpected family needs.
Tomorrow it’ll be Bob’s turn, heading out over the grey seas so that he can go down into Seattle and buy a few Christmas goodies.
Exquisite Corpse animation
This video was assembled by the New Zealand animation house Cirkus, and it’s actually a quilted-together work of a number of animators and writers. The phrase “exquisite corpse” refers to a kind of artwork where many people collaborate, improvising together, each person taking up the tale where the last one left off. (Here’s a group of exquisite corpse drawings done together by famous surrealist artists. I used to do a variation of this with my two daughters when they were little, and we used to call it the Doodle Game. More about that on a different day.)
Here’s a brief explanation of the phrase “exquisite corpse”, quoted from a book called Dada and Surrealist Art, by William S. Rubin:
Among Surrealist techniques exploiting the mystique of accident was a kind of collective collage of words or images called the cadavre exquis (exquisite corpse). Based on an old parlor game, it was played by several people, each of whom would write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold the paper to conceal part of it, and pass it on to the next player for his contribution.
The technique got its name from results obtained in initial playing, “Le cadavre / exquis / boira / le vin / nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine). Other examples are: “The dormitory of friable little girls puts the odious box right” and “The Senegal oyster will eat the tricolor bread.” These poetic fragments were felt to reveal what Nicolas Calas characterized as the “unconscious reality in the personality of the group” resulting from a process of what Ernst called “mental contagion.”
This playful concept is combined here with animation, which is one of the freshest art forms going right now. Animation work posted online allows an original piece of artwork to be distributed free to an unlimited audience. Because of the internet, all of a sudden art doesn’t have to pass muster with the gatekeepers. It doesn’t have to be represented by a gallery in order to find a following, but instead the intimate relationship between artist and audience which existed for thousands of years is recaptured.
There are some animators out there doing serious art, if a form so lighthearted can be called serious. Animation is fully as serious as oil painting, and maybe more able to express the real human condition. There’s just something about movement which captures the fragmented, momentary quality of actual life.
In the video posted above, apparently seven writers each contributed a chunk of the story, and the animators at Cirkus brought the story alive. I’m truly thrilled by the creative vitality which is nurtured by the internet.
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Sunshine afternoon, owl evening
I think this painting is finished now. It had more detail before; I did a white wash over the trees because they seemed too bright on the canvas, and now I’m not sure I like the outcome. Ah, well. It’s just a little snapshot, via paintbrush, of a chunk of our wintry yard. Just to be doing this, churning through practice paintings one after another, makes me feel like the day’s been worthwhile.
I went out at noontime to the beach nearby, to continue work on the little painting I started there a few weeks ago, but the tide was too high for me to get down the path. Here’s a photo I took from the meadow up above the beach (with my shadow in the middle of it, because the sun was so low):
But I wanted to paint, because the sun was out, and so I did a quick beginning oil sketch of the cove from where I stood in the field above. I’ll either use this as a reference point or a beginning point for a future painting.
I worked fast, stopping when my fingers got too cold to work anymore. (While I painted, I was wearing: cotton turtleneck and jeans, corduroy over-shirt, lightweight wool pullover sweater, fleece vest, heavy insulated sweatshirt, and fleece hood/face mask. It made me feel slightly muffled away from the world I was trying to depict.)
Now it’s evening and the barred owls are calling. A crescent moon hangs like an ornament in the bare branches of the alders close to the house. Tomorrow Bob comes home from the city, bearing cargo so that the two of us can make a holiday together. We’re separated from the kids by schedules and airfares, but we have friends close by. And of course cats and chickens.
But tonight is my last solitary night. I love being alone, the cozy aloneness when your mate is due back soon and all is well. The pure silence of the house, the snap of the fire in the woodstove, (and the chocolate melting in the pan on top of it). I’m so glad for this beginning of the new solar year.