A Mini-Diary In and Around the Studio

Tuesday night, June 22nd
Returning from the encaustic conference after six days away from home has sort of spun me into different territory. Who am I here? Getting back into the studio hasn't happened yet, and I think I'm losing the sense of what I really do. I'm getting caught up in gardening, working for money, lolling on the couch in front of some boring TV show or immersing myself in a book. Do I even have a studio?, I wonder, and what is it like in there? I drove by the building last week and felt like I had moved out. Some combination of breaking the routine, being faced with too many choices of things to pursue and a lack of deadlines has taken its toll on me.

Color me curiously absent from myself.

You see that "curiously"? I think it comes from watching the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland last weekend. Weird but entertaining. My favorite Burton invention was the Red Queen calling for a warm pig to rest her feet on. That could come in handy, I think, but not at this time of year.

Wednesday night, June 23rd
Summer in western Massachusetts is bear weather and we've had two visits this week from a strangely (or curiously) neat bear. The bear broke into the screened porch that's attached to our garage by pushing in the bottom half of the screen door (that was actually covered with some kind of hard plastic rimmed with metal). Bonnie, who would make a great detective, pointed out that you could see dusty paw prints on the plastic if you looked closely.

All it did during the first visit was pick up a plastic bucket (a cat litter container) that held left-over suet cakes and a little birdseed. The bear apparently selected this particular container because of the suet. The container was pretty tightly sealed with a lid and had a looped handle. It was heavy but the bear carried it out into the yard, apparently in its mouth, and exited the way it entered, through the door. When it had gone maybe 30 feet, we think something startled it and it dropped the container, which then opened and spilled some seed. We think the bear did not eat any of the contents but ran off.

It came again the next night and easily pushed in the screening Bonnie had ducktaped onto the bottom of the door. The container with suet was not there. Instead it took the lid off a metal trashcan that had held birdseed. The can was empty but still smelled like seed. Nothing else was touched or even knocked over. The lid of the trashcan rested on the floor beside it.

Who is this bear?

Thursday afternoon, June 24th
I finally went over to the studio this morning to bring over a load of stuff from the conference. The only way to get back into the studio is to go to the studio. I putzed around a little and I could definitely have stayed but I was already very hot and it was only 9 a.m. Our cool, dark house with fans blowing, dogs sleeping and unfinished paperback waiting loomed large in my mind, and I left. I think I took on some color presence because by the time I left, my face was bright red (from heat).

Returning from the conference

I brought back from the conference a backseat full of books that my mother-in-law gave me. She lives in the next town over from Beverly (site of the conference) and kindly put me up for five nights. I'm not sure what I'll do with all of them, but there was a large selection of children's books from the '40s, '50s and '60s.

Part of the wide selection of picture books

The very best one has a great title and is a huge book printed in Sweden. There is no copyright date or mark on it.

This book measures 14" wide x 18 1/2" high closed!

Here is a page spread showing the very colorful images.

And finally, here is a photo of the oil portrait of my great grandmother on my mother's side, Elizabeth Bailey Dobson. She was born in England about 1853 and emigrated to Boston through Canada

This portrait was just sent to my by my one and only cousin. Her mother had it from my grandmother. I remember it hanging in my grandmother's parlor over the fireplace. It was in an ornate frame which has somehow disappeared. There was no signature or date on the painting. I don't think I look much like her except for my coloring and the propensity of my hair to form the same waves when it gets longer than I usually wear it.

The back of the painting. This should be a lesson to always sign and date your work on the back for future reference.

So I guess I'll be getting back to normal now. Or at least one can only hope.

Questions Asked and Answered

What about that bear?
The bear has not come back - as far as we know - and all is well. Our birds have about given up looking for birdseed after we packed it all away and are concentrating on building nests in all the nesting boxes we have around the yard. So far it's mostly sparrows building nests - and our faithful robin, who returns every year.

Have you finally finished reading that Rothko bio?
The good news is that I finally, finally finished the Rothko bio! It was a long haul with those dense, 600+ pages. I was ready to give it up initially because the first 200 pages or so were extremely tedious, but once the author (James Breslin) came to the beginnings of Abstract Expressionism in 1940s New York, I was hooked and actually started underlining as I read.

This book was an incredible labor of love by Breslin, who spent seven years writing it and performed unbelievably devoted, not to say obsessive, feats of research to document minute details. His research included traveling alone to Rothko's hometown in Russia (dangerous and life threatening), investigating variances in Rothko's autopsy versus published reports of his death (not as revealing for me as for Breslin), spending five consecutive full days in the Rothko chapel in Houston studying the paintings there and seeing who visited, interviewing everyone he could find with connections to Rothko (all kinds of relatives, artists Rothko knew or surviving families of those artists, critics - including the enduringly pompous Clement Greenberg, studio assistants, etc., etc.).

When can we expect a post about Rothko?
Breslin gathered an incredible amount of information, and now, with so much detail about Rothko filling my head, it's difficult to know where to start. It will need to be more than one post because so many interesting questions were raised that not only have to do with Rothko, but with art and artists in general. I'm going to work on it this weekend and post soon - hopefully tomorrow.

Isn't asking yourself questions and answering them an intensely annoying practice?
When Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense in the late and unlamented Bush administration, he continually asked himself all those stupid questions and gave his patronizing answers. I hated that! Now here I am doing it. What's the matter with me? It's late and I'm tired. Do you promise not to do this again? I do.

It's Always Something

When we were living in the woods of Ashfield, about 45 minutes northeast of here, we always saw plenty of wildlife including moose, mink, otters, beavers, whatever. That was to be expected because we were in the middle of about 600 acres of forest, meadow and otherwise undeveloped land that was home to all kinds of animals. Since we were basically city types, we were thrilled to see nature that wasn't on the TV. But bears scared us.

We thought that moving to this little city of Easthampton would spare us from having to take our birdfeeders in between April 1 and December 1 when the bears are mostly active. But we quickly learned that this was not the case. Black bears are here and thriving. In fact, we have had as much or more bear contact here during our almost three years residency than we did during five years in Ashfield.

There are a lot of black bears in western Massachusetts. The population in 1970 was estimated at about 100 and now it's about 3000. They are thriving on garbage and birdseed, learning to live with careless people, and enjoying life in the suburbs.

Even our Governor Patrick became more familiar with bears recently during a bear inspection trip with Mass. Wildlife representatives. These photos were taken this past February in Whatley, Mass., about 15 miles from here, by Boston Globe photographer Mark Wilson.

Those cubs are about four weeks old and their mother has been tranquilized so that she could be examined and weighed. Mass. Wildlife tracks about 15 female bears with GPS collars.

Anyway, the reason I post all this is that we now have a bear who has discovered our yard and keeps coming back. She was here one day last fall and got a feeder, but I chased her away by banging pots and pans and yelling to scare her. She wasn't all that scared but did leave the yard. She returned again at night a couple of weeks later and climbed a tree outside our fence to escape our dogs that we had just let out into the yard.

Black bears generally do not attack people, but they have been known to break into sheds and houses, attack lifestock and become a nuisance. Wildlife experts suggest that people take care with their birdfeeders, compost, animal food and garbage so that bears are not attracted. Bears should not be fed and should be discouraged from coming near houses, sheds and yards.

Since this spring (mostly) has arrived, we have been careful with feeders, taking them in at night and only putting them out during the day if we were at home. Even that is risky as I kept telling Bonnie, who would not listen. (Told you so!) Last Sunday afternoon we had left feeders out and driven down the street briefly to see some friends. When we came home, Bonnie spotted the bear as soon as we came into the yard from the garage. I, of course, was oblivious. The bear was sitting calmly and dining from a suet feeder. She did not want to move. We drove her off and out of the yard by moving slowly toward her yelling and banging pots.

She is a very pretty bear, smallish, probably 3 1/2 feet tall on all fours, plump and with a beautiful, glossy, black coat. (We believe that she is a female because of her size and the fact that she is wearing a collar.)

She returned last night after dark, found no feeders hanging and turned on the motion-activated light outside the door as she prowled around the yard. Luckily Bonnie spotted the light and looked out the window to see the bear looking into the garage where the birdseed was stored. Again we drove her off, but she went reluctantly and climbed a tree outside our fence, peering around to look at us from the backside of the tree. We could see her eyes glowing in the beam of the flashlight and the lighter color of her muzzle. (I thought that she was really very cute even though we are advised not to think such thoughts.)

We got little sleep last night since we feared that she would return and break down the door to the garage, doing who knows how much damage. Bonnie had moved all the birdseed deeper into the garage and put it into sealed metal trashcans and plastic kitty litter buckets. Still, we were afraid she would be able to smell it and go after it.

I called Mass. Wildlife this morning for advice and they said that bears have a long memory and it would take a while to deprogram her. They suggested that we get an airhorn or a loud whistle and put the birdseed into airtight containers. There is not much else to be done except to try not to attract her with food and to make it unpleasant if she returns.

Meanwhile, we have to be careful with the dogs and only take them out at night into the yard on leashes. We're afraid that if they were to corner the bear, she could swipe at them with those long claws and powerful arms. Just one more thing to worry about.