Spring Block

After a miserable winter here in the Northeast U.S., we've been grasping at every possible sign that spring is here - the crocuses, the tiny sprig of green that appears when snow melts, a greenish blush of grass on the lawn, a warm sun, bugs, abandoned hat and gloves. Today, the first real day of spring, was a cruel disappointment.

Waiting

Snow again. All day. A wet, cold, sticky, clean-off-your-car and get-your-hair-soaked snow.

Yes, it was pretty, but pretty is as pretty does.

Bleak view

This was a grim beginning to spring, especially with thoughts of the misery in Japan and now a new war begun that's not really a war, so we are told.

In the studio, I'm stuck remaking my work again. It feels like I'm going around in a hamster wheel. Oh, I'm glad to have a commission to make a larger version of a piece I have already made, but on the heels of my repainting of a painting, it's not really any fun - especially since I can't seem to recapture the mood of the original. I spent all day prying up elements and replacing them with different ones that were more like those in the original piece. I'm still not there and now I have to hustle to get to the photographer's.

As I look again at the pictures in this post, I see that I have a central foreground block in each of them. They epitomize the way I am feeling. I am concentrating so much on what's right in front of me that I'm not seeing what lies beyond. It's seeing the tree instead of the forest. Oh, look - I've just made a post that teaches me a lesson even as I write it.

Spring in the Air

As I stepped out into the yard Monday morning with the Boyz, I stuck my nose in the air just like them to get a whiff of something quite exotic - that indefinable smell that presages spring! Could it really come? It's been hard to imagine with the heavy-duty winter we've had.

Front of our house, picture taken Feb 3rd

It's been pretty demoralizing. We've had storm after storm all winter. When it wasn't snowing, sleeting, or "wintry-mixing", it was so freezing cold that nothing was melting. The coldest temperature we saw one morning on our kitchen thermometer was 18 degrees below. Last weekend, I think it was, we had one morning of 12 below.

Looking toward the garage. The handle protruding at the left is the roof rake.

Then this morning, it was 40 degrees. The temp rose up to 52, I saw on the news. That was bikini weather. By this afternoon, we had lakes appearing in the yard from melting snow. Of course tonight the temp went down and the winds picked up (to 45 mph), so everything refroze. Nevermind, I had that whiff and it stirred my imagination.

The Boyz walking through the "avenues" in the yard that Bonnie has snow-blown for them.

Approximately the same view, taken last May

When it's been like this for so long, it's really hard to imagine that it will ever change and all that green will return. The old farmers (from the almanac) call snow "poor man's fertilizer," and if that's so, we're gonna have a helluva growing season.

A big THANK YOU to my valentine, Bonnie, for dealing with all the snow this winter! She did it ALL with her trusty snow blower plus lots of shoveling, roof raking, icicle breaking, scraping, salting, and whatever else needed to be done. The "Man of the House" proved she was up to the task of dealing with it all--and doing it cheerfully. A true Wonder Woman!

In the Studio
While Bonnie was working on the snow, I've been spending a lot of time in the studio. Much of the time I was working, but I've also been doing a lot of cleaning up and moving things around to host visitors  This weekend it was a pleasure to go in there to work and drag things out that I didn't have to put back. I had to get back to normal after rearranging for the Smith class. The trouble with moving things and stogging them somewhere is that they often don't reappear until years later - the curse of neatness!

I made these two little pieces for the sculpture show at Castle Hill this summer, but they seem less than exciting. I wasn't really happy working at this scale. (They are just 8"x10".) Sometimes the ideas you have don't pan out in the flesh. So I'm starting over and making something different.

Domino-trix, 6"x 14", mixed media with encaustic and dominoes

Here's another small piece that I just had photographed and will use as the inspiration for larger works for Greg Wright's show in the fall on the theme of pollination. The new pieces will include many more dominoes as related to my definition of pollination. There will be 12 artists who work in encaustic in this show at the Brush Gallery in Lowell, Mass. and a lot of related programming.

Of course there are also several shows connected with the encaustic conference that require work on a theme. I'm not so sure that I'm up to it. Sometimes you just have to continue on your path and not get sidetracked. By the way, a big thank you to Joanne M. for prominently posting one of my works on the conference home page!

Ice in the Mist

OK, so I'm not a fan of winter. I only live in New England because I was born here and can't afford to get out right now. The snow and cold and whatever are so not me. But sometimes I grudgingly admit that winter can be beautiful. Today was one of those days.

Crabapples loaded down with melting ice

On Sunday we had some snow and then rain. It froze overnight and coated everything with ice. Then this morning it warmed up and everything started to melt. When I went out with the boys, it was a strange misty but icy world.

The trees were covered with melting ice and mist was rising up as the sun hit everything. I think it was that state between a liquid and a gas that is called sublime. A good word for it.

An ice drip close up on an apple tree.

Leftover apples in a tree bent down with ice.

The lilac grove

Looking back at the house and garage through the trees and mist. Note the paths that Bonnie made with the snowblower so it would be easier for walking. (Of course it was for the dogs and not for us.)

Mist in the neighbor's yard. I'm calling it mist but it wasn't coming down from the sky - it was rising up from the ground and the trees.

Mist rising up over the frozen dog pools and Webber grill.

And it isn't even the solstice yet.

Weather Diptychs

The weather blog is an "international photo project about weather, emotion and communicating through photography" that was conceived by two artists as part of the Transcultural Exchange 2009 project. Miriam Songster of New York and Hege Dons Samset of Berlin designed a three-part project consisting of the weather photos blog (also known as "We Are Having Weather"), a video exhibition in Shanghai Zendai MoMA in November 2008 and participation in "Here, There and Everywhere", part of the Transcultural Exchange conference to be held in Boston in April 2009.

I learned about the weather blog from Alicia Hunsicker, who participated in it online and also in the exhibition in China. Beginning later today, between 4 and 5 pm, I will start posting photos to the weather blog along with my partner, the Raketa crew of Stockholm, Sweden. Raketa describes themselves as: "a network of people running interdisciplinary, collaborative projects and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media." Sounds exciting!

The idea is that the weather blog partners communicate with each other through their photos about the weather and their emotional response to the weather. Each partner is supposed to post at least one photo a day, and the idea is to respond to each other, not just keep posting from your own perspective.

So I've been taking photos documenting the weather, but I don't know if I'll post all of them to the blog because I will wait to see what my partners do. But the contrast between yesterday's weather and today's is pretty extreme. I shot some comparison views and am posting them below as diptychs. The first picture in a set was taken yesterday, March 1st, and the second image was today, March 2nd. They are all taken in my yard or looking out the window.

I won't show you the image I am first going to post to the weather blog. You'll have to go there to look tonight. We will be in the sidebar list under: Nancy (Massachusetts, USA) + Raketa (Sweden).

Soul Survivor

Never mind all this crappy economic theorizing about art being a luxury: art is a necessity - especially if you make it. We need art for our souls, not for investment, and when I stay out of the studio for a week, I can feel my soul shriveling.

This past week has been filled with things keeping me out of the studio from work to pet emergency to visiting my elderly mother to laziness, avoidance and postponement - you know, the usual. Every time I stay away like this, there are physical, emotional and spiritual consequences - not to mention my becoming impossible to be around. And now I have another consequence to add to the list - no blog topics. Oh, God, the guilt! Just what I needed - more guilt!

So, the best I can do is to promise to go to the studio tomorrow...OK, run to the studio tomorrow, and meanwhile, post some cheery photos of my world.



That darkish spot center right is the head of Bobby Budha, a statue that sits beside a walkway to the upper part of the yard.


I posted the garden in spring the other day - lush, green and verdant. Now it's a soggy mess of spring snow overlaying a thick crust of ice and underlaid by mud. These photos were from this morning after an overnight wet snow of 3" or so.



Raised beds as they look now - buried beds under a mound. Poor man's fertilizer? We can only hope.


Kirby's pool and forlorn chairs amid the drooping hemlock branches.

Kirby's pool in happier weather with Mr. K in his favorite spot and Mr. H doing the heavy looking on. (He doesn't indulge.)

Da Boyz with Chippie (stuffed, not dead)

So there you have it. Snow, garden and dogs - where the hell's the art?