Thursday, July 31, 2014

Hidden Dragon

 
My mom and I recently spent a day wandering the galleries of Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a long stretch with so many beautiful works of art, I think I could spend a month there and not see everything. Afterwards, we went to one of our family favorites off the plaza downtown (called The Shed) for lunch.
 
 
Where we were seated, I had a view out the window and kept getting distracted by the really obvious (to me) dragon head in the old vine outside (its head is pointed down toward the chair, with it's right eye staring at me). Can you see it?! Hehe!  
 



Wednesday, July 30, 2014

My Feather Friends

There are millions of natural, biological, evolutionary, complex, perfect forms/traits/quirks in our universe. They are overwhelming to take in, and we've only skimmed the surface of knowing and understanding what might be right here, and out there. I love looking at all the breathtaking colors, patterns and textures Mother Nature has painted in her genius to allow everything to co-exist and thrive. One such beautiful mystery is the feather.

Feathers provide warmth, distinction, direction and protection to their owners, have been used by humans for writing, warring and decoration (how many treaties, sonnets, deaths have occurred in our history with quills and arrows fashioned out of the feathers of unsuspecting fowl?). They have been upheld throughout our history by many cultures as signs of communication with gods, ascension and freedom.

When I was a little girl, I came home from almost every outdoor excursion with a feather, leading to my childhood nickname of "Heather Feather."


Feathers have often appeared in my path in times of transition, depression, stress or indecision, and I have always felt when I have discovered them, like I have received a message from above to remember that younger spirit, and to know that I will be guided down the next portion of my path with love and certainty if I remain true to myself. The past week has held some stresses, and sure enough, during that time, I have stumbled upon:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Picea Pendula

My last few art lessons have been en plein air in the UW Arboretum. Each meeting has been challenging due to unforeseen factors-- last time around because of an unrelenting massive swarm of mosquitos, and lack of deet. Tonight we arrived fully prepared with bug spray and citronella, but as we got set up and started painting, menacingly dark storm clouds appeared in the near distance.

We laughed that it would actually be a good exercise for me in getting the base drawing done quickly. As I worked, my art teacher looked at the radar on his phone, and showed me the massive storm system heading our way. Right about then the heavens opened up, we scrambled to get our stuff under a tree, my easel fell over and painted the grass a lovely array of Prussian Blue to Hansa Yellow Light, and we soggily peered out at a landscape that looked like this:

 
Since we were soaked we decided to put on our hats and roam around in the rain studying value change over distance, and I saw the most amazing tree- an evergreen that looked like a weeping willow. I think it might have been a Picea Pendula (Weeping Norway Spruce). I decided to explore, and was rewarded with the coolest natural tree fort ever:
 



I kind of wish I could go back at night with some tea lights and hang out under the illuminated branches!

The rain eventually subsided, and I was able to get a good start on the painting by the end of the evening. Haha!

Monday, July 28, 2014

The Beauty of Decay

Just a short walk up the mountain from the family ranch I visited a few weeks ago there is a salvage/junkyard where old bits and pieces of machinery, furniture and vehicles have been deposited for the better part of the last century- some to be reused or repurposed, others to be forgotten.

Some of the rubbings I posted the other day were from those things-- a selection of old gears, the front of a skid loader and an old Oliver tractor. I also found some other treasures, in particular a few of the old family rides that I could just imagine trudging up the mountain roads with a load of cheery family members in the 40's-60's.

The rust/oxidation on these vehicles was so gorgeous to me that I think I'm going to get some close-ups printed and framed. Here a couple of examples of the close-ups, then the long-shots:





 
 

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Therein Lies The Rub(bings)

This June I visited my friend and mentor, artist Christopher Colvin, in Brooklyn. He paints gorgeous large-scale portraits and city scenes using a variety of singular techniques he has developed over time. We talked one afternoon about sources of texture for a large painting he is working on, and as I was about to head out West to the mountains, I decided to make some rubbings of rock faces and send them his way for inspiration.

I got some supplies and practiced on my 165-year-old wooden floor. When I sent a sample to Christopher, he urged me to continue but to keep them for myself as individual abstract artworks. I've been experimenting more and more with a variety of materials and surfaces, and am loving the process (thank you for the encouragement Christopher)!

Two of the rubbings will be part of the same staff exhibit as the Ghost Farm photos I posted earlier:

Red Dragon/Blue Dragon
 
 
The Piano
 
I made a lot of rubbings out West as well-- I will most likely continue to work on a few to incorporate other colors and textures, but there are some that seem to be just perfect without much more manipulation:
 
 



 
On one of my flights home, I sat next to a lovely gentleman who is a retired creative director for a Mad Men-style 1960's NYC ad agency. We talked the entire flight about the evolution of technology in advertising, as well as visual art. He is now free to be an artist full-time, and he showed me his collection on his ipad. I had a few of the above photos on my phone, so I shared them, and he told me he was inspired to try it out when he got home!

 
 



Friday, July 25, 2014

Why Heather of the Forest?

When I first flirted with the idea of beginning this blog, I created one without knowing that the fairly random name I typed in was about to become part of the URL. When I later realized what I had done, I felt a little silly, but then thought it was hilarious to say "Heather of the Forest" with an exaggerated 1930's Mid-Atlantic movie accent. So, I kept it, and may still dress up as Errol Flynn's Robin Hood and take an amazing photo in the trees with a big bag of gold. Who knows.

My elementary school years were spent in the miner's limestone cottage in which I currently reside, on the edge of a little forest. My dad often says that I was a Christopher Robin sort of child, who played near or in the woods most of the time, befriended or attempted communication with animals, showed fascination with flowers and bugs, and otherwise became more fully immersed in my imagination and natural surroundings than most children.

After having lived elsewhere for many years, I've realized that I truly do feel a physical connection with this place, that it is home, and somehow having grown up here-- having eaten the garden produce that grew in the shade of the maples and elms, or the fruit of the apple, mulberry and cherry trees, having listened to the sound of the wind in the leaves, climbed and rested in the tall branches, cried into the trunk of one of the mighty oaks, crawled into a natural fort beneath heavy snow-covered low branches of the pine or honeysuckle-- this place became my playground and sanctuary, and I was a little bit of a wild one. Maybe I still am.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Random Departure: Red Winged Duck

Almost two decades ago I was adventuring around Madison, WI with other passionate young theater students, two of which I had the delight of reuniting with this evening for a concert by Cork 'n Bottle String Band at the Memorial Union Terrace.

As we were heading out for dinner, we saw a car driving in Lake Mendota. It swirled around the dock area wowing passers-by, then drove up out of the lake right in front of us. If you look closely you can see water dripping off the car.


Growing up in Wisconsin, we are used to hearing about the nearby Dells Duck rides, but this was quite a sight to see!




Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Legends of Letterland

My 6 year old daughter learned to write this past year in kindergarten. I'm not sure when she first noticed cursive handwriting, but it was most likely as she watched one of the adults in her life make a list or sign a receipt. In any case, she became intrigued with script, and began to "practice cursive writing" in her free time.


This delighted me, because I've heard that cursive writing is being removed from most public school curricula, and believe it and handwritten communication in general to be a beautiful, personalized art form that captures volumes of emotion, character and tone that are lost in digital channels.

Imagine my giddiness when I came across a 1926 book at a local antique shop called Legends of Letterland by a Big Bird (The A.N. Palmer Company, NY), a penmanship handbook with "jingling rhythms for teaching good, clear form of business writing to beginners."

 

I adore that the book is so 1920's-30's stylized, and that the author and illustrator have reached so eccentrically far to come up with visual mnemonic devices to help readers recall the forms (see The Capital H and K below).

 
 
My daughter loves the book too, and has been studying it with determination. There will soon be a 7 year old who writes like her counterpart 88 years ago, with a lot of quirky cursive letter poems to show off to her pals.


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Ghost Farm

I was blessed to grow up in a small rural town, which gave me a quiet, beautiful place to escape to when I was adventuring, and to which I have returned to live. Growing up, my siblings and I spent a few hours after school each day visiting our beloved grandparents (a retired farmer/teacher and landscape architect/housewife) at their farm.
 
After we left home and were in college, my grandparents grew more bound to the den and daytime television. At one point on a visit home, I decided to take my old 35 mm Canon and take some photos around the property. When I later had them developed and excitedly showed what I thought were nice artistic shots to my grandmother, I remember her face sinking with melancholy and a bit of embarrassment. She had no idea that the places I'd photographed had fallen into such neglect- she must have been living with memories of earlier, more vibrant times when the farm was in full swing in the 1950's-60's, and thought that the world outside the boundaries of her daily routine were closer to her memories.
 
This taught me a lesson about respect, empathy, time and the dimensions of reality that each of us construct. I think we each have things we don't examine closely until others point them out, or something else opens our eyes. The images have become more haunting to me as I've grown older, a good reminder that our time here is precious.
 
These were exhibited a few years ago, and will be in a staff exhibit next month at the arts center I work for. Here they are for your perusal.
 
 
Ghost Farm

 
Berkshire Hut

Fence 

The Tack Room 

 Planter

Barn


 


Monday, July 21, 2014

We Are Star Dust

Wisconsin oil painter David Lenz wrote a beautiful bio for his Everyday People exhibit at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison, WI. In it he explained, "It is not a coincidence that four of the five most plentiful (known) elements of the universe are also the most plentiful in our own human bodies. We, and everything around us...are made from elements that originated deep inside large blue-white stars that lived and died billions of years ago. Quite literally, we are star dust."

I often think of our elemental interconnectedness, and am inspired by things like the origin of minerals and water that end up in grapes in Bordeaux that have formed the glass of wine I'll drink for dinner. How many centuries of people, animals, flowers, rock formations, and evaporations have been filtered into one glass?

This came to mind again when I found a treasure on my 92 year old grandmother's bookshelf called Color by Herbert E. Martini (1928, Bridgman, NY). The book is a practical guide to artists and student artists, filled with yellowing, pungent pages of antiquated descriptions of pigments, grounds, color theory and subject matter.


I'm in love with the description of some of the colors and the idea that "the artist of years ago had an intimate knowledge of his pigments because he was compelled to prepare them himself." Painting was and still is biological, chemical and geological in nature-- though so many of us pay so little attention to the science of our paints and their compatibility, toxicity or origin (and of course these days there are many synthetic alternatives).

Here are a few example descriptions from the book:
  • Ochres- clay stained with ferric hydroxides...one of the oldest pigments known
  • Carmine- a dye extracted from the cochineal insect and precipitated on an alumina hydrate base
  • Sepia- a blackish-brown fluid secreted by the gland of a species of Mediterranean cuttlefish
  • Van Dyke Brown- a peaty earth pigment which, because of its partially decayed vegetable matter, fades on exposure to light
  • Blue Black- also known as charcoal black and vine black, is made by the destructive distillation of wine lees
So, the age-old plight of the artist to give eternal life to a subject is ironically inherent in some of the recycled organic materials used to paint (although Mona Lisa* perhaps didn't know she would be immortalized with cuttlefish/bug mush- or is it the other way around?)!

*Follow link to read about the actual material composition of the Mona Lisa.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Drawing Lessons

It was not with a light heart, that I finally decided last year to seek out art lessons.

Long ago, in the very same land, when I looked like this and had a temperament to match...



...I had a youthful infatuation with furious drawing and painting, late at night, on the floor, by candlelight, resulting from an adolescence spent dreaming of being the muse of young, tempestuous versions of da Vinci, Vermeer, Monet, Dali or Picasso, or actually becoming young versions of Cassatt, O'Keefe or Kahlo. At the time I had no desire to seek out the facts of the historical temperament, health or inclinations of these individuals- I was more satisfied with my own fanciful portraits of them.

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

My introduction to art history was mainly through my parents' membership to The Art Institute of Chicago, where we would travel annually for special exhibits. Later, this was supplemented with student travel and appreciated but naïve visits to classic museums like The Louvre, The National Gallery, The Uffizi Gallery and the Prado.

Street fair in Spain. 

Like many youthful infatuations, I got caught up in the frenzy and fury of my passion during those travels, and rushed to the Impressionist galleries where the work of my idols resided, thereby ignoring entire wings of centuries older and more obscure (to me) paintings and artifacts. I didn't know that the artists I admired were mostly classically trained, so I liked to copy their style and call it a day, and became irate if anyone (like my mom) suggested that I take lessons, thinking it meant I wasn't good enough (not that I had potential).

Santa Barbara harbor

I now understand the intention of my loved ones and value of those travels, and know that there are a lifetime of lessons to learn, and while I don't want to dampen my imagination, I do want to broaden my basic skills and technical knowledge.

So, I contacted a local artist/professor and told him I wanted to take oil painting lessons (old habits die hard- I still thought I had dabbled enough to skip over the basics). After one lesson we quickly shifted to charcoal drawing lessons hehe!

Study of porcelain cup and baseball

Drawing lessons have been both frustrating and freeing. They have quickly pointed out larger behaviors and tendencies that I had ignored or suppressed. For example, in those first few lessons I was extremely slow in making marks on the page, terrified of doing the "wrong" thing with the "right" tools and guidelines.

My art teacher patiently urged me to "get it down" and let me know that the beauty of drawing and painting is that it can be reworked. That I should try to get the structure right, but I also need to move. Many lessons later, here are some of the other valuable lessons I've learned and taken with me throughout my other daily routines:

Drawing turned life lesson #1: Take thoughtful action.
 
Drawing turned life lesson #2: Don't jump to conclusions.

Drawing turned life lesson #3: See what is really there.

Drawing turned life lesson #4: Be patient.

Drawing turned life lesson #5: Objects in the foreground are clear and sharp, objects in the background are a little more hazy.

Drawing turned life lesson #6: Practice makes perfect....let's say..."progress."

Drawing turned life lesson #7: Have fun.

In addition to drawing, we have now begun some plein air oil painting, and I've been playing around with some completely abstract departures which I'll write about shortly. I have not regretted taking the chance on lessons, and have found myself invigorated, challenged and forward-thinking.

plein air painting lesson

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Realization And Acceptance

A month ago, as my sister and I wandered along one of many graffiti, boutique and café-filled side-streets in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we happened upon a work by stencil artist B.D. White:


I emailed him to ask whether "all the beautiful things I wish I could show you" is part of a larger poem or song, or something of his own, and am still left to wonder. However, I realized as I stood there that this simple quote sums up one of my most inherent desires-- to share the beauty of this life with my fellow beings.

There have been many moments in my journey where this desire has caused pain. I remember a high school chemistry class where I told my mom's story about being related to Davy Crockett, and a classmate laughed and said "That's real? We all just thought that was one of Heather's stories!" My frustration in these moments has stemmed from a feeling of shame-- that telling stories, giving gifts, sharing photographs, etc. is somehow a nuisance or frivolity, stemming from narcissism or a desperate need for acceptance.

I had time last weekend while driving through the New Mexico desert...


...to think through this phenomenon and it's causes and effects, and have come to this conclusion: there is so much to love about the design of the universe, so much perfection in everything from the construction of a feather to the sound of dripping water, so much eccentric uniqueness in every spirit- how could I not want to share as much as possible about the things I experience with those around me who are living the same moments in time (and beyond), and drink up as many of their experiences as possible in return? There is so much we can all learn from one another, our elements and surroundings! I hope to instill the same curiosity, appreciation and love in my own daughters.

Ultimately in our digital world however I'm realizing that one of the key issues is timing. We are living in an era of passive sharing-- a phone call is rude, a text is borderline. In calling or texting we are now demanding immediate attention and response. Emailing is a little more acceptable, as we are sending a message that we know will be read as time allows, unless we are in a work setting. The most polite form of communication now seems to be the pre-arranged, in-person visit (difficult for world-travelling single mother marketing directors like me with little time and far-flung friends), the old-fashioned letter, which is personalized and private, but consumable at the leisure of the recipient without an immediate plea for response, or, (tragically?) this type of social media, which is passive, un-personalized, and meant for only those who choose to engage with it.

Therefore dears, I will write and visit those of you I know, politely share away here in hopes that other like-minded spirits will giddily glean something meaningful from these pages in free moments, and follow others with similar desires. Thank you for visiting!

 
Footnote wonder of the moment, the hummingbird moth (this pic from Santa Fe- it's beating wings felt like a soft breath on my hand):