Ephemeral tombstones

So I am down at the beach this weekend. There is a little break where the wind dies down and the temperatures are such that it doesn't physically hurt to be outside. On these days I could get lost in time just being. I started doing some work on the new stone piece, but the light was so bad that I didn't photograph the progress. It is coming along nicely though. The storage wall of stone is buried about a foot or two in the ice so I am stripping the stone down from the top. By the time I get to the lower courses of stone, I am prying it out of the ice and the end result is a substantial hole where the stone used to be.
When you get into the routine, things just seem to exist outside of time. There is no wind. There are no gulls. There are no waves. Everything seems to be locked in the ice and snow including sound. I remember the first time I noticed the absence of sound, it was like a revelation. All of the sudden you hear something and it is silence. The rest of the year there is constant sound of surf and birds and wind, the susurration of leaves and waves and sand.
After working with the stone for a couple of hours I thought I would see what the snow had to say. A drift had blown up against the wall during the week. It was about 2 feet deep and densely packed enough that one could stand on it and not sink in the snow more than an inch or two.
Found a flat stone and began to cut into the drift and found that it would hold together fairly well, so I figured a way to hack out a squarish chunk and lift it out without it falling apart. The blocks were about 2 feet in their longest dimension. The first one was a bit bigger because I took it from the biggest part of the drift. It was then carried over to the top of one of the ice dunes where it looked a bit like a tombstone.

It looked cool enough to warrant me staying down there a little longer to cut a few more blocks out of the drift and see what would happen. By the time I got four good blocks out it started to look like a Hyperborean snowhenge. Unfortunately I was running out of good snow. So I left it at four blocks.

Then the ghost of David Smith swept down the dunes with visions of Cubi sculptures...I don't think he's dead actually, so it wouldn't be his ghost. Perhaps it was his nagual/way. Stacking one of the blocks made for a different feel for the grouping. But it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I didn't push things any further as I thought the blocks were a bit delicate. So the experiment ended there.

I'll be curious to see if they survive for long. They would be tempting to smash if one were of the vandalish nature. It has been bitter cold since Saturday, so I don't think weather will do much, but it is supposed to warm up on Thursday, so I'll try to get down to see what has become of them.

This last week a friend of mine died of pancreatic cancer. He was 80, but deserved to live to a hundred. He was as vital at 80 as most people are in their prime. He had a great mind and the beautiful thing about it was that it was open. In this day and age, its a pretty rare thing. I will miss him and this little "monument" is for him. I hope you like it, Antonio.

Getting done with winter

Although the local groundhog suggests only six more weeks of winter and a recent warming spell brought some needed relief. This week winter wanted to remind us that it is not through with just yet. We are on the cusp of setting a new record for snowfall in a year and I suppose if you're going to have a lot of snow you might as well go for the record. I believe the record was set circa 11,378 BC with about 6,023 feet of snow that year. We're about three inches short of that right now, but should top it by Sunday.

Living in Erie has its moments, and some of those moments you just get tired of. I suppose that is true of anywhere that one might live, but after living here for so long sometimes it takes on the characteristics of theater of the absurd. How else do you explain ice fishing? Hey! Let's take a really mind numbing activity and do it out in the cold. When I see those guys out there on the bay with the wind scouring the ice, in their little yurts trying to coax fish out of their lethargy I gotta say I'm baffled. And when some of these guys get stranded on a breakaway ice flow, which happens annually here in the Great Lakes, I must confess that I hope none of them have reproduced.

(In a totally unrelated thought, I just want to say I hope things are going well for you in NYC Mr. Fournier. thanks for stopping by.)

Winter does have its inspiring moments, don't get me wrong and I'd rather freeze my ass off than sweat it off. Moved by the muse of the season, here are four recent paintings from the 100 Views series...

This painting is from the peninsula. On a walk along the beach just short of the light house, I rounded a corner and the light and the sky towering over this empty shallow stretch of ground just reminded me of a Dutch landscape so here is my little homage to Ruisdael.

This also came from the peninsula. On a walk along the bay side I spooked a hawk out of the brush. Apparantly I had interrupted a meal. When I went over to take a look there was this explosion of blood and feathers on the white of the snow. A cardinal had the misfortune of being red.

I don't remember where this was, but I remember really liking the feel of the icecicles just massed on top of each other and draping down the surface . In Erie this could be anywhere.

This last one is from one of the stands of birches on the peninsula. Birches in winter. They are magic. Every time I walk this trail I feel like Robert Frost is looking over my shoulder. Time to go.

Things to see at the beach

Nothing much is going on at the Beachworks. Things are buried pretty deep in the snow still. Maybe this weekend things will let up. Until then I thought I'd post a painting that came out of the project. This is a big 40" x 50" of colored stones overlayed by water and snow and ice. It was painted last winter and I kind of like end result. Until next time.....