Grand Canyon Migration

It has been awhile since I've posted. The hecticitiness of opening night preparation kept me busy(By the way, the show runs until May 2) and the annual trip to the Grand Canyon over Easter break has also played a role in my negligence. But I have a moment...

Every year more or less, a friend of mine and I head out for a little camping trip to the canyon. We leave on Friday morning and head west, non-stop for about 36 hours. Driving in shifts we usually arrive on the south rim by dinner time on Saturday. This year we brought my 10-year old son along to share the torture...take him on his vision quest. Snow and cold on the Kaibab that night made the hot dogs taste better, but the sleeping more challenging.

Up in the morning we hiked the 5 miles down to Cottonwood Creek, set up camp and then explored the creek bed as far down as it goes before a drop off cuts us off. Unfortunately one can't get down to the Colorado River from this creek bed. Over the years we have done every rim to river trail, several more than once. Cottonwood, although it doesn't get to the river, is a very nice place to use as a base camp for day hikes.

The second day we hiked over to Hance Creek and then down the bed till the cut-off. We covered about 15 miles that day. The weather both days was perfect for hiking. Close to 70 degrees each day. I'm not even going to bother trying to describe this landscape. It defies description on a large scale. You can maybe do justice to bits and pieces of it, but the whole is incomprehensible.

The third day we took the Tonto west towards Grapevine to the point where you can see the river from the promontory. One of the best views of the river from above. After that we took the rest of the day off. I wandered back down Cottonwood looking for subtleties that I could grasp. I'm particularly fond of the little chutes and slides that appear in various places. Little treasures. Here are two interesting little magic places that one can wrap one's head around. That night freight train winds blew up Cottonwood all night long and by daytime the comfortable warmth of the previous three days was replaced by sleet and snow for the climb out. I am happy to report that my son did make it out alive and may actually look back upon the experience some day with fondness.

I really enjoyed this little place, this little moment. Trickling water, fluid rock, an elemental tango and for the time I was the only witness...me and these really cool little silver frogs.

While down inside I couldn't resist playing with all the raw material. To build anything seemed to me to be absurd in light of the setting. How does anything man made even warrant attention in the midst of such grandeur. If nothing else, being in the canyon puts your ego where it belongs.

So rather than build, I just did some arranging. I did two little pieces while in Cottonwood, kind of playing along with the Canyon gods. A bar of piccolo in an infinite cosmic fugue that maybe a few people will hear and smile at, a little gesture just to let them know that their work is appreciated. The first piece was just a line of light colored stone following the contours of some reddish slick rock, up a little crease in the wall and trickling to an end in pebbles.
Its amazing to me how this rock flows. When you run yours hands over it it feels like flowing water. I have a fundamentalist acquaintance who believes that the Earth is only 6000 some years old and I can't imagine anyone being able to maintain that belief standing in this place. Watching how water and air have shaped this landscape, it is absurd to believe that 6000 years could create this. This place goes way beyond the provincial idea of such small time spans. It reeks of age, of time, of the infinite and its fluidity can only really be understood in that context.
I did a second larger piece that afternoon closer to camp. A spiral out of reddish cobbles on a slick rock shelf. Jesse actually managed to contribute a bit before his patience ran out and he wandered off and began to practice his quarterstaff maneuvers with a dried yucca shaft.

It took a couple of hours and it sort of took its own form as it spiraled out. The rock face had something to say about things, but I liked the way it played out. I just wish there would have been better light for a photo. But by the time I got done it was dusk.

The last picture was taken from the Tonto trail above the campsite. The spiral is almost lost in the setting, but I liked the picture because it inadvertently included the small rock shelter on the opposite cliff. It all feels very stone age to me and it certainly puts things into perspective.

So, that's what I did on my vacation.

The Gift of Ice, Equinoctial Squares and a Show Opening

On a day that ends like this it wouldn't make a difference if what preceded it was less than mundane. What an amazing sunset! Of course, another way to look at it would be that any human effort to create beautiful things under a sky like this would be humiliatingly trivial.

I'm not averse to humiliating myself and it was a perfect evening to work, so I'll take my lumps.

The night time temperatures must have dropped well below freezing the previous night and as the lake was calm, a thin layer of ice formed along the shore. As I was walking down the bluff in the early afternoon I could hear this loud hissing sound as if a gas was escaping under high pressure. When I got to the beach, I found the origin of the sound to be thousands of paper thin sheets of ice that had washed up on shore and each gentle wave pushing into them resulted in their shuffling against each other. The resulting sound was this unearthly hissing. A song of sirens plagued with lisps.

I went to the edge of the water and began to pick up pieces of this delicate ice. If I was careful I could hold pieces as big as 18 inches square and not have them break. I played around with a couple of different ideas and unfortunately for me, the possibilities were so tantalizing that I ended up panicking and failed to meet the challenge. Maybe someday I'll get a second chance.

I did, however, muster the courage to make a small square of overlapping sheets of ice.

Then I added a small square of driftwood sticks and thought, "That looks interesting enough to continue", so before the ice melted I added a third square of stones. The way that the sun was reflecting off of the ice sitting on the dark sand made for an interesting little sketch and I started to feel a little less inadequate.

But just a little...

This took place the weekend of the 15th. The following weekend was the equinox. Weekend weather was hospitable and there always seems to be extra mojo in the air on equinoxes, so I returned to the beach to see what the lake had to offer this time.

Sticks. That's what the lake had to offer. The ice dunes had almost completely melted away and left behind thousands of sticks. Like fossil bones of decayed ice leviathans, they lined the beach. So building on the little stick square ideas from the previous weeks I decided to make a larger square.

It was about four feet on a side and I figured that if it survived the week unscathed I had some ideas for some additions. If it weren't for obligations I could have stayed down there all day. But it was a pleasure while it lasted.

The light was good for shooting photos so I was happy with the day's output and I got a record of it. I also put in a couple hours on the new Stonewave project.

Hey, if you are in Erie, I've got a show opening on Friday, April 3rd at the Urarro Gallery. Sixty paintings, 15 photos of Beachworks projects and Brian Pardini will have some great wood sculptures and Kathy Merski some black and white photos...very nice. Free cheese, so come on by.

Global warming can't come soon enough.

Winter's back is broken and not a moment too soon. Sure there will be more snow and some bitter cold, but the red-winged blackbirds are back in force. They perch in the upper branches and trill out their claims to territory and that means that there is no going back.

Went down to the beachworks to spend some time. A pretty stiff wind was blowing off the lake ice, keeping things chilly. About a mile off shore you could see some pretty impressive breakers hammering at the ice sheet. By next week I'll bet the shore shakes off its lace collar. I spent about 2 hours with the new project and these are some of the photos. I apologize for the lackluster imagery, but the sun was buried under a slate grey blanket of clouds, so brown was the color of the day.

I levelled off the stack of stones on the right side of the bench and then raised the left stack by about 5 courses of stone. I'm still not entirely sure where this is going. I'm open to ideas from the stone, but at this point I'm getting too many options, so nothing is particularly convincing as of yet. I'll just play along until it becomes obvious.

These two pictures of the left stack turned out kind of nice. I didn't take into consideration the background when I was shooting the picture, but when I saw it I was struck by the beauty of the tree in the background in relation to the stones. Serendipity.

I had some additional time to work on a small piece right in front of the bench. I did a little window and took some of the sticks that have been uncovered as the ice dunes melt and played with a little diagonal pattern.

If it survives the week I have some derivations to work off of this window. The problem is remembering. I didn't have my sketchbook with me at the time so I didn't jot down the ideas, so I'm at the mercy of my sieve of a memory. The beach snow is slowly disappearing and I am looking forward to seeing what treasures lie beneath.

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.....

The Relentless January

Not much to report of late with the new project. Weather has made it difficult to work. The last break we had was early in January and I was able to do a little stacking and the form of this work started to take shape. The central portion has an embedded "bench" and is flanked by leaning stacks of stone. I lay some very nice slabs as the bench surface and got a few courses placed on top to hold it in place and then the snow started and it just hasn't stopped for days and the cold has been pretty harsh. The end result is all of the stone is buried under a foot or two of snow and the top of the project is also covered in snow. So I can't really work until some of the snow goes away and I can get at the stones and the top is cleared away a bit so that I can stack them.

In the mean time, although I haven't been able to work, the weather didn't deter somebody from vandalizing the sculpture. When I went down Sunday to see what the work conditions were like, I could see that somebody had ripped the bench stones out. I don't know what they did with them as they were probably close to 100 lbs. apiece. They may have just thrown them to the ground, but I couldn't see because of the snow cover. It was also clear that they had done further damage to the wall that is next to bench. I don't know what people get out of doing this? Whether it makes them feel special in some way, I don't know, but I had hoped that this kind of stupid behavior was through for the winter and I wouldn't have to worry about things until the spring. Go figure.