Winter Solstice Sketch

This weekend I went down to the beach for a couple of hours. The mid-week storm promised some impressive results in the ice-dune crop for this year and I was not disappointed. There is a lofty and varied rampart of ice running down the beach and just at the base of the path down the bluff, is perhaps the most interesting dune. It is actually an ice arch that spans about twenty feet and is at least four feet above the waterline. The roof of the arch is lined with little icicle teeth. I'm curious to see how this formation will change as the winter progresses as the lake is still at least a couple of freezing weeks away from total lock-down. While down there, the conditions were good enough to do some work, so I did a little sketch. It was a spontaneous response to the material limitations of a snow covered beach. With the ice dunes up, all of the sculptures on the beach are safe for the duration of the winter, but if we don't get any additional snow between now and the weekend, I'd like to expand this work a bit.

Thanks for stopping by Josh (unfortunately time constraints kept me from playing with ice this time), Anonymous and Janice K. (a while back). Happy solstice and now the days get longer, so enjoy.

Dinner for Dante

It happens on rare occasions, at that liminal moment when the lake or the bay transitions from liquid to solid, as the bay did this weekend, while the wind gods are breathless and the water's surface becomes a mirror. Before it has a chance to become a permanent fixture, the wind comes up and the water tries to regain the upper hand and the surface shatters into a thousand, thousand dinner plates of ice. And as if to push the evidence out of sight, the wind plows the dishes into each other up against the nearest shore. They fold and slide and stack up with each wave, accompanied by this magical sound of chimes rubbed with velvet.

You can't help but marvel at the confluence of conditions necessary to pull this magic off.

November Paintings

In November I was working on a couple of pieces from the Pattern Recognition Project. Some earlier works appear a few posts back. These pieces are based on images from the beach. Sticks, stones, water and now fish parts. This piece looks much better in real life from a color standpoint. I am fascinated by the forms that these fish-things take. The dried out carcasses with their angular surfaces and sharp edges countered by the soft aerodynamic forms of the recently dead, the bones and bony forms and the organic amorphousness of flesh. Fish are to me what bones were to Georgia O'Keeffe I think. I never get tired of painting them. While trying to finish the painting, I was at a bit of a loss as to how to pull it together, when for some reason I got Marc Chagall's I and the Village in my head. In particular the circular shape by the goat's head and the green man and it seemed to be right. The bottom piece I was playing again with water surfaces on a smaller scale, but from a closer point of view.

Sketches in the Wind

The last couple of weeks have brought a lot of wind and high surf. We've had a couple two-day blows that stack the waves up in pretty impressive fashion. Surprisingly it hasn't resulted in any big lumber deposits on the beach. Sometimes these blows wash enough wood ashore that you could refloat the Spanish Armada, but these storms have been unusually sterile. So not only have I been denied any new materials to work with, but they keep washing my sketches away. I would lodge a complaint with the proper authorities for these breaches of etiquette, but there aren't any proper authorities, so I work on in silence...but it is a prickly silence. Isn't "prickly" a great word? I applaud its inventer.

October Apologizes

So, after a miserably wet and cold start, October appears to have been in an apologetic mood this weekend. It presented us with a couple of those truly magical days that are referred to around these parts as Indian Summer. I am ignorant of the origin of the terminology, but I love the concept. These are the days that the leaves seem to glow from within. The birds are collectively taking one giant breath before they launch themselves on their migratory voyages. And everything has the quiet that accompanies the act of getting down to the business of preparing for winter. In good years you get two or three of these weekends between the end of September and Thanksgiving and every time you get them they are cause for celebration...so I went down to the beach and celebrated with sticks and Staghorn Sumac leaves.

A New Painting

I just finished a new painting the other day. It is part of the group of "Pattern Recognition" pieces that I have been playing with. This particular piece revisits the colored stone works, but now on a bigger scale. I will not get the fourth piece done in time for the Mercyhurst College show, but I'm OK with the first three pieces. In real life the tactile quality of this piece is an improvement on the earlier works and I think matches what I wanted in the earlier paintings. I also think the colors turned out quite nicely. I'm working on a smaller piece that I'll finish this weekend or sooner, which will be the last of the 10 or so pieces in the show. Then we'll see what happens from there. I still haven't had any luck finding an exhibition space for this new body of work, but I'll keep plugging away. Hopefully the weekend will be dry enough to get some beachwork done as well.

I Went for a Walk

Fall forms and colors.... October tries to make up for playing the miscreant. Thanks October.

Fall forms and colors...