The Gathering

So, normally over Easter I make a little pilgrimmage out west to do a little hiking and communing with the nature gods, but this year a variety of factors kept that from happening so instead I spent an inordinate amount of time on the beach communing with the aforesaid gods and quite a bit of time in the studio painting. The end result of all of the painting time is below, the central panel for a little polyptich that I hope to have done by the end of the month. It is the third piece in a series of paintings that are influenced by the actual beach sculptures. I'm OK with the way that it turned out. Now as far as the beach time went, most of it was spent gathering the scattered stone from the destruction of last years sculptures and wall. Much of the stone is just gone...buried beneath the current level of beach sand or washed back out into the lake, but I pretty much got all of the really good stone that remained on the beach and put it back into a storage wall for the time being. This took a crap-load of time and quite a few miles of walking back and forth loaded with stone. The end result is this is what I have stacked up for future use when the building season starts in a couple of weeks. Its probably about 4 feet high and 35 feet long and about 4 feet thick. The sculpture in front has lasted about a month without any serious damage from weather or barbarian hordes.

On Saturday last, conditions were such that I actually went into the water to pull out some of the stones that were lying knee deep or less. Altogether I pulled out 60 good stones which are lying in this little serpentine wall temporarily. The water is still cold enough that the ducks are wearing sweaters. I suffered through it though, for the sake of art. It was very purifying.

With this clarified soul, I did a few small sculptures in the stone of the day. One square gave birth to a second square and just like that the sun set and that was that.

In Like a Lamb-Out Like a Lamb

The end of March was a scramble to get a second painting ready for the Spring Show and this is what I ended up with. I've spent some time recently interpreting beach sculpture-related imagery into paintings. The end result I'm not entirely sure of at this point. The piece I submitted to Harrisburg was significantly more interesting, but this has a few things going for it. I like the colors and repetitive circle motif, but what I'm not sold on is the irregular stones on the right side of the painting. I'll have to give it some time to work itself out. What I like about the feel of these last two paintings is that they have a kind of Japanese garden-zen-wabi sabi-Lake Erie feel that can be somewhat meditative for me, in the same way that looking at Jackson Pollock's or Mark Rothko's can be. Or for that matter doing the beachworks. This is the effect that I wanted to get and at least in some ways it works for me. I've been painting the frames gold on black and the gold band around the frame does not connect, but is rather open at the corners. This is to lend an air that the painting is not entirely contained by the frame, but rather extends beyone the defined space, escapes as it were. Just some thoughts... A couple of sketches on the beach that I altered after drunken revelers damaged the original version by setting a fire on it. It is that time of the year when pyromanic, beer-swilling, littering morons migrate to the neighborhood beach. Storms keep washing away the wrong things.

Pre-Equinoctial Good Fortune

On the verge of Spring, but is it really Spring if Winter wasn't really Winter? Last week it was in the 60's every day and this week it is supposed to be even warmer. Trees are already budding and I can say I do not recall such an early and warm Spring in all of the years I've been on this planet. This begs the question of how we are going to pay for this...or perhaps we already have.

Today on the morning news I listened to Rick Santorum claim that one of the things that seperated him from the other buffoons running for the Republican nod was that he didn't believe in the Global Climate Change myth. He may have a hard time convincing his opponents that the whole thing is a science conspiracy, like evolution, gravity and other far-fetched schemes. Does a day go by when a big piece of idiocy doesn't drop out of that guy's mouth? Anyways, its been a nice start to Spring.

Did a lot of work collecting stone down on the beach this weekend and while at it, I did a little piece just to get a break from lugging 30 pound stones down the beach. No storms in the last two weeks have kept my current stone pile safe. By the mid April I may be able to start planning the next big work. This first piece looks better horizontally, but for some reason the blog-picture device keeps turning it on its side. I'm sure there is a way to correct that, but it is beyond my understanding at this point.

February Work

So, February continues the trend of unseasonably warm weather and little or no snow. With March a few days off it would seem that our Winter spent its fury in Europe. I spent most of the month working on one pretty good sized piece, 6 'x 2' and in watercolor mounted on birch panel. I was playing around with some textures that I have used on a smaller scale of late, but I think I'm getting a bit better at them with each piece. In this one I combined a sculptural motif that I have used on the beach and placed it over a veil of leaves, flat stones and pebbles. This arrangement was layed out with the intention of creating some interactions between value and depth of field, and tensions between tactile surfaces. In the end the piece did what I had hoped it would do. Below is the whole thing, intended to be seen vertically as it is here. The second image is a close up of the upper section.

I have never posted this piece in its entirety, but this is a 48" x 48" Altarpiece inspired in part by my trip to Ghent, Belgium and my trips around the peninsula. This was exhibited last summer at the Holland Street Gallery. I have another larger "Altarpiece" that I have yet to properly photograph. It was finished at the end of 2011. It is 48" x 96". I will post it sometime soon.

I am also beginning to work down at the beach and had a few nice small pieces that I wasn't able to photograph, but I will try to recapture them this weekend. February was a busy month.

Endtimes for the Beachwork and Some January Studies

If you were ever in doubt about the power of the lake, here is a reminder of what it is capable of. The photo below was taken in July when this year's work was getting close to done and the following three photos are what is left as of the weekend. And after the Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday blow out of the north I doubt there is any trace of the work left...period.

Take that puny human!

And now for some little paintings to make me feel like I have something to show for my efforts.

Fish-Sticks

Went down to the beach last weekend when all of the destruction was occuring and in the calm before the storm I had some time to make a few pieces. These were almost immediately obliterated, but the seed of the idea was worth recording I thought. I had hoped to expand on the stick piece, but the weather had something to say about that. While I was putting finishing touches on it for the day I saw what I thought was a thick short stick that I was going to use but when I went closer to pick it up I saw that in fact it was a frozen 20" fish. It was a beauty. Little or no decomposition or gull ravagement, but there were some stones frozen to it...camouflage of sorts. There were some very nice colors as well. Below is a photo of that fine fellow on a slab of stone. This was not a naturally ocurring phenomenon, by the way. Unfortunately, for some reason, the blog will not allow me to put horizontally formatted pictures on it today, so to get the full effect you have to turn your head sideways

The close up of the head gives you a sense of the fish's personality. I imagine him a splendid fellow and mourn his demise. In this picture I placed a piece of driftwood alongside because it had a fish-like quality and there was a small stone frozen to the stick as if it were an eye.

In this picture you can see a full body double portrait, and the remarkable resemblance. Even the lengths of the rtwo are near identical and notice as well the fin shaped protuberances on the dorsal and ventral parts of the stick...uncanny!

In this final shot I have set up a triple portrait of the remarkable similar fish-stick duo. This time with an additional element...a large slab of stone. Which looks almost identical to the other two objects except for its color, shape , surface texture and general demeanor. Nature! What a quirky thing it is. This photo is particularly more enjoyable in a horizontal format.

The Great Devouring Maw of Winter

The new year came in on a mild note, but soon turned to its usual tricks. North winds came sweeping down the lake and it didn't take long before it had eaten the beach. I went down today to see what the night-long howling havoc wreaked. And I gotta say...it was impressive. With the beach gone for the most part the surf spent the night pounding my latest retaining wall to pieces and then for sport it began to chew into the sculpture. It took down both ends of the sculpture and it is only a matter of time before it finishes the job as there is nothing between it and a hungry surf.

So the efforts of 2011 are now a thing of the past. I hesitate to predict what if anything will be left when this current storm blows itself out, but it will be at best, an impressive pile of rubble. Such is life on the littoral.

It is not just my sculpture that is getting a face lift. Our whole stretch of beach is in for some serious reconfiguring this winter as the lake levels are really high, because of all of the rain. You add the fact that the lake is not likely to freeze any time soon, so any big winter storm in the next month is likely to pack a destructive punch.

The following two pictures show what the state of things was before this storm decided to erase some of the previous destruction. These waves toss 100lb. stones around like leaves on the wind. And when it is over it's a sorry sight to see. The whole stretch of wall seen below and the ground it sat on is now a thing of the past. But there is always a light...