The real holiday of this season, for me, is Solstice... the day on which we flew from the mainland to visit friends on The Big Island. from our own Island's chill & damp overcast we landed into tropical air & clear starry night skies. A good-enough celebration of the longest night, in spite of unnatural price in dollars & carbon credits!
We are now on our way home for New Years... wishing that FEK did not have to change plans to join us. Her brother in law died just before Christmas so she went to Texas & would be too frayed to make the originally planned travel to Vashon, sigh... we had been looking forward to spending time with her at Soundcliff, but we accept the her situation.
Our time here has been quite wonderful. We are visiting & staying with our friends John & Glen, who used to live on Vashon but now have a wonderful home & garden here in Kona coffee country. They are active at the Donkey Mill, the local art center where an old friend, Kate Jacobson, is the director... so they know these friends from my Sedona era, Kate & her husband Will are well known potters... & teachers of a technique known as "Naked Raku"... It is indeed a small world!
We'd reacquainted ourselves & they'd met Stephen on our last visit over lunch at their home/studio, before she took this position. When she heard we were returning, Kate invited me to give an small, rather impromptu presentation at the Center... making the trip nicely more advantageous for me!
They were living in Olympia, Washington when I first moved from California & visited me in "The Cabinet", my first downtown Seattle studio, so we've been tagging each other for these 30+ years. No... I doubt we will be moving to Hawai'i in turn, even as it is a wonderful place for a holiday!. When she introduced me she mentioned that she was 21 when we met in 1976 & was kind to explain that I had been an inspiration all these years.
I was nicely received even though technical difficulties between my laptop & the projector disordered the images so that I had to surf & dance lively to improvise with whatever image popped onto the screen next! Happily it was an informal gathering of about twenty interested & interesting folk who asked good questions & appreciated the work... mostly bells, but a few pieces of jewelry plus some drawings & images of my inspirations. We sold a few bells afterward & made some future contacts, so I was pleased, in spite that several days work of planning had been lost! sigh...
Stephen & John have been friends for decades as well... He & Glenn included us in a fulsome round of parties with their friends, many whom we'd met on our previous Holiday trip four years ago. Several gatherings are traditional enough that we had been to earlier incarnations in the same wonderfully interesting homes. So many here are built to be open-air pavilions most of the time, with big sliding doors & folding shutters or simply open screens... I'm loving this kind of holiday weather!
Our hosts nicely entertained a fine dinner at the house the next evening, giving more time with Kate & Willi as well as two other friends: Lorraine, who who has lived a rather fabulous story over her many years, as well as Gerald, a younger Island-born artist we'd met on our last visit.
Christmas dinner was a picnic on the beach near with yet another group of friends with whom we've gathered before on the same occasion. I love the informal ways here. While it's a bit odd to see [thankfully few enough] of the usual Christmas ornaments alongside tropical blooms... poinsettias do grow wild here!
We enjoyed educating ourselves a bit about Kona's coffee production, visiting a co-operative mill one afternoon, where I photographed one worker raking the berries at an almost monk-like meditative pace to dry in the sun. There was a self guided tour showing the complicated, multi-stage process of removing several layers of husk & skin. At this point they had been soaked to look like & were called, "parchment"... which will then be polished off, revealing the bean ready to be sorted as green beans ready to roast.
I've made many photographs of the botanical effulgence & we've snorkled to add richly decorated fish & coral to our memory banks of imagery. My favorite discovery was the bloom of the Blue Jade Vine, which is a fascinating sculpture in an highly improbable color.
While it forms exuberant, long loose clusters, eventually making only a couple large pendulous seed pods hanging from the seemingly too-thin stem... it is the form of a single blossom that is quintessential to my eye. I have no firm idea yet how I might use it, except possibly to first pencil a study in my round drawing book. Perhaps it could evolve into a bell design, but I don't perceive just yet how...
the painted drapes in our room which that friend, Roz Marshall, painted...
We are now on our way home for New Years... wishing that FEK did not have to change plans to join us. Her brother in law died just before Christmas so she went to Texas & would be too frayed to make the originally planned travel to Vashon, sigh... we had been looking forward to spending time with her at Soundcliff, but we accept the her situation.
Our time here has been quite wonderful. We are visiting & staying with our friends John & Glen, who used to live on Vashon but now have a wonderful home & garden here in Kona coffee country. They are active at the Donkey Mill, the local art center where an old friend, Kate Jacobson, is the director... so they know these friends from my Sedona era, Kate & her husband Will are well known potters... & teachers of a technique known as "Naked Raku"... It is indeed a small world!
We'd reacquainted ourselves & they'd met Stephen on our last visit over lunch at their home/studio, before she took this position. When she heard we were returning, Kate invited me to give an small, rather impromptu presentation at the Center... making the trip nicely more advantageous for me!
They were living in Olympia, Washington when I first moved from California & visited me in "The Cabinet", my first downtown Seattle studio, so we've been tagging each other for these 30+ years. No... I doubt we will be moving to Hawai'i in turn, even as it is a wonderful place for a holiday!. When she introduced me she mentioned that she was 21 when we met in 1976 & was kind to explain that I had been an inspiration all these years.
I was nicely received even though technical difficulties between my laptop & the projector disordered the images so that I had to surf & dance lively to improvise with whatever image popped onto the screen next! Happily it was an informal gathering of about twenty interested & interesting folk who asked good questions & appreciated the work... mostly bells, but a few pieces of jewelry plus some drawings & images of my inspirations. We sold a few bells afterward & made some future contacts, so I was pleased, in spite that several days work of planning had been lost! sigh...
Stephen & John have been friends for decades as well... He & Glenn included us in a fulsome round of parties with their friends, many whom we'd met on our previous Holiday trip four years ago. Several gatherings are traditional enough that we had been to earlier incarnations in the same wonderfully interesting homes. So many here are built to be open-air pavilions most of the time, with big sliding doors & folding shutters or simply open screens... I'm loving this kind of holiday weather!
Our hosts nicely entertained a fine dinner at the house the next evening, giving more time with Kate & Willi as well as two other friends: Lorraine, who who has lived a rather fabulous story over her many years, as well as Gerald, a younger Island-born artist we'd met on our last visit.
Christmas dinner was a picnic on the beach near with yet another group of friends with whom we've gathered before on the same occasion. I love the informal ways here. While it's a bit odd to see [thankfully few enough] of the usual Christmas ornaments alongside tropical blooms... poinsettias do grow wild here!
We enjoyed educating ourselves a bit about Kona's coffee production, visiting a co-operative mill one afternoon, where I photographed one worker raking the berries at an almost monk-like meditative pace to dry in the sun. There was a self guided tour showing the complicated, multi-stage process of removing several layers of husk & skin. At this point they had been soaked to look like & were called, "parchment"... which will then be polished off, revealing the bean ready to be sorted as green beans ready to roast.
I've made many photographs of the botanical effulgence & we've snorkled to add richly decorated fish & coral to our memory banks of imagery. My favorite discovery was the bloom of the Blue Jade Vine, which is a fascinating sculpture in an highly improbable color.
While it forms exuberant, long loose clusters, eventually making only a couple large pendulous seed pods hanging from the seemingly too-thin stem... it is the form of a single blossom that is quintessential to my eye. I have no firm idea yet how I might use it, except possibly to first pencil a study in my round drawing book. Perhaps it could evolve into a bell design, but I don't perceive just yet how...
the painted drapes in our room which that friend, Roz Marshall, painted...
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