Friday, September 20, 2024

THE INDETERMINANT GARDEN & ME...



 
To suggest explanation for such along lapse posting here would begin just after we returned from Indonesia... to a garden devastated by the intervening weather. That was but a harbinger of what was to come: wet, wet, wet... wet dragging into the muck of more wet. To walk, much less work, on the garden soil. would predictably begin a mud wallow!

 
It was too easy to dance with depression. I'd been spoiled by the several recent winters when, upon coming home from tropical holidays, I could play in the garden early on. Such a head start was not to be this year... the weather only began to turn springlike a few days before the Art Studio Tour in early [first two weekends] May.

We did present ourselves well, both studio & garden, yet in that scramble to become "presentable" there were many weeds ignored...

Since getting to my studio involves walking down into & through the garden from either gate, we consider those weekends to be our own version of the garden tour, which is often suggested to us. No, we are too fragile for so many tromping feet... much as we enjoy being those in the gardens which do opt for such exposure. 
 
We did visit all of the five of the gardens on the VCA Garden Tour this year...





















Wednesday, September 18, 2024

VISITING FRIENDS & FAMILY IN COLORADO...

My Momma's 92nd birthday coincided this year with Mother's day... as it has done a number of times over the years, but for most recent years our Vashon Island Art Studio Tour schedule has prevented my being with her. This year that program has been shifted to dates in June, so we grabbed the opportunity to fly to visit her for such an auspicious occasion. 


She lives contentedly with our youngest brother Terry & his fine family in Fort Morgan, Colorado... a little more than an hour's drive northeast of Denver's airport, so we rent a car to visit her & several other old friends in the area.

My brother David lives within similar driving distance, so he & Michelle joined us. Brother Jon flew from Kansas City to more complete a rare family gathering... still quite incomplete because our sister Merrillee & her partner, Diana, own a nursery called Perennial Favorites in southern Colorado, quite a long drive away... not to mention this is the opening weekend for their spring sales. While we appreciate & understand the situation, we certainly missed them!

Jon was recording by video some of our conversations so she will be able to share vicariously when she has clearer time. We are discussing a project to make her bathroom more easily accessible. We are so appreciative of Terry & Kathy for their generosity & capability to allow her to live in her own apartment in their home. It means so much that she can enjoy a generous amount of independence & privacy inside the security of their family! What a gift! 

We had a fine day of celebration with brunch by Kathy; her favorite ice-cream cake from David; & dinner by Terry of fabulous smoked brisket. We added a vegetable & green salad. Momma was a trooper through far more commotion than is her usual. 

After we picked-up the rental vehicle on our arrival last week the first destination was Black Swan Cottage, our friends Patti & Rob's home in Four Mile Canyon above Boulder... always such a fine & funny treat. We have many memories of Patti & my history beginning three-plus decades ago when we both lived in Sedona [Arizona]. Stephen & I have visited them in France when they sojourned there one winter. Several years ago I posted about visiting when their creek flooded & we had to evacuate to safety, making a sadly memorable visit. Their home had survived a severe forest fire the year before [thus helping to create the situation which encouraged that flood, thus making the house is a survivor... it has such a strong history. They make an equally strong couple. Patti is a fantastic chef, Rob is a retired lawyer who is a pillar in the volunteer fire department & has a wonderful collection of gins, so Martinis are a first order of business upon our arrival! Much humor is a constant...











Boulder Film Film Festival with Flood...



Stephen is now in Wroclaw, Poland for the European Premiere of BIG JOY. I am settling into Soundcliff for this period until Thanksgiving while he will continue his rather constant traveling this year… attending some 15 film festivals around the globe since March's world premiere in Austin. 



We return from a week visiting his family in Edina, MN… after attending together the Port Townsend Film Festival the next weekend… both after the week in we'd planned for mid-September around the DocuWest film festival in Boulder & Golden, Colorado… thus as well the opportunity for a long awaited visit with my mother, who lives in Fort Morgan.



So… I've been traveling too!



We flew on September 10th to Colorado... not knowing this would become the "week of Noah".



We began with a great evening at my friend Cigale's... driving our rental in heavy rain from the airport into Denver to be hosted our first night by my deep friend Dwight. As always he is doing fascinating creative work, even in his new smaller studio. 



The next day's drive was wetter yet, arriving Patti & Rob's home on the creek in Four Mile Canyon above Boulder for snacks & cocktails before driving back down to Golden for the opening event of the film fest... seeing Good Ol' Freda, a documentary about the Beatles' rather quietly retiring fan club secretary... Quite fun!



Another drive back up to Black Swan Cottage in a deluge... fairly skiing over water beginning to collect in low spots. After a bowl of fab-cook Patti's home-made wild-mushroom soup, but our evening was interrupted within the hour by an order to evacuate! 



We packed-up & went across the road to their long time friend's house, higher & safe enough, but rented for the winter to folk we did not know… we expected them back at any time, not knowing that conditions prevented any after us to drive up the canyon... We did not use their beds, but instead fitfully slept on couch cushions with small throws. Next day we again settled in for some duration, but when we were out on the road surveying damage, the sherif drove by & suggested we leave ASAP since the road was compromised & expected to fail...




Our friends Patti & Rob had invited us to stay with them at their sweet home on the creek in Four Mile Canyon… Black Swan Cottage, named well before the forest burned around the house several years ago… fire-glazing the soil so as to make the area now prone to flooding.



After that evening's opening festival event in Golden [some 30 miles south of Boulder] we drove back on roads flooded in low areas… fairly skiing in some places! We arrived to be welcomed home with a fine late supper of wild, farmer's market, mushroom soup, only to be warned within the hour by the phone call to evacuate that earthy mood… the creek in their back yard was rising toward flood stage, with prediction of a much larger surge coming down from the higher drainages! 



They have, of course, made contingency plans for such event, having long ago prepared by moving all their important items of furniture, collections of memorabilia & art, plus essential paper files, into storage. They continued inside such straights to create a rich life… what with Patti's amazing kitchen, paired with Rob's wine cellar & his collection of fine gins… however… living for so long in "camping-out" mode is certainly not the preferred style for this lively couple! 



Patti had polished her collection of my bells, displaying them on the mantle so we could finally accomplish our plan to photograph & catalogue them. Rob has been gifting them to her since the beginning. He & I regularly struggle to remember which ones she already has when he wants to add a new one. In the hurried process of vacating the house she tossed their bag to me. I got only a cursory count of 41 as I gathered them up without accomplishing any proper documentary inventory.



Patti packed food from the kitchen so we would be well fed for the duration, including a pork roast she'd planned for the next dinner. 

The new renters of the house belonging to their old friends, who had given such permission to take refuge, were not home & we did not yet realize they were stuck down in Boulder by the storm for the night. We made paletts of questionable comfort out of bulbous sofa cushions & small thin throws, not wishing to disturb their beds.



Next morning we woke to the aroma of coffee… plus roasting pork. We were happily resigned to spending the day of exile in creative ways. After mugs of java we prepped ourselves for a foray out to survey the terrain. I'd already made photos of a new active creek running through a second driveway to this house built next to what was usually a dry wash… fortunately there was another, on which our cars were parked.

While we were marveling at the result of water running off barren slopes, moving rock walls built to restrain such force, a sheriff's car came driving cautiously over the rubble washed onto the road. He strongly advised we get out of the canyon because the road would probably be washed-out in the surge expected later that day. We were encouraged to pack-up & get out…



The road was indeed soon narrowed to one lane in a spot where we could only drive in the left lane… giving me views, out my rider's side window, of the creek roiling where the right lane previously had been…



We refugees were welcomed at the home of a friend of theirs, where we made a rather fine party inside adversity… our dinner: a well weathered pork roast!



At the time we'd scheduled driving to visit Momma was when the flooding made any travel ill-advised. We four had gratefully accepted hospitality at another couple's home for the next two nights, happily allowing us to be easily present for BIG JOY's screening at a venue which had been closed for two days due to high water, canceling a slice of the festivals schedule. 



However, there was an unexpected showing of Big Joy on Friday evening at the venue in Golden to fill a cancellation... back we went, fortunately on a more benign evening... so Stephen could be present. We had a rather fine dinner at a place called Sherpa... where I enjoyed eating my first yak meat! It was one of several "dates" for us, which have been quite rare this year! 



We brought along the couple with whom we'd chatted at a nearby table... adding to the sparse audience. The entire area was in a bit of shock & confusion due to the flooding… creating understandable lack of impetus for getting out to see a film!



Saturday evening was the scheduled Colorado premiere at the Dairy Center for the Arts in Boulder... a good crowd.... many friends of our hosts! I got to meet people I'd long heard about, or had correspondence with over the years as they became bell clients… Something like a Boulder "bell diaspora". 



A comfortable theater with a good system made for a technically fine screening. There was a lively Q&A, with much general appreciation. This was the evening we'd traveled for... all finally seemed good! 

Everyone had been affected somehow by the floods… I found it curiously comfortable to be a tourist inside so many tales of diversity. This was indeed an epic storm… we often found ourselves quoting James BIG JOY Broughton:

                

Adventure!  … not predicament.




Not quite knowing… from the various sources we'd been monitoring, we began driving toward Fort Morgan several days later than we'd planned. Out onto the plains, where all that water we'd witnessed was moving down, flooding into the Platte River, closing only the last of several exits to our designation… all while Momma was unaware of such events. 



We immersed & subsumed ourselves into her world's bubble. Stephen expanded that by showing her his film… which she seemed to like & to appreciate, marveling, as she often does, at the media of this age… obviously mostly incomprehensible to her. She is so sweetly here & now… seeming to me like some sort of Biblical Zen.



Stephen made this insightful duo-portrait of Momma with my youngest brother Terry.



We left from her to make a rather sunny drive to the airport. We flew home into NW wet, which accompanied us next weekend to the Port Townsend Film Festival, the opening event of which we led the parade riding in the back of a vintage pick-up. Being part of a staged event for a disparate crowd postures the various realities of romantic notions about such events. 



 
Such moments of connection inside all the current flurry of our life hold our center...

Taking that energetic to Minnesota, we flew together again to spend a week with his family.  
           
Staying in Helen's guest room displaces brother Mark, who cheerfully moves to a couch-bed for             the Friday & Saturday nights he regularly spends with his mother as her "weekend buddy". 

The Silha schedule is always full: supper at the Minnetonka; dinner at a good pub before a great             new musical, well staged in a deliciously barren industrial theatre space; one lunch with Stephen's             HS friend; another with a mutual friend of ours; family meetings, including Mark's annual review; a             hike on Merry-Wood; an excursion to the unique Russian Museum; then culminating with the             annual lecture ar the Silha Center at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Center… the main             event for our visit. 

James C. Goodale, a counsel for the New York Times, & author of the new book, Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles. delivered elegantly.








HAWAI'IAN HOLIDAY... [ENDING ELEVEN]

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...

HAWAI'IAN HOLIDAY... [ENDING ELEVEN]


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...

SUMMER STUDIO...

I've been drawn to the studio much more this summer than most. Continuing a flow of commissions beginning in winter. I'm exploring being a custom jeweler again. That is an internal web strung with a history fraught with caution & longing.

I've been mining my archives, bringing waxes abandoned decades ago. Unfinished in  the vicissitudes of tumbling life. Some have life rhythmically yammering through years. Some have been previously, periodically, progressed in similer moods hoping to move them into a more permanent [IE: cast into metal]... always to feel the deep stretch out of decades of change. Often I am daunted with a sense that I have lost finesse. Of course there are reasons why these have been postponed, Still... I have protected these fragile projects through numerous moves. Strong webs ancient & new.