SUMMER CAMP WITH BROTHER MARK...

Stephen & I watched Fellini's 1965 film Juliet of the Spirits one recent evening & I'm saturated again remembering my history of appreciation for its seminal effects. It has remained a mental soundtrack long after I wore out the vinyl album which I played much of my college life to... becoming subliminal as I lived my own version of its archetype for these 30-plus years. I'm pleased it holds up & seemed even to capture he who was seeing it for the first time after hearing my numerous mentions of it over our years. I recommend it...

At the same time I have been editing the hundreds of photos I made last week while being a counselor at Camp Parkview. This is the camp, here on the Island, for developmentally disabled adults. Stephen & his brother Mark had been attending for some years before I came along & we three have done it together for many Augusts since.

Mark & I celebrate back-to-back birthdays during the last of July... early in the sign of Leo & we love to roar our leonine pride together. It was especially good to have him around to celebrate this year since I was mostly keeping mine quiet...

Because last year I was not sturdy enough for the rigors of camp, Stephen took his own turn this year to stay home for his own work while I went with brother Mark to this week of time special to him & some 60 other unique folk who attend... plus more than half that number of volunteers & staff.

Collectively we all are such characters it is not unlike living in a Fellini film for 5 days, if you track with my drifting mix.

Mark is gregarious... a party boy even... he loves music, especially vintage rock & roll so he loves to dress up & is ready to dance anytime, even outfitted with a life vest for canoing! He more rarely can be also a bit dreamy, as seen costumed for the drama/storytelling workshop which is led by our friend Myrna, who brings all sorts of props & masks for creating a morning of theatrical play...

While there is a scheduled evening social dance complete with a live band, we find many other times to dance. A boom box at the boat house brings music to of our boating time after dinner each evening... while some folk are out on the canoes, others are rocking out... making a lively beach party! Of course Mark loves both activities...

We play all sorts of ways, freeing our variously real interior clowns... even as we enjoy the natural beauty of dusk...

Here Mark is singing & doing the hula during a session led by our ukelele playing friend John, who was a founder of this camp several decades ago...

Another favorite session for most of the campers is when yet another Islander brings his huge collection of drums & percussion instruments, encouraging our making glorious noise!

The daily arts 'n' crafts session is another favorite time for most of the campers, with a variety of media from painting & bead stinging to tie-dying. There is always music happening while we play at projects... with occasional spontaneous dance breaks here as well.

Activities range a wide diversity... basketball to fragrant wax-dipped hands during "spa day".

There is a carnival one morning,

In addition to the dance band evening there is always a movie night with popcorn. But the most anticipated evening event is when Elvis arrives. This gentle impersonator has become a fixture... for reasons that become more & more obvious as performer & audience warm to each other. He is mobbed by his fans & does not remain on stage for long. He soon dives into the mosh pit of their joyful adulation & engages as many campers as possible, dancing & singing directly with clusters of them in physical as well as musical hugs. He is good! I'm not certain who is having the most fun... he obviously loves them as much as they do him!

Mark had a camera as well this year... I wonder what his views might show...

SILENCE BROKEN... quietly

After months without posting I return with flowers to begin making amends...

I have little more to say for my silence than that I've missed this process & I'm wanting to share again. There have been numerous beginnings & several drafts are ripe to consider, including one large collection of recent photographs illustrating some stories about my spring & summer. But since I still feel some kind of block to my writing, I must begin quietly.

I photographed this nocturnal still life last night after a late solitary dinner, especially enjoying the small bouquet of roses we were gifted from a friend's garden several days ago & knowing they will shatter before I am finished being charmed by their rich color. The lilies are from our own garden & the dining table exudes scents from more than food... I am thus blessed with beauty I must simply celebrate!

Summer has always been my favorite season. Being a gardening Leo, having reached a certain age, I hold innumerable memories of the fullness inside the deep heat which brings time to bloom so lazily luscious, even in the stingy cool of the Northwest.

Silent solitude is part of such memory & this image shares words I won't write now. I have some days to mull & ponder alone all which fills my life. Rich & rare time to find my own blooming into work & play...

There is small doubt I hold my usual chatter in more than temporary abeyance, so please savor the sweet stillness of this current mood with me... even as we also know these petals will join the potpourri of memory with a certain sadness.

ENJOY!

DRAWINGS...

As I was preparing for the recent holidays & our travel to visit Stephen's family in Minnesota, I worked on a series of drawings for gifts. Beginning during the quiet, halcyon time around Solstice, I chose scraps of rag paper from long ago watercolor days for their intimate size & their character, with torn & decked edges. These were to be more in the style of "cards," which in the past were presented as & along with other gifts.

My own family long ago decided to forgo prescriptions for holiday gifts & instead to celebrate & gift each other in our own ways & our own time. For years we gathered at my parents home during times of the year when we could more easily be together outdoors. Christmas in July or September was more usual. I'm happy that we let go of obligatory expectations toward wrapped gifts...

So these bon mots in pencil on these paper objects seemed suitable... they were portable & I worked on finishing several of them on the plane. They became quite personal as my pencil danced inside the mythology of my relationship with each recipient. Still, on Christmas morning, hardly wrapped with only simple bows of the red string for which I have a penchant, my gifts were initially met with understandable puzzlement amid the detritus of paper & ribbon from the pile under the tree.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me explain that Stephen's family does rather more practical than frivolous gifting. Stephen & I have long encouraged re-gifting to share from our own collections & they grok that. Still there can only happily be room for some particularly special gifts. The spice of occasional extravagance is the blessing of the season. Such is what I gave, so I can only celebrate two other examples in their fortuitous harmony. Stephen's sister Alice gave him his 60th birthday present early... a strikingly handsome Native American beaded box:

Helen's gift to me is an Acoma Pueblo black pot, equally & literally handsome for being almost palm-able. The finish is so polished it's clay must be photographed like metal...

Two fragile objects to pack for the trip home! Wonderfully, they fit each other... the pot nestled snugly inside the box, wrapped to fit in my carry-on bag.

Aesthetic gifts always transcend mundane material... like life, all is mud of our earth given breath of creation. Glass beads on a woven box; highly worked clay; graphite on cotton rag paper; poetry dancing as vibrations on air...

Back to the drawings...

Later I created bits of time with each person to explain how I came to their markings...

Brother Mark & I are both Leos, sharing back-to-back birthdays, which encourages us to growl & dance together like our own versions of such cats. This is my lion for him.

Nephew Johnny has been settling-in with Kristen for a respectable while, so my drawing to them was about the work [see the shovel?] of relationship & the sometimes electrical polarity of oneness & twoness... I had difficulty understanding when I first perceived the cover-plate-ness of the image. There are pearls in there too, of course. Those beads are an archetype in my work since I was their age. These drawings take on a life of their own!

Niece Sarah is sweet, with spiraling curves & corners to turn as she changes careers & travels to follow her mate, while following her larger heart as well...

Nephew David is living quite a story for his 21 years. I followed some intuitive path to this creature, with a spine becoming a mortar board for the journey he's on... surfing seahorse & daunting dragon in his brain.

Stephen's sister Alice & her husband John parented the 3 young ones above... they are indeed close to a perfect family, as proven by their strength holding David through the trauma of his accident, now 20 months ago. That moment forever changed their family, welding them together in creative ways. Kristen was in the car with him, but avoiding the brunt of the collision became a sturdy part of his tenuous bridge back to normal life. Sarah came home from her first job to learn her role & path into some profession more directly helpful than marketing.

This couple look to me like the archetype of a good marriage... the long linear aspect of their drawing begins with a rather stylized stamp of an interweaving knot I have often used to bring in the strength of two intersecting lines which split to join in a moment of tense harmony.

They have replicated that ideal, growing together from their different roots to repeatedly learn the grace required of parents to continue. They've done it more than once. Now they've mostly finished the form & are testing tendrils toward the new of a future back to two.

One last drawing, for a most important person, required more time than I found in the flurry of the season, so I brought it home to finish it, with Helen's playful admonition that she wanted it done well!

I could only agree to our mutual wish.

Taking lessons that the rag paper I'd chosen was rather too coarse for the effect I envisioned, I began again on paper with a smoother tooth.

This is a fantasy I have long been cogitating for my round book & I still intend to do another version there, but the moment of the turning of the year allowed me to take time meditating on details describing the imaginary history of a city or world, with Italo Calvino's novel Invisible Cities as inspiration. Such endeavor was so much better than beginning my year with business inventory chores! I settled into work like I've not done for some long time... with genuine pleasure. I do love to draw... & I wrote verse to make my explanation...

PLANTED IN A CRYSTAL BOWL
FLOATING SINCE SOME WISER TIME
GROWS A TREE SO ANCIENT
ITS LEAVES ARE NOW SCROLLS
FADING TO FORGETFUL INVISIBILITY

WHOSE ROOTS HAVE LONG SEEPED
DEEP BEYOND SUCH CONFINES...
TETHERING THIS CITY
CENTERING QUIET IN ITS HARBOR...
PORTAL TO A CHIAROSCURO WORLD

SOMOS UNO... WE ARE ONE...

When I mentioned my recent concentration with pencil drawings to my brother Jon, he hinted toward wanting help with the logo he's been using for his blog. It originated from a tattoo he has on his ankle & the photo is thus distorted. I've long known that I can ride the horse of energies to tackle similar projects, so a re-working of the image his tattoo artist made came rather quickly.

I have numerous layers in my historical dance as a graphic artist, from high school & college posters to my own logo, which has remained a constant all my life. My business cards were re-calligraphed for each of my points of perigrination, I drew theater bills & logos for other businesses during my Sedona years. I had an alter ego named Leo Toye... but all that is quite a different story.

BroJon tells his own about how he came to wear the notion of SOMOS UNOS here...

From his tattoo:

To my versions, first in pencil, then in other ink:

The image needed to become more clear & I love working with the rhythms of hand inked line widths to imply lively space. The idea of being one vibrates life in more than cookie cutter sameness, so I played with gesture & suggested subtle anatomy. I emphasized the circling hands with stronger connection, more like a big kiss between us all, however it also glyphs magnetism & suction. Holding the differences of circle.

My experiments with color were more of the education I need in the realm of Photoshop. He dialogued a clearer version...

Now he has colored it yet differently & to great effect, as seen on his site.

I will post other drawings soon. It feels good to be playing so deeply!