Mayday
I spent quite a lot of time the other day posting about my new wall, but for some reason did not show up. What is that about? It seems a lot of hinky electronic anomalies are making themselves known lately, I can only hope that some of them work in my favor . . .
Here is the miraculous Red Wall Ann painted for me at the shop. ‘nuf said, it makes everything so much more alive. The landscape on the light table is my painting of the Mesquite Springs Campground (Death Valley) conflated with a Phainopepla–a bird native to Southern Arizona. 
The one on the floor is a clash between the Sonora (Saguaro) and Colorado (Spanish Bayonet Yucca) Deserts.
Been so long
I have been up to my neck in screenprinting, wanting to share my travails but not even able to focus on anything but the day-to-day gruel of it. I have been keeping up on my journal, so it’s not as if I don’t want some communication–just not sure what needs to be out there ? I’ve even neglected the Possum blog. More likely, I just don’t want to bum anyone out with the REALITY of going into business by yourself when you 1. Didn’t expect it 2. didn’t really want it 3. find that the peeps who were in at the beginning have all but disappeared. I am stunned by my stick-to-it-iveness, my enormous will to go through the unceasing terror and loneliness and bad odors and uncertainty.
Not many pieces of my own art are really suitable for the medium, but here are two attempts. The squirrel needs to be redone. The mask is awesome, but hard to photograph. It also printed beaulifully on Arches text wove paper in a chocolate-brown ink. Interesting note: The zig-zaggy yellow with purple ink pillow on the couch next to Steve is a print I hand-cut and printed at CCAC in 1985.
possible silkscreen material, but very fine pencil work doesn’t translate
Steve instantly took a liking to this shirt I printed from an ink drawing of a mask I did years ago.
burning a silkscreen from my pencil drawing takes some adjustment
Photographs
While taking photographs of the shop, I did that thing I have done before, looking through the camera without a spotter, I tripped and fell on my lens. Alas, I let my warranty run out–but I never liked that camera as much as the one I put in my pocket and leaned on the fender of my truck and . . . I have been wanting that small credit-card Nikon with the sliding cover, the S100? with 16 mm and 5x zoom–that would be easier than getting a bigger purse. The AW 100 is good, too, designed to take a fall or a drop in the . . . bathtub, or worse. And the S1200pj–with a projector. I have always liked that feature. So, anyway, in homage to my first digital Nikon, coolpix 5600, here are some photographs I took from late 2005 and onward.
Stone in stone, Yosemite
winter sun at Sea Ranch
Last light, Anza Borrego
China Spring near Darwin
In my element--off-kilter-Sequoia
We are the Ones we’ve been waiting for
My neighbors stopped in to remind me.
We Are The Ones We've Been Waiting For
Now more than ever.
my shop . . .
After a long week of hard work and gardening, I am planning to go to the shop and feel the energy there. Sticky Art Lab is holding am Sunday classes with the biodiesel folks, bees, chickens, house rabbits. I don’t know what class is there today, but I intend to go sniff around. I have shied away from opening the door, it’s all so familiar, but uncertain. What t-shirts do we have? Halloween, the Ramones, miscellany. All will be revealed in time, after breakfast.
Print Shop
I have spent much of the summer working at Berkeley Screenprint Company, which I am taking over as of September 1. I am a printing junky, but this is a very different type of work than I have been doing. I am not certain yet how I am going to proceed, except to keep it much the same at first. I have so many ideas, and plenty of room to try them out. Luckily, the previous owner is still around generating work and helping with the transition. At home I printed 30 more invitations to my closing show on the Epson 1400—I accidentally printed the same thing on both sides of 8 of them. Not acceptable! There seems to be a 25% failure rate in my printing process, which doesn’t bode well for a print-shop business model. I am using beautiful Staples Mat Brochure paper for business cards. I printed another batch with the possum family singers schedule ( Baltic 2nd Thursday/Chester’s 4th Thursday) on back, using Photoshop– They look great. I spent half an hour trouble-shooting my auxiliary printer which I discovered was jammed due to a tiny rubber snake which had fallen into the platen. This is not what I meant by bringing odd animals into my work.
cedar waxwing sketch
Dead Squirrel Wrap
I found a dead squirrel, a red squirrel
hands curled, a girl
feet up and tail bedraggled–caught my breath
then, in sadness,
put on another pair of gloves-
not a plastic bag!
a gag
reflex,
revulsion
fear of touching
a dead thing
a sad picture–
A newspaper?
a paper bag, smaller,
just her size.
A tool? No-
turned her over and felt the weight to ground myself
picked her up, a sleeping face
I slipped her into the
brown paper pillowcase-
inside a small, squirrel-sized shopping bag,
plastic and angel-white–
“thank you Have a Nice Day” in red
carried her to the trash bin;
blessed her life+
sent her on her way.
Hoarding for Earthday
I had a dream of an avalanche of shoes, which became silkscreens, which became art. What is my unstoppable outflow? Apparently, so many incomplete canvases that I can’t open my closet door without a refrigerator dolly. Clearly, I need a Gallery.
Sick in bed the other day, I was fascinated to come upon a marathon showing of a program called “hoarders”. I saw these people’s oceans of stored debris as a fight to keep some small amount of control over beautifully engineered packaging, and manufacturing artifacts out of the landfill–Lest we believe there is an “away” that allows us to blindly use third-world children as our slaves to save a buck, and throw our sewage into life-giving waters, or believe there is an “other” that we can bomb off the face of the earth to claim our own purity. I recognized myself in these people, victims of a throw-away culture, and their struggle to come to grips with a world of disposable ingenuity! As someone who has studied packaging, I have always collected beautiful wrappings and logos, jars with interchangeable lids, cardboard boxes of certain reusable dimensions, magazine articles I hope to read someday when the world breaks down. Styrofoam cut to fit fragile, expensive electronics is such a feat of engineering I keep it stored in the box it arrived in, as if some day when I am done with it, I will be able to ship it back to the manufacturer. In fact, the box itself tells me so.
birdnest medicine cabinet
Show at Chester’s
Redwood and Mist/Mint in progress
These and four other paintings were on display at Chester’s Bayview Cafe, 1508 Walnut Street at Vine in North Berkeley, June through August 8, 2011.
Check for further deets at possumfamilysingers.wordpress.com
Faint Heart Never Won Fair Phainopepla
Moon by Moth Light 2011
Carolingian
This spring 2011 we studied Carolingian hand, developed around 800 AD under Charlemagne as a common writing hand. The first piece I completed was a haiku written for my friend Jane by Eric Christian (deceased). the appellation is in brush lettering. I signed it with a chop in my initials, which I designed and cut from a vinyl eraser.
This is the original scan with adjustments.
Fruity parts
Paper Mache Pear
california applecore
Cox’s Orange Pippin–one of a series of heritage applesIn 1993 I did a series of Prismacolor pencil illustrations for a rare fruit tree catalog while training in grafting and propagation at a Heritage Fruit nursery. In partial payment I received several rare apple, pear, fig, and other trees. A Warren Giant Pear I planted on the street gives 200 beautiful, grainless pears every year. The catalog was never printed. I also did a series of spinoffs–a paper mache pear, an apple core, and some studies. This one, which I sold, is from a photocopy–Calville blanc d’Hiver..
While living in Arizona circa 1972-4 I had access to specimens of Lophophora Williamsii, some of which still had viable had roots and were kept as pets.
Brush Lettering
Neuland hand w brush
I have been taking calligraphy courses at Albany Adult School since Spring of 2008. Every session we approach a different hand, and finish several unique projects. These are: a card in basic brush lettering, done with Pitts pens; a mixed-media page from a large-format hand-made journal: and a piece in Neuland hand. Thank you, Michele–for getting me started on my art blog.
from M. Theberge
flyer for my band--ink, paint, crayon, collage
Calligraphy–Uncial
Spring 2011. A few pieces in UNCIAL hand, courtesy of a week of terrible weather (for gardening) This piece is too big for my scanner–but not a bad likeness.
Abraxas inks on watercolor ground
And a time-appropriate piece–copied from circa 715 A.D.
Pilot Parallel black on Arches text-wove with acrylic washes
acrylic wash, lettered with masking fluid in a 6.0 pilot parallel pen
There’s more calligraphy if you scroll down past the landscapes . . . .
Biskup
The experience of suddenly being taken in by an image–a color I want to try to reproduce, the idea that I know I can, and want to be the one that does it–impels a work of art forward and magically brings it together on the page. What is the suspension of disbelief? What is the source from which the original image came? Some analysis takes place, it’s astounding that just finding the tube of Vat Orange, black Pentel brush pen, yellow and green Winsor/Newton inks and water on Arches paper, all come together in a gestalt that I enjoy more than the original postcard I was compelled to copy.
The whole piece took one hour concept to blow-dryer finish, looks so cool in my calligraphy journal.
Sometimes there is a fear, based on the memory of how long a project took and the steps and intricacies involved, that distracts me from beginning a piece–all the time it was all impulse and instinct that moved it forward, the delicious feeling of brushes on fine soft paper. Getting to that state is often elusive, and the thought of figuring it all out logically blows my mind!
Then there is the embarrassment of copying–without the years of whatever lead up to the style and composition–the original is a hard-edge painting on a glossy postcard. Somehow, though, it is very satisfying. Thanks, Tim!
Animalia
Wingy--our founder
Squirrelus nuttellus
burrowing owl
Oh! Possum
Cedar Waxwing--prismacolor
The Desert
-
Anza Borrego Wash
- Clark Dry Lake–Death Valley
- View toward Rt 50 from Spencer’s Hot Spring
- Goblin Knobs near Area 51
Some of my favorite places to go camping are the Anza-Borrego desert wilderness (above left)
Death Valley (above) and Saline Valley, the Eastern Sierras and Lone Pine; Southern Arizona, and Nevada (right)– almost anywhere there are Hot Springs.
Above The photo above left is Clark Dry Lake in Death Valley.
I find nothing more delightful than painting sky effects and mountains. Foliage is something I need to work at, and those paintings are still to come.
- Milkyway–acrylic on plywood panel
Faint Heart Never Won Fair Phainopepla-acrylic and collage on found canvas
Calligraphy
We Are The Ones We Have Been Waiting For
Dig a Pony
Pick a Moondog
Feel the Wind Blow
A clever way to learn the words to a song. Too bad, I still have to look at the lyrics when I sing it! But a really fun project. A very large piece–14×26 each panel. A wedding gift.
Below:
Prospero’s speech from The Tempest, Wm Shakespeare,
Shakespeare in Rustic Romans on Bristol Board, birthday gift for an Actress
Prospero–Tempest–Shakespeare
HellaWorld!
Welcome to my dreamstate, a land of bats and cactussses, other creatures, other landscapes, and a fair bit of calligraphy. I am here to post my travels in art and script, on paper and canvas. Come enjoy a quiet moment of starry twilight.
also check out my band and stuff at possumfamilysingers.wordpress.com
Batcactus's Blog 