7.29.22
when I was a kid there was a corner store with a screen door that had been painted with an ad for orange juice. It was magical to me how you could see through the paint, but also see it as an image floating in space. It lead me to try painting on screen, and to copy a crochet moth with tinted acrylic medium on this 1/2″ hardware cloth.
7.2.22
Hmm. This is all I’ve done this month. in the realm of 2D art.
I have been doing a lot of physical work in the yard, uncovering an old flagstone path, rebuilding the grape arbor, cutting back the wild growth everywhere. I have been hiking about 3 miles every day or so, downtown and back, up to College or Telegraph Avenue, in search of pizza or gelato, and miscellaneous free items on the street. I found a circa 2013 gaming PC with Windows 10 that I named Curby–found it on the curb, had to buy a 19-pin monitor cable, transferring all my old photos and some music via thumb drives. Really fun to have a random project appear, just after I rearranged my office to take advantage of the summer sun.
6.14.22
I started an instagram page quite a while ago, following on my massive output of last summer. I have been remiss, neglected to share them here, until now. Oh deer. Never feer. They are not that square. Oh well, we shall see.
May 26, 2022
What is real? What is fake? I did not get a Birthday Cake.
How amazing that we can hear pictures–other people’s words- thoughts- language. I credit this discovery to the stunning book Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, which I have read twice.
I write and write- there is a picture here. Seems right to write, to catalog difficulties, to see a pattern of options, of solutions. The failures, the don’t-do-that-agains. Looking for space that is my own.
Chose one survival strategy. Embrace what is raw and vulnerable. Find an ally. Or maybe–Walk away from pain. Come back later, or not. Be sensitive. It’s not a crime.
How do I set boundaries? I “just go” as a defense mechanism. Don’t judge me, I’m Irish. I get overwhelmed. I am drowning. The solution is to swim sideways, out of the current.
What is the “secondary gain” of self-silencing? Bold Creative Non-action. Actually, it seems to be a Primary Gain. What am I hiding from? Anger? Judgement? Mis-characterization? Staying Silent may protect me from facing my own shadows. I seem to have made an Art of it. Don’t reach out. Don’t explain anything. It gets you nowhere. That picture is already stone.
piedras blancas, anza borrego, march 9, 2006, 11:16 AM photo credit Laurie A. Miller
5.4.22
Art wandered the neighborhood today and brought me some flowers that fell into his vicinity.
Don’t know if I posted these critters or not. Sometimes I find things I have photographed twice, but I don’t want to go back and edit pages, so inconvenient and random for my fan(s) out there.
What the heck. Orange trees, undated, painted 20 years apart in the same sketchbook.
A year since I tripped and broke my ankle . . . The jarring peachy yellow was so inappropriate for this redwood circle/compost heap environment. I had thought for months about how to fake a log-cabin effect, then found I had a can of Oxford Brown Acry-Shield exterior paint that was a perfect semi-gloss aged-wood color. I tried several greens that showed up too blue against the warm brown, until I hit upon a tube of Winsor Newton permanent sap green acrylic. I just used a couple of artists brushes, a 1-inch flat, and a #10 round for getting into the corners. I left the side facing the tracks in the original puke-y pink/yellow so as not to alert the neighbors, or be crashed into by the UPS van. I have since painted over the white poetry patches. Still debating what to paint the upper trim boards- green or brown . . . ?
Bonus points to Art for the ramp, help with the foundation, and relocating the extension ladders.
I found this OLD chair on the sidewalk, had to have it. It is the same era and style as the Eastlake hardware in the 1900 house I live in. I had to pull out about 200 tacks, stuffing, ragged fabric, 6 iron springs in a metal frame, to get down to the wood. There was a badly repaired crack which I couldn’t extract the nails from, so I glued and clamped it, and hope it holds. Thanks, Art, for cutting the thin plywood for the seat, snapped into place, and just the right amount of flex. This fake Holstein fabric probably cost as much as an actual cow skin, and the fringe . . . Crazy fun project. I am really satisfied and happy at how it turned out.
I have spent months dithering over the possibility of buying into a local community, a 2-floor, 2 bedroom townhouse to the northwest, where a couple of my friends live. There were yard parties to be had, and a view of Mt Tam from the little shed and an upper window. Things seemed so sketchy here in my tiny abode, and it really would have had many blessings and benefits, not the least of which was a place to put my massive work table and garden tools and westfalia and . . . suchlike. It was a goal, a hobby, to design and plan and discover and ponder, while my ankle healed. Seemed like a good idea to have a flight of stairs to climb on a regular basis. In the end, though, I felt a pressure to comply with too much, with other people’s goals and schedules and beliefs. I just couldn’t shake it loose, there were too many what ifs, and ultimately, my sense of home, privacy, autonomy, is here, right here, where I am now.
I love to copy these little designs, I love how the brush and watercolor makes little shapes and variations in tone in my sketchbook. Also fun and pointless, painting the patterns on a paper towel while sitting by the wood stove in late autumn.
October 20, 2021
Winterizing, getting water-sensitive objects out of the roofing house before the rainy season. Anything susceptible will rust, melt, mildew or be eaten by rats here in the forest. I barely got settled in this April when I fell, missed two months when I couldn’t walk, then hobbled down on crutches. Now I am packing out again. The door- there is no door- is wide open. No fear of theft.
I moved many supplies to Essex. I much prefer to paint watercolor there. I did some framing during a blissful few hot October days. Simple little repairs and tasks are so satisfying. I miss the weeks on end when I could draw every day. Not sure why that skill has not transferred. Muscle memory, perhaps. Distractions. A sense of safety in the world.
I get around on my own pretty good. After 6 months it’s an awkward state of being fragile and also able to drive alone. A real awareness of before and after now, suddenly “sort of”. The illusion of Autonomy. Another watershed, a dangerous threshold, the bum’s rush, time to make tracks. Home. Yes.
moon over truckee, september 2019
Batcactus's Blog 