Lake Champlain has been over flood level for some weeks now. There are tons and tons of interesting debris to pick through along its shores.
I’ve taken a few pieces from previous years and done light staining with watered down acrylic paint. Hate to think that I’ve been hoarding it; sometimes it seems that I have to have an overflow of a given resource, in this case the driftwood, in order to freely put pieces into play.
Currently hanging a show at the brand new CCV building in Winooski. It’s going to be a look back to some works from the 80′s and 90′s, a couple of which have not seen the light of day in a decade or more!
Please Read Me– collage, 1990, approximately 53″x54″ (click on image for better version)
Disturbing enough to know that the strange phenomenon was not limited to one location in Arkansas.
Birds Are Falling — collage on paper, 18 x 24, Click on image for better version
But this still unexplained strangeness, along with many other dire and gruesome events last week, were eclipsed by the action of one deranged individual in Tucson on Saturday.
The shooting event at an Arizona shopping mall has consumed us. Our national fixation on guns and gun control is inflamed. And, we are given a concrete focus for our free-floating sense of urgency, where to solve the mystery of the shooter’s motive and put him away for life or even kill him, will somehow magically fulfill an unspoken moral imperative.
Many jump the gun and assign political intent to the shooter’s action. Many place blame for the violence of this action on the usual suspects: the raging radio talk hosts, the barely veiled rage in a vast range of pundit hacks, the rage in the shooter’s own head, the rage in the gun itself, or its peripherals (raging magazines).
There is a lot of rage in the world today, and mental illness. It is disturbing that so many people thought this guy was a ticking time bomb, yet nothing stopped him from pulling off the horrible massacre Saturday.
For many of us, this question is the deepest philosophical issue we confront on a daily basis. My local market offers a 5 cent incentive to forgo the bag altogether.
Carrying things is nowhere accomplished so elegantly as through the Mercado in Granada, Nicaragua, where anything you can imagine that needs carrying is carried on the head. Headloading apparently requires far less energy expenditure than say carrying the same weight in front or even in a back pack.
Click on image for better clarity
This acrylic painting was inspired by memories of Granada and done in the Correctional Center with the students.
Not to be taken by surprise, I have acted as if I always knew we would see a day like this again sometime.
So I photographed a few things with a borrowed camera. I’m starting to recognize the need for a higher rez camera, if I want to be more savvy about online sales possibilities.
I almost can’t stand the idea of another research project right now, that is, the necessary investigation I will need to do before making a camera selection. COULD SOMEONE JUST TELL ME WHAT TO BUY PLEASE?
The SEABA efforts once again have South End Artists and local businesses opening doors and making merry festivities!
What: On display at LAKESIDE GALLERY AND ART STUDIO: paintings — some finished, many in the works, drawings, and cards cards cards! My new card images arrived earlier this year, and I will offer a nice discount to visitors this weekend.
Sand Beach (detail)
Where: 58 Wright Ave, Burlington Lakeside Neighborhood.
When: Friday the 10th 5-8, Saturday the 11th 10-5 and Sunday 12-4.
Light refreshments including a huge box of Oreo cookies, mulled cider, and more… !
We hope to see you this weekend ! but if you can not make it and would like to schedule a different time, please feel free to call 802-865-1208.
Under the Yum Yum Tree — acrylic on canvas, approximately 26 x 30 inches
Finished just in time to submit to the ART HOP juried show, which will be taking place in the Soda Plant on Pine Street in Burlington. Meanwhile, the Shelburne Artist Market is still happening every Saturday from 9 to 1, across the street from Shelburne’s massive farmers market. Stop by!
LaConga Radio helps! Stretching these canvases brought back from Nicaragua is a good antidote to this raw cold dreary VT April day. Ughghghgh! Take me back take me back…
well, the unappealing weather here will help me stay busy in studio at least!
I felt more alive in general, bounding out of bed, and eventually, into a rhythm of painting every morning before the heat of the day really got serious. And the camaraderie, even without a shared language in many cases, was almost a given. Camaraderie, or was I just a spectacle…? In any case, inevitably there would be a whole crowd around my easel, around and behind me, discussing what I was doing, discussing discussing. Sure wish I could have understood what they were saying!
Here I am set up across the street from our hostal, Hospedaje San Jorge, on the southern edge of the street market (mercado).
This one is unfinished, from the porch of our hostal. Can’t wait to get back to work on the paintings I brought home. Twelve of them. What am I waiting for.
I’ve posted a few more photos to my web page click here
and linked a couple of the scenes to the paintings from those places.
I don’t know how to get myself really wholeheartedly back in good old Vermont, after such an experience. Here in VT I feel very closed in, seeing so few people on a given day in comparison with the constant social settings that are very present in a city where the streets have no names, but people are right there and very present.
It might be a New England thing, that people are so very focused on their own worlds, that unless I am very aggressive about saying hello, how are you, etc, there’s just no human contact. Funny how people can go around and not even see the other people in front of them.
Maybe it’s something different altogether; I have heard from older women friends that when a woman gets to a certain age such as over 50, she becomes more or less invisible. Now that’s a cheerful thought!
