the cassandra pages

Nature and Nurture

 

My cousin, on the left, holding the black rabbit, had a birthday recently and I sent her this photograph of the two of us. It’s a slide my father must have taken in the 1950s. We’re standing in front of my aunt and uncle’s house, on their dairy farm in Smyrna, New York. I loved animals, but because of my mother’s asthma I couldn’t have furry pets, so I liked visiting the farm animals. I remember various pet dogs and cats, the chicken house out back, occasional pigs, and the huge herd of Holsteins, but not these rabbits — the fluffy white one one I’m holding looks slightly demented. But my attention was caught by two other things in this photograph as well.

One is the pair of pants I’m wearing, with their design of palettes and brushes and paint. Did I choose them or did my mother or someone else in the family give them to me? Did someone find the fabric and sew them? I was born into a family of makers; my father and grandfather were excellent woodworkers, all the women knew how to sew, knit, crochet, embroider, cook, grow a garden, and some — my mother and aunt — painted pictures. On my father’s side, everyone was musical, and my school had an active music and drama program. I had an easel and art supplies from the time I was very young, and always liked to draw and paint — but would I have discovered this if I hadn’t been encouraged? Would I have asked for a musical instrument on my own, without those external factors? And would I have persisted, without watching the adults around me, observing their enjoyment and satisfaction, and how they dealt with errors, mistakes, or making a dress or a chair that was harder than anything they’d tried before? What if I hadn’t had good teachers? What if all the music and arts programs at school had been cut, as is the case now in so many places?

The other thing I notice in the picture is my calm, direct look into the camera, and a sense of the person behind her gaze. It’s uncanny, how much of myself I see in that little girl, already.

Why, I wonder, do some children seek to emulate certain adults in their families or close circles, while others are rebellious, wanting to do just the opposite? What about a sensitive creative child, like my husband, born into a family that was not artistic at all, didn’t know how to encourage it, and had a much narrower bandwidth about what constitutes a valuable use of one’s time? Nobody was dressing him in clothes with prints of cameras and film, though I can imagine those existing in the funky design world of the 1950 and 60s. He and I grew up in such different environments, and yet ended up in similar places, partly because of discovering our natural talents and desires, partly because of encouragement from older people — outside the family in his case, inside the family in mine — and partly because of innate determination, persistence, and a basic tendency toward non-conformity.

Somehow we get launched on our particular paths, through some combination of nature and nurture, but then we encounter obstacles that can hinder progress. These can range from lack of education, money, or opportunity, or running into a destructive teacher, to basic character traits like lack of the necessary drive, stubbornness about fixing problems, or inability to take criticism.

In my case, my biggest problem has always been impatience. In music, I never wanted to play scales and exercises, and my teachers didn’t insist. I didn’t learn music theory. When you have a basic natural facility, and good skills like sight-reading, and you aren’t in a highly competitive environment, you can coast along for a long time. The same is true in studying, in art, in writing, and even in relationships. I’ve become a much more patient person over the years, willing to step back and analyze a problem and figure out how to fix it — which may require a lot of work — but that kind of patience wasn’t natural to me. We’re born with certain character traits. I doubt that anyone could have trained me to be a patient child; I would have rebelled. As an adult, I’ve had to make up for those omissions later on, but sometimes my impatience still gets the better of me.

I’m working on a new oil painting now, and it’s reached the stage where the decisions are on the fine-tuning level. Lots of stepping back and looking, not too much brush-on-the-canvas. In the days leading up to yesterday, the process has gone well, and I’ve been pleased to be able to keep the brushwork loose, the forms somewhat abstract, the colors within a range I had decided upon earlier. It’s close to being finished.

But yesterday, as I looked at the painting and felt like I should work on it, I just didn’t really feel like it was going to go well. Sometimes, starting to work breaks through that kind of psychological barrier, whatever it is, and I find myself able to focus. I knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t one of those days, but nevertheless, I put on my apron, took up my brushes, and began. Sure enough, it went badly, but I kept going. I started watching myself, kind of standing outside and observing myself over my shoulder, as I made mistakes and poor decisions. It was almost amusing. Once in a while this happens when I’m sewing, knitting, or even practicing the piano. I’m just not concentrated, I know I should take more time, but I plunge ahead carelessly, impatiently, without measuring when I need to, without correcting the perspective, without mixing the colors carefully enough — there are a million ways things can go wrong and errors can be compounded. Inevitably, I make a mess that requires going back and correcting, taking out seams, ripping out rows of knitting, or having to rub out hours of brushwork with turpentine. It’s such a waste of time — and I know better!

Having basic facility come easily is actually a problem; getting to the next level requires a lot of patience and work. Fortunately my parents were able to recognize this tendency and help me through my frustrations as I learned difficult skills. My father was extremely impatient in nature, but also a perfectionist when it came to skills; he would practice a sports skill for years, fuss over a piece of woodworking until it was perfect, or spend weeks fixing an antique clock. My mother was very patient in nature, but never spent the time to figure out why a piece of knitting or sewing didn’t fit properly, or why a recipe had failed. She liked the process, but perfection didn’t matter to her. People did. She’d patiently hold wires for my father as he tried to repair something, or sit beside the piano night after night to help keep me at my practice.

The girl in the photograph above doesn’t look impatient; she looks calm, but I remember the conflict between my desire to do things well, and my impatience with how long it took. This isn’t a question of talent; it’s a question of mental and emotional self-recognition, learning to focus and analyze, and cultivating self-discipline. As an adult, there have been many stages in my life where I reached plateaus, and had to figure out what I wanted to do, what the problems and obstacles were, and how to go beyond them. I don’t think that process ever ends, if we’re honest with ourselves, and if we want to keep growing.

It was enlightening to me to watch that innate impatience take over yesterday. There’s no parent or teacher anymore who’s going to correct me; it’s entirely up to me to listen to my mood, realize what’s likely to happen, and master myself. Realize I’m too tired or distracted, take a step back and breathe, or put down the brushes and go for a walk. Then come back and, without touching a brush or a keyboard, figure out what’s causing the difficulty, and make a plan for dealing with it.

The girl with the paint-and-palette pants didn’t know where she was headed; she just knew she had some raw materials and some things she especially liked to do. I’ve been lucky to have had people throughout my life who encouraged me, and the strength of character to move beyond the ones who didn’t. Later, when most of our mentors and guides have left us, we have to find out how to continue on our own. It helps me to have internalized what these people lived: that the process is always more important than the end result, that pushing forward into new terrain is more satisfying than repeating yourself, and that patience with yourself and others is a virtue worth cultivating.

Paul Revere and Me

---

On the 18th of April in ‘75

Hardly a man is now alive

Who remembers that famous day and year

of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.

These words from Longfellow’s poem came back to me this morning, as I read the speech that Heather Cox Richardson gave last night at Old North Church in Boston, commemorating the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s ride and the start of the American Revolution. I didn’t have them quite right - the poem actually begins, “Listen my children and you shall hear/ of the midnight ride of Paul Revere” followed by the first three lines I remembered. That’s OK. What interested me most were the memories that flooded back as I thought about the poem.

My grandmother, Elizabeth, and her two sisters, Inez and Minerva, were all schoolteachers. They were all lovers of American history and proud of their early American heritage. I have Adamses on both sides of my family, maybe distant relatives of founding fathers John and Samuel Adams, or maybe not, but we do know that some of our ancestors were Revolutionary War soldiers.

My great aunt Inez never married, and taught American history in a high school in Endicott, New York, all her life. She loved words, music, and art, and could recite many poems and speeches by heart. Whenever she visited, I would sit with her in her favorite chair and she’d read to me, and tell me stories about the poems or prose and their writers. Sometimes we looked at art books, and often she’d set up her easel in her bedroom and work on a painting during an extended holiday stay with my grandparents and us; I was learning to play the piano and she’d often ask me to play for her as she read or painted.

When I was 9, Aunt Inez gave me a book of poems that she had written out, in her firm Palmer Method handwriting, or clipped from magazines. It was perhaps a peculiar gift for a nine-year-old, but she had seen me pretty clearly from the beginning. She’d be pleased to know that I’ve carried that book around with me ever since.

 

This morning I opened the book to see if Paul Revere’s ride was in it. It wasn’t, but there were others by Longfellow, Tennyson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Emily Dickinson. I had followed her instructions and added to them: in the back, written or typed out by me, were adolescent favorites: Frost, Matthew Arnold, Shakespeare, e.e. cummings.

Today I stopped on the page where Whitman’s poem, “O Captain, My Captain!” was affixed, with ancient glue stains that looked like blood, and my great-aunt’s note at the bottom:

 

“The ship is the union, the prize is victory”, she wrote, meaning that the prize was the preservation of the Union, at a very high cost.

My great-aunt also gave me a series of books about American history for young readers, adding to them each birthday and at Christmas. One was a biography of Paul Revere, and I remember being fascinated by the descriptions of his trade as a silversmith. There was a story in it about how he suffered a very bad burn on his hand when he was an apprentice: I seem to recall binding up my own hand in rags, wearing a makeshift three-cornered hat and pretending to be him… Of course the main focus of that book was Revere’s role in the uprising against the King, unfair taxation, and colonial rule, that eventually became the American Revolution.

So I grew up, steeped in this history, as a little patriot, and not many years later became a vocal dissenter when Nixon tried to subvert American democracy. Similarly, I became a critic of Christianity when it deviates from the central original teaching of the Gospels: “love your neighbor as you would love yourself” and the State, as it has always done, co-opts and twists Christianity to suit its own purposes and power.

I am glad that my great-aunt isn’t alive to see what’s happening today, but, like me, she would speak out.

Earlier, I wrote here that I always hope for some clarity during Holy Week. One insight that’s strongly coalesced is this: it is primarily the responsibility of straight white citizens like me to carry the current resistance forward. So many members of minority and marginalized groups are terrified right now — and why shouldn’t they be? Should my friends who are people of color, obvious ethnicity, or of non-binary gender be expected to risk everything by signing a petition or a letter, or being identified at a demonstration? Do Black women have to continue to be the staunchest supporters and workers for the Democratic Party, when people of color are being axed from one federal and military position after another? Can we expect Hispanic people or Muslims to speak out when ICE agents are breaking their car windows with hammers in order to arrest the wrong man? The answer is no. Those of us with more security and less risk have to take up this cross and carry it, for all those who cannot.

You may think, well, that’s easy for you to say, you’re in Canada. It’s true, I am a dual citizen and I live here now. I have many ties that make me want to be able to travel between the two countries freely again. But it’s more than that: I care. A lot. The current trashing of democratic and human values is horrifying, even if the racism, misogyny, hatred and cruelty they represent have been predictable and brewing for decades. The whole world is affected: a world that has seen American excesses, wrong decisions, and hypocrisy, but has also admired the brightest and best aspects of the country, and expected the US to continue to lead and to be their partner. When I think of my family’s history as American pioneers, through centuries that include my father’s survival at Normandy and service during WWII, I am filled with shame at the present travesties, and feel a great sense of responsibility. I’m also, for better or worse, an optimist. It’s an American trait.

I’m proud to live in Canada, which will have a much greater role now in championing democracy and freedom — values we must protect at all costs. But, encouraged by the pushback I’m starting to see, I don’t think it’s too late to fight, not just to preserve 250 years of American democracy, but hopefully for reform that results in a better and fairer system for all the people. Each one of us who can needs to do our part, and that will be enough.

Subscribed

 

 

Wanting to Fly, but Sitting Still

---

 

Our weather is changing toward spring, at least, and that means windy days. The other morning when I got up, I noticed a gull playing with the wind off the top edge of the building next to ours, two floors below my window. There must have been a strong updraft, because the bird was able to stay nearly motionless until it decided to soar, which it repeatedly did, balancing in the draft, then soaring in a circle, coming back over the roof to catch the updraft again and play with it.

From our tall perch in this high-rise, we see a lot of bird activity — migrating hawks and geese, herons with their outstretched legs moving from an inner city pond to the river, peregrine falcons hunting the pigeons that sweep in flocks around the tall buildings, and many many gulls. It’s their flight, their speed, and their freedom that fascinate me the most.

How I would like to do that, I thought, watching the gull that morning. And I immediately thought of the African-American spiritual, “I’ll Fly Away” -

I’ll fly away, oh glory,

I’ll fly away.

When I die, hallelujah by and by,

I’ll fly away.

and of Psalm 55: “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest.”

These associations told me I wasn’t thinking just of the pleasure of flight under one’s own power, but of that other meaning of the word flight: Fleeing. Escape.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this thought. However, there’s nowhere to go, since the entire world is being convulsed right now. I’m so fortunate to be in Canada to begin with, even with all the threats and tariffs. I still have the freedom to speak my mind, to move around without fear of being searched or stopped, or worry that this is happening to others, to live in a country where education and research aren’t under threat, where truth has meaning, and democracy is honored.

 

Christ before Pilate, Duccio di Buoninsegna

Holy Week began yesterday, with the observance of Palm (or Passion) Sunday. Many times, over this week, we will hear and reflect upon the events at the end of the human life of Jesus of Nazareth: a story of injustice, unfair accusation by the Roman authorities and a local populace clamoring, moblike, for a scapegoat; suffering and humiliation; abandonment by his closest friends; and finally an extremely cruel death.

It’s always been impossible for me to separate these events of 2,000 years ago from the modern world, but never more so than this year. I don’t need to name all the examples: you know them as well as I do. But I can tell you that, in spite of that longing for flight that I felt a few days ago, I’m aware that what I really have to do is simply sit with all of it. I will try to welcome the opportunities that this week presents for deep reflection and personal accountability. I’ve never felt I had to believe with absolute certainty all the theology surrounding Easter — resurrection, atonement and the rest — in order to let this story enter me and affect me. Easter, for me, is less about a promise of life after death, but about transformation in the here and now.

To me, that’s what this annual time is really for: to help us ask the question of who we should be right now, today, and in the days going forward. As we listen to the different characters in the passion play, are we a bystander who watches for a while and then goes back to our own life, unchanged? Are we a disciple who denies our relationship and runs away? Are we part of the rabble calling for blood? Can we imagine ourselves as a soldier, a judge, a high priest? The man carrying Jesus’ cross? One of the two thieves crucified at the same time? Are we one of the women who stayed at a distance, and then brought spices and ointments to anoint the body? Are we the empathetic man who offered the tomb? This week, more than ever, we may ask, what is our role in this story as it plays out today?

During Lent, I didn’t give anything up. I continued to eat sweets and chocolate, drink the occasional glass of wine, eat meat — it seemed like things were hard enough without beating myself up with disciplines like these. But I did take on an inner challenge: I tried not to hate. Whenever I felt those thoughts arising, I tried to notice them, take a deep breath, and stop short of hatred. It was, frankly, one of the harder mental exercises I’ve ever done. I couldn’t even say to myself, as Jesus supposedly did, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The people in question do know what they’re doing. They know it very well, and they don’t care. They have even said that “empathy is a weakness.” However, most of us know better. Hatred doesn’t do me any good; in fact it’s like swallowing a bitter pill that leaves a terrible taste, affecting me far more than its object. I haven’t achieved empathy for the perpetrators of so much destruction and cruelty, but I am managing to turn away from feelings of hatred and anger, and instead focus on love of those who are suffering, and on my own desire to serve. This is, I think, healthier for me, and more productive in general, and it keeps me from feeling like I want to fly away.

Whether you are observing Holy Week, or Passover, or just the arrival of spring, please use a little time this week to sit with the uncomfortable feelings as well as the joyful ones, and let empathy and service be part of what you search for.

One Brushstroke at a Time

 

Saturday street market in Buenavista, CDMX. Oil on linen canvas, 18” x 18”.

I don’t know what you’ve been doing to keep your wits about you, while madness rampages over the globe, but I’ve been painting.

Working on this painting of a Mexico city neighborhood for a few hours every day, over the past two weeks, has not only been absorbing and challenging, but has also plunged me back into the joy of oil painting. I love watercolor, but it comes with frustration and tension. Oil painting, for me, is a sensuous pleasure even when it’s hard. Unlike watercolor, it’s forgiving — you can always wipe things out, repaint, or make corrections, as I did many times in this painting. Here’s the process it went through.

 

This was the original drawing done on location, from a balcony on the top level of the Biblioteca Vasconceles in Mexico City’s Buenavista neighborhood. A garden runs along the side of the library building, which is on higher ground overlooking the city to the east. I took a number of photographs in the same direction as this drawing but taking in more of the city beyond. Those formed the basis for the painting, while the drawing was a touchstone for what attracted me in the first place. It came down to the unusual vista of the trees, especially the contrast between that tall cedar and the deciduous trees on either side; the white tents of the street market peeking through them; and the city buildings beyond, mostly white and grey and shades of pink, with that strong diagonal street running kitty-corner across the scene.

 

Here’s the initial monochrome drawing in thin oil paint on the canvas, indicating the basic values and structure.

 

Working on top of that monochrome drawing, the first color strokes set the basic chromatic palette for the whole picture. I’m using a very limited set of pigments: Ultramarine Blue, Brilliant Green, Viridian, Yellow Ochre, Naples Yellow, Hansa Yellow, Quinacridone Red, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, and Titanium White. The support is heavyweight raw linen that I stretched myself and double-primed with gesso — a lot of work, but you end up with a wonderfully receptive surface.

 

My goal was to capture the sun-washed, slightly hazy atmosphere of Mexico City’s urban landscape on that day, maintaining a palette of greyed greens and pinks, with touches of yellow and aqua. Almost all of the greens contain some ultramarine blue. All the shadows are based on a combination of ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. The sky is ultramarine blue and titanium white, greyed with a slight bit of quinacridone red. Using limited pigments in this way, and mixing colors very carefully rather than using them directly from the tubes, helps maintain color harmony throughout the picture.

 

In the stage above, the cityscape is filled in, the foreground is more defined, and I’m starting to work on the trees.

 

With the trees in this state, the painting felt close to finished. However, I decided to simplify and focus the foreground, taking out the bushes at lower left and lower right, defining the scrubby grasses and rocks and adding some to the left side. I also emphasized the diagonal which runs perpendicular to the receding street in the center of the scene.

 

This was much better. Eventually I deleted the right-hand bush, added a reverse-curve walkway in the shadowed right-hand area, and improved the dappled shade. (It was interesting to note, just now as I write this post, that the foreground diagonal and reverse curve are in my original sketch on the canvas, but had gotten obliterated as I worked.) I’ll leave it in the state below for a few weeks and then decide if I want to change anything else.

 

A few details:

 

 

Making something from scratch — whether it’s a chocolate cake, a poem or a plant you grow from seed — stands in opposition to those whose modus operandi is destruction and chaos, and heals our wounded spirits. This is where we have to start: with ourselves. The efforts to create, and to appreciate created things, bolster our recognition that destruction and its desired effect— paralysis — don’t have to prevail. Even in the worst situations, no one can take away our ability to look for the beauty and complexity of our world, and make something from it, even if it’s just words or a melody or the idea of a drawing that we hold in our head during a time of suffering or fear. I hope a lot of you are participating in demonstrations today. And I hope tonight, or tomorrow, you’ll write some words or play some music, read a good book, walk in a park or natural area or garden, or make a good meal. Let me know how it’s going with you. Sending love.

Mexico City Sketchbook - Part III

On the street and inside spaces

 

 

In this final post of sketchbook pages, I’ll share some of the drawings that didn’t fit into the previous two posts, and then share a few thoughts about where I am at the moment with all that’s going on.

 

In a Coyoacan market.

 

Almond croissant at a favorite cafe.

 

Interior of the second apartment where we stayed.

 

Another cafe breakfast.

 

Tall grasses in the garden of the Vasconceles library in Buenavista.

 

Dappled light and fallen bougainvillea blossoms.

___

Two weeks after returning home, I’m still working on this sketchbook, but thinking about doing some oil paintings of views from Mexican rooftops and balconies. This week I cleaned my studio and freed up my easel to make that possible, so we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, in addition to daily life tasks and keeping in touch with family and friends (I spend more time on this than many people, I think), I’m reading, practicing my flute every day, and also the piano — this is sanity-preservation. I’ve also decided to make a serious effort to learn more Spanish. Language practice is one of the best ways I’ve found to keep my mind sharp, exercise my memory, and feel like I’m accomplishing something every day, even if it’s in very small increments. Duolingo isn’t perhaps the best way to learn a language, but after 1458 unbroken days of lessons, I’ve certainly made progress in Modern Greek, a difficult language to study, even though I still feel like a beginner. A month ago I switched to Spanish. It’s much easier, and knowing French and some Latin definitely helps. We’re hoping to resume the yearly trips we used to take to Mexico City, and I really want to have a better grasp of the language.

Does this mean I’m neglecting the news? Not at all. But these daily routines are helping me find a balance that works for me, and understand what helps and what doesn’t, both on a personal level and on a societal one. I’ll write more about that soon.

How are YOU doing? I’m always glad to hear from you, and I think reaching out and talking together is one of the most important things we can do for each other right now.

Reflections on an Anniversary

 

On March 20, 2003, deeply distressed about the outbreak of the Iraq War and intrigued about the new medium of blogging, I began my blog, The Cassandra Pages. Those two polarities — an abhorrence of humanity’s tendency toward destruction, and an attraction to all types of creativity — have motivated what I’ve posted here, as they’ve also motivated my life.

It seems like a good time to ask readers, some of whom have been coming here since the beginning and some of whom are quite new, what you find most valuable about this blog, what keeps you coming back, and what you’d like to see more of. The Cassandra Pages has changed over time, especially after I retired from fulltime professional work and was able to focus more on my own art, but it’s always been a personal space where I’ve tried to make sense of the world through a lens of creativity, as well as sensitivity to nature, place, spirit, and the work of both contemporary writers and artists, and those of the past.

In 2003, I had recently turned 50. I hadn’t gone through the deaths of all of our parents and their generation. We hadn’t moved to Canada. I hadn’t yet written a book, though I was working on it. I hadn’t had the experience of singing in a cathedral choir, or of riding a bicycle for most of my transportation in an urban environment. I hadn’t met all the people who’ve become dear friends of mine either in Montreal or online, all over the world. I was doing very little artwork, and hadn’t even thought about starting the publishing company that would become Phoenicia Publishing. We’d never travelled to Mexico City, or Greece, Rome, or Portugal. I hadn’t had two decades of dental problems, and didn’t yet understand, on a personal level, the complexities and challenges of aging…one could go on and on.

Over those years, I’m not sure it would be right to say I’ve “changed” as much as that I’ve become more and more myself. Some of that experience is valuable, and it’s both a pleasure and serious responsibility for me when younger people ask my specific advice, which is the only time I venture to give it. And even then, I think we, as elders, do best to talk from our own experience rather than saying “you should…” As my old New England friend Jerry Burt used to say, “be careful with your ‘shoulds’” — which also applies when talking to yourself.

Here, in March of 2025, we find ourselves in a particularly dangerous, draining, and anxiety-filled time, and it’s hard to know what to say and what not to say. From my perspective as a dual citizen who spent the first 50+ years of life in the U.S., there’s a lot I see that many Canadians may not, and it’s clear to me that many Americans have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a Canadian right now. Protecting democracy in both countries has become a top priority for many of us, and obviously I intend to do whatever I can toward that goal.

How this blog fits into that current reality is a question I’m mulling. One thing I know for certain is that many readers have told me they come here for quiet, solace, beauty: some moments of sane respite from the craziness of the world. Even if I write about politics, I don’t want anyone to come here and leave feeling worse — I want you to feel better, more hopeful, and with some renewed energy for living your own life.

For me, balance comes from the spiritual wisdom of Contemplation and Action as two sides of the same coin. “Contemplation” is a broad term that comprises many forms, from sitting meditation to knitting to walking in nature, but it is not quietism or turning away from our own problems or those that surround us. “Action” also takes many forms, suited to each individual, but always stems from the recognition that we do not exist alone, but in an interconnected web of relationship and responsibility for one another. Achieving balance —whether in one’s own personal life or in the more public ways we interact with the world — is not easy, and especially not in times like these. To the extent that I can help others, I want to try.

Thank you so much for visiting these pages over the years, whether as a longtime or relatively new reader. I’d be very happy to hear your comments, suggestions, or requests.

 

Mexico City, February 2025

A Mexico City Sketchbook - Part II

The Quiet Lives of Objects

 

 

Sculpture by Gabriel Orozco at the Museo Jumex, Mexico City.

Because I was dissatisfied with the first page of my sketchbook (oh, that first blank page! No wonder it stares at us!) I was reluctant to do another landscape right away. On our first full day in the city, we went to the Museo Jumex, a relatively new contemporary art museum in Polanco. We had visited it seven years ago, not long after it had opened, and loved both the building itself and the three floors of related shows. This time, after a good lunch in the small ground-floor restaurant, we spent most of the afternoon looking at a retrospective exhibition of Gabriel Orozco (no relation to the muralist, though his father worked with David Siqueiros). His work is inventive, often humorous, wide-ranging in both subject and media, and original.

 

One of Orozco’s carved river rocks in the foreground, with distressed soccer balls beyond the glass wall.

In one gallery, hundreds of distressed and altered soccer balls filled a corner and were scattered along a corridor, while inside the glass walls where they rested, a giant skeleton of an invented whale-like animal hung from the ceiling, while carved river rocks — echoing the soccer balls nearby — provided grounding.

Orozco’s creations make the viewer question the notion of time and creation — what creature’s skeleton is this, hanging here like a dinosaur in a museum? Who made it? How did these pieces of rounded stone that look so familiar become carved with natural forms? What are they doing here?

 

River rock carved by Gabriel Orozco. Watercolor, 5 1/4 x 8”.

I was very taken with these altered rocks, and that evening, I did a painting of one of them. It was the first detailed, dry brush watercolor I’ve done in a long while, and it led me to make several others over the course of the two weeks. I also did one pencil drawing, of a bottle brush tree flower.

 

These pictures feel appropriate, not just because flowers and fruit are common subjects for me, or because I’m drawn to natural forms. Orozco’s soccer balls and rocks felt like still lives. They made me think about a more expansive definition of “still life”, especially in Mexico where color and form are omnipresent.

But they are also quiet. “Still.” Now, these drawings and paintings punctuate my sketchbook, providing moments of reflection for the viewer between busier scenes.

 

The hyper-realism is a way to remember that goes beyond photography…

 

…and the study that’s necessary to do one of these paintings means that I’ll never look at an citrus peel or a bougainvillea flower the same way again.

 

Or a cut pineapple, for that matter.

 

Looking back, remembering myself making these small paintings, I realize that they were important meditations for me at the time. Our days were busy, and full of intense sensory impressions. Sitting down to make one of these paintings was a way of centering myself and concentrating with focus and intention. And, for me, they were a witness to beauty that, belying their subjects’ fragility, stood as a bulwark against the daily onslaught of news from the north.

A Mexico City Sketchbook - Part I

 

Street scene with bougainvillea, Bahía de Todos Los Santos, Mexico City. Direct watercolor, 5 1/4” x 8”.

TECHNICAL DECISIONS AND SOLVING PROBLEMS

Our trip to Mexico City was planned for 15 days, essentially, with the first and last taken up with travel. I’d hoped to do about one sketch a day - so 12 or 13 - but managed to complete 18 pages. I’m hoping to be able to do some more from photographic references or objects over the weeks to come, while my eyes still retain the light and color memory of being there.

It’s actually hard to keep a daily sketchbook with the way we travel. We were on the go so much when out of our lodging that I never brought my watercolors with me, since I knew I wouldn’t have the time it takes to do a color sketch. Although I prefer direct watercolor sketches (like the one at the top of this post) to anything else, I decided to take a couple of fountain pens and the sketchbook with me in my purse when we went out, and to do watercolor work — either direct watercolor paintings or watercolor added to ink drawings — when we were back in the apartment.

In both of the places where we stayed, I ended up setting up a little space to work, and paying attention to the sketchbook for some time each morning and evening. The second apartment, in Coyoacan, actually had a drafting table and excellent light fixture, so I was very happy about that!

 

Working on the kitchen counter in our first apartment.

I hadn’t expected to do detailed watercolors of objects, but it just kind of happened because of working at home. I gathered some blooms and pods when walking around, and also used fruits that we had purchased to eat. This became a thread that weaves throughout the sketchbook, as well as a meditation for me as I worked on them. I’ll devote a post to those pieces later on.

 

The very first sketch, done in ink on location in the Chapultepec woods, displeased me when I added the color:

 

Chapultepec woods.

I tend to prefer landscape scenes drawn in ink or pencil alone, or done in watercolor only, because they look to me more like art and less like illustrations. It depends what you’re trying to do. Nevertheless, as it turned out, I did use ink-plus-watercolor, or ink-plus-light washes, for quite a few of the pages. I made sure to take photos of the ink drawings alone before adding color, to keep a record of both.

 

In this pair of before-and-after drawings, the washes in olive green and light blue-grey, below, are really helpful in bringing out the depth and definition of the scene depicted.

 

Saturday street market and neighborhood seen from the Vasconceles library, Buenavista.

A problem arose halfway through our trip - my favorite fountain pen ran out of ink. I had brought more ink (in a repurposed eye drop bottle). The pen uses a cartridge that I refill with a dental syringe with a thick tip, but I hadn’t wanted to fly with that, thinking it might be flagged. First I went to an art supply store, but the best they could do were some pipettes. When I tried using them to refill the cartridge, the holes were too big and the ink flowed way too fast — I narrowly avoided making a huge mess. A few days later I went to a pharmacy and asked (with the help of Google Translate) for a syringe the size I needed. It was no problem to purchase, so I was able to get my pen back in order.

 

An ink drawing in the cactus garden of the Viveros arboretum in Coyoacan, using my fude-nib pen.

In the meantime, though, I had been using my Sailor fude-nib pen, which creates a variable line depending on the angle and pressure. It was filled with the same olive green-grey ink (Noodler’s “El Lawrence”) as my preferred fountain pen, and I decided to use it rather than my back-up fountain pen, a Moonman filled with blue ink, because at that point the sketchbook had a coherence, I felt, because of the same color ink being used throughout.

 

View southwest from a Coyoacan rooftop

However, one of my favorite drawings (above) was done during that interim period with that blue ink pen, which has a very fine nib. I had gone up on the rooftop one morning to hang up some laundry to dry, and was struck by the landscape I saw. The fude-nib pen was simply too thick to do justice to the drawing I imagined, so I used the blue ink pen with its fine nib. Its problem, in addition to the ink color, is that it tends to leak during flights. I didn’t realize the seal had leaked until I was nearly done with this sketch, and suddenly a large blob fell on the trees in the upper left! Nothing to do but accept it as part of the accidental nature of life and art! This sketch, which didn’t take too long to create, showed me that I’ve progressed in my ability to simplify and draw complex urban perspectives.

As you can maybe infer from what’s written and illustrated here, I’ve been trying to figure out what I want a travel sketchbook to be, and how to give it coherence as a document or record of a place or a period in time. I didn’t impose a single vision on this one, but tried various techniques and styles (and you’ll see more subsequently). I was happy that my work feels solid enough now that I can experiment and think in this way, rather than just being gratified to get something down on paper and not ruin too many pages. I wanted to allow spontaneity to show me things too. If I’d been rigid and refused to use my blue pen that day, for instance, that sketch wouldn’t have happened, and I’d be sorry. A sketchbook, after all, isn’t meant to be a book of finished, perfected drawings, but faster impressions of distinct moments in time that contain, one hopes, traces of the artist’s hand as well as their choices of what to stop and draw, and their feelings as they do so.

 

 

 

Anticipation

 

 

 

Mexico City interior, sketched in 2018.

On Monday evening, we’re hoping to board an Air Canada jet and fly to Mexico City. Watching the snow fall all day, and listening to the strong winds howling outside my window, I’m glad our flight isn’t scheduled for tonight, because I’m not sure it would take off. There’s more snow coming over the weekend. Fingers crossed.

 

Same room, different angle. On the couch is a sweater-in-progress that I was knitting — and now wear all the time. I packed that same little ink bottle and sea sponge today.

For six or seven years, we went to Mexico City for a couple of weeks nearly every winter. Our last trip was in 2018. We had planned to go there in early March 2020: ill-fated timing. Here’s the beginning of a blog entry back then:

Monday, March 8, 2020

We were supposed to be waking up this morning in the warmth and color of Mexico City, but instead, I'm looking out the window at wan sunshine on melting ice, and the grey snow that lines the streets of Montreal. Like many other people, we reluctantly cancelled our travel plans at the last minute -- in fact, half an hour before we were going to call the taxi to the airport -- and have been trying to re-set our heads as well as our clocks, and adjust to an unpredictable and uncharted short-term future.

In the next paragraphs I write about what we’ll be doing “for the next weeks.” My choices of words brought home the optimism many of us felt — that the period of caution would be over in a matter of weeks or a few months. I wonder what we all would have done if we’d been told the pandemic would last for years, disrupt all of our lives, and cause the deaths of so many millions of people. Good thing we didn’t know. And I wonder what I’ll feel, looking back at this post five years from now, written at the beginning of another unpredictable and scary period of time.

 

A watercolor of a red bottle-brush tree flower, Mexico City, 2017.

Tonight, after a day where the view from my window resembled Siberia, I’m trying to concentrate on sunshine and the colors of painted stucco, bougainvillea, and jacaranda trees. I spent time this afternoon getting my art supplies in order, cleaning my small watercolor palette box, making a swatch strip to make sure those were the colors I wanted to take, cleaning and refilling fountain pens, choosing a small group of mechanical pencils and travel brushes, and packing it as efficiently as possible.

I’m anxious to see how my sketching has improved since I was last in Mexico City. There’s so much detail and complexity in every view — this used to be a big problem for me but I hope I’ve gotten better. The biggest obstacle I anticipate is not having enough hours for it, since we always go with the intention to take plenty of time for photography and drawing, but end up doing far more moving around each day than we planned. For the first part of the trip, we’ll be staying in Mexico City itself, and then we’ll move to the quieter southern area of Coyoacan.

I look forward to sending you some pictures of beauty from our North American neighbor in the south. I also hope that it will be a restorative and strengthening period of time, and that I return with renewed hope in humanity and more ideas for what I can do to help.

 

Colonia Roma, looking west.

A New York City Diary: Days 4-6

 

 

At The Museum of Modern Art with one of my favorite paintings in their collection, “Ladybug” by Joan Mitchell. (And no, I didn’t intentionally dress to match it!)

1/11/2025 Saturday

Finally caught up on sleep. I woke with a headache again, maybe sinus, but it lifted after a long hot shower and some breakfast in the room. Our plan was to meet B. at MoMA in the afternoon. We made sandwiches in the room for an early lunch and then walked up Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Outside Macy's, fervent Korean evangelists with bullhorns and banners proclaimed “Jesus is Lord”. Onward to Times Square, where we stopped to take photographs. It's hard to know whether to photograph the incredible digital advertising displays, which seem to have multiplied every time we're here, or the people taking selfies with Times Square behind them. And in this center of capitalism stands a large cube, covered with a glowing neon flag, and a sign saying “US Armed Forces Recruiting Center”.

 

 

We turned right on 46^th and noticed the facade of an Episcopal Church tucked between the office buildings - St Mary the Virgin. Do you want to go in, J asked and I said yes, even if it's just to warm up. A large interior, very beautiful and old, and a noontime Mass just finishing. Clouds of incense, Rite 1 from the old prayer book, four robed priests at the high altar, perhaps a dozen communicants seated beyond the altar rail, and someone playing what sounded like a very good organ.

 

Anglo-Catholic, I decided, but not conservative in mission. The current prayer book lay on a prie-dieu in one of the chapels, and the literature at the back of the church indicated welcome to all, an open door policy and a lot of social ministry for immigrants. Several homeless people slept in the pews with their belongings piled nearby. The list of upcoming organ recitals included David Hurd, whose name I recognized - we’ve sung some of his music at the cathedral – and he was listed as the organist and music director there. Wikipedia later confirmed that it's Anglo-Catholic, and considered one of the best neo-Gothic structures of the late 19^th century. Its nickname is "Smoky Mary's" because of the copious amounts of incense they use.

 

Paul Cézanne. Still Life with Apples. 1895–98. Oil on canvas.

At MoMA, we visited an exhibition of paintings from the Lillie Bliss collection, where crowds stood predictably taking selfies in front of “Starry Night,” while a gorgeous, glowing Cezanne still life next to it had no viewers at all except me. Bliss had valued that still life so much that, unusually, she stipulated that once given to the museum, it could never be sold. (note: What I especially liked about this painting was that, instead of the primary colors that often dominate Cezanne’s still lives, this one uses a lot of beige and greyed blues in the beautiful background curtain and the tablecloth, which set off the brilliant fruit even more. The effect is both peaceful and harmonious — and can’t have been simple to achieve.) I also appreciated the chance to study Picasso's early portrait of a woman in white.

 

My sketch of Picasso’s “Woman in White.”

We sat for a while near the new installation of a floor-to-ceiling tapestry, ceramic and rope hangings, floor rocks and sound recording by Otobong Nkanga, and then went to the cafe to have a coffee and wait for B., who arrived soon after a morning of struggling with cancelled trains on his way up to Harlem and back down to the Village to leave off his instruments.

 

Otobong Nkanga, Cadence. “An all-encompassing environment of tapestry, sculpture, sound, and text that explores the turbulent rhythms of nature and society.”

We wandered through the fourth floor galleries, which present works from the 1950s through the 1970s. Unlike us, B. knew many of the performance artists whose videos were displayed so we had a personal guide. When the museum closed at 5:30 we had made it to the Thomas Schutte exhibition on 6^th floor and were sorry not to have time for more than a fast walkthrough.

Back down to LaGuardia Place, pizza takeout dinner from the Italian restaurant downstairs. B. turns down the lights and the three of us hold hands in silence before we eat. At 75 he still has ten irons in the fire and is busy all the time, as well as composing and recording folk tales with other world musicians. Having the pandemic come so soon after J.'s death must have made everything so much harder, especially with their children far away on the west coast, but he’s done amazingly well. The apartment is a little like a shrine, but it's comforting too, with B.'s huge library and desk and all the figurines and carvings and instruments from Africa, Latin America, the Pacific in the heart of it. That's what happens when you never move.

1/12/2025. Sunday

A late brunch with B. at the Noortwyck on Bleeker Street, then back to his place to talk some more and wait with him until his friend C. came to practice some songs for a concert of B.’s songs, planned in the spring. The two of them had tickets to a concert of Middle Eastern music in a club that had sounded too crowded to us. But C. hadn't arrived before we left at 4:00; the trains from the Upper East Side were still all screwed up.

1/13/2025. Monday
Weather chilly but a lot warmer than home, and today was above 40 F.

 

Ambroglio Lorenzetti, The Annunciation, 1344, tempera on panel.

letter to a friend: “Today we saw the Siena exhibition at the Met, with T. who had come down to go to it with us. They've assembled treasures from all over the world, including the eight panels of Duccio's back predella of the Maesta. The panels are in various states of restoration, depending on the wealth and inclinations of the lending institutions, but Duccio's narrative power is clear in all of them. And the colors! I was especially struck by the panel where Jesus calls Peter and Andrew who are in a boat with a net full of fish by its side, in the water – ‘I will teach you to be fishers of men’ and ‘The Raising of Lazarus,’ which I've loved for years but never seen in person (it's in Houston). There were also some astonishing ivory carvings. (How were they made? Where and how did they procure such large pieces of ivory?) and many works by the Lorenzetti brothers and Simone Martini. The installation is extremely thoughtful and well-done down to the last detail — black walls, black columns mimicking a cathedral, and widely-spaced objects lit like jewels — and of course they are jewel-like, with all the gilding. A triumph of curation, to assemble these works, and I feel so fortunate to have seen them.”

 

Duccio. The two right-most panels of the back predella of the Maesta, about 1308-11.

In retrospect, I keep thinking about those eight panels by Duccio, separated for centuries, and together now, briefly, for this exhibition here and in London. Paintings aren’t living beings, but I can’t help but think of them that way, as if they are siblings reunited for this brief time, with some awareness of that fact. You stand before them and sense Duccio’s hand and his mind as well, making so many decisions that broke with the iconographic past. He told the story in such a human way, with a cohesive vision from panel to panel, carried out not only through color and composition, but with emotional content. When the panels are separated, most of this original intent cannot be seen or felt. As I look at the reproductions in the catalog, beautifully printed in Italy, even there you cannot see or feel half of what it is like to stand in front of the real works themselves. So perhaps that was what moved me so much: this brief moment of coherence when Duccio’s idea, and his brilliant execution of it, could again be appreciated by those of us who were privileged to be there in person.

 

A sketch of “The Raising of Lazarus”, done from my photograph after coming back, in order to study Duccio’s composition.

We also saw an exhibition of works by Jesse Krimes, who was incarcerated for six years and conceived several very large installations during that time, using materials that were issued to him or available at low cost in the prison commissary. It’s hard to describe these powerful works; you can see more about them in the video linked above. One installation was a whole wall of tiny pebbles, wrapped with different colors of string, and suspended from sewing needles stuck in cloth-covered panels. There are 10,000 pebbles in the artwork, collected by inmates and sent to Krimes at his request for “the ideal pebble from your prison yard.” I was stunned when I realized what I was looking at, and what this piece says about the vastness and anonymity of incarceration in the U.S.

 

Detail of installation by Jesse Krimes

—to be continued