the cassandra pages

Spaces of our Hands and Hearts

Does the space where we work influence what we are able to do there? I think so. Space affects our mindset so dramatically that I suspect it partially determines how much work we do there, as well as its quality. Frankly, in today's world, we should be grateful to be able to do creative work at all, and to have a roof over our heads. So whatever I write here about "spaces" comes from a conscious place of privilege.*

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Ideally, the place where we do our concentrated work needs to be functional and supportive; it needs to suit who we are, and help us to feel good when we're in it. There are plenty of writers who've done their greatest work in rooms or chilly cabins piled with books and papers  -- think Seamus Heaney -- and artists, like Lucien Freud, who've worked in chaos. It's a question of knowing yourself, too.

It's hard for me to concentrate and work well when I don't have, as Virginia Woolf wrote, "a room of my own," even if that room is mine only part of the time. For most of my life, I've worked in somewhat makeshift studio spaces: repurposed or multi-purpose rooms in the same place where I was living. That's been OK when I was able to close the door and have some solitude and privacy, less so when I was working in a larger but shared space, or a space that other people walked through. For much of our time in Vermont, I did my design work and writing in a room that had, literally, six doors -- it was a former kitchen, with front and back outside entrances, a bathroom door, and doors leading to other parts of the house as well as the basement! I couldn't do artwork there at all, but, with my back to most of the doors, I was able to write.

Sometimes we don't even know what's good for us. After fifteen years, it was traumatic for me to leave our former large, dedicated studio space here in Montreal, downsize dramatically, and move into a 10' x 10' repurposed bedroom in our condominium. I thought it would be a disaster, workwise -- but I couldn't have been more wrong. The large studio had room to spread out, but it was always cluttered, and it was on one of the city's busiest north-south streets, with tons of traffic and a great deal of dust, as well as foot traffic and industrial noise from other tenants in the building. The best feature, for me, was a big wall where I could hang my work, and the ability to have separate areas for oil painting, printmaking, drawing, sewing. But writing there was difficult, as well as any kind of experimental work in general, since it was a big, open space I shared with my husband. I seldom had a sense of complete "head space", not because I was being interrupted -- simply because there was another human being in the room.

After a year and a half of working here in our apartment, I've come to love my new space (the picture at the top of this post is another view). The room is small but efficient, the north light is beautiful, and I have everything I need within reach, with most of it stored in cupboards out of sight. Instead of spreading out and working on several projects at once, I now do one thing at a time and put the materials and equipment away when I'm done -- and that's fine. The tables and storage units are adaptable -- as you can see below, I'm leaning the easel against a wall to take up less floor space, and using a drawer in the storage unit as a taboret. It works fine. 

I thought ventilation would be a problem in the winter, but I recently bought an air filtration unit which should work very well to filter the fumes of any harmful solvents, and if we have wildfire smoke again this coming summer, it should help with that too. The most important difference now is that it's a room of my own, with a door I can shut (but rarely do); all my artwork and writing and sewing take place here, as well as plenty of "thinking time." I've always believed that spaces take on a sort of energy of their own, over time, depending on how they are used, and this one now feels comfortable and personal in a way that our former, cluttered studio never did.

The pandemic years were especially hard, since we didn't use our big studio much at all and tried to do everything in our small, ground floor, former city apartment, where there was no light. We liked the apartment very much -- as a residence. During the pandemic, though, I basically lived at my desk in the living/dining room, with a lot of street noise all day, and poor J. was at a desk in the bedroom, looking out on an alley. I think that showed both of us, once and for all, what was important to us in a workspace -- privacy, light, adaptable table space, good storage, and a sense of peacefulness and quiet.

I wish I had a photograph of the back room in my parents' and grandparents' house where I used my mother's easel, which my father built for her, to do my first oil paintings, back in the 1960s -- that's the same easel I use here in Montreal now. When I moved back into the upper floor of that house, alone, after graduating from college, the pine-paneled back room became my study and studio; it's where I taught myself to paint in watercolor and do calligraphy at a professional level; it was where I listened to music, and worked hard every evening after coming home from my job; it's the room where I began to think of myself as an artist.

After working in various rooms in our Vermont house over the years, none of which were really suitable, we eventually built a garage that included a small woodworking shop for J. and a small studio for me.

My studio in the garage in Vermont, in 2006, just before we moved to Montreal.

I liked that room a great deal, and it helped me to have a space of my own during some difficult years when I was trying to figure myself out -- I was just starting to write seriously when I was about 40, and had begun painting again after deliberately taking some years off. In this room I had an electric kettle for tea, a space heater for the cold winters, a little desk with my meditation items on top of it, a rocking chair, bookshelves, and my easel. Although the windows were small, they looked out on my garden... I have lots of positive memories of being there.

Painting outside at our home in Vermont, probably shortly after I bought this portable French box easel -- which I still use at the lake today. This must have been in the 1980s or early 1990s.

All creative people need to train themselves to be able to work in less-than-ideal circumstances. I've always managed to work wherever I was, and it's been good for me to take a sketchbook and notebook (or now, tablet or laptop) wherever I go. However, it's clear to me, looking back, that the differences in my day-to-day workspaces made a big difference in my productivity as well as my contentment and sense of self, and they've also influenced the type of work I was able to do. When there's less distraction and more peace, I'm more able to simply buckle down and do the work. The main question for me has always been "can I center myself and concentrate?"

How do you feel about your own workspaces, and how are you doing, creatively, at this time of so much violence and destruction?

*More than 100 cultural sites have been destroyed in Gaza, along with the lives of scores of poets, writers, and artists. Thousands more have lost their homes or been injured, and yet we continue to hear, at times, their poignant words. Many of us, in the privileged west, have been so disheartened that it's been difficult to continue our own work. And yet we must, because the arts are essential in keeping our own spirits alive, and in giving hope that some of what we value most in human culture has a chance of continuing. When I think about "home" this always includes, for me, the place where I work. To lose it would be to lose a part of myself. Continuing to create, and to mindfully stand alongside those who struggle to do so, or have been silenced forever, is to be in solidarity. I hope to do more in the months ahead to contribute in other ways through my work and my ongoing protest. 

 

 

Returning to Oil Painting

When we were in central New York for a short time a few weeks ago, I started an oil painting. It was the first one I'd worked on since 2018 - a pretty big gap in time. The interruption of the pandemic and the fact that we took apart our studio and moved were, of course, a major factors, but except for the three oils I did back in 2018, I had actually done very few since we moved to Montreal almost twenty years ago. Instead, I concentrated on drawing and watercolor, on keeping a sketchbook, and on printmaking. I also did fair amount of bookmaking and binding, and sewing projects. The larger works I did were almost all pastels - dry media, rather than oil or acrylic easel painting. And all of that had to fit into our professional life, because we were working until about six years ago -- perhaps that's why I did those oil paintings in 2018.

When I reflect on the reasons behind these choices, I realize that the spaces in which I've worked have always influenced what media I used, along with what was going on in my life at the time -- and I'm going to write more about this in a subsequent post. 

But today, I want to talk about beginning again in what has always been the most important medium to me - oil. Why? I guess I just like it - the materials have a seductive and enticing quality that appeals to all of my senses. There is craft involved long before you pick up a brush - the preparation of your support, whether canvas, board, or wood, has to be done properly or the painting will not last. The materials are pretty expensive so you need to understand them. Then, the process of building a painting takes days, weeks, or longer, and it can be utterly absorbing as well as agonizingly frustrating during the period when you are living with it -- because that's exactly how it feels. Fortunately, oil is a forgiving medium, unlike watercolor -- it stays workable for a long time, you can scrape it away with a palette knife, dissolve layers with a solvent-soaked rag and begin again, and continually revise by painting over dried previous layers without the colors becoming muddy. You can work into wet paint for soft edges and other effects, without having to time your efforts down to the minute, as in watercolor. The colors themselves have a unique beauty, luminosity and depth. And all the while, there is a sense of being part of a lineage of painters who have wrestled with this medium over the centuries, trying to create works that are beautiful and that will last. Yes, modern conservation techniques allow us to preserve works on paper, but they are never as highly prized as oil paintings.

View up the Chenango Valley from North Norwich. Oil on prepared board, 12" x 16", February 2024.

I don't think my oils are better than other things I've done; often the liveliness of a drawing or quick watercolor pleases me more. But there is something about the process of creating an oil painting  -- maybe it's because you're with it for so much longer? -- that I find satisfying. It's always a journey, both artistically and emotionally, and there are always points where you're stuck or things aren't working, and you want to give up in frustration, but don't, and somehow find your way out of the thicket. The final painting may not be your best, but you've learned something that you can take with you into the next one. And the medium itself - the unctuousness of the paint, the spring or stiffness of the brushes, the smell, the joy of mixing exactly the right color and value, the way the paint becomes part of the surface -- all this is deeply satisfying. 

When there's been a big gap in time between when you stopped doing something, and beginning again, you can never pick up where you left off. That's because you aren't the same person anymore. A lot has happened in my life, and in the world, since 2018, as well as the fact that I have aged. All of that is carried in my body and mind whether it's formed into expressed words or not. And even though I've done a lot of artwork in other media during that time , and learned a lot from it, painting in oils is different from anything else. I'm very curious to see how these factors will affect my creative work in the long run.

Making new progress in this medium has been a goal of mine for a while, but I haven't been in the right space or frame of mind to start until recently. I'm not sure where I want to go with it, but I trust the process to show me that -- the way to find out is to paint. I don't know what a realistic goal is for the coming year, nor do I want to stop drawing or making watercolors. I don't think I can do a painting every week, but maybe I can do one every month. I do recognize an underlying sense of, if not urgency, then certainly a ticking clock -- if not now, then when? Because I too want to create a larger body of work that has a chance of lasting, being passed down to the next generations, having meaning to people because the work shows a place or a person or a feeling that resonates or captures some aspect of life that perhaps doesn't, in reality, exist forever. And I also want to challenge myself to do the best work I can and take myself, through it, into new territory. So this is a beginning, and I hope that I can keep at it and not let huge gaps in time occur again.

Starting with a winter landscape made sense, since I was completely absorbed in drawing such scenes all last winter. I feel like I've internalized some truths about them.

In this particular painting, I struggled just to get some technique back, as well as to make decisions about how much detail to include, how to handle the tangles of branches and shrubs and grasses, and the snow upon them. In the end, I simplified a lot, as you can see in the video about 2/3 of the way through. At one point I rubbed out the whole lower left section and repainted it; I also brightened the sky and added more blue, and changed the color of the hills, adding some scumbled color to indicate the trees going back. The conifers were lightened, and I added beige and pinkish violet to the bare-branched trees near them in the background.

When I reached the point shown below, I was pretty happy with the brushwork in the foreground and in the bare trees, and also with the small touches of color that I added. The deep blues gave a lot more depth and interest to the snow, while the touches of pink and lavender enlivened the dry grasses and shrubs and helped to unify the painting, since shades of both are in the background trees and sky.

I'm not sure I'm done with it, in fact probably not, but the work from here on will be fairly minor. It's a start.

 

Drawing Manon

Lately I've been working harder on trying to draw Manon from life. In spite of the fact that I've been drawing cats since the mid-1980s, I've never found it easy. There's something about their anatomy that's hard to capture; maybe there's so much fluff covering their skinny little bodies and skeletons that it's hard to see the underlying structure, and you end up with something that looks like a lumpy bag of fur. They move a lot, even when asleep. I also used to get the proportions wrong. A cat's head is actually quite small compared to their body, and I often drew it too large. Manon is a small cat, only 8 pounds. The fact that she's three-colored also complicates things when working in black-and-white.

It's been going better lately, especially when she's asleep. Above is the most recent effort, from the past weekend. Here's a detail:

And here are two other recent drawings:

Here are a couple of much older drawings, from a sketchbook in 2011, not long after she came to live with us. Doing quick gesture drawings of animals, as well as people, is a big help -- I should do more of that now.

Manon is at least 15 now, and a year ago in March we almost lost her. She bounced back, with the help of our brilliant vet, Julie*, who prescribed tiny doses of prednisone every other day. She's regained all the weight she had lost, and has had a good year. It seems like she wants to be around us all the time, even more than before, and is very affectionate while also maintaining her feline independence - as much as possible for an indoor cat. She's still pretty playful and energetic, even though she sleeps more, and she continues to be more vocal in her attempts to communicate. I never tire of watching her - to me, cats embody beauty and grace, as well as having the appeal of all their inherent quirkiness. We cherish every day with her, and I'm sure that's motivating my desire to draw and paint her while she's still with us. I must admit that photographs do a better job of showing her true personality, though -- this is a cat with a big presence! How fortunate we were to have ended up with such a companion, totally by chance.

*our vet is Dr Julie Bereza at Baker Animal Hospital in Montreal - I can't recommend this clinic enough

Announcing my new book, "Snowy Fields"

I'm happy to announce the forthcoming (mid/late Nov 2023) publication of my book of drawings and written reflections, SNOWY FIELDS, done during the past year. It's a slightly oversized 9" x 10" paperback art book, printed on coated paper. It contains the entire series of drawings, a long reflective essay that I wrote about place, identity, grief, and my artistic process, and an essay about my work by the British artist, writer, composer and educator Michael Szpakowski. The book can be pre-ordered now at a reduced price, and you can find all the details about it on the Phoenicia Publishing website.

It's always exciting when a project that began in uncertainty gradually comes together, takes shape, and is finally refined into a finished form. The moment when it is launched, to find its own way into the world, is also my chance to thank YOU, my online readers, who encouraged me and offered feedback as this series of drawings took shape. I also thank all those who corresponded with me about the artwork, and supported me through a time of change, grief, and discovery. You helped me personally, and you helped this project come into being. I'm grateful.

Summer's End, New Beginnings

We're back in Montreal after two weeks in central New York working on the lake house. It needs a new roof -- this time I went up there with J. to take a look, after we peered into the attic crawlspace and saw some water damage, which we had suspected -- so we arranged for that to happen next month. The main task was to finish sorting many of my parents' collections and other possessions. At the end of last week an antique dealer's crew and truck arrived, and we all packed and carried what had been designated to leave. At the end of that long day, I was proud of myself for not getting emotional; I was exhausted; and, as much as I had liked many of those things, I was stunned to see how good the house looked and felt in a much simpler and less crowded state.

If any of you have done this, for yourselves or for your family or friends, you will probably recognize these feelings. For us, it was the third major move/downsizing in 14 months, and we're certainly not done with the work on that house. But as we sat on the front porch that evening, we had a real sense of accomplishment, both for the sheer physical work we'd done, and because, a year ago, I couldn't imagined being able to handle the emotional demands of the task.

I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing, but I am able to remember a lot of my past in detail. Nearly every object in that house and every inch of space is weighted with specific memories of the people who once handled those things, or moved through those rooms, or used the same objects in different houses that I also remember vividly. Because I loved all of those people, and miss them now that they are gone, and because they were all collectors and storytellers who liked history, as well as being makers who restored or created many of the things in the house, there are a lot of complex layers.

Today is the first anniversary of my father's death. Although I dealt with the clothes and personal items shortly after he died, it took a full year for me to get to the point where I could say, all right, it's time for many of these things carefully collected by my parents, grandparents, great aunt and even great-grandparents to move on to new people who will also appreciate them. It finally feels ok for us to change the house and make it more our own, for the time in which we have it, and to do so without guilt. Part of getting there is the process of mourning and letting go, but I think it's also difficult and complicated to accept, and then acknowledge, the fact that we are now the elders: we have taken our parents' place.

My father had a clear conception of what he wanted the house to be when he designed and built it, with my mother's help. It's a real mid-century aesthetic, but for all these years, I don't think that could really be sensed during the several decades it took to finish the house. Later, there were so many interesting things in the house competing for visual attention that you didn't really see the space itself. When the shelves and surfaces were cleared, and some of the furniture removed, we could suddenly see and appreciate the integrity of what my parents had planned. I wondered if maybe they would have liked it too, in some sort of alternate universe. All in all, I'm grateful for the memories I have, and during these recent days I was glad to be able to talk about all them with my cousin next door, and to friends whose relationship with our family goes back three generations. 

As I wrote last winter, in a long essay that will be published this year along with my series of winter landscape drawings, the land and nature of central New York are also a consolation for me. The fields that had been covered with snow were now filled with towering rows of bright green, tasseled corn, or with freshly mown hay; the skies were't grey but bright blue with lazy summer clouds; deer grazed all over the countryside, along with turkeys and rabbits and other small mammals; hawks swept over the meadows; rising fish made circles on the water and swallows skimmed over the surface chasing insects; and a noisy flock of Canada geese arrived each evening to sleep on the lake, leaving again after the sun had chased away the wispy morning fog. The rhythm of rural life continued, both on the farms, and independently in nature, and there was comfort in that in spite of the changes in the climate.

During the past four weeks, I haven't touched my sketchbook, haven't read or written much at all, and certainly haven't written here - this may be the longest period I've gone without writing on the blog.  Today felt like a time to try to put some of this into words, and I also spent the afternoon doing an oil pastel of Chenango County hills -- the first work in color that has come out of this time.

I'd rather not see this moment as an ending, because so much of what has been remains inside of me. Let's call it a continuation that's also morphing into something new.

I Couldn't Keep from Singing

Sketching on the bulletin up in the choir loft, during the sermon last Sunday...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gone back to singing in the cathedral choir. As the warmer weather appeared, the risk/benefit ratio between continuing to be super-careful and starting to live more normally seemed to change. My husband had started encouraging me to go back to the choir, but I was unsure. One day not long ago I went for a walk, feeling a bit morose and sorry for myself, but by the time I came back home, I had made a decision to write to the music director and ask if it would be all right for me to return. He said yes, and on the next Sunday, I sang in person with the group for the first time in three years.

It’s been a long history. I started singing in a church choir when I was about six years old, and have continued (which seems incredible, even to me) nearly all of my life.

I graduated to the adult choir in that Episcopal parish once I entered junior high school. After I graduated from university and was working in my home town, I conducted that small choir for two years. In 1976, I moved to New England, and joined a very good choir at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover, New Hampshire. I stopped for a few years when J. and I got together, because his father was the Unitarian Universalist minister in Woodstock, Vermont, and we started going to hear him preach on Sundays, and then often had lunch with his parents at their home afterwards. After my father-in-law left that position, I realized how much I had missed singing, and began again with the choir in Hanover. I sang there during all the years we lived in Vermont, until we moved to Montreal in 2006, and took private voice lessons for some of that time as well. When we moved, we joined the congregation of Christ Church Anglican Cathedral in Montreal but I was unsure if I could manage the commitment or the stress of being in the cathedral choir, which was on another whole level of rigor than anything I had experienced. Thank God I had the courage to try, and to sing with Patrick Wedd — the cathedral’s music director, extraordinary organist, and soon a fast friend — for twelve years, and then with Nick Capozzoli and Rob Hamilton, Jonathan White, and then Nick after he became the Director of Music following Jonathan’s resignation in the second year of the pandemic. But with my own age and my husband's immune issues, I didn't feel comfortable going back to singing when the choir regrouped in person, and especially not when the masks came off. It was only this spring, as the pandemic waned somewhat and we began to feel more comfortable after some medical advice, when I began to think about possibly re-joining.

I had almost resigned myself to the idea that my singing career was over; after all, I was not young anymore, and I absolutely did not want to be one of those people who is talked about behind their back: “Why doesn’t she quit?” I wasn’t sure how it would feel this time around, but so far, my voice has felt good, and not too fatigued even after a full day of rehearsals and two services. However, I’ve pledged to myself that I will stop when I can no longer contribute positively — and hope it will be clear to me when that time has come.

Making music hasn’t been the problem: I’ve been playing the piano a lot since moving it to our new apartment. This winter, working on some Schubert Impromptus, new to me, was a great consolation during the darkest months of weather as I dealt with change and grief. But if you have had a history of making music with other people, that experience is pretty irreplaceable. Singing in a choir is a particular kind of musical experience, too, and in one like ours, where we churn through a huge amount of repertoire in a short time, you have to like sight-reading and be good at it, have experience in a wide range of periods and styles, and be able to absorb and learn the music very quickly so that you can perform it confidently after only a couple of times through -- if that. It’s not the same at all as a choir that practices a few pieces of music intensively for, say, a whole semester, and then gives a concert. A choir like ours cannot work on each piece with the same level of attention to detail, but if the singers and director are very good, and they have a strong affinity and sense of singing together as a group, they can actually perform very well, week in and week out. Although we don’t repeat pieces very often — it may be a matter of many years — when we come back to something that we know, then of course we can work on the details with even greater finesse. It’s a particular kind of challenge, and it’s exactly what I like most as a musician.

The camaraderie of a choir is also a particular sort of bond, and I think some of that comes from the fact that our only instruments are our bodies. There's a physicality about singing with others that creates a greater awareness of all the other group members than I ever found when I was playing in a band or orchestra. The personnel of this choir has changed a lot in the years I was away. Most of the professionals who sang with us have left and been replaced by new and younger singers (all of whom are excellent); most of the volunteer singers are also younger — many are McGill students or recent graduates — and in addition to the eight paid professionals we now have three choral scholars. These are gifted college-age singers who are given a stipend in exchange for the experience of singing in this kind of a group, and doing some solo and ensemble work on their own. But there are several people who, like me, were in the choir for years and are still there, and some new, but older volunteers I’ve been happy to meet. One of them is a man in his late 80s who I talked to for the first time last Sunday. He had sung in the cathedral choir thirty years ago, and then stopped because of some vocal problems — and now he is back. After we had told each other brief versions of our choir histories, he smiled at me and said, “Yes, it just gets into your blood.”

Like him, I don’t know how long I will be singing, but I know how much I missed it, and that it means a great deal to me to be able to do it again. Of all the things I've done, singing is one that keeps me firmly attentive to the present moment, and is perhaps one of the best ways of finding the joy that being fully in that moment can provide. And it still seems miraculous to me that, with only our bodies, we can take a collective breath in silence, and, the next moment, bring forth the extraordinary music that only a choir of human voices can create.

For a quiet moment that illustrates this, listen to the introit (opening choral work) by going to 6:20 in the video below, of last Sunday's Evensong for the Feast of the Ascension. It's "My Peace I Leave with You" by the 20th century American composer Amy Beach. (All the works except one that we sang that afternoon were by female composers.)

 

 

 

Cassandra at Twenty

Today this blog celebrates its twentieth anniversary. I almost forgot, because I was focused on it being the first day of spring: an event we're eagerly anticipating up here but about which there's been precious little evidence, other than the maple sap running, and brighter, longer days. However, I'll post these grape hyacinths in the hope that we'll be seeing real ones -- in about a month.

The craziness of living in, and enduring, such a northern climate may be matched by the craziness of having blogged here for twenty years. Or perhaps I'm just stubborn. Social media was supposed to be the death of blogging, and it did do-in most of the blogs that started when mine did. Other platforms were touted as the next best thing, but I think most bloggers just got fatigued. Keeping up a blog, trying not to repeat yourself, and finding something personal to say is hard enough over years and years, but when the readers and commenters start to go away, it's even harder to remember why you began it in the first place.

But I do remember: I was a journal writer and determined letter-writer, with a well-established practice, and blogging fit me to a T, not only because it satisfied those same urges, but because it also added the possibility of a visual component. The latter, of course, became the raison d'être for Instagram, and I have loved being part of a community of artists and photographers there. But for those who want to write regularly and seriously, nothing has really worked as well as blogs, and for someone like me who's a visual artist as well, and wants to own her own website rather than be data-harvested at every click of the mouse and keyboard, blogging has continued to be the best choice. I guess stubborn perseverance has just kept me at it, because first of all I write and make a record of my art for myself -- I'd do this anyway -- but how much better it is to share it with you, communicate with you, and get to know each other.

Jacaranda blooms in Mexico City, back in March, 2017.

The doubts I was having about blogging a few years ago have mostly disappeared. It's clear to me that this is where I belong, and that it works for me. Adding an art education component will satisfy another strong urge in me: to teach and encourage others who may have always wanted to draw or paint, or who want to do it better; or encourage those who loved making art when they were kids, only to get discouraged or distracted along the way.

A recent change is that I have begun mirroring this blog on Substack. The content will be exactly the same, but if people want to subscribe there and receive a notification via email when there's a new post, that's an easy way to get one. (I know some of you don't use feed readers, which is another possibility. While I do always post a link to new posts on Facebook, you may not be there either.) Substack posts also receive a link on my Twitter feed. Many Substack writers are trying to get people to subscribe for a monthly or yearly payment. I'm not going to do that; the content here has always been free, and I see no reason to change that. The only possible exception would be if I decide to offer formal online art courses, but that's a ways into the future and won't impact the blog at all.

Red bottle-brush tree bloom, from the same Mexico City trip.

Whether you have been reading my words and looking at my pictures for twenty years or have just found me recently, I want to say thank you. It's humbling to know that people come here repeatedly, looking for some solace or calmness in the difficult days we are all facing, and I'm glad that the writing and art which help sustain me also, sometimes, help to sustain you. After all, that's why we think deeply, why we create, and why we are here together. Thank you for visiting, and for encouraging me with your presence. If you've never left a comment, that's absolutely fine, but please don't be shy -- I try to respond personally to all comments, and will be really glad to hear from you. And for those of you who've become my friends over the years, whether virtually or in real life, and in so many corners of the globe -- how amazing it is that we found each other, and how everlastingly grateful I am for the ways in which we enrich each other's lives! 

Winter Mysteries

If there is an ultra-typical view of central New York that feels like it embodies the sense of "home" to me, it's this sort of scene: pastures bordered by hedgerows, wooded hilltops, tall deciduous trees and scrubby brush, all arranged in a zigzagging patchwork that carries the eye up and down and across the rolling hills. It's beautiful in every season, but you can see the shape of the land better in the winter, when the contrast is greatest between the fields and the trees; in the summer, pretty much everything is green, or shades of green, brown, and yellow. After this winter's deep dive into the landscape, I'm sure I will be making paintings or doing pastels in the more colorful seasons too, but I'm learning a lot about looking and about what has always attracted my own eye, attention, and heart to this particular type of terrain and its ecology. 

The picture at the top of this post was done after the one below. These are two views of the same range of hills, north of Hamilton, NY, as you're heading toward Rt 20. 

The top picture took a quite a bit of time - an hour or two -- but the bottom one was a deliberately fast 13-minute sketch. In the video below, you can see the whole sketching process condensed to a minute and a half, which I find both amusing and also mystifying; I've watched it a number of times and still can't figure out how the brain and eye, intellect and intuition actually do this. There's a lot about the arts, as well as many other human endeavors, that will always remain mysterious to me, and beyond the realm of what we "learn" to do or can explain. 

For instance, this weekend we watched Mikaela Shiffrin break Ingmar Stenmark's record for world cup skiing victories -- a record many thought would never fall. The qualities that set her apart are vastly more than flawless technique and great physical conditioning; there's her uncanny feeling for the snow in a wide range of conditions, her ability to "see" the course in her mind, and then ski it tighter, faster, and more perfectly than anyone else, and the whole constellation of mental and emotional mastery that's necessary to win so consistently over a period of years. My husband was a ski racer in his youth, and we both skied a lot in our 30s and 40s; he was incredibly good and taught me a lot about the sport, while I became a rather foolhardy advanced intermediate. We stopped, eventually, after some injuries that threatened to become chronic problems as we aged -- and also because skiing with people with cell phones began to take away the solitude and quiet we loved in that other world of the mountains. But those long, cold, sunny, foggy, snowy days remain etched in my mind, and in my dreams I am sometimes still skiing -- and it still feels fantastic.

I never understood exactly how the mind and body managed to coordinate themselves in order to allow this. You learn "how", but then there is a kind of letting go, where you aren't thinking about it in the same analytical way all the time. For me, that was always a tenuous balance, because I didn't grow up on skis, and I was never that good at it, but under optimum conditions, sometimes I could experience the freedom. The gulf between me and a top racer like Schiffrin is, well, about as big as the distance from here to Switzerland, and yet I can appreciate what the human body is capable of doing, both for someone like me who grew up among little un-skied hills like these, to learn to ski on much bigger ones, and for the people at the top of the sport -- or music, or art, or dance, or many other disciplines. It's nothing short of amazing. The thing is, we all do many things every single day that are an astounding combination of learned and intuitive actions. We seldom stop to think about them, but we should marvel at ourselves now and then, for simply being able to read, brush our teeth, cook an egg. It is not insignificant at all.

Back to Drawing

It's been a busy time, and I haven't been able to do much artwork. But, to be honest, I haven't really wanted to either -- I just didn't have the urge or the right spirit, and then, 12 days ago, I managed to sprain my ankle quite badly. Although I was able to put weight on it, I sure couldn't do much, and it was swollen and painful, but has been gradually healing up. I had accounting and other tasks to do on the computer, and there was holiday cooking and baking, cards to write and gifts to wrap and send, all of which felt strange because of my father's absence. When I had free time, it seemed like I was spending way too much of it (true confession) looking at knitting posts on Instagram, searching obsessively for the best BB creme or light foundation for older skin, or getting drawn in by 1) cat videos or 2) holiday paper-folding craft videos, which, of course, started clogging my feed as soon as I watched a few of them. But now that the Christmas preparations are mostly over, and I feel like I'm going to be able to get through it without falling apart, I've picked up the sketchbook again, and it feels like the ice is broken. Last weekend we went to two beautiful musical events at the cathedral: a concert by our choral scholars, and the traditional Lessons & Carols service. And in the past few days I've been able to go out by myself and do some grocery shopping and other errands.

Sometimes drawing is what grounds me, but sometimes I need to feel more grounded in order to be able to draw.

So...the drawing at the top of the page is of Dave Bonta's book Ice Mountain: An Elegy that I illustrated and published a few years ago; an animal vertebra, and a ceramic cup made by my late friend Jenny Lewis.

 

This is the first one I've done that shows any of the interior of our new apartment, with an indication of the rooftops we see out the window. It also shows the first artificial tree we've ever had, but we couldn't see any reasonable way to get a real tree up to the 11th floor and then down again without a big hassle for us, and potential needle-mess in the hall and elevator. To our surprise, we like it!

And here's the back of my studio door, drawn during a long zoom meeting when I was able to turn off my video. There's an old blue chambray workshirt, and a grey plaid wool shirt that was my paternal grandfather's, and has been my painting shirt ever since he died around 1980. I like that they've followed me here.

How are things going where you are? We're bracing for another winter storm tonight and tomorrow, but are happy that there's snow for a white Christmas. Best wishes for your holidays, if you are celebrating, and for the New Year - though I am sure I'll be back here before then. 

 

Of Studios, New and Old

When we finally finished cleaning out our old studio in the Usine Cadbury at the end of October, we sat down for a little while in the open space and remembered the day we moved into it -- the only other time it has been empty. That was fourteen years ago. As soon as our moving truck arrived from Vermont, the space filled up quickly with professional camera and graphics equipment, computers, tools, paper cutters and framing tools, file cabinets and storage cabinets, art supplies, a book press and bookbinding equipment, bookshelves and all the books we couldn't fit into our small apartment, my piano, a refrigerator and kitchen equipment, a couch, chairs, a coffee table, plants. In many ways it was our second home for the past decade and a half; we went there almost every day soon after rising, made our breakfast and lunch, and spent most of our daylight hours working there, only going home  -- usually on foot or by bicycle -- at 5:00 or 6:00 pm. The pandemic interrupted that routine, but by 2019 we were also retiring from our design and communications work, although I was continuing to publish books. The building changed hands, and the rent rose every year: it was clear our time there was coming to an end.

We had worked hard on selling and clearing things out last summer, but realized we simply couldn't finish by the time our lease would be up in the fall, so we signed one more lease, determined to be out this year. By the time we had finished this fall, we were too exhausted and sick of the process to feel very nostalgic. We took some pictures, including this final portrait of me by Jonathan to mark the occasion. Then we locked the door for the last time, and returned our keys.

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My new studio is very small, but efficient, and the north light in it is beautiful. I was really worried about fitting myself into it, and got rid of everything I could in order to make it work; that meant some steely decisions about equipment and studio furniture I've had all my working life, as well as weeding out a great many books, supplies I either didn't need or could easily replace, and even a good deal of artwork and project samples. I photographed things, and let the objects go. It wasn't easy, especially at first: I felt like I was giving up my identity and admitting to being much older than I feel. But as we found homes for our things with younger people who would use them, we both felt better.

The new space holds my writing desk (you can see it reflected in the mirror of the storage cabinet) as well as an L-shaped worktable. The left side of the table has a motor that raises or lowers the tabletop for standing or sitting. All the art, sewing, and textile supplies fit into two IKEA Pax cabinets, and my paper and archive of artwork are stored elsewhere in the apartment; there are boxes of cloth and yarn, archives of professional work, and some canvases and frames in our remote storage unit.

Thingvellir, Iceland. Charcoal on prepared Rising Line Stonehenge paper.

It seemed important to me to put some work up on the walls right away, so I did, and after doing a number of cloud and cityscape studies from the window, I decided to try to make something large just to prove to myself that I could still do that in this space. I want to complete the Iceland series of charcoal drawings that I began at the end of 2011; this large diptych, which was just roughed-out when I stopped working on the series, is 60" x 22". I worked on the two halves separately on the tabletop, and then together on the wall. Later, Jonathan made this portrait, again to mark the occasion of what we hope is a new beginning, and a new chapter in our lives.