Time and Art

Valley of the Wiggle — mixed media photo collage on board, 12”x9”

Five years ago, in the middle of the 2011 Project, I created this photo collage titled Beach Day.  It instantly was one of my favorites of the 365 pieces done back in 2011.  That piece was a key to my latest project, Time Travel Photos.  

The latest work for the series is of a valley that became the Lower Haight.  Where I have lived for over 25 years.  I have seen a lot of changes over time and at some point in the future may even do a series based on the changes I have witnessed in my neighborhood. 

Tennessee Valley 16 - Back to the 4x4 format

Earlier this winter friends and I enjoyed a hike in Marin County’s Tennessee Valley.  That day it rained on and off but we managed to stay fairly dry.  Yesterday was a day of late season rains that kept me in the house.  The results are a series of 16 4”x4” paintings based on that afternoon on the trail.  I deliberately forced myself to work quickly.  Any painter knows the trap of going too far and overworking a painting.  It’s frustrating when you get a work done and then keep going and, well, ruin it.

I Like Lichens

Pinnacles National Park Collagescape, 6”x6”, mixed media on board

The 2011 Project continues to inspire new work.  Three years ago I was with friends down at Pinnacles National Monument for a rainy Sunday afternoon hike.  It was a gray, drizzly fall day, but there was plenty of color, particularly from the variety of lichens.  Early on in the 2011 Project, I did a lichen piece based on that hike (see below).

The National Monument is now a National Park and I am still painting lichens.  This time incorporating them into a piece for my new Collagescape Series – this one is a fall palette.  Hopefully a wet winter will bring out a good spring bloom of wildflowers and an excuse to take another trip south. Next time will be to capture a different color palette at Pinnacles National Park.

Fall

Today is the first day of fall and it’s bright and sunny in San Francisco.   It usually doesn’t feel fall-like until about November.  But this year we started with a front moving through and a big blast of rain yesterday.  Unusually early for us, but reminding us that even Northern California can sometimes conform to the calendar.  Above are two pieces from the 2011 Project — Nor’Easter (we don’t have those in California, but the sky looked a lot like that yesterday) and Listopad one of my favorite pieces from the 2011 Project.

The Naked Ladies are Back!

It's that time of the year, everywhere you go along the coast you're likely to see naked ladies (the flowers that is).  And if you were searching on the word “naked ladies” and came upon this page, you might not have found the image you were expecting.

Beach Day

Beach Day, mixed media on canvas, 10”x10”

I still keep coming up with ideas I wish I had thought of for the 2011 Project.  This is one of those examples.  I did use some sandpaper in one of the pieces, but I hadn’t thought of encrusting the edges of the canvas in sand as I did with this piece for my upcoming installation.

I added the sand and some sandpaper because I knew that Beach Day needed more than vintage postcards of beach scenes.  The cards have beach scenes from Florida to California with a heavy dose of Cape Cod including Kalmus Beach.  Kalmus is a beach I grew up near in Hyannis, named for Herbert Kalmus who donated the land.  He was also the inventor of Technicolor.  While a motion picture film process, where would the sky in old postcards be without the influence of Technicolor?  Beach Day itself refers to a certain type of summer day, when the weather is just right, and it’s a perfect time to go to the beach.  If you live near a beach, you know….

Prints of this piece are available from Society 6.

Fabulous Land

Fabulous Land, mixed media on canvas, 8”x8”

I can never say enough how important it is to experiment.  A little 4”x4” collage of vintage postcards for the 2011 Project has lead to an ongoing series of postcard collages.  This latest piece is made entirely with postcards from the Fabulous Land (aka California).

Point Reyes

Today is Epiphany or the Feast of the Three Kings. Point Reyes National Seashore is named for those Kings. It’s a place I like to visit whenever I can and it inspired a number of pieces for the 2011 Project including the six ones seen above. I have been painting and photographing Point Reyes for many years.

December 27, 2011 – Route One

There is a lot I love about California and one thing that especially makes it an amazing place is Route One. In various pieces many, many times I have driven along the coast on Route One. Today I came back home to San Francisco along Big Sur, after all these years, it still remains as exciting as the first time.

December 11, 2011 – Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi

Here in California kiwis are in season and the farmer’s markets are filling up with bags of them at bargain prices. I just finished eating the one I painted this morning. I missed doing a kiwi piece six months back when the fruits were coming into season in the Antipodes. As many kiwis as we grow here in California, most people think about New Zealand when one thinks of kiwis.

Kiwis and kiwi kitsch are plentiful in New Zealand. I am proud to say I’ve climbed to the top of the 4-story high, giant slice of kiwi in Te Puke, New Zealand. Ironically, kiwis are not native to New Zealand. Originally the fruit was known as the Chinese Gooseberry in English. You can see why they came up with a better name for marketing purposes. And to make it all a bit more confusing, there is Kiwi, the flightless bird and Kiwi, the nickname for New Zealanders. Some prefer to use Kiwifruit, but mostly one just hears “kiwi” in New Zealand and understands the meaning by context. I can’t imagine a jam made from a fuzzy little flightless bird, yuck.

November 18, 2011 – Fall Colors

The term Fall Colors might bring to mind the colorful leaves, oranges, yellows and reds in places like New England. But in California, our fall colors are different. The autumn palette is based in the golden hills. The tress offer the contrast of rich earthy greens finished off with the complement of the rich red of manzanita bark. The bark that in most species is polished smooth, a rich terra cotta color. The bark so smooth that it could almost make you believe that mysterious forest dwellers come out at night to polish the trees. The manzanita is California’s other red wood.

November 16, 2011 – Home for the Winter

It’s getting to be that time of the year when folks start heading south to warmer climates. Places like Florida, Arizona and the Costa del Sol start filling up. California is no exception. The Elephant Seals are heading home to California. After summering up in British Columbia, all the way up to Alaskan waters or even a far-flung journey to Hawaii, our winter residents will be home soon. Welcome back.

November 10, 2011 – Favorite Maps

It’s no secret I love maps and especially cutting them up and making art out of them. There are certain types of maps that I prefer to use. I particularly like the colorful, almost psychedelic maps used to show things like climates, geology and vegetation. In 2009 I did a whole series with these types of maps. Today’s piece incorporates the vegetation and climate of two of the best places in the world — California and New Zealand.

October 22, 2011 – Bodie Light

Earlier this month I was in one of my favorite California cities — Bodie, California. Okay, Bodie might not qualify as a city anymore, but there was a time when this was California’s Third Largest. Nowadays Bodie is a remote and very well preserved ghost town high up in the Eastern Sierra. This last visit was the day before the first winter storm came in. The autumn light was stunning. And while I love photographing Bodie, my real dream is to be an artist in residence up there for a spell so I could paint those old buildings day after day.

October 8, 2011 – What a Bear Does in The Woods

Having painted big piles of rocks over the years, this might be seen as a natural, artistic direction to go in. Being silly, I couldn’t resist taking the photo the other day near Lake Tahoe. And as soon as I took the photo, I turned back on the trail not wanting to really meet the source. One of my rules for painting poop was that the painting itself, in an odd way, had to remain aesthetically pleasing (as subjective as that can be). Also, some great art has incorporated excrement — the British artist Chris Ofili who incorporates elephant dung into his work comes to mind. I have only seen one piece of his in person and really want to see a larger show of his work some day.

And to answer the proverbial question, yes, a bear does shit in the woods.

October 7, 2011 – El Camino Real

Yesterday afternoon I was standing in the middle of El Camino Real. No, I was not on a busy road of big box stores and strip malls on the Peninsula, nor was I standing in the middle of the 101 Freeway. I was in San Juan Bautista State Historic Park. There, below the plaza, next to the old mission is a small stretch of The Royal Road. You get a good connection to history when you stand on a dusty trail that served as a road over 200 years ago. Back then the road itself was more a series of interconnected trails linking Spanish missions and presidios. After Mexican independence the name El Camino Real fell into disuse. No Spanish king would be traveling up through Alta California any time soon. It wasn’t until the 20^th Century, when California was redefining itself and mythologizing its history that the moniker El Camino Real came back into use along with the reproduction bells that line the route.

History real and re-imagined, I am glad that little bit of the old road is still there. San Juan Bautista became a quiet town bypassed by railroads and freeways. The good news is that it is now the only mission town that really feels old.

October 4, 2011 - Walker River

I did this piece along the Walker River in Toiyabe National Forest up in the Eastern Sierra. According to the calendar it’s fall. The mid-morning sun is low in the sky and I had to deal with the blinding glare off the river. It was warm and one could say, the last moment of summer. Later in the day I headed south down Route 395 to get out of the way of the first snowstorm of the season. As I drove south I could look towards the peaks of the Sierra and see the storm looming over the Tioga Pass and Mammoth Lakes. The Eastern Sierra is like California’s attic. It’s up there, a hidden quiet place full of treasure like Mono Lake, Bodie, Devils Postpile National Monument and the Walker River.

Below is a photo of today’s piece drying on rock along the river. Actually it dried very quickly in the mountain air.

September 22, 2011 – Mono Lake

There is that feeling one gets near the end of a long trip when something familiar comes into view. It may be a freeway exit, a large building near home or in my case the Bay Bridge. There is that moment when you pass through the tunnel on Yerba Buena Island and there it is, San Francisco. It always looks extra special from that view. On the way back to San Francisco there is another familiar sign that you’re almost home — Mono Lake.

After one of those long flights across the continent, I love when Mono Lake appears out the window thousands of feet below. As soon as we pass over the lake I know I am back home in California. From there it’s a quick zip across Yosemite, head towards San Jose, turn right at Mount Hamilton and before you can say turn off your electronic devices you’re back at SFO.

Then there is the other approach to Mono Lake. It’s about 235 miles of driving and, if you do it right, it takes most of the day after poking around the Tioga Pass and Toulumne Meadows in Yosemite. You descend down the back of the Sierra into a hot dry landscape, and there is the blue shimmer of Mono Lake.

Mono Lake has gotten smaller over the years. The 60 year old map I used in this piece shows a lake that was much bigger. Los Angeles started tapping the water and the lake level dropped. There is one advantage of the lower water level. It has exposed the tufa formations created by geothermal heated springs under the lakebed. The lakeshore has a wonderful what-planet-is-this look about it. I’ve been photographing and painting the lake over the years.

Now might be the time to hurry and see the lake up close. The Mono Lake Tufa State Natural Reserve is on the list of 70 state parks that California is threatening to close due to budget problems. I still can’t get my mind around the idea of closing a state park. It’s nice to see the lake as I fly home, but even better up close and personal.

September 16, 2011 – Banana Slug

I love banana slugs (Ariolimax californicus). They’re photogenic, fun to paint and just plain cool. I love seeing such exotic looking creatures with that shock of bright yellow in a damp redwood forest. They always remind us, that even though we do not have a rainforest in California, we’re close with our fogforest. Today I was down the San Mateo Coast and went to Butano State Park near Pescadero. It is prime banana slug habitat. My young friend Zora is already one year old, she needed to meet the banana slugs. There were plenty out and about and as friendly as a banana slug can be.

August 24, 2011 – China Camp

Hiding in plain sight is a treasure of a state park called China Camp. It’s just off the freeway on the shore of San Pablo Bay. The park derives its names from a shrimp fishing village settled by Chinese immigrants in the 1880’s. It’s a quiet and calm place with a collection of historic buildings.

California has an impressive collection of state parks (many are what one might call “national park caliber”). California is one of the richest states in one of the world’s richest countries, yet plans are on the table to close China Camp along with many other state parks. You better go soon if you want to see the place. It’s hard to imagine the park being closed, but it looks more and more likely.