April 30, 2011 – Madrid

Madrid is calling. I have been to Madrid but I have never been to Madrid.

Back in my college days, when you do things that only 20 year olds do, I flew to Madrid with a cheap air ticket and a eurrail pass. It was to be a month of wandering Europe. The plan was an eventual return to Madrid a few days before it was time to depart. I went from Spain all the way to Sweden and back. A few weeks later, an overnight trip from Austria had me arriving one morning in Barcelona. The plan was to store the luggage for the day and take another overnight train to Madrid. Then have a few days in Madrid and head home. In the trains station I followed the signs to the place to store the backpack. I saw nothing but scaffolding. A gaping hole was where the luggage storage was supposed to be. It was something to do with bombs and separatists. I decided to find a hotel and head to Madrid the next day. One of the wonderful things about travel is getting sidetracked and tossing out the itinerary. Barcelona seduced me. A few days later, at the last possible moment, I took an overnight train to Madrid and headed straight to the airport.

With a few crumbled 100 pesata bills in my pocket not worth exchanging, I spent the last of my money on some goofy postcards at the airport. The silly ones wear lace has been sewn onto images of beautiful señoritas. I’ve always known I’d put them to some use. So here is my Madrid postcard piece. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been back to Madrid except with the vicarious trips taken in Pedro Almodóvar films.

April 29, 2011 – Yellow

The color for the day is yellow. Yellow is a color that plays a lesser role in my palette but I want to make sure each color gets its day in the 2011 Project. This piece was made with some of the random yellow bits in my hoard of collage fodder. And, as I couldn’t help notice, yellow did seem to be the power color of the day.

April 28, 2011 — Petroglyphs

When I travel I make a habit of seeking out art. In California and the desert Southwest some of the best art I find is not in any gallery or museum. There is an abundance of fine art to be found on rocks and cliffs. Much of the work is over 1,000 years old. Sometimes it’s a long hike back into a canyon or a drive down a dirt road. Sometimes the art is right there, very accessible near a road. A favorite spot is along the Fremont River in Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. There are times you find the art in a remote setting and yet one of the best spots is in sight of subdivisions on the edge of Albuquerque.

There are plenty more petroglyphs for me to see out there. They are in “museums” where you need plenty of sunscreen. The desert is not Chelsea. You will never encounter a hostile, malnourished, gallery gal in a little black dress. But you might see a rattlesnake. I think I prefer the rattlesnake.

April 27, 2011 – Ocotillo

I can still remember the first time I saw an Ocotillo. I was visiting Joshua Tree National Park and making my first foray into the lower, southern section of the park. It is where the national park drops from the Mojave into the Sonoran Desert. That trip was during the first spring in the El Niño year after the drought broke back in the 1990’s. It was the sort of desert bloom that usually only happens every 10-15 years. Driving south I left the Joshua Trees behind and suddenly encountered these tall, spindly cacti.

I had never seen anything like this cactus. They are tall, 10-15 feet high with branches stretching out towards the sky. At the tips of the branches were these flaming red flowers. There is no mistaking it, this is the Ocotillo (Fouquieria splendens). The best word to describe Ocotillo is flamboyant. They are the drag queens of desert flora — tall, spiky, flashy and demanding attention.

Ocotillo grow in the desert from Southern California to Texas and south into Mexico. The best place I have found to see them is Anza Borrego State Park south of Palm Springs. In March and April they are in full bloom. Where they bloom the flowers are often the only vibrant color. The effect is that in a few places Ocotillo are so thick the desert appears to have a red haze hanging over it as you look in the distance.

This piece is also featured on a print/poster available from Society6.

April 26, 2011 – Olmsted

The Father of American Landscape Architecture, Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., was born on this day in 1822. Even for Americans and Canadians unfamiliar with him, many of us know his work. Olmsted designed well over one hundred parks, college campuses, capitol grounds, zoos, cemeteries and some early green, streetcar suburbs. He is probably best known for co-designing Central Park, but his other commissions included the grounds of the U.S. Capitol as well as state capitol grounds in Denver and Salt Lake City. Large public parks in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, Boston and Montreal. Many subsequent urban parks were heavily influenced by his work including Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Olmsted also was responsible for the campuses of both U.C. Berkeley and Stanford.

Olmsted was far more than a brilliant landscape designer. To this day, his legacy is some of the most important and beautiful natural oasis in cities in the U.S. and Canada. His work in the 19^th Century continues to make urban life in the 21^st Century far more livable. Olmsted was the urban answer to his 19^th Century contemporary John Muir.

April 25, 2011 — Rock and Roll While You Stroll

30 years ago there was no iPod, it was all about the Walkman. The mobile music device that seemed to eat a set of batteries each time you played an entire cassette. One had to travel with a horde of batteries plus all those cassettes. Younger generations have no idea how we “suffered” to bring our music alone.

Today I found this article about how you could “Rock and Roll while you stroll” in a 1963 issue of Popular Mechanics. This device made it possible to walk down the street playing your 45’s. It never seems to have caught on. The price back then was $79.95. That is about $570 in 2011 dollars.

April 24, 2011 – Butter Lamb

For my entire life there has always been a butter lamb on the Easter table. The butter lamb is a small lamb molded or shaped from butter. The lamb traditionally has a red ribbon around the neck and a red paschal flag in its rump. The eyes are two peppercorns.

The butter lamb is an old Polish tradition that is adhered to in Buffalo (where I was born). Even after my family left Buffalo, we had one sent to us. I used to get one shipped to me here in San Francisco. I now have a mould and have been making my own butter lamb for years. I may very well have the only butter lamb in California.

The only Easter without a butter lamb was the one I spent with cousins in Poland 25 years ago. On Easter morning it was time for ham, kielbasa and the traditional Easter meal. All washed down with plenty of vodka. I asked where the baranek was? Baranek literally means “little lamb” in Polish. Lamb? No, we have ham on Easter was the response. I was trying to explain that I was looking for the butter lamb. My cousin Tadeusz, the oldest member of the family at the table, suddenly realized what I meant. He was surprised that I knew what a butter lamb was. He was even more surprised that people in Buffalo still kept the tradition as no one in Poland did anymore.