A New Website

I thought I'd let you know that I just published a new website that displays my paintings and hooked rugs. For those of you interested in seeing some of my older work, I made a page surveying the paintings of 25 years. You can get to the site here, or by clicking the website photo on the upper right of the blog page.

I used a free website platform called Weebly; if you're interested in taking a look, here is the link. It's very simple to use, so if you always wanted to have a website, here's your chance. Have fun!

A New Painting: "Constellation"

Constellation, egg tempera on parchment, 4 1/4 x 5 inches

I finished this painting before leaving on my visit to NYC. When I began working on it, I felt that the composition wasn't as good––with each element seeming necessary and in essential balance––as in my most recent paintings. But when I started mixing color, I became entranced by the intense cool blue and the playful texture of pink and bits of green. I even did a thumbnail for a possible hooked rug project using the same pink/blue color combination. The holes cut out in the sheet metal bounce about in a jazzy rhythm, unlike the more regular circles in the painting Dots. The thin line of light caught at the bottom edge of each, and the variation of color around them, make the circles into separate little characters, dancing above the large stolid mass of dark.

Built: Three Cottages and a Barn

A few days ago I was driving down a back road in my town, going to visit some friends, when I saw, lined up after an old house and long low barn, three tiny cottages, looking like they came out of a fairy tale.




The weathered paint, the peaked roofs, the old windows of the two colorful buildings placed them as antique cabins, salvaged from some small roadside motel.





The third cabin, in the process of construction, has a different kind of charm, with the sloped red roof, square black walls and narrow wrapping porch. Its proportions seem "just right", to quote Goldilocks.




Alongside the cottages is a barn, not the traditional high red-painted building, but a lower one. Its weather scrubbed colors are beautifully harmonious. For decoration, the owners have added automotive elements: a steering wheel as counterpoint to the big square of doors; a red-rusted door, its orange hue contrasting with the blue paint. There is humor here, and an appreciation of shape and texture.




My earliest paintings were of domestic architecture, which I wrote about a bit here, and I still have a great love for interesting buildings and their details. Seeing the cottages has inspired me to begin what I hope will be an occasional series of posts on architecture, called "Built". It will give me yet another reason to carry my camera wherever I go, picking up images, seeing more than what is evident at a quick glance.

**I'll be traveling to NYC tomorrow, to spend the Jewish New Year with my family. Wishing you a happy holiday, if applicable, and I'll see you in a few days.

Five Plus Five

Five Plus Five, hand-dyed wool on linen, 2 panels: 6 x 26 1/2 inches each

I have finished my latest rug hooking project, a two panel work that I conceived as interacting with the architecture of a house, rather than just with each other on a wall. I like the idea of them on either side of a door, acting almost like banners.

I tried hanging the pieces with the darkest shape at the top, and at the bottom. I think I prefer the dark at the top, so that the shapes seem to be fading as they fall; as they lighten they seem to float, instead of sinking, as they do when they get darker toward the bottom. I would like to hang the panels horizontally above windows, but in my old house the windows are too close to the ceiling. So I placed the panels with the squares in the available space above a wooden rail and the circles vertically below. I like this installation best.

The Eloquence of the Inanimate: "Floating Weeds" by Ozu

With this quiet still shot––a sake bottle and a lighthouse––Yasujiro Ozu begins his film Floating Weeds, a story of old love and new. The first of several stills of the harbor and town, this image introduces us, with Ozu's customary emotional reticence and compositional rigor, to themes of the film: we are in a seaside town, so travel, with its rootlessness and loneliness, will be explored; the equating of bottle and lighthouse, an amusing juxtaposition, shows how the ordinary things of life loom large.




In all of his films, Ozu uses a fixed camera; a beautifully composed scene is shot from a low level and the figures move through the given space. This approach makes us very aware of the architecture and objects framing the action; to me it seems that they have the same weight as the human characters. In this shot the various gray textures of rock walls and building create a stage across which the newly arrived members of an acting troupe walk. The red of the kimono adds a brilliant note; it is a color Ozu uses often. He made very few color films; when I first saw one last fall, Late Autumn, I could hardly believe how gorgeous it was. Every scene was perfectly arranged, and each object in it selected for color, shape and size. I was inspired to make the ruglet Floating Squares after seeing it, and wrote about it in this post. I wanted to show more of Ozu and now have a dvd program that allows for screen shots, so that I don't have to rely on the taste of others.




Another kind of stage is created by the Japanese interior. Here the long ago lovers are separated by wall planes moving at right angles, and by the height of the floor. Our eye moves from the woman, through the space to the man, where we follow his gaze to the red flowers outdoors; our eye is brought back to the horizontal red of the bench. The elements are all exquisitely in balance.




A stunning scene of black and white: the cranes of the banner are echoed in the bamboo pattern of the woman's kimono. And again, a splash of red from the flowers in the distance.




Here is a different kind of interior, showing the strong diagonal of a staircase in the foreground. In some scenes we might see a figure ascending or descending the stairs, the camera never moving, just showing the character as she moves about the space. You can see Ozu's use of red: above, a fire extinguisher (?); below, a small container and blankets; into the distance in another space, some containers on a shelf. Along with the green pillars, the reds establish a visual rhythm throughout the given space.




I find this exterior shot so beautiful, from the movement of clapboards on the right, inviting us into the space, to the round wheels and small square window frames; the contrast of irregular stones emphasizes the geometry of the building; the two figures, facing yet far apart, have a rhythm of their own. Ozu sees with the eye of a painter who carefully composes each long-worked painting. But here is a film with image after image of the same quality.




At a sad moment in the story, some vivid banners and piles of colored cushions play off against the somber mood. The vertical stacks of cushions are repeated by the vertical banners, and there is a low shelf with a line of red buckets against the back wall. These warm colors stand out from the muted greens of pillars and walls.




This heartrending tableau of meager traveling bags tells a tale of dislocation and isolation; from square cases to wrapped cloth bundles, each bag is different, a character in itself, isolated from the others, waiting for what comes next. The things in this film––architecture and objects of daily use––add layers of richness, aesthetic and emotional, to a touching drama.

Greening Hydrangea

In late summer, the bright white flower heads of the Hydrangea Annabelle turn to ivory and light green; at this point they are ready for cutting and drying. I place the stems in an inch of water so that they dry slowly, upright in their large containers. The sprightly green slowly fades, then turns pale brown through the winter months. The grand rounded volumes, composed of myriad four petaled blooms, remain, until replaced by new flowers each season.

A New Painting: "Zigzag"

Zigzag, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 5 1/2 x 4 inches

When I began working on this painting, I felt as though I was designing a textile pattern, with its close repetitions of shape and linear format. And it's certainly different from the previous painting, Taut (center painting below), which is rather austere. When I'm decided which image to work on next, I generally choose to change the color and type of composition; this keeps the work interesting and challenging.

Below are three recent paintings hung together in the studio.
As always, you can click on the images to enlarge.

Disease in the Vegetable Garden

Last week I was telling some friends about the horrible visitation of diseases in my vegetable garden; they suggested I write a blog post on it to show another side of gardening. I focus here on the pleasures of the garden, visual and culinary; I don't want to write about every disappointment and failure. But failures are many: seeds that don't germinate, plants that don't thrive, damage by insects and woodchucks. This summer's warmth resulted in the largest and most vigorous winter squash and zucchini plants I'd ever grown. But it may be that the warmth, with a lot of rain, encouraged the active growth of mildew. You can see its powdery appearance on the pumpkin vine above, and zucchini leaf below. I took the photos a week ago, and now the pumpkin plant is completely dead, as are the other winter squashes, with ripening fruits without the sustenance coming from the plant. They are almost ripe, so may be edible, but won't be as sweet as they should be.




The zucchini plant, being incredibly tough, is still growing leaves and zucchini, and likely will until frost.




The nightshade family––tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, though not peppers––are susceptible to blight, which spots and yellows the leaves of the plant from the bottom up, eventually killing them all. All my potato plants died back early, so will likely have smaller potatoes; the tomatoes are badly damaged, especially the determinate paste tomatoes. This leads to a smaller harvest.

Next year I will be prepared: in addition to clearing off this years crop residue, I will plant tomatoes with a new system of trellising for greater air circulation. And I plan to use some organically approved sprays against diseases, something I've avoided so far. All the difficulties in the garden make me very glad I'm not doing this for a living, and make me more appreciative of the hard work and challenges facing those who do.

Green Tomato Jam

Tomatoes are a versatile vegetable/fruit: not only are they delicious when ripe––either raw or cooked every which way––at their green, unripe stage they are tasty when fried and they make a tart jam that is one of my favorites. The tangy flavor of green tomato jam is similar to that of orange marmalade; this jam is not for those who love very sweet jam. For instance, I find strawberry jam too sweet, so never make it. There are three ingredients: green tomatoes, lemons and sugar. I put the recipe together from a couple of different ones I found online; some have added ginger or cinnamon, or other spices; I prefer to keep it simple.

Green tomatoes after macerating with sugar for 20 hours.

4 1/2 pounds green tomatoes, cut into large chunks, 1/2 to 1 inch
4 1/2 cups sugar
3 lemons. I prefer to use organic lemons for this recipe if I can find them. I would suggest tasting the lemons to see how sour they are. This year's lemons were so sour that the jam is a little more tart than I like; if I'd realized, I would have used only two.

1. Layer tomatoes and sugar in a non-reactive bowl. Macerate for 20 to 24 hours in the refrigerator, stirring 2 or 3 times.
2. Put tomato-sugar mixture into a large pot (I use stainless). Bring to a boil, then cook at a lively simmer for one hour. Skim off any scum that may appear. Stir occasionally.
3. Cut lemons in quarters lengthwise, then into thin slices. Add to the cooking jam and cook for another hour, stirring often.
4. Put the finished jam in 1/2 pint jars and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Makes about 6 half pints.

Green Tomato Jam on a slice of my homemade sourdough Pain de campagne. Mmmm.....

Sunflowers

The sunflowers, singing out in brilliant color from the vegetable garden, are summer heat and light made into matter. The irony of their blooming is that now summer is on the wane: the days are noticeably cooler and shorter, the sun is lower and moon higher in the sky. It is as though they are giving a last grand gesture of brightness, to accompany the busy harvest season.

I grow a branching variety of sunflowers; rather than one large head on an enormously tall plant, these 6 or 7 foot tall plants have many 6 inch blooms, making a vivid display. I've always enjoyed seeing the development of the flower head in sunflowers, as it changes from flat to rounded form, so have photographed the procession for this post. Sunflowers are actually a composite flower, with the yellow "ray florets" around the center "disk florets". In the photo above you can see the spiral pattern of the disk florets, growing according to the golden ratio, which I wrote about in this blog post.




Over time the disk florets grow sexually active, from outer edge to inner. Pollen is released and flowers fertilized. The bees are very active around sunflowers, so there isn't much extra pollen; when I cut the flowers for a vase indoors, the pollen floats down to make a golden dust on the tabletop.




The flower head has become full and rounded and is now in the process of growing seed.




Here you can see the not fully matured black seed. I have learned in my online research that there are numbered stages of sunflower growth; it is, after all, an important food crop. You can see a clear explanation of this here (it's a pdf). The small seeds of my garden sunflowers are food for birds, who perch on the flowers and peck away at them. When my garden is finished for the season, I till a few of the mature sunflower heads where I would like them to grow next spring; I leave the remainder on top of the compost pile for the birds; I'm pleased to share my bounty with them.

A New Painting: "Taut"

Taut, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 7 x 5 1/4 inches

I've named this painting for the feeling of its composition––tight, simple, dramatic––and the pull of rope at the upper right. I occasionally make paintings that please me deeply, and this is one of them; something in the minimalist clarity and rich color is very satisfying. It may not resonate the same way with other eyes, but I'm always interested in whatever reactions come my way.

(If you click on the image, you will see an enlargement close to actual size, which is true of all my posts on recent paintings.)

Too Late!!...or maybe not..

I was taking a walk before lunch down past the pond to check on the ripeness of the wild apples just beyond it; on the slope of lawn not easily seen from the house was this large puffball. What a shock it was to find it there: how could I not have noticed? I immediately began to exclaim, very loudly: oh no! oh darn! and various stronger imprecations. I believed I had missed the edibility window of this 6 inch mushroom because of its tan color.




My frustrations were so loud that my cat Blinky (named after Blinky Palermo) came down from where he was lazing about to see what was going on.




Then I pulled off a piece of the mushroom and saw that it was pure white inside. Since puffballs are choice eating, I'll save it for tomorrow morning, when I'll be making breakfast for friends. Food from the garden is a treat; wild food is a wonder.

"Five Plus Five" in Progress

I've completed one of the two panels for the diptych Five Plus Five (to see the study for the full piece, plus wool, click here). The colors of the squares move in graduated fashion from lighter to darker, with something of a strong jump to the final square; I hope that when finished, this doesn't seem too dark. I was looking at my darkest blue today and thinking I should overdye it a little darker in order to balance the green.

Below is a detail in which you can see the subtle shifts in color in the yellow background, and in value in the greens. The actual ruglet has more saturated color; blogger's photo uploads are very irregular: sometimes the color is too washed out, as here, and sometimes too dark, as in the photo of the wool for this piece, in the link above. We are all dependent on reproductions in so many aspects of our lives, so we can shrug, accept the limitations, and be pleased at the new audiences they allow; I do, I am.

Wild Blackberries

The great bounty of the late summer woods and abandoned fields is the blackberry, ripening in large jeweled trusses, colors deepening from pink to deep warm black; the fruit grows moist and plump as each little sphere of the berry matures. The plant is well protected: it is the most bramble-y of the bramble fruits, making picking something of a battle as your clothing and skin gets caught by the long spines. There's always a beautiful bunch of ripe berries just out of reach across a welter of thorny branches; attempting to collect them, my hat, shirt, hands get caught.

But it is certainly worth the trouble: good fresh eating in the woods, a pie for friends, batches of very tasty jam, which I cook using the same recipe as for raspberry jam. Blackberries turn out to be useful for more than food; in this post on the blog Silkenwind, we learn of using their juice for dyeing fabric, another gift from the wild.

A Walk in the Woods: Curious Mushrooms

I suppose that one day I will no longer be surprised by mushrooms, but for now, they still startle me with their sometimes odd appearance. When we think 'mushroom', we usually have an image of a toadstool shaped fungus, but they grow in so many other shapes, as in the large funnel-shaped mushroom above, with its tongues curving inward, as though drawing in a victim, an animate figure in a science fiction drama.




Coral shaped mushrooms aren't rare, but they are a marvel: a bit of the undersea on the forest floor.




These very small tubular eruptions from the litter of the path would have been easy to miss if I hadn't had my eyes insistently gazing downward. They came up in small groups, each 'finger' swaying to its own rhythm.




There are some mushrooms called Jellies, and from the photo above, you can see why: a beautiful gem-like translucence. There is a mushroom pictured in my field guide that looks similar to this, and which has a magical common name: Witches' Butter.




Finally, nestled among very small toadstools was this strange shaped yellow mushroom, looking like the head and neck of a graceful bird. I assume it's a member of the Earth Tongues, a perfect name for a form rising from the ground and tasting the air above.

From Painting to Hooked Rug: Blinky Palermo

Blinky Palermo, 4 Prototypes, 1970, screenprint, 23 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches (each sheet); to read more details go to the MoMA website.

I've been thinking about Blinky Palermo recently: he was one of the artists I cited as inspiration when beginning my ruglet Up Down; his architectural works were at the back of my mind as I began Five Plus Five, my current rug hooking project. Palermo was a German artist who took the name of an American mobster and died, unfortunately, very young. I vividly remember the first time I saw his work, the print suite 4 Prototypes, at a 57th Street gallery in the mid 80s. I was thrilled by the union of minimalism with offbeat humor, evident in the irregular edges of the imperfect geometric forms.

Palermo, Speaker in a low voice II, 1969, Two pieces: piece A, cotton; piece B, cotton on wood; total size ca. 57 1/2 x 84 1/2 x 4 inches

Palermo, Untitled, 1969, Dyed, sewn cotton reinforced with ramee fiber, on stretcher, 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 inches

Some of Palermo's most interesting works are his fabric paintings; using readymade cotton fabrics pushed against the idea of painting as a handmade heroic effort. Speaker in a low voice wittily places what appears to be a painting below draped cloth, making us look again, think again, about what a stretched canvas is. By carefully choosing and balancing colors in stretched cotton, such as Untitled above, he created surprisingly beautiful works. I saw a couple in this series at the Museum of Modern Art in 2008, in a fantastic show called Color Chart. The cloth paintings were strong, lively, and very compelling; who needed paint? I loved them.
.

Palermo, About "Blue Triangle", Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Color photograph on card, 10 x 12 inches

Another aspect of Palermo's work are his architectural interventions, placing shapes and colors within rooms and hallways, or on the exterior of buildings. The blue triangle is a particularly vivid example of his wall drawings, which transform a space and become a part of it.

Palermo, To the People of New York City, 1976, 40 individual panels, acrylic on aluminum, seen above installed at Dia on 22nd Street, NYC, 1987-88 (read about it at the Dia Foundation website)

With the simplest of means, 3 colors––red, yellow and black--and rectangles of different sizes––Palermo fashioned a visual feast in which your eye goes dancing from one group of paintings to another, colors repeating yet different, as in a musical theme with variations. I saw To the People of New York City installed at Dia Beacon and found it exhilarating; it was a new way to think of painting: as a non-linear narrative, an abstract story encompassing time and space.

ah, Blinky, 2006, hand dyed wool on linen, 9 x 29 inches

To the People of Groton, Vermont, 2007, hand dyed wool on linen,
four pieces: each 8 x 10 inches

The two ruglets above are tributes to Blinky Palermo. In ah, Blinky I am of course referencing his Blue Triangles works, with one of my triangles 'yearning' towards the other, a geometric form not quite right, as in Palermo's 4 Prototypes. With To the People of Groton, Vermont, which is the town I live in, I chose organic shapes and colors that seemed appropriate for the story of a rural Vermont village, a very modest effort of 4 panels. There are many ideas in Palermo's short career, and I'm sure I'll be returning to them again.

*This post is another in a series of homages to contemporary artists who've inspired my hooked rug work; previous posts included salutes to Mary Heilman, Ellsworth Kelly, Kazimir Malevich, Richard Tuttle, and anonymous Tantra artists.