A New Hooked Rug: "Three Red Circles"

Three Red Circles, hand-dyed wool on linen, 11 x 14 inches.

The three overlapping circles lie––spin?––on a dark field, bursting out of bounds. As with several other recent pieces, which you can see here, I'm taking advantage of the characteristics of the medium of rug hooking to make irregular shapes, which is quite easy with wool and linen backing. The lighter red color of the smallest circle was something of a surprise when I'd hooked the wool; the dyed wool fabric looked to be more gradual in its color transitions. I don't think I mind, though, since the lighter color gives a jump to the hip hop of the preceding colors. Any thoughts would be welcome.

I photographed this piece on a poorly lit wall in the studio, along with 12 inch square paintings on the left and some hooked wool sketches on the right. Did the same artist make all these?

My Old House: The Pantry

When you turn to the left from my kitchen, shown in this post, after entering the house through the mudroom here, you enter the tiny, 7 by 9 foot pantry room which is on the north side of the house. This is where I do my food preparation on a large piece of butcher block placed on the old enamel topped table. The wacky brilliant color of its legs adds some lilt to the surroundings. You'll notice the floor to ceiling paneling on the wall to the right; there is a lot of this original hand-planed beaded paneling in the house. It's beautiful stuff, especially after I removed layers and layers of old paint, leaving a blueish-green color showing.




The huge old farmhouse sink must be very old. It has a large wash basin and attached drainboard. This is probably where the pump for household water was, before an electric pump was installed in the cellar to get water from the dug well behind the house. I have an old well, lined with stones, about 13 feet deep. My most-used cookbooks are on the shelf above the sink.




Here's my funky kitchen storage; no cabinets, just shelving that was in the house when I bought it. It's not very pretty, but it works.




This cupboard is the great treasure that was left behind by the previous owners. It's a very old handmade piece and perfectly suited to the character of the house.




Here is a closer look at the paneling on the right wall, with the original rail and pegs that I use to hang some kitchen gear. I love this wall and the repetition of shapes hanging on it; its simplicity makes up for the chaos of the shelving across the room.




Each summer I dry some herbs from the garden and hang them in the kitchen to use over the winter: thyme, sage, two kinds of mint, and oregano. The old spoon, which I found among stuff left in the shed, is there because I like its shape and color; it adds a touch of additional beauty to a still life of dried herbs with circles of pot and bowl.

A Question of Size: Frank Stellas's "Irregular Polygons"

Frank Stella, Union I, 1966; fluorescent alkyd and epoxy paints on canvas;
102 3/4 x 174 x 4 in.

Last week, when I went down to the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College to see the exhibition of Native American ledger drawings, which I wrote about here, I was also looking forward to seeing the exhibition of a group of Stella paintings from the mid 60s titled Irregular Polygons. They are a group of 11 shaped compositions, each one in 4 color variations, and each named after a town in New Hampshire. The exhibition brings together one of each composition in the series. From what I could see of the works online, they were going to be great inspiration for my hooked rugs, ripe for idea-stealing for shaped textiles.

When I stood in front of the actual paintings, I have to admit that I was shocked (the internet is a great blessing, but images reproduced online can be very deceptive). They were enormous, squeezing each other and pushing up to the ceiling and down to the floor. That interesting, vibrant image above is nearly fifteen feet across! I don't have a problem in general with very large work––I've never felt that a Jackson Pollock or a Barnett Newman was too large; being inside a Richard Serra sculpture is a powerful experience––but these paintings just seemed much too large for their concept, aggressively so. I could have enjoyed them at six to eight feet.

This feeling was heightened by looking at the working drawings, which I quite liked. With this drawing, you can see Stella's playing with color, seeing how switching value relationships affects the space. The square seems to act as a more dominant positive shape in blue than it does in yellow, which alludes to an opening.




There were several sheets of small sketches, of varying shape and color. One thing I find interesting is that in the sketches, Stella uses diagonal lines in corners to imply depth, which he abandons in the final paintings.

So the question becomes: what size is right for a particular work of art? Can a work be too small, perhaps the sculptures that Giacometti used to carry around in a matchbox? If it seems too large is it because it appears made for a corporate market, so we feel a bit suspicious? (These Stellas might look a lot better in a gigantic space.) How do we know that it is "just right"? I'm an artist who has worked quite large, up to ten feet across, and now very small, each for different reasons. I hope that my choices make sense, and I'm sure those readers who are artists hope the same.

Delicate Drawings on Snow

When, as now, there is a thin layer of snow on the ground, bits and pieces of ground cover rise above it, creating patterns, spare and refined, dark against light. I found myself fascinated by the range of expression of tiny elements as I looked down during my walk. Individual blades of grass become like dancers flowing across a lit stage, bending softly in different directions.




A single stalk of weed bows in a line that curves and then doubles back, topped by a little seed head, animating a patch of textured white.




I love the mystery of this image; a simple curled leaf, partially buried, becomes a heart of mystery.




There are many conversations and interesting relations on the snow's surface, here a teeny warm-colored seed and twig seem to be yearning toward each other.




The dried leafy weed arches energetically in counterpoint to the three pine needles straight and tall.



Lastly, another single stem, so different in character from the graceful one above, its little spikes spreading out in whorls from the main stem, a dark jagged line contrasting with sparkle.

As I photographed, I felt as though I could find hundreds of these minimalist images, each one exploring a different kind of line, of proportion, of tension, of composition. I enjoyed looking closely at things hardly at all there, bringing a quality of attention to them that makes them grand even in their modesty.

Picturing Winter

Eishosai Choki, Snow, ca, 1794; color woodcut; 14 3/4 x 9 3/4 in.

We have the first glimmers of thin sun today after several days of blowing snow flurries; the temperatures are cold, the ground is white, the cats are staying indoors. Winter is really and truly here, and aside from not particularly enjoying day upon day of low gray light, the quiet and inwardness of winter is a pleasure for me, a time for reflection and reading and working. I happily spend days on end in my cozy house, not going down off my hill.

So I thought I'd put together a few images that artists have made of winter, showing its varied aspects. I got the idea to do this from Facebook, where many artists post albums of related works. The Japanese woodcut shows a lovely side of winter, with large snowflakes dancing down, and curves of snow-covered parasol and white hat create a lilting rhythm.

Vilhelm Hammershoi, Winter Landscape, 1895-96; 32 3/4 x 25 1/2 in.

Hammershoi was a Danish artist whose work is spare and restrained, with color that is almost not there. In the gentle interlacing of bare branches he creates a sense of light caught in trees, as they become alive and graceful.

Edvard Munch, White Night, 1901; oil on canvas; 45 1/2 x 43 3/4 in.

The far northern white nights of mid-winter provide an ecstatic view of landscape, with swirling strokes of paint in sky and trees. The drama of dark trees makes the bright light of snowy expanse and sky even more brilliant.

John Sloan, Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914; oil on canvas; 26 x 32 in.

Sloan reminds us of the fun of childhood snows: snowmen and sledding and snowball fights. This is a delightful view of early New York, when laundry was still hung outdoors, as it was in my childhood in Brooklyn.

Giorgio Morandi, Landscape, 1944; oil on canvas; 12 x 21 in.

This landscape was made during the war, and seems to reflect a gray, sad feeling. The light is heavy and dim, the snow gray and worn, the sky leaden. What a different view of winter from the image above it! We all have different feelings about the coming dark days, and it seems that it's been ever thus through the ages.

A New Painting: "Triangle and Cylinder"

Triangle and Cylinder, egg tempera on parchment, 4 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches.

Sometimes I think that certain painting have impish qualities, deliberately trying to trip you up just when you thought everything was going so well. This was one of those; the first day's work went so well that I thought I had only another hour or so to finish it the next day. Well, two days and 7 or 8 working hours later, including wiping off the cylinder down to the parchment––twice!––it is done. It's a fairly dramatic image with saturated color, light and dark, flat and round, the geometry fixed by the small dark "eye" under the triangle's peak.

Native American Ledger Drawings

Howling Wolf, Southern Tsistsistas (Cheyenne), ca. 1874-75; ink and watercolor on wove blue-lined notebook paper.

A few days ago I went down to the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College to see a beautiful show of a recently acquired collection of Native American ledger drawings. I had first seen a show of these works at the Drawing Center in NYC in 1996, and was very excited by them then. I love their simple form and strong sense of fluid line, their color, and marvelous design sense. In this they remind me of Persian and Indian miniatures, though not as refined.

These drawings grew out of traditional painting on hide by Plains tribes; in the upheaval and horrors in the lives of Native Americans in the late 19th century, ledger books and drawing tools such as pencil and ink replaced traditional materials. Some of the subject matter remained the same, as in the self portrait of the warrior Howling Wolf, above, being victorious in battle.

Ohettoint, Gaigwa (Kiowa), 1875-77; graphite and colored pencil on wove unlined notebook paper.

In 1874-75, many tribal leaders were rounded up after the Buffalo War and sent to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, Florida, where many of the prisoners became active artists. In the drawing above, Ohettoint shows a fanciful locomotive (though with what looks like a prone figure) that he probably rode on his way to prison.

Unknown Southern Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) artist; page #105, from the Old White Woman ledger, ca, 1880-90; graphite and colored pencil on wove ledger paper.


The rows of draped onlookers at a Sun Dance ceremony create an engaging pattern of color and shape. Forgive my wandering mind, but I couldn't help thinking of burkas, and the simple drawing of figures in the film Persepolis, about a young girl's life in Iran.

Frank Henderson, Inunaina (Arapaho), ca. 1875-78; page #92 from the Vincent Price ledger; graphite and colored pencil on laid ledger paper.

These beautifully observed horses, shot in battle, gracefully reel from their wounds, caught in a moment of galloping forward.

Unknown Southern Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) artist, ca. 1880-90; graphite, colored pencil and watercolor on wove ledger paper.

A man, just initiated into the Bowstring Society, brings gifts to the high-ranking members. The array of animal skins, feathers, rifles, one thing piled on another, are in balance with the emptier side of the page, with just two objects (which I can't figure out) above the horse. There's something musical about this variation on the page.

Unknown Brule Lakota (Sioux) artist, ca. 1870; ink colored pencil and ink wash on wove unlined notebook paper.

This drawing of a warrior raiding two horses is one of the most stunning images in the show. There is a drama of black against yellow on the horse, with the black of the rider heightening the effect, powerfully set against the paler outlines of the horses attempting to flee, their hoofprints flowing behind them. The warrior is angular, the repeating curves of the horses necks are rhythmic and elegant. That such marvelous art came out of the tragedy of the lives of our native peoples is a wonder; we are lucky to be able to see it.

My Old House: The Kitchen

When you walk into the main part of my house from the mudroom, you enter the room that I think of as its heart, the kitchen/dining room. Here is where I cook my meals (the prep is done in the pantry, which I'll show in the next post) and eat them, where I sit with my cup of tea or coffee, reading. I don't know if I spend more hours here, in that gray chair, than I do at my desk or in my studio/tv room, but it feels as if I do. I had mentioned in a comment on the mudroom that it was the spiffiest room in the house, and here you can see the old painted fake wood paneling on walls, the composite ceiling, the almost-ancient linoleum tiles on the floor. But it has its charm and I love it.

Where you see the gas range is a large alcove where there used to be a huge chimney with 3 fireplaces––for kitchen, living room and back room––that heated the house in years past. Now the woodstove, which I wrote about here, sends its smoke up a new chimney.




Turning toward the right, you can see my drop leaf dining table, with another between the two front windows. You'll notice that I don't have any matching chairs in the house; I bought them one by one in the days when you could get nice old wooden chairs for 5 or 10 dollars. I'd like to point out the wainscoting under the windows: it runs across the entire room, which is about 13 feet wide, and is 2 feet high, all one board! The wonderful thing about this house is that very little had been done to it, so all the original woodwork, hand planed, probably from first growth forest, is still here. I spent several years stripping the woodwork (using non-toxic stripper) throughout the house of generations of paint. What remains is a mottled array of color.

On the right, the artwork is firstly one of my hooked ruglets, then a painting by Tom Leddy, with two paintings by G. Roy Levin under that.




This next view shows the old hutch which I had bought while still living in New York City; it works perfectly in this house. The refrigerator is on the west facing wall alongside the door to the mudroom. This kitchen arrangement, with the stove on one side of the room, the fridge on the other, and the sink in the pantry, is not the most efficient, but I'm certainly used to it.

Artwork seen here to the right of the window: Leonard Dufresne, Gwen Fabricant, the shoes by Susan Jane Walp, then the small abstraction by Jim Long, G. Roy Levin's painted clothespins, and along the railing, cows by Helen Rabin. To the right of the hutch are some of my works, a small sculpted Sacred Heart by a student at LSU, where I taught some years ago, and a tiny cityscape by Dag Fyri.




As winter approaches and the sun lowers in the sky, light enters further into the room. The house faces south, so I receive some passive solar heating on nice days.




An old ladder back chair is usually my clothes tree for sweaters worn around the house, as it's a bit too fragile to use often for seating.






Here are two still life arrangements, of pottery on the hutch, and metal objects atop the woodstove, punctuated by a digital kitchen timer, which I cannot do without.



I wanted to show this picture of the door to the mudroom because of the history in its surface, evidence of the past that I find very touching. There are deep vertical grooves in the wood one or two feet above the floor, which must have been made by a dog, or generations of dogs, scratching at the door to get out.

And below are two details of the variegated colors showing on the woodwork, remnants of different layers of paint laid down over nearly 200 years, with dark red as the base color. The details make beautiful little abstract paintings, enlivening my funky little house.

A New Rug Hooking Project in Progress: "Three Red Circles"

I'm back to a shaped piece with this work, with overlapping circles mounted on a rectangle. I thought it would be interesting to use a different color range than my mostly usual, and go with dark colors, the "pedestal" being close to black. The subject could be fairly buoyant (the bouncing balls of Betty Boop?) and the dark colors might push against that, making the piece more complex.




The dyeing session for this work did not go easily at all. What you see above are the final colors, but it took a while to get there. For the blacks, I started with a color called "Silver Gray", which looked great in my swatch book, but when I dyed the wool, it came out close to violet; I guess the color had an undertone of red. So the wool went back into the dye pot with black and a warm brown, and that fixed the color. Then to the reds: the darkest red was at first too light, so needed to be redyed. I added some yellow to the lightest red to create a cool to warm color movement, but then the middle red looked too cool, so back in the pot to add some yellow to that too, at which point the balance of colors looked right.




Here's the full sized drawing, which is around 11 x 14 inches. For the circles, I run around the house looking for bowls, pots, or other objects, such as rolls of tape, to find just the right size to use as a template. Above are embroidery hoop, bowl, bowl.




And there's the piece just begun, with the black portion to be hooked vertically, as if holding up the circles, which will be concentrically hooked to their centers. When I look at the sketch above, the circles look like heads in a crowd; I wonder what imagery will pop up when I finish this.

A Walk in the Woods: Old Walls and Foundations

The woods around me were once the cleared fields and pastures of small homesteads, the evidence of their presence remaining amid the trees. It's almost heartbreaking to think of all the work those early farmers did to clear the land, now grown over, using only their own strength and that of animals. I come across several cellar holes on my walks, with foundations built of stones fit together, similar to the one in my house which was built in 1821.




These remnants of structures are hidden among trees that have grown up around and in them, but they remain, in some cases still straight and true. I try to imagine the houses rising above the foundations, but it is difficult as they are so small. A couple of them show a clear shape of one rectangle moving into another on a 90 degree different axis. If anyone knows how this translated into a building, please let us know.




This foundation wall has much larger stones, and they've begun to collapse. It is the closest homestead to my house, a mere 1/2 mile or so; they had been neighbors to my house's residents. As in the first image, a later owner built on the land, but higher up, so as to have a better view, while the original dwellers wanted to be close to the road.




And the old road still exists as a snowmobile trail, lined with a wall built of stones likely dug while clearing the fields. I love the way the huge piece of granite is piled with smaller rocks, which are topped with green moss; there's something very portrait-like about the arrangement, as though the rocks were living beings.




Other old walls wend their way among trees throughout the woods, with no remnant of road or building. They are the traces of the edges of fields, and where they are, we know that there was once a farm. In this part of Vermont, hilly, bony (meaning lots of rocks), and with thin soil, farming turned out not to be a very easy pursuit. So now others––artists and teachers and computer programmers––live on these hills, and are reminded of those who came before by the stones in the woods.

A New Painting: "Crossed Green"

Crossed Green, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 4 3/4 x 6 1/2 inches.

This was a difficult painting to balance; too much detail and the painting looks fussy and the form flattens, not enough and it becomes unconvincing; as with the previous painting, Composition in Red and Yellow I had to figure out the right level of precision. It took a long time to get the curves and twists so that they looked easy and didn't call attention to themselves. I'm fairly happy with the result (though I now see, through this photo, some fixes I need to make to the flow of top and bottom lines on the left): a strong cross of green shapes, flat and round, over the curved black of twisted cable.

Traceries of Ice and Snow

Winter has made a definitive appearance, with a dusting of snow and a layer of ice coating branches, sparking in the thin sun that appeared briefly this morning. The honeysuckle by the front door is dripping with icicles, and branches are held in jeweled cases.




Somehow, a few flowers have held on through the bitter frosts of recent days and are now glittering; the warmth of the south facing wall must have kept them alive.




Glistening on the nannyberry shrub, icy caps on seeds (?) looking like bird heads, ready to take flight.




The snow also makes patterns on grasses, a welter of expressive marks, here backed by the upright reds of red osier dogwood alongside the pond.




The soft texture of the snow on the frozen pond is a background for the lines of dried cattail stems and leaves, the upright, and the curve resting on the surface.




And lastly, a view of the kale plants after the deer have been in the garden to feast. On Wednesday I dug up the remaining brussels sprouts, picked a huge bunch of kale, and took down the electric fence. It took the deer until Thursday night to realize that they were invited in to finish off the crops, but then they had a nice Thanksgiving dinner.