A Green and Rainy Glade

It's finally raining, which is good for the garden and good for me, as I'm forced to be back indoors and catching up with indoor things--emails, blogs, bookkeeping, housework, and maybe even some reading. Ordered a couple of guides to surviving as an artist, don't know if they are worth it yet. In the midst of working in the garden I also made an assemblage, another bunny, this time an Art Bunny, and it is sitting on the front porch by the sign for the gallery. For some reason I had saved the big fat round brushes I'd used in college, and one of them is too stiff to rescue. The "bunny" is now "wielding" it in one paw, and holding a large ancient tube of Liquitex Titanium White in the other.

The arbor over the deck is now finished, and the lattice panels on the top are in place. I'm learning to tread that balance between under-activity and over-activity. Painting lattice is something I always used to do by hand, very precisely and wasting little paint. But this time I accepted even before starting that neither my hand nor my back--nor my schedule--would be happy this way, and thus I spread several old painting tarps over the back yard, lay the five 2 x 8 lattice panels on the tarps, and whitewashed them with a long-handled roller brush, as I would a floor. And just one good coat. And on just one side, the side you see when you're sitting in the arbor. If I feel like it, I'll do the "roof" side next spring. So for once I've come out of a project intact and still doing art and not crippling myself in the process. And it looks just fine. Yes, one could quibble over the details, but I have no more room in my life for quibbling. It's more important to get on with the essence of things. Easing up and allowing imperfections is friendlier, as long as they are doing no harm, of course. I think the trendy term for it from a few years ago was Wabi Sabi, although I don't recall how it translates.

Anyway, in the middle of all of this I sold one of my conceptual assemblages, the "War Piece." It was a thrill, of course, as it was one of my serious pieces as opposed to a fun/funky one. It's gone to a good home, the office of a grant writer who is also an antiwar activist. Another important development is Steve taking up on my recent idea to have an Online Shop for both ourselves and the gallery. He has been setting up one for one of his clients, and it occurred to me that if he did one for us, he could use it as part of his web design portfolio. The more we brainstormed it, the more we liked the idea and the idea of bringing on board some of the artists we are happiest working with. We will also carry some high-end crafts on it, more than we would in the gallery itself, things suitable for a shop. We've taken the plunge and signed on with a secure server for a year, at the cost of $250. We've already got a merchant service setup for credit cards, so the extra $20 per month to hopefully increase sales and commissions seems like a good idea.

While making the bunny for the front porch I realized that I'm actually beginning to run out of "junque" for my assemblages. So I've put out word among friends at the coffee shop that I'm willing to take some of their broken and discarded bits of miscellany, especially the smaller things. I'm going to be making several smaller funky assemblages for the Art Fair, in the under $100 range. Serious art doesn't do as well as the funky in this art fair, and that's fine by me. I really enjoy making these things and they are still very much identifiably my style. My friend Alice is retiring from her stained glass business and is in the process of moving things out of the shop. She gave me a small box of wonderful brass and copper bits, including antique doorplates and also a deep orange glass ball. They were things she was saving for herself, but she doesn't think she will ever have the time to do anything with them. It's bittersweet, in a way. She's been fighting breast cancer for several years now.

Since the last post the ravine has gone from bare to completely green. In the rainy light it looks magical as opposed to gloomy, as if the new green leaves hold a slight phosphorescent quality. It is supposed to get to nearly freezing tonight, then warm up again, providing some pleasant weather for working on the assemblages. But today is today, and now I must do today's things.

The Genius Loci, Step 2

This is the day after Easter, and in the past ten days we have had fabulous weather, inspiring not only my own expected urges to work in the garden, but Steve's as well. The model home developers had a pile of leftover lightly-used lumber, and told us to take as much as we wanted. So we did and thus we came into possession of several 16', 12', 10', and 8' boards of various dimensions, both treated and cedar. My mind immediately went to "ARBORS!" and Steve, who pays attention more than most men, also thought along those lines, knowing that I've wanted an arbor over the deck for many years.

He has been losing weight steadily, and has been going on almost-daily five-mile vigorous walks up and down the dunes along the lake. The weather was so nice and it made him feel even better to be working outside, so we put up the arbor over the deck, and made a smaller one for the end of the path to the mailbox. He also took it on himself to wash the front of the house, which was still grubby from the dust from our neighbor's earth-moving project last year. He is currently working on refashioning the sections of lattice screening that used to be on the deck into a screen for the trash and recycling bins, which have been moved from one side of the property to the other. The bins have been next to the office and gallery entry, which just isn't professional, and he is very happy to have them out of there.

I fixed dinner for my parents and Nick and Amy yesterday, and everything tasted good in spite of some scheduling screw-ups on my part. I made a ham, our first in months and months, and made scalloped potatoes in the new slow cooker. Mom brought a big vanilla pudding for dessert, which made such a nice light change from the usual pie. The conversation was lively the whole time, and we got some more details about the plans for the wedding. Everyone left by 3 p.m., and we were able to sit together and watch the first two episodes of "Tales of the City" on dvd, a program that Steve and our friends said I would really like, but which I hadn't seen before. They were right.

Today is an art day, and I plan to make one of my garden sculptures. There were several 4 x 4 pieces in the aforementioned lumber pile, and I'm going to make several small and medium-size pieces for the Art Fair. This first one, though, will be fairly large, as it is going to go on the front porch where the rocking chair used to be (the rocker is now on the main deck under the arbor, with the rest of the deck chairs).

This, finally, gets to the part about the genius loci. The spirit of the place is working through us both, and the results have been immediately evident, and completely positive. It's also drawing people here like a magnet, and on several occasions (already!) there have been groups of people spontaneously gathered under the arbor sipping coffee and debating current politics. And I'm talking about businessmen, not slackers or hippies or eccentrics. Imagine that--businessmen spontaneously gathered under an arbor in a cottage garden and feeling completely at ease. Something is Afoot!

Post-Opening Exhaustion

The past 2 1/2 weeks have been dedicated to--no, I take that back, they were consumed by preparations for the gallery's Spring Show opening reception this past Saturday. It was a very successful show in the sense that I did a good job with the hanging, Steve and I got through it without fighting, Jack and Paul and their friend Tom did a knockout job with the food and flowers, we had an excellent turnout in spite of other popular events going on in the area at the same time, and we sold over 20 pieces of art. The downside is that we are both exhausted, I can barely walk or hold my coffee cup, and we have a profit of $7.58. But it is over with and we don't have another one scheduled until October 28th, which is a relief beyond words.

The exhaustion was not strictly caused by the gallery prep but by the additional activities we took on--replacing the old cheap vinyl miniblinds with heavy plantation blinds in the gallery and the "library" and lavatory, moving a heavy armoire out of the dining room and up the stair to the dressing room, bringing up my gardening books from storage in the basement to the library, and then, to top it off, hanging a large number of works in the show in a $550,000 model home in time for it to be photographed for a national publication, then taking them down and putting them back up in time for our opening reception. Today they need to go back to the model home for the next several months. It's good advertising, good public relations, but boy we are pooped. In between all of this we have had to write a lot of new copy for press releases, general information, design fliers and posters and print them, and at the moment I am between coffees as I try to clear the mental fog enough to write the price list for the paintings going back to the model home. It's not something I want to make a mistake with.

Nick and Amy have decided to go ahead and get married this summer, and have picked August 4th for the date. Thank god we decided to not have so many opening receptions any more. As it is, their wedding is only three weeks after the Art Fair. But we are scaling back our personal involvement in the art fair this summer, bringing only half as much as in previous years and lining up a lot more physical help, so that should keep things a little less overwhelming. Of course thinking about all of it at this moment when I am wiped out from the past half month is bound to make things look more challenging than they will actually be when the time comes. You can tell from that last sentence that I am already trying to implement Mind Over Matter techniques.

I did get a couple of hours in the front garden during one warm afternoon, clearing out the decomposed stalks and leaves that had blown in from other yards, and was encouraged to see so many of my transplants coming back to life in their new home. I don't think I have ever looked forward to spring as much as I have this year. All I want to do is be quiet and garden and paint and feel the sun in my face.

But obligations call and before I do anything more I must get that list written up for the model home artwork. More coffee!