by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Life |
Saw a coyote outside the kitchen window this morning. No more than fifteen, twenty feet from the house. Beautiful fella. His dunn/gray coat blended in with the autumn dead grasses and bare trees of the forest where we live. I called my sister to come look. The window was closed but he heard me. He turned around and stared for a few seconds before running off.
They always stare face full on.
This time of year it’s not unusual to see them later in the morning, earlier in the evening. Outside of their normal hunting hours. Something to do with the longer periods of darkness.Today’s encounter at 10AM was a reminder to keep the Littles close at hand. I don’t want them to become anyone’s dinner.
Lot of action outside tonight. The hunt is on for someone. But I’m inside with the Littles. Bean is snuggled between my thigh and the arm of the comfy chair. The arm he chewed a hole in a few years back when he was a young Bean and didn’t know any better. Sophie is crashed up against Margie on the sofa. Margie is sitting there talking art. Right now she’s on Rothko. Talking about color fields. Before that she was looking through my encaustic books, talking wax.
This is a winding down time. The show is hung. Publicity wheels are spinning. Now it’s time to regroup. Clean the studio. Clean the house. Get some sleep. Eat healthy. Play. Enjoy ourselves.
Recharge.
And then paint some more.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Sisters |
Show hangs Monday. As I write this, that’s day after tomorrow. Although tomorrow is less than two hours away.
Oh. My.
There’s much to do still. Can’t begin to say what sister Margie has on her plate. Well, there’s some canvas stretching involved with the wrong size stretcher bars but…but…but that’s her thing, right? And she’ll figure it out. And if she doesn’t, friend Christina is lending a hand tomorrow. Hey and YAY!!! Christina! She’s a Virgo. And an artist. Which means she’s incredibly capable at doing things right.
Whereas I’m an Aquarian. Which means I drink lots of water, pee constantly and run around like a crazy chicken with ADD.
Mr. Spouse decided this would be a good weekend to go somewhere else. Far, far away. He’s hangin’ with da boyz in the mountains of Georgia, dangerously close to Alabama. Figured being with Sisters Lobb just before hanging a show would be akin to being the sacrificial male at a PMS festival. Safety lay three thousand miles and a whole damn continent away.
Smart move.
So here’s what Studio Grande looked like today. The following photos are taken in the kitchen of the cottage. I work in the two back rooms but this is where the heat is and these suckers need some encouragement when it comes to drying.
So that’s SOME of my work. The big pieces. Cold wax and oil. The encaustics are smaller, a few medium size, the rest 12×12 or smaller. I’ve got around thirty finished pieces. Finished except for wiring and touchup. Probably won’t use them all but it gives me stuff to choose from.
And hey, there’s a couple panels just begging for some wax. Aww geeze, whack me upside the head if I even THINK of starting something new, okay?
Now here’s a look at some of Margie’s work. Just some of it. She’s set up shop in Mama’s old bedroom because there’s not enough room for the two of us in my work area. Sounds like a line from an old western, “Sorry Pard’, ain’t ’nuff room for you ‘n me both in these parts. Now skee-daddle. Shoo.” But there isn’t. Really. So here it is, what you can see of it.
Hard to see what she’s got here but trust me, her work is spectacular. She’s amazing.
I can’t wait to see this all up and hanging. It’s going to be an awesome show!
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Process, Sisters |
She be here! Marjorie Ellen, chief tormentor of my youth, flew in from Norway yesterday. Today I drove down the hill and picked her up at the train station. The first thing we did, after the hugs and kisses, was hop back in the car and head to In-N-Out for a couple of burgers. I will NOT tell you how many burgers my skinny sister can pack away at one sitting. But I can tell you I am jealous–absolutely lime-green-with-envy-kind-of-JEALOUS of her metabolism.
After dinner we headed home. Home. The last time she was here was April, when Mama died. But the cottage isn’t Mama’s house anymore, it’s my studio again. A place where art happens. Smells like oil paint and beeswax. It’s messy with art supplies and cat hair and things of Mama’s that don’t know where else to be.
She started unpacking her stuff. It was like Christmas…bubble wrap, newsprint and ART! Gorgeous, glorious sister paintings. Etchings. Oh. My….. Photos tomorrow.
Meanwhile here’s a few photos of my own. Things I worked on today. This is new to me, COLD wax mixed with oil paint. I’m not experienced enough with hot wax yet to get where I wanted to go with the large panels, not with a show hanging on Monday. Actually I’ve got my fingers crossed that these will be dry by then.
Everyone, send some good dry mojo this way, okay? Thanks.
So this is what I did today.
Not this. (arrow pointing up) I did this last week, It’s the underpainting for (arrow pointing down).
This is after playtime with cold wax. It’s not the final photo, I straightened out the horizon but forgot to take the picture.
I’m REALLY liking the cold wax. Probably because it’s more in line with the way I paint. So it’s less of a learning curve for me.
Here’s another one. First, the underpainting, It’s 1’x3′ on plastered cradled board. Lots of fun with the texture here.
Starting the process. Just got to jump in and be bold.
And this is how it looks now.
Now it’s time to visit with Ms. Margie. YAY!
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Life |
Last night I got an email notification from twitter. New follower. New follower??? NEW FOLLOWER!!! Backflip time. Handsprings even. Because I’m new to twitter. Don’t have a lot of followers. Umm…let’s put it this way, between my fingers and toes I can count them all. And I may not need both feet. So a new follower is a BIG DEAL. Like the new phone book. Or the UPS truck with a box of pigment sticks.
A BIG deal. And hey, if you want to follow me I’m slporterpaints.
So I checked out this new follower. Went to her blog. Her name is Tracy. She’s a mixed media kindred spirit artist from Australia. AUSTRALIA? Yes, that place. The one where things are backwards and it’s spring right now. Imagine that…spring. Lucky lucky them. And that’s not to say Aussies are backwards–although I’m sure some of them are (as everywhere else). I’m just saying their seasons are confusing to me. Especially when I’m huddling in front of the wood stove and she’s taking pictures of all the new plants in her garden.
But back to Tracy. I like what she had to say.And all the links that I don’t have time to follow right now. I did follow one though, to her Facebook group, Magically Mixed Art Community. Which I promptly joined. Check it out. There’s over 1,500 members. I scrolled through a bunch of posts, commented on a couple and then jumped in and introduced myself.
I felt that at home.
And people welcomed me like I was a long lost friend. Imagine that–total strangers from all over the planet welcoming me into their midst. Fellow artists. Turns out I recognized a few names from the hot wax class.
Just as I recognized some names in the hot wax class from the plaster class last summer.
I was thinking about this today. Thinking that as my contacts are expanding, the world is shrinking. What does it matter if someone is halfway across the planet when we can communicate in real time on-line.
It’s a small, small world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKt_o6AflbI
by Susan Lobb Porter | Art, Life, Uncategorized |
I bought a couple of birdhouses tonight. Bright. Colorful. Perfect for the garden. Generations of birds will line up to call them home.
But not these birds. They’re too fancy to live in my garden. They just fly around once every year at the Miners’ Foundry, a repurposed foundry from the 1860s that’s now the cultural center here in Nevada City.
A better view. Looks like a party…and it was. A hundred artists and members of the community donated birdhouses (and other bird related art) to an auction to benefit the Neighborhood Center of the Arts. We’re in the process of building a new website but this will give you a general idea of who we are and what we do.
We do some pretty amazing stuff. I say ‘we’ because I’ve been teaching there for so long my feet have grown roots right through the floor. Must be why I’m still there after all these years.
Been there long enough to understand that it’s better to see people for their abilities rather than their disabilities.
And now…it’s been a long night. I’m off to bed.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Life |
Crossed paths with Mr. Coyote this evening. I was on my way up from the studio and, wonders never cease–I had my camera. So I took a couple of photos. You have to look closely to see him because he blends in.
This is going to be like Where’s Waldo? Hint: He’s on the right, in the grouping of three trees. About mid-level in the photo, staring at me face on. There’s a black dot that’s his nose. He’d been on a parallel path to me but stopped when I called out.
This one is a little easier to make out. Upper right, running off. If you’ve never seen a coyote before, they’re about the size of a mid-sized dog. They hunt in packs and have a distinct yip yip yip as they surround their prey. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been awakened in the dead of night by their killing chorus. The yips become a frenzy and then…silence. Total. Complete. SILENCE. And Mr. Bunny (or whomever) is no more.
We’ll hear them every night for weeks. Some nights more than once. Sometimes they sound like they’re right outside my window. Coming from a sound sleep to that racket kicks the adrenalin up. And then the dogs start barking. Because that’s what dogs do.
Really, who needs sleep?
Oh, right…I do.
After a couple of weeks the coyotes move on to fresh hunting and things quiet down. But they’ll be back. Weeks. Maybe a month, they’ll be back.
And looking at those photos I’d say it’s going to be noisy tonight.
