fbpx

Year: 2013

Posted on

The perils of open source publishing

I think this is the best photo I took in the entire photo essay, but you be the judge.
See the whole photo-essay HERE.
A few months ago, Carolyn Mrazek asked me what my obsession was with East Avenue Wegmans’ construction project. “It’s a work of art,” I replied, “as important as anything I’ve painted. And, besides, the construction workers are cute.”
Wegmansis a phenom in Rochester, something that isn’t necessary fathomable if you don’t live here. This is its hometown, it’s a family-owned company, and it’s been on Fortune’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list since the list was started. But beyond that, it’s a first-hand, constant experience in the lives of Rochesterians. To “go to Wegmans” is a universal act we all participate in and understand, even if it isn’t our first choice of grocery stores.
Gone forever… an improvement or a loss?
This was a private-enterprise project; we see so few of them in New York these days. Over time, I realized that the contractors were consummate professionals. Their workflow was a joy to watch, and they were fanatically neat. (I wish I’d taken photographs of the times I saw their workers sweeping up after themselves.)  Read the comments by my friends comparing this to the public-works projects in their neighborhoods. It will give you pause.
Living a mile from the East Avenue store, I’ve long been in the habit of walking to it daily to shop. This photo essay started as a casual, personal project—I took photos and posted them on Facebook for the amusement of my friends.  Over time, it hardened into a specific project with a documentary goal.
Moving the pharmacy to its temporary location. I shot this with my cell phone,
through my windshield, on my way home from Maine.
Oddly enough, I don’t have any photos of the first buildings to be torn down for the project: the M&T bank branch and a parking garage behind it. I remember messaging my friend Ron that it was cool and he should photograph it; I remember commenting to my husband at one point that it looked like Christo was in town (when the bank was wrapped in plastic for asbestos abatement), but I don’t have a single photo of it. A pity, because that bank never looked better than as a skeleton.
Certain ground rules applied: I couldn’t make my husband late for work; I couldn’t trespass on Wegmans’ property. This project obviously lacks a studied artfulness, because that was never my goal. But it makes up in breadth for that, since I took photos five days a week for the better part of two years.
Probably asbestos abatement but who really knows?
Of the thousands of shots I took, I saved fewer than 300. I travel quite a bit, so there were periods when I took no photos. And there were periods when they seemed to be doing nothing much, and I didn’t feel like taking pictures. But overall, this is as complete a record as you could want.
Imagine my surprise to find that many of my earliest pictures are missing from my Facebook album. Either I lost them because I wasn’t thinking in terms of a photo essay, or they’ve been deleted. There’s never been any guarantee from Facebook that it would provide a ‘safe’ repository for art, and of course there’s no such guarantee from Google, either. But here we are in the Brave New World of open source art: I can’t be bothered to print and show these photos in a traditional gallery, or publish them in a book. So I will use social media to disseminate them and see what happens.
One of my earliest photos, and a favorite. Nature will never be totally suppressed.
The process of moving these pictures to Google created problems I never anticipated. Because the photos were shot with three different pocket cameras and two cell phones over two years, Google couldn’t reconstruct a date order that matched the original. I had to meticulously reconstruct it, using the original FB album as a guide. (Anyone who thinks the life of an artist is glamorous should spend three days assembling a folio on a laptop; I may never walk again.)
I meticulously copied the captions and comments from the individual photos, but of course can’t copy all the comments made elsewhere—and on Facebook, as with blogs, comments happen in weird places. I also added photos back into the original photo essay. The Facebook album was a day-by-day experience, and I think of this as more of an exhaustive memoir.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been so obsessed if
they hadn’t constantly messed with my sidewalks.
There is actually a small amount of work left to be done on the store since I said, “It is finished.” Just as I didn’t document tearing down the M&T branch building, I’m ignoring the finishing touches on the wine bar. To me it is enough that it is open and I can shop there again.
A note about their new logo—it is the third one I can recall. The original one on the old store was designed by Janice Corea, RIT graduate and graphic designer. I always loved it, and I think devotees of mid-century modern will appreciate it in coming years. But the new one is equally lovely. Graphic design is by its nature fashionable and fleeting. Just imagine someone looking at these photos of the Grand Opening in 40 years—will it all seem quaint to them?
Wegmans is a phenom in Rochester.

August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here or here for more information.

Posted on

Finding what you’re not looking for

An old bridge abutment at Bushnell’s Basin… where “moth and rust” have already destroyed man’s handiwork.

Today was my second day walking along the Erie Canal in search of painting sites. It wasn’t as pleasant as yesterday; it was hotter and muggier. Other than the bridge abutment at Bushnell’s Basin (which I’ve painted before), the stretch I chose had little shade and almost no notable features. I turned around and headed home thirsty and rather tapped out.

Rust along an expansion joint on I-490 bridge over Erie Canal at Pittsford. Yikes!
 Unlike the rocks and sky, iron structures are not impervious to time. I’m obviously not an engineer, but I do know that rust is the great leveler here in the northeast, so we dutiful homeowners make a point of keeping our paintwork up. One hopes that our government does the same thing, of course.
It looks poetic as hell, but that’s not what I’m looking for in a bridge I drive on almost daily.
This bridge carries I-490 across the Erie Canal. I’ve walked under a lot of bridges along the Erie Canal—including bridges that are now lost forever in memory—and this is the worst-looking one I’ve ever seen. Yet I-490 is probably the most-traveled road in the Rochester metropolitan area.

Another view of corrosion on the underside of the bridge.
So this isn’t an artistic question, but a practical one: my skills are limited to observing and describing the world. I’ve no idea how one goes about fixing it, but I sure hope someone out there does. Any suggestions?
OK, he’s cute and paintable, but kind of far away from the canal bank.
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
Posted on

If every plant has a toxic relative, why wouldn’t that be true for people as well?

I’ve painted the Erie Canal all over the place (this one time in Gasport, NY). How much more can it teach me, right?

The plein airinstructor has a lot more to do than simply show up and coax brilliance out of her students. She must first reconnoiter: is there a way to get equipment from a staging area to the painting site? Are there bathrooms? Even better, can you get a cup of coffee anywhere nearby?
I aim to know where every
Porta-Potty in the Northeast
is before I’m through.
It also behooves the plein air teacher to have a comprehensive knowledge of plants and trees. Not only does it help figure out when a painting site will be at its best, but it can also help avoid a disastrous encounter with, say, poison ivy.
My friend Mary has been urging me to explore the canal between Schoen Place and the Great Embankment in Pittsford. I’ve painted frequently in both places and many others on the canal besides. What could this little strip of land have that I haven’t already seen?
I found a lovely red barn against which was growing one of my favorite springtime plants, Greater Celandine (chelidonium), which is remarkable both for its lovely yellow flowers and for its many pharmacological and herbal uses. The Celandine will survive a week of rain and be there next week. But what is that lurking next to it? Not a Queen Anne’s Lace, but its toxic and invasive Giant Hogweedcousin, which causes nasty contact dermatitis.
A Giant Hogweed unfurling its leaves in the middle of a view I admire. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
And just a little further down the path sits another noxious member of the carrot family: water hemlock. It has to be ingested to kill you, but it’s the most toxic plant growing in America and nearly a dead ringer for benign Queen Anne’s Lace.
And another Queen Anne’s Lace ringer, water hemlock. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
It happens so frequently in nature: deadly wolfsbane is in the same family as harmless little buttercups. Sumacs include poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, and a whole host of benign and lovely relatives.
In a lifetime of talking people through their problems, I’ve recently concluded that having a toxic person or two in a family isn’t the exception; it’s the rule. But it wasn’t until I was walking in the woods today that I realized that this is the way we’re designed. That isn’t a solution to the problems caused by toxic relatives, but I suppose it makes them easier to bear.
A thousand greens, our canal. (Photo courtesy of Mary Brzustowicz)
(And I must admit that the site Mary found, just east of Schoen Place, meets all my criteria and provides a unique view of the canal. Now to find a time to paint it, since it’s going to rain for the next three days.)
Whoa, Nellie! August and September are sold out at Lakewatch Manor.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.

Posted on

The old folks flit, the young fly home

Drawing by Kamillah Ramos, an architecture student at SUNY Buffalo
I’m always a bit shocked when my former students return from college, for every year they come home with more mature features and more adult demeanor. May is the month when seasoned students flit and youngsters fly home, at least for a little while.
The water is much clearer than last month. The train still barrels right over the falls, however.
On Saturday, I had several of them with me on the Pont de Rennes bridge. It was significantly warmer than when Carol Thiel and I painted there last month, and the water is far clearer now that we’ve passed the April freshets.
Teressa drawing. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
If I have a theme I harp on over and over it’s the power of drawing. Drawings aren’t precious; recognizing that gives us the freedom to take chances, to screw up. The fear of failing is the most debilitating thing in the artistic process, so there’s freedom in the common #2 pencil. Drawing first allows an artist to focus on observation, making the painting phase far more fluid.
It was windy again Saturday, hence the water-bottle counterweight. (Photo courtesy of Kamillah Ramos)
So it wasn’t exactly a surprise that most of my students were drawing. All that industrial architecture was crying out for a pencil. And I was blown away by how much my college-age kids’ drawing had matured, along with their faces and their demeanor.
Bella tried watercolor for the first time.
Moved almost to tears by their growth I was—until I noticed two of them spitting over the rail. “We’re studying aerodynamics,” they explained.
OK, maybe one more year…
And Kamillah herself.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
Any resemblance between these two is completely coincidental.

PS. This was in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle. It was our class in Highland Park two weeks ago:

Posted on

To each their own, within limits of course…

Look, Ma! No red! The red tones are made of quinacridone violet and  cadmium orange. (Finger Lakes marshes in autumn, 14X18, oil on canvasboard)

JG writes: What red do you like for plein air painting? Are there any substitutes for cadmium red that work as well but are cheaper?
Dear JG: I have pigments I like that others will find incomprehensible. That’s not just a question of personal taste; it is also a matter of where you live and the colors of the rocks, the soil, the foliage and the light.
I stopped using cadmium red many years ago because I could never use it up before the tubes hardened. It seems like a pricey paint to use as a modulator for greens. Where I live, there are few naturally-occurring true reds, even in the headiest autumn days, and cadmium red always seemed to obtrude unnecessarily. For a time I substituted naphthol red. It’s cheaper, tends to harden in the tube less quickly, and is less chalky when mixed with white. However, it tends (like cadmium red) to make muddy violets.
A few years ago, I stopped using red completely, and now I mix a combination of quinacridone violet and cadmium orange as an approximate substitute for red in the landscape. (I still use cadmium red for figure painting.) That gives me the weight of cadmium red, but it’s slightly less glaring, and the quinacridone violet permits me to mix to the blue-violet side without muddiness.
And while we’re on the subject, there are no greens in this painting, either.  (Catskill waterfall, 11X14, oil on canvas)
CB writes: I bought a paint labeled “Cerulean Blue Hue” that was a lot cheaper than the Cerulean Blue. What’s the difference?
Dear CB: A paint that is called a “hue,” such as “cadmium red hue,” is made of a blend of less-expensive pigments. There is nothing inherently wrong with these pigments, but they don’t behave the same as the more expensive ones, and you should at least know what you’re buying.
Every tube of paint made by a reputable manufacturer has a Color Index Name in really tiny type. This—rather than the seductive and often romanticized paint name—is what you should pay attention to. It’s a simple code, and no chemistry knowledge is necessary.
The vast majority of paints start with the letter P, which means it’s a pigment. Following that is a letter that indicates the basic hue family: R for red, O for orange, Y for yellow, G for green, B for blue, V for violet, Br for brown, W for white, Bk for black. Then there’s a number referring to the specific pigment itself. This is the best chart I know for paint pigments; it was designed for watercolor, but the pigment characteristics are the same through all media.
Generally speaking, there’s little to be gained by buying a hue mimicking a more expensive pigment. If you are comfortable painting with Cerulean Blue’s proximate, then it behooves you to learn what’s in it and mix it yourself, since you always have the greatest flexibility by working with pure pigments (rather than mixes) out of the tube.
If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
Posted on

Painting at the Lilac Festival with my young friends

Lilac Festival, Highland Park, 11X14, oil on canvas, by little ol’ me.

My Jewish neighbors are celebrating Shavuot, which commemorates the day God gave the Torah to the nation of Israel. We Christians will observe Pentecostthis coming Sunday, when we will commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. The two holidays are closely related, and they are both based on the idea of gifts from God.

We are often so quick to throw away God’s blessings. A friend told me that she was advised to stop eating tomatoes for health reasons. “But Galicia has the best tomatoes in the world,” she said. “I can’t not eat them. It would be a sin.”
Sam spent most of his time talking to curious passers-by.
For some unfathomable reason, the human animal loves making rules by which he denies himself pleasure. The first and deepest of these revolve around food. Whether we are talking about the dietary restrictions of religion or the modern rules guiding the “worried well,” the end result is the same: self-denial that purports to make us better on physical, moral, or spiritual planes.
One of the “delicacies” of the Lilac Festival is deep-fried turkey legs. I will not embarrass the young person who actually attempted to eat one. I hope he survives.
Last Saturday, I made a tentative date to paint at the Lilac Festival today with Bella, Sam, and Jake. Today dawned with that delicate, airy beauty that is unique to spring in the Northeast. But I have a lot of non-painting work to do, and I felt torn—should I be “responsible,” or should I go paint with my young friends. But I realized that I couldn’t knowingly toss out this gift of a beautiful day, given me to enjoy by a God who loves me. And it was wonderful, and it was a joy, and an old geezer stopped by and told me a great joke:
 â€œWhat is difference between a professional artist and a Domino’s pizza?
“The pizza can feed a family of four.”
Bella struggling to keep her easel upright.
There are still spots open in our mid-coast Maine plein air workshops! Check here for more information.
Posted on

I’m honored to have been selected to participate in the 2013 Castine Plein Air Festival

The first year I did Rye’s Painters on Location, I painted a lovely, long, low sailboat from a spot overlooking Mamaroneck Harbor. Living as I do in the Great Lakes basin, I’ve drawn and painted boats frequently enough. What I had overlooked was the tide, which confused me with constant angle changes.
My last painting for Rye’s Painters on Location. Mamaroneck Harbor, 18X24, oil on canvas. 
Mercifully, the boat’s owner was among the bidders that night and I escaped with my pride intact. The last few years I painted in that event, I worked in the same harbor, but from floating docks. This was much easier from a drafting standpoint but tough on the legs after two days.
Penobscot view, February 2013. Not Castine proper but close enough. How much more beautiful this will be come summer!
Such are the vicissitudes of painting in a plein air event. You can think you understand the subject, but still be confused at the point when your brush hits the canvas.
Last February, I took my family on an odd little pilgrimage up Castine way, looking for the West Brooksville childhood home of one of my chums. It was unutterably beautiful in February; imagine how lovely it will be in July!
Off-roading in Holbrook Island Sanctuary State Park, in my little Prius. Take that, you 4-wheel-drive vehicles!
Every inch of the coast of Maine is simply beautiful. One would be hard-pressed to come up with a favorite stretch of rock-bound coastline. And even within particular regions, there are so many choices! What will I paint? My pal recommended Our Lady of Holy Hope on Perkins Street, or sunrise at the Tidal Pool, or the Main Square. Any other suggestions?
At any rate, come watch me paint in Castine on July 27, and be sure to say hi when you see me. Or take my Maine painting workshops in the Rockland area—once a month through the summer months (check herefor more info, or email me). 

Posted on

Paleo painting

Healthy and high in fiber: paleo painting! (By little ol’ me, of course.)

Frankly the paleo food movement seems a little arbitrary to me: vegetables and fruits are ducky; grains and legumes are not, even though all four exist both in the wild and in big agriculture. (I’d examine this more closely, but I’m afraid someone might actually attempt to explain it to me.)
My writer pal tells me that paleo cooking is huge right now, so in the interest of shameless self-promotion I’m founding a paleo painting movement. This is perhaps easier than paleo fashion (which might include anything prior to, say, 2006), or paleo cosmetics, which would require kohl (dangerous) and Spirits of Saturn (deadly).
So what would constitute paleo painting? Anything done on a cave wall would be fantastic but hard to transport, let alone duplicate on the inevitable umbrellas sold in museum gift shops. The earth pigments—ochre, sienna and umber—would be appropriate and useful, and they have the additional advantage of lightfastness. Ultramarine blue would be fine, too, as long as it was ground-up lapis lazuli and not a synthetic proximate.
Of course, we would have to dump the odorless mineral spirits (a petroleum product) and return to turpentine, which is a distillation of pine resin. And the only white we will have on our palette is lead white, since it’s been mined for thousands of years.
I decided to rehearse this today with the original paleo painting material: charcoal. It is harmless, cheap, and easy to find. However, I objected to peeling the decorative birches in my front yard to make paper, so used plain old newsprint.

I think I’m going back to modern pigments for field painting. If you’re interested in joining me for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.

Posted on

Ice Tsunamis? Seriously?

It is almost this cold in Rochester right now…

There has been a bitter wind blowing from the west for the last several days. It snow-squalled lightly in Western New York this weekend and it is flurrying in Saranac Laketoday. But at least we’re not experiencing ice tsunamislike those in Minnesota and Manitoba.
How does the plein airpainter facing a Little Ice Age (or floods, drought, hail, or locusts) prepare? I am a fan of the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph.
Another of my favorite things… the National Weather Service’s Hourly Weather Graph. It tells me everything I need to know.
Above I’ve posted a screenshot of this afternoon’s graph for my neck of the woods. The most pressing issue is that the temperature will rise and the wind will drop this week…not just for us outdoor painters, but also for the organizers of Rochester’s Lilac Festival. And it’s certainly useful to know that the rain is done for a while.
But I could get that information from the newspaper. What the graph gives me that I don’t find elsewhere is the Sky Coverage forecast. This evening and tomorrow evening, the cloud cover should diminish at dusk, giving us the potential for beautiful sunsets. I can set my schedule accordingly.
Of course, different parts of the graph will be more useful in different parts of the country. We’re seldom overheated up here in the far north, but if I were in Arizona, I’d care a great deal about the Heat Index.
This year, I’ve been watching the weather in two places: Rochester, NY and Rockland, ME. Maine tends to be warmer in winter and cooler in summer than we are here inland. Makes for good painting, so if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.
Posted on

That finely-tuned, whole-body drawing machine

Bella and Jake practice standing in counterpose.

Yesterday, I stepped up to Jake’s easel to demonstrate stealth gesture drawing. Our subject was Bella, who was deeply absorbed in drawing tiny redbud blossoms. Bella, who is athletic and graceful, was standing like a column in front of her easel, a perfect plumb-line from her head to her pressed-together high-tops. “How do you even do that?” I asked her. “I would fall over.”

What is perfect for gymnastics or dancing may not be perfect for drawing. Nobody would ever accuse me of perfect posture. Nevertheless, I work standing at an easel for hours at a time.
I pondered my own stance while drawing. My non-dominant (right) leg was bearing my weight. My left foot was turned so the outside of my toe-box was touching the ground. This provided a pivot point to control my position, allowing my spine to move in concert with my drawing arm. Not that I stand like this all the time, or that any two successful artists do it the same way, but a good drawing stance is dynamic.
The Peplos Kore, c 530 BC, was clearly drawing (ahem). She’s also standing in counterpose (contrapposto). Although she’s using her left hand, her weight is on her left leg. (Acropolis Museum, Athens)
“Bella,” I said, “try standing on one foot and see if it changes your drawing style.” The difference was significant. Her mark-making was immediately lighter and more controlled.

Jake didn’t just stand around in counterpose… he also drew this house.

We all know that painting while seated yields different results from painting while standing. (The former gives better control; the latter yields freer expression.) So it stands to reason that standing differently gives different results as well. The human body is a wonderful, finely-tuned machine. Change one parameter, and everything else adjusts to fit. 

(On that note, did you know there is not one but many arches to the foot, and they act as springs? Awesome design, that!)
We have a good time in the studio, on the street, and in the park.  And if you’re interested in joining us for a fantastic time in mid-Coast Maine this summer, check here for more information.