Category: workshop

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In search of the perfect easel

I can handle the Sun-Eden storage because it’s plastic and light. I hate carrying around wooden storage space just because someone else thinks it’s necessary.

Of course, there IS no perfect easel, but I do have a perfect palette, and I want an easel deserving of it

My current easel took its last gasp at ABVIā€™s ā€œPlay It Forwardā€ on Saturday. Itā€™s ironic that, after years of being hoisted over rocks, up hillsides, through snow and withering heat, it would succumb during an air-conditioned cocktail party. (Perhaps it was shock.)
My palette on the Sun-Eden.
I have painted with a French easel (which proved to be too heavy and awkward), a Gloucester easel (which is far too big and inflexible),a Guerrilla box (which is just too heavy to carry long distances but is solid as a rock in high winds), simple tripod easels of both wood and aluminum  (which have no shelves so necessitate bringing a table), and a beechwood folding tripod easel with adjustable head. The last has always been my favorite, except itā€™s relatively delicate and has finally succumbed to overuse.
My palette on the Featherlight Pro.
The best possible place to explore easel options is when youā€™re with a bunch of other serious artists, and NYPAPā€™s Statewide Paintout at Olana provided a great opportunity to look at two easelsā€”the Sun-Eden Traveling Easel and Featherlight Pro Easel. (And thanks again to Jamie Grossman and Bea Gustafson for giving me the highlights of their easels.)
Corinne Avery’s shelf solution. Very useful for watercolor, which is light. Not so good for oils.
I also came across thisand wonder if I ought to just buy it and the Plein Air Pro shelf to attach to my Slik camera tripod, which is a high-quality, underutilized piece of equipment.
In order of importance, what matters to me is:
  • Light weight (I want to be able to backpack my kit short distances when necessary);
  • Durability;
  • A stable shelf on which I can secure my palette;
  • An adjustable head that is separate from the body;
  • NO extra weight in built-in storage (thatā€™s what Tupperware is for);
  • A hook from which I can hang my backpack to stabilize the thing;
  • Reasonable price.

 So Iā€™m curious: what easel do you like and why?
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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Views and Duets

My painting for ABVI’s “Play It Forward.” I know how to defeat this painting for next time I’m asked, BTW.
When last I posted, I had just painted with my fellow NYPAP artists* at Olana, the home of Frederic Edwin Church. This event, spearheaded by Marilyn Fairman, is in honor of NYPAPā€™s founder, Ted Beardsley, who was the driving force who brought painters from all corners of our state together.
Last year, I left in the late afternoon, since I had to drive back to Rochester. I remember thinking, ā€œItā€™s nice and Iā€™ll come again, but I am not in love with the views.ā€ (My feelings about grandiose historic homes are generally mildly negative; I mostly thank God I donā€™t have to maintain them.)

The Catskills are just so beautiful!
 This year, I was near the house as evening approached and I suddenly understood the magic of Olana: it is organized around the evening sky. The colors Church caught in his Cotopaxipaintings are really no more magnificent than those he saw many evenings from his porch. Suddenly, as so often happens, my whole view of Church has undergone a sea change and I find myself studying his pinks and reds and considering them not as fantastical but as totally realistic.
But Iā€”wretched creature that I amā€”had ignored Jamie Grossmanā€™s warning that I didnā€™t want to paint though the whole day, and I had nary an ounce of energy to paint that fantastic, fantastic sunset.
This year’s waterfall painting… not a success. Last year’s is here.
The next day, many of us gathered at Jamieā€™s to paint waterfalls. Breakfast and then a brisk walk with friends, and I climbed down to the catchpool and set up. I was cautiously optimistic about this painting, since Iā€™d painted a similar view last year with great success. Alas, it was not to be. Sometimes the mind is willing but the body is weak. I had a hard time concentrating; it was excessively hot; I was already tired and sore from a long day painting the day before. To cap it off I slipped on wet rocks and took a tumble.
But sometimes we are called away from manā€™s work to Godā€™s work. I was asked a question I never hear in art circles: what does it mean to be ā€˜born againā€™? I did my best to answer, and all the way home to Rochester I second-guessed my answers, until I finally realized I am only here to play a very small part in an eternal duet between God and another soul.
I’m never happier than when teaching…
Back to Rochester: Saturday morning promised another hot day, but we met on the canal at Schoen Place, where there was shade and a breeze. It wasnā€™t a brilliant painting day for any of us, but Iā€™m never happier than surrounded by students and it was no exception.
My tiny landscape of canal path near Schoen Place. I hate wee brushes; can you tell?
But Saturday evening turned out to be one of the weirder days of my art career. I had agreed to paint live at ABVIā€™s ā€œPlay It Forwardā€ event, not realizing that I was actually going to paint indoors at a cocktail party.  Well, Iā€™m game for anything, but it was a tough challenge. I duly finished the painting and it was sold for a decent price, and we all went home happy. And when I got in, my husband told me Iā€™d missed one of the worst electrical storms heā€™d ever experienced. Good thing I was indoors!
Once again, thank you so much, Jamie Grossman, for your hospitality this week. It means more than I can express.

*Remember, NYPAP painters: you have a special discount at my Maine workshopsā€¦ just for being you. August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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Painting at Olana

Painting at Olana, the estate of Frederic Church, with fellow members of NYPAP, for the 2nd annual Ted Beardsley Memorial Paintout. Again, I’m a little rushed, but here are snapshots of what I did yesterday.
Olana overlook, approaching sunset, 12X16 oil, by little ol’ me.
Bea Gustafson painting the sky.
My first sketch, about 45 minutes. I am not accustomed to the long view, living on the Lake Plains as I do. Pretty cool view, but it wasn’t until evening that I really figured it out.
Second painting, Dame’s Rocket in an old orchard.
It wasn’t until I was totally tapped out that I realized Olana is totally organized to the sunset. As Thomas Cole lives across the river, I wondered: was Thomas Cole a morning person and Frederic Church an evening person? If so, each would be happiest with their own view.
August and September are sold out for my workshop at Lakewatch Manor in Rockland, ME… and the other sessions are selling fast.  Join us in June, July and October, but please hurry! Check here for more information.
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Climbing the Catskills in easy stages

The mist through the early morning trees.
By the time youā€™re reading this Iā€™ll have painted all day at Olana at the 2nd Annual Ted Beardsley Memorial Paint-Out. Yesterday I drove to Kingston and saw Bruce Bundockā€™s fantastic show at the Rosendale CafĆ©, and then on to Jamie Grossmanā€™s lovely home in the Catskills.

This morning, at the crack of dawn, I set off on an amble through the Catskill countryside. I confess that as much as Iā€™ve wandered the byways of New York, this was the longest hike Iā€™ve ever taken in this area.
Episcopal Church in Palenville was atmospheric as all get out, but when the mist burned off, it was more prosaic.
Outhouses? I have a knack for finding them.
I would love to know the history of this building. It’s a meeting house, with the balcony and rood screen still in place, attached to a house of the same vintage.
The stone wall is a fixture of the northeast, but varies in form  depending on the underlying rocks.
Jamie has six waterfalls on her property. Iā€™ve admired this one many times from the bottom, but this morning I looked at it from the top. Itā€™s calling to me.
Sun tea in the early morning mist!
Oh, no! There’s a branch across this waterfall! Where’s the son-in-law with his chain saw when you need him?
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Thoughts of Maine

Downtown Rockland, not exactly last week. (Rockland Main Street, Inc. website.)
A few people have asked me why Iā€”a person with a decidedly urban personalityā€”like Rockland, ME so much.
If we were in Rockland this evening, we could attend a lecture at the Farnsworth comparing Giottoā€™s ā€œLife of Christā€ and Leonardoā€™s ā€œLast Supper.ā€ Rockland is a town of 7,297 people, in a county of 39,736ā€”and this is the off-season.  
To compare, I checked the schedule of Rochesterā€™s Memorial Art Gallery. (Rochester has a population of 210,565, in a county of 744,344, and thatā€™s the gallery of the well-regarded University of Rochester.) Tonight they are offeringā€¦ well, nothing. But yesterday we could have done ā€œYoga at the MAG.ā€
Lyceums and Chautauqua assemblies were wonderful American 19th century phenomena, concentrated here in the Northeast and in the Midwest. In fact, the Chautauqua movement was founded just south of Buffalo in 1874, at the New York Chautauqua Assembly, which lives to this day as the Chautauqua Institute.
They served up a heady stew of evangelism, populism, education and entertainment. There was an assumptionā€”now largely gone, alasā€”that the average man hungered for culture, education and entertainment. Today we watch reality TV instead, and most institutions honestly believe that nobody cares to think Big Thoughts anymore.
But back to Maine: the Farnsworth is a fantastic place, well worth a visit. But itā€™s just one of many fantastic places in this area, which is why Iā€™m so anxious that you join me for one of my workshops. Weā€™ll be painting at lighthouses, beside quiet coves, along rock-strewn beaches. Weā€™ll be going to Monhegan to paint as well.
And if you ever doubt whether this teacher is worth her hire, let me tell you that I know where the bathrooms are.

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.
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Amazing what you find if you clean your room.

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 
Itā€™s Memorial Day. Iā€™m not up to anything particularly deep about the meaning or execution of art. Instead, Iā€™m giving you Steve Ditko being deep about the meaning of art and heroism: selected panels from ā€œThe Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes,ā€ Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. Script by  D.C. Glanzman, Penciled by Steve Ditko, Inked by Steve Ditko.
You want to read the whole thing? I recommend you hunt down the comic book, since it’s still under copyright. But, pretty much, you can see where heā€™s going with this.
From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

In 1968, clothing was a better indication of social status than it is today. But oddly enough, as the elite has become more nihilistic in America, their clothing has gotten rattier. Coincidence?

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

I don’t think I paint women in bondage because I’m celebrating their nature, but rather I’m celebrating their ability to endure. But he has a point here:

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

 And I’m just happy to see this type of cultural critic lampooned. He never changes.

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

Ditko comes perilously close to the idea that there is a spiritual battle being fought all around us, one we cannot see unless we have “spiritual eyes.” I suppose that is a kind of superpower.

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

This makes me want to stick to landscape painting.

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 

 This was definitely the 20th century battle of viewpoints:

From The Blue Beetle Faces the Destroyer of Heroes, Blue Beetle, Vol. 1, No. 5, November 1968, Charlton Comics Group, Derby Connecticut. 
Speaking of heroes, Iā€™ve been thinking all day about ArmyPfc. Dwane A. Covert Jr. of Tonawanda, NY, killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom on November 3, 2007.
We are involved in an endless war that seems to have few casualties, so itā€™s easy to forget the ones our nation has suffered. But a moment to remember the men and women who have fallen in the quest to keep us safe does not come amiss.
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.
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In the end, it all comes down to footwear.

Practical for plein air painting as long as there aren’t deer ticks.

CT asks: I paint with water-soluble oils. I don’t know if this goes for regular oil paints, too, but I’m struck by the various textures and viscosities of different colorsā€”from a cadmium yellow so thick it’s hard to get it out of the tube, to oily paints like the siennas. I know that you’re dealing with different pigments, so it takes different amount of oil to suspend them. But when you are trying to paint with them, how do you deal with the extremes? (Maybe you’ll tell me that that’s not a problem with “real” oil paint.)
Yes, water-miscible oils behave differently from regular oils. When severely thinned, water miscible paint tends to slip around like watercolor. When used straight from the tube, it tends to drag more than conventional oils. This means that the natural impact of viscosity range is somewhat exaggerated for you.
That range comes from the pigments themselves.  A paintā€™s opacity is directly related to its particle size (ergo its viscosity). The oldest pigmentsā€”the earthsā€”tend to have large particles and be relatively heavy paints, since theyā€™re basically just ground-up minerals. The 19th century pigmentsā€”most notably the cadmiumsā€”tend to be moderately-large particles and so are moderately heavy. The 20th century transparent synthetic organic pigments generally tend to be high stain and more transparent.
There are a couple other factors involved. Making paint is an art in itself, and various manufacturers mill and mix pigments differently. Different brands of paint have radically different pigment loads, so the same color from two different makers may vary greatly in texture. Some paintmakers use driers, and sometimes paints sit for a long time before being sold, meaning you occasionally come up with a half-dried tube right from the store. Paints that stand (especially in high temperatures) can separate,  so the beginning of the tube is all oil and the end is stiff.
A sophisticated painter understands and works with the natural weights of pigments. This is especially crucial in watercolor, but itā€™s true for opaque media as well. This is, in fact, the fundamental trick of indirect painting, where a base painting of transparent earth tones is laid down and then painted into with opaque paints.
Cute, and about $8 from Old Navy, but ridiculous for plein air painting.


TG asks: ā€œWhat kind of shoes do you recommend for plein airpainting?ā€
Next week Iā€™ll be painting during a cocktail party fundraiser for the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired.  Iā€™m tentatively planning on wearing red patent-leather flats, a beaded skirt, silk blouse and pearls (with a smock, of course). But I admit that isnā€™t my typical painting garb.
There are two major issues with footwear: that you can tolerate being on your feet for several hours at a time, and that they be suitable for the environment in which youā€™re painting.
When working in an area without deer ticks, I favor sport sandals that can tolerate water. (I often find myself not just painting the river but slopping around in the river.)

But ticks (or black flies) mean you have to have a bug barrier of some kind, and the most effective one I know is clothing: long pants, socks and sneakers.
In the winter, I wear waterproof hiking boots and wool socks if Iā€™m likely to get my shoes wet, or sneakers and wool socks if Iā€™m not. Some painters carry a scrap of carpet on which to stand.
If youā€™re in an area with rough trails and you plan on backpacking your painting stuff up them, real hiking boots are in order. There is no agony like that of insufficient footwear on a rough trail, particularly if youā€™re packing any weight in a backpack.

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.
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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 Wegmansā€™ construction project. ā€œItā€™s a work of art,ā€ I replied, ā€œas important as anything Iā€™ve painted. And, besides, the construction workers are cute.ā€
Wegmansis a phenom in Rochester, something that isnā€™t necessary fathomable if you donā€™t live here. This is its hometown, itā€™s a family-owned company, and itā€™s been on Fortune’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For” list since the list was started. But beyond that, itā€™s a first-hand, constant experience in the lives of Rochesterians. To ā€œgo to Wegmansā€ is a universal act we all participate in and understand, even if it isnā€™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 Iā€™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, Iā€™ve long been in the habit of walking to it daily to shop. This photo essay started as a casual, personal projectā€”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 donā€™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 donā€™t have a single photo of it. A pity, because that bank never looked better than as a skeleton.
Certain ground rules applied: I couldnā€™t make my husband late for work; I couldnā€™t trespass on Wegmansā€™ 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 didnā€™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 wasnā€™t thinking in terms of a photo essay, or theyā€™ve been deleted. Thereā€™s never been any guarantee from Facebook that it would provide a ā€˜safeā€™ repository for art, and of course thereā€™s no such guarantee from Google, either. But here we are in the Brave New World of open source art: I canā€™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 couldnā€™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 canā€™t copy all the comments made elsewhereā€”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, ā€œIt is finished.ā€ Just as I didnā€™t document tearing down the M&T branch building, Iā€™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 logoā€”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 yearsā€”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.

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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 wasnā€™t as pleasant as yesterday; it was hotter and muggier. Other than the bridge abutment at Bushnellā€™s Basin (which Iā€™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. Iā€™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. Iā€™ve walked under a lot of bridges along the Erie Canalā€”including bridges that are now lost forever in memoryā€”and this is the worst-looking one Iā€™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 isnā€™t an artistic question, but a practical one: my skills are limited to observing and describing the world. Iā€™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.
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If every plant has a toxic relative, why wouldnā€™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. Iā€™ve painted frequently in both places and many others on the canal besides. What could this little strip of land have that I havenā€™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 Anneā€™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 itā€™s the most toxic plant growing in America and nearly a dead ringer for benign Queen Anneā€™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, Iā€™ve recently concluded that having a toxic person or two in a family isnā€™t the exception; itā€™s the rule. But it wasnā€™t until I was walking in the woods today that I realized that this is the way weā€™re designed. That isnā€™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 itā€™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.