Galleries are Closing...

The Art Galleries all up and down this valley I live in are closing their doors, one after the other, like a cold wind is coming. I have had my "stuff" in a couple of them and know they are run by caring and dedicated people. They are expensive to operate. The lease on the building, maintenance, employees, wine and food for opening nights, it all adds up. Most artists hate the process of selling their own work, haggling over dollars, reducing their art to a value per hour.

We need the enthusiasm of the gallery operators who can put the artist and client together.

Artists are hit first, hardest and longest by a recession. There is no room for art when the cupboards are bare and money is dwindling. We lose the galleries and some good artists because of this recession. They will find other things to do, putting their talents on hold. Survival becomes an issue.

I like to support artists in the little ways that I can. I buy nothing from China; I am not a good customer of Walmart. I buy cards and calendars and prints and hand-crafted items from artists who make these. Sometimes it is just encouragement. I think an artist might make $5 from a $25 calendar. I like to think that I encourage a dream.

The KEY to All My Sites is Here.

My Shop, My Island

View from my shop.

Walnut tree and a look at my shop.

Working on a Bench. Working on a Gate.

Twenty foot single gate in my shop.


I have lived in the same house since 1972.

I have had the same phone number, a land-line, since 1969. I paid $8,375 for the house. It was a "fixer" house and about 900 square feet on a very large lot, about one-third acre. Over the years I fixed the house

making it about 2,200 square feet with a little "granny flat" attached. About 20 years ago I built my studio in the back yard. It is about 1,000 square feet and sits in the far corner of the property, not disturbing the flow of the sun on my garden. Every morning I walk the 100 feet or so, across my stone bridge, coffee in hand, to "go to work". I don't pretend for a second that this is hard. It is not like work at all. It is what I do.

My Other Blog is Here.

Muse?

I have lost that Drive to create art and am not sure if or how I will get it back again, or what form it will take. I wonder what "Art" is, why it drove me before to create the physical out of

dreams and visions that I have had. I still have dreams but now they are swirling dervishes of language and I am dreaming in color. I don't know where to take this or whether it will go anywhere, but it is a bit like the steel, lumps of iron in my shop, wanting the heat from the fire, pounded on my forge until they become what was always within them. Art.

Maybe it is the economy. There is no excess money to purchase what I make and without sales I can't continue. Maybe it is the neuropathy in my hands. Everything I touch is like stirring a bucket full of cut glass. The steel does call for me but only offers pain.

I always start my tomato seeds in the greenhouse on April Fools Day and my garden is always my best art, creating a total environment that is really me, an island, my island in this narcissistic world we live in. That is four months from now. Plenty of time.

My Other Blog is HERE!

My Art is Temporary...

even what I make from steel will suffer the passage of time and succumb to the elements, rusting into the earth from which I found it. Like ice sculptures they will exist in memory only and then become a dream extinguished by the morning glare. I know that. It is an artists' futile attempt at immortality, creating something larger than life. Leaving behind traces in the sand to say "I was there"! I saw it and loved it even if I didn't understand it all.

My acrylic art is even shorter lived as I make no pretence of saving it at all. My paintings are photographed and transformed into the digital world of cyber space. I don't know what happens to them, looked at by others, maybe copied like stolen kisses, or glanced at and forgotten. They are lost loves into a nether world, out of reach and out of control or persuasion.

I keep them or copies of them like love letters in a box. They become a part of my diary.

They are experiences not captureable, a flicker in time. Sometimes I look back on them with amazement, astonished at how close I came. Other times I realize I have a long way to go. And all the time, pleased with myself for keeping a record, never timid, always shouting: "I was here and I did that!"

My other BLOG is HERE

In a Corner of my Shop

is the last one standing and it dries just fine there, guarding the Ornamental Iron and providing a sense of color to my otherwise metal shop. I have some in my house too

but they are always the fifth or sixth

upon the copper, painted one on top of the other in quick succession.

I like them in my shop as they quickly gather dust giving them an antiquey feel like they might be worth something. They offer proof and acceptance for my clients: "yes, I am an artist" and "no, I don't work on cars"!

I have had my art in "real galleries" and I like to believe it is the kind of art you can talk about and I like to believe that as you leave the gallery you could identify

which among the colorful pieces were mine and you can! Mine is on metal!!!

Mostly I "do art" for fun, for presents to others and it allows me to charge that "art tax" to my welding work, how I really make my living!

My other Blog is HERE

Conversations with a Friend

I visit a friend of mine about once a week and he checks up on me too! I would like



to introduce him HERE



to you, you will enjoy



knowing him. We became friends almost instantly



about 20 years ago when I was lucky enough to have him working for me. He is "an old guy"



now and like me retired



from the construction industry. Ill let him tell his own stories but hope they will include how he met his wife who was also working for me, and the story how the two of them built a yacht and sailed "around the world" for five years or so, and his latest story, building high end hand crafted



guitars and mandolins. None of these reasons are why he is my friend. He is a crafstman and if he were building doghouses he would do so to perfection. His guitars are art because he makes them art.



It is all a little bit nuts of course and only works because he doesn't count the hours and loves what he is doing. When I visit him he will explain where he is at on his project, let me admire his craftsmanship and then offer me coffee and act as if my visit is the most important thing in the world! He is one of those few friends that we acquire in life who could give a true eulogy at your funeral but has the gracious sense not to!

They are open and honest and listened to converstions. We solve the world's problems and share our own. His name is EDWIN and you will like him too.

Getting from Here to There

How does one "become" an artist?
I recently went through an old box

of slides and had them put on CD's, reminders of my youth and the road I have been on. What turn was significant? Did I take the high road when I should have taken the low road, turned left when it was meant to be right? There were other impacts on my life not caught on film, these are just moments caught in a box. The top photo I was twelve years old and had received "The Family of Man", a photo collection of humanity, from my cousin I met while in Disneyland. What is significant about this is that I remember the title fifty years later! How can that be? Curious?
The next photo I was seventeen and doing my laundry aboard the SS Ryndam, a passenger ship that sailed from Montreal, Canada to Rotterdam, Holland. That is when I ran away "the first time", dropping out of High School and off to seek adventure! The one way ticket (I didn't know when nor if I was returning!) cost $225 for the ten day voyage. Why is this exact price in my memory? I hitch hiked my way around Europe for six months on three dollars a day! Those were the days!




The next photo on the far right is me again, proud beyond belief because I had just won this
trip for my whole family to this magical kingdom! It is on this trip that I discovered an idea can be better than reality! This was 1958, a half Century ago and Disneyland was brand new and talked about everywhere! Fantacyland, Frontierland, Adventureland, and I think some kind of
Futureland! It was exciting and crowded and dirty and tiring!






These next two pictures probably had a more significant impact
on my life, more closely resemble "who I became". Me, hanging from the tree branch represents strength and I see myself that way. In my youth I would go back packing in the mountains with
a seventy pound load strapped to my back! I loved Alaska and my
fishing adventures there and arm wrestling with the local loggers!
A lot in life is just plain accidental, without design. I dropped out of High School but completed it and went on to the University, dropping out there as well but always going back. I was trained as a history teacher and did that until there were massive layoffs and I lost my job. I went into construction mostly because a friend of mine owned the company and hired me as a construction foreman!
I didn't know a damned thing about construction! "I am hiring you because you know about people", he said. So, that is how I got there, an accident, and I loved it. Mostly I loved looking back at the end of the day, seeing all the accomplishments and figuring out what to do tomorrow!

The photo on the far right, with the printing press, was one of the most significant things that has ever happened to me! This was 1963 and the height of the Vietnam War! A friend of my brother's

was drafted and gave me this printing press and all its supplies.

This was my introduction to poetry! Although small this was a real printing press with real ink and hand-set lead pieces of type.

It produced perfect products and in the process of learning you

begin by making calling cards. I made these for myself and all

of my friends and went on to create poems which were easy to

print and...said something! In twelve lines I could create a thought

and in sixteen lines I could tell a whole story!

This last photo is Alaska, an adventure I had while eighteen years

old. I had "done Europe" but wasn't ready to settle down and make "something of my life". There was just too much I hadn't seen! That summer I took a train to Seattle Washington and walked along the docks stopping at every fishing boat, asking for a ride to Alaska! One captain had his deckhand for the summer but offered me a ride if I would paint the rails and take my turn at the helm? I didn't even know what that meant but happily hopped on board and three days later was caught in an adventure I will never forget! This was a fifty foot fishing boat and this trip to Alaska took about six days. The captain would teach me how to run it and soon enough I would get my own two hour stint while he took a nap. The captain took the tricky passages through the little channels amongst the hundreds of islands between Seattle and Alaska. His deck hand was experienced and got the second hardest routes

and when we hit the open seas where it was supposed to be safe it became my turn. The third day out in these open waters we hit a storm and the waves crashed over the boat something fierce! The captain and his deckhand became seriously seasick and spent this time rolling about the cabin floor and the boat became mine! I don't get sea sick, so on this trip, "the worst" the captain said, with six hours training, I was alone at the helm! You don't have any time to think yet thinking is all you do, or just reacting to the wheel, trying to keep the boat upright and turned straight into the waves. This was a real roller coaster ride and way better than Disneyland!

If I screwed it up we would be dead. That is a pretty cut and dried assignment. No C+ to it,

you do it right or you fail, simple as that!

Acrylic on Copper

I began "painting" one year ago and hadn't touched a paint brush since Kindergarten. I started with 10 store bought primary colors, four cheap brushes, a spounge and a roller, plus some odds and ends from around the shop. My shop is a metal shop and I had a lot of sheets of copper about 12" x 18"

so that is what I painted on! I love painting on copper. The paint doesn't absorb and doesn't even stay where you put it. It has a life of its own. A year later I am running out of copper but

yesterday I made a discovery! These three "paintings" are on the same sheet and really exist only "in camera". I blob some paint in random colors here and there and hit this with the spounge and paint roller giving me some kind of background. Then I add "the flowers", a few leaves or whatever strikes me. I then take a picture of it then hit it with the roller again and start the process all over! I did six paintings on one copper sheet yesterday and the last one, six paintings deep is the only one that really exists! If you don't have copper handy this can also be done on kitchen foil. It is a lot different from painting on canvas and you can use the foil with your artwork on it for Christmas wrapping paper!

A Gazillion Megapixels!

What if God were an Artist? You don't have to look far for evidence of this. His canvas is huge, the Night Sky so mesmerizing, the early morning sunrise so promising, all colors we steal from Nature and we are humbled and left in awe. How it all works we do not understand but even hurricanes and firestorms are cleansing and promise new growth.
Now suppose He gave this to us all at once, everything. What would you say if asked was it enough? Why is it we always want more when we dont make use of what we have?

The NorthWest Coastal American Indians invented the "potlatch", the term now being our "potluck" dinner. This was actually a pleasant type of warfare, the winning chief was the tribe that brought the most to the table, not just food, but gifts of animal skins, even canoes, the best of what they could give away! What a wonderful tradition! God gives so much and also gives us our ability to share what we have.

I wonder sometimes when we hear of people in need, why is it that we want to pray for them?
Are we now asking God to create MORE? Would we ever really admit that what we are asking
is "please, God, let me keep everything I have, but make some more for them"? I think we pray
because it is easier than giviong up our lattes. We pray because we want someone else to do it.
We have our stuff and we pray that you get yours!

I am skeptical of prayer and never pray for things for me or for others. I pray for appreciation
that I could be satisfied with less than I have. I pray for strength that gives me appreciation.
I pray for courage to give me that strength. I have never prayed for more but to make good use of what I have, and sometimes, often, the answer is to give it away!

I think God is an artist and we are here to appreciate His work.