ART: WOODBLOCK PRINTS

 

Norma Bassett Hall, Old Sycamore, 1942

I have delighted in these since discovering Japanese prints from the Ukiyo-e Period. The Arts and Crafts Movement is another.  Peace, elegiac tone, quiet enjoyment, stylized posterizing, color that glows, a literary illustrational quality - all seem to be so much about who I am and what I love.

Tom Killion, Tundra,  1990's

Tom Killion, a living Northern California artist:

there’s something moving and sometimes garishly modern  in most of his work, but the balance between the dynamic,  the sensitive detail, and the lyric viewpoint is so stunning.  Also wonderful that the woodblock print is still being made.

Church - Rancho de Taos, 1919, Gustave Baumann

Baumann for me is the leading woodblock artist in the U.S. He settled in Taos where he found the picturesque and the magnificent imagery of his prints.  Small prints are available as cards, to my delight.

BIRDWATCHING: Theodore Payne Foundation, King Gillette Ranch

I'm actively going on bird walks to discover new places around LA to be outdoors.

The Theodore Payne Foundation, set against the hills in Sun Valley, does exemplary work educating Angelenos about landscaping, and supplying native plants to the LA Basin. 

The day I chose, to join a bird walk, there were only 3 of us, and "Ken", or "Emperor Ken", as he refers to himself on his website, led the walk.  He's Ken Gilliland, well known for his work in the film industry doing 3-D bird modeling, and his commitment to birds and habitat. 

Ken led us about, and in a low-key and easy way, told stories about the birds we saw - giving equal time to commonly sighted birds as well as expertly IDing little gray sparrows and bird songs.

Did you know scrub jays hold funerals for a member?  They gather together for a day and "talk" about the individual.  Who knew?

Sooty Sparrow

Golden-crowned sparrow

California Thrasher

Yellow-Dumped "Audubon's" Warbler

Pine siskins are about this time of year, too - will watch and try not to confuse them with this delightful bird, an yellow-rumped warbler, plentiful in the laurel-sumac bushes.

Nice to know the name of these common little fellows I see about on almost every walk.

White Crowned Sparrow

Sunday I went on a walk at the King Gillette Ranch, a wonderful Santa Monica mountains location before the hills' rise. The buildings were designed by Wallace Neff, a famous regional architect, and among other functions, was a Claretian monastery for some years. Finally it was purchased by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and became a magnificent public park.

acorn woodpecker

  An oak woodland area, it is primo for woodpeckers.  I used to love seeing them in Wisconsin as a child, taking them as a common sighting, loving the sound of pecking as new storage holes were fashioned to store acorns.  Scott, the birdwalk leader, told the group (65+), about social structure in acorn woodpecker families, and their use of granary trees, even building in redundancy if one granary fails by storing extra in a different location.  

Nuttall's woodpecker

Later, we got a very good view of a Nuttall's woodpecker as well - a distinctive ladder back pattern, but not to be confused with a ladder-back, which is a desert bird.   

Oak titmouse

 This oak titmouse I found by myself, on the bridge where a brush-covered slope permits passerines to approach the water from cover and then quickly fly back.

Lincoln's sparrow looks a bit like a white-crowned, will have to look further to feel like I really "own" this species.

American Widgeon

Among the plentiful mallards mucking about in the vivid green duckgrass, Scott found this duck, one I'd seen before up at the bird marshes, but was pleased to see again, my second special seasonal duck sighting.

 Last, a group of us watched female western bluebirds, almost indistingable, they were so dull, flying back and forth from utility wire to ground, brunching on insects.  Glad the bird leader told us what they were - this ID I will work on too.

It's lovely to catch the bright blue of a male if the sun is right.  Unforgettable blue, like a jay, or some blue fish.  Even the cinema cannot render for us that neon flashing glory color. 

We also saw mule deer and unexpectedly lovely, a pair of buckeye butterflies.

ART, THE SPECIAL PURPOSE OF DRAPERY, Robert Morris

How often I have been struck by the expressive power of drapery - for grief, how it covers and reveals the defeated, succumbed, accepting body beneath. 

The act of covering the body, its soul passed from our loving circle, so intimate, loving, and final an act.

Consider concentration camp and prison photography, folds falling with strange and ghoulish elegance over emaciated bodies at Auschwitz, stripes ever repellent to me as a shape arrangement after seeing those dreadful images.  

 Mourners from the tomb sculptures of the Court of Burgundy - almost genre, doll-like, plentiful, a riff on draped biblical clothing as imagined in western art.

These resin-coated linen "sculptures" by Robert Morris stunned me.  As a child I was fascinated by the stories and paintings of lepers, supplied courtesy of my Catholic school education.  I saw the film "Ben Hur" as a child, too, those huddling figures   - how they covered their bodies and their pleading eyes. Even then the drapery's folds seemed beautiful to me.  At the time it seemed like the worst fate that could befall a human - that was before I knew about Auschwitz.

In Star Wars, Disney, and medieval tales, characters wrap themselves in cloaks and veils, somehow adding stature and power to their narrative purpose, extending their personal space.  Who would follow closely upon Darth Vader as he sweeps into a room, his black cloak swirling about him?  Or Maleficent, as she appears in the Great Hall to curse the beloved child? 

Then consider Judith Jamison, her dress swirling in "Cry", the impossible clashing dynamics of those ripples and folds, against the hard and frozen valleys and hills of folds against these soulless suffering bodies.    

Christo's draperies for the most part were quite joyous, playful, celebratory:  fabric defying its purpose - a fence of rippling opening cloth instead of cattle restraint, umbrellas for sheltered pleasure, or to gift-wrap an island.  

Of all the works, only "Reichstag" seemed genuinely ambiguous - the sins of Nazism covered, so shameful that they cannot be visual,the proof needing to be always before our eyes.

And the strange white tight pleating, making the fabric-nature look starched, rigid, tight, revealing the classical form and its archetypal message of  glorious humanism.

"Dying Gaul" is certainly present beneath this drapery - questions about covering and uncovering the body, death, privacy, intimacy, the morality of war arise for me.

I think it's incumbent upon serious viewers to undertake to see the artwork from a  aesthetic point of view, developed from theory, history, personal insight, inquiry. 

I wonder if it's moral or even fair to the art to use it for access to places of profound personal grief and shame.  Isn't it truthfully a  narcissistic, subjective. even cathexic (cathexis, Freudian idea) using art for access to stimulus to personal analysis?

Is instrumentalist art even moral?  Or merely manipulative?

Nonetheless, my take-away is the instant access to a vision of compassion springing up from knowing of unspeakable atrocity and needing to go on.  Isn't "Dying Gaul" going to get up and stagger away instead of slipping to the earth's embrace?  Maybe.  I wish it so.   

BIRDWATCHING: Sepulveda Dam Wildlife Refuge

California Thrasher 

California Thrasher

The most impressive sighting of the morning, a California thrasher, singing a distinctive territory-defining song for a half-hour displaying itself on the top of a bare branched shrub.

It was soft brown - I could only get a back and profile view, and the curve of the bill was  very distinctive, perhaps because I was viewing it while it was vocalizing so loudly.  Sable's illustration of this bird doesn't really show the size or down-curve; it's scythe-like.  This bird is only found in California and Baja.

I've only seen it once before, many years ago, and it was on the ground and obscured by much chapparal.  

The song I heard was not raucous and was louder and sweeter than the recordings I've listened to today.  

Two other sightings today were fine.  A green heron sat about 10 feet away from me along the lakeshore, allowing me to enjoy the rich chestnut and green coloration.  The eye is distinctively yellow.

Hunkered down along the shoreline I found a black-capped night heron.

 The bird remained hunkered down for many minutes, waiting beside the shoreline for a snack. It's a stocky, staunch heron, phegmatic quality.

Like most visits, I found a great egret, a great blue heron along the lakeshore, and saw a kingfisher flash quickly into the trees.


A medium-size osprey also swooped over the lake several times, too, a first sighting for me for that little lake.  



Songbirds were not plentiful, however.  

ART: Butterfly Illustrations - Titian Ramsay Peale

A recently discovered book of lovely butterfly illustrations by a son of a Peale.  These American botanical and biological illustrators are such marvels.  How they do own the spirit of faithful lovers of science and creation.

I found all these photos of the book, which I probably won't buy at this time of my life, wanting fewer things. 

 The photos can be saved here, and even seem to be close to size, for me to enjoy. 






I'd love to plant a butterfly garden - maybe if the drought ends I can.

I'm fortunate enough to see the occasional western swallowtail in our yard.

The beloved monarchs, now so endangered.  I've bought seeds to plant for them to lay eggs upon this spring.

TRAVEL: White Pocket Utah - another version of desert pin striping

The rainy weather left us uncertain as to how to enjoy our last day in Kanab. One of the Travel Advisor write-ups described The Wave as a Bach fugue and White Pocket as Night on Bald Mountain. Programmatic rock formations, yes! -  the perfect end to our trip would be White Pocket.

Luckily, on our way home, a guide returned a morning inquiry and was willing to take us out there, confident that his Tahoe and his alternate path would take us safely upon the deep sandy off-road.

It was windy and cooler than our Wave hike day, and the sky was astonishing, as only Western skies can be, the clouds shouldering  each other and the skyline for display room.

Our guide was a personable Utah born former and still respectful Mormon, Mike. He was charmingly late because his mare's foal arrived early in response to the storm. This event seemed especially beguiling to Jane, still very much the queenly rural spirit representative in our group.  

It's a two hour trip out to White Pocket, entering from south 89A rather than 89, a much simpler trip which we could have made ourselves but for foot-deep sand, possibly wet from yesterday's rain.

We hiked down a sandy path, then gazed on more sandstone and slick rock, but in colors and shapes spectacular and wondrous strange indeed,

as if the rocks had simply stopped swirling only a moment ago, their currents and materials mysterious and drooping,unstable, though frozen lo, these millions of years.

Here the russets, siennas, and red ochre were violent and turbulently worked through with cream, taupe, and gray sandstone. The gray stone that topped off the headed mounds
yet seemed stripped of scalp or skin, bulbous globs of form that looked like exposed brain matter.

 Slick rock tree, planted by cowboys growing their own - shade.

Climbing slip rock is easier than it looks - the natural grit of sandstone offers the lug soles of a hiking boot a satisfying footfall.
Up and down, each view changes dramatically, the features of the rocks so compressed.

Mike explained that iron in the sand forms into small roughly spherical "marbles", which nestle spilled on the sandy surface.

Skull like, frosted top-offs abruptly exposed upon sandstone mounds.

We climbed up and into this "clamshell" hollow facing a gray frosted sentinel. 

Then down and on through...

this marvelous view and fun downhill scramble

The only native plant on the slick rock in this area - a seep gives opportunity to tiny tears, and a miniature hanging garden grows.

Interrupted divided striations, once whole and ongoing, like mini-earthquake faults.

On and on, being among the formations offers me an experience of strange connection, a feeling that my body and mind have unity with  the forms and shapes within space.

Sustaining my wonder at the finely scraped textures of the sandstone.

An expressive sagging scowl

Such evidence of might and power

Looking out 50 miles to the northwest, I think, towards Bryce and the higher mountains, still covered with a recent snow dusting.

In ponds like these breed the unusual and hardy fairy shrimp.  Their eggs lay in casings in the rock's depression, awaiting a rain puddle. Not just any puddle, but one that will become algae-filled and last for 5 days or so.

The eggs hatch and the tiny creatures have a few days to mate and lay new eggs before the puddle finally evaporates.

lupine

claret/scarlet/crimson hedgehog cactus

milkvetch?

As always, I marvel over wildflowers.

A condor sanctuary has been established here in the Vermilion Cliffs area off 89A for years now.  The population has grown to 75, a a better record than California's, I think.

Our guide said that beef carcasses are still put out for them.  On this windy day, we spotted none, but could find a nesting area stained white with their droppings. 

The two hour drive back to Kanab gave us more distant views across the sagebrush and redrock, green with recent spring rains.  

Then  one more night to dine and sleep in Kanab before saying goodbye to Lanny and Jane in Las Vegas.  Their flight left at midnight, and John and I drove home.  Back to Los Angeles, our world so separate from where we were, the discontinuity of the city always disappointing and yet the pleasure of return to a home and our chosen life and place.