limberlost

A year or so ago on a grey winter's day (not unlike this one) something reminded me of a book my mother had told me she'd loved as a girl. Considering the fact that if my mother were still with us she'd be one hundred and two, you can surmise the book alluded to is an old one. I remembered its title but no more so my search wasn't an especially hopeful one. It turned out I couldn't have been more wrong - even more than a hundred years since it was first published 'Girl of the Limberlost' is still a favourite among many people. What I found that day, though, was that there are two Limberlost books, the first one called 'Freckles', both written by the self-trained naturalist, photographer and writer, Gene Stratton Porter.

Once there was an Eden in the Midwest of the United States, Indiana to be exact, called the Limberlost Swamp. Yes, it was a wetlands region with streams that flowed into the Wabash River that originally covered 13,000 acres of land. After being drained 1888-1910 by a steam-powered dredge, the area was cultivated as farmland for 80 years. In 1991 local citizen Ken Brunswick established "Limberlost Swamp Remembered," a group organized to restore some of the wetlands, because of their importance as habitat. The work has included removing or blocking drainage tiles, allowing water back on the land, and planting native species of trees, bushes and flowers. But 428 acres is nothing like 13,000 acres. Since photographs of the Limberlost as it is now can't portray the beauty of its primeval past, I chose a painting by William T. Richards (of the Hudson River School) to indicate the mystical quality of the region as it was in the late 1800s. The author's greatest goal in these and her other books was to persuade the public to care about nature.

'Freckles',  a sentimental tale set in the early 20th century, offers contrasting characters, from vicious brutes to folks almost too-good-to-be-true. Decent people recognize the innate goodness and ingenuous soul of this love-starved youth. The Boss considers him a son; the kindly Duncans offer maternal love and warm respect; the Bird Woman appreciates his knowledge of Limberlost animals for her wildlife photographs. And then there is the Angel, a 16-year-old Irish-American girl of stunning beauty, quick wit, gritty determination and the ability to charm all she meets. Freckles frankly idolizes this princess-goddess, who delights in his private creation of a room in the forest 'Cathedral' and encourages him to develop his voice. But he is painfully aware that he is beneath her in every way (low birth, maimed body). He has no right to hope - he may only worship from afar..

You can think of 'Girl of the Limberlost' as an American Cinderella story, but with no glass slipper and plenty of moths. Gene Stratton Porter was at the peak of her skills when she wrote the novel, which starts off as a young girl's struggle against her mother's virulent hatred - and soon evolves into an enchanting little romance. Elnora Comstock has barely signed up for college when she discovers that she can't afford it - tuition and textbooks cost too much, and her shabby clothes are mocked by her classmates. Even worse, her half-crazy, malicious mother refuses to cough up any money. But she soon finds that she can pay another way - a strange lady called the Bird Woman is willing to pay money for moths, butterflies, caterpillars and chrysalids, which Elnora can easily find in a vast dangerous swamp called the Limberlost. And her friends Margaret and Wesley are happy to help her in any way they can - clothes, a violin - until the day when Mrs. Comstock comes to a shocking realization about her daughter.

Gene Stratton Porter's stories are full of hope, promise and goodness. Of course there are the usual bad elements as well that create enough angst to give dimension to her stories. I think her books reinforce that part of us which makes us better beings. They may well not be for you, but if dismal winter (this is Halifax where winters can be dark, wet, and very cold) has a grip on your mood, do yourself a favour and read one of her books and be transported into a different world, one where goals were clearer.

“We are only the trustees for those who come after us.”
- William Morris

'The Well at World's End' is next on my list.

♡

other people's work #296 - Anthony Howe

Anthony Howe lives with his wife on an island off the coast of Washington surrounded by little more than trees, wind, and other natural elements that inspire his incredible kinetic sculptures. He works primarily with stainless steel which he welds to create carefully engineered objects powered by the slightest breeze. His wind-powered, carefully designed kinetic contraptions are so well thought out it’s hard to believe they’re sturdy, welded metal constructions. When a gentle breeze begins to blow, the sculpture’s wind-catching spoons and paddles begin to turn, and the entire piece begins to undulate in fascinating patterns.

But better you see for yourself:



They are mesmerizing.
I have no backyard.
Even if I did...

♡

Crow hosts the daffodils

When there's mud between the snowbanks, spring can't be far behind. This is most definitely a picture from somewhere else at some other time, but it's one Crow and I have a great fondness for. Perhaps it's about some future when things are a little less crazy in the world. Did you know that recent statistics in England showed more children had been hospitalized for falling out of bed than from falling out of trees?

Meanwhile, some thoughts about fairy tales and fantasy, when the need has grown large:

"In an age that seems to be increasingly dehumanized, when people can be transformed into non-persons, and where a great deal of our adult art seems to diminish our lives rather than add to them, children's literature insists on the values of humanity and humaneness." 
- Lloyd Alexander

"The great subversive works of children's literature suggest that there are other views of human life besides those of the shopping mall and the corporation. They mock current assumptions and express the imaginative, unconventional, noncommercial view of the world in its simplest and purest form. They appeal to the imaginative, questioning, rebellious child within all of us, renew our instinctive energy, and act as a force for change. This is why such literature is worthy of our attention and will endure long after more conventional tales have been forgotten."
- Alison Lurie

"The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest."
- Walter Benjamin

"People who’ve never read fairy tales have a harder time coping in life than the people who have. They don’t have access to all the lessons that can be learned from the journeys through the dark woods and the kindness of strangers treated decently, the knowledge that can be gained from the company and example of Donkeyskins and cats wearing boots and steadfast tin soldiers. I’m not talking about in-your-face lessons, but more subtle ones. The kind that seep up from your sub-conscious and give you moral and humane structures for your life. That teach you how to prevail, and trust. And maybe even love."
- Charles de Lint

The thing about fairy tales is you have to live through them, before you get to the happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far.

♡

article of the week

getting it right

One of the more frustrating things that can happen when attempting to get a true image of a painting is the result you see here. The tree trunks have almost no yellow when I look at the painting, but no matter what settings I used for the scanner or how I tried to manipulate the colors with my rudimentary PhotoShop program, I simply couldn't get it any closer to how the picture looks in reality. So this is it - pretty enough that I wanted to share it with you, but hardly satisfactory when it comes to a real translation of the image. If you've ever looked through Google images of famous paintings you'll see I'm not the only one to have had this kind of problem.

Recently,  I came across some words in languages other than English that describe things familiar to all of us. The more words we have about the natural world, in my opinion, the better.

Mangata (Swedish): The road-like reflection of the moon in the water.

Ammil (English, old Devon): The thin film of ice that lacquers the outdoors when a freeze follows a partial thaw, and that in sunlight can cause a whole landscape to glitter.

Komorebi (Japanese): The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.

Gurfa (Arabic): The amount of water that can be held in one hand.

Poronkusema (Finnish): The distance a reindeer can comfortably travel before taking a break.

Eit (Gaelic): The practice of placing shiny stones in streams so that they sparkle in moonlight and attract salmon in the late summer and autumn.

Murr-ma (Wagiman): The act of searching for something in the water with only your feet.

Kalpa (Sanskrit): The passing of time on a grand cosmological scale.

Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods, an easy solitude and a connectedness to nature.

Kintsukuroi (Japan):  the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver joining the pieces and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.


Quote of the week:
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

~ Bertrand Russell

♡

another Spring with Crow

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

As you may remember, Crow has flown to warmer climes away from our frozen northern winter. While ensconced in his library a few days ago I came across this illustration drawn by a now anonymous artist made during the early years of the 19th century when Crow accompanied William Wordsworth on his walks around the Lake District. As he's mentioned often, times were only simpler then because humans hadn't yet mastered technologies they still haven't learned to use wisely. Perhaps that was never possible. Our current conditions, both good and bad, most definitely arose with the discovery of the energy inherent in fossil fuels. Now we look back to see those centuries as innocent.

I'm looking forward to Spring and Crow's return. Once its safe to walk out on our sidewalks again I must replenish his brandy supply. This hasn't been a month to give up drinking. 
♡ 

ps: I colored this and drew Crow - the rest is from an old woodblock print.

pps: Crow wrote to say the one thing that makes him and his friends laugh harder than anything else is when people say they worry the sun will become a red giant in 5 billion years.

character studies

So far as my own work is concerned, you can see I've been doing more sketching than finishing these past few weeks as I try to image(ine) the characters for a story written a number of years ago by the now grown daughter of a friend. It's a challenge, but kind of fun for all that.

In the meantime it keeps getting colder here as we count down to the shortest daylight hours of the year. There's been rain aplenty and cloudy skies too, but happily we've had no snow to spoil our walks in the park. A long stretch of that walk is by a channel in the bay where the woodland rises to a height on the left and the sea is at the bottom of a steep drop to the right. One recent day we'd fed some crows at one of the spots where we drop peanuts for them on our way to the point of land that faces right out to sea. The crows were following when we noticed a flock of chickadees flitting around in the brush to our left. Usually what happens when we see them is I scatter some nuts and wait to let them eat while we keep the greedy crows at bay. This time I still had the food in my hand when a hungry chickadee landed on one of my fingers and took a nut. Before I had time to react the little birds came one after another to take their share of peanuts from my hand. It was the sweetest feeling ever to be that trusted. Now that we know they'll often come if we wait a bit, feeding them has become one of those little events to treasure.

I know this is a small thing, perhaps even an ordinary occurrence. If so, I hope a connection with the wild world is something routine in your life. For me, it's an example (one I can hold in my hand) of real magic in the world. It's funny to think that until the final triumph of the scientific revolution at the start of the eighteenth century, magic and a great many things connected with it were treated as everyday matters in Western cultures. The sense of life, mind, and meaning in the cosmos is something that we as individuals put into the mix in the process of constructing our worlds.

Experiencing the world as a community of existent thinking beings leads us to understand that every living thing has an equal part to play in the great web of life. The opposite is to experience the world as a dead and mindless mass of raw material that has only whatever meaning and value certain human beings choose to give it. Which of those behaviors is more useful in the present predicament of industrial society is another point worth considering.

For something extra (and finished in this case) I did find a great short video you might enjoy watching as much as I did:



♡

spring rocks Halifax park

One day a few weeks ago, shortly after the last snow melted, we came across a rock maze that had been carefully laid out on the grass of Point Pleasant Park. It was probably 30 feet across and twenty deep. While my husband walked along its convolutions to the centre where there was a little rock shrine, I watched and wished I'd brought my camera - not to take a photo of him, but to record the result of the anonymous artist's effort. The maze hadn't been there the day before and by the next day the park maintenance crew had bulldozed its stones back to the rocky beach. After all, it will soon be time to cut the grass and you can't send lawn mowers over loose rocks. As Jer stooped to leave the last of our peanuts on the shrine he discovered a tiny red plastic frog another maze walker had left.

More recently we found the results of yet another spontaneous installation made from the rocks on that shore - yes, it's a very rocky shore. Today I took my camera.

There's something wonderful about artwork made from the materials contained in natural surroundings that shows what's best in us. That days can go by with nobody knocking down these precariously balanced sculptures is one of the things I love most about Halifax.

♡

the squirrel whisperer

We call him the Squirrel Whisperer.

Most days (weather permitting, of course) we like to spend an hour or two walking around the forested paths of Point Pleasant Park. No matter the route it's inevitable we eventually make our way along the broad beach path where the ocean waves provide the kind of wild entertainment the North Atlantic is famous for. About half way we're given a choice to cut across the now icy snowfields around the remains of a decrepit wwII fort to the ploughed road or to follow the path as it narrows between the fort and the old gun emplacements. Yes, they did have concerns Halifax might be invaded by Nazi u-boats in 1942  but it seems they needn't have worried.

Anyway, as often as not when we walk along that confined space, we'll pause to watch the Squirrel Whisperer. Sometimes we see him in other areas of the park but most often we'll find him standing near a tree stump in that defile patiently holding out one unshelled peanut in his bare hand. Usually there's a dubious looking squirrel wondering if it should take a chance. It's kind of fascinating to watch the two of them as they measure each other's intentions. Hunger nearly always wins.

Once the weather gets cold I always carry my little bag of shelled peanuts and raw sunflower seeds but I tend to scatter them at the spot where we like to sit, the place where our crow friends expect us. The rest of the contents get deposited in an open feeder a few hundred yards further along. I like wild animals but I don't need to have them eat from my hand. When it comes down to it I'm probably as wary of them as they should be of us.

The Squirrel Whisperer has another point of view.. or maybe he likes being out there all day.
♡
ps: Right now the temperature is noted as 8˚ feels like -20˚ with 30mph winds. Yes, we went for a walk but not to the park. I wonder if he did.

winter

Something I found written by a friend reminded me of this old favorite poem. Since I already typed it out once this evening I thought I'd post it here just in case you might like it too. It seems appropriate.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
      The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

~ Thomas Hardy

back to the drawing board

Over the past week or two I've been putting together four drawings for the little story I mentioned having found. One day last week when the rain and wind made going out for a long walk impossible, I decided to transfer this one to watercolor paper and paint it fairly fast so I could gauge how long it might take to turn the four planned illustrations into satisfactory paintings.

Several hours later I'd gone from the drawing above to this one and the resulting certainty I'd painted and inked my way into a corner. There were parts I still liked a lot - the house, the characters, the idea of the road - but overall it was looking just a little too stark for my liking. Greens are the most amazing colors in nature but are for me the most difficult to paint. The huge background hill also was going to require a different approach.

Nevertheless, I'd already gone so far that I decided to finish the painting as doing so would allow me to see what was going to work and what parts would need to be revised. I went back over the entire picture adding colors to intensify the clouds and greenery as well as delineating the two characters. I'd started inking so had to finish at least enough of that to make the picture coherent.

I've discovered (and not for the first time) is that for me making something magical takes time as well as fearlessness. I have to allow myself to make mistakes  and  be willing to start over from a blank page. With so many things in life we don't have that luxury but at least we could work on the theory the best course of action is to begin again from wherever we are right now - considering lessons learned of course.

What makes life magical for you?
♡

friends to affinity

My friend Geraldine was already an excellent artist when we met in Vancouver many years ago. Amazingly adept at drawing, I'd be aghast when she threw away nearly completed illustrations that didn't meet her ideal, a habit that lead me to collecting several wonderful examples of her work from the trash bin in her room. Her art training, including a meticulous attention to detail I envied, had been honed in Ireland, a place that's quite synonymous to me with the word magic. Geraldine's artwork was always elementally whimsical, and very captivating.

She and her family returned to Southern Ireland at about the same time as I moved to the US with the result that although we didn't completely lose touch, there have often been long periods without much contact and I never got to see what she'd been painting and making. Just recently she emailed me some photographs of work she's done over the years. The one posted above came as quite a surprise since it's a painting of one of the world's little known famous female pirates (if such a term be allowed), Gráinne Ni Mháille,  Queen of Umaill and chieftan of the clan Ó Máille.

Also known as Grace O'Malley, her story reads like a wild adventure fiction but there's history as well as myth in the legend of the Irish noblewoman who led a band of 200 sea-raiders from the coast of Galway in the sixteenth century. Twice widowed, twice imprisoned, fighting her enemies both Irish and English for her rights,  she was condemned for piracy, and finally pardoned in London by Queen Elizabeth herself.  Gráinne was one of the few sea-raiders to retire from the sea and die in her own bed as an old, respected, and very rich woman. Geraldine's portrait of her captures the sea queen's power and determination most vividly.

Among the dozen or so images was a cryptic painting titled 'Sherrach'. It's a beautiful picture in colour and form, but not knowing what story Geraldine was referring to I decided to see if there was a definition to be found in the name. The only word that came close was a Scottish one meaning rumpus or a noisy squabble. The painting may not have anything to do with arguments but the clash between water and sky seemed a fit setting for the two beings sheltering from the tempest.

Like many artists Geraldine was never one to stick to a particular medium so it was great to see some of her sculptures. This one, called Con Gái (daughter in Vietnamese), was carved during an art for peace festival held in Hanoi more than a decade ago.

Then there's this little beauty that left me speechless. Nobody other than my dear friend Geraldine  could have envisioned this deeply aware yet innocent goddess.

Such is friendship that sometimes our best conversations contain no words at all.

♡ Erin go Bragh

city gardens

Like many other places in North America, winter as we usually experience it never quite arrived in Halifax this year. Yes, it's often been very cold but there was little snow and none of it lasted on the ground longer than a few days. Now that I know spring is lurking out there somewhere I've been doing my usual pining for a garden to plant things in. Living in an apartment isn't generally conducive to the cultivation of outdoor plants as an experience I had while living in Portland will testify. The dining area of that particular flat had some very large windows with enough hardware left by previous tenants that allowed me to hang up some extra shelves. Instead of filling those windows with the usual indoorsy plants, that year I brought home several boxes of young geraniums and marigolds that I planted in pots. Within a few weeks I had a fabulous display of flowers but hadn't reckoned on just how smelly those outdoor blooms would make our home.. especially when you have more than twenty of them. They had to go long before their intended time.

Anyway, that winter we got lucky - if you can call it being lucky when a new landlord decides to renovate the building, including your apartment, while you're still living there. The luck was in having a very fine townhouse nearby come unexpectedly available, which gave me (for the first time) a balcony not too high above the ground facing east. I spent the rest of the winter planning a garden. Winters in the Pacific NW don't last all that long so we were soon visiting one of the big nurseries where I swooned over the pictures of the flowers fastened on the bare root rose bushes and tried to figure out just how a large a bamboo would fit the space along with a small tree and several pots of pampas grass. I got a bit carried away that year - the roses were gorgeous at first but eventually blighted,  the bamboo died, and the pampas grass went into attack mode whenever we passed it.

Then came the day we saw a hummingbird and for the following six summers that garden was dedicated to our delight in seeing them. They seemed to enjoy examining us as well but it wasn't until late autumn one year that I caught the perfect picture. Several months later an eviction notice was delivered by new owners planning a condominium conversion and that was that for the garden.

I still think of gardening and all the people like me who simply have no access to seeing a little piece of Nature's magic unfold day by day. Just a few days ago I came across an article about the Beacon Food Forest project that has received the go ahead to plant Seattle's first permaculture garden in a city park. This spring a  seven acre plot of land will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees; herbs; and more. It will be perennial and self-sustaining. Best of all, anyone who walks through will be free to take anything they want.


I'm guessing there may well be some happy hummingbirds living there too.
♡

other people's work

If I had a house and that house had a garden and in the garden was a pond and I happened to need a gnome then this is the gnome I'd choose to live in the pond in the garden of the home that I'd have.

David Goode makes bronze sculptures using a lost wax casting process. The results are wonderful and if you'd like to see just how here's a link to his site. Sometimes I think I take a long time doing things but one of his pieces can take 6 months or more.

If you don't have that kind of time perhaps you'd like to see a story about a little guy made of scrap metal who's looking for a home in the world:


origins from Robert Showalter on Vimeo.


I love animation.


Crow or I will be back soon.
♡

not all frogs are toads

I once read that Dakinis are the beings responsible for all life energy on Earth. It's not unusual for me to spend a day or more drawing a character who has no particular place in any planned painting but I understand the image will eventually find a place. Since photography hasn't progressed to the point where it can capture imaginary beings (a much more interesting concept than cell phone cameras if you ask me), I draw them and then they sit inside one of my sketchbooks waiting patiently until an inspiration rises. So if you think you've seen this sky dancer before you're right.

I don't know if you can see this very well as the picture is actually larger than can sit flat on my scanner but it's good enough to give you an idea. Sometimes it's hard to hold onto the dreamlike concepts I prefer to paint. Sometimes I even wonder why I keep on doing it. Sometimes I read too much news, or happen to see too many other wonderful artworks, then find myself picking up a book rather than a paintbrush.

Anyhow, the frog showed up, a frog not only with opposable thumbs on his hands and feet but one who also had wings. I'd heard of frogs mutating as a result of all the weird chemicals humans have been flushing into the environment and wondered if perhaps somewhere a frog has experienced an episode of punctuated equilibrium. Next time I stroll past a pond I'll be looking closely to see if there are tadpoles with tiny wings. Nowadays nothing surprises me.

In the meantime I'll be painting this one and hopefully will be able to make reasonable scans of my progress to show you.

Point to remember: all toads are frogs

♡

heart's home

There are times when serenity is hard to find. Contentment isn't just about us as individuals and where we are at a particular place and time and whether or not we are replete with food and drink. We experience our lives as separate beings but we know deep down we are connected to one another. Sometimes there's a deep sadness that can't be explained.. and sometimes we know why but can't change the larger circumstance. It's time like these that I go in search of things that might cheer me and you as well.




I must thank my friend and fine artist Steve for introducing me to the work, especially the architecture, of Hundertwasser who was born in Austria in 1928 and spent his life not only imagining but building beautiful places for people to live in and enjoy.

A house,

an unusual house,


that does not correspond to

the usual cliches and norms

of academic architecture

a house conceived and designed
by a painter


an adventure in modern times

a journey to an unknown land

a journey into the land of creative architecture

where there are window rights
and tree tenants

and uncontrolled irregularities

uneven floors,
woodlands on the roof

spontaneous vegetation

and barriers of beauty





a journey into the land

where nature and man meet in creation

a report about the first free house


a painter dreams


a painter dreams about houses and

a beautiful architecture in which man is free


and this dream becomes a reality
- Hundertwasser

May we all find our heart's home.