Rhythm and Hues: Songs of Home

   Rhythm and Hues is a promising art show title for the Belmont Gallery of Art. I have four songs that inspired paintings: Home on the Range, Don't Fence Me In, You Are My Sunshine and Take Me Out to the Ballgame!  I can enter only 3 paintings, but I am not sure which I will choose. You can match the titles to the paintings.

      Don't Fence Me In:  A Southwestern lamentation: the eclectic cacophony of civilization and childhood drowning out "the wide open country that I love." The painting is built on a map of the Texas Panhandle.
    Take Me Out to the Ballgame: Next door neighbor, Lloyd, now a young man,was a child surrounded by music of his mother and grandmother, cello and piano performers and teachers. Lloyd was also a Red Sox fan. The image of his dutifully practicing the cello with his mind on the baseball field struck the right note of harmony and contrast.
     Home on the Range: The Texas Panhandle of my memory: a melody simple and uncomplicated but rich in mirage.
     You Are My Sunshine: As if there is insufficient sunshine in the Western plains, the ubiquitous sunflower adds its own voice.
(Click on paintings to enlarge)

     In the meantime, I have been giving thought to why so many people are more impassioned to paint all the time than I am. I think it is because they are busy doing it, making discoveries and having surprises which are gifts that keep giving. One loses religion, family, government, writing and art if one is not doing it full time.I am determined to get busier drawing, painting and printing to feel the passion again. At least I am seeing art and reading about it. I look forward to the MFA pastel show to color passionately again.


"One ought, every day, to hear a little song, read a good poem, sip a tasty wine,

see a fine picture, and if possible, to speak a few reasonable words."
                                          -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1836)

Frazzled in Boston. Giving is good.

     With all that is happening in Boston, I haven't gotten off my blog this week. I 've made quilt blocks for Project Hope, started a baby quilt, several journal quilts and Hannah's soft birthday card. I am going to take a break to post something easy.

      Over the Passover/Easter week I was cooking challenged. When I heard neighbor Jeff bragging on his son's matzo ball soup, I said I would give fifteen-year-old Lloyd the 16" x 20" painting I had made of him as a youngster if he would provide my guests with his "award-winning" soup. The next day, young Lloyd appeared with his culinary art for 8 people in a big silver kettle and we loved it. Particular Hannah said it was the best she ever had. I am not yet pleased with the journal quilt I created on the subject, but here is the "unfinished" painting that Lloyd took home.There is a baseball carved in the paint in the clouds above his head. Lloyd had a cello before he was five, or four.  He and his dad LOVE baseball. His mother, an accomplished cellist, is on his shoulder in the painting.

     I ran across another painting in iPhoto, canvas stretched on cut-out wood, light bulbs and rullers attached,  which I made and gave to the dean of my art school when she wrote a recommendation for me. Seeing this snapshot of the painting made me want to get back to fun of crafting in painting.The title is "Those Who Do What is True, Come to the Light." Click to enlarge the photos.
   

I haven't gotten Hannah's present to her but it will soon be on the way!

First Snow: a Magical Time

       Last night we had our first snow of the season. Big flakes! The evening was magical with the cross country skiers, sledders and sculptors out in the dark.

       And what to my wandering eyes should appear, but neighbor Lloyd and his mother's rolling 3 foot snowballs from the top of the block down to their house. This was an engineering trick I had never thought of. Granted, #2 and #3 snowballs had to be whittled down to lift to make a snowman, but Lloyd and Sarah did it! A strand of brussel sprouts left over in their garden made eyes, nose and arms.

      Next, Joe noticed that ten-year-old Katherine on the other side of our house had put up what her dad called "an abstract snowman." I am surrounded by art!

        I keep close at hand this photo of  "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil," the young efforts by myself and five friends in my front yard, teen years, long ago in Amarillo. I always hoped to duplicate it alongside Storrow Drive in Boston someday. I remember being told that Carl Sandburg said the only thing between Amarillo and the North Pole was a single strand of barbed wire. Note: Speak No Evil is having a tougher time of it!

        As of today, we have probably received more snow than we had all last year. This old photo pictures the amount of snow delivered. There has been double that in the past. You can click on the photos to enlarge.