End of April Notes

Today I am posting on April 29...the end of a month long riot of weather in Wisconsin that made spring very difficult to find! But the daffodils and bluebells did arrive briefly in Julie's garden and she brought us beautiful gift bouquet.  And out in the lovely woods at Oakwood here in Madison...the bluebells, spring beauties and crocus come just before the trillium.  Bird song is loud and joyful.  

I close the month of April, though, with generally happy thoughts about art and family.  Around here lot of joyful things are on the calendar...a new great daughter due on the 7th, a grandson graduating from high school and some spring birthdays...Maddy and Patrick in April and Ben in May.  I got a new computer and Julie and Mark made is safely back from their winter trip west.  

  

    The new Oakwood art library is beginning to fill in with furniture, paintings, and other joyful accommodations.  Hoping for an open house in June.  

Julie and I are teaching a Zentangle® class at a new venue in Madison at the Monroe Street Art Center this Friday.  I plan to theme it around this book: We entitled the class "Dingbatz, Frames and Cartouches."

Here's how one of sample frames might look (Maddy's Birthday Card).

 

You'll notice that the frame I tangled is around Layla (Maddy's dog) and then the Dingbatz is in the corner of the envelope.  Which, if look closely, can be cut off and used as a bookmark!  Dingbatz are actually sort of "placeholders" usually in text or poetry to divide spaces, announce new chapters or sections, or otherwise enhance a lot of text.  Or tucked in the corner of an envelope!  

 I'll post more images after the class so you can see more examples.

We had a fun little art exercise here at Oakwood Art groups thinking about the characters from Beatrix Potter.  I picked Mrs. Tiggywinkle who is a hedgehog.  Sketched her into my sketchbook and then sent a copy to 5 year Violet (my great granddaughter.) The hedgehog is holding an iron in her hand (she does the laundry for the forest animals).  I told Violet to ask her grandmother what an iron is.  Would children even know?  

This was just a short blog...to let you know Greg and I are still around and learning new things. Tomorrow night my chorus has a performance and I have two more Sundays in May at church with choir to the end of the season.  I'll miss the music.  

Hoping you are all well and you have a good May.

 

 

A Long Time Coming: Christmas Day 2023

  

 So now here I am writing on Christmas Day afternoon.  A little spot fell into my time frame between events where I suddenly thought of all the photos I've been dropping into the "blog file" as time as gone. My goodness but it's been a LONG time since I pulled up my blog.  You surely have thought I'd given it up.  But no...I just needed a break for awhile. The big decision now is just what is important to share.  

I'll start from now and work backwards a bit...here is my family (missing 5 people) but that is pretty darn amazing to get THAT many in one place!  Held here at Oakwood on Dec 9.  Some of my blog followers already saw this picture.  But I just had to share it again. 

My last blog post was spring and summer so I pretty much slipped over autumn.  I'll just drop two little sketches here about autumn...a little sketch walking in the prairie here at Oakwood and then under the lovely Sycamore Tree next to our apartment. It was a nice autumn...not as bright as some in the past but still pretty.  We left the cabin a bit early this year--September 8--although others followed and used the cabin up to the closing in early October. 

  

And a small sketch done in late October at my step daughter's home in Poynette, WI.  One of the last days of autumn...80 degrees and this was overlooking their pretty pond.  We were enjoy watching Oliver, our great grandson (almost two) play in the leaves.  

Oliver will have a baby sister in May.  Our 4th great grandchild!

I had an 84th birthday in early November...the 4 Old Fashions were not all for me!  "Likely story" says friend, Deb.  

A farewell card for a church member

on hospice who loved labyrinths...it's a finger labyrinth.  Folks signed their names.

Below are examples of some of the 

Zentangles™ from the Project Pack #22 

offered just before Christmas.  

I'm hoping to teach another class here at Oakwood in January.  

My mini journals really suffered this year.  Most of these pages I complete take about a month or two...but this page took a whole year to complete. I guess I sort of took breaks from a lot of things this year. I have promised to do better on the next one.  

Julie and I had fun playing with a different kind of wonky house in watercolor and ink.  It was awhile ago...I may have posted this before?

I'll let our other two great grandchildren sign off for me.

Viggo 4 and Violet 5 (she just lost her first tooth two days ago).

They now live in Michigan so a little closer than CA!  

I wish you all a New Year filled with hope and courage.  Filled with rest and walks in forest, time for old friends, good books and creativity.  Here's to 2024. 

 

 

 

A Summary of Spring and Summer thoughts...

 

So summer came and went with alacrity this year...streaming by in a myriad of images from here in Madison to up north at the cabin. Back and forth.  This year we went with a 3-4 week on and off plan.  The idea being not to have to pack and unpack so often which for two old folks is arduous.  

Weather in Madison was on the average this summer was dry and quite hot.  Weather in Lac du Flambeau was on average cold, dark, and rainy.  So both had their ups and downs.  

So to simply highlight our happiest days...my sister's visit in May as she was making her way across country was splendid and so wonderful.  Then in June the visit of our granddaughter, Maddy,and her entire family was amazing. Getting to meet Maddy's fiancé AND our two beautiful great grandchildren.  What a special time.  

So summer "up north" was totally full of joyous community and family gatherings.  4th of July was a local potluck of lake folks.  Great to see everyone!  

In between family gatherings I tried to keep a little sketching going.

I found the name of the clouds to be amusing as they sounded like perhaps a bad chest cold?  When they gather in the north like this it is time to be watchful.  

Beth made the trip all the way from Rochester Hills, Michigan by car this summer to the cabin for a sister duo with Julie!  Greg's son Mark and his big family came and my son Rick and his darling family came.  Katy and Chris came as a sister duo and we loved that!  Julie and her husband came.  What a treat. They all spoiled us so!  

I found a wee amount of time to keep up with sketching some  botanicals around the cabin although I found that walking too far along the verges was harder for me this year.

We returned to Madison on Friday the 8th of September.  The summer warmth will linger awhile in Madison..as autumn generally comes on slowly and with sweet colors.  Then suddenly as October approaches it will rain and the colors will slide away from us offering us the always bleakness but coziness of November.  We are already beginning to think of the holidays in general terms.  With a large family one has to plan ahead! 

 

Art wise Julie and I have a few Zentangle® "gigs" in the works.  I am helping here at Oakwood to plan a new Art library which should be fun.  Choir at church starts this week AND a new Oakwood choral group is beginning here which should be joyful.   

I brought back a lot of old paintings stored at the cabin that "never made the cut" and so am thinking of collage and gift card making with those this winter.  I am sure I'll start up some beginning Zentangle classes here at Oakwood and need to look over the calendar for that. 

In the spring I did part of the project pack for Zentangle.  I'll drop a few of those in so you can just see a sample.   It was an odd project which was designed to get one to look at familiar zentangles in the sense of possible botanical implications.  Here's an example.  The format was unusual to say the least but I enjoyed the challenge of making "make believe" plants.  Complete nonsense, of course, but a way to push your ideas into a project that most of us wouldn't have dreamed of.  I got five of the 8 done before we went up north but hope to get back and finish the rest this fall.  

 

Wishing you a good autumn.  And GO Packers! 

Sketches as "Shorthand" in my sketchbooks!

 “The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.”  Robert Henri

Never throw art away...well, let me rephrase, at least not without looking at it with a practiced eye.  Old paintings that did not work out?...I've tossed a number in my day, of course.  But it is a good idea to use a viewfinder or you old mats to see if maybe there might be a little hidden gem somewhere amidst the larger painting.  This is what happened here.  It's been so long I don't even remember what I was attempting with the larger format...but with a paper cutter or scissors I snipped some little sweet spots out of the painting and tucked them into an envelope to save.  This one was cut down to card size (5 x 7) and it was only after I discovered it that I added the ink, the shading, and line work.  I added the pine trees, some stones along the shore, highlighted the birch trees (which were there but not highlighted), darkened the shadows under the trees.  July...high summer now...is green, green, green and this little painting says that.  

Voila..a lovely little vignette card to send to my grandson for his 21st birthday!  I think it's frame-able myself.  

Outside Oakwood Apartments in the conservancy is a little home made cage for moth and butterfly cocoons (in season).  And dear Gretchen makes it part of her spring and early summer hobby to curate the cocoons and chrysalis and then share them with residents for release. This screened.  

The Madison Urban Sketchers have been at it again...this time introducing me to the Biergarten on Lake Monona last Saturday.  (Note the Madison capital building in the bottom far right corner.). Pretty amazing view across the lake!

Gorgeous Saturday afternoon about 82 degrees and a light breeze...many folks out enjoying the cold beer (Greg and I had root beer floats.).  There were large home made soft pretzels for some folks and also brats.  But the sketchers were too busy to eat or drink much...lots of sketching going on.  People were paddle boating, canoeing, swimming, and having parties under tents.   (No life guard on duty but looks like once upon time there was!). On the beach was this dark old wood box that look for all the world like a coffin!  So I sketched it in.  Maybe Mr. Olbrich decided to stay in his park?  

You can tell we had a good turn out.  I'm standing WAY in the back row. And at that point I hadn't finished painting some things in.  

We are in Madison, obviously, for a few weeks.  Summer is lovely here and I don't want to miss the whole season...it's been so windy, wet and cold up north.  But we'll leave August 9 (after we vote in the primary) for another two week try and hope weather will improve this time!!!  

 

We are Here to Keep Watch, Not to Keep

 The astonishment is all in the being here. It is the turtle in the pond, the thought in the mind, the falling star, the stranger on Main Street… To all of this, loss, which seems only to take away, adds its own kind of necessary contribution. No matter what goes missing, the object you need or the person you love, the lessons are always the same. Disappearance reminds us to notice, transience to cherish, fragility to defend. Loss is a kind of external conscience, urging us to make better use of our finite days. Our crossing is a brief one, best spent bearing witness to all that we see: honoring what we find noble, tending what we know needs our care, recognizing that we are inseparably connected to all of it, including what is not yet upon us, including what is already gone. We are here to keep watch, not to keep. 

Kathryn Schulz (from her book Lost & Found)

I am not sure why the above struck me as appropriate for today's blog except that it "vibrated" with me somewhat as a tuning fork makes a hum with you wrap your fingers around it...vibrating your whole hand for a short time.   

Our first long summer stay at the cabin is wrapping up now...Four weeks...28 days.  Not so long in the scheme of things. We are here to keep watch, not to keep.  The cabin reminds me of things we are blessed with and so much also of what "cannot keep".  Our physical and mental selves savor the familiar lake and the Northwood smells and sounds differently now.  A real quiet descends upon us.  Deep quiet.  Wind, waves, pines, eagles, loons, wild storms, campfires, a canoe ride, wild flowers, etc etc. Things my husband has known and loved for well over 50 years.  Me, over 30.  

This time we spent time assessing things that we won't use again here and dismantling some to make room for the kids who we hope will want to keep the cabin someday and make it their own.  We still hope for some years here...but not the same way they "used to be". "Transience  to cherish...fragility to defend".  My art studio is being dismantled now (a small desk and shelf left by the window facing the lake.  We need the storage for other things and I don't need to duplicate a studio here anymore.  Greg's train tables came down.  He has his one train layout now in Madison.  He needs a work table and some storage instead.  

It is interesting that in the two summers starting with the pandemic summer in which we did not come here at all for the first time so much has changed.  Now it is as if everything has moved slightly so that we are looking at things from a different point of view.  It would have happened anyway, of course, but it's just that it's more than obvious now.  The change continues as the pandemic goes on.

We'll be back on August 9 or 10 for another shorter stay with more family headed up with us for awhile.  Then there will be more berries, more acorns, more pine cones, and the sumac will begin to turn just slightly as the ferns get dusty and turn yellow on the tips. We've seen it so many times.  

Spreading dogbane?  I've never noticed it before. What a lovely find and with a silken moth nest tucked in one leaf too!

The Boathouse is an older landmark in nearby Minocqua...a somewhat dusty and aging lakeside restaurant it turns out.  A bit of a disappointment on a sunny Thursday morning last week.  I was immediately taken in by the signage, however, which I found so interesting AND a real challenge as well.  Who knew there was a beer called "Bell's Oberon"?  Or "Landshark Lager"?  I was inspired after reading about a delightful artist named Doris Rifkin who loves to incorporate signs into her paintings.  If you google her you'll find dozens of wonderful paintings full of print. 

I hope I didn't already post this sketch.  I may have.  It's my bags full of art supplies coming up to the cabin which are now filling up again for the return trip.  Done in water-soluble tinted graphite.  

The cabin nestled into the forest from the road side.

(Lake on the other side.). Our car is covered in a gray car cover off the left side behind the trees.  A blue bag of recycle waiting for us to take to the recycle.  There's a group of large trees just to the left of the door.  One of those fell this spring in a wind storm.  Toward the cabin!!!!

BUT just missed major damage by falling where those trash cans are sitting and then getting hung up in the upper branches!  HOW lucky was that.  

  

Summer Thoughts

You're braver than you believe, 

stronger than you seem, 

and smarter than you think.

 (AA Milne)

The cabin, as the summer moves along, simmers into the routines that becomes a kind of mesmerizing center of our world.  The climate, the smells, the sounds are so different from our other life.  A life of wood smoke, piney smells, marshmallows and tiny flowers.  A life of quiet or wild storms, lapping lakeside water at the pier.  Reading on the summer porch, drawing in the studio, examining a weevil, watching caterpillars eat.  The gorgeous berry colors, the pesky mosquitoes, baking cookies in the old oven, streaming church on the computer, wearing flannel shirts and jeans, seeing so many stars.  SO quiet here. 

Sitting on the pier and looking down into the water.  Smiling over the plethora of rocks...where have they been for all those years?  Rolling around in this lake or along the shores...boulders now broken into stones.  Old, old, old.  Thinking about that new telescope now showing us photos of our universe beyond our dreaming...surely where those rocks came from originally?  My grandsons skip them across the dark waves.  Sending them back to roll in again some day.  

Family comes and goes.  Good times.  Memories.  

 

July Cabin Sketches

 Ability comes from the doing.  

And in the meantime drawing is solely for our own pleasure.

You will slowly feel its warming effect on your spirit and I guarantee it will bring happiness and connect you to this wonderful world of ours. 

Faith in this creative process, and faith in your ability to achieve it, 

can change your life.

Carol Peebles

Cabin Time

 And yet I know that hope is not a default, it is a choice, it is daily intention and action. Writing a better story is not a given, it is an intention, it is how we lean into the next great turning.

Carrie Newcomer

There is an amazing "aura" about time at the cabin...it takes about a week for me to "fall" into the ambiance of a the new-old ways of cabin life.  Ever so slowly my metabolism slows down and I begin rise and wake with the sun again.  To hear the frogs and birds more closely to smell the lake and breathe more deeply.  To smile over the smell of cinnamon French toast in the morning, to sit with my book in late evenings and watch the wild storms sweep over the water.  To really "see" the verge flowers along the road again.  

Time on the deck with my sketchbook letting my breathing go slow again...following the flow of the ink and waving at friends at boats going by.  Smelling the woodsmoke, sharing stories over wine and feeling the sun on your back.  Intent on writing a better story* (based on the old memories).  Welcome to summer at the cabin. 

*Having my two daughters with us this week has been SO delightful. 

I can't thank them enough for a wonderful week together.  Great food, great stories, great memories, wonderful help, laughter. As we "lean into the next great turning." 

Officially Summer

It was a lovely weather day on Saturday for the Urban Sketchers to gather at Wingra Boats on Lake Wingra.  Very festive...lots of families celebrating with balloons, people out padding on various rental boats available, sitting out on the patio or putting their boats in at the public launch.  

    I was drawn to a small building just at the edge of the walking path which was labeled "Hobbit House" and wondered how it is used.  No clues were given and it might just be a storage place.  But I had to include it.  Along side it were stored many of those new paddle boats that people stand on while they paddle about on calm days.  The darling "fish" sign was really quite large by the way...several feet long and wide.  Brightly painted.  Many kayaks to rent, of course, and a duck paddle boat I'll have to sketch another day.

It was our 32nd anniversary this week and so after the sketch time we went out to eat strawberry waffles.  Yum.    

 

Sometimes it just nice to sketch a "moment in time".  A quiet little half an hour after supper one evening just off the sun room here at our apartment complex.  It has been VERY warm with dramatically hot day time temperatures close to 100 degrees.  So being outside for awhile in the evening in a shady spot seemed just right.  The signs on the pots tell which of the residents maintain their "pot garden" and the pole is called a "peace pole".  They are also resident created.  (Mine is in another garden.). 

This week we'll take a short trip to Poynette to visit family and see our great grandson, Ollie, who is sprouting up like a summer plant!  He's 7 months old already!  Then on the weekend more family gatherings to celebrate the beginning of summer and a birthday party too.  

We are headed off the cabin next week over the 4th and through the month of July.  So I will no doubt be posting some cabin thoughts and sketches from up there.  

Lovely June Days in Madison

Today was a sketching opportunity day.  It was, first off, a lovely June day in the low 80s with tons of sunshine.  No storms heading our way.  (We've had a lot of scary ones in Madison lately).  

So that was good.  But also it was our 32nd anniversary!  Our wedding day that long-ago June was lovely too.  Lucky us.  This morning University Woods had "Donuts for Dads" which was just a fun little Happy Father's Day weekend deal...good time for visiting and catching up with folks.  Then I took a short walk in the woods afterwards and sat under the lush green trees for an hour and just listened to the birds!  

Then after lunch we attended a darling little Model A car show in the Heritage Circle and I couldn't resist this one.  

A nice weekend will follow with Urban sketching at Wingra Boats in the morning, pancake lunch for our anniversary meal (at our age you get to do whatever you want) and then am hoping that there is time for a Face Time visit with my sister later in the afternoon.

About a week until we leave for the cabin again.  Lots to fit into that including lots of family get togethers.  Hope your weekend is good wherever you are!  

June in Wisconsin

View of Mush Gush Island toward the north end of Lake Tippecanoe

wc in sketchbook

The 9 days at the cabin over Memorial Day were not the best weather for sure.  LOTS of rain, pretty cold, and lots of mosquitoes and ticks. But we've been going there in May for a billion springs so this was not new news.  But one always "hopes" for a miracle.  Still we had a good week and the drive up and back went just fine (although it cost a fortune in gas just to drive 4 hours!).  This sketch on Memorial Day from Betty's shore line shows how our little island are diminished more each summer by high water.  There were gray gray skies that day and gray gray water.  Later in the week we got high winds and huge whitecaps on the lake.  Kinda scary in a woods.  Let's hope things look more summery when we go back up the end of June!  

 

Acrylic on canvas: 16 x 20

Hydrangas, Mixed Bouquet, White Lilacs

I did bring back some paintings I had stored at the cabin over the years...all painted in Florida over the 12 years we lived there.  I have never hung them together before.  I was amazed that I picked cobalt blue for the background on all 3 which is nice as it makes them look more like a grouping!  I thought they make a cheery summery setting in our dining room here in Madison.  Right in front of flowers from Julies' lovely garden!

Ink and Watercolor sketch in 9 x 12 notebook

from photo of Venice

This sketch and watercolor was done this afternoon during an online streamed class with Brenda Murray at Studio 56.  She supplied the photo that she took in Venice.  And she talked about 35 of us through it over the space of about an hour and a half.  A very nice afternoon.  

Courage Cards and Hope

May 14th in Julie's garden in Madison, WI

Her garden in early spring is to die for.  

Really...I can't paint fast enough.

These are birthday and graduation cards.  

Well, the ones on the left and right are birthday book marks.

Zentangle on tinted paper with white shading using white charcoal pencil and white pens.

The center one is a grandson's graduation card.  

This is a 2 part online zoom class called "Courage Cards" 

given my Esther Piszczek.

I've just finished Part I so these are just the beginning of the project.

Esther is a Zentangle® artist. Here's her link.

Back side of the cards in design of your choice.  I used spatter watercolor and also some stencil prints as well as Gelli prints glued onto the back of the cards. (about 4 x 6)

It seems appropriate to be talking about courage in these dark time.

The entire world has been affected by wars and mass shootings and pandemics and loss.  We need music and art more than ever before to sustain our souls and give us courage.  

Greg and I are up north at the cabin for a week now (in the rain mostly unfortunately). Of the 4 days up here in Lac du Flambeau it's rained 3 days.  Sigh.  

But it's that time of year when we try to get things open and ready for the summer to follow.  Hopefully it will follow!  It's a sleepy time for baking cookies and looking for the jigsaw puzzles and cleaning cupboards and we had hoped to do a little raking but apparently not this time up.  We'll be back up the end of June and through the month of July.