Spring break, mini spring break anyway, in Crescent City, CA. (We're actually staying in a town that's a wide spot in the road about eight miles from CC. The park is almost in the back yard.) Originally we planned a trip to Pittsburgh but airfares were horrifyingly expensive, and so we set off for a few days of hiking and coast stuff, hoping the weather cooperated. It's been on and off so far. Today was beautiful, defying the predictions of heavy clouds and rain.

Old road trips leave ghost impressions. The last time I drove to southern Oregon and northern Cali, Opal was 3. It was the longest drive I'd ever done back then. I remember wanting to look at the gorgeous coast scenery and the redwoods but being terrified of the road, accepting dangerous tiredness as just part of the trip, feeling so compelled to just keep driving that we arrived at the campsite with only a grocery bag of exotic mushrooms and maybe some tortillas and a juice box or two. (What Opal remembers: the sun setting over the lake, and watching the bats. They ate every mosquito around. Hooray bats.)

I finished fixing the house in Pittsburgh. I moved back to Portland.

I have a teenager. And the same cat. And I will be setting up a new sketchbooks/random updates site soon. Stay tuned.

Last day of summer. Time's up!



Look for me on pernoctalian for new paintings. Keep in touch! You know where I live.

 

 




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One day I will make a visit to NY Central to give proper adoration to their paper selection, but for now I have the catalog and sample book. And now and then, nice packages find their way to my house.

I ordered more of the Heine that I so love, and decided to try a couple of sheets of Zerkall Nideggen as well.

Nideggen is a soft bookweight paper that drags across the fingers nicely. It's a color somewhere between oatmeal and wet hay. Nice enough but not all that remarkable in the world of fine art papers.

Until light passes through it:


The paper didn't get left out in the rain- the actual laid pattern is wavy.

For those of you who wish to know what a 14 mile walk around pittsburgh might look like, it's a little like this:



Click on the piccy for more detail. (The little green "s" is my start point.) There were stops for food and water and drawing, so it took all day. It started to hurt around mile 11.

I am seeing so many lovely and intriguing potential drawings of North Portland and I just hope I have the energy to get them the hell out of the vapor portfolio and onto paper. Gabriel introduced me to Jane at Atelier Meridian and visiting a well equipped print shop is kind of like visiting New York- never mind I used to live there, it's been fifteen years and I feel like a gawking newcomer once again. Printmaking has changed in amazing ways since I set up camp in David Freed's etching studio at VCU and salvaged my second year of graduate school with inspiration from this guy. Etching without solvents? Solarplates? Paper plate lithography? It feels like it's time to dive back in, but this is a whole new pool so of course my inclination is to test and test with the toes, secretly wishing for a push. Eventually I do jump.

Tonight's the rock camp showcase, featuring my girl on keyboards and her non-biological sister on drums. She brought her violin, but has been teaching herself a new instrument by playing her violin music on our host's piano. I love watching that brain of hers: she went from picking out notes to sudden understanding of the keyboard's layout. I may have to get a real piano someday. In the next house, wherever that will be.

There are loads of bike events this summer. We didn't bring bikes: Opal's was too small and it didn't seem useful to lug mine across on the back of the car. I didn't even bring the bike rack. I'm not sure if I regret that decision or not. There's a plan to buy cheap bikes and store them in E's garage so that we have them every summer. I haven't found a cheap bike yet. Even if we only have it for the one night..I really want to go on this ride. Costumes! Doughnuts! Drummers! Bridges at night!

Finally, yes, when I'm in Portland and have the time to post these lengthy updates on lj, you know it means I've been nailed by some illness or other, but the details make for miserable reading. Lord, back when I was in New Orleans and much sicker, I at least drew entertaining cartoons about it. Anybody who wants to know more about this summer's malady can call me and I'll hack and gasp and sniffle into the phone for you.

I just got back from Regent Square where I saw an opening of Douglas Cooper's drawings , large panoramic views featuring Pittsburgh's famously convoluted topography and the history of the neighborhoods (including mine) where you're likely to find a flight of steps in place of a street. What's cool about them is that they are done partially from sketches of multiple viewpoints, partly from the memories of older residents. So there are smokestacks and streetcars in view, neither of which you'll see now- but the feeling of those steps and streets is still very much the same. Especially in winter.

Oh, and also in his book is a drawing (St. Rosalia, Saturday, 1997) that could have been done from my roof.


*Unfortunately, the drawing in the link isn't really representative of the crazed hilliness of this place. Why, those houses are practically on a grid.

The zero birthdays tend to be unremarkable. At least the 3 I've had as an adult.

October 3, 1975 featured a lot of girls running around . efbq gave me a china cat.

October 3, 1985- I had just moved to Richmond to go to school, and I didn't really know anyone in town. My best friend called me from New York. There was a boyfriend and a recently exed boyfriend, both in DC, neither of them any good. I may have gone to the Village Cafe with my sketchbook and gotten myself fries and coffee. My parents got me a camera.

October 3, 1995, I had landed in a chaotic, musical, terminally broke house in Portland. A short, intense relationship had recently ended badly and I was alternately in denial and in a rage. I thought I knew what was going to happen next: I'd work for a couple of months, save up enough to get out of town, sell a painting or two if I was lucky, and continue traveling. The bass player and his girlfriend made me a funny card and got me drunk.

October 3, 2005-Busy. This isn't a birthday, it's a Monday. The first deadline was two days ago, a few paintings are done and scanned, and I need to somehow pull my old service bureau experience out of my long term memory. I'll probably paint all day and go out for cake with Opal tonight. Emily sent me a pair of bloomers.

Back to painting now.

Happy birthday to bigfatmama! And to my cousin Hugh, who is nine.