On Friday, September 20, we headed up the hill. The Park restrictions were still in place, so we made sure we were on the road during the permitted hours, which were quite illogical. Whatever. They are in charge; we are not. We only met 3 vehicles, all part of a construction crew on a cabin.
That pink stuff was all along the road, mostly on the uphill side. It is fire retardant called “borate”. The idea was to widen the road as a barrier to fire, should it climb up to the road.
Follow the pink road.
This is the view upcanyon, just above Lookout Point. The fire made it to Lookout and then crossed the road a bit, but we didn’t stop to figure out the particulars. We only stopped to chat with the Park employee, on loan from some Southern California park, to be sure that she made an opportunity to drive to the end of the road.
You can see borate across the canyon, along with swaths of burned areas.
The road is in terrible shape. No surprise, that. The air was clear and clean and it was a great relief to arrive at our cabin.
I finished these two oil paintings, to be held in reserve for when the Mural Gallery in Exeter needs to be resupplied with citrus paintings.
Navels on the Tree I, 6×6″, $65
Navels on the Tree II, 4×6″, $45
Mineral King
The Mineral King road and recreation restrictions were scheduled to be lifted on Saturday, September 21. By now people who need to know will know for sure if that has happened.
This is how Mineral King looked in September of 2023. At the time of composing this blog post, I hadn’t been up there in almost 3 weeks.
The Book About TB
The TB book index problem is not repaired but we now have a plan. Instead of an index that can adjust itself to repagination, we will have a static index. This means that after the manuscript is formatted, I get to go through the index word-by-word and make sure the right page numbers are listed.
This is my favorite photo in the upcoming book. (Historic Saranac Lake Collection, 2022.4.6. (Courtesy of the Trudeau Institute)
2025 Calendar
Is it a good idea to show you the calendar now? They have arrived, are now for sale, and here is the part I am unsure of: they are a sneak peek into my upcoming show, Simply Home, which opens on October 19, a month from now. Wait, this isn’t truly a “spoiler”, because I have been showing you the progression of paintings for almost a year now!
2025 Calendar Front Cover — Simply Home, $25
The Mineral King road and recreation restrictions were lifted at 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 21.
Normally you get to read about Mineral King on Fridays, but I have nothing to show or tell you. Maybe you only look at the pictures anyway. Maybe I am just talking to myself. . .
We went for a bikeride, curious about the firecamp at the Lions’ Roping Arena and the former Three Rivers Airport (more of a strip than a port, and closed for decades now.)
Even the most beautiful yard in Three Rivers looks a bit tired in September. August used to be my worst favorite month, but it has now become September (fires, can’t get to the cabin to get away from the heat, the deer really start chomping down my yard, everything is dusty and smoky, sick of heat, wanting to be home but so tired of heat—waa waa, someone call the wambulance.)
The number of vehicles and equipment and personnel has diminished. They are certainly keeping the gravel road watered and packed, but it is still washboardy on a bicycle.
We stood in the shade of this tree and visited with our friend, who is working security at the second gate.
I was happy to see these little guys are still in residence.
Those trucks are lined up, waiting their turn to get washed. Maybe it is a crew that is leaving.
I wonder what those sleeping trailers are like inside: probably very dark and cool. I think many of the workers choose to stay in local motels.
I don’t know what all the trucks and equipment are busy with or why, but I bet that whoever owns the former airstrip is making bank.
Enough of this fire stuff; off to the airport bridge to check out the river before the uphill ride home. (As a bonus, you now know why it is call the “airport bridge”. When we were kids and drove over it, we were instructed to, “roll up your windows—there are hippies!” I wonder if any of them was my future husband. . .)
Since Exeter’s Mural Gallery (121 South E Street) is reopening (TODAY!), I have a renewed interest in painting oranges.
The painting on the left is untitled, so for now I will call it The Painting Formerly Known As Turning Leaf. (I thought that Turning Leaf was a good painting, but apparently I was alone in my opinion.) The painting on the right is also untitled, currently known as The Painting Formerly Known As An Unsold Pomegranate. (Ditto my thoughts on that pomegranate painting.)
Easel place swap!
Not good enough yet.
Better, but photographed with an unsightly wet shine.
Therefore, I did not photograph The Painting Formerly Known as a Pomegranate.
Instead, I started a new painting. Painting oranges reignited my enjoyment of the subject, so this time I really started whooping it up with a 10×10″ canvas.
I’m going to really like this painting (until I change my mind and retouch it.)
P.S. These won’t be in the Mural Gallery just yet. They need to get finished, dry, titled, and scanned.
Yesterday I told you that the paintings retrieved from Silver City will be heading to Exeter’s Mural Gallery, which reopens September 19 (TOMORROW!) after a summer-long renovation. (I don’t think they have a website, but their physical address is 121 So. E Street (next door to the former Wildflower Cafe, at the edge of Mixter Park, home of Exeter’s first giant outdoor mural.)
These 5×7 oil paintings on panels got freshened up and will be sold with little easels. I didn’t photograph the process out of respect for my readers who have no interest in miniscule improvements to paintings.
And here is a table full of Mineral King paintings. I painted them quickly, in order to hustle them up the hill for the usually excellent selling month of August at the Silver City Resort. Alas, we had a thunderstorm which caused a lightning strike which began the Coffeepot fire on August 3. So, I brought them home.
They aren’t terrible, but I studied each one and found at least one thing to improve. I started at the bottom left, and here is a photo for comparison. Prolly a useless exercise for you to discern what got improved, but here goes anyway.
And now the entire table-full has been renovated.
You’ll just have to trust me that they are all a little bit better than before. By the end of the day, the light has changed significantly enough that they look different in photos, whether or not they’ve been retouched.
Now they must dry and I must rescan them in order to have a good record of each painting, because OF COURSE they will sell.
I’m in a bit of a holding pattern, waiting for several things: the Mineral King road to open, a week-long plein air painting trip to Monterey, the indexer to finish repairing the index on the TB book, and my show, Simply Home, to open.
Tucker loves the unmowed lawn, which is part of one of my gardening experiments.
What’s a person to do while waiting? Stuff, both personal and professional. (What word did people use before “stuff” became a ubiquitous filler?)
Oh-oh! Where will Tucker hide now?
Personal stuff: enjoy being home, work in the yard, do some work on the landscaping at church, read, organize some messes, hang out with the cats, you know, just stuff.
Such a sorry excuse for a pomegranate. The tree has not produced a single edible normal sized piece of fruit in over 15 years.
Professional stuff: my art has been retrieved from the Silver City Store and also from the Mural Gallery. This means that I have to change information on my inventory lists, and put card packages away.
Finally, some time to think about and design a calendar for 2025. This will be based on the upcoming show, Simply Home. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that people care more about Mineral King than my art, but I am trying to earn a living here. (My farmer dad used to say that he “scratched his living out of the dust of the earth”. Maybe I just scratch mine out with pencils, or smear it out with paint. . .) So, because I am an active citizen of Realville, I have ordered fewer calendars than in previous years. This means if you snooze, you lose, unless the demand warrants a second order.
Why is my vitex tree blooming in September? Why is it called “vitex”, which sounds like some sort of nutritional supplement?
Oh that’s right—it is time to design a new Christmas card. Yeah, yeah, I KNOW that fewer people send cards every year, except for those flat ones full of tiny photos of themselves doing glorious things throughout the year. Not me. Each year I design a new card and send them to my drawing students (and a small handful of distant friends), using the United States Postal Service.
And while putting away the paintings that did not have a chance to sell at Silver City, I studied them and decided that they each deserved more attention.
The amount of work to prepare for a solo show is astonishing. I’m so thankful that I was given an entire year to get ready for Simply Home at CACHE, opening October 19, 4:30-6:30 PM.
Here is the list of the most recent show prep activities:
Name the show (Simply Home)
Make a list of all the paintings, their sizes, titles, and prices. (52 oil paintings!)
Verify that the prices were consistent by sizing. (tedious)
Ask the gallery lots of questions about contracts, opening reception, second reception, events to keep people coming back, whether or not to bring pieces that were in private collections (nope, all must be for sale).
Answer questions about labeling (No, I don’t want my name on every label, and why must each one state “oil” when they are all oil, and is the size really necessary for people who are standing in front of the paintings?? I made my wishes known but left the final decisions to the gallerists.)
Decide if I want piano or guitar music at the opening—PIANO, ALWAYS!! (too bad—the pianist is already scheduled)
Make sure the pieces are correctly titled on the backs, with correct inventory numbers. This is always crucial with my paintings when there is so much repetition in subject matter. (i.e., was that Giant Sequoia, Big Tree, Two Big, Redwood Trees, Giant Sequoia XI, Redwood Tree VI. . .?)
Think about how to advertise drawing lessons at the show, and which pencil pieces to use as an enticement to sign up on the waiting list for lessons. (Might use a few of my students’ drawings on the poster)
After all this thinking, I made a list of the next things to do for the show. It is quite boring. I needed something productive to do that didn’t require decisions, so I vacuumed the painting workshop (dust, feathers, cat hair, spiders, spider webs) and reupholstered my painting chair with duct tape. I work in a classy joint.
I also cleaned my studio because a guest of honor was coming for a working visit. Because the studio is feeling neglected, I started a colored pencil drawing just for fun. Weird, drawing for fun.
The color looks a bit weird here because it was smoky out. So, what’s new? It’s late summer in Three Rivers and that’s normal.
Fridays are usually for Mineral King. We haven’t been able to get there due to the road closure. There are limited times that people can pass through, but it isn’t helpful to only be able to go up at the end of the day and be required to head down early in the morning. (Maybe that will change soon. . . ever hopeful here.) For fire information, you can go here: watch duty or here: inciweb. I can’t seem to find the maps on watchduty using an old iPad, but maybe you can. The Coffeepot fire is called “CAKNP” on inciweb.
Are you curious as to what subject I chose for my third still life? I guess you must be if you are reading this.
COLOR won!!
I know, this doesn’t look like color. Just you wait. . .
This is probably too small to see the progression. It was fiddly, exacting, and really fun to mix a bunch of colors that were not landscape greens, browns, and grays.
These are my two final pieces for the upcoming show. “Simply Home” will open on Saturday, October 19 and run through December 29, at CACHE, 125 So. B Street, Exeter, CA 93221.
P.S. Want to know the titles? Blue Bowl, Yellow Lemons, and Cabin Dishes. (I bet you can figure out which title goes with which painting.)
A week or two ago I told you about working in Mineral King, when I spent time digging through photos, looking for ideas to paint two new still life paintings. (Would that be “still lifes” or “still lives”? Eh, who cares?)
So, I started one, and concentrated so hard that I forgot to photograph the process.
Dry quickly, please!
Now I need to decide if there is time to paint a third piece and if I want to go with a citrus theme or the round things in blue bowls theme or the color theme.
I do love me some blue bowls. Sometimes I put lemons in them just because they look pretty, and then I end up wasting them.
