Lazy Listicle One

Since I am not making art that translates well into blog posts, here is a list of random topics, unrelated to anything in particular. Lists are the lazy way to write.

  1. Three new stepping stones: they look so much better with grout than without. You can see that I acquired some yellow tiles. Want any? I have a box that is almost too heavy to lift, full of these 4×4″ pieces of ceramic sunshine.
  2. The narcissus (mini daffodils?) and/or paperwhites bloom in January around here. (I don’t know what they are officially called.)
  3. We have the sittingest yard!
  4. This will be a sweater. The yarn matches a skirt I found, which was a big thrill to this color junkie, especially since I took a chance by ordering them off the internet. They are the color of sequoia trees, which is a thrill to this simple-minded Central California artist.Tomorrow: Listicle Two.

Irrelevant

“Irrelevant“?

Yeppers, irrelevant.

What is irrelevant?

The things currently occupying the Central California artist’s days are irrelevant to the topics of this blog.

Why does this matter?

You probably don’t care about the things occupying her days right now, so the blog is going to be quiet for a short time.

How short?

Until your Central California artist is able to return to her easels.

When will that be?

She isn’t sure, but if she thinks of something that might interest you, she will post again whether or not she has returned to her easels or drawing table. (Nothing is wrong—fret not!)

But we will miss her!

It is her hope that absence will make your heart grow fonder, rather than out of sight, out of mind.

Can we have a photograph as a little temporary good-bye gift?

Sure.

We saw that one just last week!

Don’t you think it is so very cute?

But we want something else. . .

Okay, how about this one.

I will be back soon—thank you for your patience!

Nothing to See Here

Because  I have been hard at work editing 2 books, and also formatting one of them, there isn’t much to show you.

Here, have a look inside my studio where I am parked with my laptop for hours at a time. It is nice to be surrounded by art that I like.

Jackson stopped by for a visit, but he would not stay still. He just pretends to like me in case I might feed him.

Sometimes I get distracted by light and shadow.

The mug says, “. . . and thou shalt have dominion over all the beasts, except, of course, for CATS.”

 

A Birthday Walk

On Trail Guy’s birthday, we went to Hospital Rock in Sequoia National Park, which is as far as people are allowed to go right now. It has been about 2-1/2 weeks since the last storm, but the road isn’t cleared because the equipment is broken and there aren’t enough operators or mechanics. At least that’s what they say. When Trail Guy was Road Guy, there were no excuses—the road was kept open, no matter what. Period. No time-off. Sigh.

Fretting over the present is not why we are here today. We are here because there are sights to see, such as this ugly burned area.

Moro Rock as seen from Hospital Rock; steps go up the side you cannot see from here. Advertisement: I have a pencil drawing of this, available as a reproduction. Might even still have the original buried deep in a file.

This elderberry shrub survived the fire.

Castle Rocks: if you look across the middle fork of the Kaweah River from atop Moro Rock, you will see these distinctive rocks. Or you can skip the climb and take the Moro Creek Road to see them, as we did, especially when the Park is mostly unavailable. 

California bay laurel trees make bay leaves, the kind used in cooking.

We walked up the Moro Creek Road, which takes you to the Middle Fork Trailhead.

I love me some green.

That footbridge down there is called the Buckeye bridge because you get to it through the Buckeye campground. A long time ago, Trail Guy was part of the crew who rebuilt the bridge. A big flood took it out the following winter and it had to be rebuilt yet again. (He wasn’t part of that rebuild.)

Alta Peak’s elephant is at a more oblique angle than the way we see it from Three Rivers.

The green arrow points toward Alta Peak; the blue oval is around Triple Divide Peak (separating 3 drainages: Kings to the left/north, Kaweah to the west/toward us, Kern to the right/south); the red oval is around Mt. Stewart.

Heading back, looking down toward the valley.

In addition to loving green, I love me a good stone wall.

And thus we conclude our birthday walk of 3.3 miles in the foothills of Sequoia National Park, just above the little town of Three Rivers, in Tulare County, California’s flyover country.

Sincerely,

Your Central California artist who takes walks instead of painting or drawing these days but plans on getting back to work eventually.

 

A Walk With a Mission

Why am I showing you this? Because I am not working on any art projects at the moment. (Pictures of two book editing projects wouldn’t hold your interest—you’re welcome.)

Further, I won’t be revealing the location of this walk, because we were trespassing. Forgive us our trespasses. . .

I was on a mission. The last time we took this walk, I spied a classic cabin—stone chimney, board and batten siding, very simple.

Who cares? Your Central California artist.

Why? My business is called “Cabin Art”. And I have been walking in this neighborhood for 23 years, so it is quite thrilling (and puzzling) to see something for the first time, something clearly old that has escaped my notice.

I talked to a couple of people who know the area and received a couple of possible explanations for this intriguing structure. It is down there somewhere. (Trail Guy brought binoculars).

THERE! See it? It is so far down a driveway that it is not at all visible from the road that I walk.

Mystery solved. After that, we had a shouted conversation with our friends on a lower section of road.

Alta Peak was crispy clear.

There it is again! Why haven’t those people asked me to draw it? Don’t they know who I am??

It might make a nice painting, if I include the backdrop. I’ve heard the people are quite reclusive, but the strangest coincidences regularly occur when I am curious about a building. I learned the names of the owner, and next week, someone by the same name who I know is related started drawing lessons. More will be revealed. . . or not.Looking down canyon, you can see the air quality deteriorates. But oh my, the GREEN!

This is not the river. Just sayin’. (That is a handy little cliché).

A POPPY ON JANUARY 9!! Excuse me for shouting. This is Very Very Early. But wait! There’s more!

BUSH LUPINE TOO! Guess I was too excited to focus the camera, not that one has the option on a PHD* type of camera.

*Press Here, Dummy

Avoiding the Mess in the Studio

Since finishing the indoor murals, I haven’t been working on any art projects worthy of posting. Instead. . .

. . . Trail Guy and I dismantled the show “Images of Home” at Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery. It seemed as if we were taking home as much as we delivered back in November. That is because we were. Whenever someone retrieved a sold piece, I replaced it with something else.

I have a remarkable friend, since kindergarten, who possesses many decorative items and the ability to arrange them beautifully. She did this all around “Images of Home”, so when I dismantled the show, I took a few photos of her things (without any understanding of what many actually were). My friend took the stark edges off the show, and I am very very appreciative. It is said that “opposites attract”, and while I was appreciating her enormous quantity of pretty possessions, I recently culled my own decorations down to one box. Look at this stuff! (I piled much of it on this table; the other three photos were things left in the gallery after I moved all of this).

I spent a bit of time weeding my baby poppies, which started appearing in November this year (last year it was January – all based on rainfall). Pretend you don’t see Pippin because he thinks he is hidden. Can you identify the poppies among all the other plants? I finally stopped trying to weed, because the tangled roots were causing me to wreck the poppies too. It was really just an excuse to be outside in the sun with the cats.

Trail Guy and I took a walk. I didn’t take my camera but did take the phone because I wanted to clock our distance (4.3 miles, thank you for your interest). Who actually cares? I am simply making excuses for the poor quality of these photos, but of course, if you are reading this on your own phone, they are probably all too small to see the quality anyway.

This is a neighbor’s front of house view.

We saw the first wildflowers of the year. Tiny and unnamed, but still quite heartening.

There were little fuzzy clumps of green moss.

The clouds cleared briefly off the top of Case Mountain in the distance.

All great slide shows end with a sunset. So, I climbed up on the bench around our chimney for this photo later that afternoon. It is alpenglowish, something I have painted multiple times. (And as long as it continues to sell, I will continue to repaint it.)

Thus we conclude the tour of a show dismantling and a little walk in Three Rivers. May your days be merry and bright. 

Oops. That was last month.

And you are welcome for not having to see the mess my studio was after all the art and merchandise was returned.

Remarkable Drawing Students

I have said many true things about my drawing students, mostly about how they are so kind and encouraging to one another. 

Here is another truth: most of my students are remarkable. They are eager to learn, highly creative, and have many interests. Most take drawing lessons because they have another line of art in their lives and want to be more accurate. They pick up the basics quickly, and then they keep coming because it is so fun to have people to draw with, a time set aside, and of course, help from me.

Look at what two of my students have done on their own.

C (not the “C” of email drawing lessons) loves to watercolor, and she has gotten quite proficient at urban sketching. She also has made a highly original Christmas card for several years, which her kids turned into, I kid you not, COCKTAIL NAPKINS!

Another student, M, found something online about painting on teabags. When she told me she was doing this, I said, “Oh dear, let me get you some paper!” Look at the Christmas card that she gave me:

She lets used tea bags dry, carefully opens them up and empties out the tea leaves, and uses watercolors and ink to create these one-of-a-kind teensy beautiful (and yes, weird) paintings. (I will get her some paper any time she asks!)

I really admire my students and feel so proud of them for taking what they’ve learned about drawing and applying it to their other forms of making art.

You can learn a bit more about drawing lessons here. Lessons

Peculiar and Annoying

My website/blog is being peculiar, and now I am being annoying by bothering you twice in the same day.

Several of my blog subscribers have let me know that the photos aren’t showing up. In addition, many spammers are slamming my email with unwanted solicitations through the contact button. Then, the “platform” that the site is built upon “migrated” everything to a new location in the stratosphere. (I have no idea what all this means). The cherry on top of this mess is that my web designer closed his business to take a regular job; an employee is taking over some of his clients (ME! PICK ME!!) but she is overwhelmed and thus somewhat nonresponsive at this time.

(I’m fine, just fine, thanks, why do you ask??)

If you are a subscriber, how about following the link in this email to the website. If it doesn’t show the photos on the blog post, go to this link and resubscribe: Jana’s Blog  

If you have trouble, please email me. I have disabled the contact form so IF my link above takes you to the correct version of my website, you will not have a form to fill out. (and neither will the Spanner Slammers). But since your Central California artist is trying to navigate this all by her lonesome, it may or may not solve the problem. As with everything, more will be revealed.

Thank you for reading through this annoying information about my peculiar website. You may resume your nap now.

P.S. Sometimes the titles of the blog posts don’t show; other times there are weird spots in the titles because the word “cabinart” is going over the top of the titles in white, which matches the background and further confuses the viewer. (I just work here. Sort of.)

 

11 Things I Learned in December

  1. Alma mater is not Latin for someone’s mama named Alma. It actually translates as”nourishing mother”, so it refers to the university (mother) at which you studied (were nourished), and more commonly, from which you graduated. Good grief, I have 4 alma maters. Wait – was I “nourished” by each one? I can’t remember specifics, but must have learned something. That was well before I started keeping these handy lists.
  2. Discipline-based art education is a way to learn about art in 4 areas: A. production, B. Criticism, C. History, and D. Aesthetics. The approach was formulated in the 1980s by the Getty Foundation and was a departure from the “creative self expressionism” that dominated when I was in school. If it had been taught this way, maybe I would have finished a 4 year degree. A friend told me about this (Thank you, DM!) but I haven’t found a site that explains it as clearly as he did.
  3. All those lines that I’ve been noticing in the sky are called “chemtrails” , the result of something called “geoengineering”, which is atmospheric experimentation and manipulation by covert aerosol distribution. Some document from NASA, written in 1966, indicates that such environmental shenanigans have been going on since the 1940s. I am beginning to think there is a conspiracy here, one to hide and pretend that this is not happening. To question it is to be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. Good grief Charlie Brown. How totally creepy. Maybe you can understand more than I do if you choose to follow these links: Alachua County, Europe Reloaded, Geoengineering Watch.
  4. Almost all large companies hide behind phone trees (except L.L. Bean); they experience an “unusually high volume of calls” at all times; they now have the convenient excuses of Covid and supply chain trouble; they say that they value your business; most offer a call-back option instead of waiting on hold; none of the ones I have tried to connect with ever called back. Anyone wondering why I didn’t want to get a computer, email, a website, or a cell phone? Too bad; this is life as we now know and live it. 
  5. Related to #4, I relearned that in order to get big companies to do the right thing, IF you ever reach a human, you must be firm. If you act angry, ask to escalate the call, maybe even raise your voice and tell them what they are “offering” is completely unacceptable, they usually come to see the truth. WHY WHY WHY is this necessary? Buy local, buy used, borrow, refurbish, and avoid big box stores. Take the road less traveled.
  6. It is very hard to buy things in stores because many don’t carry items for sale, but only for display. If you want to buy something, they write it down, ask you for all sorts of personal information, put it into an iPad, have you verify the information, enter it into a computer, ask for more verification. They charge for shipping the item to their store, for delivering the item to you, for setting up the item for you, and of course for sales tax. They call to say they will deliver on a certain date, they call again to tell you what time and ask you to call back to confirm, and then you get tangled up in the branches of their phone tree. If you can’t get through to confirm, they reschedule and it starts all over again. I had no idea that this is how it “works” now. Anyone wonder why I avoid shopping, keep my things for decades, and prefer thrift shops?
  7. A friend sent a link to a wonderful song. It comes with photos that go along with the lyrics, but the music alone is enough for me. Holy Now by Peter Mayer.
  8. My wedding ring needs to be resized. I needed to take it off, which took awhile with lots of dish soap. There is a permanent dent in my finger, and now I am a little bit afraid to put it back on. Is my finger fat, muscled, or have my knuckles grown? I vote for muscled. . . all that knitting, typing, drawing, painting, weed pulling. Maybe in January I can learn about where to get this done. 
  9. This was to be the year that I made Hoshigaki persimmons. I learned 3 things: A. make SURE they are firm; B. make SURE they have stems to tie the string around; C. DON’T put a persimmon on either end of one string to counterbalance when they hang because if the string gives way on one, both will go splat. Perhaps I will have success with this peculiar, time-consuming and delicious way of drying persimmons next year.
  10. Sawtooth as viewed from the former Sunnypoint Campground in Mineral King, with rushing water in the stream and wildflowers, all exaggerated from the real view in real life is one of people’s very most favorite scenes I have ever painted. Number 6 is now on the easels.(This is #5).
  11. We have gotten more rain in the month of December this winter than in the entire previous rain year! (I think a rain year begins with July). I sure hope we are allowed to have it for irrigation, etc.

 

Ten Truths of Life List

(More weird lines in the sky when no jets have flown overhead)

Lists are a regular tradition at the end of a year. People list things that happened, celebrities who died, accomplishments, goals for the next year, resolutions, words to live by, on and on. . .*

I’ve been thinking about truths of life. Writer Anne Lamott has a famous list, and you can hear her explain them on a very good TED talk. Her list made me think about my own.

Here are some truths that I know and can count on. 

  1. Life is better with a cat.
  2. Almost everything in life is a mix of good and bad—life may be better with a cat, but eventually the cat dies; social media is a sewer, but it is also a place to keep up with your modern (and often puzzling) nieces and nephews.
  3. The two best ways to spend time with friends are working on a project together or taking a walk.
  4. There are no perfect friends; no single person can meet all your needs.
  5. The more stuff you own, the more stuff breaks (and gets lost, dirty, or messed up and wastes your time in maintaining it).
  6. Gardening is war.
  7. “Upgrade” and “update” are euphemisms for “complications”. 
  8. “Educated” and “smart” are not synonyms; knowledge does not equal wisdom, and information does not guarantee discernment. In the same vein, common sense has become quite uncommon. 
  9. My approach to sweets: if it isn’t chocolate (dark), it probably isn’t worth the calories.
  10. Beauty is a need, and it is something that has no danger of an overdose.

Sincerely,

Your List Lady AKA Central California Artist

*A list from the past before I started doing those end of the month Learned Lists (because search engines like links in blog posts): 2016