On Friday’s post I said that the only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King, by Jane Coughran and me, published by Cabinart Books in 1998, is to get lucky on eBay or on Amazon.
Then I decided to look for myself. Nothing on eBay, and this is what was on Amazon. Whoa. Here is a screen shot of the first listings:
$85 is the lowest price for a book that sold for $50 as a hardcover, and this one says it is paperback??
Then I went down to the more expensive books. Check this out:
Now that is what I would call a Peculiar Sight.
I contacted the last 2 sellers on the listing to ask them if they really and truly meant to list the book for that price. I’ll let you know if I hear back. . . (and yes, I signed my name and told them I thought I did a nice job on the illustrations but their prices seemed a bit high.)
P.S.The seller called FastShip replied:
Jana, Thank-you for bringing this to my attention. We have about 70K books.
They went on with a lengthy explanation of how books are priced and how some fall through the cracks, but they didn’t say if they were planning to reprice the book.
In 1998, Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King*. Some of the drawings crossed over the center seam of the book to cover 2 pages. Some of the drawings were an odd shape to accommodate words.
This is one of those drawings (only photographed, not scanned and touched up for the web, so the background looks gray instead of white):
A member of this cabin family asked me if there were any drawings of the cabin remaining. I remembered this very large drawing with its odd shape. He and I looked at it together to see if it could be completed, and how he’d like it to be completed.
This is the result of that conversation. Highly satisfying! (but that little rude voice asks, “Yes, but is it creative?”)
*The only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King is to get lucky on Amazon or eBay. Good luck!
Someone’s Colorado cabin –definitely not small, rustic or rude
There are three distinct parts to cabin-ness:
The building itself – small, rustic, basic, simple, often without electronic amenities. (But wait! What about the cabin pictured above?)
The setting – rural, semi-secluded, in the mountains, taking an effort to get to (But wait! Have you ever been up Highway 180 to Wilsonia? And do these cabins look semi-secluded to you?)
A Wilsonia road
A Wilsonia neighborhood
The culture – slower, focused on people instead of technology; a place to play, recreate and relax, mostly outside; a place where meals and fireplaces become events in and of themselves; returning to nostalgic pastimes either of our youth or of some idealized youth of our parents and grandparents.
Outdoor dining is a big part of cabin life.Napping is a big part of relaxing at a cabinSee? Outdoor diningEven outdoor cooking!Fireplaces are a huge part of cabin culture.Eat and run??
It seems that the culture part is the strongest determining factor of cabin life. Some of our cabin neighbors gathered in another location for several summers, due to illness of one of their group. One of them told me, “We do Mineral King things in Seattle, and Mineral King is present with us there.” (I probably paraphrased it beyond all recognition – Forgive me, Sawtooth Six!)
P.S. Most of the drawings in this post are part of the book The Cabins of Wilsonia, available here.
The posts called Cabin Thoughts (Part One, Part Two, and Part Three), were popular among my readers, generating conversations through comments, email, snail mail, and in person. Now that our cabin is closed for the season, I’d like to share a few more thoughts.
A dear friend of many years, Natalie, sent these thoughts, titled “What a Cabin Means to Me”. (Nat, I did a tiny bit of editing – hope it clarifies rather than changes your intent.)
Secluded from the general public and hard to get to
In the mountains
Small and rustic, having only basic amenities, and no room for isolation.
Not a second home, but more of a make-do-and-relax kind of place where there is no television or phone service. A place where you interact with family and friends by sharing meals, playing cards and other games, sitting by a fire, hiking, and just cherishing the quietness of the outdoors.
Once again, mountains, small, rustic, games, firesides, food, outdoors, friends and family appear. I think Natalie’s ideal cabin would separate her family from outside influences, causing togetherness among themselves. This is a theme I found multiple times. . . a desire to unplug and simplify in order to focus on the ones who are most precious.
Our Mineral King cabin is definitely a cabin but varies from Natalie’s thorough and excellent definition in several ways.
It isn’t hard to get to if you don’t mind the poor road, and it is highly visible if you hike a popular trail. (This is the World Wide Web, so I am being vague on purpose.)
It is a second home to us, but not in the sense of a home with all the luxuries you may be accustomed to (our first home is purposely lacking a dishwasher, microwave, garbage disposal and heated towel racks, and we’re just fine, but thanks for your concern).
The cabin no longer has a telephone; we tell people to leave a message on the answering machine at home, and we use the cabin neighbor’s phone to check messages. (This makes up for 36 years of cabin neighbors using our phone.)
Neither one of us likes to play games; in the evenings we listen to the radio, Trail Guy reads out-of-date newspapers that friends bring up to him, I read library books and knit.
There is no single definition of “cabin”, but there is a feel to a place that makes it a cabin. I will share a few more ideas about it tomorrow. Then, maybe I will be finished with this topic. (No promises, because after all, my business is called Cabin Art.)
I looked up “cabin” on my Mac. The dictionary on my computer has fairly useless definitions as far as our discussion is concerned.
Cabin may refer to:
Beach cabin, a small wooden hut on a beach
Log cabin, a house built from logs
Cottage, a small house
Chalet, a wooden mountain house with a sloping roof
Small, remote, mansion (Western Canada)
Small, free-standing structures that serve as individual lodging spaces of a motel
Forget that. Where’s my real Webster’s dictionary?? Mine was published in 2004 rather than 1935. Oh good grief, look at this:
A small, simple, one-story house.
Willow Window, pencil. Is this a cabin? Nope, it is a bungalow. But it is a small, simple, one-story house. How do I know? Because I used to live there.Kitchen Corner, pencil, framed, $150. Is this a cabin? Yep. How do I know? I live there in the summer. But wait! It has 2 stories!
A few folks checked in with their thoughts on what a cabin is. One suggested “primitive”; another said a place to get away from every day life; a third (and someone else I talked to in person) suggests that a cabin is a state of mind, “non-fancy” is a good description, and someone else added in a description of an ideal cabin. She used the word “spare”, which could mean an extra home or it could mean without clutter. (I’ve seen some pretty cluttered cabins, and I have lived in a cabin when it was my only place of residence.)
Come back tomorrow for more thoughts on cabins and cabin life; clearly, there is no clear definition of cabin, but there are many ideas about it. Clearly.
There are many seasoned artists who freely share their experience with other artists. One of the nuggets I’ve gleaned through the years is “Get rid of your junk”. There is no reason to keep things around that do not sell or do not represent your best work.
The Cabins of Mineral King represented my best work in 1998. I draw better now, which is good; I would better have improved over the last 20 years or that would be a sorry situation. (That was an awkward sentence – anyone know a good editor?)
Still, the unsold drawings haunt me, take up space and just need to go away, either through a sale or through a shredder.
Before they go into the shredder, here is a chance for you to own an original pencil drawing for a peanut butter sandwich, as my dad used to say. I will consider offers, as long as they are not insulting.
One month from today, October 7, is the deadline on this batch of drawings.
4-1/2 x 5″, $20, SOLD6-1/2 x 4″, $25, SOLD7 x 10″, $904-1/2 x 5″, $25, SOLD4-1/2 x 6-1/2″, $35, SOLD5 x 7″, $40. SOLD
As a full time professional artist since 1993, I have accumulated a pile of work. It is overwhelming at times for several reasons.
If I am looking for something in particular, I have to sift through many other things.
If the flat file drawers get too crowded, some of the paper folds, squishes, migrates to the back of a drawer, or otherwise gets wrecked. I hate it when that happens to an original drawing!
Unsold things haunt and taunt me. They say, “Loser! Poser! Fake artist! No one wants your work!” They are mean, and eventually those mean words work their way into my psyche. (What’s a psyche??)
Therefore, I have made a decision. Unsold and unframed original drawings from The Cabins of Mineral King (published in 1998) have been here long enough. If a cabin owner doesn’t value original art of his cabin, why should I? I have my own preferences and favorites already jamming up my flat files (and they treat me better than those other unsolds).
Before these go into the shredder, I will show them to you and give them one last chance. I might even send out a newsletter to those who might open an email but don’t read the blog. I will tell you the approximate size and the price, and consider all offers (unless they are insulting. The drawings are already insulting me enough, and your Central California artist can only take so much abuse.)
Let’s begin, shall we? If these drawings aren’t sold by October 6, one month away, then say “Hasta la vista, baby”.
8-1/2 x 6″, $50, SOLD8-1/2 x 6-1/2, $55, SOLD5 x 6-1/2″, $40 SALE PENDING9 x 12″, $100, SOLD8 x 11″ – $95, SOLD7-1/2 x 9-1/2″, $80 SALE PENDING10 x 11″, $125 SALE PENDING9 x 11″, $120, SOLD8 x 12″, $100, SOLD
Drawing architecture in pencil is my favorite thing. Since this drawing is gone, I get to redraw it. Second chances, opportunities to improve, do-overs–all good things.
This is how it looks after about three short sessions with my pencils. Cabin closing, oil painting, teaching drawing lessons, taking inventory and planning for shows, editing, book design, blogging, these things all cut into time to do my favorite thing. But, pencil drawings don’t take up a lot of room, there is no palette to secure or brushes to clean. (More reasons why pencil drawing is my favorite thing.)
Would you believe these roofs all belong to the same structure? This cabin in Wilsonia contains some of the most interesting architectural oddities and details of any of the cabins. I hope to see it up close and personal next summer!
A customer asked to buy three of the original pencil drawings from The Cabins of Wilsonia.One of them is gone, so I offered to redraw it for him. He agreed.
The one he wants redrawn isn’t one I felt very proud of. Maybe I got sloppy in the midst of 272 drawings (can’t remember the actual number). Maybe I draw better now. Maybe it didn’t reproduce as well as I had hoped. Maybe I did a poor job prepping it for printing. Maybe my standards have been raised or tastes have changed.
Maybe it is all in my head.
Here it is:
I can’t wait to redo this! (Have I told you how much I love to draw, especially architectural scenes?)
The customers were sort of happy with their Mineral King cabin drawing, but not overjoyed. “Sort of happy” is not good enough. After a bit of conversation, they said the flag was too bright and drew too much attention.
My dad liked to quote a Latin phrase De gustibus non est disbutandem, which translates “it is useless to argue over matters of taste”.
I completely understand. A drawing is never finished until the customer is completely happy. While they were present in the studio, I redid the flag. Now they are happy!
Before:
After:
Because I did the flag in bright colored pencils before discussing it with them, I used Faber Castell’s Polychromos, an oil-based colored pencil that erases. Although I am very comfortable with the colors of Prismacolor and they are sitting very conveniently on my drawing table, they are wax-based colored pencils that don’t erase, so I resisted the urge to use them.
