Aquae Sulis

The last time I saw England I was seven years old. It was 1957. We were saying goodbye to the maternal grandparents and the cousins, bound for the U.S. on a ship out of Southampton. It's been awhile. Time and life and money and fear of flying got in the way. And yet here I finally was, boarding an airplane in Dallas with Glenn, who had pretty much set the whole thing in motion.
After a fairly sleepless overnight flight we touched down at Heathrow at 1:00 in the afternoon, found some nectar of the gods, coffee, at a Costa, exchanged some dollars for pounds, and got on a bus to Bath.

We were booked at a little three story B & B called The Henry House, which was quaint and old, but still had all the updated modern conveniences, including wifi and good mattresses. After that we roamed the charming, sunny streets going off at all angles, basking in the Jane Austin era regency buildings and the rolling hills.

Blending in

The famous Royal Crescent

Since England is the home of gin and since we like a nice dry martini on occasion we discovered the first, and best, of the gin bars we frequented in our travels, The Canary Gin Bar. Far from William Hogarth's bleak 18th century cartoon of Gin Alley, this was a small, cozy, and cheery place where one could sample the local product.

The Roman name for Bath was Aquae Sulis, named after the local hot springs the Celts enjoyed, while linking the Celtic goddess, Sulis, to their goddess, Minerva, in a smooth move to adapt to the area they were invading. The Romans, lovers of great plumbing and hot baths, built a spa and temple over the hot springs and had some good soaks when the weather got cold. Signs of Roman culture and architecture were everywhere, and we also ran into numerous Italians working in the city, probably because it felt a bit like home.

The Roman spa

Sulis Minerva. See Romanbaths.uk.co

If you had to be a Roman soldier sent to the far corners of the known world, this city doesn't seem like a bad place to settle down 

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and centuries later, the Christians, as they tended to do, built a large Abbey right in nearly the same spot, to replace the old religion with the new.

Next blog, some photos of the beautiful Bath Abbey.

Rescue Me

Art is not magic. It is not always easy. And it is not always pretty. In the fiber arts world there is a term called a UFO, an Unfinished Object. You go so far on a piece and realize you are just going down a rabbit hole of regret, then throw it aside in frustration. We've all been there. We've also calculated the hours spent, the supplies wasted ($$$), the difficulty in admitting defeat.

But wait. Sometimes an artwork will languish in its corner of failure until one day you look at it with new eyes and think, hmmmmm, maybe there's hope.

Take this painting. It was a part of a series of abstracts I did in a fit of energy last month, but this one just looked like a chaotic mess, and not even a De Kooning chaotic mess.

But I loved the layers and textures, and exuberant colours, so in a hopeful moment I thought "let's put a fox on it!"  So I did.

Below are the steps I went through this morning. You may think I should have stopped at step 1,2, or 3. But no, I kept going all the way to step 5. Now I have to mull on it. Mulling is an important part of the process.

Step 2-add outline of fox

Step 3-add features and shading. Front paw is too fat.

Step 4- more fur. The eyes are looking scary. Paw is still fat.

Step 5- Get it together.

So, a bit more to refine and work on (I'm talking to you, paws. And maybe the snoot) but at least that canvas isn't languishing in the corner anymore. Now to tackle all those other UFOs.

P.S. I did more.  Tweeked paws. Called it Pause. Sort of an inside joke with myself. Mulling begins again.

All the Pretty Houses

I can't remember what prompted me to make these tiny fiber art houses but what started out as cutting up failed projects and putting the old scraps together on 5 inch squares of fabrics somehow exploded into a "cottage" industry. I'm currently on house #47, which is a commission, with no sign of stopping. There's something about the image of a small house that evokes memories, nostalgia, a sense of place, and the importance of "home".
House #1, some African fabric, wool, a piece of selvage, and a bit of embroidery, on a sunny background.

The ingredients are pretty simple: geometric pieces of fabric assembled into basic houses, a background of land and sky, machine stitching, embroidered details, beads, and yarn, quilted onto a backing, and attached to a small painted canvas to hang on the wall. They're quirky, imperfect, and slightly wonky, a bit more labor intensive than my hearts but all in all, most satisfying.



More examples:

A grouping:

A commission of the Church of St. Francis in Taos:

Another church:

More houses:

A commissioned set:

 And an English cottage for my mother, for Christmas.

These are all sold now. There are more in the works, including three more commissions. Fortunately, I have a huge stash of fabric and yarns, and infinite variations on a theme.

A Sense of Place, a Sense of Space

Since I did a painting last Spring of the fields near Levelland I have been exploring landscape painting, and especially textures, patterns, and colours of wild grasses. I have never particularly done a large series of paintings, except for my foxes and wild animals, so this has been a way for me to explore and develop my technique and my observation skills.

This was my first painting: Field Near Levelland, now owned by two friends. I documented its travails in an earlier post.

 This was followed by a series of small studies of grasses. I discovered it was very calming to hold a slender brush and make quick, energetic strokes to create layers and layers of grass.

A photo of an old tressel bridge north of Lubbock also inspired a painting:

Some watercolour paintings on paper as opposed to acrylic on board.

A painting called Watchful, done from a photo I took of an actual fox sitting on our front doorstep:

A trip to Dallas inspired this landscape from a photo I took while stalled in road repair in the town of Throckmorton:

An imaginary place yet still familiar, called Borderlands:

This one is called Roam. A friend bought it for her grown son's birthday.

Another painting called Riverbank needed a shot of colour so I put in a red canoe.

 I then created a pen and ink version on paper called River Grasses:

Each of these paintings have helped me evolve, but not only that, they have given me a sense of peace about where I am, in this moment, in this place. I am able to walk in beauty, to take it in, and reflect it back.