Carrasco Studio

A Time of Trees

Last night, after the bright glare of sunset and the ensuing pop and crackle of fireworks subsided, I put on a CD of Sharon Robinson's," Everybody Knows" that has a song I love. It's not the Porgy and Bess Summertime, but one Sharon wrote. Her Summertime is about how "I want to put my light things on.....and wants "peaches on the table", and you know she is singing about something else as well.

I carry summer in my heart against life's grey days of rain. Instead of "thy rod and thy staff" of the Bible, poetry and art will sustain me.

On my walk to the grocery store, I usually pass under some catalpa trees that have been so brutally trimmed that they are like giant green toadstools...a mat of overarching tiny twigs and leaves.  This time when I passed by, it was full of children, and their father was trimming the tree to give a platform for a treehouse.  The sweet fresh faces glowing in the dark leaves, the brilliant sky and an occasional pink foot or hand poking out.  They called to me and I stopped to talk with their father.

And Ann Sexton's poem.  It is enough.

Half awake in my Sunday nap
I see three green windows
in three different lights---
one west, one south, one east.
I have forgotten that old friends are dying,
I have forgotten that I grow middle aged,
at each window such rustlings!
The trees persist, yeasty and sensuous,,
 as thick as saints
I see three wet gargoyles covered with birds.
Their skins shine in the sun like leather.

I'm on my bed as light as a sponge
soon it will be summer.
She is my mother.
She will tell me a story and keep me asleep
against her plump and fuity skin.
I see leaves,
leaves that are washed and innocent......

I know what I know.
I am the child that was,
living the life that was mine.
I am young and half asleep.
It is a time of water, a time of trees.

stanzas from "Three Green Windows" by Ann Sexton

 

Vegetable Love

We had an art business meeting last night, and Leslie brought me a purple kolrabi.
It looks like it will start humming, levitate, spin over the kitchen twice and take off into space.  I am ready to duck.

Jade Rivers and Sequined Trees

Our group of artist friends joined their artist hostess, Cathy, at her home in the Skagit county for a short visit of visual and gustatory delights. An exquisite garden, a sweeping potato field in her back yard and sheep-looking goats to her left and right..   (the goats were hairy, phlegmatic and looked like sheep from a distance except for the fact that they stood on their back legs to munch on trees and plopped themselves comfortably on top of outbuildings.  Most disconcerting.)

A short walk to the river, along the levy and into the woods brought us to a river of jade water and twinned images.  Us, the birds, the occasional cloud....these entered into a visual conversation with the river. A dialogue between reality and its reflection.

And, of course the brilliance in the trees.  The light, the sky and the water blinking and shimmering through the summer branches of the greenbelt between the river and the levies.  The light nipping at the edges of branches and leaves and making round sequins of yellow and green and blue. 

Michaela and I were entranced by the sign that warned the park was "OPEN UNTIL HOURS OF DARKNESS".  It sounded like a quote from the Inferno.

We had a splendid lunch  Garlicky chicken (divine), lambs quarter salad and beans in vinegarette, and Judy's deviled eggs with a tart salty olive in each center (a poem)....then the Skagit farm strawberries.  Fit for God.

The night before, after much wine and great conversation, I went to bed in a room of great purity and quiet.  High old windows, a very palest plaster of palest celery white, white cutwork linen sheets and quilt, and Mary had placed a bouquet I had brought from the tangled meadow that has become my garden. 

To wake in the morning, even with a slight hangover, to the sight of trees and green and far reaching fields, and bunnies hopping in the slants of light, the goldfinch flitting past and hearing the high shrill cry of the red tail hawk....and then returning to  the flowers in this still and perfect room.

Naughty fairies, Pink Polka Dots and lots of glitter

One of my most favorite clients wanted me to design and paint polka dots and fairies on four 24"by24" matboads (reinforced on the back with matboard strips) for a spec condo, a little girl's room, in Chicago.  The big polka dots were white or salmon pink with accompanying naughty fairies hanging from the edges or charging out into white or pink space....with a few crowned birds as well.  And, lots of glitter and gold detail.

I had to work fast,so I designed first on tissue.

Then I cut out 8 ply mat board, rounded the edges, painted the polka dots and and the fairies.  Then came the "frosting" edges, the glitter and the gold.  Warning: I am finding glitter all over the studio, my sock drawer and behind my ears.  Haven't seen this much sparkle since I worked on kindergarten projects.

 

Frozen Dreams

We were talking about Alaska last weekend, and I dug up some of my journals of my trips to different parts of Alaska with Ben,  a bush pilot I was hanging out with over a period of about three years.

Here are some entries from the Copper Mountain trip I took with him in October of 1992.  He was flying provisions and people into a gold mining operation in the distant mountain regions that border Alaska and Canada.  It was an adventure......beautiful, cold and involved some pretty fancy flying.  Ben was such a good pilot and so experienced that I didn't feel much apphrehension as we wound through the snow covered peaks and valleys, banking and twisting to arrive at the small landing strip on
plane skis.

 .

Coming up the Matanuska Valley, I saw a little red "Beaver" plane going the opposite direction.  One bright red speck against all that white and black hugeness.

The valley was so gorgeous and silent, and I really liked the gold mining crew.  The men worked long brutal hours and two women cooked for them....wonderful food...homemade bread and cookies and huge meals.  A lot of the miners were college kids from the lower 48 or rough and tough older Alaskan men and women.  They weren't supposed to transport alcohol, but there was a lot of that plus canoodling between some of the men and women.  Ah, those long cold nights.

As I mentioned, the landscape was breathtaking, but one thing that shocked me was the total lack of concern for the environment.  All the cyanide tailings were trailing into the creek.  Gold mining is a curse on the environment, and I saw many rugged Alaska individuals spoil the bounty of the country with trash and disregard for environmental consequences. 

I think I put this in an earlier entry, but it was such a part of the trip I'll put it again.
The lights were so spectacular, and I was half awake and shivering in the 4am....it seems like a dream.  The lights even made a sound....like the crackle of cellophane.

Ben and I took several trips, and each one was a revelation to me. I got over my fear of flying. Period.

Several years after we stopped seeing each other, Ben went down with his plane in Yakatat Bay.  They found his body a few weeks later.