Carrasco Studio News

Staring at Goats • Farm Art

2012-05-23T17:48:10Z

Here's looking at you, Kid.

When my sister Megan and her veterinarian partner Dave purchased a 75 acre farm in the Palouse area of Washington state, and also acquired 29 goats, I knew that a road trip across the state was in order. Also, my cousin Richard was having a 70th birthday party, and Phil and I wanted in on the fun.

After a 6 hour trip from Seattle down to the most south eastern part of Washington, Phil and I drove through my home town of Pomeroy and ten miles out on dusty gravel roads to the Farm.

We immediately felt at home.

And I hauled a chair out to the middle of the field to get acquainted with the Herd.

Dave and Megan had branded their goats with a no pain method of dipping the bottom of a pepsi bottle into dye and stamping the goat.

The goats were all vaccinated, de-wormed and the boy goats have their balls tied off. Dave has a moveable electric fence (solar powered!) to keep out coyotes and cougars, and to keep the goats moving to fresh meadows.

I asked Dave what he planned to do with all those goats, and he said he would sell the ones "Megan hadn't grown attached to." Like remodeling houses and selling them, Dave is "flipping goats". A much safer investment in this economy.

Megan's favorite goat, Sweetie.

Megan with the herd.

Goat activities mainly center around eating. ANYTHING.

Trees, leaves and grass. Dead branches. My journal.

The barn cat came over for a visit. Stand off with goat.

Magpies hung about, hoping for what–glitter? Their nest near the pasture is a big clump of twigs, and they enter their nest toward the bottom. A fortress of twigs against the hawks and eagles.

Later, my sister Eileen and my brother in law John came out for dinner. We had several delicious dinners, in fact. None of them, fortunately, goat or rabbit.

Eileen inspecting the goats with loveslut Mabel, the guard dog.

All the lilacs were blooming. I swooned in purple and green. The green back yard, mowed beautifully by Megan on her green John Deere mower, the hills beyond were green crushed velvet, the trees flecked gold green and sap green. All was a visual wallow of green with mounds of purple.

The back yard.

The side yard.

I helped Megan plant veggies in her garden, and Phil and I went over to check out my cousin Bill and Ginny's garden for tips. They have an amazing set up. A very nice easy access house (Bill has the McCabe back trouble) and a huge warehouse for projects and food (dated and stored)/generator/equipment storage. I told them they were survivalists without being fascists.

I like this photo of Bill wading through the grass in the valley below his house.

My cousin Richard had a grand party....good food, and being Irish, a lot of razzing, jokes and booze. Jason and Carmen, his kids, really did a splendid job. I don't have photos because I was too busy chatting and eating and catching up. Since Richard and his brother John, another esteemed cousin in my huge batch of 1st cousins, owned and operated a morturary home, there were a lot of undertaker jokes.
My favorite was about Richard and a buddy driving with 4 caskets and bodies on a trailer down one of Idaho's precipitous grades when the trailer brakes failed, and they landed in the ditch. The newspaper, the Lewiston Tribune, headlined the accident with: Four Dead, Nobody Hurt.

After 4 days, we left the farm. I took a (sort of) American Gothic photo of Dave and Megan on their front porch and drove into town to stop by to say goodbye to Leenie and John.

John has grown his hair out now and I must say he looks very "judgely" when he slips on his robes for sitting on the bench.

And then off across the wide open spaces of Washington State to the rainy, noisy, traffic snarled world of Seattle. And our cozy little home and garden.

Remembrance of Wildflowers Past.

2012-04-21T05:56:18Z

....."the Guermantes Way with its river full of tadpoles, it's water lilies, and its buttercups have constituted for me for all time the picture of the land in which I would rather pass my life.....the cornflowers, the hawthorns, the apple-trees, which I happen when I go out walking, to encounter in the fields, because at the same depth, on the level of my past life, at once established contact with my heart." .... Proust

And these are the wildflowers of my childhood.....yellow bells, shooting stars (they smell like cinnamon), grass widows, wild roses....and later on, morels to gather in the deep woods. Mushrooms, not wildflowers, but soooo delicious fried up along with a mess of Dad's catch of rainbow trout.

I can draw all of them by heart.

A Store and Shopping Cart!

2012-03-17T16:03:17Z

For the past year, I've been working sporadically on a series of Meadow images to use as tapestries in children's rooms. I seem to gravitate to a soft, rather English watercolor effect in this type of illustration.

As the oldest of 4 sisters, I was read to a lot, and I always loved the Beatrix Potter illustrations and my book of poems by Robert Louis Stevenson. Their images have colored my imagination ever since. With this in mind, I created this series titled, Come to the Meadow. The meadow day starts with Morning Meadow, then Noon, then Twilight and finally the Midnight Meadow.

This Meadow series was also inspired by my Grandparent's farm in the Pacific Northwest. I loved everything about the farm, especially the acre of meadow grass behind the orchard. It sloped down to the river, and the grass was so high that my grandpa Carl had to swing me up on his shoulders so we could go down together to the river to fish.The meadow was a delicious tangle of timothy grass, buttercups, clover, butterflies, and, best of all to a child from the eastern part of Washington, NO rattlesnakes.

One of the challenges with displaying paintings is the framing, matting and protective glass or plexiglass. It's expensive and time consuming. I wanted to create something affordable that wouldn't have to be framed and could be rolled up easily and mailed in a tube, all ready to unpack and put up immediately in a child's room.

I also wanted to create a series, where the parent could choose one or all of the series for the child's room. Murals are great, and I do murals for kids on canvas that I apply like wallpaper to the walls (which can be removed with eight pounds of pressure,) but even then it's a project to repaint a wall after removing a mural.

However, this particular tapestry concept is perfect for American contemporary life. Whether the nursery is part of a rental, an apartment or a home owned by the parent, it's easy to decorate a child's room with a Carrasco tapestry. Two hangers or finish nails in the wall, two bows tied (with or without a rod,) and done!

Each tapestry is a print of an original Carrasco painting on heavy canvas. Each is fitted with two burnished brass grommets at the top and each grommet is threaded with two feet of soft green grograin ribbon. The tapestry then can be hung from decorative hangers or antique brass curtain rods (available as a sale option)

I am also preparing an even more affordable series of the same images printed in different sizes on archival paper and also will feature some original watercolors. I'll send out announcements when these paper prints are available. Let me know if you are interested at jennifer@carrascostudio.com and I'll "put you on my list" (but only if you ask!) These images on printed paper will range in price from $25 to $45, and will come in sleeves, and will be matted and mounted on archival mat board.

Here I am with Ama, my first satisfied customer!

Photo of me with paintings, and Ama, Jewel and me by Noah Siegal

Turn Left at the Sign of the Winking Sheep

2012-03-03T16:07:09Z

Sounds like the beginning of a Historical Novel. Sorry to disappoint.

My cousin Maggi McClure has yearly sheep dog trials on Vashon Island ( a short ferry ride from our house), and she asked me to paint her sheep shape as advertisement for her event. She just sent me this photo from last year.

I painted it a ala Jackson Pollock, one of my art school heroes. The faint whisker is actually a "BAAA"

My hat is a genuine sheep herder/Irish chap cap from Donegal that I picked up when I went on a painting trip in Ireland with my Uncle Bert, Maggi's dad.

Ireland is my ancestral home. People wonder where the Carrasco came from. (My former marriage...it's a lovely name...scans better than McCabe)

http://www.facebook.com/jennifer.m.carrasco

To Paint or To Quarry?

2012-02-23T22:33:41Z

I've had some recent projects with painting faux marble for two churches, both of them, oddly enough, named Holy Rosary, but in different parts of the state. The first was my ongoing project with the Holy Rosary in Pomeroy Washington. They needed me to match the pillars I had painted last October for the rest of the altar.

For this project I started with primed PVC pipes and laid out the pattern of veining to imitate a type of marble called Calcutta Oro that had drifts of green, ochre and linen white along with a touch of umber.

To the right is a sample of actual Calcutta Oro.

Here is the beginning veining for the Calcutta Oro.

Just recently I was asked by Jergen's Paint, a high end Seattle painting compay, to prepare a sample for another Holy Rosary church in West Seattle. Here is the sequence …from the time I started with the very VERY smooth primer coat (I like Benjamin Moore Fresh Start Alkyd paint…it is a Dream to Sand.) BIN white shellac is good too, and blocks any under colors. My partner Phil screwed the bottom of this wooden pole onto some plywood, so I could turn the pillar easily without it tipping.

I use a bit of Golden Acrylic glaze and JoSonja gouache acrylic paint for my faux marble for my first layer...and the layers after. I can use JoSonja gouache as well with tinted Benjamin Moore Satin water based Urethane. When a painter uses these products, there is not much build in the paint areas, which adds to the illusion of faux marble. Also, JoSonja is a lot cheaper than other acrylic gouache lines like Holbein.

I like JoSonja acrylic gouache...The paint doesn't lift (after drying 15 minutes) and I can use it as transparency...with or without Golden acrylic glaze or in Benjamin Moore water based urethane, and the colors are matt, intense, varied and light fast. Also, it works well with Golden Acrylic products, which I use a lot, and I can wipe out sections for veining or lighter inclusions before it totally sets up.

Lynne Rutter of www.ornamentalist.com uses watercolor and/or gouache + champagne for the base coat. She prefers oil based paints after that, and that's a classic approach. However, I like acrylics because of no solvent and the paints dry quicker.

I apply the first layer with the peach colored acrylic gouache (watered down burnt sienna and a bit of vermillion and white titanium,) and then I wipe off some of the paint for the beginning of inclusions and channels for veining.

Then I used watered down waterbased tinted urethane…usually raw sienna tinted…and I apply it with a piece of damp T shirt rag. I slip this tinted urethane over the base coat at least 3 times with the Tshirt urethane soaked rag....it dries really fast and will fix the bottom layer.

I use this Tshirt method for all of my urethane coats because it is fast and doesn't show brush marks. Fast and effective is good!

After the tinted layers on the first coat dry, I start shading some of the areas, and spatter some dark spots as well as start veining some other areas. I use a round skunk hair brush and my badger brush (obtained from badgers and skunks only with their permission) to blend out the channels and shapes. A rigger brush is perfect for veins.

Each time I add urethane varnish over the new paint layers with my urethane soaked Tshirt rag to preserve the new layers of paint. The urethane is now tinted with a light orange vermillion tint…just slip in on and it dries in a minute!

Also, if I use Golden satin glaze with the gouache so you can blend. It speeds it up to add a bit of Golden acrylic matt medium to the Golden acrylic glaze when I apply the paint areas between urethane coats. It dries faster.I start refining the dark spots and adding veins. Then I go over all with a urethane layer tinted with a bleached titanium white to unify the shapes.

And I add another more saturated tint of orange vermillion urethane… and touch up a few more spots…smooth out some of those zits with a white scotch bright pad…..... and FINISHED!

Shining Stars • An Appreciation of my Students

2012-01-18T20:35:46Z

Daisy, one of my students from my Tuesday class at CandP Coffee, just finished a gorgeous interpretation of a still life we had set up for a previous CandP watercolor event. Daisy has been my student for almost three years, and because she has the talent, the smarts and she practices, she is progressing by leaps and bounds. In fact, many students have displayed such extraordinary advances in my class that I can't include them all.

New Water paintings

2012-01-01T14:46:50Z

Willow Creek 3 • 20"x30" Watercolor

Images

eddy, then sink,

in dreams at night,

and trickle through

the congested days.

Overgrown Creek • 20"x30" Watercolor and Gouache

©Jennifer Carrasco

Pataha Creek and Autumn Willows

2011-11-17T07:01:47Z

Willows and Creek 2 20"x30" Gouache on Arches 300 paper ©Jennifer Carrasco

I've just finished a couple of paintings inspired by the creek that runs through the back yard of my childhood home. The willows, always gorgeous with their flickering silver sided leaves, are now yellow and chartreuse. Their leaves drop brilliant lances into the tea colored water and whirl in the eddies. The red willow roots can be seen at the edges of the creek, just under the water, and wave like scarlet yarn in the currents.

Willows and Creek 1 20"x30" © Jennifer Carrasco

My Life with the Saints (continued)

2011-11-09T22:09:26Z

Sailing out ©Jennifer M. Carrasco

When I was 15, I lost my faith. After reading too much Dostoyevsky and agonizing over impure thoughts (what else do you think about in your early teens), I decided being a good Catholic was too exhausting and just went through the motions to keep my familly off my back. In time I was able to achieve the really important aspects of teen life. Namely cute clothes and boyfriends.

Later, I added my feminist objections, a hardheaded suspicion of dogma and a general bloody mindedness to the list. Now my impure thoughts have faded (somewhat) and I stay away from "Crime and Punishment".

But the Catholic upbringing shaped and sustained me in many positive ways as a person and an artist. Discipline and deadlines. "No excuses!" snapped Sr. Mary Eugenia, as I whined about my long division homework. If I stole or copied or cheated and and didn't make recompense, I would go to hell. (Create your own stuff or Mother Superior will lurch into your line of vision and shame you in front of the class). Long hours of sitting still in pews taught me to be patient in traffic jams and committee meetings. Giving up candy and movies during Lent taught me (mostly) to avoid temptation and keep plugging toward a goal. Eating fish on Friday taught me to despise certain colors, i.e. the particular brown and puce of salmon loaf.

And, I genuinely respect those who support the religious community and seek spiritual guidance and comfort. There's something out there. It's just that I'm not sure what it is.

In the esthetic arena, there are many I can count many Catholic influences. I like the flash of gold...the crowns on the Virgin, the monstrance on the altar and the golden chalice.......

Crown by Carrasco

The poetry of the liturgy of the Mass, the spare elgance of the Gregorian chant I sang as a child, and the litany to Mary, "Rose of Sharon, Tower of Ivory, House of David" still resonate. Drama and mysticism makes the hair on my head stand straight up. I wanted to have visions like Bernadette at Lourdes when I was a child. Now I often try to express the idea of spiritual ecstasy in some of my paintings.

Woman Singing Gregorian Chant (Detail) © Jennifer M. Carrasco

When I went to the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I encountered another brand of Catholicism; a potent mixture of Spanish and animistic Malay/Chinese beliefs, and this too affected my art. As a naive country girl, I was fascinated to see believers lining up in Quiapo church to kiss the feet of the black crucified Christ, or to note that one could buy charms and herbs insuring both abortion and fertility for sale in the churchyard. I would sit on the balcony of rectories and chat with provincial priests and their "housekeepers" ( and his children.) I was enchanted and repelled by the life sized statues of Mary and Christ staring out of glass enclosures in the living rooms of prominent families.

(the following images are sketches scanned from my 1981 sketchbook journal)

The statues of the Saints were not only life sized, but elaborately dressed and given real jewels.gold crowns and sceptres, and placed on elaborate palaquins hoisted up and paraded by men on feast day processions around the barrios and cities. I was fortunate to see a very elaborate procession of Virgins in the old Walled City of Intramuros in Manila in l981.

Joan Orendain had told me about it, and we took our little boys over to stand on the top of the parapets to watch the statues of the Virgins emerge on their thrones from the darkened cathedral ..all brilliant in the lights of their thrones and jewels.

There were about 15 of them, all dressed and displayed as displays of a Manila family's religious devotion, and followed by crowds of women in black dresses and mantillas, children dressed as angels, young girls in their traditional butterfly sleeved dresses accompanied by men in their best embroidered barongs. Priests and acolytes were swathed in incense and the smell of burning beeswax, and a company of dogs and cats trotted along as well.

We looked down on the Virgins as they slowly paraded between the old stone walls. Generators surging as the lights glowed and dimmed. Exquisite details like hiding a statue with a jeweled painting, with all but her face peeking out of an opening in the canvas, or the long blond hair of one Holy Maiden held down by glittering silver clasps and chains. And several statues were almost eclipsed by huge sun haloes of gold surrounding their faces.

When the procession finally circled back to the cathedral yard, the statues were gathered in a line facing out at the crowds. All was dark and quiet except for the radiant statues on their glowing sedans. Then, all of a sudden, the bells of St. Augustine's cathedral rang out, and churches all over Manila began ringing as well. Fireworks and firecrackers began to sizzle and pop. And the Virgins remained in the middle of the noise and dazzle,tranquil, assured and glowing.

And of course, being the Philippines, there had to be a note of humor at the end. We followed a red Fiera Ford pickup as it jiggled it's Virgin and her minder all the way home to her glass cage in the family sala.

Procession of Virgins

The statues lurch from somber gates

on the backs of sweating men.

Feast of the Assumption,

Tonight, Manila frees

God’s mothers

from their glassy cages

in the family salas.

Ave, Maria de Santa Rosa, the Virgin of Sampoloc.

Oh, Queen of Sorrows from Binondo,

you and your sisters show pale faces

like the tilted eye of God,

ivory ovals in a radiance of crinkled hair and diadems.

My childhood saints were plain.

My church , a part

Of pleasant neighborhoods.

Mary was our patron saint

of varnished pews.

Sexless, she and Jesus smiled

on farmers and their women;

the mothers soothing babies,

crying in the back.

A flash of gold along a hem.

A crown of flowers from the yard

Were our Mary’s only ornament.

Where you, Maria, your Spanish shimmer casts

a retinue of comets in the dark.

The generators surge, electric candles

urge light across moire, along your goitered neck,

and snag on jeweled ears, the lace at breasts and cuff.

Your light slaps facets on the sweating walls,

spins glamour out of filthy ground

and clothes the beggars squatting by canals.

You scatter glitter in the streets

where day shows only garbage,

circling dogs,

and slinking rats.

Painting the Saints

2011-10-30T18:55:10Z

It's been a long hiatus from my blog. I've been working for the past month in (very) Eastern Washington in Holy Rosary Church in the town of Pomeroy, Washington (1000 plus people), patching and painting the statues of the saints, the stations of the cross, and faux marbeling the pillars on the altar. The town of Pomeroy is where I grew up, and the church bell in Holy Rosary Church was bought and shipped from "back East" by my great grandparents.

Pomeroy is surrounded by high rolling hills that are planted mostly with wheat. The top soil there is in some places, almost 100 feet deep, and was deposited by giant sand storms millions of years ago. A surreal quiet beauty I didn't appreciate until I left it. This is how the hills look in the spring.

This is how it looks in the fall.

I always like to start with the land. It is the strongest connection I have to any place I have traveled. If I can't get out of the city or off a bus or stop the car and walk across a field, wade through a creek, or pick up stones on a beach, I feel like I have missed the spirit of a place.

My home town of Pomeroy is in one of the valleys Lewis and Clark traveled, and there is a little creek that runs through the center of town called the Pataha Creek. When I was a child, my Dad worked with the Wild Life and Game Commission to stock the creek with rainbow trout and limit the fishermen within the city limits to kids under 14. (There always seemed to be a lot of Dads "helping" their kids on the day fishing season opened.)

I spent all summer sloshing up and down this creek , fishing and dreaming under a canopy of willows and dappled summer sunlight. I saw muskrats, rats, water beetles, water striders, minnows tad poles, frogs, crawdads, humming bird nests, blue herons, and caught my share of trout. The creek was too brushy for casting, so I used grasshoppers or worms I'd catch for bait. Sometimes I would even hook a pretty little native rainbow, but usually I let it go. They never got very big.

I was baptized and confirmed in Holy Rosary Church, sang gregorian chant at Mass every day there for the first 8 years of my education, and now I am a very retired Catholic. However, my life has been shaped by my community, my religious training and family, and I was honored to be offered the opportunity to do some repair and restoration for the church. The church committee was very organized and gave me a notebook book full of possible projects.

The church will be repainted in the colors of wheat and grass and blue sky. My designer friend Betsy Stalker and I came up with the concept, and the Altar Society and Father Robert Turner approved it with some additions of their own. The livid blue, included the blue and stenciled gold pattern on the main altar and the carpet will go. (Whew!)

I noticed this sign in the sacristy. Made me laugh. No gum for the altar boys/girls.

My first project was to add more green in the main altar faux marble pillars. I had done the faux marble finish on the pillars in a lighter shade fifteen years ago, but the committee wanted me to bring out more of the green. I winced a bit when I looked at what I did before. I'm a better painter now.

While I worked on the pillars, the committee…Mary, Donna, Carol and Dwyla…cleaned the statues of the saints. St. Joseph, Mary, The Sacred Heart and St. Teresa of Liseux were shampooed and rinsed. There were lots of nicks and damage. The Sacred Heart had a badly mangled hand, and all the saints with the exception of St. Teresa had damage to the folds in their robes.

Mary worked on the Sacred Heart after removing his arms and Dwyla, Carol and Donna worked on the Virgin Mary. They used a specialized cleaning product from a conservator site, and worked from bottom to top so there wouldn't be streaks. I patched the saints with a dental stone plaster, sanded them and matched their colors with casein (reversible). Under St. Joseph we found several touching requests scribbled on scraps of paper. "Pray for me, I have cancer" , "Please give my son a job", or "Please find me a job" Sad signs of the times.

My next job was to work on the Stations of the Cross, fourteen of them, which had been cleaned and were waiting for me in the old Catholic school…in the same room where I attended 3rd, 4th and 5th grade classes taught by the Holy Names Sisters.

I had never really looked at the Stations, since they were so high up on the wall and we really never did much with them except on Good Fridays, which seemed intermidably long and gloomy when I was a child. After looking at them closely, I am pretty sure that someone painted the backgrounds a dark grey with some sort of folk art acrylics sometime in the 70's or 80's.

The figures themselves don't seem to have been touched since the original paint. I would hazard a guess that they were painted with oils, since they dated at least since the early 4o's. They almost looked airbrushed in many places and are exquisite with delicate details like tiny eyelashes, tears and very thin lines of red along the lower eye lid. I followed the advice of my friend Lynne Rutter www.ornamentalist.net and had my crew paint a layer of BIN (tinted white shellac) over the background just in case. (Shellac is a barrier and can be reversed) I had it tinted a pale grey blue, since it would be a good base for a simple sky background.

I mixed a combination of raw umber, burnt umber, a little yellow ochre and titanium white casein to touch up the damaged sides of the Stations and their finials, and it really worked well. My crew of Mary, Carol, Donna and Dwyla did a fantastic job.

When they finished with the base coats and the touch ups, I blessed them all roundly and told them their work was done. Then I got busy with building up oil paint glazes over the BIN background for the "skies". Mary suggested that I start with a lighter blue and ochre and madder sky and work up to a green and plum and ochre sky as the Christ figure approaches his death on the Cross and internment in the tomb. I tried out some clouds, but thought it too fussy, and the committee and Father agreed. Keep it simple.

I turned on my new Ipod touch with my downloaded library audio books and painted away. What did I listen to? Moll Flanders, some novellas by Jim Harris, and Sons and Lovers. The spiritual and the corporeal.

My next job was trying to help the Dayton Parish Mary and St. Joseph. They were badly damaged. The hands of the Virgin were NAILED in through her sleeves and wiggled ominously. When I moved them, her right hand slid out, fortunately, into my hand. The wrist section that fit into the broken sleeve had crumbled into pieces around the wire armature, and both sleeves were already fractured and broken. Baby Jesus was missing a whole shoulder and part of his back. Joseph's face was falling off. On both statues, the paint was cracking and falling off in sections.

I suspect that about 80 years ago, a painter had applied oil paint on a surface that had not been properly prepped or dried long enough. No doubt a client was demanding, like Pope Julius ll with Michelangelo, to hurry up and finish the job!

I ruminated, patched and sanded and painted, and did my best. I am not a conservator, but I have been careful to use reversible techniques and materials, so in the next thousand years a restorer will not say something sniffy about the stupid amateur who worked on these poor saints.

I fixed hands, noses for a few, shoulders for Jesus and tried to give St. Joseph's scarred forehead a luminous glow. I discovered that a tine on a plastic fork worked well for applying plaster, and I found that a bag of dental stone plaster kindly donated by Pomeroy's dentist, Dr. Smith, worked very well for repairs. I tried to contact the same dentist a few days later for a little riffle file, but I think he had gone hunting! So I did the best I could on the centurion's nose. I forgot to get a final photo of Mary and St. Joseph, but Donna is a technical wizard and is going to send me some photos from her Iphone.

It was complicated getting an Internet connection. I have a pay by minute cell that I rarely use unless I travel so no phone connections for me. Usually I would go to Meyer's Hardware and Tommy or Kay would make me an excellent Americana and I would set up my laptop on a little table and tune in, visit with teachers and farmers and lawyers who came in for paint, widgets, etc. but stayed for coffee and conversation, and read my e-mail.

Oh yeah. I also did a Pomeroy Elementary school residency with the esteemed Ms. Shari Curnett, art teacher, and the 6th grade and the 3rd grade classes. Will have their finished work up soon.The 6th grade each did a tapestry on Roc-lon canvas donated by Darlene Saunders and the third grade did all the pets they could paint (one little boy told me he did a "distinct" dinosaur) and they tied them on yarn leashes and glued them to a big sheet of craft paper for the hall decoration.

And I did an all day watercolor and acrylic painting workshop in Lewiston, Idaho (30 miles over the Alpowa grade and across the Snake River). Verrry successful, I must say.

Then Mary took me over the back roads and the Snake River bluffs to her ranch in Peola where she houses three horses, 30 cats, a great many outbuildings, a studio in her dining room and a very handsome husband named Steve.

And every day I came home Megan, my dear sister, would have a beer ready. And dinner and tea and sympathy even though she had back surgery. And her partner Dave would walk me and their dog Rosie in the morning. And Eileen, my other dear sister and wonderman and husband, John, would ply me with good whisky, give me rides, and feed me good food. And find stuff I left in places.

And at night, me and Rosie and Megan and Dave and I would relax, and I would draw and watch Dancing with the Stars and call foul because loathsome Nancy Grace and charming but awkward Carson were still in the contest.

That's it. I am back in Seattle and Lying Low.