A Lucky Tide

They say a high tide lifts all boats. It's kind of a trickle-down Thing To Say, but it holds true for me today, luxuriating in a sweet vacation house in a sweet vacation place. I will come home tomorrow with sore feet from all the walking and a new lease on the good life. 

I have a relative who has been lucky, which means they have worked hard. Hey! Another Thing They Say: the harder you work, the luckier you become. Luckily, some of that luck rubs off on me, like when I get to borrow this sweet vacation home.

Here: I'll show you a picture of a thing that you can see from here.

That's some sunset.

Will I paint that? Probably not. There are photos that are pretty hard to either improve on or even imitate, and that is one of them. But I have taken some photos this weekend that might become the basis for a painting. So, technically, as far as the IRS is concerned, I'm working.

Back to my point: I was imagining that knowing someone close to you possessed something so wonderful that you do not possess might make one feel bitter or envious, but I don't feel any of that. I haven't worked for it and I have enough. In fact, I both have enough AND this weekend in this place, which is over and above. 

Whatever you don't have that you want, I hope you are able to work hard enough to get it. And whatever you do have, that's probably enough. I mean, one bag of Cheetos is enough sometimes.

Cheetos are so good, you guys.

Your Monday Dose of Nonsense: Pop Culture Things!

Which Pop Culture Object Would You Like to Possess?

This question came up on the Pop Culture Happy Hour. What a fun thought experiment, I said to myself. Because I am lame?

Still with me? Here are my choices for today.

Object: Excalibur

Shiny! Green!

Reason: My first thought was Excalibur from the movie Breaking 2: Electric Bugaloo. I joke. No, of course  I mean the sword from the 1981 John Boorman film, off of which they continuously reflected green light, making it appear super mystical. I have realized since falling in not-so-ironic love with this movie while watching it with Drew in our salad college days in Eugene, Oregon (maybe that's better phrased differently but I like the idea of Salad College, so no edit), that if you take away the late Nigel Williamson, who drunkenly brilliantly played Merlin with a comic, nearly cartoonish swagger, that the movie would be one long, over-serious, over-pretentious, over-written cosplay of a film. But with Williamson, even with lines like “Look into the eyes of the dragon and despair!”, it’s a cherished classic.

Use: Cheese cutter.

Object:  The Tom Servo and Crow Robots from MST3K

Tom Servo and Crooooow!

Reason: Nothing on TV or film has captured my pop-culture-watching essence like Mystery Science Theater 3000. Just ask poor Drew who has had to watch TV and movies with me for 34 years. Oh, did you want to watch this episode of Swords and Rapes without any further explanatory dialog? Then fine, you’ll have to watch it without me, because I have some questions and answers. And no, I don’t think the old seasons with Joel Hodgson are better. I didn’t know MST3K existed until the Mike (Michael T. Nelson) era, so I am free of your whiny bias. In fact, I am extremely excited about the reboot with Jonah Ray because I’ve been a fan of his since the first Nerdist podcast. If none of this make sense, thank God you’re not such a meganerd and go about your much more relevant business.

Use: I would install them in the back of my Prius, looking out onto whoever is following me. Occasionally I would make them talk about bad drivers.

Object: Peewee’s Bike

DUH.

Reason: DUH. According to Peewee Herman, it’s the best bike in the whole world, and there is pretty solid evidence to back that up. It’s red (the best color), it’s got chrome, whirlygigs, bells, horns, a lion hood ornament, and some space-age saddle bags to carry your bow ties. And Peewee’s Big Adventure holds up as a film. You should revisit it if you haven’t lately.

Use: As intended.

Object: The Cow-tapult from Monty Python and the Holy Grail

John Cleese farts in your general direction.

Reason: Actually, I would like all the makeshift armor and weapons as well as all the fake moustaches. However, if I were to choose a useful item, it would be the trebuchet with which the Frenchy-accented John Cleese and crew launches a mooing cow toward King Arthur (Graham Chapman) after calling them names and farting in their general direction. Okay, so you don’t actually see the trebuchet because of budgetary reasons and the cow, after mooing convincingly, turns suspiciously stiff (you’re welcome, PETA), but let’s pretend/assume that it exists. Then I would want it.

Doy-oy-oy-oing

Use: Set up in the back yard, it could reach the street easily in case of unwanted solicitors, unleashed dogs and/or religious bullies. I could grow my own pumpkins to use as ammo.

Object: Lucy’s White Burial Outfit from Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Roomy and elegant. Probably dry clean only.

Reason: FASHION. To be clear, this is the 1992 Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppola with Gary Oldman as creepy/steampunk dreamy Dracula, Anthony Hopkins as vampire hunter Van Helsing, and both Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder obviously turning down accent coaching and taking a stab in the dark at what English people sound like and each getting it hilariously wrong in different ways. That little nitpick aside, come for the Oldman/Hopkins act-a-thon, stay for the costumes. Sure, Dracula gets all the wacky costume stuff, but Nina’s friend Lucy gets the best of the female costumes. They get more gorgeous every time she appears on screen until the vampire bites her extra hard and everything gets blood on it. Most of her outfits are corseted beyond all hope, but her burial outfit is both outrageous and roomy!

Use: Gardening, camping.

Object: Luke Skywalker’s Lightsaber

I'm two swords deep in this list. I'm not sure I really need one sword, really. Still.

Reason: I know I’m supposed to say this, because everybody wants it and many have a Hasbro facsimile, but it doesn’t really work because we don’t live in that galaxy far, far away and I don’t have The Force. So without all the special effects, it would just be a lightsaber holder. Oh, and don't out-nerd me by questioning my choice of this particular light saber over another. No one wants to hear that. No one even wants to hear THIS.

Use: Hiking (this would require Drew to accompany me and don a Jedi cloak at the top of each hill so that I could repeatedly hold the Lightsaber out to him while a drone camera films us in a circle).

Object: Yeoman Janice Rand’s outfit and wig from Star Trek TOS

These boots are made for trekking.

Reason: Look, there aren’t that many awesome Janices in pop culture. There’s Janis Joplin, but I was never a fan of screamy blues. After that, characters named Janice become a bit of a joke, especially during the Friends era. But Yeoman Janice (played by the late Grace Lee Whitney) was hot and smart and had a weave hairstyle that was kickass. And Captain Kirk would try to look her in the eyes, but could never quite make it.

Use: If you give me that outfit, I would lose 30 pounds by next week to get that thing on.

One Last Fashion Must-Have: Zoe Washburn's leather vest from Firefly/Serenity. 

JUST LOOK AT THIS. There's nothing more badass in the universe.

I've said enough. Now you. Do you have a favorite pop culture object?

A Triumphantish Return to Sedona

Your mom's friend's Lizbeth's painting of Sedona is dead (see earlier dumb post). That canvas now has a non-Sedona painting. But like the Phoenix (the bird, not the nearby city), Sedona has risen again in this dumb painting. What I liked most about Sedona (the unique rusty red colors of the rock formations) is not apparent, but what I like about painting (ALL THE COLORS) is evident. I hope you like it. I had to make a large reorder of paint after this one.

Crowded Sky. Oil on canvas (palette knife application). 28" x 24" gallery wrap

That is SO Last Season

My grandma used to have a cast iron trivet that she hung over her stove that said "The hurrier I go the behinder I get." 

Something about the mix of Seussian wordplay and country-folk grammar of that sentence appealed to me enough that it stayed with me all these years. 

That has very little to do with my intended topic, but the fact that I find myself constantly behind the seasons made me think of it. Things I photograph (or think or feel) in fall are now finally making their way onto my blog, as they simmered in my head and then came to life on my canvas over the winter and early spring. Now that the tulip bulbs and hyacinths are bending over in my front flower patch, I can finally unveil all this work that is no longer in step with the seasons.

I began painting this canvas after we came home from Sedona. I fell in love with the scenery at Slide Rock State Park. There was an old working apple orchard there dating back to pioneer times. The apple trees topped by the trademark Sedona-colored cliffs behind were ripe for painting. 

I may try to paint this again in the future, but the photo is a pretty good substitute.

The painting I made of the scene was just as good as your mom's friend who took up painting as a way to occupy her time after the kids went to college. Very nice. So I painted over it and tried again.  (Maybe I should have photographed it before I killed it but I didn't. It looked very much like the photo.)

This time, I abandoned Sedona and just painted an autumn view I saw once.

I see a trend this spring. I try to recreate a picture, remember I already HAVE the damn picture, and try again, this time to recreate the feeling I want to convey about the picture. Wow, even writing about it sounds cliched and like something your friend's mom would write.  Dammit, Lizbeth (she used to be Liz but she's called herself Lizbeth ever since she got home from that yoga retreat). Get out of my head!

I am what I am, I guess. To paraphrase Neil Diamond. Or was it Popeye?

Anyway, enjoy an Autumn Road.

This painting has a secret past! A Sedona scene is hidden beneath!

Our Tree

I bought a frame at Goodwill. I needed a break from gallery-wrapped canvas, which is so popular these days because the finished work, with paint wrapping around the edges, does not need a costly frame, and since I favor large canvases, framing costs can be more than the painting is worth.

When I buy frames, I tend toward plain ones that do not detract or overly engranden the work inside them. Like my rule for jewelry: if it does not make the wearer look better, take it off. But this frame was a statement. Whatever I put into it better be super fancy, or it would not match. So I set out to paint fancy.

I chose for my subject probably the most well-known and popular tree in all of Portland: that one Japanese maple in the Portland Japanese Garden. I had taken a knock-out photograph of the tree in Autumn back in 2000, and since then have seen many other photographs of the same tree. It really has everything: autumn color, wriggly branches, beautiful setting. I had once painted it in acrylics on a tote bag, but it really deserved a real oil-on-canvas interpretation.

That Japanese Maple as I photographed it in 2000.

I originally decided to put my palette knife aside and use my brushes on this one. Maybe I just didn’t want to work as hard as I would have had to work to complete the entire thing with a palette knife. But my first and second tries at creating an interesting picture with brushes were too prissy, super boring. Not fancy. And not interesting. So out came my palette knife and out went my editor’s brain. I quit worrying about my design approach being too obvious, or that I might ruin the whole thing with a careless swat. And this is the result. Quite fancy. I think I’ll call it Our Tree, because so many people in Portland know it and love it.

Our Tree. Oil on canvas, 36" x 24" 

I'm In Sales

I spent the weekend going back and forth to Battle Ground, a small community about 26 minutes from here (according to my Google maps app). Each community’s art guild normally hosts one or two art shows a year, and most have a spring show. This weekend was Battle Ground Art Alliance’s show. I entered two paintings: Redwoods Sky, as their theme this year was something like “underneath the surface,” and since the perspective of Redwoods Sky is looking up through the trees, it was the best I could do to match the theme. I also brought along “Agate Beach Morning” because they were able to take paintings up to 36 inches, which, because of the size of our hanging partitions, our guild is not.

Redwoods Sky, oil on canvas (palette knife application), 20" x 20"

It was a short show, which meant entering the paintings on Friday, attending the artists’ reception on Saturday, and then picking up the paintings on Sunday. Lots of driving, helloing, smiling, and feeling intimidated by better work.

I didn’t win or place in this show, which is understandable, as the talent on display varied greatly, from adorably amateurish to awe-inspiringly-out-of-place-in-this-small-show. If I had to put a quality judgment on my art compared to the others hanging, mine would have been very much at the top of the bell curve cluster along with all the other “nice” work. 

Agate Beach Morning, oil on canvas, 36" x 24"

All the driving gave me time to think about the nature of self employment and employment in general. My least favorite jobs have been sales. I don’t like – no, I hate asking people for anything, let alone asking them to buy what I have to sell. This is not good for someone who is now devoting a lot of her time to asking people to buy what she has to sell. But at least the thing that I am selling is something I love.

But can one escape sales? You can get past most of it if you long to be a waste disposal technician, but even then you have to convince your employer to hire you, and then continue to convince them not to fire you. But most jobs have a sales angle to them, and the more you make, the better chance that someone expects you to look and act like you deserve the money they are paying you.

Have you been watching Better Call Saul? You know, the spin-off of Breaking Bad, which follows the pre-BB exploits of Saul Goodman, ne Jimmy McGill. Jimmy is battling his own sleazy instincts to try to fit into high-powered, high-class lawyer world, and is struggling because the fancy suit doesn’t fit. He convinced the firm to hire him (sales) by bringing them a big case (sales). In the latest episode, his friend is in the doghouse for allegedly knowing about one of Jimmy’s misguided sales schemes and not saying anything. How does she try to get back into the good graces of the company partners? Sales. She cold-calls and cold-calls until she brings in a juicy, lucrative client. And from what I observed in my career as a paralegal, that is what an easy fifty percent of lawyering is. Sales. Winning the case before you can win the case.

I am pretty sure that if I approach enough galleries along the coast and/or in Central Oregon, I could find gallery partners, for as adequate as they may be, many of my paintings feature beaches and/or Central Oregon scenes, which vacationing gallery visitors are suckers for. But first I must approach. Sales. Ugh.

Up-To-Date List of Names To Which My Dog is Required to Answer

1.     Scotty

2.     Scot Evil

3.     SCOT

4.     Scooty

5.     Scooter

The Dog in Question

6.     Scoot-Scoot

7.     Schnoodle

8.     Mr. Snoodle Bears

9.     Snuggles

10.     Snuggle-Pooh

Guard Dog of the Royal Zucchini

11.      Pooh

12.     Phooh

13.     Pooh Bear

14.     Phooh Bear

15.     Pumpkin

Attempting Upward Dog and Downward Dog Simultaneously is Not Recommended for Beginners

16.     Punkin

17.     Punk

18.     Dork

19.    Hair Beast

20.   Hair Bear

Tour Guide

21.     Hairy

22.     Fluff

23.     Floof

24.     Fluffmeister

25.     Pajama Pants

Fashion Trendsetter

26.     Jazz Pants

27.     Captain Ridiculous

28.     Colonel Ruffneck

29.     Prisoner of Floof-Kaban

30.     Voldefloof, Creator of All Poops

Dancing Babies and Fish Tanks: Working in the 90s

I swear this existed. Everybody in the Lease Administration department of Hollywood Video in, say, 1998 had this, but when I try to look it up on Google today, I get nothing. There was a virtual aquarium screensaver program that you could download onto your computer with its cool Windows 95 operating system that looked better than any eight-bit game and made all your office mates jealous. Okay, that part seems pretty standard with what other Windows 95 archivists remember. But now comes the part that I can’t seem to replicate on Google.

Pretty snazzy for Windows 95, right?

This particular “fish tank” came with one lonely fish. But you could “buy” new fish for your aquarium simply by printing a certain number of documents. Brilliant, right? Said the guy from HP Printer Toner Headquarters.

Soon, the office looked like a virtual 800-gallon aquarium and workers were printing entire 30-page draft leases with very little reason, finding a few exciting errors, fixing them, and reprinting entire 30-page draft leases. Printing costs were skyrocketing, efficiency was plunging, and computers were slowing to a crawl.

Thus ended the Hollywood Video Aquarium Screensaver craze of 1998. Do any of you remember this printer/fish tank scam? Or was there something in the water at Hollywood Video Headquarters in the 90s?

I'll put my hand up. I'll be somebody different. I'll be better for you.

Oh, and that dancing baby? Everybody remembers that. Did you know that it began as a product sample for animation software? From there it circulated on the 90s internet before it was discovered and pared with Blue Swede’s cover of the song “Hooked on a Feeling” (or the Oogachaka Song) by the writers of the television show Ally McBeal. I didn't watch Ally McBeal, but the dancing baby was everywhere at the office. I still think of him every time I hear Adele’s “I’ll Be Waiting” off her album 21. For some reason, the dancing baby pops into by head when this song plays and I dance along with him.

I’ll show you some time.

In Which I Relearn a Lesson From Home Ec

My sister is four years older than me. I spent most of my childhood struggling to keep up and getting reminded that I was too young to try. But there was that one time that I felt real empathy towards her - the time she burned a big iron print into the dress she had just completed as her home ec project (or was it a pantsuit? I remember it was a pumpkin colored polyester double knit print). Oh, Lord. The weeping and gnashing of teeth.

That garment had been a struggle to complete. My sister was a whizz at almost every part of school, from the social to the athletic to the scholastic, but that home economics class was her nemesis. She was already planning a life in which she would never be required to cook or sew, but to get there, she had to go through home economics, a class through which we girls were all funneled in order to give us some REAL LIFE skills that we would no doubt use in our career as wives and mothers AND NOTHING ELSE. That’s a small town in the 70s for you.

Oh, the wasted precious teenage hours she spent struggling at that little portable Singer sewing machine and its pal, the seam ripper, as she put that dress (or pantsuit?) and matching jacket together. Thank goodness for polyester double knit, you guys, right? It’s so easy to work with and clean! And THEN IT HAPPENED. It turns out that polyester double knit takes only seconds under a hot iron to go from worry-free living to petroleum goo.

I don’t remember what that iron print did to her grade, but if I know my sister, she was able to finagle her way to a grade high enough not to make too much of a dent in her excellent GPA. And she did manage to banish all sewing from her adult life and keep her cooking hassles to the barest of minimums while raising four kids who also excelled in the social, athletic and scholastic arts.

One thing I did have on my sister, once I was funneled through that same home ec class, was that I loved it, ate it up, became the worst kind of teacher’s pest (and I mean pest in that I once gave a book report that lasted a full class session instead of the allotted five minutes), and got so into sewing that I began to design and make my own clothes, including a red disco jumpsuit that I wish I still had.

Once in college I found more and better interests and never designed another garment. Once out of school, I sewed curtains and pillows and made an occasional repair, but there was never time for making clothes.

Thirty years later, now that I can afford a fancy sewing machine, I can totally pick up where I left off, right? It turns out that no, I can’t. Not only has my eye for detail atrophied, but the fabrics are different, techniques have evolved, and my actual eyes seem to have suffered from the passage of time. But with every project I am getting my skills back and learning new techniques.

For my fourth back-in-the-saddle project I chose a lined vest – a simple garment made a bit complicated by a full lining. I found some beautiful dark red crushed satin that would give me a nice bit of color over one of the many all-black goth-kid outfits I tend to favor. I cut out the pieces and put it aside for a lazy Sunday.

Cut to Lazy Sunday. I spent all day Sunday plugging away at the vest. From the sewing machine to the iron back to the sewing machine as you do. I had the iron set to the lowest setting that was still warm enough for steam, and that seemed to be doing the job slowly without any of that telltale sticking feeling you get right before a hot mess. I have been careful with the iron through the last project, which was working with fleece, so I had my feelers up for the right temperature to use. Also, I am proud to report that the seam ripper stayed in the drawer for the first time since I picked this hobby back up.

Things were really coming together. The vest was complete save for a couple of side seams and a back buckle. THEN IT HAPPENED. I was pressing the lining seams and everything was going hunky-dunky until I felt that stickiness, pulled the iron away and saw the hole. The formerly beautiful crushed satin looked like the gooey remains of a film stuck in a hot projector. I checked my iron and found that it had been bumped up to the highest setting by my own clumsiness. My face flushed with angry, angry blood and my brain flooded with memories of that pumpkin-colored dress. My sister and I, we’re not so different. She’s just way ahead of me. 

How I Got Here

I just got back from show-and-tell at my art guild, Society of Washington Artists. As Artist of the Month, I showed a sample of my work and gave a brief presentation about my background and my process. Although most of the following did not come out of my mouth during my presentation, I had written it down as a way to gather my thoughts about who I am and how I got here.

My name is Janice Tracy. I have been a member of SWA since August, but due to a heavy dose of social anxiety, I have yet to really meet many of you. So please accept this as my hello. I am very happy to meet you.

I have been a visual artist all my life, although I didn’t know it until I was in my 30s. I think my mother knew it, but for the sake of my financial future, she kept it to herself. Opportunities for art instruction in high school and college were wasted in favor of music and dance.

Luckily, while I was living in Bend, I met a wonderful working artist named Avalon Parsons, who has shown and sold her work in galleries all over Oregon. She became my mentor and muse. She does beautiful oil landscapes using a palette knife. I was both fascinated and intimidated by her expertise, so when I finally decided to study visual art, I chose watercolor, so I wouldn’t compare myself so harshly to her many years of study, practice and talent.

Not one of my first watercolors. You would not want to see those.

We spent many lovely, productive days in her studio, heated by a wood burning stove, in the junipers behind her house. My watercolors continued to improve, but not at the rate I had hoped.

Watercolor bear.

I knew it was going to take years of practice before my drawing, my patience, and my expertise would match my expectations. So I did the next best thing – I tried oil painting, thinking that, for some reason, the learning curve for oil painting would be shorter and steeper.

Not one of my first (again, you're better off), but one of the first in which I felt a little pride.

You might guess the result – the learning curve was no different. What was different was the experience of the painting itself. The paint was so creamy under my palette knife. The mixing of the paint was so contemplative. The act of painting was so calming. Although I love the look and effect of watercolors, I love the act of painting in oils.

The Oracle With She Who Watches. One of my personal favorites, although it doesn't translate well.

And so I started climbing the learning curve. I’m still climbing, but I throw away a smaller percentage of my work every year.

I brought this one to show and tell because of bears.

When I first started working with Avalon, I was mainly looking for a form of expression and, frankly, some art for my bare walls. It wasn’t long before our walls appeared to be buckling under the weight of all the canvas, and I needed either to find an outlet for all this art, or find a new hobby.

This one is still on duty in the back seat of my car.

My first attempt at relieving some of the stress on my walls was to find other things beside stretched canvas to paint. I discovered canvas bags. They were cheap, useful, and since the whole idea seemed a little silly, I could be more whimsical in my choice of subjects. Through a process of trial and error, I found that if I prewashed them, inserted a piece of foam board as a temporary stretcher, taped a work area, and gave the bags a couple coats of gesso, I had a small, paintable area that was completely without pretention. That led to an explosion of creativity, and friends and shopkeepers started to remark about my bags. 

I can screen print! Barely!

I decided to go legit. I designed a logo, learned to screen print, printed one side of each of my bags with my new logo, and opened a website to show and sell my bags. Business has not been exactly brisk, but I have sold enough to pay for paints and bags, and I got the attention this fall of a favorite rock singer in Seattle with a large twitter following, and was able to sell a few bags through that happy accident.

Nutty.

I have also shown a few of my works at a couple juried art exhibitions at Gallery 360 this summer. My goal for this year is to screw up my courage enough to approach more galleries and work harder on my social media and web presence.

A bit of the Na Pali Coast in Kauai. Oil on wood.

Thank you for your patient interest in my accidental art career.

Thank God you're here. 

Wilder Ranch

In 2010, we bought a camping trailer and started an October/April tradition. To camp in one of the most sought-after camping spots in the California State Parks program, you must reserve your spot seven months in advance, at the moment the month is opened for reservation. For any date in April, that means being on your computer with the spot and dates ready to reserve at 8:00 a.m. on October 1 the previous year. Apparently, camping on a California beach is very much like purchasing Beyoncé tickets.

Camping at Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, CA. It's worth the hassle.

When we are lucky, we get an April week at Seacliff State Beach in Aptos, which is just south of Capitola, which is just south of Santa Cruz. When we aren’t, we might settle for the state park up on the hill in Capitola with no electric or water hookups, or we might go into Santa Cruz and stay at the city harbor RV park. We spend a week beach combing, walking along Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz, or kayaking in Monterey, or poking around San Francisco, and always mountain biking at Wilder Ranch State Park just north of Santa Cruz.

Time to roll.

Twice a year like clockwork (calendar work), I become a mountain bike rider for a weekend. I wriggle into my chamois shorts (maybe a little tighter this year), with my chubby white babydoll knees poking out, wobble up onto my overpriced twenty-niner, forget what I look like, start to feel cocky, get red in the face, have the Best Day Ever, and resolve to do the same thing Every Weekend From Now On.

I play a pretty slick water bottle game.

One of those two days a year is the day we go out to Wilder Ranch. It has everything a mountain bike ride should have: gorgeous views, mostly flat terrain, no scary boulder thingies, ocean breezes, the possibility of a whale sighting, and little possibility of death, unless you disobey the signs.

Obeying the signs

I usually take pictures. In fact, I usually take the same pictures, because either (a) the joke never gets old,

Funny!

Still funny.

or (b) the views always look unprecedentedly beautiful to me, even though I eventually find they are nearly identical to the ones from last year.

Here's those rocks again.

Although I know, design-wise, that photos of my favorite places don’t always make the best subjects for art, it hasn’t stopped me from trying because five percent of the time it works, sometimes spectacularly in spite of the rules. This one is not a spectacular success, but it is a happy blending of two moments, one at Wilder Ranch and one on the way to Bend when the clouds did this bendy thing that I captured and squirreled away until I needed a design element to boost a feeling.

Wilder Ranch, 2016, oil on canvas (palette knife)

We don’t have camping reservations at Seacliff this year, and I am regretting our decision in October to sell the trailer in the spring and save our money for the next, better trailer. This trailer may have to do for a while longer. I think I’m going to need an April mountain bike ride. 

In Which I Trademark My Own Vision for the Future

My mom and dad live in a nifty retirement home – kinda looks like a mansion, and kinda feels like Hogwarts for Retired Wizards. One thing my folks were anxious about when they moved from Longview to their new Vancouver wizard house was when they could expect their phone book to arrive. How else where they to familiarize themselves with the area? Doctors, restaurants, shoe shops - the phone book knows. Oh, they are quite computer savvy, especially for octogenarians, but old habits die hard, and habits are like comfort food when everything else seems unfamiliar. Hey, I still have a paper-style newspaper delivered every morning. I am probably the last generation to do so.

When was the last time you were thrilled to find a phone book on your porch? It hasn’t been that long, really. Maybe fifteen years tops? But in those fifteen years, because of the ubiquity of your hands on the keyboard and the convenience of Google, your habits have completely changed. Now phone books often go from the front porch to the recycle bin without touching down on any other surface.

My mom likes Apple products. She has an iPhone, she’s adept at Facebook, and she orders library books to read on her iPad. My dad is a Windows guy. He has a laptop that he recently updated to Windows 10, long before my husband has (or will). However, they are probably at their technical peak. I doubt if they will follow the next trend. They don’t venture into Twitter or Reddit. You will not find them wearing virtual reality headsets or Dick Tracy watches.

Despite my newspaper habit, I don’t see my own technical horizon yet. I’m willing to adapt. But I know there will be a day when I am going to call a halt and hunker down in my own technical bunker, and the kids will call me a Luddite. Too old to get with the program. But where will that bunker be? Will I be willing to get the new iTattoo, which I’m assuming will work like an iPhone, but with the vibrating feature replaced with tickling? Probably. But I will probably balk at the iEye. Sure, I can see getting a yearly tattoo update, but I think I will keep my own eyes, rather than replacing one of my goo-filled eyes with a CyberDyne Cyber Eye™.

What does your technical horizon look like? Can you imagine looking through your own Cyber Eye™? Or is it clouded by an advancing Mad Max style apocalyptic dust storm? I guess we could consult a crystal ball (an ageless wizard-style technology).  I wonder whether WiFi disrupts a crystal ball signal. Wait – have we made crystal balls unusable with our thirst for instant techknowledge? (I’m disappointed to learn via Google that I didn’t just invent the word techknowledge). Find me a crystal ball. We have some research to embark upon.

This essay has taken a turn. I can either walk away or follow my thoughts through the next narrow hallway, which from here looks littered with Tarot cards. What’s that card there? The Oracle has it in his hairy white hands.

She Who Watches the Oracle.

On Contentment

I'm thinking about contentment.

I'm not thinking about contentment as the opposite of ambition, but contentment as the opposite of pure acquisitiveness. You know, acquisitiveness: that stuff that makes you covet your neighbor's ass.

I get barraged by the forces of covetousness every morning when I open my email. I get daily come-ons from Groupon, Zulilly, L. L. Bean (I don't remember ordering from L. L. Bean), and 20-odd more. I thank gmail for automatically sorting them into a separate "promotions" tab, which lends them an air of market barkers, hollering for my attention and my dollar. It makes it easier to delete them unread. Okay, most of them.

I'm not a machine, and I fail to run the gauntlet with my bank account intact maybe once a month. Not a good average, but I'm working on it. 

Don't you need this [shiny thing]?

Don't you want this [thing that is better than your dumb thing]?

Yes! Yes! I want the better thing! Then I will be happier!

And yes, I make and sell shiny things that are unneedable.

I've really written myself into a corner.

The fact is, shiny things are wonderful, and as humans, we do love and appreciate beauty. And glitter. But what do we lose in contentment when, in the pursuit of a more and better contentment, we spend more than is safe and leave ourselves vulnerable to financial instability, which will, in turn, result in a breakdown of any feeling of contentment we may have had? That was a great sentence.

Are you content? Can you make yourself content? 

Do you need that thing? It's just an ass.

My Own Private Disaster

There I was in the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix again. Nothing to do all day but wait for my man to bring home the bacon. It’s kind of a weird time machine I have put myself through this summer. I remember when my mom used to accompany my dad to conferences and trade events, the sponsor would have “activities” to keep the wives entertained while their hubbies were busy talking business with the other Business Men. Those days are gone. Conference sponsors rightly assume that the spouses of attendees (of whichever gender) have their own damn conferences to attend in a completely different conference center. Yet here I am, a spouse at a conference, looking for ways to entertain myself.

Here I am, entertaining myself in the proper method.

With the experience of being trapped at a bland resort and forced to eat $20 deli salads fresh in our memories, we rented a car this time.

The Biltmore in Phoenix is not a jail to keep people in. It's a jail to keep the weather out.

The first day, after my walk along the canal filled with water stolen from a wetter place, I took the car out for an explore. I found a grocery store (meant it), Scottsdale (didn’t mean it), and the trailhead of the trail to the top of the peak that I could see from my cell at the Biltmore (meant it but was surprised to find that pointing the car in that direction actually worked). By the time I found the trailhead, it was noon and over 100 degrees, so I vowed to come back the next day as early as possible, as the forecast called for 106 degrees the following day.

After a lousy night using all my willpower not to scratch two legs full of mosquito bites (golf courses beget standing water begets mosquitos), I was a little groggy and slow the next morning. I decided the hill (actually Piestewa Peak on the map) could wait another day. I told Drew of my non-plans as he left for his full day of conference going. However, after two cups of coffee and a little leftover boredom, I decided to make a somewhat belated exit and head for the hills.

Hey, look at that cool, easy trail!

So, well after 9:00 a.m., with the temperature already climbing out of the 80s and into the 90s where it could really stretch out, I parked, added one more layer of sunscreen, and set off.

There were many trails starting from the trailhead, and as I am not good with either translating those stupid kiosk trail maps or telling where I am in space, I just decided to follow the trail marked “1A.” That sounded safe, like a green dot ski slope.

Wait, where did the trail go?

The trail sent me around the base of the hill to the other side of what I learned later was the Phoenix Mountains Reserve. At the time, I was looking forward to doing some climbing, so I was a little bummed at the gentleness of the slope. I could feel the temperature climbing, but I had applied every sunscreen product and carried a bottle of water. Because only dummies hike in 90-degree heat without water.

Finally, the trail points upward toward the peak. The actual “1A” trail seemed to crest about 100 feet shy of the actual peak that I had been staring at from my gilded cage at the resort, so I took a gravelly, slippery little side trail up to stand on the peak.

What makes this peak so special (okay, what makes most peaks so special) is that the top is really pointy. That’s why they call it “mountain climbing,” not “mountain walking.” You have to use all your limbs to get up there. You might as well. At that angle, your arms are as close to the earth as your legs are. And when you get to the top, there is very little of earth left to stand on. Most of the ground is at a completely different elevation, and if you mistakenly step on the part of the ground that isn’t there, you will fall a long way before meeting the earth again – at an unpleasant velocity.

Look how pointy!

I love hiking to peaks and it surprises me every time how dizzy I get when I make it to the top. I look down, my cerebellum switches off and I forget how not to fall. But yes, I took a selfie, and yes, I was sitting down for them and still pretty sure I was going to go splap onto the trail far below. I embodied the danger of selfies, now known to kill more people than sharks. So I took my selfie and skedaddled back down.

Trying not to fall on Phoenix.

Another thing I keep forgetting is that if you climb up a gravelly peak using all of your limbs, you many not have that option on the way down. Actually, you have three options, in descending order of humiliation: (1) go down the way you came up, this time backward. However, since you are at a less-than-90-degree angle, you will be safe, but you will look like 1960s TV Batman and Robin pretending to climb a building by climbing a floor and tilting the camera; or (2) slide down on your ass and buy new pants at the bottom; or (3) walk down in 6-inch increments, sliding and gasping all the way. I chose (3) and my heart chose a new, kicky rhythm.

So I’m up the peak, down the peak, and ready to head for the car. The trail seems to loop back toward the parking lot, but there is a little bowl to cross before several rises in the trail, which hide the way ahead. How far to the car? Let’s find out. Across the little bowl to the first rise (with handy steps cut into the rock), which leads me to a second flat and a final steep rise to a ledge about as high as the peak I just climbed. No problem. It’s getting hot but I’m making good time and I still have most of my water…wait. Why are my hands empty of water bottles? Why don’t I remember carrying water bottles since I was on top of that peak a mile away? Well, the water is staying on the peak because that was hard and I’m almost done.

Luckily, this new peak comes with steps cut in the rock, which makes it much more firm under my boots, and at the top of this ledge I ought to be able to see my car in the parking lot.

Bonus uphiking!

Except. The top of this rise reveals another, larger bowl maybe a half-mile across and just as deep as the base trail, surrounded by ledges as high the ledge I am standing on. And I see bits of trail here and there, but I can’t make out exactly where the trail goes and how it comes out the other side. I’m pretty sure it does, and I’m pretty sure the parking lot is on the other side of this new bowl, but I’ve been wrong already today. I would ask a passerby, but it turns out that Phoenix citizens have more sense than to be here right now. I have only passed one mountain bike and two humans all morning.

I sit to think. I am in an unfamiliar environment. The heat is only getting hotter. Nobody knows where I am. I don’t know for sure where this trail leads. I have no water.

I headed back the way I came. A couple of known climbs and a long-ass hike around the base of what I now understand is a complex of hills is better than betting on an unknown trail in an unfamiliar area. And the temperature will hit the century mark by noon.

I trudged. I got that gooey white stuff on the edges of my mouth. I told myself to put one foot in front of the other, like a prisoner on a forced march. I imagined myself as one of those crawling, thirsty desert guys. It seemed to take forever before I could see the damn parking lot, and then once I saw it, forever to make it to the car. And water.

Artist's very sketchy rendering. 

And that’s how I nearly gave myself heat stroke in the desert while in the Phoenix city limits. By the time Drew got back from his conference day, I was well hydrated, unsunburnt (because of my expert sunscreen application), and rested. No one has to know.

Huh. It appears that there IS more than one peak back there.

The Knobbiness of Age

Each year I get older, I avoid more mirrors and delete more camera images. All I can see are wrinkly necks, chubby middles, and jowls. This is nothing new to the human condition, but it is new to me, just as when I was having a baby (not exactly the first of my species to do so), I couldn't believe that such a level of pain was even legal. 

The Knobs of Doom

I've got a two new knobs on each side of the last knuckle of my right pointer finger. It looks like the beginning of arthritis, but it doesn't hurt - it just instantly ages my hands by twenty years. If not to cause pain, then what is their purpose? I'm beginning to believe they are a there to remind me full time that I am heading for haghood.

This subject always reminds me of salmon. Once salmon spawn in their home riverbed, their DNA turns violently against them and they morph into humpback, hooked-nose freaks and summarily die a humiliating death. Like salmon, women's DNA starts to throw out grey hair, thin skin, wrinkly faces, and pudgy middles, which makes them head out into the forest to make scary stick figures with twine and dance around a pile of soggy leaves. (Right?)

Look away. I am a monster.

As a petite, pixie-faced type of young woman, I always counted on my looks to illicit some level of sympathetic helpfulness in people that seemed to be missing from non-face-to-face interactions, such as telephone calls. In fact, I avoided phone calls because I was unable to use the one interpersonal skill that I possessed - my face. Now, as a less petite, more salmon-faced over-50 woman, I still instinctively reach for that interpersonal weapon and am disappointed to find that it is no longer there. Where as before, I had what you might call a functional level of shyness, my descending haghood has threatened to push my shyness level into unprecedented hermithood. 

I won't be coming out of this chrysalis a butterfly. This chrysalis is genetically set for decrepitude. If I don't get over myself, I will be bound for a life of cats and plastic bag hoarding. So I am attempting to say yes to social exchanges and say hello more often. I will step right into my new hag mask and wear it around town like a flowered hat.

I guess the point of this post is an attempt at eliciting empathy on behalf of all of us ladies of a certain age. Give us a break. We didn't make ourselves look this way. Our salmon DNA did it, and we are not happy about it.

Rejection Leads to Existential Crisis (Of Course)

I got a door politely shut in my face today. It hurt a little (a lot). But I am assuming that I was trying to go into the wrong door, and that I just need to turn around, get my bearings, and try another door. 

Art is such a subjective entity. Is any painting valuable? Invaluable? Or unvaluable? Why are some paintings worth millions while other paintings, which may be subjectively either better or worse, worth northing? Or even more millions? Are any of them worth more than a handful of tulip bulbs? Especially today, when anything can be produced or reproduced? Why even use paint? It's very messy. Do I need to find the right audience? Or feel content that my art is something I (alone) like to look at?

I have seen shovels hanging in galleries (art galleries, not tool galleries). There are many highly prized works out there boldly expressing one note - excellent art if you like colors, but don't like it when the colors form a shape.

I guess there's art for everyone. And nobody can please everyone.

If you google-image the phrase "Is this art," you get some food for thought, including some rather disturbing images. If you google-image the phrase "modern art," you get some of those dumb blank canvases, but you also get a flood of beauty, so much it makes me feel puny and unimaginative in comparison.

A sample screenshot from the Google Image search "Modern Art"

If you google-image the phrase "Young Woman with Unicorn," you get this picture of a Raphael painting from 1506, showing a girl holding a teeny unicorn like it's a teacup poodle. There is no point to be made. I just wanted you to see it.

Young Woman with a Unicorn, Raphael, 1506

Well, this took a turn. I appear to have tried to answer the question, "What is Art," when I started trying to answer the question, "Is what I make art, and is it worth anything?" I can answer that it IS art, but only because I say it is. To the second question, I can only answer no until proven wrong. In the meantime, here's a picture of an albino nutria, holding a tarot card, in front of a famous Columbia Gorge petroglyph entitled Tsagaglalal (She Who Watches).

The Oracle

Thanks for reading, friends. 

Why Paint That? Volume 2: Redwoods Sky

I bought a couple of square canvases a while back because I knew of a few square wall spaces that could use a bit of color. My first attempt at design using the square involved making four smaller squares with different abstracted bits of sand dune effects in each. It turns out that four squares full of sand-colored lines is not a compelling image. TOSSED.

My second attempt to use the square canvas came after a trip to Bend last year, when I had a hot-tub-inspired flashback to once upon a time when we had a hot tub in our Bend backyard, which we tended to use after dark (the better to not see you, my dear). Bend has those starry clear, cold nights, when it is only right to be looking up while up to your neck in hot water. We could watch the white stars through the trees while our cheeks (all four) turned pink like sauteed shrimp. 

That memory is not ripe to paint yet. It's dark. The sky is dark, the trees are darker. The only bit of light is from stars. And if I don't get the stars right, Neil deGrasse Tyson will be angry. And you wouldn't like Neil deGrasse Tyson when he's angry. ( 1970s Incredible Hulk reference. Ask your mother. ) I remember how incensed Tyson got at James Cameron when he just filled the night sky with random twinkly lights during the dramatic DiCaprio popsicle scene in Titanic (Cameron later fixed the sky in the blu-ray version). 

But I liked the idea of painting the view you get when you look up through a forest. I remembered a similar moment when we visited the redwoods in the early 90s. Of course, as the daughter of a forester, I've been looking up through a forest all my life, but (a) OUR forests were an everyday thing - nobody paid admission or drove across country to see our neat and untidy Douglas Fir plantings, and (b) there's something about redwoods.

A photo of the redwoods I took in the 90s. It is the inspiration for the painting Redwoods Sky.

The proper shape of such a view would be round, as if you could turn around in a circle beneath it and feel like you were under a sky fanned by green cedary fluff. And if I were a more precise painter, or one with lumber and a jigsaw, I could make a round flat surface to paint on. But instead, I had this square canvas, and I thought I could make it work. 

As with most of my paintings, the drawing portion went well, then it took a dramatic turn for the worse, until I was able to pull out a win at the last moment. In that way, the arc of my paintings are often like sports movies.

Redwoods Sky. 20 x 20 oil on canvas (palette knife application)

When several of my paintings were on display at Rinnovo, this one got the most comments. I currently have it hung far up on a wall, where you have to look up to view it. I like it that way. Unless you would like to see it at your house. Then we can talk.

What I Did During My Summer Vacation, Part 1

Part 1? Hell yeah, my life is ON FLEEK. (I'm 53 and should never be allowed the use of those words, but the internet has no police.)

I convinced my personal firefighter and chauffeur to pull the trailer down to my sister and brother-in-law's ranch outside of Lakeview on the July 4th weekend, leave me, Scotty the and trailer there for the week while he works at his real job, and come back the following week and take us home. He was cool with that because firefighters and dog lovers HATE the 4th of July, and the 4th at the ranch is completely fireworks free. It's the quietest place to spend Independence Day. I recommend it to all dogs. It's great.

If it sounds like I pulled the trailer up to the front of my sis's house for the week, then you need to revise the picture you painted in your mind, because my brother-in-law and sister don't own a backyard horsey corral. They have a 5,000-acre cattle ranch with a reservoir, an RV park, deer and antelope (playing), and a ground squirrel population problem. Here's a link to the RV park website, in case you are ready to make plans for next Independence Day.

I took the opportunity to hone what is left of my watercolor skills after a year-long break. Watercolor is the painting style that I like to look at the best, and that I love to excel at, but the one which frustrates me the most due to my lack of skill. If I worked at it more, I would improve my skills and become less enraged by my failure, but that would require me to become enraged more in the process, so it is easier not to. This time, I just took watercolor paints and paper with me. That way, I couldn't walk into my studio, pick up a palette knife, and start making mud pies with oil paints. I had to pick up the watercolor brushes. Oooh, I can be such a taskmaster.

Here's a shot of the ranch from the RV park (behind me). Those black things are future hamburgers.

It was hard to concentrate on painting because there was so much to do - hiking, mountain bike riding, mooing at cows, brushing tumbleweeds out of Scotty's hair, going on field trips with my sister, draining the grey water tanks (no one could tell me how long my trailer showers could be), and reading - but I managed a few small paintings. 

Junipers Reservoir

This one was based on a photo I took the year before, as we seldom had large expanses of blue sky this year - lots of fluffy clouds during the day and dark, thundery ones in the evening.

Scotty bids you to follow him.

Is this still the ranch? Yes, this is still the ranch. There are some lovely ponderosa-filled hills to wander.

A dramatic sunrise at the ranch. Colors by GOD.

The cloudy conditions made for some dramatic photos and this dramatic painting. 

HABOOB

Check out this photo of an incoming wind storm. I just wanted to show you this. I didn't paint it or anything. Pretty cool, though, right?

Footbridge over the creek

Hey, wait, Janice. Didn't you say this ranch was outside of Lakeview? Isn't that pretty dry country? Yes, reader, but this ranch is magic and has everything. Including this little creek, on the banks of which I saw a deer and a GIANT OWL.

The ranch house

This is a picture of the ranch house from the reservoir road below it. This is the last of the three paintings of the ranch that I made while I was there. None will be for sale - they belong to my sister and brother-in-law if they want them. I got a little skill back in the painting of them, and I had a lovely week in God's country. One last photo...

Hey, it's a Nature Trale!

This sign was made by the FORMER OWNER of the ranch, so please don't blame my school teacher sister or brilliant brother-in-law, but it tickles me every time I pass by.

CHOCOLATE REPORT. Was I eating chocolate during the writing of this post? Yes.

Pregnant With Art.

June 17, 2015: I've been holding on to some good news, because kinda like being a few weeks pregnant, I feel like it's too early and anything could happen. Maybe it's all just a big mistake. I'm not even telling you now! I am writing this in draft form and will post it in a day or two when I'm feeling more positive that this is really happening. Here's a clue:

My first notice of acceptance for my first juried art show.

See? I'm pregnant with art! 

Back in May, I noticed this call for a juried art show for pieces featuring "trains, planes, automobiles, and anything with wheels." I don't really paint vehicles, with one exception: bicycles. And mostly, bicycles holding up my son. I dug out my three paintings with bikes in them, rephotographed them, and sent them in with my application via email. Only one of these paintings has been included in the gallery of this website - the other two are watercolors I painted a few years ago and keep for my own decorative purposes, since the "model" is my son.

This entry via email thing is awesome. They don't know I'm a hot mess in person, and that I have to fight my toddler's instinct to took at my shoes while speaking. And it worked! I'm in!

Now I just have to write an "artist's bio" and deliver the paintings downtown to Gallery 360 at The Slocum House. 

That's all.

Artist's bios are normally written by the artist in third person (awkward). They should include the artist's background, schooling, influences, gallery exhibits, and philosophy. Since I have little art schooling, no legit gallery time, and few meaty art thoughts, my bio is a little light. 

It turns out that the hardest part has been dragging my hermit-y ass down there with the paintings and bio. I could have fit it into my schedule today, but I "ran out of time." Meaning, I "ran out of nerve." What if they take one look at my paintings and decide they've made a huge mistake? What if they laugh at the prices I wrote down? What if the person at the gallery does not know what I'm talking about when I tell her I am delivering art for the Art on Wheels exhibition and sends me away? What if the gallery attendant is busy and I have to wait on a stool in a corner like a frightened rabbit and then the gallery closes? These are all valid fears, right?  

I will complete this report when I return from my VERY SIMPLE ERRAND tomorrow.

June 18, 2015

Okay, it's done. It was just as awkward as I expected, but since I expected it, I wasn't thrown. As expected, the nice older fellow on duty did not know how to accept my art, but he had a checklist to follow, so we got through. it. He also was thrown by the gallery-wrapped oil painting, as it was frameless, and he was apparently new to the concept. At first, he said he didn't know if they could accept artwork that was "unprotected," but I explained that it was an oil painting that you did not show behind glass, and he did a little mental reckoning, and okayed it. Phew. Awkward, since he was a member of the gallery co-op. Maybe he does woodworking or something.

Oh, and if you're interested, here's my artist's bio:

Janice Tracy

Oil on canvas

Watercolor on paper

Acrylics on tote bags

Janice Tracy lives and paints in Vancouver, Washington. She started painting in the 1990s while living in Bend, Oregon. Her first efforts were a “do-it-yourself” way to decorate her home, but she soon found that she was producing more art than she had wall space.

In addition to various classes and seminars, one of her main influences was her friend and mentor, Avalon Parsons, whose oil paintings have been shown in galleries throughout Oregon. Like Ms. Parsons, Janice often uses a palette knife as her only application tool when painting landscapes in oil, but she picks up her brushes to create works that include human and animal figures.

Janice’s approach to her art is to capture a place, a moment, or a memory in the hope that the viewer can experience it with her.

Until recently, her work was on display at the Rinnovo Spa and Salon in Vancouver.

She also produces a line of canvas tote bags painted with acrylics under the name “Used Art.” The subjects for her canvas bag pieces are usually more whimsical, such as otters, bears, cows, and the occasional nutria.

Although she has been painting for over 20 years, she has never been able to give herself a proper manicure.

Now I guess I wait until the opening, which will be during Downtown Vancouver's version of the monthly artwalk called First Friday, which is July 3, when I am supposed to be somewhere else. I guess I should work that out sooner rather than later.  See you on July 3, I guess?

Why Paint That? Volume 1: High Dive

I got this text a while back from The Captain, my Personal Firefighter and Chauffeur:

A polar bear mom getting grey hairs from her risk-taking son

Apparently, this poor polar bear mom had something in common with me. Whether it was when Dean was younger and learning to ski in the morning and taking black diamond runs in the afternoon, or later when he gravitated to the kind of track cycling that was more of a contact sport than is actually specified in the rule books, Dean was the cause of more than a few motherly screams.

So the gauntlet was laid right in my inbox and I accepted it. Whether this small, 8" x 12" turns out to be a study for a larger work or the end product, I am not sure yet, but it went well - quickly without much angst:

Here I am as a polar bear.

This will probably not end up for sale, (1) because it is so similar to the idea material, which did not originate with me, and (2) because I don't sell self portraits.

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you go hug your mom.