Farm Country

I have made a major life change moving from the city to the country since I started this blog. I was quite active in urban sketchers, so my focus now on fields and farms feels healthy yet somewhat disorienting.

I have been exploring various subject matter but the urban aspect is pretty much over for the time being.

I also temporarily halted my journal but intend to get back to more drawing.

Hopefully my transfer to instagram will not make the blog obsolete but I have definitely changed my emphasis.

Knitting seems to be a continuing activity.

Well we'll see what's next....

August in the Driftless

From the top of Grandad's Bluff near La Crosse, my grandsons and I looked out toward the Mississippi River at the city below us.

"The cars look like toy cars" exclaimed the younger of the two.  A turkey vulture flew past right in front of us, high in the sky, yet at eye level.  It seems so refreshing to see again from a fresh perspective and that's the gift of summertime for me.

I have continued with panorama paintings, rather than journal entries.  This expansion onto large papers rather than enclosed in books has felt life giving for the time being.

Suddenly its Spring

This year it felt sudden.  The winter didn't seem too long.  And now the green fields, the new lambs, the garden plots, the plans for summer.  I just can't believe it could be May.  I have been much more consistent on Instagram and allowed this blog to be dormant.
Meanwhile I've been making socks, reading and weaving and even made a sweater.  In painting I'm trying panoramas rather than journal pages, so we'll see what develops.

Slants of Sunlight

Our local library has recently been raising money for a new building and so we have been having numerous creative fundraisers.

The latest is handpainted chairs to be auctioned to the highest bidders.

I gave that a go and actually enjoyed painting a chair.

Cold cold days has meant that the sunlight has some special qualities: clarity and the resulting drama and the particular slant of winter.

In addition to painting the chair I went out painting again along the roadside.

I'm coming at reality at a slant these days: searching for relevance.

latest discovery: chicago poet, Adam Gottlieb, (Louder than a Bomb)

Painting Again

Ancient Treasures: the land and the sky

I'm trying to learn to appreciate anew the life all around me.  I take the land and the sky pretty much for granted everyday. 

And yet my life depends on the air, water and land surrounding me.  

Trying to live by buying local and appreciating the hands that are working to give me life is a task that seems to be achieved more easily when I go out and see and experience the light and textures of my local life. 

Brushes, paints and pencils help me do that.

view of
Vernon County Fairgrounds

Saugstad Rd North of Westby

Wefts of Wonder All Around

Do we live in a warped world?

The truth is that the world, seen as something woven, would be made up of both warp and weft.  But I have been seeking to view our 2014 world as more than a cynical warped place of wars and terrors and cruelty and out of whack priorities.  I have been weaving and watching.

I notice stripes of color and texture all around filled with light and life. 

The "warped"  aspect of life is certainly present but so is the "weft":  the wonderful color of nature, of community, of sustainability, of singing.........  the joy of being human and able to think creatively.......
Taking the metaphor just a bit further, another "stripe of weft" that gives me hope is the ingenuity of the young.  We certainly need new alternatives to the corporations dominating the planet's future.  We are all part of a complex system that needs balance.  

So weaving some balance, some complexity, yet finding simplicity...roads and paths to a new reality....and even sometimes going out on the water......
Wonderful Wefts  (the weft is the horizontal strips of fiber in a woven piece)

 I wish you all joy as we head into another new year.  May you find your balance.  Thanks for checking out this blog.

Crackle Weave sampler

Roads : One Day Tells its Tale to Another (psalm 19)

I am going back and forth on roads lately....not exactly making a new path.  A road is much more traveled, more worn, more predictable.  I am going back and forth over previous endeavors searching for new directions, unusual twists.  I feel on the verge of something but in the meantime its roads for me and lots of stopping to check maps:  to look again.  The weaving is from last winter.
More questions than answers..........What's my next destination??