how to paint grass

reserved

i remember vividly the day i learned to paint grass.  

i had recently moved to portland with james.  i didn't have a job and was holed up in my cluttered little studio daily, the living room of our tiny yellow rental house, trying to make art that would sell.  i was painting birds, people with birds, and landscapes, all from the pages of my old national geographics. when i wasn't doing that, i was sanding or finishing cabinets that james was working on.  i remember being pretty hand-to-mouth, pretty stoned most of the time to deal with the money stress.  i remember it being really hard, but also exhilarating, to be in a city with a million interesting places we hadn't been yet, a city that didn't know our names.  i thought i moved there to make it big as an artist. now i realize that i just wanted to be near my family.

my mom and dad lived in camas at the time, a tiny mill town twenty minutes east on the river.  my mom always worked as an artist and illustrator, was well connected in the local art community, and always had lots of random and interesting jobs.  a friend of a friend somehow recommended my mom for a job with a local duck hunter that wanted his boat painted in realistic marsh grass camouflage.  he wanted the best camouflage, so the ducks wouldn't see him but his fellow hunters certainly would.  my mom called to enlist my help, and i said sure, of course i'll do anything for a little cash. 

we drove over to his home in the woods and were greeted by two roaming horses, a sheep dog, and the largest mule i'd ever seen.  we were led into a shed filled with taxidermy, hunting paraphernalia, and the aluminum skiff, his pride and joy.  on that day, with four different colors of enamel, my mom showed me how to paint grass.  

we started with the middle greens, swiping the long fronds from the bottom up.  she told me i was too stiff, painting too slow.   "imagine how the grass moves.  imagine the wind in the grass," she said, swooping the brush swiftly upward.  "picture how random nature is.  each blade isn't perfect...there will be bent blades and curled blades.  each blade is different.  see, watch how i do it."  i tried to imitate.  we must have looked like amateur ballerinas, swooping our brushes in a lyrical interpretive dance, laughing hysterically at the awful country blaring from a tiny boom-box.  we moved to a darker color, filling in the shadows between the blades, creating depth and dimension, carving out the grass, adding in cattails.  last, we took the bright yellow, and highlighted each blade, our brush landing where our imaginary sun would land.  in a mere three hours, we were done, and boy that boat was glowing with its new paint job.  i'd venture to say that we were glowing too, as we posed together for that photo, mother and daughter team, victorious.   mission accomplished.

what do you see?

i'm pretty sure edison has ghosts.  talking to frog tonight really sealed the deal.  "it's an indian burial ground, you know."  he said.  i nod in affirmation.  

frog grew up here.  his name is actually thomas, and i'm not sure where his nickname came from.  he's usually donning some frog paraphernalia of some sort.  he's tall and lanky with long black hair and a goatee, with a hoodee and a baseball cap and skate shoes he blends right in.  but he's different.  he's a bit of a local celebrity, and an edison authority.  frog lives down the street in a house with his grandma, protecting her from aggressive vacuum salesmen and other opportunist-type people who would like to take advantage of an elderly woman.  what all i know about frog:  he has a heart of gold.  he stashes tall cans of rainier in between slough food and Marilyn's house.  he fell out of a tree when he was young and was paralyzed.  he learned how to walk again, but one of his hands doesn't work the way he wants it to.  he likes to buy me and james drinks, preferably shots.  he is extremely sentimental, and emotional, and will sometimes cry when a meaningful song comes on the juke.  tonight, it was someday never comes by credence.  at fourteen, he used to sneak into the town's then-slaughterhouse office and call 900-numbers with his buddies.  he saw many a cow get axed, and even tried to rescue one.  he dragged the calf all the way home, clipped its ear tag and shaved the burned-in numbers from it's fur to hide it's identity.  not knowing what to do from there, feeling helpless, he let the cow go free.  he doesn't know what happened to it.

i love frog, he makes life better here in this tiny town.  he makes life in edison more colorful, more meaningful.  he helps me realize that a town is not just made of it's buildings.  it's not just the architecture or the environment.   it's the people.  that's what makes this town special.   

cozy

i'm not sure exactly what happened.  but i went from being a non-knitter to a knit-a-holic almost overnight.  i knit my first hat in three short days, now i'm well on my way to finishing my second.  it's a new kind of escapism, perfect for those dull winter afternoons in the store or evenings in bed with a fire.  it puts me in a bit of a trance and scratches my obsessive compulsive side.  it is also one of the reasons i had a hard time doing my painting yesterday.  and today.  i was knitting instead.

i joined a local ladies knitting circle some time ago, not as an excuse to knit, or because i knit at all:  i didn't. i wanted to get to know some ladies, and maybe drink a little whiskey and shoot the shit.  but in that circle, i saw knitting and crocheting elevated.  i was jealous of everyone's pattern-following prowess, and their collaboration over questions of complex construction.  impatient with my own project that lasted over a year and went nowhere, i quickly finished the edges and went to ravelry in search of a pattern.  and i realized:  the potential is endless.

which brings me to knitta.  i've seen those brightly colored knitted cozies around telephone poles in bellingham and portland.  maybe they were made by the notorious yarn-bombers called knitta, maybe knot.  but all i know is:  edison needs one.  seeing photos of the knitted r.v.cozy, the bus cozy, the bicycle cozies, and other jaw-dropping projects, i now want a cozy for everything.  i adore this new modern hybridization, a perfect combination of craft and graffiti, domesticity and guerrilla art.

distractibility

leave it to me to ruin a perfectly good thing.  you see, making yourself do a painting a day has a way of taking some of the fun out of it.  yeah, there are still days when it's just right: the music is right, the light is right, the motivation is right, the supplies are right...and it really shows up in the work.  those days, i create works of art.  then there are the other days.  because not all days are created equal.  and so some days, like today for example, i wait until after i've worked on other crap all day and gone to a party and eaten too much dessert and then i realize i ran out of paper and it's about all i can do to not have a tantrum all over myself.  you've heard this one before.  so here it is:  a half-assed sunset painting reminiscent of a hawaiian shirt on a dirty corner scrap of paper from a photo i took of the la brea tarpits in los angeles.  a sunset, with the silhouetted trees and reflection on the water, is about one of the simplest things you can paint.  in fact, it's kind of like a big  Rorschach ink blot, or the finger paint and folded paper experiments i used to do when i was little.  which brings to mind an artist i remember loving, who started every drawing from smashed paint in a sketchbook. yes, that is something i should try.  one thing leads to another, a little velvet underground comes on the radio, and i decide to take my own Rorschach test, just for kicks.   it told me that my sickness quotient was 77% and that therapy would be useful."1)You work very slowly. In fact, if you went any slower you'd be in reverse. 2) Everyone likes you. This is because your life is such a mess that everyone else is relieved they aren't you. 3)  Your personal motto is "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger." Wrong. What doesn't kill you usually makes you hurt all over and go "Owie!" ".  okay, so i wasted ten minutes on some crappy excuse for Rorschach when i could have been working on art.  whoops.  i promise tomorrow's attempt will be better.

hurray

collection of the biddle family

today we celebrated the birthday of james reisen.  james, you're the butter on my toast, the apple in my orchard, the wood in my stove, the tea in my mug.  every year just keeps getting better and better.  how could i be so lucky?  thank you for being you:  everything, and more.

thankful

my family was traditional. we had our traditions, and for years and years we followed those traditions faithfully like the children of hamelin followed the pied piper.  for thanksgiving we would gather, aunt june crafting a ridiculously lavish meal. every course imaginable was arranged across the delicate crocheted lace tablecloth, the table set proper with a centerpiece and candles and matching china and silver and crystal glasses beneath the chandelier.  we would hold hands together, in a circle, heads down respectfully while uncle earl said grace. a devout man, a spiritual man, his grace was always a beautiful and simple expression of appreciation.  thank you, heavenly father, for bringing us together, for the nourishing food that you have provided, bless it to our body's use, amen.  we would eat forever, then fall down sleepy on the burgundy leather couch and watch television.  it was thanksgiving, and it was the same, year after year.

ever since mom died, holidays have been hard.  i suppose that goes without saying.  but holidays seem to emphasize her absence. when she left, we were all at a loss.  for a while, we tried to do the same old thing.  it was horribly lonely, staring across the table at each other, faces forlorn. we were trying with all our might to be thankful,  but only ashes remained.

this year is different.  i am thankful.  because this year, all the traditions we held fast to have been broken, shattered like a bottle on the mast of a ship.  because with every end, there is a beginning.  and for this, i am thankful.  this year, james and i spent our first thanksgiving together.  we sat at our oak table, the table handed down to me, in the chairs my mother refurbished with her own two hands, the table and chairs of many a family meal.  we ate salmon that was caught by james in our local river, and squash that was grown by the hands of a friend, all cooked in a cast iron pan on the woodstove that heats our home.  we finished with pomegranate seeds, the symbolic fruit of greek mythology from which the seasons were born.   it couldn't have been more perfect.

listen closely

sold

the last few weeks were spent in preparation for tonight's daffodils show.  i bought a new drum stool.  we made a list of the forty or so songs that we know.  we practiced until exhaustion or impatience made us take a smoke or drink or potty or sleep break.  we watched a band we admired, looking for clues to the puzzle.  we even made an impromptu demo, and gave it to him at the show.  a shot in the dark, or a toe in the door, perhaps.  we listened to recordings of our practices, trying to pick out the good parts and eliminate the bad like a new recipe.  we practiced, and practiced some more.  all in preparation, for tonight, and for all the shows to come.

today, listening to KEXP's live recordings of my favorite bands in the entire world, my eyes and ears were opened.  i realized:  there is a thin divide between us and them, that divide being fame.  it is something every band works toward, but few achieve on a large scale.  but typically, it's not the reason we all make music.  music is a force all its own, a force that binds us together in the expressions of joy and sadness and love and every other human emotion.  it is therapy, it is adrenalin, it is satisfying, to the listeners and the performers all at once.  because of the profound effect it can have on the listener, musicians are often put on some sort of artistic pedestal.  but listening closely to some of those live studio recordings, those raw, unedited moments, and listening to the artists talk, really brings it back home to how similar we all are.  and why we all need music.  it is a celebration of life.