Industrial Alhambra

Alhambra is not a city that seems too interested in preserving its past.  Sorry, Alhambra, but it's true.  A city that was once known as the City of Homes, it has replaced thousands of single family dwellings and duplexes with large condominium developments.  Alhambra's historical society is housed in a small 1980s building.  An all-American Main Street that once boasted department stores, a Woolworths, a deli, an ice cream parlor, and the like is now lined with car dealers.  And the car dealers bemoan the fact that they have no freeway to bring them customers who aren't local.  In the Emery Park area of Alhambra, which I just learned was was originally part of the San Gabriel Vineyard and the town of Dolgeville (who knew?!!), there are remnants of industry.  There is a foundry, some furniture factories, and an aluminum factory.  Or there was.  This stuff is all getting sold and torn down and developed.  So my painter friends and I hightailed it over there on a couple of Saturdays to mark a moment in time.  I chose these quieter themes, an alley and Rod's furniture, over the huge and marvelous heavy equipment.  We hear it's all going to be a mall or a business park before long.

  
There is still one ice cream parlor on Main Street.

Like Home

I painted at Alhambra Park yesterday.  This is the second painting in an incidental Palm Avenue series -- Moving Day and Trash Day.  The trash cans and the red curbs were factors in my choice to paint this scene, offering some immunity to big trucks parking and blocking my view.

I'm addressing two personal shortcomings I pointed out in the last post -- tardy blogging and bad car painting.  I've skipped ahead several paintings, and I'm giving you something fresh.  I'm pretty pleased with the SUV parked on the left-hand edge.  There's actually even more of it -- the entire rear wheels, but the photo of the painting wasn't well framed so I had to crop some.

I've said several times that I like houses, but I think probably what I really like is homes.  Houses that are lived in, and wear personal touches of quirky, exuberant and fragile lives.  Blue stairs, flags, potted plants and stuff.  I love interiors too - the infinite different ways people nest.  I thought about going on a house tour yesterday afternoon, but instead wound up visiting family members at their new home.

My Summer

You'll recognize that I painted these guys before using the same photograph as reference.  These were by request, sort of a commission you might say if it didn't sound so pretentious like I'm posing as an actual working artist.  Still, sometimes people who like pigeons will find me.  Shh.  I don't collect or pay sales tax on paintings.  I think it's okay that I don't pay income tax, because I'm pretty sure I shell out more on supplies than I make.  Actually, I pay an awful lot of taxes, and generally feel pretty good about it.  I'm fortunate to live in a wonderful city, state, and country.  All the benefits that I enjoy have a price, and usually it's not the blood of soldiers, but just cold hard ordinary cash. 

I came upon this poem last week.  If I up and quit my job one day soon, this is where the seed got planted. 

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver.

Into the Weeds

I painted today just off a tiny Alhambra street that has some pretty venerable art history. Champion Place was once home to the studios of artists Norman Rockwell, Clyde Forsythe, Frank Tenney Johnson, Eli Harvey, Tex Wheeler, Sam Hyde Harris, and Marjorie Reed. The eucalyptus tree lined arroyo has since been cemented in, and a batch of mid-century homes obscure the view. Nevertheless, it remains a place of abiding charms as well as a number of cats.


My painting got a bit cluttered and mired in details. But I think you can still see that it's a nice place. I was enticed away from painting by an invitation to tea, so I didn't quite finish on site. I completed the painting later at home, and since I had the paints out, I decided to try a second take on a postcard. And here you have it, almost completely without detail. Something in between would probably be best, something closer to the less fussy right side on the first painting.


I'm not sure how to bring this up. I worry sometimes that I'm a discourteous blogger. I think I behave myself pretty well on the blogs of others, but here I often neglect my guests. I don't thank you for your insightful or kind remarks. I don't even respond to your questions sometimes. I'm sorry. It doesn't mean I don't value you and treasure your comments. I don't really have an excuse. I will say my mother taught me to offer food and drinks, to take coats and write notes. But really I'm afraid she knew nothing of how to blog.

Almansor Park

I painted in Almansor Park today. It was warmer than predicted, but still nice. The people were plentiful and pleasant, and the birds were quite wonderful. I recognized some of the ducks and geese from my last visit. The painting went quickly. I'm sort of pleased. It's a little bland but I did take on water. I should have included geese and golfers. Just beyond the little gazebo (or what have you) a wedding happened while I painted.

Alhambra

Saturday I painted at Alhambra Park. Alhambra Park is easy walking distance from my house, but my painting stuff is pretty bulky, so I drove there. Although I mostly paint in watercolors and probably don't need an easel, I use one anyway. It's a french easel and it's an object of beauty, and the many nuts and bolts by which it is unfolded and folded up again are part of my painting zen.

Alhambra Park has some beautiful trees, including a massive wonderful eucalyptus I had forgotten. Painting that tree as I wanted would have meant painting with the sun in my face. That alone wouldn't have dissuaded me, but I also took an interest in this house (or apartment building) on the other side of the park. It was moving day there. I was going to paint the moving van too, but it left pretty quickly, so I painted the nice shadows in the driveway instead.

I like painting these urban/suburban scenes. They often appeal to me nearly as much as wilderness scenes. A picture like this is much more stuck in time and place than a picture of a forest or ocean. But I don't think that's strictly a bad thing. It's a little tiny slice of human history. A viewer noted that I didn't put much detail in the car. I said I considered the car mostly just in the way, but I did like the way it reflected the sunlight. Simplification.