Lost or Stolen

When my hard drive gave out, I didn't lose any irreplaceable pictures.  I learned my lesson about that years ago.  I did lose one partly written story.  I'll briefly summarize it here, not actually the story, but what it was about. It was about collecting rocks for my garden.  I don't like the idea of purchasing rocks, not even precious ones, but particularly not the ones I stumble over - the ones placed by forces of nature long before I stumbled along.  I have purchased rocks anyway, but my car and I really can't carry more than a very few at a time.  Mostly I find rocks and carry them home.  Surprisingly, when you look for something like rocks (or used disposable lighters, combs, hair ties, or flatware,) it appears without explanation in your path.  There are good sized rocks sitting in city streets.  There are rocks in the wild and rocks in gardens.  I try, for the most part, not to take other people's landscape rocks.  Nevertheless, I lift rocks sometimes right from someone else's garden.  I half expect someone to emerge from a house, and shout stop thief!  That's my rock!  I have my rationalizations, but that's all they are.  And I have some rocks.  Not nearly as many as I need, and I still think I may have created a small depression in the surface of the earth.  Things and animals roll down hill toward my home.

The stone structure depicted here was a watering trough, built in 1906 and 1907 and much later designated South Pasadena historic landmark number 7.  It was a place for tired and thirsty horses and travelers to rest and hydrate on their way from Los Angeles to Pasadena.  Before people built lovely structures out of rocks, there were many more rocks just sitting around on the ground.

Home Staying

I'm going to break from my normal pattern here, and I don't mean my pattern of going weeks without feeding the blog, but rather my pattern of taking things in order.

I've been doing this Saturday paint-out thing for going on five years, since March 6, 2009, if you want to keep track.  This is how it started.  My youngest son was going off college, and I thought I ought to dedicate myself to making good use of my expanding spare time.  I was already drawing and painting, but I decided to put more time into it.  I signed up for a watercolor painting class and joined some art clubs.  I  found out about people going out and painting on location every Thursday, and I badly wanted to join them, but I couldn't shake off my Monday through Friday full-time employment.  So I said to the board of one of the art clubs, I think there should be paint-outs on Saturday mornings.  And the board said, make it so.  I got a little help early on, but soon it fell to all me.  It was going to be a club activity, but the club's insurance carrier could not condone club members being led out into the wilds to paint, so it became its own thing.  Unaffiliated and unsanctioned.  Just a bunch of people getting together and painting.  Sometimes, though, it wasn't a bunch.  Sometimes there were just a couple of painters.  Sometimes only me.  Frankly, I like it better when there are other painters around.  It's more fun and it's also safer.  But I don't mind painting alone.  So I stuck with it.  I habituated it.  I paint on Saturday mornings.  I am constantly on the lookout for places to paint.  I send emails to people who want to get emails about Saturday painting.  

I've had companion painters come and go over the years.   I understand that there are hundreds of other things to do on Saturdays.  Yard sales, cartoons, diner breakfasts, daylight lovemaking, gardening, and hiking, to name a few.   I send emails to seventy people.  Some have never actually come to paint.  I'm glad all seventy don't come, because that is much too big a group to paint with.  I think about 5 to 10 people is optimal, and that is just about how many people come these days.  My painter friends make me happy, and I think I've done a good thing giving them a nudge to come out and paint on Saturdays.  I treasure their friendship and their company and their artistic wisdom and their art.  So once a year I invite them to my house and give them some food to show my gratitude.  Then they hang around and paint pictures of my house.  Maybe someday art historians will wonder why so many artists chose to paint a modest one-story 1917 bungalow with Christmas colored trim and unkempt landscaping.  Like this:

For some more work by some of these painters, see
http://sherryschmidt.blogspot.com/
http://pasadenaadjacent.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAy34LUknd8

Island in the Street

Chelton Way is a South Pasadena landmark.  It is a quiet residential street.  It used to be, in my time, distinguished by a giant oak tree growing in the middle of it.  But despite very heroic efforts to save the tree in the first place when the road was built around it, the oak tree eventually died.  Or probably just came close enough to dying to pose a big danger.  There's a large planted area in the middle of Chelton Way that is shown in the foreground of this painting.  I can't remember if this is where the oak tree was; I think the oak tree was a bit further north where the big Chelon Way sign is.  Anyway, there are more nice trees growing in the middle of Chelton Way.   This was painted in early June, when it was overcast in the morning, and the promise of summer still stretched ahead.

Garfield Park 2

I don't know this for a certainty, but it's a reasonable inference that Garfield Park was named for James Garfield, the 20th President of the United States and/or his widow, Lucretia.  James Garfield had a long and distinguished career in Congress, but he had been President for less than a year when he was shot and eventually succumbed to his injuries.  He left his wife and seven children behind.  Lucretia Garfield lived out the summers of her long life in Ohio, but her winters were spent in South Pasadena.  She had Greene and Greene design her winter home on Buena Vista Street.  Mrs. Garfield entertained Teddy Roosevelt in South Pasadena, she volunteered for the Red Cross and she died in South Pasadena in 1919.  The Garfield House still stands.  For the second half of the twentieth century it was owned and occupied by an engineer/inventer and father of ten including Doublemint twins.  Now the Garfield House is  home to a songwriter musician producer.  

Then there is Garfield Park.  For a while, when my children were in preschool and early grades, Garfield Park was the center of my social life.  Weekend after weekend, there were parties under the pergola, with sheet cakes and pinatas and people dressed like Ninja Turtles and Batman.  There were picnics there with my husband's family, who loved parks in a way that went far beyond anything my parents conceived of.  They barbecued and played Frisbee and bocce and ate and watched the kids.  These days I'm likely to go to Garfield Park for Shakespeare or summer concerts.  And occasional painting.  I brought my dog Frankie with me.  It wasn't my first paint-out with Frankie, but it was the first time Frankie let me really paint.

Backstop Firefly

In the center of my town, there's a railway stop where there used to be a train station.  There's a history museum in an old building that used to be an iron works.  There is an old stone structure that used to be a place to water horses.  The weekly farmers market is here.  Painters love this place, and in a way I have to confess I'm not sure why here as opposed to a literally infinite number of other possible places. But it seems to work.

It rained Friday night, brought about in part by the power of my thoughts, or so it seemed.  So Saturday morning was one of those sparkling bright high contrasty mornings.  If not for being unseasonable chilly, it was perfect for painting.  Smells of garlic, and coffee, and toast, in turns, wafted over from nearby restaurants.  Before I began to paint, I got approached and then interviewed by a couple of filmmakers for One Day in Los Angeles.  I hope that if I end up in the final cut I don't look or sound too ridiculous.  

I picked this scene to paint for a combination of visuals.  I liked the bright color of the restaurant, although I rendered it more pumpkin and less saffron.  I liked that the sky wasn't visible through the trees, but only reflected on the windows and the street.  I liked the back of the stop sign, and how you know it's a stop sign without the annoying red color and stentorian message.  Although it's in the middle and foreground, it isn't overly significant.

The saffron colored restaurant is called Firefly.  I like the restaurant.  I kind of remember when it opened and I think the owner/chef was the father of a classmate of a friend's daughter.  It's been probably a couple of years since I've been there now, but I've had some good meals.  The food is prepared with thought and care. I did a New Year's eve tasting there once, and once had a birthday dessert splurge.  One time I went for a walk, and ended up having dinner there.  It's all outdoor patio seating, and one time a waitress noticed a big spider on my husband and calmly plucked it off and returned it to nature.  She was my best waitress ever.    

Back Home

This was just last Saturday, plein air painting in my own backyard.

Post Office Post

If I can't manage daily posting, or even weekly, I want to get something in here before a whole month passes.  Because I haven't decided to give up on this altogether.  In fact, I imagine I might make it a regular thing again some time.  I haven't given up or even really slowed down on painting.  I continue to go out and paint every Saturday morning and to try to learn oil painting most Wednesday nights.  I just remembered, I still haven't cleaned my palette and brush.  The thing I don't like about oil painting.

So this is the South Pasadena Post Office, my local post office.  I painted it May 18.  I had noticed not too long before that many post office buildings in many places look pretty much exactly like this one.  I didn't paint the iconic front view with "post office" emblazoned on its face, but you know what I'm talking about.  The South Pasadena Post Office was renowned for many years because of the wonderful homegrown roses at each window delivered daily by thoughtful gardener and post office customer, Miriam Spaulding.  I remember those roses.

I thought of another thing to add to the list of things I don't like.  I don't like the use of the word, "unacceptable."  It has become increasingly popular among parents, bosses and elected officials.  I don't like it because it has so little meaning.  The word seems to carry a stern judgment, but really doesn't tell you anything.  To whom is it unacceptable?  And why?  Why not say instead to your child, employee or other foreign power,that their behavior is unkind, annoying, dangerous, not up to your standard of quality, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, or whatever.  If you're going to make a judgment, then be committal about it.  I might have told my children a few times that something was "not all right with me," but I was just dropping a Maggie Roche quote.

I should probably start lists of things I do like.  Watercolor cleanup, local history, roses, The Roches, my opinions.  See you again soon.    

Gold Line

I'm busy and tired and lazy.  At least to the extent that those things aren't mutually exclusive.  I would kind of like to write something about trains and how perfectly evocative they are.  But it's late, and you already know what you know about trains.  I painted this from a perch on top of the Oaklawn Bridge in South Pasadena.  These are the tracks of the Los Angeles Metro Gold Line light rail.  We're looking south, toward Los Angeles.  Amtrak tracks used to follow this same course.  Once many years ago I was in a student film walking along those tracks and under the Oaklawn Bridge.

House on Bilike Hill

I painted the Bilike Mansion in South Pasadena last Saturday.  The Bilike House was designed by John Parkinson and G. Edwin Bergstrom in 1906.  Parkinson and Bergstrom  are responsible for a very significant portion of the architectural icons of the City of Los Angeles.  The house was built for Mr. and Mrs. A.C. Bilike.  The house now shares grounds with the South Pasadena United Methodist Church.  It is used by Boy Scouts, Al-anon, and Kinesthetic Learner childcare.  I'm pretty certain I recall reading that Mr. and Mrs. Bilike died on the Lusitania.  Yet at this point I can find no mention of that in the wide deep sea of the internet.  Somewhere around my house I've misplaced my South Pasadena history book.

This is only a small view, and a canted one, of what is easily one of South Pasadena's most significant structures.  The house is surrounded by trees that have been growing for a long time, but you can still make out the views in every direction, and they are wonderful.      

Eddie House

This is a Saturday paint-out painting that I painted several weeks ago, and then didn't post because I thought it didn't look good.  However, there were those who liked it on facebook, so who am I to judge?  The Eddie House, I've mentioned previously, was a South Pasadena home that was bequeathed to the city on the death of its owner.  It's a pretty generous gift, but I'm sure cities aren't crazy about being given houses with any restrictions about use and maintenance   I love houses myself, but I admit that they are mighty needy.  

It was a pretty gloomy cold morning I recall.  One of the first of the season.  Leaves were falling.  I was taken by the light shining through the house, which, while imposing, is not deep.  I think I tried to play up that spot of bright light by darkening up everything around it, but the shadows got too dark.  Or maybe not so much too dark as they are utterly devoid of color. I like the back-lighting on the sycamore tree.  I like the boldness and the simplicity.  I do not like the shadows on the pavement, or the column, which ought to be mostly in shadow, but shows up like a blind man's cane.  

Shakers

There's a restaurant in South Pasadena known as Shakers.  It was previously known as the Salt Shaker, but the name was changed.  The name might have been changed because the Peppermill, which was owned by the same people, went out of business.  It may have been because the population became more health conscious, and reduced its salt intake.  Possibly it was just because Shakers sounds snappier, and might have any number of possible meanings.  This is painted from a photograph I took of shakers at Shakers.  It was a happy day.

I've been eating at Salt Shaker/Shakers for many years.  Used to go there sometimes after the bars closed with English friends who liked eating liver and onions, and breaking into song, which the waitress said was not all right.  My husband and I ate breakfast there on weekends with our infant son in the carrier and our neighbor and the Los Angeles Times.  There's a dish that includes chili and eggs, that has at different times been known as Great Eggs and Eggs Incognito and Great Eggs Incognito.  A family favorite.  There was probably a smoking section at first, and then the smokers were relegated to an outside patio.  We had quit smoking long before.  Finally a city ordinance banned smoking altogether, and the only the patio remained.  The patio became the place to dine with your dog.  And we had a dog and loved our dog, and what could be better than dining with a dog?  If you don't have a dog, or you don't love your dog quite so much, there's some other stuff to like about Shakers.  It has extremely anachronistic architecture.  It has really good fresh baked goods.  It's so old and familiar to me, I'm not really sure whether it's good or not.  It's kind of comfortable and familiar like an old uncle or an old sofa.    

I used to think still life paintings were kind of trivial and useless.  But I figured out that with the right composition of light shapes and dark shapes, they had as much visual validity as any thing else.  I like dramatically lit inanimate objects, because drama and stasis are juxtaposed, and I'm confused and amused.  I've also been reminded of the power of objects.  We give power to objects, because they are the repository of our memories.  Sometimes things outlast the people who owned them and used them.  There is comfort in the solidness and usefulness of objects.

Everybody Paints At Buster's

I didn't set out to paint Buster's on Saturday.  I had it in my mind that I'd paint Griffins of Kinsale, my new pub.  I've missed having a pub something awful, so I thought it was best that I commit it to memory.  Against the unthinkable.  As it happened, I couldn't make much of the pub; there's a ginko tree right in front of it, and the morning sun doesn't light its face. 

The morning sun lights the awnings and umbrellas of Buster's.  Buster's is a wildly popular South Pasadena spot that serves coffee, ice cream, pastries and sandwiches.  For a working stiff like me, it's almost painful to drive past Buster's, because on any weekday, there are cool and happy people lolling about Buster's - sipping coffee, reading their books, hanging out with their dogs, chatting with their friends.  To make matters worse for my envious heart, there are frequently weekday plein air painters right in that area.   I like almost everything about Buster's.  It isn't open late at night, which is problematic, but there's a pub nearby for people like me. 

Churchgoing

As I may or may not have mentioned, I'm not too much of a church-goer at this time in my life. This church, Holy Family, is as close to being my church as any church I guess. They send me collection envelopes. You'll probably find me here on Christmas and Easter. I remember taking one of my reluctant sons to church here week after week, and he would complain about how long an hour is. And I'd say, look around at all the wonderful things God has done for you, and an hour a week just doesn't seem like much to give. But I feel slightly less certain now, about God, and what we can give God. And how long an hour is. Many of us go through these changes. I think there is ultimate and absolute truth, and we cannot know what it is. I think faith is a marvelous and powerful thing that doesn't necessarily reflect truth. This is obvious; people believe different things.

I think churches are beautiful. I love buildings, and there's nothing more lovely than a building built to honor the creator of us all.

I'm reasonably happy with the painting. It's a little smaller, and small paintings go much more quickly. I thought it looked a little washed out, like somebody had already hung it in the sun for several years.

Saturday Morning

Sometimes it feels like work going out to paint on Saturday mornings. I don't get to sleep late very often. I don't get to hang out in my pajamas and eat indulgent breakfasts. Once I'm out though, especially if I like how the painting is going, there's little I'd rather do.

Today I painted from the Oaklawn Bridge - the landmark Green and Green 1906 concrete bridge - looking down at Mound Avenue. I chose this view because it was an unusual view point, and I liked the atmosphere of hazy bright morning light. Although there are some obvious problems with the painting, some of it is quite good I think, and I'm happy with the overall effect. I recommend the Oaklawn Bridge as a great place to paint, walk and explore.

Here's an old photo of the newly constructed Oaklawn Bridge.

Nature Park

I painted today at the South Pasadena Woodland and Wildlife Park, which is commonly known as the Nature Park, even by it's primary caregivers. It was pretty hot this morning, and I almost can't imagine what fall feels like. Other than evenings and the crunch of an apple. The painting is nothing to brag about. Anything that is lovely in the painting was probably lovelier in the world. I did turn the fall color up a notch, in a bit of wishful thinking.

Here is fairly satisfactory photograph of a spiderweb. The web was huge and well lit. I didn't see the spider. I did see some wildlife at the nature park, including a heron, mallard ducks, several lizards and some butterflies. But I'm not much good at photographing moving things.


The jimson weed was about my speed.

Miniature Golf

The Arroyo Seco Golf Course includes a par three eighteen hole course, a driving range, and a miniature golf course. It is the most wonderful use of small space tucked in between a freeway, roads and a wash; it is simple, unpretentious, reasonably priced and lovely. I don't actually golf, but I have tried the driving range. I am a seasoned veteran of the miniature golf course. This course was built over half a century ago; the castle is built of masonry; the windmill is built of wood. The course is rather challenging in places. Nine wonderful holes of wholesome, multi-generational, outdoor fun.

It was a little tricky to find a place to stand where I wouldn't be in the way or at risk from flying balls. I may try to paint the castle and the windmill from one of my photos. You might notice I painted a couple a people, which was kind of fun for a change. What I really want to do though is go back and play mini golf.

El Centro

I thought a little this morning about why we make pictures. At best, they are objects of beauty, which is enough. If we make photographs or representational art, we make pictures OF things. To be objects of beauty, but also to capture a moment, a place, a face, to make an object out of a vision.

I thought about this because when I go out to paint, I try to choose my subject based on how it looks rather than what it is. I may not be a super good painter, but I am a serious painter. I value all the good art advice I've received, and try to follow it. I don't see myself as a sentimental painter, even if I sometimes do make pictures of beloved companion animals.

My painting location this morning included a view of my old veterinarian's office. El Centro Small Animal Clinic, the office of Dr. Pio Rimando. Dr. Rimando was there when I moved to town. The household I joined already had a cat who was a patient of Dr. Rimando's, so I brought my cat to him as well. Dr. Rimando and his wife ran a small, happy, busy office. The prices were reasonable; dogs and cats got shots and stitches. There wasn't even a x-ray machine. There was something so extraordinarily beautiful in the quiet gentle matter-of-fact way Dr. Rimando handled the animals. Mrs. Rimando planted beautiful flowers outside the office. You'd always see them out walking dogs who were boarding and watering the flowers. Dr. Rimando got older, and sometimes the office was closed for weeks because he was ill. He started keeping much shorter hours. Eventually, reluctantly, he put the property up for sale. Now there's a notice of zoning change up in the window. Somebody wants to tear down the building and put up a two-story office or live-work building. Another one. It will be nice to remember when it looked like this.

I did put in some time before I painted it to see it as a picture - the diagonal and convergent lines and the blasts of red.

Across the street was a reminder to stop and smell the roses.

In My Own Backyard

Today the paint-out location was my backyard. It was a beautiful day. I'm pleased with my painting. This is the view looking beyond the yard to the north. It's uncanny how much it really looks like this. It was very interesting and fun to see other painters' takes on my yard. I'm kicking myself for not taking photographs.

Life on the moon? I thought that's what it looks like. Really, I just very desperately need to clear out the porch light.

Finally here's green lynx spider with its egg sack. Life is wonderful. I have fallen a bit behind on the Christmas preparations.

My Lucky Stripes

I live in a place that is noteworthy for its lack of remarkable weather, but these past couple of weeks we've had some. When I went out in back this morning, I was sprinkled on. Then there was a rainbow in the west. Rainbows are always opposite the sun, but, it my experience, usually in the afternoon. Here's a little slice of my rainbow.

And as if that weren't cool enough, I was inspecting my plants for signs of bug life, and I saw something I've never seen in my yard, but earnestly hoped for: a monarch butterfly's child. I rubbed my eyes, and it was still there. I snapped a picture.

A little later this morning, I went to the South Pasadena Woodland and Wildlife Park to paint. It took other painters a while to show up, and I didn't really want to paint alone. There's wildlife and then there's wildlife. After I set up and sketched, I realized I forgot my palette. I did have my tubes of paint though. I scavenged around my car and from the other painters and came up with something to stand in for my palette. I decided, since I had to squeeze out all new paint, I'd use colors I never use. I don't really recall how I even got them - they might have been giveaways. I chose the view of the backs of houses on the other side of the Arroyo. I really like my resulting painting; I especially like the freshness of the color.

And that was my very rewarding morning.

Eddie Park

In South Pasadena, where the paint-out continues, there is a very small park with a big house in the corner of it. In 1934, the house was bequeathed to the city by Ellen Mary Eddie. It's a pretty impressive house, with its two story columns and wide oak door, but it is modestly used by AA and Mommy & Me groups. The park, which you might drive past and not recognize as such, has places to cook, sit and climb. It's too small for athletic fields, and like its neighborhood, it's very quiet. Thank you Ellen Mary, for this lovely gift.

I painted at Eddie Park yesterday. I would say I took a lesson from the portrait exercise, and worked harder to perceive color. I included a squirrel, which you might not have noticed.