chair

Because sometimes between one mess and another I remember to catch the light.

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shining wilderness

May's four day wilderness hike in Pisgah National Forest led us nearly to Cold Mountain on a winding search for water. The litany of names becomes the rosary of forest trails.
Drive up up up to still cool air. Walk Ivestor Gap and Art Loeb entering Wilderness, a wrong turn on Shining Rock Gap leads a pristine campsite viewing Cold Mountain. A search for water, up Crawford Creek Gap, up Shining Rock Ledge, across the Narrows to Deep Gap and down to pump from a stream dropping tablets yellow then white, gulping after water turns from clear to yellow to clear again and walk walk rest walk miles back to camp. Gulp a spicy dinner of matar paneer and quinoa beneath a tarp under frigid pepples of hail. Back to Sam Knob trailed by icing blue flowers down to Flat Laurel Creek and a fire overseen by a charcoal dragon. Up Sam Knob to meet a brave little grey bird. Down Down Down Down again to a sea level home. Miss the hills and winding roads.

More images here.

managed to squeeze a few polas at Sam Knob too.

home(outsideof)town

The first two are from just outside the town I grew up in.

These next are from the cowfields I spent my childhood. Visiting makes me wish a camera was in my child hands. How would I have captured this place then?

Behind me here I found the nearly intact skeleton of a cow who died birthing her calf with tiny tiny split feet, her pale ribs and spine still arched above the ground picked clean by coyotes and the sweet white curve of her little one's ribs scattered across the forest floor. Hawks left behind tail feathers as a tribute to their meal. A persimmon tree nearby, laden with astringent orange fruit, attested the bitter view.
At the marsh below, I'd sing to the frogs and crickets when there were more, our voices rising and falling in the afternoon, nonsense and mostly out of tune, bovine bones and turtle shells dug from the black muck adorned a chickee fort.

A red hide dried tight across the skull pulled back thinned lips and once chased me away, the opened jaw in a haunted bellow followed me home and to school, until the idea to tan the skin pulled me back. Mud sucked at my shoes as the dried skin cracked from its bones, the stiff thing clattered behind on the way home. Soaked soft in a bucket with oak leaves and forgotten, until putrid and foaming it produced retching in those too close, the poured out the liquid tainted the ground and attracted the dogs until the next thunderstorm washed it down.

When the water rose changing the marsh to a pond, bits of logs were lashed together as an ineffectual raft, the patch of cattails promising tasty treats stayed forever just out of my reach.

Another day a calf lay quietly alone in the shade hidden in foliage, concern flooded my chest when it didn't rise at my approach. As my hands ran over it looking for an injury, my eyes watched for its mother. Its red coat ever so soft rose and fell under my hands and thrilled me. Its eyes still unconcerned, I sat a little longer and left it.This past week found the pond field closed to cows, overgrown with dogfennel, and the shade of the oaks tilled by feral pig snouts. Most critters tend to ignore dogfennel because of the poison harbored it harbors, but orange wooly caterpillars munched without reservation.

The pond's adjacent field held the first crop I've ever seen planted there; a white pipe at least a half mile long snaked across another field to irrigate the watermelon vines, cows congregated along its path grazing the grass made greener by its leaks. Curious groups of calves watched us pass by before bolting away heels kicking gleefully in the air.

black swallowtail larvae

The blur has been sighted here before.

blur

Last week was spent at St. Augustine Beach with my aunts and grandparents. It's the off season which means the beach is nearly deserted and comfortably cool, yet still perfect for swimming. Unfortunately I nursed a cold all week and didn't spend much time drawing as I usually do, but played in the sand with little cocinas and took lots of photos which I'll share more of this week while I figure out my studio life and hopefully a Halloween costume.

Photography is a new medium for me, something I have never studied or pushed until I bought my little point and shoot camera and began blogging. It seems appropriate that most of my images are oriented on tiny details of the world as without contacts, I own nine inches of perfect vision and then a progressively blurrier world. The photos above are another way I see, which could be a frightening way to live but make for beautiful images, yes?

My adult sculpture class at the museum ended Sunday, and I think I left happy students, as a few asked about the next sculpture class with plans to take it. It always makes me so satisfied when I have such an enthusiastic class, so often it is one of the first things they have made in clay since gradeschool, if even then. I inserted a little plaster mold making demo in the last two classes and a few were very excited about the possibilities of handbuilding with plaster which I did with Bone Mother and Daughters. I'd love to offer a course on that, though I don't know if the museum would welcome it as it's so very messy. . . have to mull on it.