Squaxin Island Museum

inside the Squaxin Island museum

To continue my education about the lives and history of the Squaxin Island people who have lived in Olympia and the surrounding areas since time immemorial I visited their museum and research center this week.

The colorful wall murals answered so many of my questions with pictures, texts, and stories. And the display cases were rich with artifacts. After perusing the displays, Jan and I sat in the well appointed library, feasting on the books and later went outside to enjoy the lovely gardens and stream for some sketching.

pens and watercolor in Etchr sketchbook

It was a smoky day in western Washington, but we didn’t notice it there in the secluded area by the Sound with its rich oxygenating greenery.

Autumn is upon us now quite suddenly, at least a month late, bringing the rain and cold temps. I’d like to go back to the museum on a rainy day with the friends who weren’t able to join us, for the kind of immersion that sketching always promises. Like leaving the tea bag in longer to get a richer brew!

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A Poet at Oly Farmer’s Market

Our year-round Farmer’s Market has the gorgeous seasonal fruits, veggies, flowers, fish, meat, baked goods, artwork, and cool things like worm tea and fermented foods. Also live entertainment and world cuisines.

But last Saturday there was a new addition, a dapper fellow sitting at a manual typewriter set on a tiny table with a pile of small sheets of blank paper, offering custom poems! “Your Story, Your Price”

Who could resist? My first thought of course was to sketch him, but since I would be sitting close by and looking at him a lot, I first introduced myself and ordered a poem. My story. . .ummm. Something about a poet and a tree, I suggested?

fine liner pen and watercolor with Elliot’s poem in Etchr sketchbook

I sat at a picnic table with my back to the band that was playing. Children were running around, my picnic table received other visitors and their food and conversations and jostling. Most people walked right by. Some stood blocking my view for a while, speaking to the poet named Elliot, ordering poems, I presume. And I realized both Elliot and I were in the same boat, needing to concentrate fully on our creative task in the midst of numerous interruptions.

Over the years I’ve trained myself to do this, but how does one start a poem, get interrupted to take a new poem order, and immediately return to the middle of the one you were working on? I was impressed.

When I returned at the end of 45 min or longer to show him my sketch, he had a small pile of poems completed and waiting to be picked up. He dug mine out and read it to me. I was pleased! I particularly like the ending. . .”reminders, so, in the woodpulp that stays“. When I asked him how he does it, he replied, “there’s always poetry” and smiled.

 Elliot seemed pleased with his portrait too! And his poem fit just perfectly on the opposite page!

It had been a great meet up for our combined Tacoma and Olympia Urban Sketchers! Some sketched the building, others the flowers and people. All seemed to enjoy this time out of busy lives, sketching in public.

A Day in Tacoma

@S 7th St and Pacific in Tacoma. fountain pen and watercolor in Travelogue sketchbook

I think it was about the warmest day so far since last Fall! Jane Wingfield and I celebrated with a day in one of the downtown historic neighborhoods of Tacoma. Mount Ranier was visible in her snowy white robes, punctuating the southern portion of the Cascades. She looked almost close enough to be able to touch her 14,411 foot skirts! We visited the Tacoma Art Museum and then occupied sidewalk spots in the sun across from this lovely building.

While sketching on my stool I heard some mumbling behind me and noticed the lid of a trash bin was opened slightly from the other side. I saw no one but knew of course that one of the legions of homeless folks in the city was hunting for some lunch. An elderly lady named Maria parked in the handicapped spot next to me. After a while she came and politely asked permission to look at our sketches. Then she went over to the person at the bin behind me, still rummaging, and asked his name . . . William . . . and age . . . 35 . . . and struck up a friendly conversation with him. Not much later she returned to tell him how handsome he is and what a nice singing voice!

Finally she joined me to see my finished sketch and, with very little encouragement on my part, told me her own story of homelessness. Not so long ago she was living in Beverly Hills, but then her husband got sick and died. She was left alone, handicapped and not able to manage the remaining money and became homeless. Both of her children said they could not help her and, after staying with friends in temporary places for months, she was facing living in her car. Finally she was awarded the HUD apartment where she now lives.

Her story reminded me so much of the stories I heard when volunteering at The Living Room in Santa Rosa. So often it is the people who have themselves suffered homelessness who are the most compassionate and anxious to help those who still are. To see some of my watercolor portrait stories of my friends from The Living Room visit here.

Rainy Sketch Date

A little rain never stops us urban sketchers. Well actually it usually stops me from going out, but not when my die-hard buddies are willing to risk the elements. So on Tuesday we met at Dominican University in San Rafael for a drizzly day. Sitting on a porch wasn’t such a bad idea, at least for a while until the cold started to seep into the bones.

Of course then we had water saturated sketchbooks that needed to be held open under the umbrellas while walking back to the car. The next stop was lunch in a warm bar downtown.

 

I’m not accustomed to hanging out in bars, but I must say that the sketching opportunities are good. One gets a little bored with coffee shop folks glued to their computers.

When I christened these men Sports Bar Flies I realized that we had sat there for a while after finishing lunch and could easily fall into that same category!

Some Flood-times Ironies

For over two days now a song has been going on in the back of my mind. Occasionally I would register that it was a James Taylor song. but it wasn’t til this morning, as I was driving on the only open route into Santa Rosa, due to extensive flooding, that the words to the song leapt into my awareness with sudden force, “I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain”! 

At that moment on River Rd. the entire Laguna flood plain was spread out before me, that same plain that had carried the message of fire and smoke for periods of time the past two years. Fire and rain. Record breaking rain in Santa Rosa this week and the worst flooding in over two decades, following on the heals of the record breaking firestorm.

I headed into Sebastopol later to see what the flooding had done there. Muddy Laguna waters had invaded town. The Barlow, our town market area, was under water and roped off. I set up my stool on the edge of the water, facing the residential area, hoping to tell some of the story in sketches.

While I sketched onlookers came and went. Children raced into the water while parents expressed dismay. “You’ll soak your shoes!”

(Child)”I want to go in a boat!!” “Why is the trash can floating?”

I started collecting ironies. . .

–The Barlow sign restricting parking to Barlow customers, when the only parking in the lot was under water.

–The Not a Through Street sign on the street that was under water and had become a thoroughfare for kayaks.

–The Slow Children Playing sign, again on the street where no children were allowed but there were lots of adults playing in their canoes.

–And the white and blue fire hydrant which was itself under water and unlikely to be needed at that time.

I stopped counting how many boats paddled by me in this downtown Sebastopol street, but I’m guessing 30 in less than an hour – or how many people took pictures of the lady sitting at the edge of the water sketching (me).

I tried sneaking into the area where all the crews were hard at work, but got shooed out, along with all the other curious townspeople.

So I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain, and I have a fair idea of all the grief folks must endure when their home and business life must be restored before life can return to some semblance of normalcy. To them I send my prayers and hope that they’ll once again see sunny days that they think will never end.

Home in the garden

I’d planned to sketch at Sebastopol’s Apple Blossom Festival last Sunday, but it was hot and when I thought of the crowds and my lovely cool garden at home, the plan changed. From my chair on the patio beneath the redwoods there would be no musicians to sketch, no lively festival activities. Just the same old house and garden I look at every day. But I could sit in the low flight pattern of the birds on their way to the bird feeder and watch the gold finches bathe in the fountain and listen to variety of bird choruses and loud humming of the bees in the Australian tea tree.

fountain pen and w/c in Hahnemuhl Watercolor Book, 6 X 8″

And of course the butterfly action, Tiger Swallowtails and Pipevine Swallowtails.

I tend to suffer from the malady of all enthusiastic souls. . .FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) but I think I discovered for now at least a way to avoid the symptoms while staying home.

Oh, but then I guess I will have FOMO when I’m away from home too, knowing I will miss the baby quail parades and hungry caterpillars growing. I guess there’s no cure for FOMO.

NBC News: Urban Sketchers

“In this fast paced world many see life through a cell phone camera, but. . .” So begins this NBC News perspective on Urban Sketchers, taking the story from a Syracuse, New York chapter to other sketch stories, including our north bay fire sketches. Watch, but don’t blink or you’ll miss my red fire truck sketch!

 

A Lesson in Fire Fighting

On Tuesday my sketch buddies and I headed out to Alliance Redwoods Conference Center  in Camp Meeker, CA. where the fire fighting strike teams from all over the state were being housed between shifts of firefighting. We wanted to try to tell another part of the story of the fire storms that have so far burned over 100,000acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, the deadliest of which has claimed at least 22 lives, burned thousands of homes to the ground, displaced many thousands more in evacuations, and destroyed many of our beautiful parks, vineyards and more.

As we drove out country roads to the camp, there were frequent reminders of the gratitude that this community has for these fire fighters who are the undisputed heros of the day. Signs were posted on many properties with bright Thank You Firefighters messages. We found ourselves in a caravan of fire trucks all the way out.

When we arrived we signed in and were given Visitor badges. Wanting to stay out of the way, yet have a good vantage point for sketching, we went to the end of the parking lot filled with trucks, and started sketching.

Lamy Joy fountain pen and watercolor in Canson Mixed Media 9 X 12″ sketchbook

As we were sketching there was a trickle of firefighters walking by. We soon discovered that we were almost as interesting to them as they were to us. For many of them it was rest time and they were at ease enough to chat and seemed happy to answer questions about when and where they’d come from, which fires they’d been on, etc. Many of them were from southern California and had been here all week working 24 hour shifts.

Other looked quite weary and seemed more anxious to get settled.

Some were hanging out in groups, enjoying the fresh air of the redwoods, a welcome break from the toxic smoky air they’d been breathing.

Lucky for us a couple of battalion chiefs, the ones who lead the strike teams of 5 trucks that go out together, decided to have some fun with us artists and had us try on the fire  jacket they wear with its thick layer of insulation and fire retardant shell. Where’s the air conditioner? I asked, knowing that sometimes they’re fighting fires in 120 degree heat. The answer “that’s when you take off the jacket and your sweat cools you“.

Tony came over to us a while after I sketched him lounging in his truck. He was happy to tell his story, which turned into many stories! A 75 year old volunteer firefighter from Quincy, CA he was on his second consecutive fire in other parts of California and wondering if he might be getting too old for this!! especially having gone 60 hours without sleep when they first came. Pushing the body beyond the limits that most of us could tolerate seemed to be standard for these guys.

We took every opportunity we could to voice our gratitude for their service and they always just turned it around to say how grateful they were to all the people of our community who were so full of spirit and good will. Some said they had never seen anything like it in other places.

Later I remembered that night eleven days ago when the Tubbs Fire came roaring over the hills, lighting up the horizon with flames, fueled by 50-70 mph hot winds blowing in our direction, and I knew that our fate was in the hands of Nature and the firefighters who would jump in their trucks and head this way from as far away as Alaska. Yup! This is one grateful community.

 

Summer of Love at the de Young

I was a high school (almost but not quite college) student in Stockton, Ca that summer of love in 1967. Even though I could drive and had a car I was not allowed to join the hippies in the Haight in S.F. However the music, the fashion, the psychedelic/consciousness expanding (drugs secretly imbibed) were a kind of salvation as I felt boxed in and bored with my suburban existence, etc, etc.

Walking into this Summer of Love exhibition at the de Young museum last week, it all came back. And I was in good company with my sketch buddies of the same era and other museum goers who were ready to share their memories.

I wanted to record it all – the hippy fashion, the posters and button art/quotes, the lights and lyrics. Most of these were sketched standing with the paint added later.

“What’s scandalous about jeans is how you outrage them.”

Denim -ocracy (We’ve still got this!)

“I’m from Berkeley, but I’m not revolting.”

One little comment here about this exhibition, which I loved! They used the same mannikins from the Oscar de la Renta show and gave them no wigs! We were the hair generation! How could they not put hair on them?! So I added it in the sketches.

The fashion in the show is flea market finds – artsy, craftsy, hand sewn (we girls all knew how to sew and repurpose clothing back then) cross cultural. . .

And then there was the protest art, which we are now seeing such a resurgence of. I particularly enjoyed these two pieces. Hmmm. Does this give you an idea of someone else who could be a fine subject for art pants like these?

In the heart of the exhibit is an empty room with light shows throbbing on every plane and bean bags chairs on the periphery inviting weary museum goers to curl up, watch the show and listen to the music. Now this is my kind of exhibit! I always get tired feet in big art museums so I was one of the grateful ones. After a nice rest I sketched this young couple sharing a bean bag.

. . .while listening to, who else! Janis. . .

This is me, grooving for a few minutes. A totally natural high. By this point in the day we were all pretty giddy as years had been shorn off our ages.

And we weren’t the only ones. Like this fellow who we spoke with. I sketched this later that night from a picture I’d taken. My husband came out to my studio and the walls were pulsating with Jefferson Airplane as I painted. “Remember what the doormouse said”  Or just go see the exhibit.

NYC: Part 5

On my last day in the city I’d planned to sketch in Central Park, but the head cold was in full swing and it was another day of gusty cold winds, so I hibernated in my son’s apartment where I’d spent the week with him and his three roomates, all of whom are PhD candidates in Economics at Columbia. Stealth sketcher that I am, I slyly recorded one of their study sessions.

And when the other roomate was home, caught him at the refrigerator digging around for dinner ingredients.

They were so welcoming and seemed comfortable enough having me around, that after a while I forgot my mother-ness and advanced chronological age and was flooded with memories of the joys of communal living in my 20’s. 

I’ll end this photo/sketch journal of the week with a couple pictures of the skyline from the roof of the building where Andrew works (Diller, Scofidio and Renfro). Looking north here with a slice of view of the Hudson. . .

.   .and east across a darkening sky toward the Empire State Building, with the High Line crossing just below.

New York, I’ll be back! You’ve definitely captured my heart.