Laurelines

Charleston sketches, part two

Just back today from a few days in Charleston, where I finished sketches for the Old World/New World sketchbook... at last. Charleston is such a beautiful city, and Charlestonians are such lovely people---it's easy to want to be there often, very often. And I do.
A clothing exhibit at the Charleston Museum shows the importance of French and English style to the wealthy early colonists. The fine materials, rich colors, and modishness of the clothes were a great contrast to the somber, practical wardrobe of the Amish I visited so recently. In particular, the red corset with black lace, dating from the same period as the second wave of Swiss immigration to Pennsylvania, shows how marked regional differences were.

Some cities are masculine (London), some are feminine (Paris)---Charleston, with its sinuous architectural motifs and tropical abundance is feminine, most definitely feminine.

Post party, pre Charleston

Ippy and I gave a going away party last night for one of our dear friends who's moving to California. The party was at my house, so I spent the past several days getting house and garden ready. Everything went well. Our sweet friend R said he felt truly celebrated and I'm so glad. We'll miss him terribly, though. There's nothing for it but to make lots of trips to California to see him!
Tomorrow, I'm driving back to Charleston to finish up some sketches for the Old World/New World sketchbook. Be back on Friday.
In betwixt, I made a few quick sketches of life here on a quiet, beautiful, and cool Monday. The last is a sketch of my daughter C, whom I've sketched so often before.


I admit to feeling as though I'm running on low. I need recharging. I'm happy, but I'm depleted. Don' t know how or when it will happen, but I hope I have a space of a few days to do nothing but let the creative juices bubble and brew without feeling I have to produce.

Mid-July miscellany

Tying up the Amish loose ends, sketching my friend Sheila reading to her little boy Hank, and making another white line painting, this one of the hibiscus in my studio garden. It's still hot, of course, and it's supposed to rain in the next few days. It must rain. It will rain. Won't it?

Plus ça ne change pas...

In Lancaster County, Pennslyvania, the Plain people hew to the ways of the old country. The first wave of Amish and Mennonites came from Switzerland to Pennsylvania in the late 18th century. Other persecuted religious groups, including Quakers and Huguenots, settled in Pennsylvania, too, but the Amish alone strive to live now as their ancestors lived. Their simple, modest clothing derived from centuries-old patterns, their horse-drawn buggies, their devotion to the land and farming, their highly codified rules for behavior, set them apart from their 21st century neighbors. And that is the point. I visited Amish country this week and was humbled by the rectitude of the people I met and talked with---and so grateful for their friendliness to, and tolerance of, a sketching stranger. Here are some sketches of them and of some historical artifacts, too.

Added: I have a few more which I will post in the next day or so.

Cool blues, warm heart

It was very hot this weekend. At the farmers' market, I searched for blue flowers as a counterpoint to all the red and gold tomatoes--- and the heat.
I bought bouquets of scabiosa and delphiniums, too. Here are scabiosa plunged into my tall blue glass vase. (Click for bigger image.) Very cool.

Tuesday, I'm heading for Pennsylvania Dutch country, sketchbook and paints in tow. I'll be creating another installment in my Old World/New World sketchbook, the one that got into the French exhibit. Week after next, I'm heading back to Charleston, SC to finish that part of the sketchbook, too.

I'm traveling farther afield in August and September---in August, the east coast of England to see a dear friend and to do some art business, too. In September, a few places in France. About which, more as the time draws nearer. Hope YOU are keeping cool, wherever you are.

A ghostly pas de deux

I went back to the Bodies exhibit today, the last day for which the artists' admission discount was valid. I took my Kaimei brush pen, but the place was so crowded, I couldn't get distance on the figures, so my plan to do calligraphic and gestural brush drawings was foiled. I sandwiched myself between a wall and a pair of displayed figures and this is what resulted. A skeleton danced with the musculature of a human form--they were part of the same cadaver. My drawing instrument was an 8b Cretacolor monolith graphic stick. With no pencil sharpener, my marks were blunt and reductive. I think the resulting style was oddly appropriate for the macabre subject. 15" x 10", graphite on toned paper.

Drawing Bodies

I went today to the Bodies Exhibition that's traveling around the US, the one where they've polymerized Asian cadavers and arranged them in various poses, where they've mounted body parts with dyed veins and arteries in display cases.
The one where they're charging $25 a head admission fee, except, for a short while, $10 for us artist types. The one where they're making money hand over feet (is that the way to say it? That looks funny) and I hope some of it is going to a good cause, like health care for the indigent, which I think the cadavers were when they were alive---that one. I drew with my 8b pencil on biggish paper. I added some color at home. Tomorrow I'll go back with my brush pen and do gestural drawings of the figures in their semi-balletic poses. Today my pen was out of ink.

Of cow derrières, sketching with friends...

... and eating the last softshell crabs of the season. I call that an eventful weekend!
And then there was the lovely pig pickin' at M's on Sunday where I met a new, charming kindred spirit and, in an effort to divest myself of some of my 25lbs of lentilles de Puy (don't ask), contributed a lentil salad whose quirky recipe was of my own hasty devising. Feta, plumped raisins, toasted walnut, fresh mint, red onion, olive oil, sea salt, freshly cracked pepper---the usual suspects.
I'd intended to post a midyear assessment of my 2007 art plan yesterday, but what with all my cow, crab, and pig partying, I did not get around to it. I'll do so this week.
Here are my sweet art buddies Lin and Sue, who went with me to the dairy farm to sketch:

There were zillions of flies bothering the cows, though this had not been the case in my previous visits to the farm, therefore the girls weren't as into posing as they had been last summer. Sketches were, of necessity, on the perfunctory side.

Later, sitting on the terrace of Crook's Corner, I took a few minutes to sketch what was in front of me.