Laurelines

In a liminal state

Here it is, the end of one of my favorite months, the eve of another.

I am standing on a threshold, with loose ends to tie up before I leave for Wales and some miscellany to share.

Having finished my summer workload, I turned back to Alaska-inspired paintings. I felt as though I had, literally and figuratively, painted myself into a corner with the Copper Mountain series and their restrictive color palette. These are self-imposed restrictions, needless to say, and so are readily set aside for a while.

As a way to sneak up on and vanquish my stymied and procrastinating self, I turned away from orange and verdigris and thought about the cool blues and greens and earth tones that characterized 99.99% of the Alaska I experienced while I was there!

More studies. The trick is to keep the energy and verve of studies in my final paintings... that has been the hitch with the Copper Mountain series so far. Nevertheless, I persist.

Study of Lake Clark, Alaska and its turquoise waters and dramatic sky:

 

Standing here today, I believe I see some thoughts of Wales sneaking into this study! Liminal states are like that, with their rearview glances to the past and their earnest wonderings about the future.

I mentioned last time my brush pen technique as a solution for the garden illustrations I had to do and that worked well. I actually simplified shapes and tones and ended up with not a lot of nuance, but some fresh and light-spirited images which went well with the tone of the essay.

I can't share the final illustrations until they are published this fall, but here is a collage I made of leftovers from the process, all pasted into my journal/sketchbook. Color and light and simple shapes dominate here.

 

Having lately rediscovered my beloved brush pen for pleasure drawing I vow to make more drawings with it. Here is one of my daughter Kate from a few days ago. Pentel pocket brush pen and Caran d'Ache watersoluble crayons:

So now, again, back to the painting studio and to thoughts and plans for my upcoming trip to north Wales. See you soon!

Trip prep and paint pots

I leave for Pembrokeshire, Wales in a few days and I'm madly scrambling to ... do everything. I travel only with a carryon, which makes it rough if you want to make art! This time I was able to order some things from Amazon.uk that I couldn't pack and have them sent to the place I'm renting...things like a jar of matte medium, and some giant Derwent graphite blocks (man, are they heavy and messy! Not sure they'll be my faves, but wanted to try.) And a pair of foldable hiking poles, which for me can be classified as art supplies! ( TSA won't let you pack those in a carry-on.) And a couple of other things. I'll order some gesso when I get there.

I'll have to send home the poles and whatever else I want to keep and use after my time there.  Luckily, there's a very nice postmistress in St Davids who will help me accomplish this in a reasonable way. This reminds me that I FINALLY got out of my state of denial with regard to the size of drawings and paintings I can work on while traveling... especially, since, as I said, I pack only a carryon. I'm restricted to about 9" x 11" paper and just a few watercolors as paint. But that's okay. I happily use these sketches as source materials in the studio when I get back. 

Here are some shots of what I'll take with me. My travel palette has two new colors: Daniel Smith cerulean blue (Wales seems to call for that opaque and granulating oceanic blue) and Daniel Smith German Greenish Raw Umber. That last works well, combined with other colors,  for rendering the rock outcroppings I love to look at and draw.

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I'm taking three (!) sketchbooks, if my carryon will let me. First is one made of Khadi paper, a rough, tough surface useful if you want to paint with mud, sand, and the like.

Second is a new Seawhite accordion sketchbook, pictured below in its case next to the one I used last fall, an old one I'd ordered from Seawhite of Brighton a few years back. Note the diminishment in size, which made me a little sad. Here's the one from last fall, all spread out:

And here it is side by side with the new one:

Third one is a new Stillman & Birn Beta, the ultimate in sketchbooks, for my tastes.

Just to round out the picture of my gear, here are my hiking boots, which I have to wear on the plane and trains since my feet are big, which make the boots bigger than they might be on others. I got them for my Alaska residency and I took them also to Wales last fall and I wear them gardening around here in areas where copperheads thrive. They'd just about fit in that much-talked about carryon, if I packed nothing else with them. My feet and I will be the absolute picture of travel chic! 

I had hoped to be finished with some of the Copper Mountain paintings I've been working on before I left for Wales, but this is not to be. There are four out of the eight or so that are ALMOST finished, but clearly I can't rush them. I work on them every day, but there you are. They have a mind of their own. To tide them and me over until I get back, I have made pots of the colors I've mixed for each painting, so I'll be able to take off running with them when I return.

See you in Wales very soon!

Copper runs through it, part two

Here I've been, in the studio, seeing what emerges from my Copper Mountain ideas and inner imagery, my drawings and photos, and the emotions I experienced in my Alaska residency.  I find it surprising how  all over the place they are, and, well, interesting, too... but then I would, wouldn't I? 

I've been trying to figure out how to deal with deeply staining and glossy paints... colors like phthalo turquoise, quinacridone burnt orange, and others that I haven't used much before in acrylic form. I want to layer them, but they don't layer well. They kill whatever colors I have painted under them and then there's that glossy sheen, which I hate. So, much mixing with white and other colors and experimenting has been going on here. I'm learning the best way to use them for my purposes.

I'm making lots of studies, but I also have a dozen or more big paintings started, waiting for me to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Here are some of the studies painted in my latest Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook, my treasured portable studio and lifeline: 

 I love the verdigris aspect of copper and go back and forth with it in my rendering of mountain shapes.

As I posted last time, I note that the coppery palette now crops up everywhere I put pen, pencil, or brush to paper. I don't mean it to, but I don't mind it,either. Here's a quick warm-up pen and ink sketch made last week with cad red, phthalo turquoise,  and ochre watercolors. 

I purposely didn't mention the fact in my last post that there is a connection between my copper theme and Wales. Both Alaska and Wales have a long history of copper mining, but since I don't do caves and deep underground, I thought I'd never be able to personally experience that fact of Welsh history in my visits there. But NOT SO! Peter Wakelin, Welsh scholar, author, and former head of Collections at the National Museum of Wales, was also head of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments  of Wales. He sent me a link to this video of Parys Mountain in Anglesey. Reader, I'm going!

 

Copper runs through it

Well, here I am with a post from February, which cheekily ended way too soon! 

For months I have been elatedly immersed in thoughts of copper and copper-related minerals and copper-related colors, ever since my residency in Alaska last August. One Alaskan sunset in particular was seared forever on my mind's eye and heart... the sky all tints and hues of orange, pink, red, and the glacial waters of Lake Clark looking like pale oxidized copper,  and then the mountains, Copper Mountain, in particular (yes! That is its name!) was set on coppery fire by that sun. It was one of those holy moments; I felt lifted to a world of thrilling and pure beauty.

And then, everywhere I looked afterwards, I saw copper... in the salmon leaping from the water, in the colors of the native blue geranium leaves as they turned autumnal, in the bonfire flames, and on and on. My work started to be filled with burnt orange, cadmium oranges and reds, phthalo turquoise, cobalt green, teal, burnt sienna, ochre... the orange/blue- to- red/green world I saw when I thought of Alaska.

This is a bonfire built the night of that coppery sunset.The magnificent fire was a brilliant celebration of that place, that day, that glory. Here we see my orange/turquoise palette in an early manifestation.

Below are two of many, many studies I'm working through to try to figure out my own idiom for expressing what I saw and felt in the coppery Alaska. In addition to those zillion studies of all sizes and impulses, I have 12 paintings in progress, filling up my studio walls and floor. Who knows which of these will end up resolved? I don't mind, though. This is the slow way I work. I am an eternal pioneer in the studio, scrabbling for ways to get where i want to go.

Here is copper in the vegetal world, spangles of it appearing overnight on the leaves of wild native geranium:

Later, on my trip to Austria, I was thrilled to learn that the Natural History Museum in Vienna has a vast mineralogical collection. I headed straight for the specimens that were copper-related. Oh, those colors, my new colors! I stood my ground there on the cold tile floor, sketching carefully for hours, as rivers of school children flowed everywhere around me. This was the micro view of my copper world and with my love of geology, I reveled in it.  Here are two spreads from my Vienna sketchbook:

Since my return, I've made several sketches, unrelated to my Alaska project, without realizing as I drew that I was still using my coppery palette!

A bystander at the Women's March in January asked me why I'd chosen the colors I used for my sketches. It was then that I realized what I'd done!

I want to finish at least SOME of the Copper Mountain series before I leave for Wales again in May. I'm slow, but I'm optimistic!

2016 turns to 2017

 And so do we all. This year has been a fraught one, to say the least. We have had way more than one year's share of loss, despair, and dread. I know that many of us around the world are looking to the new year for some, for any, relief. May we find it.

On a personal, artistic level, however, this year has been one of the fullest ever, with trips and work deriving from my Places Project. I began to experiment with painting and drawing with found, organic materials. I have a long way to go and, I assume, lots of time to continue with this. Mud, paint made from rocks and soil, sand, charred twigs, berry juice were some of my means along this path.

The red earth of North Carolina, gathered here from Peregrine Farm, is highly pigmented and is a total joy to smear and brush on surfaces. Soil from my area makes paint in this deep red and in various other ochre, umber, and sienna hues.

 Rows of celosia flowers at Peregrine Farm, supported by white plastic mesh made for a striking subject. Mixed media : mud, acrylic, watercolor, found charcoal on toned paper:

Other studies and sketches from Peregrine Farm can be seen here and here:

 In Alaska, at my residency at Chulitna Lodge on magnificent Lake Clark, there was peaty soil and sand to dip into. I brought back some soil I ground and dried for use in my studio this year. I overestimated what I could do pursuing these means in a limited period of time, restricted to materials I could pack in my carryon! I need to be somewhere for an extended period, with lots of space to work and to store materials. I am working on just such a scenario for myself for 2017.

View of Copper Mountain from across Lake Clark. Mixed media: watercolor, sand, soil.

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 There were wild currants to squash and smear to add color to drawings:

This and other spreads and studies from Alaska can be seen here and   :

 

 

In coastal Pembrokeshire, the world was rich with beautiful mud and rocks that told stories 450 million years old. I was in ecstasy there and have just made plans to return for two weeks in May to continue those explorations.

Above, I paint and draw with sand and rocks and below I smear in my sketchbook mud from the source of sacred St. Non's well near St. Davids, with blackberry stain added for color.

Other paintings and studies from the 12' long accordion sketchbook

I used in Wales appear here.

I enjoyed another year of working with Charleston Style and Design Magazine, producing illustrations that allowed me to stretch and play and that were such fun to do

 

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I led my second three-part drawing series at the Nasher Museum of Art in September and it was a lovely, successful experience, just as last year's was. It is a thrill to work with enthusiastic students from all ages and backgrounds. 

 

 

In print in October: garden and grits!

Hello from a golden world! While I was in ecstasy, walking and drawing, 

eating and drinking in marvelous Wales, two projects I'd been part of appeared in print!

First was my illustration to accompany an essay on grits by Margaret Locklair in the Fall 2016 issue of Charleston Style and Design. This was a playful piece and I hope my illustration expresses that sense of play.

 

This is the third piece by Margaret Locklair I've illustrated for CS&D.  

Each one has been a joy.

Here's the essay from the digital copy of the magazine:

 

My second print appearance this month was a photo essay in Walter Magazine; Raleigh's Life and Soul, on my garden, with more photos and the accompanying text written by yours truly.

Here's my essay:

My garden

By Laura Frankstone

If my garden could talk, you would hear mostly French, with traces of North and South Carolina-inflected English.

I lived in France for three years as a young child; the shapes and patterns of that country’s elegant formal gardens became imprinted in my heart. This was, as far as I could tell, the way things grew.

In my grandmother’s garden in Charlotte, luscious gardenias and glowing panicles of snowball bushes thrilled me to my core. Her verdant oval of lawn studded by white iron glider benches and chairs was my one constant in a childhood of frequent moves, the dislocations of a military family’s life.

My mother-in-law’s Charleston courtyard garden was proof that formal design could live happily in an intimate setting. There grew a deft mix of herbs, flowers, and ferns, with graceful seating for conversation.

My garden’s French accent has grown stronger over the years, with many visits to France. A pilgrimage I made to le Jardin Agapanthe in Normandy, the gardens of brilliant garden designer Alexandre Thomas, was especially transformative, showing me you can use traditional French garden motifs in free and fresh ways.

My garden tells many stories, those of an artist-gardener who plants for texture, color, and shape, more than from horticultural considerations. It tells stories of my daughter’s wedding, rehearsal parties, receptions, countless dinners, and birthday celebrations of children and grandchildren. It tells the story of 3 a.m. meteor showers, seen from two outdoor lounge chairs given to me expressly for the purpose of stargazing.

What those other gardens told me, and what my garden says, is that in order and beauty, there is comfort. Life provides enough pyrotechnics. Let our gardens give us peace, space for reverie, and delight.

 

I am now in re-entry mode from the Wales trip (and the Alaska trip, if I'm to be honest!) and will continue to process those experiences physically, through my work, and emotionally, too.

 

I will post sketches from Wales in the next days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alaska, part two, sketches and studies continued

Here is the second and last batch of studies from Alaska. I wanted to post them before September completely sweeps me away with planning my drawing classes for the Nasher Museum of Art and pulling things together for David's and my trip to coastal Wales two days after the 3-part series ends!

I have some painting ideas growing out of my time in Alaska and evolving from my sketches and studies... and I need to get the rough lineaments of these down in the studio before I head for Wales. So, hurrying along I go.

For now, here are two more gestural mountain studies. The sky in Alaska was where most of the actual, visible energy of the place manifested. The mountain peaks held and exuded their own energy, of course,  but what was surprising in Alaska was that the water itself was pretty calm. This is not always the case with Lake Clark, but compared to the sea, the lake's drama is simply going to be more subdued in most cases. Somehow, this had not occurred to me before I went!

I had packed a Strathmore sketchbook filled with gray-toned paper, but I used it less often than I thought I would. That brown craft paper was so much sturdier!

The angular peakiness of the mountains became more and more apparent as I drew. My curving, swooping gestural style ceded to the reality of those chiseled shapes as the days went by.

Sitting on the deck of the bathhouse one late afternoon, I grabbed some pencils and sketched a view of the mountains, seen through the branches of an Alaskan spruce.

Oh, I had fun drawing with charred wood from our bonfire! Here are two more found charcoal sketches:

And a quick shot similar to the one I posted last time, of two sketchbook spreads, the pages of which won't fit on my scanner:

I'll be posting work made by the participants in my drawing series at the Nasher over the next three weeks. I had forgotten to take photos of the drawings last time and I won't make that mistake again. We are going to have a wonderful series and I want to share it with you!

Alaska, part one, sketches and studies, means and materials

Note: You do have to click on the thumbnails here to see the full pieces. They are too wide for this format.

 

Well, Alaska was humbling! And thrilling and unforgettable. I'm so grateful for the time I had there.  I wish it had been longer.  

Humbling for the obvious reasons of the place's grandeur and uniqueness, but on a work level, too,  because constricted packing space and travel exigencies naturally limited the kinds of materials I could take with me. The upside of that is that I made do with what I had... and that is a very Alaskan trait!

Here are samples of studies and sketches I made, direct and immediate responses to what I saw, in no particular order. 

At the last minute, I decided to throw in a pad of heavy craft paper and I'm very glad I did! It is so sturdy and, being toned, it provided instant atmospherics and drama.

 

The paper's brown tones seemed to bring out my hitherto completely unsuspected inner Maynard Dixon, a twentieth-century painter of the American west!

 The craft paper stood up well to the charcoal stubs I harvested from a fire pit, using them as drawing tools:

I brought loose sheets of heavyish watercolor paper and was able to make some studies with paint made from soil.I brought back soil, rocks, and found charcoal to continue these experiments at home.

I collected wild currants and smashed them and used their pulp to add color to this ink sketch of fireweed:

In a sketchbook made for me by a good friend especially for this trip, I turned to more colorful subjects:

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More to come of Alaska and its aftermath!

My Places Project part 1: Beginner's Mind

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."  from Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice.

 

For my Places Project, I'm choosing locations that, for all sorts of reasons, send my heart reeling. Alaska, Wales, and Bavaria are on the horizon in the coming months. I'm sticking closer to home for now. 

For this work, I'm adopting Beginner's Mind, reaching back to the four-year-old Laura with her box of unlimited possibilities, aka the 48 crayons. I want her spontaneous response to her surroundings, a response unfettered by the history of stylistic shticks and tricks that any artist working for a while has. Shorthand techniques are useful, but rely on them too much and your art becomes inert. Inert is the opposite of what I want my work to be.

My first numinous place is Peregrine Farm, in Alamance County, about 30 minutes from my house.  This is land owned by friends of ours, Alex and Betsy Hitt, who have farmed it for 35 years.  Their place exerts a pull you'd have to call spiritual. Here there is natural and human-made beauty, order, and, though it's a mightily productive farm, here there is peace. 

The things Alex and Betsy grow are of a rare quality, both in taste and in appearance. Terroir is at work here. It is a concept usually applied to wine, but I think it explains so much about anything alive and issuing from the earth.  

noun ter·roir \ˌter-ˈwär\

1. :  the combination of factors including soil, climate, and sunlight that gives [....] distinctive character

 

I want to embody (literally!) in my art this phenomenon of terroir, a distant country cousin to the ch'i, and to do so, I start with la terre itself, the soil.

Soil is our everyday experience of our earth, whether we are just trodding on it or working it for a purpose.  This spring I have been digging soil, collecting rocks, and making my own paint out of that very earth where the Peregrine lettuce and the flowers and the peppers grow.

This is my first time making  paint and I feel like a magician.

 I am bowled over by the granulation of my paints made from the earth! I could make them more refined, but then I would lose what I love most... a sense of the paint's/soil's essential nature and energy. 

  

 Soil into paint is just the beginning. I'm also making drawing tools and materials out of found objects, like the incidentally formed charcoal Alex led me to in his 35-year-old burned brush pile.

Here is a sketch of Big Branch, a tributary of the Haw River that provides one of Peregrine Farm's boundary lines. Sitting on a large rock in the middle of the creek, I drew with a piece of burned blueberry bush from Alex's ash pile. Later, I will make ink out of some of those ashes and I will draw with it, too. 

More blueberry bush charcoal put to work:

In keeping with the many possibilities of Beginner's Mind, I am branching out in lots of directions. In early May, I made use of rainwater I collected and the sun to produce my own images of Betsy's gorgeous anemones:

Mixed media: watercolor and rainwater:

Cyanotype: sun and anemones:

I'm at the beginning of Beginner's Mind, on this Places path. I'm where I need to be.

 

I'll be back soon with more images from Peregrine Farm and some thoughts about origins. Happy June to you!

A story of Alaska

 

A story of Alaska, in three essays and two epilogues.

 

Essay one, my art residency application:

 

Back to Alaska: My Story

...

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

 

Lines above and below from T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Four Quartets.’

 

I was born on Adak, an island in the middle of the Bering Sea, in a blizzard, at home. Wrapped in an army blanket, placed in a cardboard box, I was taken by jeep to the hospital.

When my mother died five years ago, I was seized by the idea of heading back to my birthplace. I had not been there since I was a baby. It was time to return.

Research reminded me what my father could have if he were still alive: Adak is often besieged by high winds, fogs, cyclones, and snow.  Flight delays of days or even weeks are common. Facilities for travelers are now practically non-existent, after the government’s relinquishment of the military base where my family had lived. My dream trip seemed outside the realm of possibility.

Still, even though I have painted in Iceland, a similarly rugged landscape, I could not give up the idea of going back to an Alaska in some way related to my Aleutian island. When I found the Chulitna Lodge art residency online, I began to think this might really be possible. Adak is several hundred miles from Port Alsworth, but there is a real geological connection: the mountains in the Lake Clark National Park are part of the Aleutian Range and all of this area, of course, was once one landmass stretching across the Bering Sea. 

A passion for energy and place, as well as a delight in the materiality of paint, pencils, ink, and surfaces, have been the propelling forces of my art life. At Chulitna Lodge, I would be able to experience these in a deeper way than I have ever done before.

With the model of British artists like Richard Long in mind, I could document my stay there using wilderness materials: mud as paint, pigments I would make from local rocks and other natural materials, twigs as drawing tools, bark as canvas, lake and glacier water as the basis for watercolor washes, and more. I would mix these with more standard painting and drawing materials, exponentially increasing my expressive repertoire. I would make drawings, sketches, studies for larger paintings, monoprints, mixed media pieces.

The possibilities seem various and thrilling.  Not only would my work be a metaphor for the c’hi emanating from the Alaskan wilderness, it would literally embody it, containing as it would the DNA of the wild place where I was born.  

 

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

 

Essay two, statement of intent:

In order to fully immerse myself in the Alaskan landscape, and to express in my artwork the energy that pervades it, I intend to make art with natural, found materials... mud, rocks, twigs and bark, among others.  I will draw in the sand and document that process with photos. I will draw and paint on any available appropriate surface.

I will combine local organic materials with a limited number of conventional art supplies that I will bring with me, so that I can fully express the life force I find in that milieu. I will make studies for later paintings. I will make sketches and on-site mixed media finished work.

I am going to spend the next months developing the practice of using found organic materials for art making, something I haven’t done before. At the same time, I want to be sure to bring a sense of spontaneity and discovery to my week there, so I will guard against forming a lot of preconceived ideas of exactly what I will produce.

A week is short, but I am used to traveling and orienting myself quickly to the spirit of a place, and documenting it with drawings, paintings, and sketches. In a week I will be able to work hard, experience deeply, and build up a store of images, both in the artifacts I create there and in my heart and my mind’s eye… a store of images that I can turn to as an artist once I return to North Carolina.

It will have taken me a long time to get back to an Alaska related to the island where I was born. I'm not going to lose it.

 

Essay three, artist statement:

I’m a restless artist, a shape shifter, a seeker, and therefore, not surprisingly, a traveler.

The past three years I’ve done a lot of illustration work, work for other people. It was a good thing to do, a necessary part of my trajectory, I’m convinced. I’ve also spent a long time drawing and making sketches, work that is an immediate and direct response to place and people. That, too, was worthwhile and right.  Now I’m determined to get back to my own paintings, my own deeper path, to plunge back into that thrilling process of trying to know what it is I need to say and how in the world I’m going to say it.

I know I need more of mountains, rugged open spaces, cold days and nights, and skies with lots of stars...the numinous places of my history and my imagination. With my trips to Iceland, Norway, the Alps, I have been circling back to the source. That is where I need to be.

Not long ago, on reading Michael Pollan’s wonderful book A Place of My Own , I was reminded of the concept of ‘c’hi:’

' "C’hi" is the Chinese word for the earth spirit, or cosmic breath, which flows in invisible currents over the face of the earth... . This earth spirit animates all living things.'

It’s when I pick up my brushes and address the c’hi, that life force I sense so strongly, in places that are personally important, that I am a painter in a way that matters most to me.

Epilogue one:

180 people from around the world applied this year for this residency program, which is available only in the summer months.  Applicants were told they would be notified of results around the first week of January. The large number of applicants made for a long delay in the selection process.

On Easter morning, I got an email in my inbox. Out of 180 applicants, 8 were chosen. I was one.

Reader, I’m going!

 

Epilogue two:

Because I didn't hear from the residency program for a long time, I assumed I hadn't made the cut, so I made another plan to spend time this year making art directly connected to a numinous place. I wanted a place somehow related to coastal Norway, but closer and easier for me to access. I chose coastal Wales and I'm going there, too! And that is a story for another day!