Laurelines

December trip sketches and thoughts

(Please click on images to see them in full.)

 

The days after our return from Bavaria and Austria raced by. I felt breathless trying to get everything ready for the holidays. But part of me is still there, in lively and friendly Munich, elegant Salzburg, and imposing, glittery Vienna. The sketches I made this time were idiosyncratic and totally self-directed. It was cold out and we were traveling with friends, so I didn't have, or didn't arrange for, many urban-type sketching opportunities.

I took a limited mix of art tools: big Pitt artist pens, a smattering of Inktense pencils, a couple of micro pens and a Pentel pocket brush pen. I wanted to add color on site, get it done! I  often take gray or brown toned paper sketchbooks when I travel to cold climates in the winter time and I did this again this time. The toned paper gives an atmospheric quality to what I draw that is just right for those cold places.

My first sketch of the trip was in Munich, at a little café in the Viktualienmarkt.  We were on a glühwein quest and we found a fun, spartan place to sit and celebrate the first night of our trip.

Another successful glühwein stop! This was the second night of our Munich adventure.

The wild boar mounted on the wall at Goerreshof restaurant in Munich took me back instantly to memories of our first trip to Sweden, to Gothenburg to see our daughter Cecelia, where I sketched another pig's head in the food market there:

Here's my Swedish pig from 2005:

And here's my Munich pig from 2016:

 

In tiny Frielassing, where we had to drop off our rental car, we had dinner at a family-run, cozy restaurant. I made this sketch in the darkish interior, using dry Inktense pencils. 

 

At the Naturhistoriches Museum in Vienna, I was compelled to sit and draw skeletons from the long- ago past. 

 

Leaving Vienna for Munich again and our flight home, I drew this lovely woman at the Hauptbahnhof very early in the morning.

 

 I admit that I have had mixed feelings about starting to write this post. My cheerful words and images seemed inappropriate at best. A few days after we returned home, 12 people were murdered in Berlin and 56 were injured at a Christmas market very like the ones we went to in Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna. I had, in fact, at first hesitated to return to Munich this year, after last year's terrorist events in Munich and other parts of Germany ...and elsewhere. In the end, I decided not to let fear guide our plans and so we went. We were lucky this time. Others, tragically, were not.

That we live in highly dangerous times is obvious to everyone. Hatred and violence manifest daily around the world. It is easy to feel hopeless and I often do. It is not a state of mind I can sustain and yet what is there to replace it with?

For my own comfort and with that stubborn human hope that, against all evidence and against all odds, there's a better world coming, I repeat to myself these words from the Buddhist Metta prayer, the prayer for lovingkindness:

May all beings everywhere be happy, be safe, and be free from suffering.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

 

Love and peace to you.

 

Wales, my traces. Thin Places. At last.

[Please click on images to see them whole! ]

 

It has taken me a long time to get my Wales sketches ready to post. Life, with its illustration deadlines, its family obligations and pleasures, its holidays and feasts, its ordinary hiccups and flare-ups, intervened. And then there was my being daunted at the beauty of the Pembrokeshire coast, that thin place, as Celtic Christianity would have it, where heaven and earth share an unusually permeable and fragile boundary.

Anyway. Here we go. I used an accordion sketchbook from Sea White of Brighton, one I'd had for several years and rediscovered before I left. It seemed a perfect sketchbook for my adventure on the Welsh coast! When spread out, the book is over 12 feet long. I filled one side. I drew, I painted, I cut and pasted, I slathered mud and sand and berry stains... the place called for many responses and evoked many of my passions.

My husband and I walked sections of the Wales Coast Path, a dream I've had ever since I read Richard Fortey's 'The Hidden Landscape.' On the coast path there are many places to sit and sketch and bask in the glory.

 The coast is dramatic, stunning, magnetic.  A large part of my heart is still stuck there. (And I'm working like anything to be able to go back soonish...more about this another time.)

I took my little scissors and a glue stick with me to be able to add some collage elements to my sketches, the way I do with my illustrations. I got a start with this practice in Wales and am eager to do more on subsequent travels.

 

The rose hips I saw, pictured below, in the front garden at Ty Gwyn, the historic house where we stayed in Pembrokeshire, were luscious and huge... that must be the climate that rugosa roses pine for. My garden certainly isn't.

A chief goal of my Places Project is to use found organic materials in making my drawings. I discovered in Alaska there's a limit to how much you can do as a visitor from far away,in a short period of time, with necessarily portable and spartan materials... but, again, I did what I could. The day pictured here I was ecstatic...painting with soil and sand, dripping with chilly water, standing, striding, drawing in the midst of one of the richest geological spots on the planet! Heaven and earth side-by-side, indeed!

 

My second mud and sand drawing, below. Those rocks! That movement! Those textures!

 

 

Farther down the coast, David and I walked to St. Non's Well. There I gathered mud from the well's source and smeared it on my page, adding berry stains from nearby wild blackberry hedges for color and good measure.

Since I  couldn't always attach organic elements themselves, I made paper and paint versions of them and pasted them to the page, as below.

I chose coastal Pembrokeshire to visit, as mentioned above, because of the incredible geologic history of this part of Wales. The energy of the earth, 450 millions of years of it in this case, is visible everywhere you look. And this part of Wales was once connected to Scandinavia, which is another reason I, the ardent Scandinophile, wanted to go. The rocks here are vestiges of that Caledonian Orogeny, which produced the mountain range stretching then from Norway to northwestern Scotland to Wales and to the present-day Appalachians. Back then, of course,  there was no Atlantic Ocean separating these lands.

I made simple and stark drawings of some of the rock formations at Whitesands Bay, some of which you see here. I don't know exactly what I will make of this inspiration, but with this and my experience in Alaska, I have a huge crowd of ideas and images waiting in the studio wings for 2017.

I made the sketch below from one of my own reference photos, something I rarely do, but here I was trying to capture the look of very rocky rockiness with bottled ink and palette knife, a method I couldn't use as a transatlantic, carryon-only traveler, on site.

And, speaking of 'thin places," this sketch I so enjoyed making one morning in Fishguard is way off in terms of rendering of depth. Everything is very smashed together in thin space, which gives it , for me at least, a kind of quirky charm!

Do you see why I loved Wales so? I am hoping to go back in spring and fall next year, but its going to take a whole lot of fixing and arranging. Wish me luck!

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!

In September, come draw with me at the Nasher Museum again!

From the source: an inner-directed, process-oriented, fully engaged approach to drawing in museums... and everywhere!

  

This is an open invitation to join my three-session drawing series at Duke University's Nasher Museum this September.  We will meet at the museum on the successive Saturdays of September 10, 17 and 24 from 10:00 to noon. Some drawing materials will be provided, but feel free also to bring your own sketchbooks, paper, pencils and other dry drawing materials. Materials fee for the series will be $40 a person.

Registration is limited, so please email Jessica Ruhle at the museum,  [email protected], to register or email me at [email protected] for information. 

 

Last year's series at Duke University's Nasher Museum was so much fun and so successful that we're doing it again! 

As noted above, we will meet 10am- noon on 3 successive Saturdays: September 10, 17, and 24.  Working over three weeks' time will allow you to expand your drawing vocabulary,  and through experimenting with new and stimulating materials and methods, to take your drawing practice to new levels.

I will provide instruction and inspiration at the beginning of each class and then you will head for the galleries to draw. I will be available throughout for help and guidance. The last 20 to 30 minutes of each session, we will return to the classroom to share your work in a supportive, lively, and fun atmosphere.  

Last year, I was thrilled by the camaraderie that developed in our group and by the dazzling variety of great work that the participants produced.  Below is an example of two fabulous drawings made by Paul Keene of Durham:

  

 

"It's through the gamble, the willingness to take risks, to make mistakes that we keep our work alive and growing." Roger Winters, On Drawing, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

  

July: images and experiments

All images after the first one derive from Peregrine Farm, first of the places for my Places Project, which I began a few months ago. Alaska in August and Wales in October are next on my agenda.

But first: For the Summer 2016 issue of Charleston Style & Design Magazine, I was to illustrate an essay by Judy Kurtz Goldman on mothers and daughters and their gardens, in particular, the story of the garden of the author's late mother. Her mother had had an unusual way of waving the garden hose in arcs above her head as she watered her flowers and this is something the daughter does, too. "I wish [my mother] could stand beside me on a hot July afternoon and feel the spray from my garden hose.  I'd thank her for this wonderful things she's passed down to me, as we both squint at the arc of water crossing itself over and over."

 Continuing with my plan to use materials from the places I immerse myself in, in combination with the elements earth, air, fire, and water... in one guise or another... I made another cyanotype with love-in-a-mist from Betsy's flower fields. The image, an arrangement of flowers and cut paper placed on photo-sensitive paper, is developed in sunlight.

Later in the month, I sat and drew in the celosia fields. Here I fell for the brash and blazing reds of the blossoms as well as for the accidental beauty of the white mesh fabric used to support the tall stems as they grew. This was found sculpture! On Strathmore toned paper, I used paint made from soil I gathered from the farm as well as crayons and pencil.

The days I visited the farm to draw celosia flowers were very hot. I tried to convey the sense of red hot air in this drawing, made on site using a multi-leaded colored pencil, with red acrylic paint added later in the studio.

Drawing with charcoal made from charred blueberry branches found on the farm, I sketched a plowed and open field edged by a road leading to the Alex and Betsy's house. The reddish paint was made with field soil and the ochre paint was made with soil I collected near the farm's creek beds.

 Here's another drawing of celosia flowers growing through a grid of white plastic mesh. Drawn with watercolor crayons, painted with paint made from field soil and a final layer of acrylic paint.

Not all of my experiments were successful, but isn't that what experiments are for, to try stuff and see?

Here's a case in point,  a collage I made of purple and red lettuces growing in a field. I had been attracted to the wavy, concentric shapes of the lettuce heads, and to their jewel-like colors.  For these, I drew from my studio stash of leftover painted paper, cutting the paper into lettuce-inspired shapes.  As in the images above, the field's earth is painted with earth from the field itself!  That is what I love about this project... playing with found, organic materials in combination with more conventional media, to try to render the energy and essential nature of these places that are meaningful to me.

I leave for my art residency in Alaska in a few days! Trying to work out which art supplies to take is my challenge. I will report back on what I chose soon! Happy August!

A pause for pencil

In a complicated world, experienced by a complicated mind (mine, to wit), it is well from time to time to simplify. What could be simpler than pencil on paper? And it's so much fun, the pencil. Here are colored pencils in action at the Audubon Gallery at the North Carolina Museum of Art. I usually find taxidermy distressing and depressing, but the birds at NCMA are lovely. Their spirit remains.

I commend to you, in addition to the Audubon Gallery at NCMA, the Iris restaurant where, along with bright and tasty food and polite fellow diners, you get to rub shoulders with one of Patrick Dougherty's sublime site-specific branch and twig wall sculptures. Pencil with a bit of added wash happened here.

Why do I like blue pencil so much? I have no idea, but there we are. At a workshop I went to last weekend, I blue penciled my fellow attendees. And on blue-lined paper, too. I sense a theme evolving here.

and

On the other hand, we have non-blue pencils and here is one very dandy example ... I used a multi-colored, swirled-together leaded pencil for a quick drawing I made of my daughter Kate on her birthday. Those multi-colored pencils are delightful... they're rainbows in pencil form.

And here's a nude guy from a figure drawing session I went to,  drawn on 18" x 24" paper. Brown pencil here, I don't remember which kind.

People and countries behave badly often, but pencils... they're low-key, they're steady, they're workhorses. On the cusp of July as we are, with its heat and its relative quiet (Northern Hemispherically speaking) and in the midst of global troubles, it's worthwhile to consider pausing with a pencil or two. That's what I'm doing.

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!