steel bridges

Here are a few of the pieces I've been working on for the Art of Action project. Its been a struggle to not over-define the bridges- note the difference in the green bridge from the blue. The drawings are of the other Richmond bridge. All of these images are cropped and are just samples of the work for now.

happy baby

Euan Kishishita Hale was born on February 9th, 2009 at 2:17 PM. He weighed 7 pounds 4 ounces at birth, and was 21 inches long. He is healthy and beautiful. Yoko had an all natural, relatively short 11 1/2 hour labor, and the delivery was incredible. She is recovering really quickly, and breastfeeding is going well. Euan is relatively quiet, and in the first 24 hours hadn't even cried. He since has developed a ferocious appetite and a powerful cry to momma for food! We have been in our pjs since Monday, and have been taking every opportunity to find sleep- not an easy task when he wants the breast every hour... He has lots of dark hair, large hands and feet, and big beautiful eyes that rarely open. He seems to like Bela Bartok. Today we have our first trip to the doctor for a checkup, and right now he's resting up for the adventure.

With the Art of Action award, and a week later the birth of our first child, this is a truly magical time in our lives.

Thank you all for your kindness and support as everything progresses!

On my way to the birthing class my wife and I are attending, in advance of our first child (due now in just 4 weeks,) I heard on VPR, an irate woman going off on some state official because apparently someone overstated the dangers of living within 10 miles of the Eden Mills asbestos mine. The folks in Eden Mills were upset that their property values will decline as a result of this report. I wouldn't be surprised if they did... This was the first I've heard of it. Maybe I've had my head in the sand as I worked on my proposal. Really, the scary thing is that for almost 3 years, we used to live less 2 minutes away from the mine. I knew the caretaker and his dogs, although not on friendly terms, because I used to sneak in there to paint, and he'd chase me out. The thought of cancer, and the sound of this persons voice on the radio breaking with rage, it just brought back some memories, like digging a hole under chain-link fencing, and crawling under on my stomach, then sneaking into the chutes... 'Guerrilla plein-air' (for some reason we used to call this 'Bruce Lee Style', but now 'guerrilla' makes more sense.) I remember how moon-like the landscape was out there. There were huge portable lights on trailers they used for night mining. There was the florescent green-blue water at the bottom of a crater. Inside the chutes I remember there was almost a furry white dust on everything- kind of like how white mold looks, and lots of pin-up girly posters. Outside the whole place was surrounded by fencing, and kept locked by a seriously scary caretaker with loud dogs. I only ever painted outside the fencing. But I did a whole bunch there. It used to be a funny thing to me, to pull right up to the locked gate, get the guys dogs barking and freaking out, and just set up and paint, knowing I was within my rights to be parked outside the gate, and knowing he was the one who was affected by his dogs, not me. It was kind of mean, but I was younger and stupider then. In the short term, painting at the Eden Mills asbestos mine paid off. I sold a whole series of 6 or so paintings to one person, a geologist (& patron) by hobby. This is one he didn't want, wonder why? Hopefully, I won't be looking at any long term future comeupins from whole affair with Eden Mills...

Response to Clair Dunn

Reading Clair's most recent, beautifully articulated post, I couldn't help respond. As I typed, I realized I was kind of hijacking her blog, so I decided to post it here, and also show an old painting...

Clair,
I couldn't agree more that people simply need to learn to look and see the world they live in, and causing that is really the raw power artists have in the world. For me its often a matter of not looking for "positive" and "negative" in the landscape, but for some abstract opportunities (visually/conceptually) that I can "exploit". Taking that approach can help me bear looking at some of the ugly stuff you mentioned. A favorite example of this is a satellite dish (the big kind people used to have on their front lawns before they got tiny and mounted on houses...) The object is hideous if you see it in the context of the "Vermont" we use on our maple syrup packaging, but if you see it as a large geometric form in the landscape it's incredible looking.

Not that it is incredible looking in this painting! But nonetheless, pictured proportionally, it attempts to fulfill a vision of the dish as a shape rather then a blight.

Some subjects are more difficult for me than others in this respect. I can look at Tafts Corner and find loads of beauty to paint, right off the highway. But the residential sprawl just before the exit as you head up 89 is really hard for me to find opportunistic visually. I still think its possible, but its more challenging than a big colorful strip (mall) with mountains and sky... I think it might have something to do with the gentrification of some places. They only typically use small fruit trees in the medians for the strip mall areas, whereas in the residential areas you get a lot of redundant colors and shapes that are harder to find peculiar. They do a better job of homogenizing these houses than they do the malls.
-C

Its hard to know what to do right now, it’s around 11 pm… and the Art of Action written materials are printed, collated, done. For the past 3 weeks, I’ve had no work (money work, doing carpentry/cabinetry). The economic downturn has hit 1541 McReynolds Road pretty hard actually. I’ve made the most of it though, using my time to research and develop this project. As the final days approached I decided to rewrite the entire proposal. For the past 2 weeks, I’ve fueled myself with anxiety and urgency, and it stopped being fun about the moment I wrote the first sentence... I love the driving around and looking part of it, it’s the putting-painting-ideas-into-words-without-undermining-my-painting-part, that is the biggest challenge for me. I’d much rather paint a place because I can’t describe the reason I want to paint it.
Congratulations to 19 other artists as they wrap up their proposals. I hope everyone does something nice for themselves as a personal celebration of their completed work. I’m planning a visit to Montpelier tomorrow, to drop my paperwork off, and on the way back, the purchase of a nice big and strong, Belgian beer of some sort at Hunger Mountain… something to sip on a Monday night when there’s no need think another edit or early wake up to go back to work… I, for one am going to rest for a few days, and maybe paint some more gas stations, in St. J… something I don’t need to explain.

I just deleted my last post- I was trying to edit it, cause it sounded arrogant- and the text just couldn't be fixed! To those who read it, I meant to say, that we've all worked super hard on this project, and have all earned our proposals. We've all dug in, and thankfully its coming to some stage of completion.