More Evidence of my Wildflower Obsession

Cliffrose below the Rattlesnake Arches.

Matt took me up to hike the Rattlesnake Arches within McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area in the late afternoon yesterday. The temperature was perfect, and since it was so late in the day there was hardly anyone else around. Matt and I agree, May is the best month of the year in canyon country.

Stemless Woolybase

Cushion Buckwheat

I love this one! It looks like a little mound of fluffy pom poms low to the ground. If you bend down and get a close-up look, you can see the little red stripe on each tiny petal. It makes me think of peppermint!

Penstemon

Sego Lily

Recent Paintings / New Color Palettes

A couple months ago I was working on these new small paintings and I needed some inspiration. I’ve been getting sick of the color palettes I typically gravitate towards, so I decided to put all my inks in a big pile, and force myself to use whichever 3 or 4 random colors I picked with my eyes closed.

I’m so glad I did this little exercise, because I never would’ve combined colors in exactly this way; these are much subtler and softer than I’m used to. I think I’ll continue this method for a while and see what happens.

More Surprises / Southern Utah

A Native American grain storage building under a rock overhang in a cliff side.

The Southern Utah deserts are bursting with surprises — large and small, from wildflowers to thousand-year old native rock art to natural arches and springs. Matt and I have come across quite a few Native American drawings as we’ve explored our local region this spring.

This natural arch is called “Paul Bunyan’s Potty” and is located near the granary pictured above. You can get a sense of the scale of things by noticing Matt standing at the base of the rock at the bottom of the picture.

Native American rock art at the base of a cliff just outside Canyonlands National Park.

More Utah Desert Wildflowers

Claret Cup Cactus

Silvery Lupine

Milkvetch

Globemallow

Cliffrose

Heartbreaking Beauty of the Utah Desert

We were surprised to find a little patch of Manzanita at the higher elevations. This plant is really common in the Angeles National Forest north of Los Angeles.

I can’t find a name for this one. Looks like a lily, perhaps, but it’s not in any of my books.

Matt and I went (once again) to the southeast corner of Utah for a weekend of camping and outdoor enjoyment. We finally got our new truck completely situated the way we want it for going waaaay out into the sticks on bumpy 4x4 roads. I think we saw a total of five or six other people the entire weekend.

Dwarf Evening Primrose — This is by far the largest flower I saw. Each bloom is about 2" in diameter. The entire plant is a mound about 12" around.

The first week of May is, as far as I can guess, the prime time for desert wildflower spotting. The weather is just getting warm, about 75° during the day, and there are still a few patches of old snow in the shadiest spots.

Scarlet Gilia

The thing I love most about desert wildflowers is their tiny size relative to the vast expanse of landscape. If you don't keep your eyes open, it's easy to just glance right over them. They grow close to the ground, typically not very close to one another, and the blooms are rarely over a half-inch in diameter.

Our campsite (and our new truck!). The higherelevations are really green at the moment — big thunderstorms passed through last week. Everything will be brown again shortly.

Stephanie Liner’s Paradoxical Sculptures

I came across these beautifully unnerving works by Stephanie Liner through the pattern research I’ve been doing lately. Her work straddles ideas of beauty and traditional ideas of femininity and sexuality. She uses patterns in her work that evoke the Victorian period, when women had a very defined role in the household and in culture.

Many of the pieces Stephanie makes have secret compartments in intimate places that hold candy or other objects for viewers (men) to discover. Are these items gifts from the woman to her suitor, or is there something more sinister in the relationship between the woman and the viewer?

Alex Blau’s Pattern Paintings

My friend Camille knows how much I’m obsessed with pattern right now, so she introduced me to Alex Blau’s paintings she saw recently on a visit to Anderson Ranch in Aspen, Colorado.


Ms. Blau’s paintings are relatively small, but are intricately detailed... using colors and graphic elements inspired by candy and junk food packaging. The use of acrylic polymer gives the paintings a little extra candy-goodness with a shiny gloss that isn’t altogether natural or healthy.

These paintings remind me of Krispy Kreme doughnuts — they look and taste soooo good in the moment, but ten or fifteen minutes later, you feel completely gross from all the sugar. It’s that attraction/repulsion of these sweet paintings that is so compelling.

Patterns on the Brain

Alan The Gallant

I’ve been filling all my spare time studying patterns... working on this book proposal. It’s a lot of work, but I’m learning a lot and seeing a lot of inspiring images. These are just four of the hundreds of patterns I’ve seen over the last few weeks. I’ll post more inspirations later.

Jessica Gonacha

Carla Arocha

Paul Alexander Thornton

Meditate with Me on April 19, 5pm

Meditation comes in many forms— some are rooted in stillness and others are more dynamic. The similarities lie in the ability to connect your body, mind, and spirit in ways that promote a sense of peace and well-being.

Join me for a meditation workshop to center yourself and explore your own inner strength.

• Moving Meditation (asana)
• Breathing Meditation (pranayama)
• Vocal Meditation (mantra)
• Lucid Sleep & Relaxation (yoga nidra)

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

When: April 19, 5–6:30 pm

Where: Yoga Vinyassa
2500 Broadway (near Albertsons in the Redlands)

How Much: $16

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Bountiful is Beautiful!

I’m working on so many things right now... but they aren’t really in any visible stages that I can share with you now.

1. I’m almost finished with a new design for the FIDM College Catalog. The final book is due out in July. I have some fun specialty options on this book, so it’s going to be a bear on press.

2. I’m also working on some new paintings for a show called “Sun Worshipers and Junk Yard Dogs” coming up this September in Colorado. I need to finish at least six paintings for the show... I have two done now, and two in process, two still inside my head. I'm experimenting with some new materials (new to me) so keep your fingers crossed that everything will work.

3. Last week I was commissioned to write a serious proposal for a pattern design book with Rotovision. I’m working on the BLAD (Basic Layout and Design) now, which includes researching and writing several sample sections and designing the sample pages as they would look in a final book. If the rights to the book get purchased, then I’ll get the commission to complete the entire project. [Update 6/3/09—My editor got laid off, so they assigned me to a new editor, who basically changed the whole direction of the book. I decided to decline to continue working on this project... I already learned everything I wanted to know about patterns, so writing the book didn’t really seem necessary any more.]

4. And later this summer, I’m planning to work on a book design for a Southern California-based non profit group called Kids of Kilomanjaro. They raise money to provide lunches to school children in Africa. This book will be a documentary-style coffee table book showcasing the children and their environment, and will be used as a fundraising tool for the organization.

Send me lots of positive energy to help me keep all these balls in the air!

I Dreamt of Things...

Last night was a weird one. I had three disconcerting dreams...

1. Matt and I came home to a house we lived in. Inside was a long, dark black cobra coiled up waiting to strike. It chased us out of our house and we sat in the car as it stared at us from the outside.

2. As I placed some papers on the bed, a spider came crawling out. Matt kept trying to catch it but it was too quick. Finally, its belly swelled up to the size of a basketball and exploded all over everything.

3. I was in an airport trying to get home. There was a strange trolley system — it was like a train of grocery carts with seats that carried people around the airport. I was pregnant, but I didn’t want to be. I sat on my little cart jerking down the tracks, waiting to arrive at my destination so I could go home ... but there was no destination. I had nowhere to go. (p.s. I’m not actually pregnant, thank goodness!)

Matt’s Photos of Downtown L.A.

Downtown Los Angeles from the roof (14th floor) of the Los Angeles Athletic Club (LAAC).

Matt came with me last week when I had a business trip to Los Angeles. We stayed right in downtown at the L.A. Athletic Club. I always love having him accompany me on my work trips, because we get together with friends and we usually get to go hiking in the Angeles National Forest.

Looking southwest from the roof (14th floor) of the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
The purple light is coming from Staples Center and L.A. Live.

The L.A. Athletic Club has a rooftop area where people can go hang out (though from all appearances, it seemed like no one had been up there in a while). Matt got the great idea to go up there one foggy night and photograph the city. These images are beautiful!

Check out more of Matt McGrath’s photos here.

Rachell Sumpter’s Touching Eskimo Drawings

Finery. 11x14 inches. Pastel and guache on paper.

I was in Los Angeles last weekend with my friend Camille, and we spent a lot of time checking out the local art scene. The most memorable work I saw was created by Rachell Sumpter. These drawings of Eskimo scenes are so quietly touching — most of the drawings are no more than 11x14 inches, and the figures are often only about 3/4" tall.

The painting above is my favorite. It’s melancholy is punctuated by brightly-colored litter strewn througout the sea as this Eskimo tries to canoe through the water.

Go Wild. 13x21 inches. Pastel and guache on paper.

Igloo. 11x14 inches. Pastel and guache on paper.

Volcanites. 10x12.5 inches. Pastel and guache on paper.

Aurel Schmidt’s Illustrations

Aurel Schmidt is a 26 year old artist who moved from Vancouver to New York a few years ago. Her immaculate drawings exhibit exquisite detail. She creates wacky images using bits and pieces of leaves, bugs, butterflies, and other elements from nature. Many of the images are quite beautiful from a distance, and then you're thrown for a loop when you get up close and see that the bigger image is created with groupings of tiny bugs.

See an interview with Aural and more of her work here.

A Matter of Life & Death

I just read about artist Cordola Volkening in yesterday’s New York Times. About 18 months ago, she was diagnosed with brain cancer. Surgery and chemotherapy didn’t help, so now she is left with only months to live. Ms. Volkening faces her fate through obsessive painting, sometimes completing several paintings in one day.

I am inspired by the paintings, not just because of the circumstances surrounding their creation, but the use of color, abstraction, and gesture. These are beautiful and not at all self-conscious.


Quoting the NYT article:

So she spends her remaining time in a comfortable chair by a window at the studio. She painted years ago but with more mental interference, she said, making it more of an “intellectual pursuit” than the urgent, spontaneous process it is now. Now the brush itself seems to decide what to paint.

“I paint what comes out,” she said. “It’s not intellectual — it’s instinctive.”

She paints rapidly and spontaneously and her images are primal and powerful. There are urgent brush strokes, bold colors and bleak backgrounds. There are faces laughing and others cringing. There are winged characters flying into the beyond. There are people hugging each other. Different as they are, she said, they all reflect aspects of her condition.

She says the terminal illness has simplified things, washing away the worry and petty preoccupations that almost made life more hard when she had plenty of it. And she has never felt more connected to the canvas and to her creativity.