Daffodil Bundles

In a city where plastic is taboo, daffodils come with their own paper wrappers.

Yo. I'm an Art Class Dropout

Most of my friends thought I was pretty dumb in high school. It wasn't until graduate school that I discovered the arts, found my niche, and was ok with myself. But here, today, I am back in adolescence feeling dumb and sneaking out of class.

Christopher, from figure drawing

This spring, as you know, has been the season of the class.  Figure drawing has been spectacular. Maureen, Tyler, Barbara, and all the other models  have turned their trimmed, clipped, and Brazillian'd sides to me and I have responded with drawings that are--in my estimation--far more lovely than anything I ever did in college.   Then I picked up the second class--watercolor.

Oh my.  What is happening here?  I have painted for a long time, but I know nothing,nothing about the science of watercolor.  What makes those amazing transparent crimsons I see in my friends' work?  How do I achieve...luminosity?  What is "granulating??"  This is what I wanted when I signed up for beginning watercolor.

So with the first class, we learned to do a wash.  Three hours of layering, but that was ok. Today I went back with my Arches (pronounced Ar-chay) paper and San Francisco Slant palette and we learned how to shade a cylinder.  For three hours we looked at a standing paper cylinder, and we shaded it, and shaded it, and shaded it.

I  took two drawing boards and taped down six sheets of paper. Then I turned my paper cylinder sideways to see the stapled edge, and began with that. Next I put a transparent yellow background around my cylinder and layered it with green for sort of a spring-asparagus color. That is when the trouble started.

The teacher came to me and said, "What is going on here, something different? It was not a nice tone of voice, either, the voice I heard.  What is this line doing in the cylinder?  Using my best southern-girl voice I pointed out the stapled edge and explained that I was putting the stapled edge of the paper cylinder in my painting.

Then she made an announcement to the whole class:    "If you are seeing the stapled edge of your cylinder, turn it around to the back side so it won't be a part of your painting.

Lorraine, from figure drawing wk 4

I wanted to slink out like a chastened puppy.  So very slowly, I moved my paint box outside the classroom door.  Then when the teacher wasn't looking I took my bag full of  Windsor Newtons and Ar-chay paper and put it outside the door as well.  Then I came back, grabbed my car keys, and when her back was turned I made a break for it.

So. I will not be going back to watercolor class.  Instead on Monday afternoons from 2:30 until 5:30 I will go to Emma's Coffee Shop as I did today, where, for six dollars they let me pick from a lineup of low-end red wines (Yellowtail, Rosemount, Mondavi) and, with a smile the young Hispanic bartender will pour a glass that is incredibly full, brimming.  Almost flowing over.

Unchambered

This morning the park was quiet except for the sounds you hear any any woodland.  It was unchambered music: the scrape of eucalyptus limbs, and percussion of water and stone.  Expect the unexpected in the park, and this morning it was the jarring and repetitive curse of a hawk-sized crow.  You couldn't call it a song.

Nekkid and Nude

Ira once told me that he could never have a long term relationship with any woman who pronounced naked as “nekkid.”  It was best, at that point, not to reveal that this is the way we all pronounced it when I was growing up.  Nay-kid was, well, not something we said.  So forgive me if I avoid any mention of that word and say that I am taking a figure drawing class, attended my first session yesterday, and…it was good.

Most students arrived early, padding around until they found a space they liked and then claiming and straddling their see-saw-like drawing benches. Those of us who were wait-listed were last in line, so we were parked at easels in the back…my choice anyway. Money was collected, heat was turned up, and our model Maureen appeared--wearing a muted green sarong.   From the moment the fabric dropped silently to the floor,  Maureen held all the cards.  Much of her power had to do with the stopwatch she was using:  in this three-hour class Maureen timed every pose like a drill-sergeant, beginning with three one-minute poses (quick, let me change my paper!), two four minute poses (can I even sharpen my pencil?),  and a break.   No time to think about what’s happening here,  just get the lines down on paper.

After a little intermission (on with the sarong),  Maureen moved into two 10-minute poses; we were still sketching at breakneck speed.  I found myself remembering how to look at angles and forms, spaces and solids, how to loosen up, choose the lines I wanted to keep and let the others fade away.  By the time we got to the last hour of class and two 20-minute poses I was in the zone, appreciating Maureen for her grace (she’s quite beautiful in a 40ish way) and marveling at her flexibility and her ability to strike a compelling pose.  Well before beginning the last group of studies I was lost in the process, feeling like I’d miraculously learned something about drawing by being away from it so long.

Maureen's 20 minute pose   1/8/13

During the next break the teacher reminded everyone about the “No Cellphone!” (i.e. camera) rule. Can't imagine a reason for that one.  I slipped out for coffee and wondered, “Does Maureen put ‘nude model’ on her income tax return?  When did she “come out” to her children?  If she saw me at the Safeway, would she smile and speak?”  I’d say this would be no big deal to Maureen of the sarong and stopwatch.  She is elegant, professional,…and, in this case,  just nude.  

Near the end of the class several seats were vacated and I moved to one of the drawing benches, sandwiching  myself between a group of  men and women (mostly retirees) who had been working as diligently as I.  It wasn’t surprising that--from my new vantage point-- I could see as many different sketching styles as there were people, like students speaking varied artistic languages, some more proficiently than others,  but all equally dedicated to the process.

I took a sidelong glance at the person beside me, a man who was seated with a full frontal view of the model. Then I discreetly checked out the work on his drawing board.  What I saw were lots of stick figures with Afro-like hair.  I didn’t "let on"-- one of Mother’s favorite expressions--but in retrospect I think those particular drawings might have been, well….nekkid.

Surrender

Mud-slush
of May careened into
July
painting from the sky
the bank time and temp
sweated out the truth of it
one hundred eight degrees.

Six months we've lived close to the ground
porch swing creaking out a
slow heartbeat that
wanted to hang on past
coy song and
fire of autumn night

and did, through that third week
of October when we found ways
to walk on water and raised
smoke signals and dug
fingers into sand.

No denying it though
when yesterday's ginkgo
in one
relentless hour of sky and wind
made peace with passage
and yielded up the last
of her gold.

God is in the Details

Finish, Finis, the Finial

But I was so much older then...

I'm younger than that now.

  ---Bob Dylan

It was in the 90s that we last painted the house, and I recall getting Mom's ok to do something daring...I wanted the field color to be cream, and the woodwork white. When we got to the finial, that architectural finishing touch on the highest point of the roof, I had it brought down and gave it a brush of blue.

This time around, being much younger than our former selves, we asked Tommy to scale Everest, set his sights on the finial, and go for the gold.

The Great Mystery

There's something to see on every side.

As we've ripped boards and relocated piles of dust in the attic of the Emma House we've scanned each inch for marking and numbers on the timbers--anything that would give us a clue as to the origin of the house plan itself.

Queen Anne was the style of choice at the turn of the 20th century and its greatest champion was the Knoxville architect George Franklin Barber (1854-1915) who marketed his house plans through catalogs worldwide.

Barber's drawings featured an overall sense of harmony--with wide verandas and decorative gables with contrasting trim.  His houses often had steep pitched roofs and he was determined that each side and angle of his homes was visually interesting.  Barber's early designs featured turrets and circular elements, and his later designs had columns and symmetrical features like those on our own front porch.

The back porch is still in the works.

A Barber design, Bainbridge, Ga.

Another oblique connection to Barber is that the original builders of the house--the Katzs--were an affluent and educated Jewish family from Nashville who would certainly have known that one of the premiere architects of the era was also a Tennessean.

The original plan of the Emma House is out there somewhere....in a museum, catalog, plan book, or perhaps hiding in plain view on a corner lot in some Southern city.  

Edges and ledges

See it? That new cedar green strip
above the 2nd floor porch window?

All summer my body has been cranking out an early-morning song,  a call and response with the birds. My alarm is set for 5:55,  but I'm always ready to sprint before the tone sounds. Lately, however, my brain cells need to get out and start painting at 3:30 or 4am, making me think that Simi might be right...I am a little close to the edge.

It was breezy at 5:30 am today and I was hyped on coffee and paint fumes and way too eager to paint the porch floor, having spent much of yesterday with three brushes in my hand (yes--navy, cedar, cream) trimming fine details on the columns and repairing one bobble just in time to make another and have to switch colors.  But then Tommy arrived  (taken off the other job removing asbestos after his work partner--all space suited and helmeted up--keeled over yesterday--wonder why)  making this a surprise "lift day," and thereby scratching all other plans. 

100 degrees outside, 120 degrees inside.

Ok, we are flexible around here.  I changed the game plan  and  painted from the lift while Tommy repaired gutters.  Everyone agreed that the front of the house above the ultra-elaborate pedimento was a large yawn by comparison to the extravaganza of color we had created on the porch.  So...I added a cedar stripe below the nearly invisible navy and even more invisible green brackets that I'd almost killed myself back-bending into the first week.  Yes, I know.

Someone (I believe it was La Postina, Marie) tattled to Ken that I'd painted the back gable detail green-blue-green instead of the green-green-blue that we have on the other two) so Ken repaired my mistake only to paint the same detail in another green-blue-blue.  All this prompts me to wonder how many wrong ways there are to paint a gable.  Hot, hot, hot.  I tell you we are losing it.

Green blue.  Blue green?  Green blue green??

I took myself out of the mix after lunch and left Tommy and Ken in the lift painting the back sunroom windows.  One of the things I did this morning before dawn was to stretch as far as I could out of the corner window just to see if I could reach the exterior brackets with a scraper and paintbrush.  Well, yes...if you hook your right leg around the window ledge, hang on to the roof with your left fingertips, grip the brush in your teeth, and don't look down. It gives new meaning to the word "window-seat."

After today we'll be finished painting from the lift.  Just kidding!  The gangly dinosaur is beginning to look right at home in our yard, along with Old Forester, Subaru, and Truck of Antiquity.  And Tommy has moved into the sleeping porch and is beginning to leave laundry on the floor and say things like, "How is supper shaping up?"

Are we having fun yet?

Actually, yes.

This column was creeping outward.

Ira dons headdress, attacks lattice.

Tommy, me, and the lift.  We stayed high all day long.

North Side.  The last frontier.

Pedimento, continued

Shot from church steps.

Pedimento

Out, out, damned spot!  Cedar must go.

My friend Barb calls her blog Pentimento, an Italian term meaning the painter repented, painted over, and left traces of the original design.  Such is the history of the front pediment of the Emma House.

The center triangle was originally gray--we think--to go with a mustard exterior.  For years it was a solid white--obviously a relief from the previous colors.  With this incarnation I can't get it right, either...the interior triangle has now been painted light cream, cedar, and finally darker cream, the field color of the house.

I've sat on the church steps and pondered the colors, and how each balances with those surrounding it.  I've mused on the play of tones as I walked to the post office, the bank, and the library.  (All just around the corner in Clinton.)  I've backed into the street during mid-day traffic (not that dangerous) and decided if the pediment center was cedar then the surrounding windows would need to be painted to balance.  Not what I want, at least not at this point.

I think this final color--the khaiki-based cream of the body of the house--is the keeper, but tracks and traces of the process remain around the edges, in the farthest corners where my brush wouldn't reach, and in little scars and pock-marks that cover the surface and challenge my will.  This house will not surrender its history.  And the floor of the pediment--where we all signed our names last Friday-- looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

The Pizza de Resistance

Water-soaked rags on our heads...they helped.

The architectural pizza de resistance (a John Ross term) is the front porch.  On this Friday of our second week  we'd wanted to finish that--and a whole lot more.  The problem was the heat.  According to the Community Bank Time and Temp sign (which we can see from the lift) it was 108 by noon.

We kept at it as long as we could but by mid-afternoon we had to put on the brakes.  Nobody was ready to call it quits, because our principal painter--Ken-- will be away for three weeks and we'll be in slow-mo during that time.

Anyway...we had lemonade shandies on the side porch and quickly got over the heartbreak of not reaching our goal.

Pediment colors are tricky, we discovered.

K-Coog this is your side of the house.

Final pediment colors are on hold for now.

Pizza for lunch seemed thematically correct.

We all officially signed off for the holiday week.

Day Nine?

It's a form of progress when friends, sensing desperation, jump in to help.  Jim Lemons sent Tommy and the skylift on Tuesday, making time for us in his already overbooked schedule.  Cherry Pyron showed up at seven am this morning and worked with us till five in the 100 degree heat...just having knocked off a house for Habitat for Humanity.   Jim sent a second workman late this afternoon to help scrape the gable that faces Mayfield Highway.  Now I am fully understanding why my dad once had this house spray-painted all over in refrigerator white.  But yes, it has been fun.


Here's a sequence of the day's photos.

Cherry Pie takes a break from Habitat.

I don't know who is going to paint the remaining 22 under-gutter brackets (of 75) but it may not be me. 

Tommy and Liz on terra firma

Tomorrow, tomorrow, it's this side...tomorrow....

Give me a lift, will ya?

Ken finished the cedar colored porch ceiling this morning and I added navy trim.  The rest of the day was spent on the lift with Tommy.  We painted trim, took water breaks and smoke breaks and told some jokes.   He really is a lot of fun...best of all this thing he drives eliminates the need for a ladder.

It took quite a while to get the first gable right.  I painted with Tommy most of the morning and then Ken took my place. As soon as I bailed out of the cabin and went inside there was an extreme noise and the sound of a breaking window.  Jim will pay for the window replacement, and I will have a lot of fun reminding them that as soon as I left the cockpit something disastrous happened.

shot through the upstairs window, now in a bazillion pieces

can you see the color?  it's there...

This is what a rough draft looks like, children.  Maybe it will get edited and spiced up at some point.

Streetside

It was into the 100s yesterday and by late afternoon we were looking and feeling our best.  It's the most visible side of the house, at the intersection of Highway 51 and Highway 58, so the general public can see the process.   I am expecting a massive traffic pileup any day now, just from the rubbernecking.

This morning I'm up at 5:15.  Jim Lemons is sending reinforcements at 7am, and they'll be scraping the highest areas of the house, using the lift.  Ken will finish the interior front porch and then I can start on the color trim.

A "before" pix in the early morning light.

Revising and Editing

House painting, like life, seems to require endless editing.  Compose, delete, redraft.  Take a look at the progress,  make amendments.  Decide what you can salvage, what you should go to the mat for, and when you have to settle.

At the end of this first week Ken, Ira, and I have covered all this territory in painterly fashion, and a lot more in terms of conversation and music. The Wailin' Jennys, Gillian Welch, and Allison Krauss have filled the hours.

Black screen doors--found years ago in the garage--now have a dusting of copper to soften the tone.  

Section finis?  Never completely. 

The beadboard above the navy fascia was first the same Dunmore Cream as the house body. But in the context of the northwest corner the color seemed more yellow and less the muted cream we want to achieve.

Ken rewrote that headline in about five minutes; now the whole section is the same light cream
 as the column...and the contrast works.

With paint or pen, changes can be made in a flash.