season is here at last! Like many people I am partial to the cute little boxes they come in and always save them for months before (once again) coming to the conclusion that they are fairly useless for anything but firewood. Oh well! In the finest tradition I have already started my yearly stockpiling.
It was a very happy holiday for me as my parents (pictured, freezing cold but being good sports) and brother James and his family trekked down from CT to be with us. I really enjoyed preparing the feast and being the hostess for the first time in donkey's years. I had the slightly odd feeling that I was channeling my talented mother-in-law as I whirled from stove to table in a more efficient manner than usual, and for once I even remembered to light the dinner table candles (my usual recurring hostess error)!
on my studio windowsill. How many of something do you have to have before it is a Collection (with a capital C)? I seem to have a little rubber ducky collection (with a lower case c) at least.
leap behind H from the biggest bonfire I have ever seen. The farm we belong to (a community supported agriculture scheme) had a big thank you bonfire and potluck for its members. It was great. The bonfire itself seemed a small mountain of brush, but it was amazing how quickly it died down. Then the kids toasted marshmallows and ran around waving burning brands like a troop of savages. They were in heaven. By then it was night and as I looked around the flame and lantern-lit faces I got the sense of what it would have felt like aeons ago, if this was my whole tribe celebrating some ancient festival. Then I had the realization that in some way this WAS my tribe celebrating some contemporary festival. Hmmm. Now if only I knew everyone's names!
I happened to be standing in my friend Pat's house, camera in hand, when her cat decided he wanted to come in. This is how he lets them know. Maybe this is how the term "peeping Tom" came into being?
is visible in this shot I took yesterday morning of frosted leaves. We had a hard, killing frost, but then the sun came out in full glory and warmed everything up again. I took this photograph at about 8 in the morning in Laurel Hill Cemetery, where the Philadelphia Area PhotoBloggers met up for a communal shooting spree. It was the first such event I have managed to attend, and it was a little surreal. I pulled in to the frosted, dead quiet cemetery lit dramatically by the rising sun and found the group wandering in ones and twos among the graves. It was very very still and quiet except for the occasional click of a shutter.
It is the many small imperfections in the stone which which make this baby buddha all the more appealing.
Last night was the opening reception for my friend Alex Tyng's show at Fischbach Gallery in New York. Drove in with a bunch of other people to cheer her on. It was a great night, the reception was really fun and as we left the gallery on our way to dinner we passed this oddly compelling banner by artist Patrick Mimram. "Art For All, Dharma for One." Do I know what it means? Not really. But I made Alex pose in front of it. Oh, the incredible good-natured patience of my friends!
of Lego pieces. Really very attractive in an abstract way. Then made into Super Death Blaster ships by the boys. Less appealing to me then, personally. I remember I loved to make Lego houses when I was a kid, complete with little Lego families (using simple rectangular pieces onto which I imagined faces and characters.) But my brothers would often demolish my little villages to make their Lego tanks and aircraft. There is nothing new under the sun!
in action. Sometimes you just need a starting point. We had relatives visiting, a family with both artists and engineers in it, and I was not really very surprised to see that little cousin R here took to our Tinker Toys like a pro. Instant tinkering. Instant deep absorption.
I had a great photo shoot in my friend Pat Fiorella's chicken coop a few weeks ago. The only thing is, I ended up with hundreds of dim and blurry photos of chicken-like shapes. Those guys are flighty and fast, and the lighting was so low. Pat and her daughter Sondra were a little easier to capture as they filled a box of eggs for me. This looks like a really fun chore, more of a treasure hunt!
Titanium oxide white, my new favorite color. Or non-color. I am suddenly so, so tired of color.
I keep this little rubber Kewpie Doll, a relic of my childhood, hanging around in my studio. I guess she is a sort of talisman. Occasionally I hear her voice a little louder than the other things in the crowded studio, and I include her in whatever I happen to be painting. Looking at this macro shot I just took, I see that I need to dust her, the poor little thing. Maybe that's why I haven't heard her voice much lately.
in my neighbor's yard the other day. Hiroshi came over and told me to come quick and bring my camera, so I did. His eagle eye had somehow noticed this tiny, well-camouflaged owl sitting motionless in a dense tree next to his house. I am still not sure how he did it, but he is very aware of wild birds, has various feeders out and binoculars etc. Still, very impressive. We identified it from a Stokes Field Guide as being a Saw-Whet Owl, and according to those experts "Not easily discovered, because it is strictly nocturnal and roosts during the day in dense conifers." Not this one!
by years of sea and salt. Found by my nieces and treasured like a rare jewel.
and loving it. A dancer at the Renaissance Faire last month, where the crowd went wild for a band from Germany, Corvus Corax. Henry loved them too. I think a lot of people had come specifically to see this group but we, of course, stumbled across their path by accident. Hard to describe the music: medieval trance bagpipe? Anyway, it put everyone there into an extremely uplifted state. When the set finished Henry started crying. Must get him CDs for Christmas. But listening to it on our puny little CD player won't be able to recreate the wild, pulsing, almost euphoric atmosphere.
thy name is Henry. Right at this moment anyway. Even as I post the air is filled with Henry's strange cries of despair (an odd cross between growling,whining and shouting, I don't know how he does it.) Fortunately, our neighbors are inured to it and I can hear my neighbor practicing her cello, an interesting accompaniment. He was always such a Buddha of placid contentment that now these periods of anguish are very hard to take. Is he sick? bored? frustrated? pondering a nihilist interpretation of man's place in the universe?
If only he could talk and tell us what the problem is! Hen had a nice day: lots of walks and visits to parks. We even stopped in at the French Bakery, where the sweet girl who works behind the counter recognized us and immediately served us ahead of everyone else waiting in line (to my discomfiture and Henry's delight: No-Wait French Delicacies!) Oh well. I suspect he is not feeling well, but despite enormous effort we have never progressed enough with his language to make this clear. It is very hard for me to read about parents of other autistic kids trying to fine tune their grammar, or complaining about echolalia. Instead, we have wails of blank despair. And, now, posts of verbose despair too!
Looking at this tree, lit up by the midday sun, was like watching a bonfire in extremely slow motion. I was so astonished when I saw it driving by that I actually pulled over to the side of the road, so I could gape in safety. Felt like there should have been a few traffic cones in the road with safety signs: AMAZING TREE AHEAD! Slow DOWN! Fines DOUBLED in Tree Watching Zone!"
H and his favorite birthday present. He'd asked for canvas boards, and I also bought him a table easel and paints, which I guess was largesse beyond his wildest imaginings. He was thrilled, commandeered my studio floor and used up all the canvas boards within a couple of days. Need to find a source for buying them in bulk! He nearly missed the school bus this morning, he was so engrossed in a drawing. "Honey, you have two minutes to find your shoes and put on your jacket and catch the bus!" I shrieked, suddenly coming aware of the time and H's shoeless and unready state. Unhurried, he replied, "OK Mom, but first I need to just finish this bit here..." How well I understand and sympathize. The curse of creativity!
onto my life. I wish this particular "Jack Sprat" window was not right near the front door of H's school, so that I see it every time I go in. It is all too true! And unpleasant. Off to get a comforting cup of tea. With cream!
This morning I went on an errand to an unfamiliar part of town, and by chance I parked in front of a small row house whose entire (tiny) front garden was dominated by a large stand of these vines. They were definitely not weeds, being planted in orderly rows on tall supports obviously put there for that purpose. I have no idea what they are, but the curling tendrils remind me of the delicate tracery on rose windows in medieval cathedrals. But they can't be all that delicate really, despite their fragile appearance, as this area just got our first frost last night, and they looked fine and healthy.
ice cream cone eating. I hesitated to post this shot because I didn't want anybody to get the wrong idea about how I feed my family. But as soon as I realized the PC train of my thoughts I decided to go ahead: let 'em think what they want!
is what I would call the color of this glistening plastic tube, awaiting deflation. It was so chilly today that we all put on sweaters (children) and even jackets (adults) for the first time this autumn season.
It was my turn to go out to the farm a few weeks ago, to pick up the farm shares. They weren't quite ready when I got there and somebody beckoned me, "Come with me. Lets kill a little time." We walked across a few fields and there was the flower garden. "Go ahead and pick a bouquet." I felt almost faint, overwhelmed with joyful possibility, especially when I saw the riot of Tithonia, a flower I love to paint but had not been able to grow this year. The smiling farm helper who'd led me to the flowers suddenly looked as though she had a faint but shimmering halo capping her head. I hesitated only a moment, to make sure I wasn't dreaming, and then plunged right in. My studio is now absolutely crowded with flower paintings.
Elizabethan re-enactor. Re-enactress? The little zip-loc baggies she was using were a charming anachronism. Anyway, this was the best I could do for PhotoFriday's challenge: Retro.
In the window of my friend Carla's house.
We went to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire on Sunday. I had heard about it for years, with only mild interest, but one of H's friends is a fanatical devotee and had talked it up to him big time. Suddenly I kept hearing about it, morning noon and night. H is not a loud, in-your-face type of child but he is very quietly persistant when he really wants something. So when a Sunday was suddenly, unusually, freed of other committments (soccer games young and old called on account of soggy fields) I knew this was our chance. We went with dread in our hearts. Well, actually, P and H were full of pleasant anticipation and Henry had no idea what was happening but enjoys car rides. Just Paul and I felt the dread (this thing is both a long drive away and relatively expensive, so if Henry decided he couldn't stand the place we would feel pretty bad!) But, it turned out to be a gamble that paid off: we all had a fabulous time!
There were no dogs or loud mechanical noises at the Faire, Henry's big bugaboos, and there were continuous live concerts of all kinds. He loves music, so he did serial concert attending and eating, while Paul and I traded off taking the other boys to the Maze and the Archery Range and the Sideshow games etc etc. One of my favorite performances, which I got to see twice, was the Gypsy Dancing. And Henry loved it too. I don't think he cared much about the lovely girls, but he adored their very spirited accompaniment of percussionists, who were great in their own right. We also got to experience an amazing heavy metal medieval instrument playing band from Germany called Corvus Corax. Henry made a bee line down into the very heart of the "mosh pit" and stood there swaying blissfully to the reverberations. I guess we need to start dyeing his hair purple and taking him to clubs!
I realize I have gone on at length about this, but it is SO DIFFICULT to find family outings that we can all enjoy (Henry's autism and uncontrollable fears preclude many "normal" activities that other folks take for granted. ) So it feels wonderful each time we discover one more.
We have a lot of Praying Mantises in our garden this year. They seem to have thrived on the unusually dry summer weather. Whenever I hear shrieks of delighted "terror" coming from outside I know that the boys have just spotted another one of the alien looking creatures. Then they come running in begging me to shoot their latest find: with the camera of course!
Here is a recent mixed media piece by my brother Bruce. He's been working in black & white miniatures lately.
and plenty of them. I am always dazzled and amazed at how glittering and beautiful "junk" is becoming. It seems like it just gets more and more spectacular. If you had never seen anything like one of these iridescent bouncy balls imbedded with strips of holographic glitter wouldn't you think it was a precious jewel beyond all imagining? And yet they are 2 for $1 at the local "dime" store.
The bees were very busy the other day in my neighbor Fay's cosmos patch. Makes me wonder what cosmos honey tastes like?
Not as elaborately decorated as usual, it is amazing that this cake ever got baked. Yesterday was not only H's ninth birthday, but our friends from Scotland were ending their two week visit, trying to fit in a few more activities and then pack and catch their plane. So I had to wrap presents, bake a cake and supervise after-school kid stuff (arrivals, reports of the day, snacks, homework etc) while juggling a five month old baby! I thought longingly of Sara Lee as I measured and sifted while singing nursery rhymes and wiping up baby spit. The cake tasted especially good though. Baby drool, the magic ingredient!