Walls of Stone

From the Gun Factory's abandoned waterway, overlooking Fall Creek Gorge.

Stations Lost

It’s not like I want to live in this house. I just want to sit on that porch awhile, watch the evening storms coming across the hills. Can’t you imagine us doing that? Kicking back with a couple cold beers, the Mets game fading in and out on a tinny transistor radio. You can’t put it down or the station’s lost, you have to keep working the tuner, waiting–What happened, did you catch that? Lindsey Nelson on the play-by-play, Ralph Kiner doing color: “Eleven strikeouts already for Seaver, and we’re only in the seventh.”

Table For Two

Eddy Dam Footbridge

Eddy Dam Footbridge, upper Cascadilla.

Thirty Steps

Between Uris and Ives; at the top of the steps, Tower Road.

A Lovely Ruin

The path from Risley Hall down into the Fall Creek gorge (see Autumn Gorge, on the Risley website) is steep, stony, needs work. Where the path crosses the first runoff, a stone slab that formed a tiny footbridge has fallen into a narrow channel lined with crumbling stonework, choked with rubble. The bridge seems a lost cause, but if I’d brought tools, I could happily spend the afternoon down here, grading the path, clearing brush and fallen trees.

Today though, we’ve brought only Parni’s camera, my tripod, a notebook, a pen. Half an hour, several photos, and my reservations about carrying a tripod are forgotten; already it seems indispensable again.

Making my way along the water’s edge, stopping now and then to look up at the underside of the Thurston Avenue bridge from this novel perspective, I realize that being down here in the gorge seems a much more private experience than I’d have expected. We’ve only encountered three people so far, two guys and a girl coming back downstream; but it’s more that the gorge is so deep here, the bridge deck so far above us that the people looking down from the railings register only briefly, don’t matter. You don’t feel watched.

Across a wide sunny expanse of ledge, a mosaic whose meaning eludes me for a moment: Then the many small bits of shale coalesce, become big letters spelling out a greeting to be read from above: HEY ANDREW.

A last turning of the gorge, and our walk upstream ends at Triphammer Falls and the abandoned Hydraulics Lab. The lab, built at the turn of the last century, has been condemned and closed to the public for nearly forty years. But what a lovely ruin it remains.

M. John Harrison is blogging again, this time at the Ambient Hotel.

Short story: MJH’s ‘Cocking A Snook’, from the archives of Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights.

Baker and Boldt

A gray afternoon and a colorless sky, one I'm tempted to try sweetening some with Photoshop. But I like too the way the misty light complements the architecture, softens rooflines and chimneys. North Baker Hall, Boldt Hall, West Campus, Cornell.

Beebe Lake

Beebe Lake 1
Along the south shore of Beebe Lake, on the Cornell University campus. Parni’s photo, my edit.

When Parni first suggested we take her camera for a walk, I thought she might be taking most of the photos. I hadn’t carried a camera for years, partly because I’d found that for me, taking photos often got in the way: Walks became less about simply experiencing and enjoying a place, a day, and mostly about taking photos. I needn’t have worried, it’s all been good: Bringing the camera along has added a new and exciting element to our explorations, and been Big Fun for me too­. And so far, I’ve kept my impulses toward thorough (I’ve never become entirely comfortable with obsessive) in the pocket.

It’s been interesting to note how much less time and effort I’m putting into taking photos than I would have a few years ago. No tripod, no careful setups, just freehand snaps with the camera on Auto. I haven’t learned how to change its settings yet, mess with exposure, shutter speeds. Seems a good thing to let all that go for now, let the little camera do its thing. Less work, more fun–What’s not to like?

Of course, part of why I’m okay with throttling back on the in-camera thorough is because I can control the post-camera process in a way I never could when I was shooting film and sending it off to be developed and printed. I find I’m treating many of our files as raw material, essentially–Let’s see what we got today, what I can do with this one in Photoshop.

Beebe Lake 2
The path continues along Beebe Lake’s north shore. Parni’s photo, my edit.

Most of what I’ve done with these photos of Parni’s is subtractive–With Beebe Lake 2, radically so. In both cases, though, I looked for those elements that seemed to me at the heart of the image’s appeal, and cropped until all they seemed balanced, in harmony, and no distractions remained.

I’ve always liked panoramas, but never drawn them much. Maybe I’ve needed to explore them in another media; maybe the experience of working with this kind of format digitally will have its effect on whatever happens at the drawing table.

If not, that’s fine too. There are things I want to draw, and things I want to photograph, and they’ve never overlapped much. At the moment, I’m enjoying both media again, and I’m looking forward to our next walk.

Admiring: James Gurney’s plein-air watercolor of Maison d’ Ailleurs, “a museum of science fiction, utopia and extraordinary journeys” in Yverdon, Switzerland. “Return to Dinotopia”, a new exhibition featuring over 50 of Gurney’s Dinotopia paintings, will open at Maison d’ Ailleurs in October.

Wall's End

Wall’s End
Built circa 1985, photographed 2004

Twenty years ago now, more, I rebuilt a stretch of stone wall that ends here. Sections of the wall had fallen, and those still standing had settled, slumped, wound this way and that, so I tried to blend in my new work in a way that went with the flow–And would hopefully, one day, become indistinguishable from the old. Hence, a new name, one that stuck: Weaving Wall.

The wall’s end widens to accommodate the two concrete silo staves that form the seat. I’d intended to build a six-pack cooler into the wall behind the seat, near the top, but access became a prohibitive issue; solutions that seemed aesthetically pleasing also seemed likely to create drainage problems that would compromise the mortared stonework there. So I filled in the space with rubble and mud, capped it permanently. A few empties did find their way into the wall elsewhere, though.

There’s no footing below the mortared area, but the mortared joints haven’t opened up much. I remember thinking that the wall’s new end would move around some, but maybe if I built it solidly enough it could ride the frost-and-thaw cycles as a unit. Probably a naïve approach at best, but twenty years on, the wall’s end and seat are both holding up well.

Vince Whitehead

Vince Whitehead, Ft. Jennings, Ohio Railroad Depot
Pen and Ink, 12" x 10"

It’s been awhile since I’ve worked much in pen and ink. But looking at Vince Whitehead’s Fort Jennings, Ohio Railroad Depot makes me want to get out my Sakura Pigma Microns, and have some fun.

Vince has posted several in-progress scans, details, and comments on this drawing on his site’s Work In Progress page. Looking at the reference photo reveals how Vince has utilized heightened contrast to sharpen and highlight elements like the depot’s windowframes, the decorative details at the gables, and even the roof’s shingles. Vince handles natural elements equally well; the trees, foliage, grasses in this drawing seem unstudied, effortless. Of course, they’re not; he just makes them look that way.

Limited-edition prints of this and many more of Vince’s drawings are available through his website.

The Lost Episodes, Scene 4

Another Lost Episode, from 2006.

The Lost Episodes, Scene 3

Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20; looking through in-progress scans of old work, it's easy to see where I should have made better choices. The drawing this enlarged detail was saved from was ambitious and fun but unfocused, and would have benefitted from more ruthless editing- The rest of the elements didn't work nearly as well as this one, and I should have recognized that. But this passage, at this stage, I like.

Catherynne M. Valente's short story Palimpset, from Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy, Senses Five Press

In Silence, Scan 5

In the final scan, the cliff’s become more cliff-like, taken a step back into the shadows and assumed a supportive role, with a sloping lawn appearing at the top, between the building’s foundations. A rugged natural setting with another green tucked among the perhaps-ruins below, and immaculate, carefully tended buildings and grounds above- Those contrasts make for an interesting place, one I’ve enjoyed spending some time exploring.

Materials, tools: Strathmore Bristol Board; General charcoal pencils, Grades 6B and HB; Dixon Ticonderoga Graphite pencils, Numbers 1-4; kneaded erasers; Q-Tips.

To view the finished drawing, click here.

In Silence, Scan 4

I wanted the adjacent buildings to tie the tower into its setting, without compromising its impact or obscuring its brightly lit face, so I kept the new shapes and rooflines simple, clean, complementary. The small building breaks up the horizontals, and the light falling across it becomes another focal element. Trees and bushes function in the same way, and soften shapes, surfaces, edges. More sky smoothed, values adjusted throughout the drawing- Always an ongoing process. The cliff to right remains a work in progress.

Part 5

In Silence, Scan 3

Here, I’ve adjusted and cleaned up the tower’s lines, and developed its surfaces further. I like the new bridge, the flow of the bridge and walkway, and I still like the outcropping below. I’m reluctant to give up any of those elements, but though I’m usually partial to solitary, stand-alone structures, it seems clear that this tower should be the focal element of a community or campus.

Part 4

In Silence, Scan 2

In the second scan, the tower’s taking shape, and I’m working to bring the values of its roof and the sky behind into line.

Part 3

In Silence, Scan 1

In Silence is a charcoal and graphite drawing on heavyweight, acid-free Bristol Board. Tools include General charcoal pencils, Dixon Ticonderoga graphite pencils, kneaded erasers, and cotton buds. The drawing began with a light, nearly random blotting and rubbing of charcoal dust, applied with a cotton ball. I roughed in the tower’s shape by lifting out lights with a kneaded eraser shaped to a fine point, and developed detail with very sharp pencils, stippling from light to dark.

Exploration and discovery remain a priority of my process. In the first work-in-progress scan, above, I like elements of the outcropping to the right of the tower. But the crag the tower stands on doesn’t seem substantial enough, and the tower already seems to need adjacent structures.

Part 2

Small Steps

If someone unfamiliar with any of my work were to view an unidentified selection of my drawings from ten years ago, or five, when I was working primarily in ink and graphite, then view a selection of recent pieces, say from the last year or two- Would they sense or imagine or expect them all to be the work of the same artist? I wonder.

If not, well, that’s probably a good thing. Considerations of marketability aside, if my work isn’t continuing to evolve in a way that’s perceptible in the finished pieces, then I probably haven’t learned or grown much in their doing.

I wish sometimes that the differences between a new piece and the last were more obvious, more radical, that the growth represented were greater. For me, growth has never seemed about big leaps, but a series of small steps. Like most aspects of personal artmaking, it’s hard to be objective about that; maybe I’m just too impatient, and not giving myself enough credit.

Dissatisfaction, though, is a good thing. I’m always trying to narrow that gap between what I want to achieve, and what I can. And as long as I’m continuing to move forward, small steps are okay too.

Keith Jarrett, interviewed by Ted Rosenthal for Piano and Keyboard, 1996

In Silence

In Silence
Charcoal, Graphite; 5 1/2” x 16 1/4”

In Silence is the largest drawing I’ve done in several years. It’s been on the drawing table for a few weeks, and I’m happy with the result. More on this drawing shortly. Click on the image to view at actual size.

Recent reads, both short stories:

At Archipelago, Tracy Robinson’s Open Your Eyes, Red
At Barbara Campbell’s 1001 Nights, M. John Harrison’s Not A Hint Of Irony

James Skvarch

James Skvarch, Going Over the Sketches for the Last of the Big Paintings
Etching, 18" x 24", 1989

I first saw James Skvarch’s work nearly twenty years ago at an arts festival in Ithaca, New York. The Commons were crazy that weekend, James Skvarch’s booth was busy, and I didn’t stick around to tell him how much I liked his work. I should have grabbed a card; I probably thought I’d remember his name. Or if not, I’d run into him again at another show, another year. But I didn’t.

Years later, when finding an artist’s work became simply a matter of Googling their name or a work’s title, one day I thought, Hey, what about that guy we saw that year at the Ithacafest? I remembered, I was sure, at least one title–Well, as it turned out, not exactly. So Google couldn’t help either.

It’s hard to reach back now, recapture much of my initial impression of James Skvarch’s work. Memory-postcards of that day have browned to sepia, corners curled up the way they do; detail is lost in the creases, bleached away in the faded sunlight of that long-gone summer afternoon. Mostly, I remember thinking that those drawings (I’d find I'd gotten that wrong too; they were etchings) felt like illustrations for John Crowley’s Little, Big.

That much, at least, I got right.

Then in January 2007, on Charley Parker’s blog Lines and Colors, this post on James Skvarch. And in his site’s Archives, the image I’d remembered, Going Over the Sketches for the Last of the Big Paintings.

James Skvarch's work is imaginative, inspiring. His etchings and paintings have a timelessness about them, a wonderful sense of mystery and distance and intimacy and endless beckoning possibility, all at once. All qualities, of course, that I admire, and hope remain at the heart of my own work.

James Skvarch on Lines and Colors
James Skvarch’s website

Reading: John Crowley’s Love and Sleep. New trade paperback reissue of the Aegypt Cycle from Small Beer Press

Now Playing: Jay Calder’s The Second Quadrant. Stellar acoustic guitar from the cd Breakfast With Barnabas