Cups of Coffee

March 28, 2010: Cups of Coffee   My mother's busy days were measured by cups of coffee. I learned at a young age not to be too chatty with her until she had finished her first china cup of hot "Taster's Choice", lightened with a teaspoon of "Coffeemate" and one tiny white "Saccharine" tablet. Several more cups throughout the day gave her a chance to relax while she scanned the morning paper, read the afternoon mail, and watched the Late Night News on TV.   After Sunday dinners, she and her sisters would congregate with their cups and saucers around the table, looking at ads from the paper. "Anybody want more?" Aunt Doris would ask, coffeepot in hand. "Sure!" Aunt Lu would say, sliding her cup and saucer closer. "You, Margie?" My mother would shrug and "Oh, I guess so." As they sipped coffee together, huddled around the table, I would hear "Here's a letter from our sister Jeannie"... "Edward's" has sheets on sale this week"..." and "Can't wait to get a perm this Thursday"...   One morning when I was about sixteen, my mother sat sipping her first cup of coffee as usual.  Before I could think of what I was saying, I blurted out, "That really smells good to me!" Even though she was only a few sips through her first cup, she looked up at me, and smiled congenially. "Would you like to try a cup?" "Why yes, I think I will," I replied.   She poured steaming water into a china cup, and I nervously stirred the ingredients together and took my first sip. It was delicious! We celebrated my rite of passage into the sisterhood of coffee sippers with a lunch (and of course, a cup of coffee) at Edward's Cherry Valley Room in Downtown Syracuse.   We shared many sips of coffee together in the years ahead. And today, I'm drinking several cups of coffee in memory of you, Mom, on what would have been your 94th birthday.

Undercover Art

March 8, 2010: Undercover Art In my conversations with other artists, we all lament the difficulty of knowing when a work is done. It's hard not to add just one more definitive stroke, or make that one tree a tad lighter. This week I've been working on an acrylic painting that I began last fall, and just hadn't resolved. As you can see in "Summer Breezes", it began as a cool, rather stark rendering of a solitary house against the sky. I had fun being loose with the strokes, and experimenting with some different colors, but the feedback from my circle of critics was not enthusiastic, so...  I went undercover. Going undercover means searching for new direction on a previous work, much like snow melting (as it finally is here in Ohio this week!) to reveal crocus buds in the frozen earth. It was a complex journey to the "final" image of "Spring Welcome", acrylic on canvas. At one point, three tall pine trees loomed on the left side! But for now, I'm sounding the buzzer. It's done! And it speaks of spring's arrival just down that path.

February 18, 2010: Power Lines

February 18, 2010: Power Lines   For well over a year, I've had a drawing idea in the queue, waiting for its turn to become one of my colored pencil drawings. This week I began working on my concept.   It seemed so ordinary, just a reference shot looking down the railroad tracks, taken after a freight train had passed through a nearby crossing. But something about the distant power lines etched and stretched across the opaque February sky kept calling to me. Perhaps it was the memory of the power lines that cut through our family farm in Central New York.    In the distance is a collection of all sorts of power line towers and poles, some wooden, others metal. Each has a different configuration, forming an intricate tracery of scaffolding connecting earth to sky. I love the way the cables cross the sky, carrying stored power of invisible sky sentences on delicately lined writing paper.   The train is far down the tracks now. Everything is still and desolate on this bleak winter day, yet somehow vivid with implication.  I am reminded of a high school speech teacher who demonstrated how a whisper can have more impact than a shout.

February 5, 2010 A Special Day

Today my father, William Arnold, would have celebrated his 88th birthday. Just hours before he made his transition, he wanted us to take pictures of all of us together, and he managed a big smile. This is my favorite image of that smile.   From my earliest memories he recorded the daily events of our lives with his Kodak. He bought one of the first Polaroids. I can still smell the chemicals and feel the magic of watching  the image magically appear on paper from just a few minutes earlier! Dad also recorded holidays and birthdays with his 35 mm movie camera.   He was a fastidious keeper of diaries, and always urged me to write down the day's events. He sent me his weekly entries right up until his last hospitalization. Each day was important, and each life significant.   Thanks to my father, I have a vast archive of imagery to draw upon for inspiration. He would be proud to see the hundreds of photos and pages of journal entries that I use in my drawings and paintings.

January 29, 2010 Idea Auditions

January 29, 2010 Idea Auditions   Part of art-making is finding order in the chaos of ideas. Which images should I select for this new year? I always find the process exciting yet exhausting as I categorize images into piles of "winners", "losers", or "try again next year". I  fear that I will misfile, overlook, or trash a really good idea. In the reality show of my studio, I have to keep the inner critics from too quickly eliminating a contestant, yet I rely on them to help me whittle the images down to a realistic number. Somehow, order must prevail over chaos.   Idea auditions end this week.  Next week production begins in the colored pencil and painting studios.