Art and Love in Wisconsin

 Displaying two perfect, squeaky squidgy Wisconsin cheese curds. From left, Master Artists Robert Bateman, Cindy House, and Not-Master Artist me.

 

The center of art in Wisconsin: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, with a fabulous crane installation called "The Dance" by Donna Dodson and Andy Moerlein.

 

What a sculpture garden this museum has! 

It's not at all like me to blog something so current, but I'm stuck for 7 hours in Detroit's airport, just trying to get home on a dreary gray day, victim of a malfunctioning emergency aisle light on a plane, that had to be fixed before it would be cleared for takeoff. That little burned out light meant I missed my connection in Detroit, and the next plane going to Akron doesn't leave Detroit until 10  tonight. That gets me in at Indigo Hill at approximately 1:30 AM, after I drive the two hours home in blinding rain. Yay. First world problems. I have a car, I have a home to go to, right? Still, it is a bit of a bummer to be so tired and not be able to get home in a remotely timely way.

Reflecting on the great time I had while in the care of Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's wonderful staff seems a good way to feel thankful while sitting in a corner on my enforced staycation. Cindy House, fabulous pastel artist and dear friend, asked me to introduce her at two functions during the Birds in Art show at which she received the Master Artist medal. I got to hang it around her neck!!  I also wrote a long article for the show catalogue, in which I attempted to say enlightened things about the importance of her glorious art. Better than that was getting to tell a lot of other artists and art appreciators how much Cindy means to me personally. I really loved getting to do that.

 

One thing I wanted everyone to know was how funny Cindy is, something that doesn't come through in her majestic pastels at all. My intro turned out well, because Cindy's talk immediately after my little speech was cripplingly funny. Here, she's describing being on enormous Antarctic seas in a hurricane, and saying, "You know you're in trouble when the maid puts a seatbelt on your bed..."

The talent packed into this wee person is inestimable. Go to her website and look at her pastels. This is one of my favorites. You can see through the waves way down into the water.

We had no trouble at all with PDA's. That's how we roll.

It was such a delight to be among friends and fellow bird artists. I got to see Elwin Van der Kolk, with his gorgeous miniature of shelducks on a mudflat.

 

Such a simple concept, but so, so beautifully realized.  His website: for more of Elwin's incredible work click here.

I've no idea how it came up, but somehow Elwin and I discovered that we had both contributed art to the cover of two different editions of Vernon Head's wonderful book, The Rarest Bird in the World: The Search for the Nechisar Nightjar. Elwin did the cover of the Dutch language edition:

 

and my painting was used for the cover of the English language paperback edition:

 

The bird is known only from one dried wing from a roadkill, which is why our paintings have a certain similarity.

More beauty--John Pitcher's breathtaking nesting parasitic jaeger.  Holy wow.

 

Irish artist Julian Friers' incredible northern fulmar painting. He's a barrel of monkeys--plays guitar and pennywhistle; paints portraits of rock stars, extinct animals and other awesome things. His website is here.

 

I gloried in a huge auxiliary exhibit of Master Artist Anne Senechal Faust's serigraphs. Oh My Gosh. 

It was such a privilege to be here among such gifted people. Utterly humbling. 

 

Speaking of soul-feeding... I got to spend some incredible quality time with the wildly talented Debby Kaspari. We made music together, yakked, talked art and life, and soaked each other in. Oh my heart.

The artists all had to stand by their paintings in the Birds in Art show, which left me orbiting rather aimlessly, and wanting to get out into the warm September sunshine. There's no way you can put out enough cheese and crackers for several thousand people, so I got really hungry at the cheeseless Saturday morning public opening.  I decided to go foraging. I only walked about five blocks before I lucked out and found some wild plums dropping their fruit with abandon along a driveway in Wausau. 

 I gobbled about a dozen of them, and wish I'd taken more.

Saturday afternoon is given over to a trip to Hazelhurst, the private estate of the Woodson family which so graciously hosts Birds in Art. There are ravishing gardens which looked fabulous, even in September.  Glorious tall Japanese anemones blew me away.

 

 

 Morning glories were just starting to bloom, and already closed for the day. Mine in Ohio are only thinking about making buds. It is ever thus.

  

 I was delighted to find a new bee for me: Tri-colored or Orange-belted Bumblebee, Bombus ternarius. It's on Sedum "Autumn Joy."

 

They're zippy little bees, tolerant but fast. 

I found a Grail--a plant I've grown but once and then lost touch with. This is Salvia patens, Gentian Sage, so called because the only flower that comes close to its jaw-dropping pure royal blue would be bottle gentian. I have to say that this salvia beats even gentian for a true blue. It's bluer than almost any delphinium I've seen. Not a hint of lavender. BLUE. blue blue electric blue. Nothing like it.  Not that I'm hung up on blue or anything.

 

Debby Kaspari, a fellow plant freak and awesome gardener, caught me massaging Salvia seedpods until I found some fat brown ripe seeds. Eureka!

 

I would imagine you know what will happen to those. It's gonna take about a year, but expect to see this plant in my garden in 2019. Garden goals!

 

Debby and I were taken on a deluxe two-person sunset pontoon boat cruise around the lake, during which we ogled a young common loon, three hooded mergansers, a bald eagle and about ten billion whirligig beetles. I fell asleep with the sun on my cheek.  I dreamt I was in a Cindy House painting.  And that is a beautiful dream indeed.

Thank you, Kathy Foley and the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum staff, for having me up to honor one of my dearest friends. It was a trip I'll never forget. 

Thank you my dear dear friends for all the love. I'm going to try and store it up for awhile. 

 

A badly-lit goodbye clench at the hotel last night. I had soul-feeding conversations with (from left) Amy Montague, Larry Barth, Cindy House, Barry (and Lisa, far left!) Van Dusen and Eric Derleth, and I'm much the better for it. Gosh I love these people. I feel so lucky to call them friends. Shoutout to my beloved James Coe who was yakkin' elsewhere when this shot was taken.

 

Now to walk .6 miles in search of dinner. DTW Terminal A, here I come.

Paradise in North Wisconsin

Oh, I love my artist friends. Here's Barry Van Dusen studying an open-winged damselfly. He's one of those people who has taken his bird ID skills and simply transferred them to dragonflies, fish, what have you. He's also probably America's top life sketcher. I can't imagine anyone who does it more, or better.
By now we were all up near Minoqua, diggin' the boreal scene.

The only sure antidote for having to lug your 47-lb. suitcase, which is crammed with six pairs of dress shoes and six different outfits, and attending those formal functions and making smileynice all day, is to walk in the woods. The LYWAM staff knows that, so just when we're all smiled and chitchatted out, they throw us on a bus, where we gab and laugh among ourselves for two hours, and we magically arrive in Serenityville, also known as Hazelhurst. Which is the Woodson family estate, which we are most privileged to enjoy for an afternoon.

Upon arriving, we walk through a forest where mysterious artists have gone before us

and one of our number pauses to paint the autumn-tinged landscape. I gave Lars Jonsson a copy of Letters from Eden, with an inscription that I hope helped him understand what his art means to me. It's not often you get to thank people whose vision has changed yours. Here, he's whipping up a nearly-instant landscape while the rest of us are yakking and dawdling along the trail behind him. Hats off.

Barry Van Dusen and Lars Jonsson compare sketchbooks.

Elsewhere, deadly fly amanitas push their buttons up through spongy loam.
We wander through a garden that must be tended by magical fairies to have so much color in mid September...
and catch one of the fairies, a snowberry clearwing, at work.
The garden's beauty, and the intoxicating scent of nicotiana and phlox, set the soul to rest.
Here's where the fairies live when they're not primping the flowers. Can you imagine having a playhouse like this, buried in the north woods?

My sincere thanks to the Woodson family, and to the amazing staff of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, for making all of us artists feel special and thoroughly honored for that magical weekend. Each person on that staff is a gem; together they are unbeatable. Let's face it: most of us artists work in comparative solitude, and with adversity waiting just outside the door in these economic times, life does not exactly roll out the red carpet for us every day. This kind of event, so carefully and thoughtfully planned and executed, is why they call Wisconsin the Heartland.

More Birds in Art

The trouble with the Birds in Art exhibition opening in Wausau, WI is that it happens too fast. You get there on a Thursday night, and on Friday you have four functions to go to, on Saturday you are committed for the morning at the museum for the public opening, and then they whisk you off to northern WI near Minoqua to a retreat, and on Sunday you go home. I did all that, and gave a public talk on Sunday. Pheeew. It was really, really fun but I am staggering a little as I contemplate my unmown lawn and house all primed for cleaning again, plus the fact that I leave Thursday morning for three days of pure fun and work at the Midwest Birding Symposium.

I didn't take many photos of paintings, just because I was overstimulated, but this one by Dutch artist Elwin Van der Kolk thoroughly charmed me.


I like paintings that have other paintings within them.


It's nice to see paintings that make me want to paint. There were a whole lot of those at the opening. It hangs through mid-November, so if you're within striking distance of Wausau, you should go!
courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

Here's our Master Artist, John Busby, in the fetching salmon-pink jacket, along with my dear friend Jim Coe. Here's Jim's evocative painting of a redtail circling over Cindy House's well-painted backyard. (She is probably the only person whose backyard has ever been featured twice in a single Birds in Art exhibition. It is some backyard. One of the fringe benefits of belonging to our little Artists' Group.)

Cindy House was there, which automatically means that there would be a great deal of laughing done. She adheres to Murr Brewster's adage that "really, most things are funny." Here, from left, are Suellen Ross (she of the fabulous hummingbird nest watercolor), Cindy House, and your blogger.courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

Cindy also creates a mood in her pastel paintings like nobody else. Her painting of her beloved turkeys going to roost on a January afternoon really sticks with me.That backyard, again. Isn't it beautiful?

My paintings were hanging in the foyer so I wandered around in the Birds in Art exhibition a lot because that's where the wine, cheese, people and sausage were.

That's also where lovely Debby Kaspari (Drawing the Motmot!), her matching sister Dorianne, and painter Jim Coe were.courtesy of the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum (stolen from their Facebook page)

So now you can see my friends' work, and also how cute they all are. More from Wausau tomorrow.

I won't be posting on Thursday night--too bizzy. See you next week, if not at the Midwest Birding Symposium! Walk-ins are welcome!

Birds in Art

I'm posting from my friends Yo and Kate's home in Columbus, where I collapsed, as is my regular wont, upon returning to CMH airport at 10 pm. They always have a nice bed and dinner leftovers, which I can tell you are much, much better than my dinner leftovers, waiting for me. I wanted to show you some things from the Birds in Art show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI, where I've spent the last four days.

It's so exciting and inspiring to see the works of 112 artists from around the world, all of them dealing with birds in some way. It's even better to hang out with those artists, and discover all our common ground, from health insurance and cash flow issues to the quirks of our creative process. I took only a few photos (for me), being much more interested in living it. Apologies for bad color and flubby retouching. It's hard to get a good photo in dim gallery lighting.

I had the pleasure of seeing paintings from Catherine McClung
and Suellen Ross
watercolorists who do what I do but do it a whole lot better. Whew. What gorgeous, lush work! and what wonderful people they are. I look at these paintings and marvel. I know what went into them all too well. Glorious!

John Busby, from Scotland, is this year's Master Artist, an honor overdue. Here are his diving boobies.
There's no one who can see and sketch birds in flight like John Busby. His paintings are so lively, so full of action, and every bird spot on.

I love his "society scenes" like this one.
John draws what he sees, and his compositions are such fun to wander within.

I spent a great deal of time talking with sculptor/woodcarver extraordinaire, Larry Barth. These completely pitiful photos of his mountain bluebird piece do nothing to enhance its beauty, but they will give you a dim idea of his skill and vision.
The razor-thin edge of a bluebird wing.
This is wood, believe it or not. And despite the poor color here, it is incandescent blue.
I wish I could convey all Larry and I talked about, the whys and hows of carving exquisite birds, the convoluted path that leads to a piece like this. It's really the stuff of a book. Talking with Larry Barth is like entering a library, pulling one volume after another off the shelf. I feel blessed to know these folks, to incorporate their artistic viewpoints into mine.

Zickefoose in Wisconsin

What is this frog eating? Read on...

I'm about to leave for four days in Wisconsin, where I'll have a special exhibit of 16 paintings opening alongside the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's venerated Birds in Art exhibition this very weekend, September 11-13. You can find out more here. Be sure to scroll down to find me. I can hardly believe it's going to happen. This year's Master Artist is John Busby, whose sketches and paintings of living birds just fly off the page, so vigorous and true are his lines. Some of my best buddies will also be attending and showing work, including James Coe, Cindy House, Debby Kaspari and Barry Van Dusen.

Please, if you don't already know their work, hit those links and see why I'm so proud of my artist friends.

And if you are anywhere near Wausau, Wisconsin, please come see us, and this amazing show of bird art from all over the world! I'll be speaking and signing books at 1 pm Sunday, September 13, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. It's also "Artrageous Weekend," a terrific time to visit Wausau. Bird art, street art, food, cheese. What's not to love?

As you might imagine, I'm kind of busy, leaving tomorrow morning. I have a To Do list that would choke Fergus the Frog. If you don't know who that is, give this story of my bird-eating bullfrog a read. Thought I should leave you with something fun to do.