the flops, aka shitty first drafts

In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott refers often to the “shitty first draft” as she encourages writers to get something, anything on paper as a way to begin. It rarely is anything worth keeping.

The lesson applies to painting, too, and when I’m working on paper, the shitty first drafts get tossed onto a shelf or cut up to use as gift tags or to collage into other pieces. Paintings on panels get multiple layers, so there is a long process of adding and taking away until I’m pleased with what’s appearing on the surface. I started those cloud paintings during my recent artist residency at Cedar Point Biological Station as a way to get started with something. I also played around pressing leaves into paint, using dried stalks as tools for making marks and sprinkling sand into wet paint. None of these experiments yielded anything worth sharing, but were part of my exploring the place in my work. The puffy clouds will either get cut into pieces or covered with additional layers until they are unrecognizable as these particular works.

I did make two paintings explicitly based on the shapes and colors of the landscape at Cedar Point and share images below. While they’ll both get signed and probably framed, I’m really only happy with one of them. The second painting has an ease about it while the first one feels overworked. It’s also true that what I see as overworked may actually appeal to a particular viewer because it’s a bit more literal and does have some whimsy about it.

one of two paintings on paper based explicitly on the Cedar Point landscape.

Another painting on paper based on Cedar Point. I prefer this painting for the flow of the composition, the variety of textures and the sense of ease it conveys.

Shared spaces

One of the great things about participating in an artist residency is meeting other artists. Learning how they approach their subjects, what questions drive them, how they manipulate their materials to tell their stories help me examine my own methods, materials and media.

During my two weeks at the Cedar Point Biological Station, I spent time with three other artists who are doing really interesting work.
Jennifer Bockerman and I shared studio space for several days. She worked on large mixed media pieces on paper as I painted. After leaving Cedar Point, she spent a week in New York City with the Art21 Summer Institute for educators and then went back to Cedar Point for another week. She teaches art to middle-school students in Lincoln, Neb., and helps lead international trips through EFTours.
Sophia Ruppert created a table-top sculpture using parts of yucca plants and also cast plaster figures during her time at Cedar Point. We spent a foggy morning gathering fringed sage, also called prairie sagewort, (artemisia frigida) to tie into fragrant bundles. She’s completing her MFA at University of Nebraska-Lincoln next year and expects her thesis show to examine gender roles and family narratives.
Anne Yoncha worked on a large pencil drawing of prairie plants highlighted with ink she made from red cedar needles, and we spent several evenings watching sunsets and storms move across the open landscape. After recently completing her MFA at the University of Montana, she’s off to spend a year in Finland on a Fulbright grant.

I’m looking forward to following all these young women as they further their careers!

Connections and intersections

After several days working in the studio during my residency at Cedar Point Biological Station, I was eager to pedal a few miles. I loaded my trusty commuter, Sage, onto the rack on the back of my van and drove over the Kingsley Dam into the state recreation area around Lake McConaughy. I pedaled along the lake road, grateful that much of the Independence Day crowd had left the area. It was a warm, windy morning and the route offered a few small climbs on the way to the LeMoyne entrance into the park. I enjoyed seeing blooming wildflowers, waving grasses and a single mule deer watching me from under a canopy of trees. After my ride, I drove around the Lake Ogallala state park, seeing a girl running to launch a rainbow-fish kite and watching the spray at the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District facility.

As I drove back toward Cedar Point, I turned to look around the Hilltop Inn property. As I was reading the marker noting the dates of the dam’s construction, I realized the view was very close to that of the Ogallala camera taking photos for the Platte Basin Timelapse project. As a longtime admirer of Michael Forsberg and Michael Farrell’s photography, videography and prairie advocacy, I was excited to know I was near a camera that was gathering images for this interesting compilation. I looked for the camera and found it. It felt like a celebrity sighting! I suppose it just shows what a geek I can be about the Great Plains.

Plaque at Kingsley Dam noting it was completed as a public works project in 1941 when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. The view was familiar.

and there’s the camera, mounted on this tower, taking images for the Platte River Basin Timelapse project

On Saturday, I left Cedar Point and stopped in Kearney for lunch at Tru Cafe, strolled down a few blocks downtown and into the Museum of Nebraska Art to see the exhibit “A River Runs Through It.” For so many reasons, including my ongoing collaboration around river themes with Marcia Joffe-Bouska and Tom Quest, I was interested in seeing the exhibit. And what a treat it was to see photos by Michael Farrell as part of the main exhibit and an entire adjoining gallery devoted to the Platte Basin Timelapse project.

During a storm earlier in the week, Kearney saw intense rainfalls and resulting flooding. This year has been filled with stories of rivers overflowing their banks in Nebraska, and those images and ideas will certainly affect future art-making, although I’m not quite sure yet what shapes they will take. Look for some of those explorations in an expanded exhibit of “Rivers,” which will travel to Norfolk Arts Center in December and will be on display through February 2020.

Books and boots

After hiking with a group of students and artists at Cedar Point Biological Station last Tuesday, I realized my sneakers weren’t quite sturdy enough to support my aging ankles when climbing on rocky trails. After a few more days of sketching, painting and hiking a bit, I decided to spend Saturday exploring Ogallala. I visited the farmers market and enjoyed a cold brew from Slow Lane Coffee. I visited the local library and found a book I thought perfect for reading during the evenings at the station, The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker. When the librarian on duty told me I could only use it at the library, a waiting patron offered to let me check it out on her account. I was grateful for this display of hospitality and returned the book several days later after reading a wealth of prompts to contemplate.

Gotta love this turquoise bike parked at the entrance to Ogallala’s public library.

In addition to scouting local libraries, I seek out local independent bookstores and found a gem of a shop, Hokes Bookstore, which had a good selection of titles focused on the region. I didn’t clean out the section with my purchases, but made good additions to my personal collection of Nebraska literature and guides. To get familiar with a place, I want to know more of the stories and learn about what makes it distinctive. Discovering what grows and who lives here, and how those have changed over time are topics worth exploring.

When I strolled into Bomgaars, I was pleased to see that boots were discounted, so after trying on a few pairs, settled on the arch and ankle support offered by the Ariats pictured above. I’ve worn them nearly every day since I bought them and feel much more sure-footed on the rocky trails around the station.

A few days later, I received a package. A friend had thought of me while reading a book and insisted on sending it to me while I was away from home. Thanks, Ann G., for What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas. With its descriptions of friendship, aging, betrayal and forgiveness, it is a guide for appreciating the present moment, finding absurdity and humor every day, and celebrating love.

So while I may be striding with more confidence today, I’m also stopping often to watch, listen and learn.

Change of pace; change of place

Settling into a new place for a short time reminds me to slow down and pay attention, and that’s one of the reasons I’m interested in participating in artist residencies. I spent last week and will continue through the next week as a guest at Cedar Point Biological Station, a former Girl Scout camp that the University of Nebraska-Lincoln purchased in the mid-1970s and has used as a biological station since then. For a few years, artists have been added to the mix of classes, research projects and naturalist training workshops that meet here every summer.

While I’ve started many paintings on paper and have spent part of each day working in the lab-space-turned-studio, I’ve also spent a fair bit of time just watching the grasses and flowers, the American pelicans on the lake, the cardinals and finches and turkeys visiting the feeders, the lizards and butterflies and dragonflies that flit across the trails. The skies are vast and ever-changing. Last night lightning flashed across the lake while above me I could see stars and the Milky Way against blue-black sky.

Rob Walker begins his book The Art of Noticing with this passage: “Pay attention,” Susan Sontag once advised a young audience; she was speaking of the creative process, but also of living. “It’s all about paying attention. It’s all about taking in as much of what’s out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you’ll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others, It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

Slipping away for a short time from my everyday routine helps me recalibrate and then return with more attention and eagerness. It’s one reason such a trip is so restorative. The paintings I make during my stay may not turn out to be anything more than exercises and experiments, but for me they’re only a small part of why I’m here. Having the time and space to really slow down, sometimes just stopping to watch the play of light on grasses and flowers, or to appreciate the lizard or butterfly accompanying me on the trail, or to look up at the variation of cloud shapes, shades of blue, the light of millions of stars are much better reasons. And they’ll remind me to do the same thing back home.