Bullfrog Hills

On the spur road to Rhyolite — Jer

Friends and jury-riggings

Beatty is full of people who like to look after The Artist. The McCoys, caretakers of the Open Air Museum up the road a piece, drop in to make sure I haven’t fallen off the step ladder or been bitten by a tarantula. (No, Del, I won’t show another one of the critters, although I think they are  cute).

John Donahoe, who bought one of my paintings last year and who has a fine greyhound who respects the Studio and its artist, lent me the precise step stool I need to reach the top of the big canvases. I can actually reach the top standing on the floor, but it’s uncomfortable. With John’s stepstool, I can stand on the first step, hang onto the back of the stool with my left hand and paint with my right. Not a lot of danger there:

Then Richard Stephens showed up with a box of oil paints for me and two flutes that he made. They use a pentatonic scale, that sound that sends shivers up your spine. I made him play both in the barn and out, because I wanted to hear how the sound changed.

And I got a photo of the Red Barn from behind, looking out at the scenery from just up the hill to the north. I can never get enough photos of this scenery (although Jer seems to be stealing the show with his new equipment and better eye):

I have two small masonite board studies of Panels # 2 and #7, and I have started painting canvas panels #1 and #2. None are done well enough to be seen too publicly yet; i’m learning about clear gessoed linen and figure by the time I’ve finished the seven monsters, I might know something about how to paint it. I threw out the small-scale linen back wall panel; it was too muddy to save. I copied down where the big forms would be placed so I still have the scheme for the large pieces. Now all I have to do is paint them. Maybe next time I post I’ll have a painting worth showing. Or maybe not…… –June

Ladd Mountain

Ladd Mountain. View is to the east from the Red Barn — Jer

Canvases Cut, Studio less empty

The Red Barn studio is filling up:

The Easel in the photo is a big one — about 8 feet at its highest. So you can tell the size of the panels. Actually there are seven of them on the wall at this point (the photo of the seven that I took is really dreadful), so the whole will be 5 feet by 28 feet (each panel being 5 feet high and 4 feet wide.

I’m starting to sketch on news print and put up trial bits of canvas here and there to practice on. I’ve painted an acrylic sketch (to be seen only from a great distance), a canvas sample that misplaces the very first panel I want to paint and goes downhill from there, and, finally, a 12 x 16 masonite board, which I couldn’t see because I was observing the brilliantly lit desert from inside the relatively reasonably lit studio:

Another migrating visitor appeared on Tuesday, this time halfway across the Studio floor. I think the Red Barn is directly in its migratory path.

It got terrified and hid (but not well) in a crevice beside the door for about 3 hours. When I went to close the door, I had to use the end of a stretcher bar to whoosh it on its way. Apparently the smell of Portland moisture was enough to disgust it and out the door it went, looking a bit bewildered (un-oriented) but outside, at least for now.

So the brushes are out and about, the spiral from the first residency continues to garner a rock a day, and on Wednesday, I put up my obo. Actually I started it earlier, but with only one rock, it looked lonesome. Now it’s much more assertive.

–June

Looking southeast from the Bullfrog Hills

Near Beatty, Nevada – Jer

Beatty, Nevada and thereabouts

We are settling in. I have begun work at the Red Barn, the studio provided by the Goldwell Open Air Museum Foundation. Jer has set up his computer at his end of the dining room table in Beatty, where we are in the Goldwell House for the next five weeks or so. We saw almost everyone in town that we knew and they all seemed genuinely happy to have us back.

It was Beatty Days when we arrived and so on Sunday we went off to the Lions Club Pancake Breakfast:

Later, we saw David Lancaster and got the House keys and unpacked. Then we drove out to the Red Barn, where we were greeted by this critter:

I was glad to make his/her acquaintance, but didn’t really want to share the studio space with her, so I screeched the screen door, and she reversed course and scuttled into the sagebrush.

Before we left the Red Barn area, however, we had to pay our regards to Panamint Annie, whose grave is both well kept and strewn with pennies. I left a quarter, hoping to gain her ghostly approval. It would have been better to pour some beer on her stone, but alas, we had none with us.

And so now I get to face the work itself — the empty studio (not to mention the blank canvases) awaits me.

–June

By the way, I am keeping a residency journal of the work I do in the empty space — hopefully it will be filled by the time we leave. If you are interested in checking in on the process, here’s the link.

Highway 50 east of Austin, Nevada

– Jer