Groundhog Sighting and Bulb Pot Update

The beautiful bulb pot, the last in a series of three, is slowly moving into its return phase.  The last of the flowers are beginning to loosen and droop,, and the foliage is turning thin and yellow.  In a few days this pot will join the other one on the back porch in order to complete the returning of energy to bulbs and begin the quiet dormant period.  

Meanwhile the amaryllis, which began its glacial development back in December, is now actually getting ready to bloom.  And there are two blooms coming out of the bulb! 

This afternoon P and I walked back to the meadow behind our house, and on our way we spotted some action around the three groundhog holes that are in our little woods near the fenceline.  P had seen a groundhog sitting in the back woods a week or so ago, and we had thought 'great! at least one groundhog didn't see its shadow!'  Further confirmation today:  all three holes had clay-colored prints leading from the holes to adjacent holes, and in one case, the tracks led under the fence and out to the meadow.  One hole is dug under a patch of English ivy, and the cast off clay has raised a mound of ivy-covered clay that is now ivy-covered snow.  We know how deeply we have been sunk into winter funk when we get excited about groundhog action.  And not only groundhogs, but the snowdrops are getting ready to bloom, and the lenten roses have made it through the hard freezes of the past weeks!

Drawings of Space Around

Today's drawings were all over the sketch for the print.  I was only able to scan half at a time and for some reason photoshop isn't letting me put these two sides on the same layout.  Not a problem really except that I can't show the whole thing joined.  But you can see some more finished transitions and spaces.  I'm ready to start putting it on the blocks.  I'm calling this 5 drawings.

Environments

 I drew for hours today but not things.  Today I placed xeroxes of things [charlottes] into small environments, with which they immediately interlocked and in concert which with they took on new meanings.  My intention is to form the environments into a single multi-faceted Wide Game.  Each of these below is a section of the larger sheet of paper that I'm working on, which will ultimately be translated into a woodcut.  The whole thing is taped together sections of xerox drawn on with pen.  I have a lot more to do, but a few of these are close to the way I want them.  A few seem like they would stand on their own as small prints.

Information about Jesse

 Jesse had just settled down for a nap as it began snowing in earnest tonight.  It was a frequently-shifting nap, however, and there was no one pose that lasted long enough to qualify as a pose.  Instead this series of gesture drawings will have to do.

I think it's interesting that some of these details of Jesse look more like dogs or lemurs than cats.  Definitely profile view is not the most telling angle for a cat.  I remember from art history class the observation that the ancient Egyptians always drew humans with the face and feet in profile but the shoulders and torso facing front because these were the angles that gave the best information about the human form.  I imagine a cat standing as though walking forward in profile but with its face facing front would be the most informative angle for cat information.

Things As Events

The more closely I look at these flowers the more they become events, processes, temporary arrangements.  The same is true of people, Jesse, even the rock-hard charlottes.

Perfect

When I started drawing these I thought of them as incomplete buds in the process of emerging.  After spending an hour with them, I see them each as perfect and complete. 

Survivors

On my way to the woods today I stopped by the front garden to see what if anything was still struggling along in spite of the record-breaking cold the past few weeks.  This afternoon the sun was out and the temp was around 50, but more snow and cold are expected later tonight and tomorrow.  Meanwhile, not much is making it in the garden.  Even the hardy lacinato kale looks stone dead.  But the old onions are sending up tentative green shoots, and the new Egyptian walking onions are still green in places.  Many of the new onions had been uprooted by frost heave, so I tucked them deeper into the soil.  My friend who gave them to me said they're from New Hampshire and will make it easily. 

In the woods, the putty root is looking fine.  The mosses are bright and crisp looking.  The rhododendron leaves have relaxed from the pencil-tight furls they were in earlier this week.  Nothing else is doing much.  I smelled bear funk twice on the high trails.