In Maria's Treasure Box

Today's drawings were a pure pleasure to do. My friend Maria had generously invited me to draw whatever I wanted from among the treasures that she keeps in an African dowry box.  I started with a goddess figure made of bronze that came from Ecuador and is around 500 years old.  Next was a very old female figure from the Ivory Coast in Africa.  Both these figures were small, around 3 -4" tall.  The third thing I drew was larger and made of cloth and Spanish moss.  It was a reproduction New Orleans voudou doll, constructed around a crossed stick and made of cloth wrapped around a moss stuffing.  The name Erpulie was written on a tag, and I wondered of this was a variant of Erzulie, one of the main female saints in New Orleans voudou.

The three figures on the left hand side of this page are Peruvian burial dolls that were intended to be used as grave guardians.  Maria thinks they are old but obviously had not been placed in a grave.  All three were tacked onto a cloth backing that was sort of like a pillow.  On the right side of the page is an African shaman's divination hat that Maria bought at a street market in NYC years ago when she lived there. 

My favorite places to draw are in the African room at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and in the Met in this country and in various Etruscan museums in Italy.  Drawing at Maria's today was even better.  Having the luxury of spending so much time focusing on the details and being able to touch and smell these mysterious objects was like traveling to another time and place.  Best of all no alarms went off when I leaned in too close, and no guard barked at me to stand back!  Thank you, Maria!

Late, Late Summer Woods

This has been a summer of enormous dripping all-engulfing dampness.  The mushrooms have been thick on the ground in the woods.  But this evening we noticed that very few remain, and those that are still hanging on are blasted, gnawed on, broken, bruised.  The light has changed, the dampness has lifted, and toads have taken over from katydids at night.  On the right side of this page-- Jerusalem artichokes growing across from the orchard, with a large jumping spider just starting her nightly web.

Along the trail the remnants of a few mushrooms were hidden under the first leaf-fall.  Almost everything had been nibbled on.

At the far end of the trail before it turns toward the top of the mountain, yet another stand of dark and dry Indian pipes.  And on the right, a large brown mushroom broken in half so that the surprising white inside showed, like a chocolate candy with a coconut cream center.

Goats!

Driving past the goats on Highway 70 this afternoon I noticed that the berm in front of the goat yard that faces the highway looked accessible.  It was newly-mown and seemed to have a relatively wide path between the electric fence and the drop -off to the highway below.  I realized I had completely overlooked simply leaving my car on the road that goes by the dentist's office and then walking around the front of the dentist's front yard and up the side of the berm.  The goats are always on that side of the yard anyway.  So immediately after dinner tonight as the sun was setting I raced down the highway and pulled into the little street and parked in front of the row of mailboxes near the corner.  It was so easy to climb up the berm, and when I got to the goat fence, a dozen or so goats came ambling over to greet me.

They stood mah-ing at me and I mah-ed back at them.  They were jolly and playful.  A bunch of them watched while I started sketching.  Then they got back to clambering up and down the steep, rocky slope of the yard, eating weeds and brambles as they went along.  They moved constantly!  I just let my hand dance along with them, barely looked at the page beyond checking to make sure I was still ON the page.

Here are some observations:  Most of the goats were mothers with very large udders.  I wondered at first if they wanted to be milked;  then I noticed that there were some babies in the group, so no need for humans to milk those mamas! These are white goats with black patches, short-haired, and with horns that are flat like blades and beautifully curving.

The udders of the goats were shaped very different from cow udders.  They were seamed down the middle and the nipples stuck out toward either side.  The goats all had short, fluffy tails. ( I googled goat breeds when I got home since I know nothing at all about goats, and the closest match I could find was Anglo-Nubian for the breed.)

They were enormously nimble, chewing on leaves while balancing in the most precarious-looking positions.  I loved drawing these goats!  It was completely worth having bugs land on me constantly and trucks whizzing by on the highway a few feet away.  Up there on the berm it was all sweet goat sounds and smells and evening coming on with a few katydids and a bottle-blue sky.

Jesse Sleeps It Off

Jesse spent all night outside last night.  Several times we woke up to battle cries and hissing from far corners of the yard.  This morning he spent a long time grooming himself to utter perfection.  His nemesis, a fluffy gray boycat, ambled across our front garden once or twice, then disappeared.

Around 10:00 Jesse settled down and slept until late this afternoon, at which time he woke up and

stretched, looking maybe kind of sheepish.  Then he settled down to sleep some more.

Instead of Goats--

There's a scrappy piece of land on a steep hilltop adjacent to the local family dentistry office that has suddenly acquired a herd of goats. I almost had an accident driving past it today, craning my neck to  see the goats, who were hard at work clearing the weeds and scrubby bushes.  My mission was to go back out there this evening and draw the goats, but there was no place to park along the highway, and the dentist office parking lot was bristling with signs threatening no trespassing and video surveillance and 24 hour towing.  I decided to risk being towed, figuring there was no real problem because it was after hours, right?  But no sooner had I scrambled up the steep bank and started walking along the narrow path that ran between a ticking electric fence and a sharp drop, then a large dog bounded out of the woods beyond the fenced area followed by its shouting owner.  All this, and the goats could not be seen from this side of the lot.  So I quickly changed plans and found a quiet rural road with some interesting outbuildings to draw instead.

At top left is what must be a horse barn.  The four double doors seem to open onto stalls, and there's an empty hay rack of some kind attached to the building.  I didn't see any signs of horses, and the fencing was old barbed wire;  so this place might be abandonned.

Across the road and down about a quarter of a mile was the barn-like building on the bottom left.  Its slatted sides reminded me of a very old Portuguese canastro that I saw last spring while in Porto, Portugal.  A canastro, I have learned, was a little barn used to dry corn.  The sides are slatted and it's raised up on short pillars to discourage rodents.  This barn/corn crib that I drew was not as well-fashioned as a canastro, but it was interesting to see how the trees were used to hold up the shed roof and stones formed pillars to hold up the downhill side.  I really enjoy drawing this kind of building.

On the right-hand page, a goat milking stand that's in the woods near my house.  Originally this stand stood square, but it's slowly composting in place, and the whole thing leans to the left and has vines growing over it.

On the left page, above, is an abandoned goat shed in the woods at the foot of Jones Mountain.  This is a small structure, about the size of a large doghouse.  It was built by college students in the 60s who were planning to raise goats in the woods to help keep the underbrush in the nearby orchard trimmed.  The plan didn't work because the goats kept running away.  On the right is one of the old-growth trees that grows just across from the goat shed.

Woods: Lovely, Dappled, Dripping

Phil and I hiked all morning on the Mountains to the Sea trail.  It was early enough that the trees were still dripping from last night's showers and this morning's fog.  Sunlight was breaking through, and things were quietly scurrying in the underbrush.  The occasional pilliated swooped across the path barking its cry.  One of the first things I found was a small pair of dessicated Indian pipes next to a gnawed-on russola mushroom and a baby pine tree.  A bit farther along the trail was a dry-constructed stone bench.  And then a great surprise: a terrapin parked in the middle of the path!  I drew it several times, got really close.  It held perfectly still, a far better model than Jesse ever dreamed of being.

Here's the third and most- finished drawing of the terrapin.  I added the color after we got home.  When I finally stepped around the terrapin and started back up the trail, Phil pointed out his best find of the morning-- an enormous caterpillar holding onto a grape leaf stem and chewing on the leaf.  It was chocolate brown with excellent eye-like spots in black and white, the whole thing as long as my index finger and about as big around, perfectly smooth.

We found many wild orchids, and so I drew a couple of those; and when we got to the overlook, we sat for a while looking over the whole valley below.  I didn't have time to draw the entire thing so did a texture strip instead, starting at the clouds above the highest mountain peak and ending at some middle ground trees.

More Cats, Cows

I spent both days this weekend with a group of friends printing very large woodcut blocks using a steamroller.  There were 12 of us who worked on 3 foot x 3 foot or larger blocks during the past couple of months, and this weekend we all brought our blocks over to Asheville BookWorks, where owner/director Laurie Corral had rented a steamroller and organized one of her studios for us to do this gigantic job.  Be sure to check out BookWorks' website -- www.ashevillebookworks.com-- over the next few days for pictures of this event!  Anyway, at the end of the day yesterday I felt like the cat drawings on this page.  All I was able to do was fall on the bed and sketch Jesse, who was conveniently snoozing on the floor nearby.

Today was a lighter work day, just a couple of us finishing up some extra prints, and after I got home I went down to the corner and drew the cows as they shifted back and forth across the field, following some rhythm of their own and followed by a flock of birds.

After a few more cow drawings, I came home and plopped down and drew Jesse again.