2023 CAC Artist Fellowship application

Of course I didn’t get a fellowship. I didn’t recognize any names on any of the three categories.

The CAC Fellowship will support my ongoing creative art practice by giving me time to develop more writing and to publish a backlog of work. I have several book-length poetry manuscripts, and material from ongoing projects including travel journals and memoir—including meeting with poets and artists in the USSR, and Latin America when I traveled with mentor poet/translator, John Oliver Simon. 

I am also a photographer with a large archive of photos of notable poets and writers that spans 40 years. I’m in the process of scanning thousands of negatives that I plan to make available with my writing via print and web before I die. I‘m 71. COVID taught me that time is finite. Some of my B&W photography is online here My historic photos of poets and notable people have recently appeared in The Weed Museum traveling exhibit, and the soon-to-be-released Julia Vinograd documentary, Between Spirit & Stone.
During COVID isolation, I joined several Zoom writing groups which led my writing in new directions. One writing group I belong to has generated enough new material for several full length books, one of which I've submitted to Gunpowder Press. 

In the previous narrative boxes, I've discussed my teaching career—and about passing on the baton. I discovered it's important to train other artists in order to facilitate change through the poetic process. Then there is the next generation of students to carry on the tradition. Teaching has been at the epicenter of my creative process, and inspiring others also informs my own work. I discovered I do not work in a vacuum, I need interaction with community, whether it's protesting against the government or social injustice, or reflecting upon the environment. But now it's time to pull back, and make my own work available to larger audiences.

Nothing rhymes with…

City Hall. Used with permission, Donald Kinney photo c. 2023

Last night, City Hall was lit up with orange lights to support the SF Giants, but street photographer, Donald Kinny noted that it looked more red than orange. Well, technically, if this were the early Renaissance, then he would be right—it is red, scarlet or cadmium red. Not orange.

Before 1510, the term yellow-red was used (geoluread in Old English—say it aloud with a swallowed g = y) or red-yellow to describe orange. Or the color orange was referred to as tawny (probably a Celtic loan-word). Saffron and green were the most favored colors for Medieval Irish clothing. I imagine that gold was also used to describe orange. It got me asking, why did the English language suddenly have the need to distinguish the colors red from yellow with a new word?

Weirdly the English word orange is a relative linguistic newcomer. It’s a “new” color name, meaning it wasn’t recognized as a separate color name in English until the 1500s….so, yes, some reds border on orange. Especially the light cadmium reds.  

I didn’t understand that when I was taking painting classes at College of Marin why cadmium orange and red were so close in color. I dislike orange. I was pretty relieved when I discovered that color newcomer, alizarin crimson as I favor the blue reds versus the yellow reds. Also alizarin crimson was way less toxic than the cadmiums. Poor mad Vincent. Was it the cadmium yellows and reds he used responsible for his affliction?

Letting my fingers do the walking through the Google pages, I found this: “The first recorded use of "orange" as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor.” Curious as to where the term came from, I discovered that it probably came from the Old French, pomme d'orenge. 

Curiouser yet, the color term took 600 years after oranges arrived in Europe, for the color to be named in English by way of those Normans. Perhaps politics and the Reformation played into it? As in the House of Orange? The word orange, or flan bhui is flag-yellow, as there is no word for orange in Irish (oráiste is the fruit) is a politically charged color in Ireland, signifying oppression and the division of Ireland. 

And of course, as you know, in English, nothing rhymes with orange. Unless it’s a Giants home game. Then all bets are on. Then City Hall and Coit Tower are bathed in a victorious orange afterglow. But here is the clincher, early oranges that came all the way from China, or India, weren’t necessarily orange-colored. They were green! They were bitter as well. I read that Florida farmers dye those green oranges orange.

Valencia oranges marked Christmas season for my grandmother who was raised in Bantry, Ireland. Each year her Christmas gift was one Valencia orange wrapped in foil.

Tulips pastel (NOT) published on Spring Spectrum blog (art)

Don Campbell just published my old tulip pastel as well as the extra heart pastel that I included called, believe in love on his Spring Solution Spectrum blog. It’s nice to get my old art work out into the world, rather than languishing on the hard drive. The digital world gives my old art a new life. There’s a lot more work over on my art blog as you like to go visit it.

Don took the blog down. Unpublished just like that.

Mt. Tam watercolor for Laura Austin Wiley, 4 x 6”

I ran my original watercolor thru a cartoon app

Four quick paintings

Thinking my painting for the SGV Spring Art Show was due on Tax Day, and wanting to test run my newish Gamblin oil paints, I banged out four quick canvases sitting in my car. They were wet when I took the photos. Mt. St Helena from Sonoma Mountain is glistening, it's so wet. I haven't touched oil paints in 50 years, an allergy to turpentine made it impossible to breathe. Now there's Gamsol, a mineral oil opens up possibilities. Larry Rippe said no, you have two weeks. Reprieve. Sneaky Larry. I'm always late turning in my assignments.

Den Bosch and the world of Hieronymus (scanning old photos)

In June, 1993, my friend, Vinz van Neerven and I visited the Gothic cathedral where Jheronimus van Aken‘s paintings graced the altar. The wooden tryptic was dark and much smaller than I expected, and didn’t portray the grisly scenes of the artist’s later works. It was more like an icon. It was way too dark in the church to even think of taking photographs of the artist’s work but I was able to photograph a bookbinding and printing exhibit inside a nave of the Catholic church which was doubling as a museum. I can’t remember, but I think the artist was buried under the stone floor of the church. But the church organ was a stupendous work of art. The mere thought of it filling that cathedral with music gave me goosebumps. Even the acoustics of silence were brilliant.

Gilded dragon, Draak Den Bosch, holding the city seal

Van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450 – 1516) lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, a well-preserved medieval town off the well-beaten tourist path, situated half-way between Utrecht and Eindhoven, in Noord/north Brabant, the Netherlands. OK, so it’s closer to Eindhoven, home to Philips which gave us TVs and CD/DVDs and optical media burners. Den Bosch too manufactures computer bits and is the Heineken HQ. Something about the light.

Hieronymus Bosch came from a family of painters, both his grandfather and father were painters. Bosch’s relatives were from Nijmegen and Aachen (which is reflected in his surname: Van Aken. He was born Jheronimus van Aken. Everyone called him Joen, (Jerome) for short. 

I was surprised to find his last name wasn’t really Bosch. He was from Den Bosch. But try saying the full name of the town several time really fast. 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch. Gesundheit! Do not attempt this exercise after three Triple X beers. You might conjure up a demon or a lemon. 

There are plenitudes of gargoyles and dragons galore in Den Bosch, subjects dear to Bosch’s heart. It is speculated that the nearby chapel of St. Anthony on Hinthammerstraat was a favorite hangout of Bosch’s. It also doubled as an insane asylum that treated people suffering from St. Anthony’s fire, or ergotism. Yep, LSD poisoning. Talk about prima materia. I don’t think I took a photo of the statue of Bosch in the town square, I was sidetracked by all the lovely dragons—especially this gilded fellow (above) on a pedestal. But I have not finished my epic scanning project. A photo may yet turn up. 

Dragon fountain, a 1903 memorial for twin girls killed at 17.

In a different dream (art, redux)

This was the desk portion of an old oak school chair desk, it was on my cousins’ porch in Nicasio, but someone drove a pickup right through the porch 4th of July, 2019, destroying it and the front of the house, and this is what I salvaged of the chair. 

This was the entire piece. The back of the chair too. I also had the rungs too, but they got separated from the rest. I repurposed it with chalkboard paint and pastel. I gave it a dream of a lake and a mountain. When my cousin moved everything out of the house for repairs, this piece got damaged along the way, the chalk image brushed off, so I reapplied it, but now it’s a different dream. Since the peace no longer exists with its other parts, is it a new piece or an old piece?

I offered back of the chair with the horses on it to Geoffrey Davis but he never replied. What is significant about the Paleolithic horses is that they were pacers, most horses trot diagonally but amblers, or pacers move both legs on the same side.  The only other horses that do that naturally are Neolithic horses, such as the Icelandic ponies (which have some Irish lineage) and the archaic horses of the British Isles including the Kerry bog pony, Dartmoor, and the Exmoor pony. The extinct tarpan would be related. Can’t use the word breed, here as it predates the concept. I wrote more on Kiger mustang pacers here.

I made this Angel assemblage from the rest of the old oak chair, and other detritus from the yard. it lived outside the Nicasio house like a guardian angel until the contractors finally came to repair the house last year. Now it solely exists as a photograph. It rests on a piece of sheetrock from the 1940s. It was one of the walls that was smashed in. When the contractors discovered that it was made with asbestos, the entire house got tagged and bagged for hazardous substances. The beginning of the end of the Nicasio house.

I write in order to learn—what I am currently interested in—and I never know what will catch fire. Suspect my dyslexia has a lot to do with my eclectic interests. But I must admit anything to do with horses has my unabiding attention—weird ideas come to me and then I follow them. See where they will lead. Most of these convoluted essays stem from Facebook comments. I write one thing, and then discover something related, and so on. And then it won’t let go of me. I am possessed once I am in the throes of writing  Most people just roll their eyes at this stuff.

Few folks know that Petaluma was once the hotbed of racing trotters. I think the famous stallion Kenilworth was a trotter. Not sure if he was a pacer. That information is hard to track down unless there’s an action photo. There were also famous trotting/pacing thoroughbreds, not just Standardbreds, and I remember reading that one famous racehorse who was a pacer, can’t remember who I have to go look that up. Like Healdsburg’s Black Ruby, the world’s fastest mule at the trot. So the larger question begs, was she a trotter or a pacer? Inquiring minds want to know.

Mt Tam, stabilo drawing 5x7”

Three views of Elephant Mountain (drawings)

Small pumpkins, drawing

 

Fire journal 13, Pond Farm

Some fire photos of Bauhaus potter, Marguerite Wildenhain’s place, Pond Farm Pottery. I know the firefighters were trying very hard to make sure that the historic farm didn’t burn down. 

Marguerite was friends with Walter Gropius, and the Bauhaus movement. During the late 1970s I met her, my boyfriend and I were potters. She didn’t really want to have much to do with anyone. But she did give us a tour of the place. Quite possibly lunch. It was a long time ago. Maybe time to write a blog piece about it. 

The story goes that Marguerite Wildenhain commissioned a friend to build a hostel of sorts for her students in Armstrong Woods. The lobby, built like a teepee, was turned into a disco in the 70’s and 80’s and burned down in late ‘80’s. That place, I remember dancing there to disco lights, and I do have photos of it. 

The Hexagon House was designed by a friend of Marguerite’s. I originally learned that Walter Gropius, a frequent visitor to Pond Farm—I think they had a thing going on—designed Hexagon House. But I was corrected. Still not sure if he had a hand in it. Gordon Herr is credited with building the Hexagon House. Apparently it was originally designed as a meeting place for an enclave of visiting artists. But Marguerite was the only one who stayed on. I know that Ansel Adams visited, as he took a photo of Austin Creek.

Interesting to think of all those pottery students hiking up the hill from Armstrong Woods to Marguerite’s place for pottery lessons. It’s at least a mile walk, and they must’ve been in a euphoric state by the time they got there. 

A friend of mine who was the photographer for The Paper, Phil Osborne, worked for Marguerite when she did production pottery during the 1960s and 1970s. I wonder if he was originally a student of hers. 

My friend Dulcie and I made an homage visit to the outside of Pond Farm yard in October, 2017, as the farm has been closed for some time. We were visiting Kat Williams, who lived beyond the next firegate on Sweeteater Ridge, to take photos of some paintings and clay sculptures of Boschka Layton’s.

Dulcie and I were both students of Thano Johnson’s pottery school at College of Marin during the 1970s, so we knew of Marguerite’s work. We also shared a boyfriend, Bob the Potter. I guess I nicked him from her, and then seven years later, she nicked him back. It didn’t take. He was damaged goods. This time Dulcie nicked a large serpentine rock from the parking lot as a memento and handed it to me. All that slippery greenness, harbinger of blue clay deposits, the potter’s friend.

A few years back the Press Democrat had an article on Pond Farm,I need to look it up. Someone mentioned that Sunset Magazine also did a spread as well. Things to Google when I have time, so this is a placeholder.

Spectrum 24, poem & drawing, reading Aug 29 via Zoom

• Spectrum 24 KILLING THE CAT
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Personification poems with Blake More Tomatoes, Carrots & a collage

WHAT THE TOMATOES SAID

We arrived in black bags filled with loam
and waited for them to come.
We had no idea of our destiny,
or what was to become of us.
We waited along the fence
in haphazard formation.
The sun rose to its zenith, and we wilted,
uprooted from the coolness of the garden,
we were awaiting adoption,
not knowing who would claim us,
or where we were going.

She found deep pots for us and gave us water.
After we recovered from the shock,
we began to grow, reaching for the sun.
She gave us gilded cages
where we could rest our heavy arms.
And we leaned in conversationally,
we blossomed, and then we fruited with gravitas.
At first, we were shy green orbs that swelled,
and then we doubled in size

with each new watering
until we were constellations,

or perhaps even planets.

And then we reached for the sun
and we became the fire of sunset.
We waiting for the cool green depths 

of salad bowls rubbed with garlic 

and dressed with olive oil. We glowed 

like the glistening blood of rubies.
Summer's gift to those huddled 

around their meager tables
waiting out the siege.

8/5/20

THE CARROT SPEAKS

The carrot speaks of the night,
it speaks of the stars
glistening in the gloaming.
Once it was the color of darkness
but then it saw the sun for the first time
and the shape of its dreams
began to change to include the light.
And then it glowed with the tendrils
of the summer sun.

8/5/20

Digging Deep: Revealing Nature Through Poetry & Art

Emily Carr, Canadian painter & writer, Group of Seven

Autumn, 1922-23, oil, Arts & Crafts style (1913-27) Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

One of my favorite artists of the Pacific Northwest, Emily Carr,  (Dec. 13, 1871 – Mar. 2, 1945) was also a writer who chronicled the stories of the First Peoples of British Columbia. Carr’s memoir, Klee Wyck, inspired me to travel making a pilgrimage of sorts to the then remote Nootka villages of Tofino and Ucluelet on western Vancouver Island, and later, to the village of K’san on the Skeena River, in the late 1970s, where I promptly got sick and spent a few days camping in the bushes outside of town—to the consternation of my boyfriend, the villagers, and jeweler-woodcarver Vernon Stephens, who had once driven us from the middle of nowhere to another middle of nowhere. Another story...

Though relatively unknown and unrecognized in her lifetime, Carr was one of the first North American Modernist painters to use the Post-Impressionist painting style. She bucked the prim Victorian society and studied art for three years at the California School of Design/San Francisco Art Institute, and later, Carr spent a year in France, 1910-11, where she met the Cubists and Fauvists. Their use of bold color and broad shapes greatly influenced her work.

But upon Carr’s return to Vancouver, no one was interested in her work. She toiled in domestic obscurity for 15 years, managing an apartment complex in Victoria, until 1927, when a piece was accepted to a National Gallery of Canada exhibition where she first met the Group of Seven. She was the only woman painter to be included in the Group of Seven, modernist painters who changed the face of Canadian art

After being told that Canadian totem poles and trees were unsuitable, and simply unpaintable, Carr defiantly went out and painted them anyway—for the rest of her life. She finally gained some recognition for her work when she was nearly 60. After a series of heart attacks in 1937, Carr gave up the rigors of plain air painting, and wrote seven books, winning the Governor General’s Award for Literature in 1942.

I have seen many of her paintings in museum collections, but not this one. A reverse image search referred me to the dubious ArtPoster and Pinterest sites, several titles suggests it’s called,  Lone Cedar, or (Cypress) Tree in Autumn, or simply Autumn, ca 1920, painted variously in Brittany, or in British Columbia.

I have a lino block that I carved in high school that is similar in style. I wonder if I saw her work back then? Where? At the De Young? SF Art institute? I got to see her work later, in Victoria and Vancouver. There was an article on Emily Carr in the Sunday section of the Chronicle, California Living, circa 1972, which contained a retrospective of her work. I saved that article and read it again and again and again. She was uniquely a one of a kind artist.

It took some doing, but I found the painting, it’s called Tree of Autumn, 1922 - 1923, oil on canvas, 49.5 x 44.5 cm, done in the Arts and Crafts style (1913-1927). Collection of Glenbow Museum, of Calgary—which explains why I never saw it, though I’ve been to Calgary, I didn’t visit the museum. Purchased in 1956. Note bene: As of 1990, it’s housed at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Another extraordinary painting I’ve never seen before is First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, oil on canvas, Fauvist style, 101.5cm x 84cm. 1912. Audain Art Museum, Whistler, British Columbia. “In 1912, following a journey up the northern coast of B.C., Carr produced a number of works with First Nations motifs in her new style. However, these works were not well received with audiences in Vancouver and Victoria.”

First Nations War Canoes in Alert Bay, Fauvist style, 1912. Audain Museum.  Wiki

My Maureen Hurley Art blog is now live

I've been developing a blog collection of my art work. I’ve still got a long way to go, with only 135 posts (some revert back to this writing blog—meaning I haven’t moved them over yet—mostly because I don’t have accessible jpgs). Blogger jpgs are tiny and you can’t directly lift them from an iPad. But you can lift low resolution jpgs from a laptop, by dragging them to the desktop.

Some posts host as many as ten art pieces, depending upon the medium. I tend to work in a series, or medium format: for example, a wet pastel jag, or an aquarelle jag, etc. I will eventually need to replace some poor jpgs—provided that I still have the work. In some cases, a bad jpg was all that survived. But it's a start.

Art is listed by media type, and by category. Most of my early work was destroyed, so in many cases, it comes down to bad jpgs (digital camera was in its infancy ca. 2000), or nothing at all. Work may seem uneven, but it really boiled down to what had survived the onslaught of technology, time and floods. Pretty much everything from my College of Marin and Sonoma State days was destroyed. Not to mention all my ceramics. Who knew that those daily Facebook Memories posts would yield so many salvageable jpgs, a snap to save to my iPad, then upload to the blog. It makes me positively giddy with joy.

At the bottom of the Blogger page there's a link to access the older posts, it goes in about 5 pages worth. Or you can navigate by month, which is much less useful as I don't know what month I made some  pieces, let alone, the year. Onward, as they say.

Next up is to create a photo blog. Any recommendations? I’ve been looking at many blogs for ideas. I really like Morrie Camhis (sp) photo blog. If only Blogger would develop some new templates. But as I write this, Blogger has finally updated the long in tooth app format. Meaning it’s a little easier to use it on the iPad. It was a nightmare, and there were no decent Blogger apps in the App Store.

Maureen Hurley Art blog 

https://mohurleyart.blogspot.com

Mt. Tamalpais from Corte Madera, from an old photo, acrylic 6x8” (art)

I have four pieces I can live with, I need two more by Thursday.

Take two. Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic painting, 8 x 10

Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic, 11 x 14”

Gallagher Ranch, Black Mountain, Point Reyes, acrylic, 11 x 14. Two down, four more to go... art show deadline Jan 9.

Revised foreground.

Last painting of 2019, Barboni Ranch, Hick’s Valley, West Marin. 8x10” acrylic.

Last painting of the year. Barboni Ranch, Hick’s Valley, West Marin. 8x10” acrylic. The iconic tree and rock formation is just past the one-room Lincoln schoolhouse with the vernal pool nestled in the lower foothills of Hick’s Mountain. Eponymous Tennessee land baron “Uncle Billy” Hicks never lived in the valley, once part of the Rancho Corte Madera de Novato land grant, that was named after him. Arroyo Sausal fireroad is to the right. It might be on one of the Barberoni ranches, preserved by MALT. Maybe Circle B Ranch? The Barbonis were Italian-Swiss, like most of the West Marin ranchers who settled there in the 1880s. Barboni founded Marin Dell Milk. I remember seeing the sign as a kid. Biggest ranches in Marin, 2600 acres, total, now preserved. Lots of rare and endangered species on that ranch including white buttercups in the lone remaining vernal pool, and home to red-legged frogs, badgers, otter.

Hicks Valley, Mountain: An absentee landlord in Marin's early days, William Hicks, left his name with this valley in the ranching area of Marin. (The Marin French Cheese Factory is located here.) Hicks was a native of Tennessee who arrived in California in 1843 and amassed a land empire. In the words of a newspaper reporter in 1884, "His acres, horses and cattle covered a thousand hills." The land stretched over Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Sonoma Counties, plus Marin, where in 1855 he bought 4,000 plus acres of Rancho Corte de Madera del Novato for $5,000. "Uncle Billy" Hicks died in 1884 at the age of 67 at his home in Hicksville, Sacramento County, a town no longer in existence. There was a post office named Hicksville, 1860-1889. —Place Names of Marin, by Louise Teather, 1986page 29

Neighboring Thompson Ranch, aka Marin French Cheese factory. Illinois 49er, well 65er, he came late—Jefferson  Thompson built an empire on cheese, supplying buttermilk cheese to the saloons of San Francisco. He wasn’t  French, his children changed the name to  “Rouge et Noir” to make it sound classy. After three generations, the Cheese Factory was sold to Jim Boyce, of Bishop, Ca. When Boyce died in 2010, it was sold to a French family business, Rians. It’s the oldest continuously operating cheese factory in the United States—and bona fide French after 150 years.

1/1/2020

I made a pastel too, 9 x 12” but I don’t like it very much. I need six solid pieces of art by Jan 9, for two upcoming art shows. The pressure’s on.

Kiger mustangs carry rare Iberian Sorraia mtDNA

A chalk drawing on a broken school desk I made for an art show.

Someone posted on Facebook a photo of dun-colored Kiger mustangs, a horse that carries a rare mtDNA recessive dun-color gene from Iberia, and I fell down the Google rabbithole. I noted the phenotype was similar to the endangered Iberian horses related to the Gallego, and Sorraia breeds. The Southeastern Oregon Kiger mustangs were originally flagged as being unusual because of their dun coloring. Instead of shooting the mustangs for dogfood, someone thought to sequence their mDNA. So, being a horse of a different color literally saved a rare genetic pool from extinction.

BLM photo of dun Kiger mustangs in southeastern Oregon

The BLM photos of the Kiger mustangs made me think of the autochthonous, or Neolithic CeltIberian Sorraia (closely related to the Marismeño) horse, also with rare mtDNA markers. Coat coloration was the clue. Horses that are dun colored (a bay, or chestnut dilution gene), or grey-dun grullo (an even rarer black dilution gene—neither roan, nor grey) not only carry a primitive recessive coloration gene, they often have dark faces and points with pangaré markings, body mottling, zebra-striped legs, and dorsal stripes—a primitive dun horse trait similar to those tarpan-like horses represented in paleolithic cave paintings. Their manes and tails are often bi-colored with white guard hairs and black upright manes like that of the feral Polish Konik horse, and the Heck. The wild Przewalski's horse has a solid black upright mane and tail.

Many equines appearing in prehistoric cave paintings such as in Chauvet cave are dun, and several closely related species in the genus Equus show dun characteristics. These include the Przewalski's horse...and an extinct subspecies of horse, the tarpan. —Wiki

Chauvet, Ardèche, France, 31 000 BP —Wiki

Contrary to popular belief, Spanish and Portuguese explorers didn't ship their prized Baroque Andalusian horses to the New World. Instead, they sent primitive native horses on long ocean voyages that lasted two months or more. Hardy and resistant, unlike the valuable blooded horses preferred by the nobility, those diminutive horses captured from the fens and marshes of Portugal, were practically breathatarians, and  could survive the harshest of conditions, and subsist on little food or water.

Paleolithic artwork in Lascaux II, note the horse is pacing, not trotting—Wiki

Because the native ponies weren't valued as blood animals, they also nearly became extinct in both the New and Old Worlds via neglect and distain. The Sorraia was once hunted for food, and the Exmoor ponies of Britain was used for target practice during WWII, they were a source of illegal meat in the cities. During the 1970s, the BLM was infamous for slaughtering entire herds of mustangs for dogfood. And their nearest ancestor, the native American wild horse was probably also hunted to extinction during the Ice Age.