Close Encounters

Above are more flat-tops that I painted while at Mountain Water earlier this week.

Last night we rented Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Spielberg classic in which Devil's Tower features prominently, which is why Samagra recommended I see it. The film came out in 1977, and, weirdly, I was in Wyoming that fall, not to visit Devil's Tower, had done that sometime in the 60s, but on a long fishing trip with parents and future husband. A remake of Close Encounters today would be so simple with iPhones – no banks of computers, no paper maps, no movie cameras, no instamatic film cameras, no dial-up phones, no flashlights (free app for that, too). In the movie, François Truffaut's character conjectures that all the people trying to get to Devil's Tower were "invited." Where do you go from a flat-top mountain? Apparently, into space. Isn't that what I said about the "ok plateau" theory too? My future, space…

More flat-tops

Somehow I missed seeing Close Encounters of the Third Kind way back in 1977. Friend, Samagra, tells me a flat-topped mountain features prominently in it. Will it make sense of this series of paintings? It's on the list to see. During the Aesthetic Intoxication painting weekend I added 12 more flat-tops to the series.

OK plateau

Mountain portraits, mostly with flat tops and cold weather. Jenni Lord: are these related to Joshua Foer and the OK plateau? Interesting. If so, beyond this plateau: space.

Return

Mountains, flat-topped and cold. Snow has come, finally. To open the season of return, the Festival of Iron.

Spirit

Love this jet-window photo: an offering, running river spirit? Flight from Baltimore to Boston, somewhere around Long Island, I think.

Painting weekend

A November 11th-13th workshop coming up, 6 spaces left. A fine immersion in painting. Here in Boulder CO. See details and registration form at my website.

Paint

Detail of a JS Sargent painting, society portrait, a polka dot dress… Lush, beautiful, fakery of painting, gotta love it.

From the sky

Flight to Boston, earlier drawing field patterns, then weather along a river with power plants, power plants creating their own kind of weather, clouds drifting downwind. The serpentine curves of rivers flow over the ground, so many as we fly east; from the air, patterns of flow not the real sense of moving water, but the pattern made by moving water. Just beautiful. The visible mythology of snakes & water.

Sewing

Happened upon Alabama Chanin again and her dedication to hand sewing. So, sewing again, by hand, making homely little bags for things – this one for a silver compote, a family piece. The bag is made of silver cloth that keeps tarnish at bay. I found a reference to Judith B Montano's Elegant Stitches at the AC site. Now this is a fabulous reference for decorative stitches! Trying out different ones to embellish these projects, designing & learning as I go. To the tunes of Laura Marling…

Enchiridion

A couple of pages from the ENKHEIRIDION I started in the summer. (I like the Greek spelling with the "k" and "ei".) The class ended this week, and most of us feel the process just got started. It's a curious one – writing one's own painting manual. I'm planning to keep at it, surprising connections crop up; it helps to work on it with others as their insights shed light on what we're blind to on our own.

Autumn equinox

OOPS! Forgot to post these on the Fall Equinox. One of two days you can balance eggs on end, most commonly done on the Spring Equinox and its association with eggs (Easter Bunny) and fertility. Here is the phenomenon demonstrated on September 23rd this year. Can it be done on other days? Never tried it.

Now available!

The VECTOR book, catalog of the spring 2011 show at Naropa University's Nalanda Gallery, is published & available for purchase from blurb. View some sample pages below. Thanks to my sister "vectorinis" Diane Fekete, Jen Miller, Beth Sautins, Emily Utz, and Cathy Zimmerman, aka +5. Marvelous experience working together. Finding I really like book design, ha!

VECTOR: Spirit Inventions by Joan Anderson +5 | Make Your Own Book

New bike

I visit this ditch almost every morning. Along its edge, earlier in the summer before the mower came, the chicory and alfalfa and milkweed were in spectacular bloom and fragrant. This is wild mountain water & even in a cement channel retains its own poetry. I coast along the edge and stop to gaze where it takes an abrupt turn north before it arrives at two gates that split it and send it under a highway and on to separate destinations.

Time away

A week at Mountain Water, conditions were dry but not desperately so, lots of berries on the bushes and lots of birds enjoying end-of-summer feasting. One night a light step on the porch woke me, lifted my head to see a little bear silhouette in the window two feet from my nose, greeted it with a soft "Hey, there." It spun around and dashed away – faster than you'd ever guess – across the moonlit meadow.
Next night we bungled latching the kitchen door for the night, in the morning found it standing wide open. No intruders, not a mouse, not a bear. Such luck.

A vase without flowers, not that there weren't any. I replanted iris rescued from an old homestead site across the road during the late '90s drought. Propagated them and brought them home. Conditions not that promising, though as soon as I placed the first one in the ground, it began to rain – no lie. Also planted a fringed lavender, a gift from neighbor Nancy Haynes.

enkheiridion

More silk, more water

Could be related visions. Liquid, transparent, patterned, overlapping.

High water

Boulder Creek is running high, swollen by rain in the mountains, hasn't yet topped Barker Dam, overflowing into bike path tunnels – a thrill! Moments after snapping these a huge! stump came bounding & rolling downstream, then a monster log – look out!

One of Six

This is one of six small pieces – vectored and tea-stained silks patched together and layered; maybe three or four layers of silk organza cut in squares and reassembled, then covered with a tea-stained scrap from 2006. Love doing these. Tonight thought about a painting from years ago called How to Begin the Ohio Star; might be cool to patch an Ohio Star from vectored silk and proceed from there…

Finished form

Black, White & Tea

Vector practice (abstract marks with found objects, usually sumi ink on silk) continues with a reprise of the group show, this time more domesticated, as in framed, presented in a neat line on a wall – that sort of thing. Layering silk still so appealing. Here is genesis of a larger piece, beginning with a piece of raw silk, found tools (top–foxtail barely seed head, next–a small square of card stock) dipped in black ink. Didn't particularly like the result, cut it up into squares, sewed them together (photo 3), didn't like that either, then layering began. Really like that. It will be matted & framed.