Spring Toot to Death Valley

The Painted Earth

My dear friends Kate and Jerry drove up to Bishop for a visit and whisked me away for an all-too-brief tour of Death Valley. Thunderstorms cooled and clobbered the skies and we traveled through rainy and windy patches of road on Hwy 190 out of Lone Pine.  We stayed a night in the motel at Panamint Springs, had a picnic lunch at Furnace Creek Ranch, and toured Bad Water, Zabriskie Point, Darwin Canyon and the Artists Drive and Palette. Veteran campers of the area, Kate and Jerry knew their way around and had many memories to share. We saw coyotes, road runners and a golden eagle; an easy Maytime ramble across the deadly, lovely desert.

During our drive around the Artists Drive loop, I became aware of feeling nervous around the crumbling colored earths since they resemble colors I have seen in mine tailings, although tailings colors are rather faint next to Artists Palette. I don't mean I thought it would hop over and bite me, just a sensation of discomfort when I should be feeling happy about pretty colors.

Below: Artists Palette, Golden Hillsides near Golden Canyon, and a face I found among my vistas (if you can't see it, try squinting). 

 

At home I consulted with Big Google to find out why colorful earths in mine tailings are toxic whereas the exposed Artists Palette hillside's metallic oxides generally are not. Turns out that crushing rocks releases natural arsenic!  A lot of metal-rich rocks, such as gold and silver ores, are richer in arsenic than your garden variety granite, and these ores are pulverized in the extraction process. When mercury is added to this "slurry"  to bind up gold out of powdered gold ore, it forms amalgam clumps, out of which the mercury evaporates when heated, leaving the gold pure and the surrounding air very toxic. But of course some mercury always remains in the left over mud and is tossed out on the tailings piles.

I continued prospecting to find out more about earth colors. I dug up a swatch book available to assist the analysis of soil composition by color: the Munsell System of Color Notation (www.munsell.com). Compare the colors of soils from anywhere on the planet by hue, value and chroma -- just like printers and painters do! Generally red, pink and yellow earths are iron soils, green comes out of glauconite (mica), and manganese spades up purple-blacks. Wet soils lose oxygen and become gray, the gray mud sediment that forms the banks of the upper Owens River. Dry soils take up oxygen and colors bloom; iron oxide colors red and yellow cliffs and sands all over the Southwest, where sedimentary layers have be drying out colorfully for millenia. 

I believe the first artitsts did not look directly at reality and try to copy it, but rather it was from looking at natural forms and envisioning in them "looks-like" figures that inspired the first construction of artistic forms such as "looks like" figures drawn onto rock walls, or pottery surfaces, or woven into baskets. It was earth that tutored the first artists in the necessary imaginative abstraction of painting and gave them colors with which to paint it.

ANNIVERSARY

End of April - beginning of May will be the anniversary of my move to the Eastern Sierra three years ago. I have survived retirement from full-time work, learned to fish for trout, and begun a series of paintings of local subjects in a fresh style, of which these are the most recent:

 Edge of the Pasture, Big Pine, winter

 Independence Creek, early spring

Winter Stream, Blue Heron

I have made a happy home for myself in my (unrestored but congenial) Vintage Trailer, and I have just installed my first air conditioner -- ever! --in the window over the kitchenette sink. An air conditioner in the heat means I can stay in my trailer and paint this summer, and I expect I will sleep better. Fishing season opened today, which means I will motor up to the lakes and pines, sit in a chair by cool waters and read or daydream until some life force in the dark water beyond jerks the bubble below surface and I must rise and reel in the silvery thrashing entity to shore...if I can, if it doesn't jump into the air and shake out the hook like a bronc in a rodeo shakes off a cowboy... the classic happy pastimes of Retirement are mine: painting and fishing!

The Gorge

The first colors of spring in Owens Valley are reddish. Brick reds, rusts, oranges, maroons, glowing out of grey coyote willow, white alders, red birch, black willow nests. I have been fishing where Owens River flows down through a gorge carved by its waters into the pink tuff of the volcanic table land, from the Gorge Power Plant to Pleasant Valley Dam. Fishing buddy Winford provides a little red wagon in which we haul our jackets, tackle boxes, poles and snacks along the three mile road cut into the rocky eastern side, looking into the water below for a likely spot, then scrambling and sliding down to river's edge to fish. Mornings were sunny and pleasant, but one afternoon the wind funneled down into the gorge and blew the water upstream in waves -- I felt like I was fishing at the seashore.

The Lake by Pleasant Valley Dam

Winford resting near the power plant at the north end of Pleasant Valley Reservoir

Along the river in the Gorge

Three pictures of reddish spring by the river below the dam; a fisherman's path through the willow, a ditch gate to direct water through a pasture, and a willow chewed by beavers:

Paintings at the Pomona Arts Colony

 Clam Samurai in Squashed Clam Chowder Can Kimono

 

Full Moon Ghost Crab

 Crab Claw Cupcake on the Halfshell

 The Last One Abalone

 Thinly Sliced Something Fishy on Toast

I have paintings hanging in two galleries of the Pomona Arts Colony.

http://www.pomonaartscolony.com

Old Downtown Pomona, gone almost derelict after its heyday in the 1950s, had become a small town SoHo for artists in the Pomona Valley, and recently was declared an Arts Colony of Los Angeles County.

Shows at the dA Gallery and BunnyGunner :

Simply Red --    http://daartcenter.org/en/

All U Can Eat --  http://www.bunnygunner.com

opened on the monthly 2nd Saturday Art Walk night of February 8, 2013.  The steets were busy with visitors to galleries, bistros, vintage goods shops and bars, a concert, and a street fair. I saw an interesting art show presented by the Walking Gallery: a conga line of young people circled the block holding paintings up for view and chanting their mission. They shared the sidewalk with a mobile Samba Drumming Band, mostly women in tight shiny short shorts marching with huge drums and racks of percussion instruments, following a leader in khaki blowing a loud whistle. At Simply Red a group of gowned and tuxedoed singers sang arias from Italian Opera. At Simply Red at the dA Gallery I am showing Red Horsehead and Red Birch Heart Valentine (photos posted in previous blogs). Above are photos of five of my paintings at the All U Can Eat show at Bunny Gunner:

All of these are acrylic on 5" x 7" cradled board, a size specified by the gallery (no bigger than 5x7) that presented a challenge to me and I painted them 'specially for this show, with a Seafood (see-food, get it???) theme -- I suppose they have a literary dimension that makes them kinda cartoons. It's been fun and I hope to do more like them. The gallery at bunny Gunner is a single very large room and hundreds of small paintings by many artists were hung in vertical rows side-by-side with the name of the artist at the top of his/her row. Fascinating to see so many styles, subjects, themes, medias all together -- the gallery encourages participants to paint food for "All U Can Eat" and the show does have a fully-loaded buffet table or downtown cafeteria feel to it. One idea of this show is to offer small-sized and affordably-priced art works that young or beginning art collectors can buy. Well,  I didn't sell anything, but the show is wonderful to behold!

My inclusion in these gallery shows came about through the renewal of an old friendship. I had met Kate Thornton in High School and we stayed friends through our 20s in the LA area. By 1990 we had gone our separate ways into other adventures, careers and relaltionships, and we fell out of touch. Last July Kate contacted another old friend, Bonnie Barrett, whom I had also lost and found again, and learned my whereabouts from her. We began a joyful email rediscovery and I learned she had become a published writer of detective and sci-fi stories. She had also taken up painting and had become a member of the Pomona Arts Colony community, especially the dA Gallery where she volunteers and sits on the Board.  Bonnie, and husband Jim, met myself and Kate, with husband Jerry, for a fancy dinner out and some gallery hopping. The recovery and resurgence of my friendships with Kate and Bonnie at this time of my life is a great and unexpected happiness to me!


Kate in her dA Gallery Store

Red Horse in a Winter Field

When I was a student at Immaculate Heart College in Hollywood, almost 40 years ago, I dreamed of a red horse; a large, glowing, muscular, head-tossing creature. As I approached the red horse to ride it, it slowly shrank until it resembled in size a big dog. I felt foolish and frustrated and remarked to myself that to ride this horse I would have to be the size of a child on a Hobby Horse. The dream either expressed or introduced a deep mood of chagrin and is one of very few dreams I have remembered across time. Since I have been living in Owens Valley, my camera's eye has been caught many times by red horses in pastures around Bishop and Big Pine. Now I have begun a series of paintings of red horses, using my photographs as source material, and a few days ago, I wrote a red horse poem.

a red horse on the Paiute Reservation, Bishop

 a red horse in a Rossi pasture, Big Pine

 a draft horse as it stands in my mind

a pack horse poking head through barbed wire, begging

Red Horse in a Winter Field

I dreamed a Palomino
taffy and gold,
I dreamed a Harlequin Pony
cheerful and bold.
I dreamed a Red Horse shrinking
from shame and cold.

Taffy and gold was sold.
Cheerful and bold grew old.
Red Horse mired in thickets and wire,

kept buried in coal like fire.

Winter's color, winter's stain
rust and blood on the window pane.
Trained in thickets, framed in wire,
Red Horse returns, blamelessly burning.

Early Winter Paintings

Short cold days bring wastrels to bundle indoors with heaters, toast and teapots, if they've got 'em, which I do, and am grateful for these comforts. The creek, or Bishop ditch, that runs through the trailer park is frozen over, and its mallards have not migrated to warmer waters but huddle in plump feather-loafs in the frosted, tawny dry grass along its banks.

I scratch out my paintings/drawings, using my photographs of Owens Valley as sources. I miss being outdoors, wandering around exploring, taking photographs and finding fishing spots. Winter enclosure seems to open an interior eye that rummages through the photos and chooses those most congenial to its introspective mood: watery grottoes and vanishing points on winter horizons. Summer sojourns are usually busy and pleasurable, but finite; winter brings me to the threshold of journeys that promise neither destination nor return, yet my mind continually returns to these still points of departure, as if renewing a promise again and again.

Final Fishing Frenzy

Thursday November 15th was the last day of fishing season in the Eastern Sierra. Wednesday the 14th, Winford and I spent the day driving from fishing hole to fishing hole, catching not much. I hooked and landed the first trout from a grassy bank at Warm Springs Road bridge over the Owens River, then no more bites. We drove on to the Missing Harmonica site, where I always score, but we zilched this time. Winford getting pouty. We then took the canal road north from Warm Springs, he's looking for a "pool," he says. Well, there's only one "pool" I know of, at a small weir, or dam, where I stop, get out and spy fish, but "NO!" he says, vehemently, "that's not the pool I mean!"  I shrug and we trundle on down the dirt road until he stops us at a small bridge where we cross the canal and get out to fish. Immediately I cast my hook into the opposite bank's bushes and snag. I re-cross the bridge, intent on salvaging my tackle instead of just breaking the line. I think I can do it, I'm sure I can do it, I creep down the bank, and landslide into the water. "Help! Help!" I cry to Winford, who comes to my aid, chuckling because I have just fallen into the water again. He tries to pull me out, but the bank crumbles under my feet. Finally I crawl up the bank on my knees, hanging onto his hands. My jeans, soaked to my thighs, get coated with mud. He's giggling, which erases some of his grouch over not catching a fish yet. Because I am so smart, I had dry jeans and flip flops in my truck and changed my clothes, and fortunately, it is midday by now, warm and sunny. Up and down the bank I chase a school of fish that darts forever away from the thumping of my feet and the "plock" of my bait. I see a very large carp, bright orange, obviously someone's previous pet goldfish, replacing the old idiom: "sticks out like a sore thumb" with the new phrase "sticks out like a goldfish in an Eastern Sierra canal." But no bites. We drive on and stop where a ditch/creek pours into the canal from a marshy pasture. It's a "secret site," Winford says, "you can get Browns here in Spring!  Don't ever tell anyone!" .He casts into the turbulence and gets a nice big rainbow. I cast into the turbulence and get myself a nice big rainbow. Then for another forty-five minutes we cast into the pool -- and get nothing -- we can see them but they ain't  bitin'. He's grumpy again, sits on the bank and smokes a cigarette. He wants to go park by the East Line Street canal bridge and have an easy debauch at the site of The Fish Truck plant there the day before. We arrive, see about 75 trout schooling in the water below and shout yippee. But they just fondle our baits, spit everything out, ignore Winford's lures, and then Fish and Game drives up. First time I have ever had my license checked -- I was about to dig it out of my tackle box when the warden said, "you've got a bite!" My pole in its holder was jerking so I pulled in a fish and forgot about showing my license. Winford had to remind me "he's waiting to see your license, dear."  I felt foolish. And that was the only fish I caught in that pool. I'd been asking Winford: "aren't you hungry? don't you want some lunch?" but he is dead set on getting his limit, he is looking grim. So we give up on that pool and roll over to the Wye Street Bridge, another plant site, where we find an old bearded coot quietly pulling one big trout after another out of a very murky stream. Winford casts into the same place by the bridge and gets -- nothing. Downstream I get a bite, but no fish. The coot has sympathy and offers a couple fish to Winford, who takes 'em. Then the coot stops catching 'em, says "oh, they've stopped biting" wishes us luck, collects his little doggies and drives off. The murky stream clears, and we can see lots of fish, some very large. I manage to hook one, and finally Winford catches his limit!  It is after 3 o'clock, we started at 8 am. I caught one fish each in 4 of the 6 places we fished. I had a great day, but tired Winford went home feeling chagrined and humiliated by all those finicky fish. The day's experience confirms my growing awareness that even a good fisherman catches fish only when the fish are biting.

Not eating all day had a consequence, I woke up a 4 am with a migraine starting up, took some ibuprofen, ate some crackers, and went back to sleep. Mercifully, woke up without the pain, dizziness and nausea that can, if not nipped in the bud, destroy my entire day. I mustn't let Winford's even-worse-than-mine fishing addiction upset my equilibrium -- usually I take snacks, but forgot this time.

So that was the end of my summer of fishing the lakes, creeks and canals in the Eastern Sierra until next May. I am already missing being outdoors by the water most of the day. Of course, we can fish the River and the Reservoir all winter -- whenever the wind isn't howling freezing cold down the gorge. Now it is time for painting, reading, and a trip to Pomona for Thanksgiving -- next blog.