Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 40

A Rainy Sunday, Inside and Out

Sunday... was soggy. The rain had begun in mid-morning, battering the cathedral roof so that we could barely hear the Sanctus bells. In the late afternoon, as we were singing Evensong, a drip began from the highest point above the chancel, the water drops falling and accumulating into a spreading brown stain on the marble floor just beside the choir to the left of the altar. We continued to sing, casting nervous glances upward, fervently hoping the plaster ceiling wouldn't fall on our heads.

Like so many old buildings, the cathedral has roof problems, and during recent years we've had to repair many leaks and damage to plaster walls and ceilings. In the next few years, the entire spire will have to be replaced. It's a huge headache and massive expense, shared partly by the province which gives grants for preserving our architectural patrimonie. When I used to visit London churches, long before my own days as a cathedral singer and parishioner, I often wondered about the small congregations charged with the burden of caring for those magnificent but difficult-to-maintain buildings. Now -- with a newer building, only 150 years old, but a more punishing climate -- I see and feel the problem firsthand, and each new leak sets off a collective sigh among us.

Beyond the porous stones of the cathedral, thousands of cyclists were getting soaked during the annual Tour de l'Isle, and many streets and bus lines were closed. I took the metro after the service and walked home from the nearest station, without a coat or umbrella, drenched but happy, forgetting about leaks and troubles; it was a warm rain, and the scent of lilacs hung in the heavy air.

I left the sidewalk and turned into one of the ruelles, the narrow unpaved alleys in the centers of the blocks between the three-story apartment houses, lined with painted or vine-covered fences offering an occasional glimpse of a backyard garden, criss-crossed with old-fashioned clotheslines on pulleys, overhung with low tree branches weighed down with water. It was dark and secluded in the alley -- there were occasional sounds of voices, the clink of dishes as dinner was prepared in an upstairs apartment, someone practicing scales on a piano -- but these were all interior sounds, turned inward; there were no faces at windows, no dogs barking behind the fences, no couples on the high balconies. Suddenly I felt free like a child, alone with the cats and sparrows, hidden by summer's first lush growth, loving the mud beneath my feet and the exhilaration of being soaked to the skin. My toes squished in my water-logged sandals and I marveled at an improbable flotilla of bubbles the size of ping-pong balls dancing on the puddles.

During the hardest rain, we had been singing a Renaissance verse anthem set to the Song of Solomon, and now, as I walked slowly home, the music played and replayed in my head:

The time of the singing of birds has come

and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land --

Come away, my love,

Come away!

R.I.P. Muhammad Ali

This is a drybrush watercolor illustration, about 16" square, that I did for my portfolio around 1980, never intending it for publication because it was copied from a photograph. I always kept it because of my admiration and affection for the man himself: his courage throughout his life, his love of humanity, his refusal to bow to authority, critics, or the media -- as well as being the greatest in his sport.

My dad was a boxing fan, and I grew up watching Ali's fights as well as listening to the media interviews, most notably with Howard Cosell, who continually baited Ali and used him to further his own career - I thought those interviews were harder to watch, and crueler, than the boxing matches. I was a Vietnam War protester and greatly admired Ali's refusal to fight, in spite of what it cost him. It was with real sadness that we learned of his Parkinson's diagnosis, but he conducted himself to the end of his life with dignity and continued to try to help people in need. It's easy to be cynical about celebrities, and the way the public falls in love -- and just as rapidly discards them. I always felt Muhammad Ali deserved respect, and he showed -- at a time when it was even harder for African-Americans -- that personal dignity, even with humor, could be maintained in the face of all kinds of criticism and attack. He must have suffered a great deal, especially in his later years, and yet he will be remembered not for that, but for what he did with his life and what he stood for.

Midnight Pizza

Making pizza for friends in our Vermont kitchen, 1986.

Is it possible that in all these years of blogging I've never gone into much detail about our obsession with pizza? I married someone who had lived for several years in New Haven, and hated everything about it except one thing. Need I say more? I think J.'s love of pizza started long before that, but my guess is that it was the extraordinary pizza he ate in New Haven and New York City during his teenage years that got him started on making pizza at home. By the time we met, when he was 28 and I was 26, he was already a masterful and obsessive pizza-maker, while I was merely an appreciative occasional pizza-eater whose only experience of making it at home had been boxes of Chef Boyardee. That changed pretty quickly! Together, we sought out and ate great traditional pizzas all over the northeast - not at fancy shops, but at the great small pizzerias run by single chefs and families in small towns and cities. Then J. tried to recreate their best qualities: the perfect crust, most flavorful tomato sauce, finest cheeses, best toppings - which, for us, tended toward simplicity. Our benchmark was a classic Margarita: just crust, tomato sauce, basil, and mozzarella cheese.

One of our favorites was Springfield Pizza, in Springfield, Massachusetts, where we stopped - often late at night - on nearly every trip we took from Vermont to Connecticut, where his parents lived, or New York. I remember how, each time we'd leave the highway, we'd drive down the deserted main street and turn left, hoping to spot the lights in the little storefront with its small neon sign bearing two blue stars and the word "pizza" in red -- it was open! Inside, often on a cold winter night, we'd sit at one of the two or three tables and patiently wait while an elderly man named Georgio made rectangular pizzas with the best crust I've ever eaten.

In New Haven, of course, there was the unending debate whether Sal's or Frank Pepe's made the best Napoletana pizza. We preferred the latter, probably because Pepe's had the most amazing coal-fired oven. Their white clam pizza was to die for, and probably still is; but now I see that Pepe's has a fancy website and several locations, which makes me glad we enjoyed the original - it had long lines even then.

At home, the pizza experimentation and refinement has continued throughout the years, in spite of the fact that a home oven cannot reproduce the extreme heat, rapid explosion of the crust, and charring effect of a wood or coal-fired pizza oven. We've always modified our stoves for pizza-baking with a layer of quarry tiles on the bottom rack (excellent for bread, too); the pizza is slid off the peel onto the tiles for the first minutes of baking, then moved to the regular top rack to finish. J. makes his own tomato sauce, either from fresh plum tomatoes or from cans of San Marzanos. Since moving to Montreal, we've been able to get even better ingredients than before, which is especially noticeable in the quality of the cheeses: buffalo mozzarella, creamy goat cheeses, excellent Parmesan. Lately he's been trying different flours; King Arthur used to be his standard, then he used Montreal's own Five Roses for a while, and recently we bought some Italian hard-wheat flours specially for pizza.

Last night, already in bed, we happened upon a YouTube video about Brooklyn pizzerias. We've eaten a lot of Brooklyn pizza, even doing a pizza marathon in that borough a while back where we ate, I think, a record of three in one day. Anyway, the pizzas in the video looked so fantastic that there was no choice but to get up and make one.

There was already risen dough in the fridge, and some homemade tomato sauce, so all that had to be done was to pre-heat the oven, roll out the dough, sauté some mushrooms, slice some hard salami, slice and grate some cheese, and go out on the terrace and pick a handful of fresh basil. While the pizza was cooking we poured a glass of wine, and reminisced about our favorite pizzas of the past.

And then, close to midnight, we ate. I'm sorry you weren't there to taste this, but all I can say is: please do try this at home.

Looking In, Looking Out

We've had a week of truly warm weather, at long last. The lilacs and honeysuckle are in bloom, the tulips fading, the trees in full leaf: I think most Montrealers are ready to declare that summer has arrived.

I've been picking flowers from my garden and as usual they've been making their way into my sketchbook - even the last of these tulips, just before the petals fell.

And when I haven't had sculptural plant forms to draw, there's always my desk and its array of objects.

This morning I went out onto the terrace with my coffee, and did this sketch on the final page of my current sketchbook. I've been anxious to finish it (the book, that is.) Looking through, I find the pages filled with the interiority of winter and "home", both in the focus on still life and everyday objects, and the accompanying mental state. I've learned a lot in keeping up this practice, and it was good for me in the same way as a written journal: a practice of observing and setting-down that helped me feel grounded and centered, absorbed in the task and the moment, even on days when it was the only thing that felt that way. I think there was also a desire to maintain a certain tone and theme in that particular sketchbook, which I began a year and a half ago. But now I'm ready to begin a new one, moving outward for a while into the streets and parks, the botanical garden, and maybe some figurative explorations. We'll see!

Not Forgetting

 

Remembering my mother today, on the tenth anniversary of her death.

There are people who sweep onto the stage of our lives, and show us something grand, impress us with their brilliance, magnificence, charisma, power. We always remember them, and even try to emulate them, but they may disappear from our lives just as quickly as they came. Then there are other people whose presence is much quieter and steadier, who teach us how to actually live a life, day by day.

My mother never traveled much; she had asthma and it was difficult for her to be in strange environments, but she was also fairly shy, and happier to stay in familiar surroundings - her home, the lake and woods - which she loved deeply and knew in detail. She loved the beauty and peace of simple things, and never complained about her life being boring or mundane - how could it be, when it was filled with family and friends, books, plants and animals, a natural world that changed not only with the seasons but daily, for she observed all its minutiae. She bore life's inevitable difficulties with stoicism and grace, and far more equanimity than her daughter, who seems to have taken a much longer and circuitous route to learning those lessons - I should have just observed the Zen-master qualities of my mother, but when we're young, we can't see our parents clearly, nor their wisdom.

Each year, when the lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom, I make one of these drawings for her; I think she would like this one, the first to include color, and some other flowers: the purple violets she loved, and the forget-me-nots that always filled our gardens. I'm happy today, remembering her, grateful for so much that she gave me, including this love of art, and her gentle, steady encouragement about everything I tried to do.

I look at the painting, closer, closer, searching for her, for myself.

And I decide that the underlying emotion is captured best in the drawing rather than the painting that it became. There's something in that horizon line that stops short of the edge of the page; it was a deliberate but subconscious gesture, if that makes any sense: our relationship is not finished, cannot be squared up; something continues, or is left open. I don't mean that in terms of "meeting again," but rather that I continue to discover her, and myself in relationship with her. A gift I've only understood well after the passage of an entire decade.

Will we see a return to blogging, and other content-rich internet forms?

Patricia Bralley, a friend who I met through blogging, recently tagged me on Facebook, asking what I thought of a recent article in the International Business Times by Hossein Derakhshan calling Mark Zuckerberg a hypocrite for claiming that Facebook encourages a global, interconnected society. Derakhshan was imprisoned for his own web activism in Iran between 2008 and 2014; the stakes of using the internet were considerably greater for him than for most of us. Let me first quote a few bits of his article; my own reply to Patricia is below.

"While Zuckerberg laments at walls and admires bridges, the fact is that his Facebook algorithms have created billions of these comfort bubbles that are more isolating than walls. Also, he has destroyed the most powerful bridges that perhaps ever existed in the human history, the hyperlinks...Facebook's desire to keep users inside of it all the time is why it can generate so much advertising money. But that means it provides less and less reasons for anyone to leave its environment, in order to read an article or watch a video.

"It is heart-breaking to see how Facebook has changed the internet into little more than a portal for entertainment."

"Blogs were the best thing that had ever happened on the internet. They democratised writing and publishing – at least in many parts of the world. They gave a voice to many silenced groups and minorities. They connected friends, families, communities, and nations around the world. They encouraged discussions and debates...The World Wide Web was founded on the links, and without links, there won't be a web. Without links the experience of being on the internet will become one of a centralised, linear, passive, inward-looking and homogeneous kind. This is happening already, and despite Zuckerberg's sermon, it is largely Facebook and Instagram who are to be blame for the demise of links, and thereby the death of the open web and all its potentials for a more peaceful world."

 

Patricia, I'm on Facebook, basically, under protest. I use it for letting people know what's going on with Phoenicia Publishing, and to keep in touch with family and friends who aren't anywhere else, or those who simply don't use email anymore, but it is no substitute for what our blogs used to be. Facebook, in my opinion, has impoverished content, and impoverished community, thoughtfulness, and connection. I keep my blog going, but often wonder if I'm just doing it for myself. I always post a link on FB to a new blogpost, but question whether many readers even leave FB to go to the blog and actually read it or look at the images before "liking" or commenting below the FB post.

Back in March, when The Cassandra Pages turned 13, there were 13 comments on my blog. On the FB link to the same post, there were 12 comments and 60 "likes." Three years earlier, almost all the comments -- 40 or so -- were on my blog itself. I appreciate those "likes" and comments very much, but these statistics represent a big shift in terms of where people are reading, and what they see as their place of communication.

One of my biggest objections is that FB encourages our natural laziness (my own included, unfortunately) - it's so much easier to just hit "like" than to actually engage when we are all inundated with internet information. It also plays into our anxiety about isolation through the falsity of quantitative reassurance. I think, frankly, it's time to start resisting this and to engage more seriously again with the people we care about - yourself included - even if that means fewer "friends," and dealing with the radical concept of less actually being more.

I'd like to add that while my FB interactions are fairly minimal, I have started posting longer-form content on Instagram in connection with certain images. Other people are doing this as well, and we seem to be forming a loose community that reminds me somewhat of blogging. I don't think social media is necessarily devoid of creativity or content, but it takes time and effort to use it differently.

Thanks for asking.

--

Readers, what do you think? Is it worth keeping a blog like this going? What about your own? If you've stopped blogging, why was that, and are you happy with social media as a substitute? Do you think there will be a swing back to longer-form content in other places on the web, and a reaction to social media - as some have predicted - or do you think the die is cast?

 

...and one more

Inspired by the Springtime Table

Finally, spring has arrived in Montreal. Not all our trees have leaves yet, but many do. The magnolias are on bloom, and flowering pears, and there are daffodils and tulips. I picked the first from my garden a few days ago, and they've found their way onto our table along with a basil plant left by friends who've gone on vacation. I'd been drawing the tulips alone, before (see below) but the addition of the basil set up a more complex still life that begged to be put on paper. I like the tilted perspective of the tabletop here, and the flatness of the picture plane. I'm glad I added the background of books and sideboard. In the end, it isn't a drawing of tulips but an arrangement of shapes and positive/negative space that creates tension and release, with the many types of curves leading the eye through the picture, balanced by the verticality of the books and vase handle. It doesn't matter a bit to me whether the objects are identifiable or "realistic."

Here's a fast sketch that was an earlier version from a few days before - not nearly as interesting as a finished drawing, with the two blooms so symmetrically arranged on either side of the vase, but making it served to instill the shapes in my brain, so that when I looked at the objects again, in conjunction with other things, it was easier to see what I wanted to emphasize and how to work with the shapes.

I put some color on this drawing afterwards, but liked a cropped version of the right-hand side better than the whole image. It helps to photograph the image and play around with it in a photo editor, but I used to do the same thing with a couple of cropping covers cut from mat board. I always ask myself, where is the liveliness in this picture? What cropping makes it the most dynamic? What do I like the most in it? What sings? Sometimes there's not much! But it really helps to zoom in, move around, crop different areas, copy it and cut it up: artists are fortunate now to have tools that allow us to do this non-destructively.

I've almost finished this sketchbook! Looking through it last night, I was contented and grateful to see it as a journey and journal through the year, rather than being critical of the drawings.

Inside Things

The containers of my life come in all shapes, some so familiar I don't even think of them as containers. All hold the mundane and necessary along with secrets, though sometimes the secrets reside only in the memories suggested by a touch, a glance, the movement of my hand as it unzips -- unfolds -- opens -- slides in order to retrieve or fetch or search, and then to close.

(cross-posted from my feed at Instagram)

Sketching Kit

Frances' comment on the previous post, about her artist friend's sketching kit, made me think about my own, and I've ended up sketching it (how meta can you get?) to show you. Over the past five or six years, since I got back into this sketching thing, I've refined what I carry so that it's now down to the lightest, most compact kit I could manage - and it works really well for me. If this is helpful to any of you, then all the better.

1. Winsor & Newton compact plastic watercolor field box. However, I've switched out the student-grade Cotman watercolors for empty half-pans that I fill myself with whatever pigments I need for a particular trip or season. I use tube colors from Winsor & Newton and Daniel  Smith, and also sometimes use the Daniel Smith solid watercolor sticks, but break them up and soften them with water so they'll stick in the pans. You can use any sort of tin for your colors - some people even use the sort of tin that mints come in - or buy an empty one from an art supply store. Plastic may not feel as nice, but it weighs less than metal. It helps to have the color containers be interchangeable, then you won't have to rinse out partially-used expensive colors in order to switch them. Your tin needs to have wells where you can mix the colors.

2. Plastic brush-pen. There are several models; mine is by made by Letraset. This brilliant invention is the key to easy watercolors on-the-go. Not only does it dispense with the need for sable brushes (hard to carry, hard to care for), you also don't need a water container because the water is in the brush handle. I usually travel with just a little water in the brush, and fill it wherever I happen to be: on a plane, in a hotel room, at a public fountain. There is also a little sable travel brush in the watercolor box, but I rarely use it. The brush pen has a synthetic, responsive fiber tip that never separates or becomes worn, and it works by dispensing water as you squeeze the handle - you can control it very finely, with a just a little for intense color and fine lines, or squeeze hard for washes or to rinse the brush out before changing colors.

3. Fountain pen with waterproof ink. Mine is a Lamy Safari, the transparent demonstrator model, with a fine nib, and I usually use Noodler's Lexington Grey ink in it. If I'm going to be gone for a while, I take a small bottle of the ink for refills: mine is a re-purposed plastic bottle that originally contained over-the-counter eye drops. I like drawing with a fountain pen much better than with fine-tipped markers; the line has a lot more variation and life, and the nib is pressure-sensitive. This pen choice is the result of a lot of testing and research: you have to be careful with waterproof inks - do NOT put them in a favorite, expensive fountain pen!

4. Pencil sharpener and one pencil. Often I don't begin with a pencil sketch anymore; I either start right in with the pen or splash on some watercolor first, and then draw onto it with the pen when it's dry. But most of us will want and need a pencil some of the time. The sharpener (drawn a bit too large here!) is a high-quality metal one; plastic weighs less but a hundred broken points later, I've decided the cute plastic sharpeners that hold the shavings aren't worth the trouble.

5. A rag. You need something - a paper towel or a rag - to wipe your brush on.The green thing at right is a piece of a microfiber towel from Trader Joe's: this fabric works incredibly well for the purpose. It weighs very little, is super-absorbent, and can be rinsed out and dried quickly. In a pinch, you can just use a paper towel or napkin.

6. Small, high-quality sketchbook. I use Stillman & Birn Gamma series spiral-bound sketchbooks at home, and these lovely cloth-bound Travelogue Artist Journals when I'm traveling; both contain fairly heavy paper that has a bit of a "tooth" and accepts multi-media and light washes. If it's for a special trip, I've sometimes made and bound my own books, but frankly, I like these better; they open flat and the paper is excellent. I wouldn't suggest working in a book with pages that are less than 5 or 6 inches square; you'll get all tied up in details from working so small. Take the biggest one you think you can manage and will use on a daily basis: it's better to use your weight allotment for this.

7. Zip-loc bag. All the tools fis into the zip-loc, which is then closed and rolled up. (I keep the sketchbook separate in case of spills.) The zip-loc is the lightest possible container, and if the towel is damp or any water or ink should spill, it won't leak into my shoulder bag or luggage. At home I use various containers, including a beautiful India print pencil sac given to me by my friend Priya, but for travel, you need light + waterproof.

I hope this is helpful to those of you who like to draw, but more than that, I hope you'll be encouraged to get out there and try your hand. I don't show you my bad drawings here - we all do them - but the important thing is that practice really helps; my drawing continues to improve and become more lively and fluid, and that's true for everyone. So don't get discouraged by early attempts that may be disappointing, just keep at it and have fun observing and recording what you notice in the world around you, which is the point of drawing in the first place.

This drawing reminded me of an illustration in one of my beloved children's books. It was by a woman who was an artist and book illustrator, and she had drawn her palette and tools and written a little about herself: it was a loose, lovely little watercolor in shades of brown, rose, mauve, soft green. I pored over that page for hours, returning to it again and again. There was just something about that little box of colors and the brushes that was utterly captivating and whispered, "this could be you someday." I can still see it perfectly in my mind, even though the book has been gone for decades. How odd life is, how strange the way it circles back to our beginnings, our earliest longings and dreams!