Cruising Desolation Sound then hiking Olympic National Park

We have been saying goodbye to summer by first cruising Desolation Sound and then hiking Olympic National Park. The waters of Homfray Channel are so quiet in mid-September; even the summer breeze has left the area to make room for the gales of October and November.

While we still had calm skies and warm mornings we took the Black Ball Ferry from Victoria to Port Angeles, Washington to hike in the Olympic Mountains. It was fascinating to read that for thousands of years during the ice ages, these mountains were like an island surrounded by moving seas of ice.

The deep forests of the Olympic peninsula are a constant study in shifting light, and I am always anticipating that an image for one of my realist paintings of nature might be hiding in my camera.

I am especially drawn to the tiny views and fleeting moments of nature, for these create the language of symbol and metaphor that the unseen world uses to communicate.  The brief existence of a single raindrop contains all the wisdom of the Oracle.

Why I make art

I do not visualize images in my mind.  I make my art in order to see it.  I ask my work to teach me, knowing that nothing is only what it seems but also something else.  This poem is one of my oldest teachers. It came to me in 1972 while listening a lecture about Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language at the University of Oregon where I was completing my PhD.in Art Education.

In a painting of space

Of light and light, you paint to be alive.

Every part, and every part between the part is whole

And you are artist enough to call forth it riches.

For you there will be not past indifferent moment

There will be no forgotten place.

 I have remembered these phrases again and again across the years of my art-making.  They remain the ground upon which my choices for ways of working are made.     

  

 I moved to Cortes Island  in 1990 from Halifax, where I was teaching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, because one cold dark morning I was shocked to not recognize myself in the mirror—I looked so tired and stressed. I gave up money and career advancement to become an overeducated oyster farmer who paints large photo-realist images of nature, makes frame drums for shamanic journeying, and continually creates the Journey Oracle card deck.

 I compare my best painting moments to singing Opera.  I strive for making that elegantly floating line of pigment unfurling like an effortless aria, all the while knowing years of discipline and practice are supporting the voice, and the mark.

How I make a frame drum

I just finished a 19 image photo album on my Journey Oracle page on facebook showing how I make a frame drum.  Here are some of the highlights.

A frame drum has humble and yet powerful beginnings in a bath of "hot lime" and cold water.

I include pictures of me using a break knife and an ulu for preparing the hide, and show how I cut out the drum head.

I even share a secret for finishing the drum hoop to keep the dried drum skin from buzzing when played for the shamanic journey.

I demonstrate the most important first cut that fits the skin to the hoop and "sets the drum voice."

There are lots of images of constructing the back of the drum: punching holes and lacing thongs to anchor the back of the drum to the cedar withie that keeps the drum skin stable and balanced on the hoop.

Even when completely dry, the drum is not complete without the interlacement pattern I weave inside the cedar ring that becomes the hand hold for the drummer.

See the full story of how the Cloud Drum was made on facebook.

Why do cats have so many names?

We have four cats who all started life with us each with one name.  Now everyone has official names, and secret ones, and names that come and go like the weather.  Why do cats have so many names?

Losha has the least number, maybe because she is the Mom cat and one year older than her three cat children.  Of course she is also Mamalosha, and sometimes Loshamama, but these all seem to maintain her dignity, or which she has a great amount.

Mau has several names but like her, they are sort of generic rather than descriptive.  Mau is cat in Egyptian, and she is also Mauchica, which is cat girl in Egyptian and Spanish.  Mostly she is Mau Mau; always turned toward her wild outdoor life.  On those rare occasions when she briefly comes inside she is so on guard she earns the name Scary Cat.

Hopee is sometimes called Hoopee, and has had many variations like Hopito and Hopeecito.  Also he is occasionally Hopeelapo because that's where he most wants to be. Most recently he was christened Burr by our housesitter, I think because he like to stick to furniture and is difficult to dislodge.

Hopee and his sister Soma like to watch me make frame drums and the difference in their manner seems a perfect reflection of their attitude toward life.

Hopee is curious while Soma is happy to lounge.  Soma was named for the sacred drink of the Gods mentioned in the Rig Veda but she is often Somatalkie because she has a comment for every moment of our insufficient attention to her needs.  Her newest name is Limpet, which does capture exactly her suck up and attach qualities.  I often wonder what cats name themselves.  Surely creatures as complex and mysterious as cats have their own many layers of names.  One of my favorite phrases of shamanic wisdom from the Journey Oracle card deck seems to apply perfectly: "naming it makes it so."

Drumming for the clouds

I have just finished a new shamanic journey drum that appears to be made of the clouds.  The surface of the skin is a rich blend of transparent areas mixed with opaque patches--just like the clouds beginning to appear during these late August summer days.  It has hazy gold light on the edges, reminding me of the way the dust of high summer filters the sunlight into golden shafts this time of year.

Weaving the interlacement pattern into the back of the drum became quite a complicated task.  I finish each drum by creating a pattern using the same number of thongs that fasten the hide to the cedar ring--for this new drum the number is 11. Although I was able to make the pattern from a single length of thong, which is important because an interlacement is continuous so the eye travels its complexity without a pause, the resulting spaces were too narrow.  The addition of a five sided rawhide rope to pull open the shape unexpectedly created another whole level of interconnection.

In fact, the resulting pattern is so complex that I have been unable to wrap the thongs with leather hitching which is my usual way of finishing the back fastening of my drums.  And yet when I looked closely though the window-like opening in the center, I felt I was looking though to the sky with the clouds parting to show its face of eternal blue.  This airy web is just right.