JANIS JOPLIN
Showing posts with label The EveryDays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The EveryDays. Show all posts
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Friday, September 30, 2016
Every Day in September 2016 - Habitats and Environments in WASHINGTON STATE!!
This is "Every Day in September" for 2016. I found it a GREAT opportunity to explore and re-discover my birth-state, since moving back here to live from Michigan six years ago. Washington, interestingly enough, has the unique distinction of having examples of all of the world's natural Biomes except one - Tropical.
Here are the instructions and guidelines for EDiS2016 from our moderator:
Below you’ll find this years prompt list. The theme is habitat/environment and the flora and fauna thereof. This will include anything that lives (but not humans
), that are indigenous to the habitat/environment in question. From the smallest microbe to the biggest whale....and anything inbetween, plus plant, trees etc. This is a chance to discover a little more about the world we live in. So power up Google and let your creative juices flow.....
Here are the instructions and guidelines for EDiS2016 from our moderator:
Below you’ll find this years prompt list. The theme is habitat/environment and the flora and fauna thereof. This will include anything that lives (but not humans
), that are indigenous to the habitat/environment in question. From the smallest microbe to the biggest whale....and anything inbetween, plus plant, trees etc. This is a chance to discover a little more about the world we live in. So power up Google and let your creative juices flow.....
Every Day in September 2016, #30 - Environments and Habitats - WASHINGTON STATE
Well, here it is - my last post in 2016's Every Day in September.
The very last painting of the very last day of September. And I did it! Thirty 7”x10” paintings, one for each day. This last one is just a map of the places I have visited. I have learned, remembered and rediscovered so much in the process of doing them. I am going to post-bind them and put them between nice hardboard covers with their little narratives – a lovely chapbook love letter to my birth state, to which I have come home. And where, it appears, I am blooming where I am planted.
Every Day in September 2016, #30 - Environments/Habitats - WINTER Where you live
EDiS #30 - The last of my old Whidbey Island Mandalas. This is Winter where I live. Here winter can be kind of grey, but when it is not, it is spectacular. The mountains stand in crisp, white relief against the deep, blue sky; the tall evergreen trees sometimes (but not often, here on our temperate, little island!) wear capelets of snow; the cold, night skies let us (finally!) see the stars, holly berries provide us with color, the rivers freeze, the glaciers thicken, and we might get a yearly return visit from ghostly snow owls.
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #29 - Environments and Habitats - ALPINE
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #29 - “Alpine”
Here, on alert, is one of my favorite Washingtonian critters, the Olympic Marmot, in one of my favorite Washington locations, Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Peninsula. This is where the Marmot, the official state mammal, lives burrowed in colonies all over the rolling mountain meadows, whistling. There is not a lot to do up on Hurricane Ridge, unless you LIKE climbing up grassy, wildflower covered slopes to stand on top of a peak among peaks, breathing in sweet, clear mountain air and waiting to hear an eagle's cry or a marmots whistle. Or maybe listening to the soughing wind through forest or watching Olympic mountain mists gathering at the tree line below you. Not much to do up there, but, I'll tell you, I'd drive all day up the hairpin, winding two-lane just to get to the top and have a picnic lunch, take it all in, and drive back down. And I have. Many times.
Here, on alert, is one of my favorite Washingtonian critters, the Olympic Marmot, in one of my favorite Washington locations, Hurricane Ridge on the Olympic Peninsula. This is where the Marmot, the official state mammal, lives burrowed in colonies all over the rolling mountain meadows, whistling. There is not a lot to do up on Hurricane Ridge, unless you LIKE climbing up grassy, wildflower covered slopes to stand on top of a peak among peaks, breathing in sweet, clear mountain air and waiting to hear an eagle's cry or a marmots whistle. Or maybe listening to the soughing wind through forest or watching Olympic mountain mists gathering at the tree line below you. Not much to do up there, but, I'll tell you, I'd drive all day up the hairpin, winding two-lane just to get to the top and have a picnic lunch, take it all in, and drive back down. And I have. Many times.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #28 - Environments and Habitats - TIDE POOL
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #28 - “Rock/Tide Pool”
In 1972 I was wrestling with a choice. After getting out of the military, I could go back to Washington state, enroll in the community of Dale Chihuly's Pilchuck School in the foothills of the Cascades and become an artist in the burgeoning Seattle glassblowing community. Or I could continue with my plans to marry the man I'd met in the Marine Corps. In retrospect, the life with the gypsys and crazies blowing glass in the woods at Pilchuck may have been the wiser choice. But then, I wouldn't have Genna (and Gracie and Charlie), nor would I have the remaining family, and dear friends, my time living in Michigan, and teaching art in Rockford, gave me. But, had I joined the merry band of glassblowers, I would have learned to make art which creates the beauty of nature using only brilliant hot glass, a confident touch and the breath of the body, such as this representation of the colorful creatures floating in a Puget Sound tidepool.
In 1972 I was wrestling with a choice. After getting out of the military, I could go back to Washington state, enroll in the community of Dale Chihuly's Pilchuck School in the foothills of the Cascades and become an artist in the burgeoning Seattle glassblowing community. Or I could continue with my plans to marry the man I'd met in the Marine Corps. In retrospect, the life with the gypsys and crazies blowing glass in the woods at Pilchuck may have been the wiser choice. But then, I wouldn't have Genna (and Gracie and Charlie), nor would I have the remaining family, and dear friends, my time living in Michigan, and teaching art in Rockford, gave me. But, had I joined the merry band of glassblowers, I would have learned to make art which creates the beauty of nature using only brilliant hot glass, a confident touch and the breath of the body, such as this representation of the colorful creatures floating in a Puget Sound tidepool.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #27 - Environments and Habitats - SWAMP
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #27 - “Swamp”
I was raised by a compulsive fly fisherman. No family activity, vacation, or travel was undertaken unless it somehow culminated in, or involved, fly fishing. I have some pretty bad childhood memories resulting from my father's obsession. But, I also have a few good ones – like a rustic log cabin on the shore of a high mountain lake in British Columbia –outhouse, wood stove, bears, coyotes, loons, and moose swimming the lake at sunset. Pan fried fresh steelhead. The milky way and northern lights so close you could hear them singing.
That was a big one. A little one was tiny Lake Hannan, in the woods above Duvall, and me, maybe 12 or 13, laying tummy down on warm summer planks, dropping no-see-ems and skeeters into flytraps to get them to slam their jaws in satisfaction, surrounded by the funky aroma of skunk cabbage and swamp moss, and the songs of tiny green peeper's. Sometimes I was joined in the lazy warm by a silent green and yellow garter snake, or by noisy blue and red dragonflies.
These are all good memories. The fishing wasn't.
And do it, I still will not.
I was raised by a compulsive fly fisherman. No family activity, vacation, or travel was undertaken unless it somehow culminated in, or involved, fly fishing. I have some pretty bad childhood memories resulting from my father's obsession. But, I also have a few good ones – like a rustic log cabin on the shore of a high mountain lake in British Columbia –outhouse, wood stove, bears, coyotes, loons, and moose swimming the lake at sunset. Pan fried fresh steelhead. The milky way and northern lights so close you could hear them singing.
That was a big one. A little one was tiny Lake Hannan, in the woods above Duvall, and me, maybe 12 or 13, laying tummy down on warm summer planks, dropping no-see-ems and skeeters into flytraps to get them to slam their jaws in satisfaction, surrounded by the funky aroma of skunk cabbage and swamp moss, and the songs of tiny green peeper's. Sometimes I was joined in the lazy warm by a silent green and yellow garter snake, or by noisy blue and red dragonflies.
These are all good memories. The fishing wasn't.
And do it, I still will not.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #26 - Environments and Habitats - SUBTROPICAL
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #26 - (for) “Subtropical"
Today's is the last of the prompts for subject matter in tropical biomes - Subtropical. I have chosen to relate all of September's prompts to where I live now, my birth state of Washington. In my mind, things tropical relate heavily to exotic and beautiful fruits and flowers, like mangoes, papayas and orchids. This, then, is a painting of the "beautiful and exotic" fruits and flowers of Washington state - luscious red apples, jewel-tone cherries, juicysweet wine grapes, nectarines, plums, pears, berries. And, nurtured by our temperate weather, "exotic" flowers everywhere -rhododendrons, azaleas, tulips, daffodils, lilies, camellias, and yes, out in the bogs and marshes, even orchids.
And, yep. This was not one of my two hour sketches. I got caught up in this one and it became a full scale painting. A rarity for me.
Today's is the last of the prompts for subject matter in tropical biomes - Subtropical. I have chosen to relate all of September's prompts to where I live now, my birth state of Washington. In my mind, things tropical relate heavily to exotic and beautiful fruits and flowers, like mangoes, papayas and orchids. This, then, is a painting of the "beautiful and exotic" fruits and flowers of Washington state - luscious red apples, jewel-tone cherries, juicysweet wine grapes, nectarines, plums, pears, berries. And, nurtured by our temperate weather, "exotic" flowers everywhere -rhododendrons, azaleas, tulips, daffodils, lilies, camellias, and yes, out in the bogs and marshes, even orchids.
And, yep. This was not one of my two hour sketches. I got caught up in this one and it became a full scale painting. A rarity for me.
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #25 - Environments and Habitats -
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #25 - (for) “Tropical Grasslands"
In the tropics they are called veldts, savannas and pampas. In non-tropical climes, such as here, rolling grasslands are called prairies. At the bottom of Washington state, in a prairie in a bend of the Columbia River Gorge, across from the Dalles, Oregon, there is a ranch where, on their 12,000+ acres, the owners raise buffalo and cattle. And yaks. And emus and ostriches and wallaroos and elk and mules. And a zebra. And a giraffe. Buffalo weren't necessarily native to the state, back in the day. But they are now. Yippee kai yay and wallaroo, too.
In the tropics they are called veldts, savannas and pampas. In non-tropical climes, such as here, rolling grasslands are called prairies. At the bottom of Washington state, in a prairie in a bend of the Columbia River Gorge, across from the Dalles, Oregon, there is a ranch where, on their 12,000+ acres, the owners raise buffalo and cattle. And yaks. And emus and ostriches and wallaroos and elk and mules. And a zebra. And a giraffe. Buffalo weren't necessarily native to the state, back in the day. But they are now. Yippee kai yay and wallaroo, too.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #24 - Environments and Habitats -
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #24 - (for) “Tropical Dry Forest"
Peek a boo in the forest, PNW style.
Peek a boo in the forest, PNW style.
Friday, September 23, 2016
Every Day in September 2016, #23 - Environments/Habitats - TROPICAL CONIFEROUS FOREST
EDiS – Environments/Habitats - #23 - “Tropical Coniferous Forest”
Again, no Tropical Biome here. But we do have plentiful coniferous forest – cedars, hemlocks, fir and pine, resulting in miles of driftwood log beaches. Also, from Neah bay in the north down to the Oregon border, we have sea stacks - pillars of rock orphaned from the parent shore by the action of wind, rain and erosion. Because our left side faces west, we also have magnificent tropical-type sunsets out over the ocean. Pacific sunsets – almost tropical . . .
Again, no Tropical Biome here. But we do have plentiful coniferous forest – cedars, hemlocks, fir and pine, resulting in miles of driftwood log beaches. Also, from Neah bay in the north down to the Oregon border, we have sea stacks - pillars of rock orphaned from the parent shore by the action of wind, rain and erosion. Because our left side faces west, we also have magnificent tropical-type sunsets out over the ocean. Pacific sunsets – almost tropical . . .
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