I’m amazed at how fast days go by. We have had cold wet weather that makes everyone think it is still March or April instead on May and June but nonetheless the strawberries are ripening and the peas are bursting off the vines. I’ll have a a great crop of kale, many rhubarb pies and plenty of lettuce in my future. I hope the tomatoes will stop shivering soon and that the slugs won’t eat all of my basil. Meanwhile, I’ve got two beehives going, although they are both struggling a little which makes me think beekeeping in Oregon is much harder than in California.

We’re going to visit my parents and sit on beautiful Lake Michigan beaches for a week. I only wish I had a good stunt kite to take with me, I think it would be fun to learn to fly one.

In the studio I’ve finished another painting, one that really works. It is so satisfying to feel a painting come together and work. I’ll have to post a photo soon. A good week.

I’ve been working on a new painting that takes some of the ideas I started working with in the Vectors and Graphs paintings and brings the painting surface itself more into focus. A lot of the pieces I’ve been working with have patterns that try to capture the space of the painting plane. Allowing the viewer to see more of what was hidden in the white painting I did. My interest in the ideas of graphs comes from the way we see so much visual imagery on the computer these days. Everything is chopped into pixels that translate what we see. Before I was playing with lines and planes by lining up the hollyhock seeds in partial rows, partial graphs. This time I measured out all the seeds and placed them into the surface, a truly pixelated image. Pixels can’t occur in nature so I like the irony of using natural materials to represent the pixels. I think the next step for this painting will be to heat up the surface again and remove a few dots. I do like the way the wax will allow me to go back into the paining and work more. I removed one seed already. I can’t decided if I like the effect. In some ways it enhances the layered parts but in some ways it is so strong it is distracting from the rest of the painting. I’m also afraid it may be too decorative in feel. I’m posting a photo of the new painting and then one of the first Vectors painting. Sometimes seeing a painting in a different format can help me think. Anyone have any thoughts?

Unfinished painting - Hollyhock Seed Dot Matrix

Vectors

This week in Eugene! A look at life in this quiet hideaway.
Some beekeeping friends had their hives visited by a bear recently. The bear came and destroyed a hive, undoubtedly eating both larva and honey, and then came back two nights later for another hive. After that my friends put up an electric fence. Within days, the fence had bent rails where the bear tried to get through, quite oblivious to the electrical wiring. There was still one hive that was so strong my friends needed to split it, so I took the split and ordered a queen. Her majesty arrived today in the mail and I installed her without mishap in the hive. All the bee people are expecting the bees to swarm in the next couple of days when the temperature finally warms up a bit and I’m hoping to get a second hive going that way.

Sounds positively nineteenth century doesn’t it?

Some dried teasel stalks from last year rippling across the new green

I went to Portland yesterday and had a lovely time with a friend I haven’t seen enough of lately, no doubt because we live 100 miles away from each other. In the Pearl we went to several galleries that had interesting exhibits up. I was intrigued by the wax and graphite surface of Julia Mangold’s sculptures at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, although as artworks I thought her drawing were the more exquisite pieces. We also went to PDX, where there was a show of James Lavadour paintings. I’ve never quite loved his work and while these paintings aren’t my style, I loved the balance of control and chaos, and was fascinated by their technical skill. Really good. I also enjoyed seeing the Disquieted show at PAM. I had a good private laugh at a couple who were so engaged with their iphone tour that they couldn’t figure what was going on in the Jan Tichy video installation, 1391. The installation had a projected shadow that moved over a model of a secret prison camp in Israel, referred to as Israel’s Guantanamo. The building model was on the floor in a square lit by the projector while the shadow implied the movement of the sun as day after day passes. From there I went through the permanent collection and saw the Leon Golub show and the three recent Cy Twombly pieces that are up. All in all a lovely visit!

Yesterday, I was perusing the Eugene Weekly and came across a review of The Living River exhibit at the Jacobs Gallery, in downtown Eugene. And there I was – spinning around at the end of the article – It is a really nice mention because I think the reviewer, Suzi Steffan, understood my piece and was able to articulate her thoughts. She wrote, “Sarah Grew doesn’t shy away from the abstract in her work either. Spinning uses camas lilies in a white acrylic emulsion to evoke a feeling of suspension, of small things stitching a world together. The mixture of scientific and botanical precision with patterned and thickly layered canvas hints at the ways a river inserts itself into our bodies and our minds.” If you want to read the rest of the review, click here.

For me, the exhibition as a whole is a bit overwhelming in the varied quality of the work, and the sheer number of pieces in the exhibit. It felt like there were about two inches of space between each piece, which, I think, is too bad. On the up side, the show is a fund-raiser for the McKenzie River Trust, a non-profit group that works to preserve land and habitat the McKenzie River flows through, in other words, habitat in Lane and Douglas counties. I also appreciate the fact that work like mine, which is strictly non-representational, could be selected along with so many literal pieces.

Spinning
2008, 30 x 36 inches

I taught the first day of my Encaustic class at Maude Kerns last Saturday. I hate to admit it, but the class was a bit of a disaster. It started out well enough, I spent the first hour talking about wax, and encaustic and what we were going to do… Then my ten attentive students began to prepare their first boards with unpigmented encaustic medium, to get the feeling of the wax and how quickly it hardens, what type of brush stroke it makes, as well as the process of fusing the wax. However, as soon as we got the heat guns going all the electricity blew! I reset the circuit breakers but that didn’t solve the problem. I thought there must be a breaker that looked like it was on but wasn’t, so I turned all of them off and then back on again. Still no luck. In the end I had to send everyone home after only half the class period had elapsed, and left the Art Center classroom with no power. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only piece of the building that I left without power, the server in the office was turned off and on again, as I reset the breakers, and now it won’t work. I think the staff at MKAC must be cursing me daily, they haven’t been able to check their email, or access any files since Saturday. A real fiasco!

I went to see the grave of my Triple-Great Grandparents. The two of them have a tall pillar shaped gravestone on the left side of a large plot with many of their children. In the center of the family plot is a big blocky granite stone with Kuykendall carved into it. The stone is lifted on the right side by the roots of a Madrone tree which I thought was a wonderful little note from the forces of nature. I was particularly moved that it was a Madrone tree growing up from the tombstone, as I have a great love for them. It felt really beautiful, and quite personal, that a Madrone was lifting the stone.

Full Circle in 5 generations.

I just came back from visiting in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was so so nice to be there and bask in the company of many of my truly wonderful friends! I wish that everyone could be as lucky as I am.

So here is my crazy coincidence for the year —
While I was in SF I went to the 75th Anninversary Exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I’ll digress to say that I was really impressed at how much the collection has grown since I worked there, and that I have been so starved for art it was a very nourishing experience. Anyway, on the third floor, I incidentally noticed a photograph taken in the woods of northern California by one Frank Kuykendall in the 1870’s. Kuykendall is my paternal grandmother’s maiden name, and all my childhood we heard stories about her family in the Pacific Northwest. I knew they were in the area by the mid 1800’s thus my first thought was, “I bet I’m related to this Frank Kuykendall somehow, I wonder what the relationship is?” So, this morning, I googled the name and found a book on the history of the Kuykendall family written by one George Benson Kuykendall, who it turns out is my my great great grandfather, was available on GoogleBooks, and that indeed Frank Kuykendall was the son of my great-great-great uncle George. I don’t know what you call that relationship, third cousin, or first cousin four times removed, or?

However, that isn’t the amazing part, no the astonishing piece of information, which I found on page 71 of George Benson Kuykendall’s History of the Kuykendall Family Since it’s Settlement in Dutch New York in 1646 was that my great great great grandmother and grandfather (John and Malinda Kuykendall) are buried here in Eugene Oregon and that I had no idea!!!!  The book included photographs, and so here is a photo of my 3G-Grandparents.

If it stops raining long enough, I’ll have to go see if I can find their tombstones in “Odd Fellows Cemetery”, now known as the Pioneer Cemetery. Really, my family had no idea! Even my father, who read the family history long ago, didn’t remember that they were in the very place I live now. I guess I do have Eugene roots afterall!

I’m indulging myself in a second photo, also from George Benson Kuykendall’s book. This one is of my teenaged Grandmother (left side) with her family. I should add here that my Grandmother was a teacher and a “sunday” painter who always encouraged my creativity and that Great Grandfather E.V. Kuykendall was a judge, a state senator from Washington state, and most importantly to me, also a painter.

I’ll stop now for fear of starting to read like an epistle my son might have to write for school. Cheers to having fun with Google, and now the rain has stopped.

Announcing my next Encaustic Painting Workshop! It will be held at Maude kerns Art Center in Eugene, on three Saturdays in April, starting April 10. This is a great opportunity to try out encaustics and see what you can do with them. I’m copying the whole Maude Kerns listing here but just click here to go to their site and enroll. Check it out!

Encaustic: Painting & Collage
Sarah Grew
Class ID #1654
SPACE AVAILABLE

In this three-week workshop, you will explore the ancient medium of encaustic and create modern artworks of your own. Dating back to the ancient Egyptians, the process of encaustic painting uses heated beeswax which is applied to a prepared surface. During your first class meeting, you will review the history of encaustic and discuss how artists such as Andrea Montegna, Diego Rivera, and Jasper Johns have incorporated this medium into their work. Artist Sarah Grew will also demonstrate the process of mixing encaustic paint. You will learn how to use encaustic paint, how to create a photo transfer on your work, and also experiment with adding texture to the wax medium with found objects. This is a great class for students new to encaustic and for those looking to refresh their skills and learn new techniques. Sign up early to reserve your space.!

Saturdays, April 10-April 24, 1:00pm-4:00pm
Members $50 – Non-Members $75 – Materials fee $20

My workshop at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum went really well and has got me going on a bunch of new ideas.

I have also finished, well almost finished, a new piece – I’ll post a photo soon.

One of the projects I want to work on is doing more pieces containing old botanical drawings, like I did in my piece Honeyed View.

These early botanical drawings are so rich, and much earlier than I thought. Really quite at the beginnings of modern science as we know it. In the process I’ve discovered Maria Sibylla Merian who went to Surinam in 1699 with her daughter to paint the stages of metamorphosis of caterpillars. Women artists hide in many places. So much to learn, I feel really ignorant!