Today I am drying samaras from Oregon Ash in my dehydrator so that I can use them. They are quite long and flat, not hairy and curved like the Maple samaras. When they come out of the dehydrator they are still green on the ends. Drying so quickly I am able to retain a lot more of the fresh green color.

I’ve also got some snowberry sprays that are beautiful. Some Alder cones, fern brachts, pine needles…. and the wax and damar are on their way here.

Painting 30 canvases sort of at the same time feels like I am in overdrive but it is also amazing. Everytime one panel is too wet to work on anymore I turn to the next one and I never run out. Working this way makes it easier to coordinate the color and feel over such a large body of parts.

Lately the light has been beautiful in the late evening. The other night I zoomed off in the car to catch a photograph of frieght train cars in front of a lumber yard in the sunset. Unfortunately, there were no train cars and I was a hair late for the best part of the sunset. Instead, I caught an image of traffic lights and orange clouds right at that neon time of night when the reds glow. This will be one of the images in my piece. In order to work with the rest of the piece I de-saturated the image so that the clouds are mostly gray with a hint of pink. The giclee print looks like a hand-tinted photo.

The Crescent Village Project is about Lane County, the enviornment and the way humans have shaped the area. The piece is comprised of 63 panels that are 15″ x 15″ each. Around half the panels will be paintings, like the ones you see on my website, and the other half of the panels will be photographic in origin. Either created or transposed into a digital format the photographs are then printed as giclees on canvas and stretched over the panels. with in the photographic panels half are from the Lane County Historical Society archives and the other half I have taken. So far this is the part of the piece that is moving along well. I really wish I could share the historical images here but due to the reproduction rights I can’t.

This isn’t really about working on the Crescent Village Project but here is the new best friend member of my family.We have named him Paco. He is part husky and part golden retriever.

On the other hand this is about Crescent Village. Here is an image of my studio space before I began working there. I just wish I could have it for as long as I wanted. I love the open feeling of looking out the roll-up door across the wetlands.

The wetlands I look at as I work

I haven’t been posting much lately. Too much is going on. My inlaws visited, the oven broke, we adopted a puppy… so the blog went the way these things go. Also I think that after the initial excitement of writing I feel silly, wondering if anyone reads it…

However, Crescent Village –

I collected some Heracleum seeds today. Heracleum is an amazing plant. It grows from seed every spring to become 8 feet tall by the time it blooms. The leaves are over a foot long and look a bit like a rhubarb leaf. I can always remember the scientific name because of the Herculean effort made to grow that big in such a short time. it isn’t a particularly beautiful plant, something like a Queen Anne’s Lace. The common name is cow parsnip which I think is an ugly moniker and really doesn’t do it justice.

I am stretching photo canvases now. They look great. Janet Smith, aka Sterling Editions, has done a great job printing them for me. I was worried about this part of the piece since I’ve had a few bad experiences in Eugene with quality of workmanship so I’ve been especially pleased to meet Janet and work with her. She understands what I am trying to get out of each image and has helped me to get the best print I can. I can’t wait to get some wax poured.