orchidart

2011-11-20T12:16:00.000-05:00

A venture into book arts

2011-11-20T12:11:00.002-05:00

For the past several years I have been exploring the intersection of my nature art and the book form, as a way of containing and collecting in some small object some of my images and musings about nature and conservation. Two months ago I was invited by Morton Arboretum to teach some simple movable book forms that have the ability to expand an artist's repertoire of materials, methods and creative expression. This book, which was an hommage to John James Audubon, and was part of a Chicago Hand Bookbinders' exhibit at Northwestern University and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Library a few years ago, was my first venture into this form!

Kew Gardens

2011-11-20T11:21:00.002-05:00

The 'Losing Paradise' finished its five-month run at Kew Gardens, London, as part of a larger exhibit titled 'Plants in Peril'. My son Ian and I were appreciative of the opportunity to see LP at its previous venue at the Smithsonian natural history museum in Washington. Kudos to Carol Woodin of the American Society of Botanical Artists for coordinating this groundbreaking collaboration between scientists and artists, in the service of conservation of endangered species! Their next major conservation-oriented exhibit will be featured by the historic home and gardens of 18th century Philadelphia botanist John Bartram, who helped ignite the love of botany worldwide.

2010-12-31T12:30:00.000-05:00

Milkweed and monarchs

2010-12-31T12:21:00.003-05:00

This is an illustration I did for a friend who is a natural areas steward here in the Chicago region. It's Asclepias exaltata, or woodland milkweed. The graceful, pendant flowers and finely-textured leaves are so different from the other members of the family, but when you look at the pods and flower interior, it's clear it is a milkweed. This species is fairly rare in our region; it's closely monitored by Plants of Concern, a regional rare plant monitoring program of the Chicago Botanic Garden. I have observed small populations (one or two plants) rebound after clearing of buckthorn and other non-native invasive species of brush. I believe it's primarily an edge or even a savannah plant.

The milkweed family is host to the beautiful, orange and black monarch butterfly, which means that's all the monarch eats - no milkweed, no monarchs! Monarchs migrate from Michoacan, Mexico, up to Canada every year, but their numbers are in decline because milkweed is considered a noxious weed by farmers and ranchers. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could allow a wild corner to help our pollinators? We need fruits and vegetables too, not just corn and beans! : )

2010-05-26T11:26:00.000-04:00

Book is finished!

2010-05-26T11:25:00.001-04:00

My trilliums book, a collaboration with Susan L. Post of the Illinois Natural History Survey, is now off the presses! A limited edition of 12, with three artist's proofs, half will go to Susan and the other half to people who have helped inspire my love of nature.

2010-03-16T23:36:00.000-04:00

Losing Paradise? Endangered Plants Here and Around the World

2010-03-16T23:28:00.002-04:00

The second stop of the international tour is the Chicago Botanic Garden's Joutras Gallery. The forty-four botanical illustrations were curated by jurors from the Smithsonian and the Center for Plant Conservation. The exhibit is sponsored by the American Society of Botanical Artists and will travel next to the New York Botanic Garden, then the Smithsonian's American Museum of Natural History, then an international venue still being confirmed.

My son Ian drove us down to the grand opening last October at the Missouri Botanic Garden. I hadn't been there since before he was born and I remember it feeling much larger than the 70-something acres it comprises. The Japanese Garden, with its Godzilla-sized koi, is much the same, even lovelier. And stunning Dale Chihuly glassworks were everywhere!

I'm still pinching myself that I was accepted into this amazing exhibit. There is even a full-color catalogue of the work available through the ASBA! I was back at the CBG last weekend just drinking in the talent and dedication and visionary appeal of the exhibit's fine artworks in all media.

Draw Orchids - wikiHow

2009-11-29T03:23:00.000-05:00

Draw Orchids - wikiHow

2009-07-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

Orchids in danger again...

2009-07-29T20:05:00.002-04:00

Saturday our veteran team of rare plant monitors went out to hunt the dangerous purple-fringed orchid (dangerous because I've broken several bones, on two occasions, on the search!). We located two new plants at one site, two others we had located previous years, and were feeling quite pleased with ourselves and optimistic about our next foray. After a wonderful lunch of Thai food in a cute restaurant not too far away, we ventured over to our second location. Again, two plants re-located, and two new babies : ). But the bad - I mean REALLY bad - news is that they were all awash in a sea of reed canary grass. And if we can't get rid of all the RCG there, the orchids in that area are doomed. : (

This is so characteristic of the efforts to save our precious endangered species - letting the invasives get even a tiny toehold in our natural areas can spell doom for the plants and animals we love and want to preserve!

2009-05-25T00:08:00.001-04:00

Orchids and vanilla grass!

2009-05-24T23:57:00.002-04:00

This weekend we finished up our Cypripedium candidum monitoring. It's amazing how well they do with a prescribed burn! There were many in this tiny railroad prairie, full of conservative species such as yellow star grass, hoary puccoon, vanilla grass and blue-eyed grass. The spring weather was also more temperate and rainy, so perhaps that has some effect on the orchids. But the burn set back the brush, restored nutrients to the soil, and reduced the number of weed seeds. Next year, who knows?

Speaking of weed seeds, we saw a flock of goldfinches yesterday at Volo Bog, eating the seedheads of the abundant dandelions! I wish I had a flock of goldfinches in my yard, manicuring away at my dandelions! : ) We also saw way, way too much reed canary grass there in the bog. There are at least a dozen endangered and threatened species in a very small area, all vulnerable to takeover by this invasive alien plant! I alerted the state ecologist; hopefully that will help matters?

2009-05-18T16:01:00.000-04:00

Showy orchis and ladyslippers!

2009-05-18T15:45:00.002-04:00

This past weekend was a two-fer: Saturday we monitored Cypripedium candidum in a high-quality prairie in western Chicagoland, and on Sunday I drove about 150 miles (getting lost twice, unusual for me!) well into farm country to climb a wooded hillside to see Galearis spectabilis on the edge of the slope, in afternoon sun and glorious bloom! This was the first time I had ever seen this particular beauty.

In many states it is declining quickly, and now I can see why: this particular hillside is rapidly being overtaken by garlic mustard, whose antifungal properties spell doom for the ground-dwelling fungus that nourishes our native orchids. We spoke with the landowner about the joys of orchid conservation and the need for keeping garlic mustard and other invasive species at bay, and will hope they will do the management essential for the orchid's survival.

The gentleman said there used to be a large colony on his property years ago, but it had disappeared. This is the first one he has seen in many years, probably due to the abundant rains this spring? The floral associates were Virginia creeper, bedstraw, poison ivy (always!), black and white snakeroots, carrion vine, jack-in-the-pulpit, wild grape, clearweed, sweet cicely, and balsam ragwort. It seemed very happy nestled in its bed of white pine needles. The tree diversity was very high there; the woods seemed not to have been logged, in recent memory, anyway. There were white pine, shagbark hickory, American elm, hackberry and black cherry nearby.

Moroccan food and violets

2009-04-25T20:25:00.002-04:00

Today we went on our first rare plant foray of the calendar year - for the native dog violets, locally abundant only in a few pristine wooded areas. Unfortunately heavy, intermittent thunderstorms started right as we were setting up our survey, so we weren't able to safely monitor this weekend, but we did find a great Moroccan restaurant within reach, afterwards, and had hot minty tea and a wonderful tagine in its traditional ceramic cookpot. The company was great and we spent time discussing art, kids and upcoming monitoring plans, so it was time well spent.

The early-season marsh marigolds (Caltha palustris) were in their full golden glory and spring beauty, trout lilies and other early spring woodland ephemerals are well along. The trilliums are not yet up. Although our monitoring team has learned to easily ID dog violet, a stemmy, trailing violet with long-spurred light purple flowers, even out of bloom, it's just more fun to see them in their full glory, so I think we'll wait another week. I hope the weather is better next Saturday! : )

2009-03-31T22:34:00.002-04:00

2009-03-31T22:34:00.001-04:00

Here's Trillium grandiflorum. I can't wait until I see them in the woods this spring! : )

2009-03-31T22:29:00.000-04:00

2009-03-31T22:22:00.002-04:00

Well, the trillium series is finished - for now. Just in time for the next exhibit at Whole Foods River Forest's cafe and gallery. (Whew!)

Illinois is home to nine species of trilliums: Trillium grandiflorum (the large white trillium everyone thinks of when you say trillium), Trillium sessile, Trillium cernuum, Trillium nivale (the dainty snow trillium), Trillium recurvatum (probably the most common species in our woodlands), Trillium erectum, Trillium flexipes, Trillium viride and Trillium cuneatum. I grouped the series - or tried to anyway - most logically by color. The painting above is of the two green trilliums, T. cuneatum (left) and T. viride (right).

Waiting for spring...

2009-02-03T23:47:00.002-05:00

Groundhog's day has come and gone, and six more weeks of winter is yet to come, love it or not. I keep thinking about all the sweet orchids and other rarities enjoying their winter sleep, and wondering how they'll fare this coming year. In Illinois, the numbers on the white prairie fringed orchids had tanked in previous years but it seems that there is a very slight upswing because of the wet springs we've had the past two years, and attention to management in some areas. Drought is very hard on them, and unfortunately all the good management in the world can't make up for loss of rainfall....

I've been sidetracked from painting by other projects - church stuff, this orchid article, advocacy for the Mike Quigley congressional campaign, but now it's time to get back to the boards and get a few more finished - I have an upcoming exhibit at Marion Street Cheese Market. What to paint, what to paint??? (And no, I'm not painting cheese! I'm still painting orchids! : ))

good news, bad news

2009-01-26T00:24:00.002-05:00

My hunch that the stemless pink ladys' slipper being possibly extirpated has been borne out by last spring's visits by the state botanists, who found only thick colonies of buckthorn and multiflora rose where the plants had been last seen. Management is so crucial to our natural areas' health! We need more dedicated volunteer corps all over the state to adopt these natural areas and keep the invasives at bay so that future generations may continue to enjoy and treasure these beauties as we do.

The good news is that with management and volunteer commitment, a few new populations of native orchids are being discovered, or rediscovered, each year. The federally listed prairie white fringed orchid was identified at a new site in northern Illinois last year, after years of population declines. I am hoping to be able to locate and talk with botanists who are studying native orchids in hope of learning what are the most serious threats and the best management strategies for combatting them (and by that, I'm ruling out the ones we already know: loss of habitat to real estate development or agriculture, changes in hydrology, trampling, poaching, and global warming for boreal species).

2009-01-10T10:50:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year! In spite of gloomy economic news, I try to keep sane by continuing to seek beauty in the world and attempt to paint it. The orchid pictured below, the stemless ladys' slipper, is listed as Endangered in Illinois. Today I learned that no one has seen it in almost ten years - contacting people about the two state records informed me that it's very possible the plant is extirpated. At the very most, there is probably only one colony remaining, and its numbers have plummeted over the years so the news isn't good...

I feel like the authors of the book "Last Chance to See," who travelled all over the world documenting the last years of endangered animals such as the Yangtze River dolphin. Where will this sixth global extinction, in which we are currently living and participating, finally leave us? I shudder to think, but I also believe that human ingenuity, community and caring contains all the answers to solve our weighty global problems.

Happy Holidays

2008-12-12T09:25:00.003-05:00

publish or perish?

2008-12-09T02:04:00.003-05:00

Illinois Audubon published an article I wrote about Illinois' native orchids, in their fall 2008 issue. Since that article, one more orchid species has gone extinct in Illinois, the small whorled pogonia, Isotria medeoloides. They are federally listed as threatened, recently downgraded from endangered because of new population discoveries, but the populations are so small and intermittent, they're hard to locate and monitor.

John Schwegman, noted state botanist, had been monitoring the tiny population for many years and a friend of his had even purchased the piece of property the plants were on, to save them from the ravages of development. So it goes, sometimes...

2008-11-21T14:11:00.001-05:00

New Work

2008-11-21T13:59:00.002-05:00

Well, the ASBA exhibition accepted one of my pieces, of the rare native yellow lady's slippers. That was encouraging news. With the stock market tanking and no end in sight to the recession, I fear this will be a tough time for artists - a time for regrouping, reconnecting with their public, re-envisioning. Wouldn't it be nice if Pres-elect Obama instituted a WPA, promoting more art in the service of science and innovation?

2008-09-20T02:15:00.000-04:00

Back at the drawing board finally!

2008-09-20T01:58:00.002-04:00

After a hiatus of almost two months I am back at the drawing board, finishing up two paintings, hopefully soon, and starting a third. I have a deadline of next June to finish twenty-five native orchid paintings for an exhibit up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Since I won't be out in the woods anytime soon, and the orchid monitoring season is pretty much over for me, I might have enough time to meet that deadline! The CD is in the mail to the American Society of Botanical Artists for their 'Losing Paradise?" exhibit, next year, but it is very competitive and it is the first time I've submitted to them so my expectations aren't high. There are a couple of nice pieces on the CD tho and they plan to post all submissions on the web, so that is something to look forward to in any event!

Hazards of the trade...

2008-08-30T00:09:00.002-04:00

On July 26 (my mother's birthday), while out monitoring Ilinois' endangered purple fringed orchid for the Chicago Botanic Garden, I stepped in a low spot. My knee went one way, my ankle the opposite, and my left fibula was broken just above the ankle. Fortunately I had other monitors with cellphones nearby and they called EMS for me. It took them ten minutes to find our location on their map and they ended up sending out four ambulances for the one of me. Even though I ended up as afternoon snack for a horde of mosquitoes, it could have been a lot worse. I didn't need surgery, I didn't end up sitting in a patch of poison ivy (I'm very allergic) and I was able to get home that evening after the leg being put in a cast at the hospital. (Chorus of Beatles' "I'll get by with a little help from my friends!") Five weeks later, I'm more or less back on my feet and tomorrow will start painting again. My son says, "No more hiking in the woods for you, mom!" Hah! We'll see about that, but he's right for the moment. I have to be good for a few more weeks. I have a lot of catching up to do with my artwork! My exhibit is home for now and I'm researching other venues. Any suggestions?

2008-07-01T08:37:00.000-04:00

New exhibit

2008-06-29T11:49:00.002-04:00

Our local Whole Foods Market in River Forest has graciously invited me to exhibit several of my native orchid paintings along with other species monitored by the Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern program. It's an unusual venue, to be sure, but the small cafe has north light, friendly customers and an earth-centered mission. I plan to be there many evenings to help talk up the conservation work in our area. Here's the poster from the July 2008 exhibit.

Purple pitcher plant with rose pogonia orchid

2008-05-15T19:17:00.000-04:00

Today I finally completed another in my native orchid series. The rose pogonia orchid, Pogonia ophioglossoides, is fond of tussocks of sphagnum moss, and is frequently seen in bogs and sometimes on the edges of quiet lakes. I have seen this plant in the wild over the past several years. The first rose pogonia I ever saw was sitting atop a mat of sphagnum no more than six inches across. All around it was open water. A couple of feet away was the edge of the sphagnum mat, with ferns, pitcher plants and other wetland-obligate species. There were only two orchids visible from the floating boardwalk that year. The park naturalist told us a story that had horrified me: while making her rounds, she discovered that someone had stepped onto the floating mat, pulled up the orchid, thought better of it, and then dropped it on the boardwalk, where it shriveled and died in the sun. I can see why these are endangered species!

She also told us that as the bog closes in, there is more sphagnum moss for the orchids to grow its seeds on, but other plants also invade the new floating mats, competing with the orchids. As taller and taller plants become established - ferns, highbush cranberries, poison sumacs and larches, the orchids decline because they become shaded out. Such is succession. In the meantime, I will enjoy the orchids.

Native orchids up in Illinois!

2008-04-24T11:02:00.002-04:00

I am expecting to see orchids soon in all their various habitats, since the common spiranthes is up about half an inch in my prairie patch. Their parallel-veined leaves, slightly recurved at the tip, give them distinction from grasses and sedges and members of the lily tribe. Some leaves are very smooth, even waxy, others slightly pubescent (those being mostly the ladyslippers, whose tiny hairs often contain a chemical irritating to the skin, to ward off predators. Despite that, unfortunately, they are all 'deer candy'.

Three paintings were exhibited this spring at the former Brushwood estate of the Ryerson family, now an education center for the Lake County Forest Preserve. I painted three species native to Lake County: Platanthera psycodes, the purple fringed orchid; Mitella diphylla, also known as bishop's cap, for the curious shape of its seed pods; and Asclepias exaltata, the poke milkweed, an undisputedly ugly name for a lovely woodland milkweed. The exhibit was organized by my dear colleague Ann Gilna for our Reed-Turner Woodland chapter of the American Society of Botanical Artists. Derek Norman, head of the Midwest Center for Botanical Documentation, is the president of our group. He used to be head of the Chicago Botanic Garden corporate design team before he retired and is now on staff there teaching several botanical art courses. Quite amazing work, that! I have not studied with him tho am sure I would enjoy the privilege. The exhibit represented species native to northern Illinois as well as some tropical plants. I prefer the natives, simply because a close look reveals hidden treasures, and many people are not familiar with them.

I came across A. exaltata a couple of years ago when out in the woods botanizing with my mentor John Banaszak. He pointed out the plant to me and said that if the buckthorn was cleared from there to open up the savannah a bit, we'd see more of the plant, and if we didn't, we would lose the species from the site. So restoration was scheduled for that winter, clearing out the brush and carefully herbiciding the stumps of the buckthorn and honeysuckle bushes that were starting to take over the black ash/swamp white oak flatwoods. The following summer, instead of two plants, there were several. And one of them had seedpods, so I have great hope that we will continue to see the population increase.

Habitat restoration is important. Sure, I adore orchids; how can you not? - they're SO cute! But they're also the 'canaries in the mine' for habitat and water quality. When the orchids disappear from a site, you know that there are changes, visible or invisible, that are making the site inhospitable to them. Some of these changes might be changes in hydrology, especially lowering of the water table, since orchids are dependent on fungi in the soil and the fungi seem to be pretty specific in their moisture needs. (I need to research that further but that's what staff at the CBG tell me) Another change is incursion of non-native species such as reed canary grass, buckthorn, honeysuckle or garlic mustard. The garlic mustard is especially insidious, since it contains an anti-fungal chemical which is deadly to the essential but delicate fungal network in the soils of high-quality woodlands and prairies. (I found a sneaky overwintering rosette yesterday in my yard - AAAGH! - they can be very difficult to remove by the roots, but that's what you have to do.) Quite a bit of my 'discretionary time' which heretofore had been spent painting orchids is now devoted to restoring habitat so that there will be orchids there next year, and the next, and maybe for hopefully many years to come.

This year I hope to be monitoring four species of native orchids, and several other species besides, for Plants of Concern. I also hope to get out to see the extremely rare Calopogon oklahomensis. Stay posted for new images from my field trips, and new paintings.

2008-01-04T00:44:00.000-05:00

New Year, new projects...

2008-01-04T00:28:00.000-05:00

This year has been so busy, wrapping up a variety of projects having little to do with orchid painting, tho definitely with their conservation. I hope to start in earnest my series of native orchid paintings this year. Climate change, loss of habitat through real estate development, the lowering of water levels in Lake Michigan and other areas around the Great Lakes, have all played their part in altering the ecology of the sites where our native orchids are trying to hang on for dear life.

Hopefully by producing this series of paintings and researching the efforts of those many people who have helped save habitat for orchids and other threatened native species I can help promote awareness of these beautiful plants and the need to save them while we can.

On a personal note, my son Ian turned twenty the other day. : ) I am no longer the mother of a teenager, and instead the mother of an amazing young man. Wish he would help me save orchids! : ) He's too busy, tho, helping people save (or recover) the data on their computers...

Oh, the other projects? The Chicago Wilderness Fieldbooks, subtitled 'a Passport to Discover Nature's Hidden Treasures.' I completed about seventy pen and ink illustrations for self-guided nature journals, meant to be part of the new national initiative called 'No Child Left Inside'. Get those kids away from their TVs and computers and Blackberries! Enough already! : ) Get 'em outdoors to play!

Changes of the season

2007-10-11T18:42:00.000-04:00

I finally received copies of the natural events birthday calendar I designed for the Friends of the Forest Preserves. The first go-round, the printer used too light a weight paper, so they had to be re-done. I designed them to hearken back to the days of the FPD's founding in the 1930s, with simple linoleum prints of twelve different nature subjects, plus the cover. We hope that it will be a tool to help people observe and honor the many seasonal changes that occur, while providing a place for forgetsies like me to keep track of birthdays, anniversaries, income tax quarterly filings and so on...

My process - you can do it too! : )

2007-01-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

For those hardy souls who are interested in botanical illustration, I offer the following advice:

I'd first decide what media you're going to work in, pull together the materials, find some tracing and transfer paper to transfer the drawing to your support (canvas, gessoed board, heavy illustration board or hot press watercolor paper), do the drawing, trace the drawing, take another look at the plant (or piece of the plant) you've chosen to draw, to see if it's moved from your original composition and make changes accordingly. Then transfer the drawing onto the support you've chosen, taping your tracing paper onto your support - watercolor paper, drawing paper, gessoed board or canvas, or whatever - with the transfer paper in between. Make sure the side with the graphite imbedded in it is facing down! (it doesn't work the other way, which should seem obvious, but you'd be surprised how many of us make that mistake at least a few times) Oh - light. You need really good light to draw and paint by. I suppose this is a given, but I always feel it's important to mention it. I have an OTT-Light that gives good results and I can draw late into the night. It's color balanced. This is also important.

Choice of plant: I'd find a plant I can represent life size. Why life-size? Because you can see all the details easily, you can work close to your plant, you can do one-to-one measuring from plant to paper (or whatever surface you've chosen) with dividers (or a ruler, but I like a simple set of dividers - you can use a compass and just put in its extra point, in the place of the pencil lead, in a pinch). Now, I have to betray my bias here: I think orchids are wonderful for this first sort of initial study. If there's a Home Depot or a nursery near you that has some nice, smaller plants in bloom, that's what I'd try first. (There are also some nurseries which ship blooming plants by FedEx.) The flowers last a few weeks on the plant, at least, they're beautiful to look at, and the lines are clean and uncomplicated. I know for a fact there are many illustrators and teachers besides myself who use them in their botanical illustration classes for just these reasons! : ). And even if the plant doesn't thrive in your care over the years you still have a beautiful drawing or painting to look at afterwards... But if you can't get orchids, don't fret - any attractive flower with good substance should do well for you. Keep it in the fridge (in a zippie bag to hold the entire thing without crushing any parts) when you're not painting it and it will last longer.

Note that plants with fuzzy textures or lots of little leaves are just plain frustrating for a first or second project and you're going to get bogged down in the details. For a first botanical, you don't need that. Draw what you love, and that love will give you the energy and inspiration to do your best work.

I usually do a graphite drawing first. Five values is fine. You need to know where your highlights, darkest darks and the three intermediate values between those are. Work on a pleasing composition, turning the plant around a few times to capture its best aspect, but when drawing, be extremely faithful to what you see in front of you. Be content to give it the time it needs, and be aware that a live plant will move and grow and shift itself around searching for the light. If you keep it in a sunny (tho not harshly so) window it will tend to move a bit less. Notice the grace of the plant, the line of growth, and measure it to make sure it fits comfortably on your page. You could take a photo but personally, I wouldn't. You won't capture the detail, the values will be off, and you'll be using the photo as a crutch. Don't go there this time. The next time around you can play with the form of the plant and the presentation of the blooms on the stalks, but for now, I'd just paint what I see.

After you've competed and transferred your drawing, and you're ready to put paint down, study your greens. There are very very few greens right out of the tube that will match anything you see on any plant. Mix your greens carefully, realizing that the basis color of the leaves (usually yellow, tan or brown; in some deciduous trees it's red) will depend on the species, and that the green you see is from the photosynthesis process. Don't mix too many pigments together, you'll get mud. Keep a simple palette of a cool red, a warm red, a cool blue, a warm blue, a cool yellow and a warm yellow. This will vary depending on your media. There are a few colors you just can't mix, and I have some of those on my palette (I work primarily in watercolor, acrylic ink, colored pencil and computer) too.

I'd probably paint the flowers first, since they're the most fragile. If a flower falls off, take the opportunity to dissect it and draw and paint it (later - put it in a zippie in the fridge for now) on a separate support - paper, whatever. If you have a magnifying glass, use it to appreciate the fine details. Don't make too much of them but make sure you indicate them somehow - botanists want to see that the attachments of the leaves to the stem and the flowers to the stem are accurate. If you're not sure what you see, find a botanist to help. Or take out a botany textbook from the library to go over the parts of plants. Don't get bogged down with this, just use it for simple reference. Brian Capon's Botany for Gardeners is a pretty good reference too. (to be continued)

2007-01-11T23:02:00.000-05:00

What makes me paint what I paint? Well, like any other artist, perhaps I want to freeze some special scene, some moment, some awareness of life's fragility - in time and space. I have a good friend who is a musician, and listening to his music reminds me even more of the fragility of life, of our experience, of just how arbitrary our minds are in their ability to seize onto something and remember it or have it make an impression. Even with classical music, which often but not always follows a score, each performance of a piece will be different - the instruments will have a different timbre, the conductor will vary the tempo, the color, the quality of the player, even their mood will affect the piece. So with music, it's played and then it's gone. Even a recording will only capture a certain fragment of that music. Where was I going with that? Probably to say that painting is like trying to capture the moment of our "music" - our life experience - so that we can revisit it. But are we going to step in that same river twice? Probably not. Each viewing, each session of painting will bring something new to us, or at least I hope so...

If I had unlimited time to catch each wave of inspiration I would paint all day - but I can't. I have to pay the rent, see that my son has health insurance, clothes, and food and the other things he still needs from me, few tho they be... So I've had to focus my efforts on what makes my heart sing - and that's orchids. I have painted portraits, and still lifes - would someday like to paint landscapes but they're daunting - and for the past several years orchids still call me by name. Hopefully by painting our native orchids I can help promote the conservation of the natural areas they live in, so they can continue to be enjoyed by generations to come... Like that music, we try to catch on to it and hold it in our hearts but it's gone as soon as the sound fades. And I am very afraid that orchids will do the same thing - global warming has changed the natural landscape, drying out many areas where orchids thrived, inundating others. And real estate development has created sprawl into the last few areas where orchids still exist - forests, wetlands, prairies. So I'm trying to paint them because I'm so afraid we're going to lose them all. And that would make me unspeakably sad if that happened, wouldn't it?

I have to tell you, the recollection, the painting, is no substitute for the real thing. Get outside. Get up close and personal with a flower sometime - even a dandelion. Drink it in. Sink into its beauty. Care.

Why this fascination with orchids?

2007-01-10T00:02:00.000-05:00

Orchids, to me, are sort of the plant kingdom parallel to humans - they're adaptable, vulnerable, beautiful, long-lived (sometimes), and have a long "infancy" - that is to say the period before they are fully able to be self-sustaining. Orchids are fairly old as far as flowering plants go, and we can tell that because they have developed so many different forms, because they are present on every continent except Antarctica, and they have more chromosomes than humans do, in some cases! They are very vulnerable to the water cycle, as is all life, tho there are some orchids which live in very dry climates. Some live inside the Arctic circle, and others live in the southern part of Tasmania, just next to the Antarctic circle! When orchids are not just being completely bizarre, they are fascinating, beautiful, addictive to many collectors and rare plant fanciers. They can live for many many years - I had one that lived over twenty years with me (and was probably ten years old when I was given it as a gift), and a year of neglect while I was juggling school, parenthood, work and many other things, finally brought its health to an end, and I lost it. : (

Orchids start life as a very very tiny seed. If you remember your basic fourth-grade botany lesson, all seeds contain an embryo (which develops into the growing plant), a seed coat to protect the embryo until it sprouts, and endosperm, to feed the embryo while it reaches up to the sky and down to find some anchoring place and set roots. Right? Uh, not in the case of orchids! Oops! No food! The poor things are sent on their way in a papery seed coat, with no food. The little orphan, with its zillion brother/sister seeds from the same capsule (that is to say if there are any pollinators left in town!) are sent across the air currents to find a hospitable place that has - what? Fungus??? Right. The embryo develops a relationship with a fungus which, if it doesn't kill it outright, feeds it (by borrowing sugars and starches from other plants it's attached to already) in the hope of getting some food itself once the plant is big enough to share some. A web of life, indeed! Everything's all connected by the fungus in this ecological chain!

The embryo turns into something called a protocorm with the help of this fungus (and different orchid species need different fungi, too). It takes a loooonnnnnng time for this to happen! A year or more sometimes! Finally, the protocorm develops something looking like leaves and roots, and the little plant is on its way. But it takes years - several years! In the case of north American terrestrial (that means living with its roots in the ground) orchids, up to fifteen years before you see flowers!

If you dig up an orchid to take it home and plant it in your yard, you've killed it. You just removed its food source. A single orchid plant needs a web of fungus at least an acre in size to grow and bloom. If you dig up the plant, it's like cutting off its roots. That's bad. Then that ecosystem, which probably didn't have a lot of orchids to begin with, just lost a lot of good genetic material - so we just lost diversity. That's bad too! Diversity is good. So moral - don't dig up orchids. That's just mean.

2007-01-06T02:27:00.000-05:00

Isn't teaching fun?

2007-01-06T02:01:00.000-05:00

I love teaching - my first class was at the Hyde Park Art Center, where my academic advisors had set it up that I teach watercolor for a year. Now you can probably tell I'm a representational artist. How I got into HPAC was only due to extreme policial pull by my one advisor, who was connected to everyone on that board in some way or another - probably a donor, too, if I know Chicago! : ) Seriously, there is a lot to be said for community good will, and Jean Knoll and her friend Gretchen Anderson were great at building that. I think they even got Ronne Hartfield, who is a wonderful artist, and writer and artist educator involved in the hiring process....

Anyway, being able to draw, and render, and apply paint convincingly is no preparation for the world of teaching! Some of my students looked at my work and said "But I want to learn English watercolor method. Can you teach me that?" Huh? We're not in England. We're drawing and painting from life... no thatched cottages south of Winnetka! And the room - well, we had multiple light sources - mostly bare bulbs. Interesting, drawing a still life with three sets of shadows! Somehow we managed, I sent them home with assignments to work on, from a single light source, and to my amazement, we all survived the process. And thrived! Today I do things somewhat differently with the classes I hold in my studio. We do four-week sessions and much of it is student directed. Nature is the syllabus!

With time limited, tho, frankly I'd rather paint than teach, unless someone is really persistent and motivated, and already can draw a bit. The teachers at Morton Arboretum had wonderful systems in place, handed down mostly by Nancy Hart Stieber, with the most fair, supportive but directed critiques I've observed before or since. And I have the comparison of taking classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, where I believe you got points for being as cruel as possible - tho I'm not certain about that, actually... it just seemed that way. It was a privilege to study there and to learn great skills for teaching art. Teaching certainly shows you how effective your communication skills are!

My favorite painting and drawing teachers - Louisa Boshardy, Frederick Franck, Richard Schmid, Irving Shapiro, Eldon Danhausen (sculpture also), and Walter Parke. Least favorite teachers - Al Algaminas, who sat in the corner doing crossword puzzles during class and just grunted when he looked at your work. He kept repeating "Paint back to front, dark to light, thin to thick" for three months' worth of oil painting classes. And a design instructor who somehow didn't communicate the beauty of good, simple design, instead having us arrange a system of geometric shapes which made no sense to me at all - maybe if she first discussed why?

2007-01-06T01:58:00.000-05:00

More than you wanted to know...

2007-01-06T01:27:00.000-05:00

For some crazy reason - and my son disagrees strongly - people are impressed by so-called "educational credentials." Don't you think that your life itself is credential enough, is validation enough for respect? But for some reason there is esteem for the process of jumping through all those hoops of attending classes, getting good grades, pulling a portfolio or some other questionably valuable artifact together to prove you did the work, learned some facts and are now equipped to present yourself worthy to the world.....

But I have some credentials, just in case readers need to satisfy curiosity about them: B.A., Visual Arts, DePaul University, Chicago; Masters of Religious Education, Loyola University Chicago, and a botanical illustration certificate from Morton Arboretum, Lisle, IL, with their naturalist certificate in process. I was president of the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts a number of years ago (no, I won't tell you how many even if you beg!) - one of my cooler accomplishments, since they only started to admit women in 1967, when Ruth Van Sickel Ford applied. Formerly an all-boys artists' club, with wives relegated to preparing and putting out (and cleaning up) food for the exhibitions and parties (and non-wives posing nude upstairs), they finally had to break down and admit Ruth, since she had taught half or more of them how to draw and paint while she was president of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, where Walt Disney and political cartoonist Bill Mauldin studied. Ooops! After that they did their best to bar the doors, smoke lots of cigars and otherwise discourage women from applying but we finally made our way in. One of my favorite women members at the P&C was the first woman president, Diana Farran, who got the place on the National Register of Historic Places, not just for its history but for its interesting double-bay Italianate architecture and connection with Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler.

The other two women I feel privileged to know from there were Nancy Guzik, wife of former P&C president Richard Schmid, and Susan Lyons, who is the better half of Scott Burdick. Oh, I better not forget Wendy Anderson Halperin, who's an amazing children's book illustrator... see what they were missing the first three-quarter's century? And last but not least my dear dear friend Louisa Boshardy, who was a student of Bill Moseby at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. Bill, I heard, made it really difficult for women students in his class. In a nutshell, he didn't take them seriously. He tried to pretend they weren't there and wouldn't talk to them hardly at all. His critiques blistered, only bested by the ones specially reserved for representational artists at the Art Institute of Chicago... Louisa was- is- not only a top-notch draftswomen, she also has a wonderful alla prima style that is amazing to watch - and is facile in watercolor, oil, pastel, pen and ink - you name it! I'm privileged to know her - and all of them. Women artists rock!

2007-01-05T01:13:00.000-05:00

Tribute to a friend

2007-01-05T00:25:00.000-05:00

Don was an artist, and the son of a famous artist, Pete Llanuza, whose baseball comics are still highly collectable on eBay, and her question was why, when he was finally able to have the time to paint, why he didn't do more of it? Well, I responded, being an artist is a kind of delicate thing - if you do it just for money or to meet gallery quotas and deadlines you have to be careful not to let it develop a financial tyranny of its own, and lose your voice and true creativity in the process. The best artists know how to take risks, work the system so there's money coming in to pay the rent on a fairly regular basis, eat a balanced diet, have at least one good friend, and produce like crazy. The so-called Sunday painters often make a lot of excuses why they don't have time to paint, don't have discipline or passion. But there are a lot of fine artists who also slowly chip away at the mountain of their talent, discovering themselves in there over years and years of effort. Never write yourself or anyone else off who says they want to create - it's good for the soul.

There's a dance to it too, I found: If I was too content with life, my art lacked sparkle and depth; if things were too intense, absorbing my energy and time, draining me of that extra I needed to create, there was nothing left to create from. If my kid or his dad or anyone else were making me crazy or I seriously was out of harmony with myself for any reason, I couldn't paint. If I had space and some calm but not too much calm, that was perfect. There needs to be a fire in the furnace or nothing cooks...

This week, with the son away and a little space, things are cooking - not going great but at least going. And I am so behind schedule I may have to raid my son's supply of Bawls... Ooops! He won't miss them, will he?? Well, I really have to go back and finish that stem of flowers, and pull out the materials for the next painting - I need to have three finished by Monday night... and my portfolio in decent shape for a meeting Tuesday that will make me or break me... Now, if I can just keep peace with son and boyfriend - is there a better word out there, someone, please???? - I might, just might, make that meeting...

2007-01-05T00:22:00.001-05:00

Today I went to the art store with three little kids who stood there patiently for several minutes while I agonized over color choices. Last night I was working on a painting and the colors I was putting down just didn't match my reference, either in front of me or from my recollections of this amazing orchid I saw out in a swale up north this past summer. And being the persistent artist, while fully accepting that few colors in pigment match faithfully the ones in nature (or vice versa) I was determined to find something that was closer than what I had on my palette. Would it be permanent rose or quinacridone magenta, or perylene maroon, or winsor red or thalo red or? Well, perylene maroon ended up looking like I had scrubbed a bloodstain for half an hour, winsor red was too warm, ditto thalo -bingo! the synthetic quinacridone magenta was the one!

When the kids went home with their mom I was left to bliss out with my paints and the studies for this new venture. Great - another interruption!! I'm going to pull that darn telephone out of the wall! Oops - can't do that - tied into the internet via cable, my lifeline to my son and my boyfriend - if you want to call him that, being well past boyhood and crazymaking enough that sometimes I wonder if he's as much a friend as some demon fate had ordained to pay me back for every one of my past misdeeds... in this life, and if you believe in reincarnation (don't know that I do, but sometimes I wonder...) and all the ones ever lived since the late Paleolilthic...

But the call is important - a friend had passed away and his daughter-in-law was checking in to see whether the travel arrangements for family members had been all sorted out, and we ended up chatting, chewing away at precious moments I really needed to spend solving problems of composition, value and infinitesimal watercolor details... and, since the friend had been part of our lives for half mine, I provided her a side of him she had not known.

Don was an artist, and the son of a famous artist, Pete Llanuza, whose baseball comics are still highly collectable on eBay, and her question was why, when he was finally able to have the time to paint, why he didn't do more of it? Well, I responded, being an artist is a kind of delicate%