Susanna's Sketchbook

May 6, 2008

Did you know, when the painter Claude Monet moved to his house in Giverny, France, and began painting the beautiful landscape in the surrounding area, namely poplar trees and haystacks, that the owner of a certain forest that Monet had been painting told the artist that unless he was paid a fee, he would cut the trees down? Oh yes he did. And once word got out that Monet would pay money to keep his painting's subject matter intact, other wily townsfolk started blackmailing him, too. I suppose in a strange way, the greedy townsfolk should have been thanked because in the end, Monet painted those famous waterlilies from his own gardens.

I didn't know that about Monet until I read artists' houses by Gerard-Georges Lemaire. It's a fascinating book about the homes of several well-known artists, including the Bloomsbury Group, Alphonse Mucha, Andre Derain and Claude Monet. The gorgeous photographs in the book are by Jean-Claude Amiel.

It's so interesting to see what these artists collected over their lives be it rare Japanese prints, grotesque carnival masks, personally-designed furniture or a mishmash of bowls and paintings left by guests and roommates.

One of my favourite rooms is the studio of painter Duncan Grant of the Bloomsbury Group.  I like how every inch of the room seems covered in artwork and that the paint colours on the walls are just a little bit odd. Like that lime-green-yellow on the right. And then look at the wall behind the mirror...it's covered in random dark brushstrokes.

Talk about an interesting read... There were so many affairs and open relationships occurring under these roofs! Well, except for Monet. His wife threatened to move out of the house if he hired a female model. I'm surprised that Hollywood hasn't picked up this. Okay, I'm not really that surprised. Maybe the BBC has...?

March 26, 2008

It's Wednesday afternoon and the weather is beeeaaauuutiful! No, I didn't photograph my birds in the field today, like I said I would. They are still in pieces on my table, waiting to be painted and taped together. Sigh... I spent about an hour working on them today but I became so distracted by the spring breeze coming through my window and by the perfect pastel clouds slowly floating across my view. All I wanted to do today was to go outside, to find colour and inspiration somewhere.

So I went to the bookstore. Yes, that's still indoors but I transported myself via the magazine section to other parts of the world. Among the photography magazines, I happily discovered a photograph of Maddie's on the front cover of Stampington's Life Images Magazine (hooray, Maddie!). In the same issue I found a pretty photo spread of a French house by Corey. I looked for the April issue of Budget Travel Magazine as Maryam wrote an article on her favourite haunts in Marrakesh but I couldn't find it - yet. Before I left, I had to take a peak into the current W Magazine. Bruce Weber has a terrific photography spread on New Orleans in the magazine. While several photographs show model Karen Elson wearing designer clothes, most of the images are of interesting New Orleans residents and of organizations helping that city recover from Hurricane Katrina. Way to go, W Magazine, for publishing a creative article that goes beyond a bunch of pretty pictures.

I'm back home now. I picked up a black wing and then put it down. I baked chocolate chip and coconut cookies that look nothing like the photographs in the Donna Hay cookbook I had been referencing. Oh well, they still taste good. In half an hour, J and I are (finally) going to go outside for that walk.

March 11, 2008

I took a walk in a rose garden this afternoon. The rose bushes had been either cut down to about a foot off the ground or had been left alone with round pods wrapped in dried petals still attached to the branches. Underneath the bushes, however, Spring was finally making a welcome appearance. Little armies of green shoots were pushing aside heavy blankets of dead leaves and mulch and capturing rays of warm sunshine. Ahhh Spring...!

The sight reminded me of Frances Hodgen Burnett's book, The Secret Garden (1911). My mother used to read it out loud to my sister, M., and me at night, changing her voice for each character. We loved that book. I still do. We enjoyed following the young character, Mary, as she traveled from India, where she was a spoiled and ill child, to the lonely manor of her wealthy uncle in England, after her own parents had died from cholera. It was thrilling to hear my mother channeling the mysterious moaning coming from down the hall each night and it was exciting when Mary discovered the secret garden behind the wall. I will admit that I had a secret childhood crush on the maid's brother, Dickon, because he could talk with animals.

March 3, 2008

This past weekend, I dropped by my local Borders and discovered with delight that a book that I have been coveting for over a year was on sale. The Seven Sins of Chocolate by Laurent Schott is a collection of you guessed it, chocolate recipes, but what sets this book apart is the ingenuity that the chef, photographer and stylist brought to the table. All the chocolate recipes are categorized under the seven deadly sins - sloth, anger, lust, pride, envy, avarice, and gluttony. Photographer Thomas Dhellemmes and stylist Veronique Villaret created decadent, dark settings for each chocolate dessert. Oh my, oh my...

Here are a few pages from The Seven Sins of Chocolate...

a fresh berry and chocolate tart crumbling down a frou frou pillow...strawberries spilling onto the pink tablecloth...

A gothic table setting of chocolate crepes...the uneven plates remind me of grey seashells...

 

And an outstretched hand offering jewels and chocolate and pistachio financiers.

August 19, 2007

This is turning out to be one the most perfect weekends of the summer. Yesterday afternoon I spent a couple hours flipping through magazines and books at Barnes & Noble. I discovered a new book, or at least I think that it's new, on the late Francesca Woodman and her photography. Something in her work speaks to me and I can't tell you how many young women photography students were also influenced by her images when I worked at the art college. When I picked up the new book on Woodman's artwork, I was pleased to find images of hers that I hadn't seen before - images of her body entwined in the heavy branches and roots of trees. Once again she's disappearing into her surroundings.

Speaking of books, I finished reading Michael Ondaatje's latest book, Divisadero over the weekend. I love Michael Ondaatje's writing. I'm in awe of his ability to not only tell a good story but to string phrases together to reflect the overall feeling of the story. For instance, in Coming Through Slaughter, the main character, Buddy Bolden, is a clarinet player in the Storyville district of New Orleans who eventually goes mad. Michael Ondaatje not only tells the story of Bolden's descent into madness but the way he writes of it... the sounds of the sentences as they roll off the reader's tongue is jazz music, is madness.

In The English Patient, the characters are experiencing the loss of others and of themselves. There are physical, mental and emotional injuries that the characters struggle with throughout the story. There is of course the character with amnesia, played by Ralph Feinnes in the movie adaptation of the book. In The English Patient, Ondaatje's writing reflects the in and out of consciousness. What paragraph is real, what is a dream...?

The feeling in Divisadero is that of love and sudden endings and I have to say, I found this story the most difficult of all the Ondaatje books I've read. There's such a feeling of unresolved emotions and relationships and I just wanted to have a happy conclusion for all of the characters. But then, that isn't always true to Life, is it? And I don't really want a Hollywood ending or - ack! - a Harlequin ending. I have to say, I did let out a whoop! of joy when I discovered a character from Ondaatje's previous stories slipping into Divisadero. If the character had been real, I would have thrown my arms around him. True to his character, though, he would have been horrified by that act. And I would have lost my wallet.

To top off the day, J and I went on a three-hour hike through the woods. As it was early and we didn't have plans for the evening, we were open to losing ourselves down unfamiliar trails. We walked through fields with grass as tall as our shoulders. We ate wild blackberries - sour! - and picked thistles off our clothes. We saw the shapes of deer walking through the trees. It was so quiet - just the sound of cracking branches, leaves blowing in the wind, birds calling out in alarm as we approached, crickets singing in the tall grass, our footsteps on the path. Perfect.

Japanese DIY

During my travels yesterday, I came across a little shop in a jumbo-size mall that sells everything Japanese - cute little eraser kits, simple pastel-coloured notebooks, music cds of Japanese pop stars, hard cover books on Japanese decor, including one titled Japanese Country Living that caught my eye and almost my wallet.  But what really caught my attention were the Japanese DIY magazines. The photography in these magazines are simply beautiful and the projects themselves are creative and often come with wonderful little hand drawn instructions. I'm kicking myself for not picking up an issue or two in the store but this morning I found an Ebay store called "Simply Pretty Japanese Beads Books" that sells quite a few of these magazines. Here are a few covers and excerpts:

 

*Clackity clack clack...this just in... Holly from the excellent design blog decor8 just wrote a post on her blog about a few of her recent book discoveries, including Japanese books Jeau de Paume. She also includes instructions on how we readers can order these books through Amazon Japan. Check it out here. Very cool! Thanks, Holly!

Artful Blogging: Visually Inspiring Online Journals

I had a great weekend! How about you? On Saturday, J came into the apartment grinning, holding our mail. There in his hands was a large envelope I had anxiously been waiting for and it had finally arrived. Yippee! And what was in the large envelope? Somerset Studio's new quarterly magazine, Artful Blogging: Visually Inspiring Online Journals.

Artful Blogging: Visually Inspiring Online Journals is a lush, beautifully laid out magazine featuring thirty-one crafty and creative bloggers and their artwork. I can't tell you how excited I am to not only see my artwork published in the magazine but I feel so lucky to be featured alongside so many super-talented bloggers, several of whose work I have admired even before I started blogging. There's la vie en rose...a sweet life, Posie Gets Cosy, Art Tea Life, Anahata Katkin, Wish Jar Journals... And there are many inspiring bloggers in the magazine who I hadn't met before but who I certainly will be paying visits to in the future. There's Michelle Ward from Green Pepper Press Street Team whose monthly "crusades" inspire others to create. And get this, after emailing one another over the weekend, Michelle and I discovered that we both live in the same town! Really! How fun is that?

Artful Blogging will be on magazine stands on August 1st. And if you are interested in participating in future issues, check out how to on page 139.

Barbara Kingsolver and the Bug Hatin' Farmer

Have you ever read a book that changed your life or pushed you in a new direction? Well, just today I finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and I have to say, I can't remember the last time I was so excited about a book on agriculture and food.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is about Kingsolver and her family's move from Tucson, Arizona, to a farm in rural southwestern Virginia. For one year, the author and her family decided to eat (mostly) local food, that is, food that was grown either by themselves or within their county. Each member of the family, Kingsolver, her husband and two daughters, were allowed one non-local food, like caffeine - hence the "mostly".

It's an educational read from what vegetables grow at different times of the year (recipes included) to why we may want to buy local vegetables and meat (organic when it's available) versus the big company brands. Some of the information is disturbing - my Thanksgiving dinner will not include a big white-breasted Butterball this year thanks to her chapter on big brand turkeys. I'm already buying the organic versions of milk and vegetables that are available in the supermarket but now I'll be looking more closely at the labels to see where the produce was grown. One of Kingsolver's biggest reasons for buying locally or growing for herself was to cut down on the fuel consumption and energy costs it requires to move a product internationally or across the United States in order for her to purchase it in her neighborhood.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is not an entirely serious read. Kingsolver writes down-to-earth and with a good sense of humour. The description of her lovesick turkey hens cracked me up. And the recipes her daughter includes in the book have already made it into my kitchen. J and I had Summer Potato Salad for dinner tonight.

Needless to say, I couldn't put the book down and I was so eager to incorporate the idea of local food shopping/support into my life that I drove out to an outdoor farmer's market this past Saturday morning. I was all ready to fork over dollars in exchange for organic vegetables grown in a local NJ farmer's fields. Well, the farmer's market wasn't what I had envisioned. I guess in my mind had envisioned the California markets I've seen online. You know, the ones bursting with boxes of vibrant fruit and firm vegetables. Well duh, I live in the North East and we have a different climate and growing season here. What I found was one row of tables in parking lot. The first table was owned by a young, kind-looking couple selling pots of flowers. The rest of the tables were stocked with pies and assortment of vegetables, including bananas (definitely not local), and were manned by four young, smiling women and one very large man. I noticed that with the exception of the beans and zuchinni, all the vegetables were grown internationally. Okay. Beans it is. I asked for one pint and one of the smiling young girls put it in a plastic bag for me. I then asked her, Do you work on the farm that grows these? Yes. Do you know if there were any pesticides used when growing the vegetables? She looked a bit shy with this question and then pointed out the large man as the farmer and that I really should ask him.

So I walked over to the farmer with my bag of beans and started up a conversation. Hello. Hello. Are you from around here? Yes, my farm is near Flemington (within forty minutes from where I live). Oh good. And then I asked The Question. Do you use pesticides when growing your vegetables? Well, the large farmer paused and then declared loudly, HELL YEAH! I HATE BUGS! Oh. I guess he saw the shock on my face (which was due to his dramatics and because I was now envisioning my just-purchased beans covered in pesticides) 'cause then he leaned towards me with a look on his face and asked, Are you one of those OR-GAN-IC, granola-crunchin', paper-bag-using people??"  Um, er... (I started silently repeating to myself, I will not be intimidated, I will not be intimidated...). Well, I try, I replied. I then told him that I was reading Barbara Kingsolver's book and that in the book she promoted the idea of buying locally. One of the young, smiling girls piped up and asked me how I liked the book as she was thinking of buying it for herself. It's really good. The bug hatin' (and possibly granola-hatin' and definitely plastic bag-usin') farmer seemed to soften up with this bit of information and I spent the next twenty minutes listening to him talk about the financial difficulties of owning an organic farm versus a pesticide-using one. He had some interesting tips - like the produce from Chile is very good because they have strict rules on pesticides whereas Mexico is still using pesticides that were banned in the United States decades ago.

So I'm still learning and I haven't given up hope on buying locally-grown and preferably organic food. Mind you, organic has become a confusing term, too. Even Kingsolver mentions that many local farmers grow organically but cannot officially claim their products as such due to the high cost of registering as organic with the government. She also mentions that big lot farms are trying to loosen the rules on exactly what is organic. It's all so confusing, isn't it? I'll just have to do more research. But then, it's worth it, don't you think?

To read another blogger review of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, look here.

Cities and Countries

I have spent the last few evenings wandering the popular streets in cities such as Buenos Aires and Berlin. I didn't bring my camera or my passport. I didn't even pack a suitcase. Sometimes, I found myself in a place whose name I didn't recognize. Asmara, Cuzco, Ljubljana. How was that possible? This way.

Photo: New Jersey car horns, hitched at my local Blockbuster last night. 

Sailing with Noah

I'm taking a break from my painting and thought I'd write a little book report over some tea. Last night I finished a terrific book called Sailing with Noah: Stories from the World of Zoos by Jeffrey P. Bonner. Usually I read fiction or short biographies. I rarely, if ever, read books about animals or nature but I tell you, I couldn't put Sailing with Noah down! It's fascinating. Bonner writes about everything from animal and reptile escapes in zoos, the hijinks and creativity among different animals (that have resulted in unexpected escapes), saving endangered animals around the globe, breeding programs among zoos worldwide (sounds boring but it's actually fascinating and humorous - think elephants), public outreach programs that saves species and villages, and what we can do to protect the environment.

Here's an excerpt from Sailing with Noah on how bees communicate with one another (it's befitting as I'm currently painting with beeswax):

If they dance in a circle, it tells the other bees that there is food relatively close by - within one hundred yards. If they dance in a figure eight, it means that the food will be found much farther away. As they dance their figure eight, they waggle their bodies. The harder they waggle, the further the food source. Now the bees know how far away the food is, but they don't know which direction to go in order to find it. The dance, however, is performed on the vertical plane of the hive. The angle of the figure eight is the key to communicating the direction of the food source. If they dance upward, as in straight up and down in relation to the wall of the hive, they're telling the other bees to fly straight in the direction of the sun. If they dance downward, the other bees should fly in the opposite direction of the sun, and of course, any angle in between works just as well.

Photo: a living piece of beehive, sandwiched between plexiglass. It was displayed next to a table of jars filled with honey at a fleamarket.