Studiology

It's Complicated

My computer has struggled of late, it kicks and screams, refusing to contribute when it comes to photographs (photoshop completely shuts it down) and a few keys don't work. I think its time is short. So I finally went back to Macintosh and am still struggling with some items but have gotten far enough to conquer a few and with time, it should get easier. I wish technology was less complicated!

My little man, who is balanced on a ball is a new piece. He is part of a show for November of 2025 and I will try and be quiet about that until much later. He is only two inches tall! Made from wire and clay, I was very proud of the fact that I could make such a little man. The title is "And the Crowd Roared", so I painted little people in the background. 

There is also a new heart and a smallish piece with a lemon tree. These are available at art galleries in Charlottsville, in fact I have finally restocked everywhere after the holiday sales.

and sadly there is still the issue with the right side chop of my photographs..

Outside is still snow covered but it has been interesting to see the difference between mowed areas and gardens. The front meadow and wet meadow have been left to feed the birds and there is no doubt as to how well that works. The front meadow is always filled with birds, and I suspect a vole or two for hungry hawks. Little footprints in the snow are testament. 

I continued to play with frost orbs and have a long way to go, but it's been fun.

And lastly I wanted to share these orchids. I purchased Brassavola nodosa, or so I thought, and it ended up a hybrid with no scent at night (the reason I love it). She is commonly known as Lady of the Night, so I recently bought the real brassavola and behold, with only one flower, she is incredibly fragrant and lovely! I can't wait for her to get bigger.

As I switch computers, it should get easier! Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Winter

It's officially winter with another drab and cloudy day. The gardens are dormant, but promise is evident with buds on witchhazel, helleborus, and a few native azaleas. Lettuce is under cover, the texture gives the perfect crunch, the taste as good as it gets. In our climate so little is required for great winter crops. 

I am also growing bulbs in pots, sunken for better insulation and topped with row cover, an experiment to see if I can force them early. The greenhouse is finally set-up with electricity and plugs, the next step is to finish the floor. With that done I should be able to utilize it as the bulbs mature to the point of bud set. 

This morning was another hoar frost, and the front meadow was a glistening white. My photographs don't convey the beauty, but it was lovely. The lack of color is par for December and I'm fortunate to have all of the color I need in my art studio where lots of projects are underway.

 

If you lay down and photograph at an angle to the sun with a macro lens, you can capture frost orbs. I intend to get better at this.

 

Krampus Land

It's been a couple of years since I've been able to build the larger, fourteen-inch Krampus's (Krampi?). After finding a source for these bigger, blank, wooden nutcrackers, the season has begun. The official Krampus night or Krampsnacht is December the 5th, but with the close friendship between St. Nicholas or Santa (Krampus takes care of the bad kids), they are often displayed together, right through Christmas. It's been a whirlwind season, and they have sold as I make them, so Krampus Land is what has become of my studio time and space. 

As raw nutcrackers, they come as drummers, or giant lollipop holders, so the ball shaped hands are removed as well as the drum. The biggest obstacle has been replacing the hands with something that has creepy long fingers. It's been a couple of years, but I have come up with a method using wire, epoxy paste and clay. 

The best creepy hands to date have been on this masked Krampus. Just enough expression and matchy, matchy to make it outrageous. The fingertips are now black to add to the creep factor.

There are several in the works which go to McGuffey Art Center or C'Ville Arts in Charlottsville, VA. Complete with chain or cowbells, I'm always surprised how popular they are.

I learned a new technique for creating small, free standing characters from Michael deMeng, which is illustrated here. Two thin wood panels are cut (I use a scroll saw) to carve exact replicas and then cut the top one down to create a skeleton half. The bones are built with clay and then the painting finishes it all. This is the drawing and another subsequent Krampus character.

It will soon be time to get back to more innocent items, but I did finish this small "Shell Collector". He is forever searching for the perfect shell.

And back to work I go. 

Family Days

November turned out to be a great month. A visit to Florida for a sistas vacation turned out to be extraordinary, the weather was gorgeous with an excursion every day to some wonderful sanctuary, bay, or restaurant. We flew into the Tampa airport, where a giant flamingo decorates an interior alcove, and I knew I had to find it even if it meant walking the entire airport. 

My youngest sister has moved to Florida from Virginia, so our time was booked with all sorts of adventures. I will admit to my first time in a kayak, and I could not ask for a better place to be on my maiden voyage. 

Two excursions were to visit the manatees. Since the waters were still warm, they were spread out, but we spotted 10 or so in various locations. 

To end the month, I had plans to finally have my entire family visit for Thanksgiving in our new home. The theme was a pie Thanksgiving, which turned out better than I could have imagined. We had Sheperd's pie (with ground turkey), chicken pot pie (s), quiche (s), and plenty of dessert pies including my favorite, sweet potato and pecan. 

Yep! Pass the pie.

I hope yours was good too.

 

 

Happy Halloween

With great joy I return to my Halloween posting! The photograph is a long exposure with selective light from a flashlight. Enjoy your evening!

 

Late Flowers

The last of the monarchs are still passing through. Without a hard freeze, there is still nectar to be found and my garden is a good source, I have seen more in October than all the rest of the year.

 

One of the monarchs favorites is Mexican flame vine, found in Mexico but also native to the south and northern parts of South America, it produces floppy stems and is considered a vine. I originally knew it as Senecio confusus, which translates to a confused senecio. To realign, the name was changed to Pseudogynoxys chenopodiodes, which means; looks like it belongs in the genus Gynoxys (all from South America and in the aster family) and resembles a goose foot. In searching for Mexican geese (in an attempt to understand the epithet), surprisingly even our Canadian geese will overwinter in northern regions of Mexico as well a few other species of geese, so maybe there is some basis for the species name. Bottom line, the name will probably change again, and DNA test will resolve any relationships, we can hope for a botanical name that's not such a mouthful.

The salvias have also been a hot spot, specifically Salvia leucantha. The species name translates to "white-flowered" but there is a great deal of diversity in the flowers, something hybridizers are searching for. I have a selection called S. 'Phyllis Fancy' which has been going strong for at least 3 months. Before the hummingbirds migrated, this was their primary source for nectar.

There are still zinnias, more salvias, and a third sowing of sunflowers, which are busy with various bees. 

PS for some reason my photographs are displayed as half of what they really are, despite the fact that nothing has changed other than my poor internet. I am publishing this post to see how they display when clicked on and am waiting for an answer from Typepad as to what I'm doing wrong. This has been a big part of why there aren't more as this has been very frustrating! Hopefully this will be fixed and refined at a later date.

 

Fall is Afoot

Subtle changes are evident as leaves are beginning to change. Most of the garden is tired, the energy is directed towards seed, unless you grow a few select salvias. Another spin around the gardener's clock brought me back to Salvia mexicana and S. leucantha, two that grow and grow until the days shorten in fall before they even consider blooming.  I bought three of each and watered them this summer, even though they come from a place where a dry season would have occupied much of their growing days. In this spoiled state they have grown to eight feet and five feet with an almost equal spread, swallowing all around them, to the delight of hummingbirds. 

Salvia mexicana is barely beginning, this snapshot gives only a hint of the show that is about to begin. The deep blue flowers emerge from a bright green calyx. With eight foot floral stalks, it will be incredible!

By chance I found a polyphemus moth building a cocoon one day on a small maple. It takes only two weeks for the adult to emerge and within that same day, the female emits a pheromone to lure a male. Their life cycle is about five days, with much of that time spent laying eggs. As I kept an eye on the cocoon, I was fortunate enough to find the mating pair shortly after she hatched. In moth size, they are huge. Sadly, I also watched her die in a time period that was less than a week. Hopefully, if all goes right, I will see many more emerge next year from maple leaves that will fall to the ground for winter. Another reason to keep your leaves where they fall, late in the season.

September also included participation in the Virginia Native Plant Society's Annual Meeting in Harrisonburg, VA. A three-day event, fieldtrips to rare habitats included Cowbane Prairie, a nature preserve in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. Portions of the preserve are wet prairie, home to Filipendula rubra or Queen of the Prairie, we were greeted by waves of goldenrod with a few surprises tucked between, it was too late in the season for the Queen.

The primary pollinator of closed gentian are bumblebees, which buzz loudly as they struggle to open the flowers. The lure, the reason to even attempt entry, is for the sugary nectar. 

Our next fieldtrip was to the Mount Joy Pond Natural Area Preserve in Raphine, Virginia. A very rare sinkhole and home to some rare native plants. Our guide was John Townsend, a senior botanist for the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and he knew the site well. After a recent burn and targeted logging, the sassafras trees were responding to increased sunlight and just beginning to turn color for fall, they were gorgeous.

The primary focus is on restoring the pond, which has dwindled due to an overabundance of maples, which are essentially sucking the area dry. The fires have no effect on the oaks and help pinecones open to drop seed. This preserve is home to a rare sneezeweed (currently endangered), Helenium virginicum, which had finished flowering, but we did find a small, late flower.

complete with a small crap spider

To understand the practice of botanizing, it helps to see the scale in which one might be working. A very small dodder (which is a parasitic vine that sucks nutrients from surrounding plants without ever rooting into the ground), was found on site as it wrapped around a Stachys hyssopifolium or hedge nettle. The tiny flowers are from the dodder, which number 9 species in Virginia. And clearly one that is very, very small.

The weather forecast is for a week of rain, which I'm sure will help a bit on this site. Just prior to this trip I planted 2 plug trays of natives in my own front field (100 plants), so there will be no complaints about the rain. Especially when I was shoveling directly into shale. Good luck guys!

 

And So It Came To Be

Two years have passed since I was juried into the McGuffey Art Center, although it seems much longer. I am part of the Associates group, artists that don't occupy a studio in the building but work in their own space at home. Most months we have a theme, which works for me, I like a direction. For the month of September, the theme is "self-portrait". I thought it a bit weird, most self-portraits are created to keep, so my plan was to abstract the art, not make it overly personal. So ta dah, this is what I created and it took a very long time.

Next in the line of recent work I completed a consignment, an octopus coming out of a shoe. The customer recently purchased the whale in a shoe, so this may be a companion piece. Working in spurts, it took 2 months to complete, and I was satisfied.

Lastly came the masks. I might be incapable of not making masks in the fall (it is September). So with some more fun and whimsy came these 3. Delivered to C'Ville Arts today, it's not too early to start thinking about masks!

 I recommend a large wig to accompany them. Each comes with a wall hanger so they can be displayed as a piece of art as well.

What a Difference a Month Makes

August has turned into a very nice month, rain and pleasant temperatures, not the way we often think of the height of summer. My freezer is full of frozen salsa, so much so that the remaining tomatoes had to be canned for lack of space. Sweet potatoes and melons are coming on strong, thank-goodness for changes in the vegetable garden.

The flower beds are also morphing, busting out on all sides. Sunflowers were sown 3 times with the second sowing in flower now. Finch, Cedar waxwings, wrens, and cardinals are frequent visitors/feeders, to the point of scolding me when I visit. In the background the hummingbirds get a bit more brazen, and monarchs are nowhere to be found. 

One of the most frequently visited flowers for hummingbirds and the hummingbird clearwing moth is Salvia 'Summer Jewel'. A reseeding annual, once it's been placed in the garden, it will forever return there (and over there). 

I have it planted with Coleus 'Campfire'.

A few tuberose are flowering, dug from last year and stored in the garage. The first night I caught the fragrance, it was a flood of familiarity, so powerful I had to step back. Nothing has such a wonderful scent and after scent.

The brugmansias or angel trumpets are also going strong, only 2 years old, they are gigantic (6' tall, by 5')! The fragrance is light and different from other night fragrant flowers.

I purchased a new phlox, Phlox paniculata 'David's Lavender', a sport of P. 'David' (which is white). The flower heads are large and full, but the color reminds me of the species. It makes me think it's trying to revert.

Here is the comparison from the wild species growing along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The Maryland senna or Senna marilandica is in full flower. Small nectaries arrive prior to the flowers to lure ants, which arrive in great numbers to protect and serve. 

 

And as luck would have it I stumbled onto this Viceroy caterpillar. Munching away on poplar, which is very common in this area of the Piedmont.

The adult is often mistaken for a monarch, they share the orange coloring to dissuade predation, a color that signifies poison or bad taste. The larvae also mimic bird poop (to avoid being eaten), which a few caterpillars share and are very good imitators. The viceroy butterfly has a much more erratic flight (the first giveaway) and an extra bar of black lines on the lower wings. With so many poplars here, I find them occasionally, whereas I never saw them further north.

A very full and beautiful moon is expected tomorrow night, the Super Blue Moon or Sturgeon Moon. It will be time to sow root crops once it has passed, think beets, carrots, and turnips. The gravitational pull will reverse and encourage root growth. And September is just around the corner. 

 

 

Art Projects

A lot on the table, works in progress and completed pieces for July. A work in progress is coming along and exceeding my expectations. Here are a few photographs:

Another wand was completed, titled "For the Birds, a Wand", the back is actually a bird house front, the rest had fallen apart and rotted. The wand is held in place with the help of magnets.

On the back I added the watercolor eye, peering through. A little surprise.

And lastly was this small piece made with a doorknob plate and small antique box. Simply titled "Knock, Knock".

August will also be busy with some pieces in their beginning phase. One is a self portrait, something new and challenging.