Despite.
Anyway, it was way windy
which didn’t deter me, encouraged after Saturday night’s possibly deranged ravings from an enthusiastic if certifiably inebriated friend ancillary to her birthday, from delving into
my Deep Past.
Also in there we had a fine little dinner down the street at Gaby’s celebratory of nothing
in particular while the mud continued to wash down from the foothills, the winds blew on and
on and also there occurred a couple of BBQ opportunities out back before
I headed out of range, finding it strange to spot Sierra snowpack west of Sacramento on the
way to the Crocker, an excellent not-so-little museum with many wonders. Being there for
a talk by an acquaintance of L.’s we got the kale salads out of the way first thing and then toured the California galleries [below, “Night Watch”, 2011, by Roger Shimomura], always
revelatory and often strong in Landscapes…early twentieth century being ever interesting to me
as are the Californians [above, George R. Hinkle, “Palm Canyon”, N.D.; below, Maynard Dixon, “Post Office, Lone Pine”, 1919] particularly as a lead-in to Sandra Mendelsohn Rubin’s
observational tours de force, of which we saw a panoply as she took us through her singular career and remarkably focused work, which emerged pretty much fully formed right out of grad school with determination and a precocious technical accomplishment unusual in those times.
Many of her early views of L.A., as above, were painted directly from the van she used as a mobile studio before relocating to Booneville in the late eighties, which I, who makes everything up, found fascinating. Once the lecture wound to a close L. and I paid our respects and went our separate ways; L. towards Benicia, I belatedly over the hill to Truckee, Sierra Valley and east
to temporarily escape spring by Hallelujah Junction. Lower Honey Lake showed a hint of green
though at Sand Pass, RR detritus remaining, the architecture has finally succumbed
to erasure and it was pretty brown. From there the road led up the Smoke Creek to Wall Spring
just before the moon was full…
Full enough to keep a person wakeful, though tired…
The deep dive into your auto-biographical past (30 squares, shot off your computer screen?) certainly reveal a penchant for deserts and trucks. Are the those color tones recently added or the result of natural aging?
And what’s with those extremely muddy waters? Are you downstream from the nasty upper Midwest floods? No, the brown river running by Benicia must be the result of catastrophic California fires. I hadn’t heard about this telling effect of climate change, methodically filling up the SF Bay. Yikes!
The colors are the result of shooting slides projected onto a piece of foamcore as visual aids for an anticipated narrative…memoir, or whatever. s/o that’s what happened to the color, for the most part. As for the muddy waters, they’ve been constant all winter; those fires were all upstream and definitively impacted the watershed. the Bay could use a little wetlands restoration, and mud’s a good start if they’ll let it…
Ah, the many intensely California landscapes at the Crocker. Plenty to see and contemplate. Considering membership.
Definitely do it! A great institution…and in your neighborhood…
I had no idea that the Crocker Museum even existed. Hummm. It looks like somebody stole the Sand Pass building. What do you mean by “makes everything up”? It seems real to me.
Somebody eradicated the last sand Pass building since I was last through there four weeks ago. It had been in a sad state for some time, derelict and hazardous. As for “making it all up” it’s just that I mostly work back from memory, trying to make viable objects that are both paintings and evocative of things seen, so “looking real” is definitely complimentary. Few get as close to reality as your “Enigma of the Sheldon Range” from 1976, as you demonstrated with a photograph some years later…in the past sometimes I’d paint a landscape I hadn’t seen yet, but…
As for the Crocker, just go! I’m surprised you haven’t already…it won’t disappoint.
I also wondered about “makes everything up” say what?
I thought the arrangement of photos was something new you were working on….not as a dive into memory but as an interesting almost collage. I loved it. Full moon with that wonderful tree was greatly appreciated. To a certain degree, don’t we all “make things up”? I feel like I create things in the context of how I see them and understand them……..