Open Studios 2011

Woodcut Prints

These are my first woodcut prints, made in a workshop in my friend Bridget's Davenport studio last weekend.

Redwing Blackbirds

One color woodcut with blended roll

8"x6"

Encounter

Two color woodblock print

8"x6"

Live Painting

Painting the crowd for the recent Art Hang exhibit reception

at the R Blitzer gallery in Santa Cruz.

ART STUDIO SALE!

Time to make room for some new work!

Solamente en San Miguel

So one of my stories that originally appeared here on this very blog is now published in the

2nd volume of Solamente en San Miguel, a collection of writings about San Miguel by local writers.

You can read my contribution entitled 'Burdens' here.

Holiday Art Sale

Come by to see some amazing art gift ideas-

I will be showing small paintings, prints, jewelry and more!

Open Studios Tour

Getting ready for the Santa Cruz Open Studios tour-

for the first 3 weekends in October over 300 artists will be showing their work.

Beach Paintings

New Beach Paintings at Many Hands gallery in Capitola, CA. July -August

Summer is here and I took my camera down to the local beach, then came home and painted these fun 8"x10" oil paintings on wood panels. I love the shapes of bodies and the play of light.

A Community of Artists 2010

This will be the fourth annual showing of fourteen amazing Santa Cruz artists that have been meeting for many years to share their work and company. Come join us at the First Friday artwalk in Santa Cruz on June 4th at the Felix Kulpa gallery in downtown Santa Cruz.

Savor the Little Things

A page from my art journal

The swallows are nesting in the wall above my bed. They come in through the vent holes outside next to the garage and swoop in and out of the tiny holes in the eaves, quick and silent, slicing through the air. Last night we heard a tiny sound and stood on the bed with our ears to the wall, where we heard the peeping of baby birds. I remember last year on the day that the fledglings were ready to fly, the house was suddenly surrounded by swallows, as if they were coming to celebrate this big moment. They came as a community, ready to protect the vulnerable chicks as they leapt from the safety of the nest into their first flight into the outside world. They flew to the branch of a nearby tree and sat there for a while, astounded by their new reality. What impresses me most is how the whole flock of adult birds circled and swooped and brought them food, supporting them until they had the courage to take the next step.

*

Because it is Spring

because I have noticed the birds gathering grasses and twigs

the sweet lip of dawn revealing new blooms

trees sprouting leaves like a swarm of wings

because I feel the restless tug of my heart

familiar and insistant, with only a touch of grief

a quiet repressed joy unfurls, a spiraling tendril finding its way

because I have been sleeping for so long

because I have forgotten so much

the sigh of the shore

the soft wide curve of hip and belly

this mind is a fish, a star, a seed, a wild horse

because I remember the sheer joy of movement

the absolute pleasure of stillness

and the precious moment between the two.

***

Life with a Home Brewer

From a page in my art journal. ©Susan Dorf 2009

"There is more to life than making beer. There is drinking beer and blogging about beer."

When I first came home to what looked to be someone's dirty underwear soaking in my best cooking pot, I have to admit I was a little unsettled. Even after he explained to me that they were just used hop bags, they still looked disgusting. And what was all that sticky stuff all over the stove? Yeast starter? What the hell is that? Ugh. It had been several weeks since my husband had taken the one day Introduction to Brewing class at the local home brewing supply store and come home with a glazed look on his face and a starter kit to make his first batch of home brewed beer. Now he was moving from malt extract to all grain brewing and had acquired a mill and a few other bits of paraphernalia to make it possible. As long as it all fits under the sink, I said.

But really, I was glad to see that Mark had found a passion. After all, it’s good for a man to have a hobby, right? And this one made a lot less noise than the wood shop idea, and was much less risky and stressful than the commodity-trading phase. At least he wasn’t racing motorcycles or raising strange animals.
Still, I wondered how long it would last.

After the equipment started taking over the kitchen cupboards and then the kitchen itself, we bought a plastic shed for the back deck for him to store the accumulating burners, pots, kegs, CO2 tanks, grains, etc. And when the beer glasses collected from the various breweries and pubs and beer festivals began to shove the other drinking glasses and dishes into unapproachable corners of the cupboards, I agreed that he could use a shelf in the laundry cupboard for the overflow. Soon there were two shelves of glasses, a bin of hop pellets that looked like rabbit food, along with various other devices and several books on home brewing. Laundry and cleaning supplies were stacked on top of the dryer and our storage space was reduced to a few square feet. Then one day the freezer arrived on the back of a friend's truck and with some pushing and shoving was wedged in next to the washing machine. A few adjustments and attachments later, and it was goodbye storage, hello kegerator.

He kept meticulous notes on every aspect of his brewing process. And while his dirty clothes may have been sprawled across the bedroom floor and his bathroom took on the appearance of a war zone, the beer area was always spotless and orderly. He became manic about sanitation and cleanliness, and though my kitchen knives would disappear into fermenting kegs to become weights for dry hop bags, or my pots and measuring cups would mysteriously relocate themselves to the beer shed, I was told that I must never, ever borrow a beer utensil for anything else.
Some mornings he trots out to visit his fermenter the minute he wakes up, then comes back with a glass full of some cloudy yellow liquid as I’m trying to wake up, sitting down to a cup of coffee. ‘Taste this’, he says. ‘Tell me if it’s any good.’ He is a man possessed.

Little by little, the world of beer began to infiltrate into our lives. Weekend outings gave way to brewing Sundays. Our vacations and road trips were punctuated by tours of micro-breweries, (which I found I could use as leverage to my advantage, countering with museum and gallery visits.) My usual healthy eating habits became compromised with countless brewpub menus while participating in numerous taste evaluations of beer samplers. I learned about hops and how they are used as a bittering agent, used to balance out the sweetness of the beer to give it a fuller and more complex flavor. Gee, I found myself thinking, it sounds just like a relationship.

He explains to me about the yeast. How it changed the course of history by turning nomadic wanderers into agrarian people because they needed to cultivate grain to make enough beer to keep them satisfied.
One night I woke up to a strange rhythmic bubbling sound coming from the bedroom closet. When I opened the door I saw that his shoes had been shoved to one side to make room for the glass carboys wrapped in electric blankets like precious bundles. I pulled one of the blankets aside and stared at the foamy mixture inside. All of that yeast in there multiplying away in a feeding frenzy. Living organisms that through some strange intelligence knew just how much they needed to reproduce to consume the sugar provided by the malted grain. I knelt down to get a closer look at them. "What have you done to my husband?" I asked.
And that’s when I knew. This wasn’t just a hobby anymore. This was his calling.

He joined a homebrewing group where he and other brewers would gather together like mad scientists and taste each other's concoctions and talk endlessly about gravity and hop ratios and IBU’s and clone recipes along with the latest must-have brewing gizmos. He was a man communing with his tribe.
He would come home from beer festivals with a wild satisfied grin on his face, like a kid coming home from Disneyland. He would look like a walking advertisement for micro-breweries, laden with tee shirts and keychain bottle openers, bumper stickers, hats, glasses.
Here was a man who wouldn’t buy himself a pair of socks, who balked at the price of food and haircuts, and yet when it came to beer or beer related doodads, the money flowed from his wallet. There was no holding back.
After the arrival of the beer sculpture, the ominous skeletal multi-tiered monstrosity that appeared one day after he had befriended a welder, I knew that our lives had turned a corner. It was time to move. We needed a garage.

One night I asked him the question a wife should never ask her homebrewer husband.
"If you had to choose between beer making and me, what would it be?"
I could see the wires crossing in his head, the almost visible sparks as he struggled to find the right answer. Finally, "What the hell kind of question is that?" he said, and went out to the garage to check his fermenter.
I’m okay with it. Really I am. Because in my heart of hearts I know that when your true purpose and passion calls to you and makes you feel happy and whole, what choice do you have, really?

***
See Mark's blog at backyardbrewer.blogspot.com

The Migratory Life

“No soy de aqui, ni soy de alla,
no tengo edad, ni porvenir
y ser feliz es mi color de indentidad”
-Facundo Cabral

(I’m not from here, nor from there
I have no age or future
To be happy is the color of my identity.)

There is a Mexican folk tale about a donkey that was extremely hungry. At the same time he was also very, very thirsty. To the right of where he was standing was a fresh pile of hay, and to the left a cool river of clear water. He turned toward the right to eat, then realized how really dry and parched he was and so turned to the left, only to feel the ache of hunger in his stomach crying out for food.
Thirsty. Hungry. Food. Water. Left. Right. What do do?
And so they found him, both dehydrated and starved to death at the same time, unable to make up his mind….
Grim, I know. And yet whenever I think of this story I have to admit that I feel an odd kinship towards the donkey.
It scares me sometimes.

*

Well, we have been back in the US for 2 weeks now and I spent the first one wandering lazily about the house in a semi stupor, as if waiting for my soul to catch up with my body. Maybe it’s because I am getting older. Maybe it’s because I am feeling more displaced these days wondering where my true home is. Or maybe, like everything else lately, it’s just another menopause thing.
At any rate, it seems to be taking a lot longer to adjust to the change of environment.
Everything about being here is so different from where we just left.

At 6,000 feet in the high desert of Mexico the air is crisp and sharp and dry.
The senses are constantly assalted by smells both delicious and repugnant, the daily inescapable sounds of barking dogs and crowing roosters to church bells, fireworks, music. It drips with rich earthy colors: ochres and reds, a sharp blue of sky, deep purple shadows.
Mexico is a culture that nurtures creativity and spontaneity and human contact.
It is intense in every way. It can overwhelm you and enchant you. It can charm you and exhaust you. It’s sheer and constant aliveness both seduces you and drive you crazy at once, like a wild love affair.

Here, on the other hand, my skin gratefully soaks up the moisture on the grey cloudy shores of Aptos, among the gentle soft blues and greens and beiges and greys. In my house I can hear the sound of the ticking clock and occasional passing car, smell the occasional whiff of the vague sea air and spring blooms.
On one of my return trips from Mexico I found myself lying in bed irritated by what sounded like the bass notes of a not too distant boom box that went on and on. After awhile I realized to my astonishment that it was actually the beating of my own heart in the immense unbelievable silence of the night.
It feels peaceful and predictable here. Refreshingly dull and insulated. The perfect place to rest and regroup.

So what to do? North. South. California. Mexico. Why not both?
I do love the migrating lifestyle, being of two worlds. Each complements the other, each fills me up in a different way. It is a definitely a lifestyle that is challenging to maintain logistically, mentally, and physically, however, and one must adapt to a sense of flexibility in life as well as a defined structure to make it work. One must embrace a sense of home in a different way, as a citizen of the world, where traveling and daily life are the same. I’m working on it.

***

Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I'd give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?

Dorothy Parker
(from On Being A Woman)

***

Bird Dreams

"Gathering" monotype
(see entire series at www.susandorf.com)

The other night I dreamed that I suddenly remembered a small box that I had brought back with me from Mexico that contained a live wild bird. How could I have forgotten all about it? Surely that poor bird was dead from starvation by now. And if so it was my fault. I had killed it. But what if, through some miracle, it was still alive? There was only one way to know, of course. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. To find the box. To open it. Perhaps if I just imagined the miracle I could go on, guilt free, knowing the bird had survived despite my negligence. But the thing about miracles is that you can’t just imagine them, you have to believe in them. You have to have faith and know beyond a doubt that they are true. And if it wasn’t true, then it meant that I had killed that innocent bird. And so to save myself from guilt, I had to believe.

Well, this was a dream after all. Which means that the bird is me, or part of me, I suppose. And maybe what has been neglected since I returned from Mexico is my creative spirit, my connection to the magic. My writing, perhaps. A wild thing that should never be kept in a box anyway. I must keep faith, must keep it fed, above all else.
That the creative spirit survives at all in this demanding world is a miracle in itself.

We have moved back to California and are living in yet another reality. We can hear the hush and sigh of waves on the shore, the hiss of sprinklers at dawn. Swallows nesting in the attic vents that shared our bedroom wall. All night long we could hear their little cheeping sounds, all beaks and bone and hunger. Now they are gone and we remain in this new nest, padding through carpeted rooms, trying to keep our faith in miracles in these days uncertainty. Trying to keep from getting swallowed up by the demands and stresses of everyday life.

Here in Santa Cruz, there are plenty of opportunities to practice.

At a little gift shop in Capitola I overhear a customer talking with the saleswoman. I can’t see what they are looking at but I can hear the conversation.
“So what does this one mean?”
“That means Happiness.”
“And this one?”
“That says Prosperity”
“How about this one? What does this stand for?
“I think that one is Love.”
“Good. I just think it’s important that I know what they mean.
After all, if I’m going to put one on my altar and pray to it then it better stand for something I want.”