Notes from the Road

My sister Jennifer and her two boys drove me from the wilds of the North State (does the rest of California know that those of us living past Mendocino have a different name for our state?) to the airport in San Francisco. Jen and her family live nearby so I had a day with them and was also able to visit my son who lives in Santo Cruz. The delight of the journey begins.

I flew out of the new terminal two at SFO. It is a step in to a new age. Gorgeous, technologically driven and yet the priceless art SFO is famous for was present in an extensive collection of gorgeously crafted silver from many eras. I flew Virgin America. From the moment I stepped in to the plane softly lit with purple and pink I felt transported to some magical place. Huh? Air travel with some glamour? Yes. This was a different ride. It is quite wonderful to have a screen in front of me with menu selections that I can enter at any time and have brought to me. As many times as I wish. No waiting for the cart to travel down the aisle.  This airline is doing many things in a different way. I enjoyed traveling with them.

Washington DC. A must visit place. As americans we travel all over the earth. I hope those who love to travel also come here. This city is simply magnificent. I have been gifted to a stay at an unbelievably wonderful and stunningly unique place near Dupont Circle. It is called The Mansion on O Street. Many Thanks to Ted Spero and H for your generosity. You have truly created a one of a kind experience. My life is greatly enriched because of you. To Karen for offering this connection: I love you!

My dear adopted mother Frannie has traveled here with me. We have been waiting for Travis to arrive with the show. He is currently 30 miles away from us. A few days behind schedule. But all is safe and good. He has adventures to share from his drive across the country. While waiting for Travis yesterday Fran and I decided to sightsee. We toured the National Galleries, east and west, soaking up, inhaling, feeling so much marvellous art. Highlights include the tunnel of moving lights which connect the two galleries. Whoever thought this installation up was inspired. We walked the moving sidewalk three times and each time found it a thrill. I could not help but bounce myself with a light run back and forth on the sidewalk and leap off the end. Lunch by the waterfall installation came as close to the rapids of the south fork of the Trinity River as I will ever know in an urban environment. I could put my face up close and imagine I was near the steep falls I love to visit every summer, the drops of water popping, the motion rapid and white. Once again I am thrilled by the power of art to create a change in emotions, feelings, sensation. Then of course the visiting Capitoline Venus in the rotunda, oh her lips! How can hard marble appear so soft? It is her first time out of Rome. Gabriel Metsu created an opportunity for my time travel in to another place. Walking through the intimate rooms filled with his quite ordinary and yet sweet everyday life images grabbed from a time so long ago filled me with the sensation of being in another world. Nam June Paik offered a retreat, an opportunity to embrace stillness, reflection. Frannie had a vision while in the tower with this installation of the Walking In Love spiral filling the space. Of course we had to sit and watch the gentle motion of a Calder swirling over all. Huge chunks of metal in graceful air ballet. I am inspired by the visions these artists possess. And then there was the "5 plates of steel and two rods" sculpture standing in exquisite balance below the Calder. I soaked up to full saturation a dizzying array of magnificent art. YUMMY!

A trip across the mall to the National Museum of the American Indian created an interesting balance point to the galleries. The most beautiful circle executed in stone and copper sits at the bottom of the rotunda at the center of this gorgeous building. I sat on the highly polished stone bench leaning up against the rough hewn stone back gazing up at the four directions created within the skylight in the ceiling. Max, a young boy from Tennessee asked me what I was doing. He then quizzed me about why I am in DC. He closed his eyes when I described the Walking In Love spiral and then asked enough questions to fill his imagination with a vision. He smiled with amazement and said he would love to see it. Was he an angel? I do not know. He brought me encouragement. I stood in the center of the circle while children ran around, adoring parents took endless photos of them in their delight. Of all the moving experiences created within this museum I was most enthralled with a wall full of arrowheads mounted in a flowing manner. I can't do it justice with words. It moved, like water, through various sizes, shapes, all arranged as water motion, yet rendered with rough stone crafted from hundreds to thousands of years ago out of many types of rock. Fran and I ate lunch by the 'river' created next to the cafe which serves foods of indiginous people. It was fabulous!

Just when we thought we were too exhausted to go any further we wandered through the Botanical Gardens. I felt the call to float across the lawns, my butterfly wings delighted by the blue globe thistles, orchids, water gardens and green. Frannie refused to wade in the fountain though her dogs were barking furiously. "It's just not dignified,"she told me. I wonder if we could all do with a tiny bit less dignity and a little more fun? She tells me that she stood in the fountain in her dream last night. I am so glad!

The Thrill of it all

Can't help it.
 Fire and metal are a huge draw for me.
 How many photos
of these bits and pieces
can tell
the fascinating story of copper and steel
taking shape
to become a room?
The perfect contrast
to the delicacy
of white on white panels,
is this grimy, sweaty, dirty,
hot and
 potentially dangerous work.
I will admit that
the sharp contrast
between the white work
and the metal work
had me
in a little bit
(correct me if I under exaggerate my response)
of stress
around
how the
'marriage'
would ultimately
come about.
These gracious guys
accepted the need
to clean the metal
once all the fabrication had been completed and before it would come in contact with the white work. 

Participating with, watching, staying out of the way, getting in the way, all of these things happened for me  while the build of the copper room that would house the white on white panels took place. Men, Many men (and a woman or two), with strength and brains, skills and practical know-how made the design John envisioned work. We were not people who have all worked together before, though many of us have overlapped on projects of all sorts in the years we have lived here. I do not know that any barn-raisings have occurred in this community in recent years, but I have seen many of these people build a barbeque pit for the hall. I watched the Petanque court come to life at the same time our show was born. I do not mean to be sexist about who did the work of copper polishing, grinding, welding and construction. It is a simple fact that this was largely the realm of the men. I am not a stranger to this way. I worked as an engineer for a dozen years in a male dominated field before I chose to work from the home to raise my two children. Prototype development was what I loved to do. Here was an amazing chance to play once again. I am so very grateful for these volunteers and how they worked together in very elegant and harmonious ways through snafu and delight until the room was built.  Charley, John, Evan, Tony, Jean-Pierre, Ebbe, Travis, James, Larry, Phil, Dad, Neil, Sydney, Karen, Fran and Susan Thank You from my heart.

Hyampom Community Hall

Our community hall is a special place. In our village, yes some people call us one of the last true villages, the hall serves as the place where everything happens. Weddings, memorial services, art and music festivals, school performances, church, town meetings, dances, yoga and fitness classes, countless potlucks meals and more. Being able to build the Walking In Love installation at the hall of my little community has been sweet. We took over the hall for six days. Others who use the hall graciously shared the space with this project. People from the community came and went, at times joining in with helping out, checking with the progress of the build.

This hall, even if not this exact structure, has been an integral part of the life of this community. In the days before electricity and phone connections the hall was THE place everyone gathered to talk about community events, share a meal and then play music and dance until dawn before returning to the work demanded by homesteading. In this day of e-mail, easy auto travel, television and pandora the hall still offers our small wilderness village all of the things it always has. When the Bee Eaters came to offer their particular form of magic music to us this past January the hall buzzed with life and drew many to share the special event. We ate a potluck meal first, per tradition. As our build progressed different people brought food, tea, music and encouragement.

Packing the Trailer

A gorgeous summer day blooms. Who could know what the weather would do this day? Rain and cold one day then heat the next. Lessons in "it is what it is". A phrase which pops up with increasing frequency in my world. From many different people. In many different situations. Well, what it is today, is a day to pack the trailer for the drive across the country to Sacred Threads. Punch lists, inventory, fix it kits, carefully packed white panels, tools, ladders. I am so very grateful to be able to send everything in one package. I do understand it is one of those 'all the eggs in one basket' situation but Travis Boland is someone who is able to do what he says he will do. One of those people that show up, take care of business, work in a solution oriented way and knowledgeable about how to deal with a wide variety of situations. I am grateful for the way life brought him into the Walking in Love world.

Friends tell me I am brave. Huh. Not feeling that this morning. There is this feeling of excitement standing at one edge of this giant country and preparing to go across to the other edge. And debut an art installation. OK, I can be a bit of a drama queen now and then. But it is a truth that nerves do accompany brave acts. I know about myself that I feel fear and do things anyway. I just want to see how it all turns out. Life is so varied and interesting. To do the same thing over and over again is not my cup of tea. While this is the third time the Walking In Love Installation will be shown, it will not be the same show again. Panels have left. New panels will be hung. Different people will help to set it up.  The feeling of this next show will be affected by the town it is in. It will also carry with it the hearts of people from Trinity County, the good will of so many wonderful people. My dentist told me he is happy to see Trinity County become known for something besides agricultural products, which is a euphemism for the cannabis cultivation which this region is world renowned for.

I get to meet new people and see how lovely life is away from my wilderness home in Trinity County California.

Tony Kendrew, Walking in Love Artist

Friends would stop by and comment, "Oh, so this is what making an art installation looks like." Maybe once a piece is finished in a gallery and the whole is witnessed the details disappear in light of the finished glory. So easy for those seeing the final product to be unaware of all it takes to make some ideas come to life. It is quite humbling for me to find out that so many people will just show up and volunteer their time to an idea. I have learned that I live in a community with extraordinary people. Tony Kendrew was the first one at the hall waiting with the key the morning we were to build. He has been in the midst of many of his own projects. He just recorded a CD to go with a book of poetry he wrote ( have not convinced him to make a poetry panel yet). He was working on a brand new petanque court in the front of our community hall. The grand opening games were the same day as our installation showing. But there was Tony, day after day showing up to offer his help with so much of what happened. Talented, quiet, funny and so generous to many within this small town. Thank you Tony for your steadfast way of showing up until the work was finished. It would not have happened so gracefully without you.

John Ritz Walking In Love Artist

The past few months have flown by. It is hard to remember that in January the Walking In Love installation had yet to be fabricated or shown. Only the idea for a spiral structure existed in my mind. Thank goodness John's name popped in to my head when I was wondering how the spiral could be made. I am so very grateful he decided to tackle not only the first simple spiral we attached to the ceiling of the Highland Gallery, but also decided to design and then build the second round, the copper room to house the white on white panels. It was a very great pleasure to watch John work with his son Evan, a young man my son Eric went to school with when they were children. John and Evan took the lead of engineering the installation structure and created something wonderful.

John Ritz

I've worked with metal for 35 years. As a welder, metal fabricator, blacksmith and sculptor.  I'm also a bass player, and as such it is my role to provide for the other musicians the solid rhythmic foundation and melodic support without which the song may not exist. One definition of Love is: To actively support the spiritual growth of another.  My role in "Walking in Love" is to provide the physical support for the other artist’s efforts so that others may experience the Love that went into their creations.  


THANK YOU JOHN AND EVAN!