Gourd Art and Whooping Cranes

My kitchen has been transformed into a studio, the table filled with unfinished gourd art and pine needles ready for coiling. Not that the kitchen ever poses as a domestic center, anyway. It more closely resembles a studio much of the time as projects come and go.
Earlier in the week, the same table was scattered with ink illustrations for an exciting children’s book project that I will return to later. But for now, it’s exhibit time, time to finish up and organize the art that will travel with me next week, to the Whooping Crane Wildlife Festival in Necedah, WI.
There I will reunite with whooping crane enthusiasts around the country and with Operation Migration’s crew and staff. If the weather cooperates, we’ll all visit the observation tower to watch this year’s juvenile whooping cranes in flight training over the Necedah NWR wetlands as they follow ultralight aircraft piloted by Operation Migration crew members.The photos above and below were taken at a flight training in September of 2007 as I stood at ground level beside the observation tower. The young trainees were hugging the ground that morning with pilot Brook Pennypacker encouraging them to a higher altitude.
It is a thrill to see these fledged juveniles and to witness an endangered species being aided by these innovative efforts.

Detail of unfinished pine needle coil on a hard shell gourd basket.

Below, woodburned sandhill crane art on small hardshell gourds, ready to be coiled.
Detail of art on the bottom of a piece with date and signature.

Cades Cove Black Bear

The prospect of bear and deer feasting on summer’s bounty lured me to Cades Cove in the Smokies for a brief visit. Brief is the operative word, here. I only have two photos to show for it. Intent on searching for bears, I passed other beauties, like the clumps of black-eyed Susans dotting the forest edges and the delicate white-tailed does that seemed to be everywhere. This one bear photo brings back all the detail—the yellow-green light shining through the canopy, the soft carpet of ferns, pine needles and moss among the boulders, the disarray of fallen tree trunks, the thick, black fur of this young female as she wove her way through it all.

I’m already sketching this image in my head, so rich was the moment of crossing the creek and watching her at a safe distance. I passed a rock she had moved, the clean dirt pattern of its shape shadowing beneath its new position. She moved along nonchalantly, until tiring of observation, she gracefully leaped over a cluster of boulders and loped out of sight.

That brings a laugh to my heart, always. I love seeing bears, but I love their freedom and privacy, too. I enjoy that moment of disappearance and imagine a life in a pristine world, undisturbed.
Above, an eight-point white-tailed buck who studied me for an instant before returning to foraging on over-head leaves.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds-I

The King is still here. I keep thinking any day now he will depart for Central America...
but I don't know when the resident males generally leave their breeding territories in east Tennessee. Our male is still on territory, challenging migrant visitors. But he’s also slowing down a bit, away from the feeder more and, hopefully, fattening up on insects.

His appearance is more preened and healthy now, compared to this photo below, taken in July.
And below, a petite visitor...
According to Robert Sargent, in his book, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, hummers binge to put on weight prior to migration, gaining from their normal .1 to .12 ounce weight to .19 to .22 ounces. “Just an additional .07 ounce of fat likely gives them enough fuel for their transgulf migration—under normal conditions, a nonstop journey of 18 to 22 hours without feeding."
Amazing numbers. It’s no wonder we are so fascinated with these tiniest of birds.

White Tailed Doe

It was with innocent intent that I set out to snap a distant photo of two spotted fawns, their delicate faces and alert ears just visible over the grasses in the spacious yard.

But what I encountered was new to me and had me apologetically backtracking to safety.

A deer’s retina is composed almost entirely of rods, enabling them to see well in the dark, but inhibiting their ability to recognize still objects. This doe was the look-out in what turned out to be a small band of three does and two fawns.

When I stopped to snap her picture before moving a little further to capture the fawns, she turned to face me and began a stiff-legged, slow-stepping approach. I wasn’t sure what this meant and mistakenly thought, being still was the way to avoid disturbing her. But this is not entirely the case. As I stood still, snapping her photo, she continued her stiff-legged steps toward me. Then came a loud “blow”. This I had never encountered before. Was she going to charge? Certainly, she was tense. By the second blow, seconds later, I began my retreat to a safer distance. She snorted one more time and continued to watch me in stillness.

According to Leonard Rue, author of The Deer of North America, both the blow and the stiff-legged approach are designed to encourage an intruder to move so she can get a better look at the threat. Deer don’t flee blindly. They investigate so that they know which way to run for safety. While, in hindsight, I think this deer was doing just that, investigating and letting her band know there was an intruder near, I did ask a nature photographer friend if he had ever been charged by a doe. The answer was “yes.”

It’s always a good idea to follow one’s intuition.

Watercolor Practice—Trees

A friend of mine asked me, "what do you have after a week-long painting workshop? Did you come back with paintings?" I laughed. "No, no new paintings, just lots of fundamentals and practice."

Getting familiar with the paints, the combining of colors to create rich neutrals, how much water and how much pigment, how the water and pigment move together on the paper, which brushes give what effect—these are the fundamentals of painting.

And since I had not painted for over a year, it is these fundamentals that I revisited. They weren’t in my back pocket anymore. I had to reconnect with them. It was a happy reunion.

Painting is much the same as playing basketball or learning photography or writing practice. You follow your passion and you practice. Through practice you develop skill, familiarity, confidence. You load your brain with the fundamentals.

Then when you want to paint, these fundamentals are right there in your brain’s library. You focus on your subject and the rest flows. This is the essence of talent—a loaded library.

I practiced trees, lots of trees.

Practice wets the appetite. It made me eager to paint more trees.

Sunlit Tree

I always come back from a watercolor workshop ‘seeing’ differently. When you are playing with paint, reacquainting yourself with the pigments and water and how they interact, you are simultaneously looking more deeply into the subjects you paint. The shapes of twigs, the bark of a tree, the angle of limbs, the shadows and the light, how things look far away or close in, and you begin to see everything around you with renewed depth.
This is one of the many benefits of creative practice. It is not about the end result, though the result can be a reminder of who you were in that moment. But more importantly, it’s what is gained, what creating gives you, how it deepens your experience, your seeing and your awareness.

Once you see a tree so deeply, see the light dancing around its edges and the stories it whispers of life and death and change, you never again feel quite the same about trees. In New Mexico the pines spoke of silence, of space, of the whispering breath of mountain winds. In New England, maple, birch and sweet gum towered over Queen Anne’s lace and Joe Pye weed and unveiled edges newly dipped in gold and scarlet after a chilling rain.

Our trees--living, breathing gifts to enjoy, to protect, to revere.

Back to Watercolor

Having devoted the earlier months of this year to finishing my novel, I have neglected painting and sorely miss it.
So, I’m treating myself to a week with Ann K Lindsay and catching up with art friends at a cozy B&B in New England. This is like ‘old home’ week for me, since it’s my eighth such trip. Add together home-cooked meals, a homey atmosphere and all-day painting and it feels like pure pampering to my soul.

Ann is an intuitive instructor. And what I love about intuitive art, the art of creating what is wholly your own in a process that leaves behind the opinions of others, is that you express what is uniquely you. You begin to recognize in your own creations, who you are and what matters to you. And that strengthens.

This involves a rocky crossing, one that moves you through fear and self-criticism to that place of intuitive freshness on the other side. But because you show up and keep moving, you eventually arrive. You have created. And as time goes by, you begin to notice that what you have learned in making art touches every aspect of your life.

Young Peregrine Now Wanders

With the opening of his hacking box door at dawn, Rocky, a young 7-week old, male peregrine falcon, was released yesterday.Within 30 minutes, he accomplished his first flight and was out of sight of viewers who waited a short distance away. The day prior to his release, he was fitted with leg bands which will aid in future identification and with a tail-mounted radio transmitter for tracking.
A fledged peregrine falcon remains with his parents for as long as two months, while he learns to hunt. High speed flyers, peregrines primarily feed on birds that they catch in flight or from a perch. But both the strategy and precision of this hunt must be learned.
The radio transmitter allows Dale and John Stokes to monitor Rocky’s progress for the next few weeks so they can assist if something goes wrong. Dale and John obtained Rocky from a falconer in Minnesota for a fee of $600 in order to release him in a process called hacking. The hacking box (see previous post) serves as an artificial nest and fledging home. Raptors are known to imprint on their fledging area and will generally return to that area when it is time to nest and raise their own young. Peregrines nest on high bluffs and it is hoped that after adolescent wandering for the next two years, Rocky will return to nest in the Lookout Mountain area.
It was falconers like Dale and John Stokes who alerted the world to the effects of DDT on our raptors and subsequently saved many species from extinction. Peregrine falcon populations plummeted from 1950 to 1970 due to DDT poisoning, but the hacking re-introductions that began in 1970 have restored species numbers. Peregrines were removed from the national endangered list in 1999 but remain on the state endangered list in Georgia and TN.

More than falconers, Dale and John Stokes have a combined 49 years of experience with birds and have devoted their lives to educating the public about raptors. They conduct live birds of prey shows at Rock City, near Chattanooga and visit regional schools, parks and festivals to provide programs.

Links to peregrine information: Dale and John's S.O.A.R. blog site with update's on Rocky's progress. Chattanooga Times article on release. Cornell's interesting facts on the peregrine falcon.