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The harvest is in. Pumpkins are everywhere. The leaves are falling, the air cools instantly. The year is dying. The Dark is coming. Cern, The Horned One, the forest god rises to stalk the woods. Ghosts pass through portals opened by The Faery and roam freely. Samhain again. I am convinced the purpose of holidays (other than the obvious having a good time) has got to be making you stop and feel. You feel anxious, you feel happy, or nostaglic, but you feel. This time of year in most cultures is a time to remember the dead. It’s the time I feel closest to my ancestors. Probably left overs from being raised in an Irish-American family? Through the prefection of imagination I can sit in a warm, candlelit cottage, the smell of a peat fire floating like a spirit around the room. I’m eating Grandma’s shortbread Soul Cakes filled with nuts and dried berries topped with a touch of dark rum icing while carving a Jack O Lantern. Offerings of nuts and apples are set out for “the visitors”and someone is telling scary stories about the Banshee or something that is just believable enough to compel me to actually listen.

Back in the more shared reality I’ve always felt a bit disappointed about Halloween. My little town here hosts a great celebration where all of the shop owners decorate for the holiday and hand out goodies to costumed princesses, and Ninja Turtles with a sprinkling of ghouls streaming past their doorways. It’s a fantastic time that I participate in every year and truly enjoy… but it misses the point. As a kid I anticipated and even occasionaly had a Halloween with dark clouds scudding through a stormy sky occasionaly revealing a faint moon so I could feel appropriately spooky. But the longing was always for bonfires and dancing in circles with the unseen souls in the dark encroaching on the edges of the festivities. With droughts and fire bans that will probably never happen now. Samhain is a festival of light with bonfires and candles and feasts to remind us of the Summer, The Light, that is passing as have the dead we miss and honor. Personally, I miss the Summer.

In art it brings out fanciful darker images. I’ve experimented with a blend of photos and photoshop that possibly highlights the Faery presence, or a more mystical feeling from my usual. I hope you enjoy.

Apart from sharing the title of the picture with this post, it sometimes describes a lot of fellow PNW denizens. The holding pattern starts with the return of Brother Rain and the area begins to wear its constant gray mantle. Around the first frost you once again hear people talking about whether or not a month on Maui is worth exchanging for Christmas this year. Then you notice that you haven’t seen much of the regulars lately. And finally you notice you haven’t actually been outside in, well, a while. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to hibernation. Possible explanation for Seattle’s fixation on coffee? It does help one Hang On.

Luckily for me there is always the urge to create lurking in the background waiting for its chance to strike. Since my wife is close with her extended family I have a seemingly endless opportunity to come up with birthday, anniversary, Christmas, and assorted other occasion cards. I’m still threatening to start selling my Christmas cards here but haven’t made much headway in that direction.

The latest grandchild to have a birthday pop up was 14 year old hockey super star Silas. We had a great time on a recent Vacay Squad trip to Mexico so his card reflects that plus his ‘tude.

When each of our five grandchildren were born my wife assigned them an animal totem. Jorja got the giraffe as hers so her recent birthday resulted in her riding Alberta Cowgirl style.

My daughter is an artist in her own right and the inspiration for the more “artsy” or non-kid styles I try. She has always been a reason for me to push myself and I love her for it. I guess it’s all a round-about way of saying I keep busy? Drawing has always been my relaxation and I still love doing the childrens’ book/ cartoon style so I’m set for the foreseeable future.

Ok. The smell of fresh coffee is wafting in from the kitchen and it’s been minutes since I’ve had any so I’ll end this here. What do you mean Winter’s not even started yet?????????

“Dear Santa, Bring Summer!!!”

    I’ve been having a blast creating posts for my fantasy-food blog From Paradise With Love and Rum. Please check it out and spread it around (pretty please) I need more subscribers. The blog centers on the sailing journals of a fictional R.B. (Rum Brother) McCarthy as he travels cooking and loving his way across a 1960’s South Pacific. It is presented by his grandson who is learning to cook by recreating the rum based recipes he posts.

   Recently one of my subscribers asked what inspired me to post his “new favorite dish and story” called Joan Was Quizzical. I found it funny that he chose one of the few posts that didn’t feature a South Pacific fantasy and was written in a very nondescript time and place with only a loosely implied ending. I feel the other posts are better fantasy inducers, but I have to agree with him about the dish. I make it often. Check it out here:

I answered by saying that writing these posts and imagining myself back then leads to frequent nostalgic moods. I think sometimes those mental exercises summon my Muse. She comes and whispers in my ear then lets me believe it was all my creation.

The recipe is one of my favorites partially because it involves grilling and that always makes me think back to my Father and countless other men of his time across the country standing there next to a round black BBQ with drink in hand, coals glowing, and the aroma of sizzling food wafting up.

My trivia ladened brain remembered that the first mass produced BBQ grills, like the one I use now, were made by Webber. The company originally manufactured buoys for the coast guard and NY Yacht club. In a fit of creativity (or his Muse?)the owners son gathered various buoy parts and created a portable outdoor grill he nick-named “Sputnik” because of it’s appearance. So now I had a double connection.

Space Nerd me remembered being entranced standing in the backyard with my Dad while he finished grilling dinner and him pointing out Sputnik as it raced overhead. Webber making buoys touched on my love of sailing AND grilling.

That’s when the playlist coming through my headphones hit on Buffalo Springfield – Sit Down I Think I Love You . The tune took me back to high school and a prom photo I had recently come across. The rest is pure fantasy. Credit (or blame) my Muse. But I typed it all myself, so I get some credit, right?

The truth is that the amazing, adventurous, more than lovely young woman in my memory is absolutley that person from the story. She’s proudly leading a wonderfully mature, happy, successful life. I’m proud to have known her. Here’s the story:

Start the music to set the mood…

Summer of 1970 on the beach in L.A. was…different. I was still recovering from a nearly fatal car accident from 1969 and this was my first Summer back from the dead. I had spent from June of 1969 until late August of 1970 in hospital and bed time at home. Still couldn’t walk but sitting worked just fine and that was a huge improvement. I only made it to the beach when I did because of some truly good friends. My girlfriend would drive me there on her way to work and a couple of friends would cross their arms in the old Boy Scout hand chair maneuver and carry me the rest of the way over the sand to where “Everyone” was gathered. Gotta love those guys. I still do.

Because of the accident my perspective had changed utterly. I knew the pace of change in the world had gone off the charts but it was so odd to see how much was different in my little part of it. The guys were more or less the same bunch. I began to understand what the ones coming back from military duty (mostly in Viet Nam) dealt with. Most of them had been removed from The Scene at least twice as long as I had (and in a totally surreal world) so the view as a now outsider must have been truly, intimidatingly bizarre. Music was headed down hill to heavy metal, hair bands, and Disco. Drugs were harder and surfboards were shorter. Hipsters had traded marijuana for coke and my ten foot David Nu’uhiwa nose rider was a dinosaur. A soulful glide across an open face on a chest high wave and interacting with Mother Ocean had morphed into shredding with an almost violent attack of the wave. The wave seemed secondary as you performed skate boards tricks in the water.

The sixties had mellowed and some of the ideas had blossomed or fermented. The best, parts like the Free Love thing, thankfully persisted (flourished?) and things were loose. Better yet the sun was still there and the sand felt just as good as before. The salt in the air smelled just as glorious and the volleyball nets were new. Women awoke to competitive beach volleyball and I had become an expert cheering section for them. I was back in my own little corner of Heaven.

One team had adopted the net closest to where I was usually deposited and I became Guardian of Our Stuff while they played. My duties boiled down to rationing Gatorade out of the cooler and an occasional loudly voiced encouragement. More importantly I was to play the team’s Theme Song “Come and get it” by Badfinger whenever they walked onto the court and especially when they won. I remember one woman in particular. She had injured her leg surfing and had to sit out most of that season. She gladly accepted the position of assisting me in my duties. She tried to teach me the finer points of volleyball and we shared highly exaggerated surf stories. The way she ran her hand through her soft light brown hair was only surpassed in cuteness by the way her nose wiggled as she spoke. Her boyfriend sat with us often and became Team DJ by quickly mastering the timing of the theme song.

They both recently showed up again on my drawing table wanting to be a part of an upcoming art show here in town. The contrast between intense detail and purposeful vagueness feels a bit like that Summer with all of its’ changes. The theme is carried through many of the pieces I’m showing this time. It’s quite a ways from the children book illustrations style I showed previously. Wish me luck !!

Kevin

If you can’t laugh at yourself, life is going to seem a whole lot longer than you’d like.

Natalie Portman

Being creative isn’t limited to what I produce on paper or canvas. With everything going on around us sometimes it’s finding ways to keep myself grounded, humble, and laughing. My favorite source for laughing often involves memories. Not the kind of memories like being the hero, or scoring the winning touchdown. Apart from the fact that those things never happened with me, I have been a confirmed non-heroic goofball most of my life. But being that goofball has proven to be a bottomless well of amusement now.

If you’re as lucky as I am you can look back at times when you thought you were soooo cool and laugh your butt off. They are easily distinguishable from actual cool times by the fact that the actual cool times still have importance to you. Feeling the interaction with Mother Ocean as you drag your fingers across the face of a shoulder high Hermosa Beach wave as your longboard glides along remains an important memory I use often. Purely cool. As it happens, the times and surroundings can be genuinely cool… but it’s just you that’s the cause of laughter. Example: 1969 (a deeply cool year), plus Herbie Mann (a very cool jazz flute artist), plus Herbie playing the extremely cool venue of UCLA Royce Hall adds up to a Fantastic evening of being very cool, right? Well…read on.

My off-and-on-again girlfriend at the time was a couple of years older than myself, lived with her parents in the wealthy Palos Verdes, and attended a very prestigious college we used to refer to as Unusually Spoiled Children. She wasn’t but it was still fun to say. I had starting really liking  jazz and one of my favorite artists, Herbie Mann, was appearing at the coolest venue UCLA  had to offer, Royce Hall. Even in my best James Bond fantasies ( me being James of course) she was out of my league but there was still a hope of winning the fair maiden. I was desperate to impress her with my coolness. I planned a very cool evening of dinner at the high end Meditterania on Restaurant Row followed by the concert and ending with coffee at the beatnik-hipster hangout Bratskellar in Westwood. I even bought new clothes and a got a haircut ( well, a trim at least) Considering I was a senior in high school and working evenings this was a supreme effort on my part. So I set out on the appointed evening dressed to the nines smelling of my best cologne and wearing my heart on my sleeve. Her Mother answered the door. She had always liked me and was very impressed with my appearance (Score!). While she hunted for her camera we quickly ducked out headed to dinner and my appointment with Coolness.

      What prompted this post was that I recently saw an old photo of my girlfriend kissing me. There I was, bigger than life. A pink scrubbed, short haired, Catholic School boy in my blazer with patches on the sleeves, wide wale corduroy pants, new Earth Shoes, and a nice burgundy turtleneck sweater. All I needed was longer hair and a pipe and I could have played the Ivy League Trust Fund Baby from a bad movie, or at least a cheesey professor’s assistant.

        When we arrived at the restaurant I sat my date in the lobby and in my best 007 mode walked to the Maitre D’s stand and advised him of my reservation. He hesitated a moment then leaned over and explained to me that the restaurant, unlike most others around there, maintained the dress code of  men having to wear ties. Ooooops. Rather than head off to another place I chose another path. I would valiantly, single-handedly resist oppression and openly protest the antiquated rule by wearing one of their “loaner ties”. I chose the nice dark one (that was already tied) and slipped it over my head defiantly tightening it over my turtleneck. It only made me look like a 12 on the Goon Meter scale of 10. From first glimpse of my fashion addition to well past ordering the food my girlfriend stifled a giggle that finally erupted into out and out laughter when, as we were leaving, I forgot to return the tie and the Maitre D’ had to call me back.

        About half way through the concert the fact that I was wearing a turtleneck, thick pants, and blazer in Southern California threatened to trigger a tsunami of sweat. To avoid that little embarrassment I removed my blazer and pulled up the sleeves on my sweater. My first indication that I might survive with any dignity in tact was that my date took my blazer and neatly folded it on her lap. It’s the little things, right? It looked a bit better for me when she wore it over her shoulders as we walked across campus to the Bratskellar. My tripping on the last step down to the door and barely avoiding a face-plant onto the floor between two tables was a brief setback, but did get some applause from the crowd… imagined or otherwise. We closed that place and the ride home was thankfully uneventful, but oddly quiet.

      As we paused to say goodnight at her front door she turned and looked into my eyes. Half of me acknowledged that she knew how that entranced me and was probably softening the blow I was about to take. The other half feared she would break out into laughter again. Even though I adored her laugh, tonight was not the best time to know it was at my expense. What she said blew both of those ideas away. She thanked me for an evening she would never forget and knew it would become a favorite family story someday. Insert inkling of hope for me here. The quiet in the car was because she was sorting through her feelings. Insert heart-in -hroat apprehension here. She said I had shown her more care and respect, more courage, and the admirable ability to laugh at myself, all rolled into a more remarkable sense of Cool than anyone she had ever known. How could she be anything but madly in love with someone who went to those lengths to impress her? And impressing her was something she said I never needed to worry about anyway. She knew very well who I was. As she gave me one of those totally Kevin melting kisses the front door opened and the flash caught the moment. We both knew it right then, but a little over a year later we were engaged.

      I donated the outfit the next day. I still have the match books I took as souvenirs all those years ago. Apart from the memory of her, the best part of the whole thing is still getting to laugh at that guy in the turtleneck. 

P.S.

I bought a tie just like the one I wore at the restaurant that night and wore it to dinners at her house for years. Her family loved it. I bet they’re still laughing.

Focus is an odd thing. Sometimes you work hard to hold a tight focus and other times you see things too clearly and seek a bit of a blur. Or you can set the cruise control and sort of half notice as things focus and fade at their own pace like you are watching someone’s slide show.

“We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.”

The Outer Limits

The most recent invitation to join a local art show came at a point where I was playing with ways to keep one foot in each world, so to speak. Enjoying the soft fuzzy blur of watching the world float by and still tightly focusing on the details of certain aspects. The Muse found that balance in what came out for the show.

The sharper focus of parts of these have an almost anatomy class quality like illustrated muscles or sinews. They form the foundations that allow the other parts to soften and be more implied or maybe not analyzed too carefully. Kind of like a balance between things that truly matter and things that can be enjoyed without the work.

At any rate, here are samples of what I plan to show this month. Please let me know what you think using the form below or email me directly at Kevin@artbearstudios.com