closer still

November Show at Tilde, Portland

2010-11-06T11:38:00.000-07:00

This November at Tilde Shop in Portland, I'll have a selection of lovely and affordable giclee prints, digital prints and original paintings for sale. And ... your 2011 wall calendar! Poster or tea towel, this vibrant silk screen will delight you through the year. So, if you're in Portland, visit Tilde Shop in Sellwood (7919 SE 13th Avenue @ Lexington) or visit my etsy shop!

New Work at Pulliam Gallery

2010-07-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

I'm delighted to be part of a group show at Pulliam Gallery, 929 NW Flanders, Portland. The show opens Thursday, August 5 from 6-8pm. Pieces include those pictured here (Arbor Day I, Arbor Day II, Wedding Bower, Bowers. Parasols. Progress, In Tall Grass, Mother Bower, Bring Only What You Can Carry.)

The News

2010-04-29T09:23:00.001-07:00

This Saturday, I have show opening at the CSUF Grand Central Art Gallery in Santa Ana.

Here are four of the new pieces I made for Kindred Spirits:

The Rushes, 2010

Garland of Seasons II, 2010

Garland of Seasons I, 2010

The Briars, 2010

I'm also excited to mention a show I have up a the Marylhurst Art Gym. Called Motherlode, the show is a grouping of work by artist moms, including Nan Curtis, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Linda Hutchins, Dianne Kornberg with poet Elizabeth Frost, Fernanda D'Agostino and Shelley Jordan. Super thrilling to be in the company of such talented women. For those of you in the area, there will be a gallery talk on May 6 at noon in the Art Gym. (Click the link for more information.) Here are a few of the new works I made for this show:

The Nursery I, 2010

The Nursery II, 2010

Untitled, 2010

In other news, I'll have a single piece showing in the Pulliam Gallery's group show opening May 6 here in Portland, and have been invited to contribute a group of new paintings to a Pulliam show in August. I'm also part of the Reading Frenzy Awards Show that will be opening on May 6. Early this year, I was kindly invited to sell postcards and prints of my work at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco. This is a special place if you haven't yet been. In celebration of Clare Rojas opening at MOCFA in the middle of May, I'll also be sending down one original painting that will be available in the gift shop.

In music news, the recording of the latest Golden Bears record is very close to being finished. So close! Just a few more vocal tracks to cut, some hand claps and maracas and it's a go! Tonight we open for gorgeous Baby Dee at The Woods. One last little update-y thing... I'm proud to report Seth is currently and deeply in the midst of recording and producing Corin Tucker's eagerly anticipated solo album in our home studio. This has been the soundtrack around here since February and it's thrilling stuff. No wonder it's been such a great year so far!!

Two Days Slow

2010-02-18T09:44:00.001-08:00

I'm part of a group exhibition this March in Ottawa at Canteen Gallery. You can find out more about the show and the participating artists at the gallery website. Here's mine:

Thunder & Lightning

2010-01-25T15:49:00.000-08:00

Here are two shots from the Fontanelle show by Jess Fogel.

Our Songs of Experience

2009-11-29T13:38:00.001-08:00

I have a show of new works on paper opening at Portland's lovely Fontanelle Gallery this Thursday, December 3rd at 6pm. And wow, am I looking forward to celebrating the season with you, the pleasures of hard work and the relief of getting it done! In addition to 20 works in watercolor and ink, the show will be host to a large installation, made in collaboration with my bosom bunny, Jen Smith. The night of the opening. Fulfilling a very long time dream of mine, darling pal and local designer Jess Beebe has fit me a replica of Pete Townsend's Isle of Wight jumpsuit! Oh. My. God. Is right.

Here is a sampling of the work - reflections on the experience of being mother and daughter. I have several more images to add, and will include titles and dimensions soon! If you're interested in any of these pieces, please contact Fontanelle. Love to all.

This Will Be Our Year

2009-11-11T22:27:00.001-08:00

I have a beautiful new wall calendar up on Etsy. Click here.

Autumn's Bliss

2009-11-11T22:03:00.000-08:00

Two Timer Art Show

2009-09-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

Hope you Portlanders can come out tonight for the opening of "Two Timer," a group exhibit of work by artist/musicians. Curated by Rachel Blumberg for MIssissippi Studios in conjunction with the opening of Music Fest NW. I have a few older works hanging (show here).

Other musician/artists are:

Jason Leonard (Loch Lomond, The Nick Jaina Band, Jolie Holland)
Tara Jane O'Neil (TJO)
Even B. Harris (e.b.harris, ex member of Horse feathers, Loch Lomond, Laura Gibson)
Sarah Winchester (A Weather)
David "Yaya" Herman Dune (Herman Dune)

Rachel C. Blumberg( Norfolk & Western, Jolie Holland, Mirah, M. Ward)
Nicolas Columbo (Foureyes)

Also, don't miss the debut performance of PUP! (the Portland Ukulele Project) at 7pm featuring members of Loch Lomond, The Nick Jaina Band, Norfolk & Western, Run On Sentence, and more!

2009-09-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

Our trip to Bainbridge Island, staying with friends at their family's beautiful beach house. The container ships in the Puget Sound send huge, gleeful wakes against the house at high tide and during low tide, swallows dip and dive from the little landing beneath the window in the sunshine. In the quiet, I'm thinking of the show at Fontanelle in December, all that I hope to do for it. And the garden too, the work that awaits me there.

At home, my daughter started preschool yesterday. There is the smallest suggestion of fall in the air along with all there is to look forward to.

The Work of Summer

2009-08-27T21:24:00.001-07:00

Art of Touring Event

2009-08-20T08:55:00.000-07:00

This Saturday, come to Fontanelle to celebrate the release of "The Art of Touring," a book compiling art and writings about life on the road. I'll be performing a couple songs with my friend Tara Jane Oneil and possibly dusting off a very old tour diary for a short reading. Also reading and performing, Sara Jaffe (Erase Errata) and Rebecca Gates.

Saturday, August 22nd, 6-9pm. Fontanelle Gallery: 205 SW Pine Street, Portland.

Calimyrna

2009-07-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

These are my favorite of the figs. Almost lurid to look at, I think their color and texture is impossibly lovely. Our neighbors' tree overhangs the alley and will drop buckets full onto the concrete if resourceful people like myself don't stop over from time to time. My favorite way to prepare these beauties is drizzle them with honey, a little sweet vermouth, coarse salt and lavender flowers and bake them until they're dark and caramelized. Add a little buttery bleu cheese on the side and dessert is served.

Alive! Alive! The Garden Heaves...

2009-07-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

...even in our shade challenged little space. Here come the beans, the tomatoes, the squash. The pears grown heavy! The plums blush!

New Postcard/Notecard Sets on Etsy!!

2009-07-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited to offer these beautifully printed, 4x6 postcard reproductions of 4 of my paintings in my Etsy shop!

Made at Greener Printer in Berkeley, California, these cards were printed on 100% recycled paper with vegetable and soy-based inks in a carbon neutral facility. Rad!! The color quality is gorgeous and the matte card stock is lovely to write on. Available in 4 and 12 card sets!

our progress

2009-06-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

In late May, just as the crimson clover in the front was flowering and buzzing with honey bees, I pulled it up and simultaneously loosened the soil about two feet deep. Each year, the soil takes on a slightly darker, more satisfying hue as we feed the ground with compost and the over-wintered clover fixes the soil with nitrogen. This year, the ground is also deeply saturated from heavy rain and my garden fork sinks easily through the dirt as I turn over the soil. I lay a few stepping stones through out the yard - little pavers that will keep me from compacting the earth - and set about planting our summer starts. The tomatoes are mostly new (to us) heirloom varieties with the exception of two of our favorites: Sweet Million and San Marzano. The the others: Japanese Black Truffle, French Carmello, Costoluto Genovese and Cherokee Purple. For winter squash there are Sunshine (my favorite pie squash) and Bon Bon, along with what appear to be several Blue Hubbard volunteers from last year, and for summer squash, three long green zucchini plants. Planted in a row near the hottest part of the plot are Tollie's Sweet Italian peppers, Orange Hungarian and Yellow Cayenne peppers, along with Purple tomatillo and Japanese eggplant. I push Jacob's Cattle beans and Bush beans into the soil around an impromptu, bamboo teepee.

A week or so later, the fava beans at the front of the yard (also over-wintered, also a great fixer of nitrogen into the soil) are ready to harvest. These marvelous, labor intensive beans are some of my favorite late spring treats and once they are all pulled, we spend the following week plucking them from their furry cases, blanching, peeling and preparing them in soups, spreads, salads. The favas absent, a place opens up in the yard for the pickling and slicing cucumber starts that have struggled their way up from seeds on the front porch. I tuck them into the ground.

In the mean time, the garden in the back yard has been serving up something green since April. We've been through 4 different plantings of arugula from seed and we're on our 3rd lettuce planting. The spinach has only gone to seed this week (I'll plant again near the end of summer) and we've been pulling Purple and Lacinato kale from the yard since the beginning of May. Sugar snap peas have come and gone (sadly, since shelling and eating the contents had become one of the kid's favorite activities) as have the French radishes. Now, more Bush beans are coming up in the beds, along with an heirloom tomato called Bloody Butcher. (Yikes.) There are Armenian cucumbers, Thai and Italian basil, and more mysterious winter squash volunteers. The late season raspberries now take up most of the planter against our rickety garage. The Santa Rosa plum tree is heavy with green fruit on the verge of ripening and this definitely looks like the best Bosc pear and Fuyu persimmon year we'll have to date (which almost makes up for the fact that our 40 year old apple tree has littered most of its fruit - green and marble sized - all over the back yard. At least the tree holds up the hammock.) Even the Arbequina olive tree seems set to deliver at least a jar's full.

This is such a thrilling time of year in Portland and I feel so much delight looking at the long list of fruits and vegetables our little yard can yield. And the weather ... the weather and the late light redeems even the hardest of winters, the wettest spring. The other night, I road out on my bicycle to meet a friend and it seemed like every able, bicycling soul was on the streets or crowding some bar patio or front stoop. On the ride I couldn't help but notice how many more houses had raised vegetable beds in their front yards, how many people had torn up a portion of their lawn in favor of a bean patch. It made me feel so happy that I live here and even cautiously hopeful for our mostly clumsy, bewildered human kind.

Summer is so lush here, but rather short. Fried green tomatoes have become an end of summer tradition for us because we want every green fruit at the start of the season to reach it's potential, and because so much green fruit is left on the vine as the weather begins to chill. A short summer, but concentrated - a flourless cake of vitamin D. As I write this my daughter is napping upstairs, the house appears as if a small twister has passed through it. Wet clothes bob and turn on the line outside and more wet laundry awaits being hung. A large and weird and half finished painting calls from my studio, but it will have to wait. Until the girl wakes up, I'll be sitting on the front steps with my feet in the sun, drinking tea and watching the plants grow.

2009-05-23T14:15:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to let you know my etsy shop is up and running. I'm adding new original pieces every week or so and will soon add some 11x14 prints, along with postcard sets. For those of you who haven't entered this lovely universe, etsy is an internet market for handmade goods and a vibrant and really friendly online community. I hope you'll pay a visit!

The Sister Project

2009-05-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

A lovely website called The Sister Project contacted me a few months ago asking to profile my work. The site focuses on the many facets of sisterhood and their inquiries prompted me to look at my own progress as an artist (and human), inspiring a renewed thankfulness to the many women who've inspired me in the practice of making art and music. My exchanges with TSP have been so rewarding, so much fun and I'm consequently experiencing an entirely web based friend-crush on both Paige and Margaret, the women most responsible for the site. It's a sweet place to spend some time and you can have a look at my profile here.

Disappearing Book

2009-05-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Tonight, at Ready Frenzy in Portland, we're celebrating the release of Disappearing Book. My lovely friend, Melody Owen has curated a gorgeous, moving book of art and writing "attempting to address the marvelous nature of some of the many things that are disappearing from the world." Several of the artists who participated in the project ( myself included ) will have working hanging in the shop tonight: Aaron Henry, Alexandra Lakin, Carson Ellis, Cynthia Lahti, Cynthia Star, Donald Morgan, Jack Dingo Ryan, Jessyca Burke, Kristan Kennedy, Montana Maurice, Phillip Cooper, Rudy Speerschneider, Vanessa Renwick and Zak Margolis. Also, there will be readings by Camela Raymond, Kevin Sampsell and Ty Connor. And lastly, Seth and I will be playing a few quiet songs, along with Ty and Dustin Lanker. (The above piece, Straight Horned Markhor, is also pictured in the book and will be available for sale.) The exhibit will run through the month of May.

Please purchase this beautiful book! Available at lulu.com, the book is 56 pages, 7.5" x 7.5" and full, gorgeous color. A mere $15.70 plus shipping. You will be so delighted to hold it in your hands!

Posthumous Style Guru and Life Coach

2009-04-15T13:25:00.001-07:00

Last month, I treated myself to a copy of The NEW Self-Sufficient Gardener by John Seymour (adorably pictured above). I've only been gardening for about 4 years now and this year, I've been coming to terms with my flightiness as it relates to the vegetable garden. While sometimes I can be an assiduous caretaker of my fruit trees and vegetables, I am more often late to thin starts, lazy about re-seeding and careless about things like crop rotation. The result is a decent, but never impressive yield and we remain a long way from self-sufficiency even at the height of our growing season here.

It strikes me that every urbanite turned urban homesteader or back to the lander breaks ground in their garden with one thing in common: optimism that far outstrips practical experience. It must be the seeming simplicity of growing food, or that humans have been up to it for so long that makes sophisticated city dwellers think it can't be all that hard. And in many ways it's not. You plant a seed, you water and prevent weeds from overtaking the ground. And seemingly from nothing a plant emerges, and it's not merely beautiful - as in the case of the artichoke or the marbled heart of radicchio - but you can eat part or all of it. Amazing.

Still, this little synopsis doesn't take into account the myriad questions one must ask if they hope to grow food with any lasting success. My most valuable questions - those whose resolution actually gets me somewhere new - have come from failures. For instance, why are these carrots disgusting? Why have the fava beans stopped growing a full foot shorter than last year's crop? Why do these potatoes look like they have eczema?

When I was first pulling up the lawn and preparing our front yard for planting, my mind was busy stocking our basement shelves with preserves and pickles I'd neither prepared nor grown yet. Classic hubris, I'm afraid: it turned out I liked sweaty, hard work and at the time this seemed like enough to earn me a garden's bounty. As the reality has set in - that my learning curve will be long, that the garden will be my ongoing challenge and project - there have been moments when the pull of other work or family has made my ambitions outside feel like an impractical conceit. (Perhaps this is where a lot of working folks get tripped up when trying to maintain more than a lawn?) But I think abdicating is a mistake and brings me back to John Seymour and how his advocacy for emergence in the self-sufficiency lifestyle is, paradoxically, teaching me it's alright to take my time.

The NEW Self-Sufficient Gardener is a catalogue of marvelous things I'm not up for this year. Building a mini-greenhouse? Grafting? Bee keeping? Collecting onion seed with tidy little plastic bags tied around the flower? All lovely things to do, but exhausting to consider along with all my other chores. But what I can do this year is use a calendar for the first time to write down when seeds go in the ground, when I fertilize and when to re-seed. I can write up a map for rotating crops through the raised beds. I can plant potatoes without too much organic matter in the mix ... the cause of last year's scab. And if I suddenly find myself with a rare free day, I can build a couple caged frames in the shadiest part of the yard for a leaf mould or hammer together a little bat house to hang from the apple tree.

John Seymour died a few years back at the age of 90. He was buried on the land he and his family established and farmed together. All accounts I've been able to find about him make him out to be a real lover of life, of song and dance (and home fermented beverages.) I think of his long path and I'm inspired anew. There may not be time for everything, but it is awfully early yet.

Spring. At last.

2009-02-19T16:16:00.000-08:00

This last Friday marked the first day of spring and Saturday marked my daughter's second birthday. She and I spent the afternoon in the back yard, her ferrying rocks from one spot to another and I taking account of winter's toll and the delights of the new season. According to my survey, we lost two of my favorite plants, the black barked, yellow flowering abutilon and the corokia cotoneaster. I pulled their lifeless bodies from the soil with a sigh, threw the thinnest, broken stems in the compost bin and heaped the remainder atop the great mound of pruned branches and suckers that will be trimmed down into kindling for the woodstove next year. Beside this great pile of dead things, something more optimistic was happening; I could see the starts of radishes, peas, lettuce, beets and kale pushing through the soil of the raised beds. A hopeful patch of tarragon was returning in the adjacent herb bed, along with several bunches of chives, thyme and oregano. I pinched off the smallest leaf of tarragon - its licorice tang - and went about collecting a bouquet of plum blossoms, ribes, corylopsis, hellebores, cardoon leaves and santolina for Evie's birthday party the following day. Evie finished with her rock excavation and she and I threw some dandelion greens to the chickens before our sleeveless arms were too chilled by the gathering shade and we hurried inside.

Two years ago, the vernal equinox fell on the day Evie was born here at home: March 21, 2007. She was due to arrive one day later on the 22nd, but all along I'd hoped for her to come on the first day of Spring. Ten years earlier on the same date, her father sat beside his own beloved and very ill dad as he breathed his last and died. I was only getting to know Seth then and never had the chance to meet his father, but the thought of George's grandchild entering the world on the day he left it - the thought of Seth carrying both of those passages in his heart - tugged at mine. What more perfect day to hold her grandfather's departure and Evie's arrival than the day when light and dark were equally divided, when winter's decay and spring's abundance weighed equally on the warming ground.

And she did come. After the long, ecstatic, blurry beast of labor, she was born in our bedroom: 8 pounds and 6 ounces, 21 inches long. Her voice was husky and she had two little dimples on either of her ears. One of her grandfather's trademarks had been to tweak his own children's ears affectionately, calling them his "rabbits." We like to think of these dimples as his handy work. And now when we are deep within winter and longing to see the first crocus, longing for more light and some warmth in our bones, there is this added miracle to consider. Our daughter's life will be nourished by the grace of someone she never knew just as spring's new growth will be fed by the plants heaped on last years compost heap. Happy Spring.

2009-01-29T08:27:00.000-08:00

I have a show of new work opening in New York City in February. If you're not in New York, you can peruse a selection of those pieces right here. Otherwise, I hope you'll drop in. The gallery is called Charmingwall, and I encourage you to spend some time in their space or looking through their lovely website. They curate a selection of open edition fine art prints, all of which are available for a mere $20! And each month they feature one of their artists in a solo show. February is my month, the show is called The Itinerant Seed and hangs from February 7th through March 4th. Contact the gallery for prices.

Charmingwall

191 West 4th Street, between 6th & 7th Avenue

12pm - 7pm . 7 days a week

212. 206.8235

info@charmingwall.com

2009-01-27T12:35:00.000-08:00

It's been snowing all morning and I've only now noticed that it's stopped. Weather reports say it will not stick and will be replaced by rain as soon as this afternoon. In the front yard I can see the fava bean starts peering through the top of the snow, green fronds of garlic in the raised beds on the parking strip. It's a quiet and lovely scene, though the beauty of the snow belies to some extent the decay that is so much a part of the season. Still, like many faithful gardeners I'm drawn to the window in these times to dream about spring, about all the life that lies dormant under that white blanket and about what I will plant this year.

Three years ago, I pulled up the lawn in our front yard to plant a vegetable garden. I'm sure there are far more expedient methods than the one I chose, on my knees cutting away at the sod with a sort of hatchet, day after day. When we moved to Portland, I had never gardened before and most of my early activity in the yard was far more brutish enthusiasm than brains. But there was something transcendent about all the sweat and sore muscles, about hauling the useless lawn away in a barrow, or sneaking it into the yard debris bin. A friend from Seattle gifted me Steve Solomon's bible, "Vegetable Gardening West of the Cascades," and I got to work enriching the newly exposed soil with compost, lime dolomite and a cover crop of crimson clover. That late spring - turning the clover into the soil and picking out and planting our summer garden - I felt the first real flush of what was possible in this space. I saw us learning how to feed ourselves.

We've had three summer gardens and a child since. Last year, we invited five chicks into our lives, two of whom began crowing at about four months old and who - three months later - were served fried in what I can only describe as the most realistic meal I've ever eaten. At this writing we have a persimmon tree, two plum trees, an apple tree, a pear tree, an Arbequina olive tree and a sprawling, old Concord grape vine on our relatively modest lot. (Approximately 800 square feet.) In three raised beds in our back yard and two raised beds on our front parking strip we've grown everything from lettuces to turnips, herbs to strawberries. And in the 200 square feet (give or take) that used to host only a scrubby, peaty lawn, we've grown tomatoes, winter and summer squash, beans, cucumbers, artichokes, peppers and eggplants of many varieties.

Still, we have so much to learn. An excess of shade and short summers challenge our yields. Aphids have caused me to give up almost altogether on some of my favorite brassicas. And while I used to spend at least a small part of every pleasant day in the yard, parenting has made that kind of liberal attention a real challenge. (Read: impossible.) But I'm only encouraged when I look outside. As an artist, it's impossible for me not to compare gardening to a drawing or painting that's never really finished. And delightfully so. This is the work that unfolds in seasons and years and studies and triumphs and failures. And I'm absolutely hooked.

There are far more lyrical writers and established artists considering the political, social and environmental power of the modern victory garden. (Michael Pollan and Fritz Haeg come to mind and are heroic in their leadership.) But if my voice here is part of a din, I think it's exactly the sort of racket we need now. So while this blog will continue to be a space to share my studio work and news of its showing in the world, it will also be a humble place to consider and discuss this other art project of simplification and budding sufficiency in my home, garden and community. I hope you'll stay tuned and share your thoughts and experiences with me.

Fondly,

Julianna