Lee Thomson

A classic example of work on one thing blossoming into something else again.

Having made a series of rivers of circles, I wanted to explore what happened with rivers of blocks.

I have been haunted by a song, Stay Gold, from a group called First Aid Kit. To me, the song is the flip side of Robert Frost’s poem Only Gold can Stay. The poem talks about the first green of spring, and the song mourns the end of golden summer. Together they bracket the summer, speaking of the long soft golden stretch between spring and fall.

The bottom of all three pieces of triptych – numbering on the left, initials and date on the right, and my full signature and the year on the right most corner of the right-hand piece.

Because this is a commission, the person who commissioned it gets to see the it all together first. Once I have delivered it, I’ll ask if I can photograph it in the new space.

a rock in the foreground

getting closer to done

I finished the long horizontal lines of island, marsh, water and sky, and finally cut the large piece into the three triptych pieces. Now I have to add some foreground rocks in the river. There is a 50% chance of seagull, but I am not feeling birdlike at the moment.

Once the pieces are finished, it is down to trimming and binding, then stretching and framing. And then, THEN I deliver the artwork to Jenny who has been so patient.

I always seem to have a hard time getting back to work. I know the way I do it best is to stand in my studio and turn in slow circles until I see something I can completely understand how to finish. Today I knew exactly what to do for this little moonlit night, so I finished it, and trimmed it and finished the edges and got it framed even.

Then I did the same for another piece that had been languishing, waiting for stretcher bars the right length. And now I have two finished pieces for the Crane Estate Art Show and Sale, and I feel relieved to have crossed two out of five things off that list.

Tomorrow, I make a design for a mug, and see if they like this one better!

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It has been a full couple of weeks.

We went to see my brother. He lives on an island. My mother came out too. I always call these gatherings the world’s smallest family reunion.

The selfie is me rowing in the Atlantic, one of my most favorite things ever. The group photo is my mother, her two children, plus their spouses and offspring (all my mom’s grandchildren in one place!) plus other important people who come along with us. We seem to be able to take one family photo on the dock before we all vanish to the various compass points of our existence. I have a couple more pictures taken on this very dock (someone else was occupying our usual rocks) spanning a decade.

While I was on the island, I spent some serious time experimenting with acrylic paint. I will post pictures of those when I can. I was reminded how intense learning can be, mostly by the off-kilter feeling I had about my ability to depict what I wanted to.

Alice is a senior. To her deep disgust, school started for her this week, while Aerin has until Sunday to revel in the tail end of summer.

Aerin’s back to school pictures are generally packed cars now, headed out to college, although this is her senior year as well.

I was thinking how hard it is to recreate a believable sunset in artwork, or onstage, and Aerin pointed out that hardly anyone believed in sunsets even when they were looking right at them.

Ephemeral. Fleeting. There is poetry in the description, sometimes.

number of entries completed today: 2
number of entries with today for a deadline: 0
width of both pieces, in inches: 20
assumed length of both pieces, in inches: 60
actual length of manifold circles piece, in inches: 48
unnecessary time spent by photographer because I failed to remember the actual size of the manifold circles piece: 45 minutes
efforts to rename each piece: 23 and 21
satisfaction with names of each piece: I have no number for “eh”
size of both pieces, in multiples of how large I “normally” work: 10
time spent cleaning the surfaces before they were photographed: 45 minutes
time spent cleaning surfaces after they were photographed: another 45 minutes
reliance on photographer for photoshopping out weird tendrils: 100%
relief at being done: 100%
belief these will sell, anywhere: 5%
pleasure in the objects themselves: 110%

This is a look at part of the front, and a glimpse of what it looks like on the back, of the second of the huge brown pieces. This one has a working title of Yooge Brown Bubble River (I might need some more practice titling things?). It is also 20×60″

I am indebted to Notion to Quilt for their patience while I test drive the Babylock Tiara and dither over space constraints in my tiny house. I did all the work on the circles in a marathon afternoon of free motion practice. I would have done more, except it seemed unchivalrous to impose on their kindness. All the horizontal work I did on what I now think of as my “small machine” – but which is actually my regular machine.

I have a good deal more sympathy for the posting schedule of those who work on bigger pieces too. Working big means the milestones have long gaps between them, and it can be hard to make small talk in the interim.

Both pieces are with Stephen Petegorsky having their pictures taken because I can’t cope with anything that big.

Well that’s finished, but not readily visible. The finished piece is 20×60″ – in four sections 20×15″ each, laced together. The background is strips of brown fabric stitched over in cobbled circles. A sinuous river of turquoise circles, embellished with perle cotton winds from top to bottom.

The problem with working large is that I cannot photograph it and do it justice. I have to bundle this off to an actual photographer, with tools for coping with big things. So I present a couple of detail shots, courtesy of my phone (which I think has more megapixels than my actual camera at this point).

The working title is “Yooge brown thing in pieces with turquoise circles” which means it will get renamed before I enter it into anything. Although I rather like Yooge – I might try to leave that in.