Author: cabinart

Messing With Other People’s Art

There have been several times in my career when I have been asked to change someone else’s art. I have repaired a torn canvas, changed a boulder in a painting that looked like a skull, fixed a child that looked like a little hunchback, and brightened colors in a dull painting. All these were done without knowing the original artist, and with assurance that the original artist would never know.

The Mineral King Room makeover was a different story. The original designer is highly educated, experienced and respected in The Art World. I am somewhat known in the local Art World, but I try to keep a low profile when it comes to any formal types of situation where I might be outed as a total DBO, mostly self-taught, Tulare County native. (You know how I feel about ArtSpeak. . . ugh.)

I respect the original artist of the Mineral King Room and understand that she put a lot of thought into the design. The folks who approved the design were awed by her work, and didn’t think that there would be a strong reaction to the teal color and the stylized mountains, which were all effective from a designer’s point of view.

The approvers were mistaken about the reaction, which was strongly against the color and the mountain shapes. This necessitated a call to your Central California artist, who also is the local Mineral King artist.

The designer wasn’t pleased when she learned that I would be giving her design a makeover. (What artist would be??) I don’t blame her, because she chose all the shapes and colors based on her design expertise, to provide the best interpretive background for historic displays. She was professional and polite, while sounding as if she was defending a dissertation, not in a defensive way, but protective and offering the rationale for her design decisions.

My approach, on the other hand, also based on training and experience, is to simply please the customer. (My very wise dad taught me the all important business principle of “You kiss their fanny and take their money”.) We have to think about who the visitors and supporters of the Mineral King Preservation Society are, and what they will understand. The answer to that is that they love Mineral King, not a stylized version of it. (“Nosirree, I’ve climbed Sawtooth, and that ain’t it!”)

This is how the mountains surrounding the Mineral King valley really look.

So, with respect to the designer, who is very good at what she does, I just dove in and “corrected” her work. I don’t mean that it wasn’t good; it just wasn’t right for the audience.

Did Mineral King Need a Paint Job?

Did Mineral King need a paint job?

No, but the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum did. The blue didn’t match the murals in the room, and the mountaintops weren’t recognizable. (You can see the murals here.)

First, I was determined to mix the right shade of blue using whatever paints I had on hand. Lightfastness isn’t a problem on indoor murals, so I was able to use a can of indoor white paint that came from who knows where, along with my 2 mural paint blues. Mural paints are highly pigmented and that makes them very useful for making my own interior colors.

Second, we taped all the parts that needed protection. (This was not the royal we—I had great help from MKPS Sandi).

Next, I traced the tops of the mountains on the mural showing the peaks surrounding the MIneral King valley. This provided a guide to redraw the peaks to match reality. (This was based on the assumption that I painted the mountains accurately in the mural.)

I drew the mountains on with chalk. (It wasn’t a Mineral King blue either but it matched my painter’s tape.)

Then, I started painting and almost immediately, dripped onto the rust color.

Good thing there is touch-up paint for all the colors involved.

Here is an example of something weird that I have learned about acrylic paints, as opposed to oil paints: they are LIGHTER when they are wet. Doesn’t make sense, but it is true.

That teal color was great with the rust, but just not right for the subject matter. I told the Mineral King Preservation Society that if they are just going to waste the paint, I’ll be happy to take it off their hands. I’m sure I can find a use for it. (Weird how the rust looks like red here, and the white looks like light tan).

Now look at the room so you can see the corrected peaks and the color that matches the murals. (I’ll show a before and after on the 2nd shot for you.)

Before:

After:

The mountains in the Before photo are more dramatic and more proportionally pleasing. However, the mountains in the After photo are realistic rather than stylized, match the murals and give more display space for whatever will be going on the wall.

Tomorrow I will tell you a few thoughts about this job.

Quick Quick, Can You Help Us?

The Mineral King Preservation Society has 2/3 of a room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum. We call it The Mineral King Room, in spite of sharing it with another exhibit.

A few years ago I painted some murals in that room.

Recently, the room started getting a facelift, or perhaps “makeover” is a better word. I was at the museum for something, went in the Mineral King Room, and saw the beginnings. My first thought was that it was colorful and spiffy looking; my second thought was that the blue didn’t match the sky in the murals, and my third thought was that the supposed Mineral King peaks did not look like Mineral King.

Several weeks later, another Mineral King person stopped by and said, “That color of blue is doesn’t look like a Mineral King color, and I don’t recognize those peaks.”

Thus, I got a phone call, asking if I could change the color of blue and fix the line of mountains.

Aren’t you just dying to see what I am talking about?

An incidental thought about that blue: it is a great color, kind of a turquoise or teal, something I have quite a bit of in my wardrobe. It just doesn’t happen to match a sky in Mineral King. It might look better with the rust than the sky blue, but reality has to take precedence.

mineral king murals mineral king room

Mineral King Is Now Open

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional cabin opening weekend. It is when Sequoia National Park unlocks the gate, and people begin backpacking and camping. Some years it feels like summer; some years it does not. This year was snow-free, but it did not feel like summer.

The classic view

This section was stripped of willows and other shrubs in the fire prevention efforts last fall. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through my photos to find one of how it looked before it got pruned to no avail.)

Monarch Falls and Creek are flowing well.

This is “Iron Falls” along the Nature Trail.

This is Iron Falls as recently painted.

The dandelions were prolific, bright, and charming (because they are not in my lawn).

This is the view of the stream that I painted 7 times over the winter in the Sawtooth oil paintings, and I took this photo in hopes that it will assist me as I paint #8.

This is painting #6 of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

As now seems to be the norm, there were dogs coming both up and down the Nature Trail with impunity. No one reads the signs, and no one cares. (There is a dog in this photo, although it is sort of a “where’s Waldo” type of view.)

We had a super clear day to walk up to Crystal Creek and the wind was quite icy.

This is the section that I think of as the Yellow Tunnel in the fall. The cottonwoods were just beginning to leaf out.

Crystal Creek was doing its normal spread into about 4 shallow branches.

Thus we conclude my first visit to Mineral King for 2022. May there be many more!

Mineral King Mineral King oil paintings

Between Jobs

That’s “between paying jobs”. I didn’t charge my church, a decision I made many years ago—I will charge people in the church, but not jobs for the church.

What does an artist do when there aren’t commissions or upcoming shows? (Besides look out the window and contemplate matters of consequence).

(Or think about joining Pippin in a nap.)

(Or look out the window and wonder why this blooming shrub has the peculiar name of “pineapple guava”.)

Your Central California artist does these chores:

Plan new paintings, based on the assumption (and experience) that current ones will sell, and the sellers will want replacements.
Package notecards for a custom order.
Balance the checkbook
Sort through piles and toss or file all the stuff that seems to multiply in the dark
Go to the bank (as a few checks trickle in)
Write a few notes
Contact drawing students who have missed for awhile to ask if they quit and forgot to tell me
Write blog posts
Answer the phone, learn of a request for a QUICK, CAN YOU HELP US RIGHT AWAY?, and dive in to planning the next job.

Okay, let’s roll!

Sold in April and May

It has been awhile since I did a Brag List. Perhaps it could be called a Reassurance List, because when my business hits a lull, it reassures me to see that work has sold recently.

Ten Things I Learned in May

I learned about a Redbud booth location that was new to me: a. the patio is very convenient for set-up and breakdown; b. that location would be too hot if it was a warm weekend; c. sharing a booth is an excellent idea; d. my screens can blow over.
Selling a home without an experienced and organized realtor is UNTHINKABLE. (Nope, not my home; I’m still here). I highly recommend Diana Jules of Sierra Real Estate if you live in my neck of the woods. (Woods have necks??) She made it stress-free and is a joy to be around.
It is very complicated to be simple. Setting up a new landline at our cabin has taken 4 very lengthy phone calls with Huge&Rude, the dominant (and only) communications company for Mineral King. I could fill a page with the things they promised and did not deliver, along with all the lies I was told (probably by accident of ignorance, due to the complicated nature of simple things).
Look what happens when you neglect to pay attention while baking; let’s call it Flour Deficit Disorder. I kept ignoring the little voice in my head that said, “Not enough flour—the dough is too thin”. (It sounds an awful lot like the voice that tells me that a knitting project is going the wrong direction).
Iron-on patches don’t work. (And isn’t it interesting that my jeans wore out above the knees rather than on the knees?)
I learned that there is a Murphy bed with an attached desk that keeps its load when you lower the bed. See that desk/tray piece beneath the mattress? It stays in a horizontal position even when the bed is down.
Precis is a real word. It is pronounced “PRAY-seez” and it means a concise summary.
Have you ever bought or seen squished pennies at a tourist site? They were introduced to the USA in 1892, although begun in Austria in 1818. The elongation machines cost $4-5000, and and it usually costs .51 to squish a penny. Even if a single transaction costs $1, it seems like a pretty long shot to make one’s money back. The coins are called “elongated coins” and collecting these souvenirs is a popular hobby. Souvenir collection itself goes back to the early history of humans when one needed to bring home something foreign from travels to prove one had been somewhere. The Three Rivers Historical Museum plans to get a machine, and one of the designs will be the logo I made for the Mineral King Preservation Society. There are maps online for the dedicated collectors which show where the machines can be found throughout the USA. When I was first asked about the use of my design, I had my usual response:
A friend showed me an app for the phone called Picture This. If you take a photo of a plant using their camera, it tells you the Latin name, common name, and characteristics of the plant. To keep the app free, you have to hit “cancel” a few times each time you use it. Otherwise, after 7 free days, it will cost you $29.99 for a year. I wonder if the subscription comes with benefits other than just not having as many interruptions to sell you things. . . see? My mind is flooded with questions. (Discovered the name of a terrible smelling weed in our yard is “stink grass”!)
For several years I have used DuckDuckGo as my search engine. I didn’t like the sense of being stalked by Google. Now I have learned of a new search engine called Ecosia It plants trees when you use it a certain number of times or something like that. I just like the idea that it isn’t trying to make a gazillion dollars by selling ads instead of helping me find stuff on the World Wide Web. We’ll see if it works. I learned about it from Seth Godin’s blog. He is a little bit too smart for me, but I do trust him when he tells about a good product that I can actually use. Not sure how, not sure if it will work, but I will try it.

Always Remember

Early Season Mineral King

This post comes to you courtesy of Trail Guy. He took the photos for us to all enjoy.

This is Empire Peak.

This is Timber Gap, to the left of Empire. Farewell Gap isn’t entirely visible in the next photo, but you can see Little Florence Peak, which is on the left side of the gap.