Three Rivers | Cabin Art

Changing Spaces

The Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building is a regular location for art and craft bazaars. I’ve been participating here for many years in many different places in the building.

This was in 2011, along the wall. I’ve learned to not overload my space and overwhelm the visitors with so many paintings.

Whatever year this was, my booth was in the center of the room.

2014 was consumed by the book “The Cabins of Wilsonia”, which the printer failed to deliver as promised in time for this show; so, I just took all my extra knitted items to sell, along with my usual cards, Mineral King tee shirts, a friend’s knitting and another friend’s lavender. This is the same corner space that I had last weekend.

This window location is a common space given to me and we’ve learned to deal with the bulky drapery in the way by scrunching it together using a bungee cord. That big banner is now gone – just got worn out.

The windows provide wonderful natural light, especially in the springtime.

Spring of this year: the big round table has been useful through the years but does take up a lot of space in the roughly 10×10′ space.

This year I set up the space this way. No more large round table.

It was a good location, because when people entered the building, they immediately saw my colorful table with affordable items on the right side.

Every year I have slightly different merchandise, different paintings, different ideas for display, and it presents a new puzzle each time. It is all part of the business of art in Three Rivers.

Friday and Saturday I will be in another new space here in Three Rivers, NOT in the Memorial Building.

Friday Fun

Trail Guy went to Mineral King last week. This is how it looks at this time of year.

Farewell Gap with the Crowley Cabin from the bridge at the end of the Mineral King Road. November is bleak and colorless, waiting for snow.

That hardly qualifies as “Friday Fun”. What does? How about Pippin in the leaves!

Look hard. Might need to enlarge the photo to see Pippin, camouflaged in the leaves. Very very camouflaged.

Pippin didn’t want to share with Tucker.

See you tomorrow at the Three Rivers Memorial Building for the annual Holiday Bazaar, 9-4!

Three Rivers

A Busy Month (and you are invited)

November is my busiest month. For the first time in several years, I have no selling events in Visalia. However, there are plenty of other opportunities to see me and my art: a list might be the easiest way to see all the upcoming events.
1. Holiday Bazaar, Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building, Saturday, November 23, 9-4, free (of course). Always a nice event with good stuff made by interesting people who are eager to tell and sell.

2. Perfect Gift Boutique, 41837 Sierra Drive (that’s Hwy. 198 in Three Rivers) in a borrowed empty storefront, sharing space with the other Kaweah Artisans. Friday, November 29 and Saturday, November 30, 10-4. (the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving). The address on this poster is where we were last year; this year’s will be in the next building just downstream, next to the Kaweah Commonwealth office.

WRONG ADDRESS, WRONG DATES, WRONG DIRECTIONS (but right event)

3. In other events, I am teaching drawing lessons at Arts Visalia each Tuesday evening from 6:30-8:30. Five students, good times!

4. But wait! There’s more! The Festival of Trees and Globes is the annual fall fundraiser at St. Anthony’s Retreat Center in Three Rivers, this year on Thursday, November 21. My part? Judging the decorated Christmas trees, along with 2 others. It is a little stressful, knowing that people poured their hearts into these trees, and trying to be objective when I know most of the participants and every worthy organization; Three Rivers is a small, self-contained community, and anonymity is rare. The event itself is quite fun, lots of food and drink, a silent auction, and the live auction of the trees. (It’s not fancy like the similar event in Visalia – we are easy-going and informal here in 3R.) You can buy tickets in advance or at the door or from me.

P.S. First Saturday, December, is also coming up, and for the first time in a long time, my studio will be open!

Now the 2nd side of the path to the studio door is planted. This is where I draw, paint, and occasionally contemplate matters of consequence, which results in fascinating blog posts such as this one.

Remembering With Gratitude

In the Studio

It has finally stopped being hot in Three Rivers, so I get to work in the studio with the door open. Although our cats are not allowed inside the house, I let them freely wander in and out of the studio. This won’t work if it is raining, but for now it is great fun.

I tried to convince Tucker, our shy black cat, that he could use the upholstered chair for naps. He only wanted to sit there if I held him, which doesn’t work while I am working. He ran outside, and when I turned around, there was Jackson, who needed no convincing.

Pippin jumped on the drawing table (I was working at the desk behind the drawing table), so I opened the blind for him.

While I worked at the desk, Pippin napped.

As much as I love summer in Mineral King, I also love fall at home in my studio in Three Rivers.

This picture is from spring of 2018; the plants and stepping stones are different now because almost nothing stays the same in life. Have you noticed this?

What was I doing in the studio? Bidding on a HUGE commissioned oil painting, gathering photos for some of my drawing students, helping a friend order calendars with his photographs, editing the TB book (haven’t mentioned that in quite awhile), and working on a new pencil drawing. When the drawing is finished, I’ll show you.

Indoor Mural, Final Day

Put down your brushes and walk away from the mural! That’s what I had to tell myself at the end of Day Three on the mural at St. Anthony’s Retreat in Three Rivers.

The mural looked like this at the end of Day Two.

At the end of Day Two, I took a photo of the mural, studied it, and made a list of things that were not quite right. When I arrived on Day Three, I didn’t even read the list but just started working. The oak tree, the sycamores, the river’s edge. . . fixey, fixey, fixey.

Next, I peeled the masking tape from the top 2 sections to see how effectively it masked the edges. Then it was time for lunch. (I love working at St. Anthony’s!)

The tape had a few malfunctions. The pencil we used to swing the arc and the blue chalk line all had to be painted out, so I used the wall paint to cover the now extraneous guidelines.

I signed it, then added one more poppy.

Stick a fork in it; it’s done!

Indoor Mural, Day Two

I started Day Two on the mural at St. Anthony’s Retreat in Three Rivers with the idea that I could finish it, maybe even in the morning.

Fall down laughing.

First, I needed to fix the slopes below Comb Rocks. It was mushy in the mural, undefined, hard to read. See?

I looked out the window to see how the hills actually look. Of course, it is the wrong time of year, the wrong lighting, and the wrong angle; that’s where I try to blend artistic license with believability.

Artistic license is also why I have made Comb Rocks more prominent in the mural than they are out the window.

Better, more defined now. maybe too well defined, but leaves on the branches in the foreground can disguise that little problem.

That took longer than I expected, so I took a break. First, I photographed the live oak out the nearest window, thinking it might be helpful.

This is a view out the nearest window. I wonder if those bells ring.

Go back to work, Central California artist, because you are procrastinating and it isn’t advancing the mural.

Branches on the oak tree and leaves on the branches. And these “bells” don’t ring; they are my clamp lamps.

Time for lunch! I love working here. 😎

River and bank sort of done. I found a river picture among the 30,000 photos on my computer that was helpful after I flipped it the other direction.

The oak tree on the left, the bank along the river, the sycamores, and the river itself don’t seem quite right to me. So, tomorrow I will see how to make these things look more believable.

Indoor Mural, Day One

It is possible that painting inside a little chapel at St. Anthony’s Retreat is the most pleasant mural painting experience I’ve ever had.

It is 1.3 miles from home.
The room where I paint is quiet.
The lighting and the temperature are steady (it is indoors!)
Occasionally someone stops by to see how it is going and to offer a helpful suggestion or compliment.
THEY PROVIDE LUNCH!! (always very good food).
The quiet makes it possible to listen to a wonderful 3-book series on Audible by my good friend Shannon VanBergen, called the “Glock Grannies“. I read the books, but it is so much fun to hear them read to me by a professional.

This is a scene cobbled together from several photos of Three Rivers as it shines in the spring. Look at how much I got done in one focused day of painting!

The faint little sketch and some of the photos are taped up, and the tallest ladder is in position on a drop cloth.

Sky, spaces for clouds, and the shapes of the hills. 2 ladders side-by-side is a helpful method.

Clouds. The light is rather low in the room, so I couldn’t tell if I was covering the wall very well.

Gabriel brought some high-powered lights and suddenly I could see that the sky had been too dark, and the clouds needed more work.

Those lights produce a lot of heat, so next time I will bring my clamp-lights. Because the wall surface has glossy paint and the mural paints are mostly transparent, I started putting an undercoating down before adding detail.

I use the blank wall beneath to clean off my brushes between colors; this helps give a sense of what will go where and puts that first coat of paint on the wall.

I got a phone call and needed to write down a number. (No, don’t call the number, please!) I started the tree, and worked a bit more on the clouds.

When I paint murals, there is a lot of noise in my head. Listening to Shannon’s books occupied the part of my brain that keeps yammering at me that I have no idea what I am doing, and that this is too hard for me. So, on this day of painting, the noisy and negative part of my inner dialogue didn’t have a chance. I just listened and painted, and it was lovely.

Three Rivers

New Indoor Mural

St. Anthony’s Retreat is a conference grounds here in Three Rivers, a gathering place by many people for many reasons, not just a place for Catholic retreats. I like to go there; it’s close to home, has happy memories, and most of the people who work there are my friends (I don’t know all of them. Yet.) Plus, if I am there around lunchtime, they feed me really good food.

They want to convert a small windowless room to a prayer chapel, and got the idea to have me paint a mural on one of the walls so that it doesn’t feel claustrophobic in that space.