After the tour of Terminus Dam, I had questions. Ranger Tim’s answers were posted yesterday. And as is usually the case, questions and answers beget more questions.
Here are my further questions and Ranger Tim’s answers.
1. What is a “stilling basin”?
Stilling Basins Behind Dams — USACE Design and Function
A stilling basin is a critical energy-dissipating structure located downstream of a dam’s spillway or outlet. Its purpose is to absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy of high-velocity water discharging from the dam, thereby protecting the spillway, outlet works, and downstream channel from erosion and undermining Association of State Dam Safety. – At Terminus Dam / Lake Kaweah it’s the area behind the dam that looks like a big pond. Its shallow, full of birds and wildlife, and slows the water before it heads downstream and gets split into the St. Johns and Kaweah Rivers.
The “pond” down there must be a stilling basin.
2. Those red bootprints—are they also for photographic accuracy?
Yes, the footprints are for photographic accuracy. An employee would stand in the boot prints and hold a camera to their chest at breast height so that every picture each year would be facing the same direction and be at a similar height. Very similar to how Giant Sequoias are measured – an employee would stand at their base and measure the circumference at breast height with a measuring device.
THANK YOU, RANGER TIM!
One more thing: he said the hydroelectric plant is operated by Eagle Creek. Here is a link to their website: Eagle Creek Renewable Energy.
Ranger Tim replied to the questions I asked after our dam tour. You can see that blog post here: Terminus Dam and Lake Kaweah.
Lake Kaweah, pencil, 9×12, $300, unframed
Great Questions!
Thank you, Ranger Tim!
In big storm years the Lake has jumped 50 vertical feet in 24 hours so it can fill very quickly but they can also drain it very quickly if they open the gates all the way.
The radioactive symbol on the tower is leftover from the cold war era when the dam/tower were being constructed in the late 1950s. When the tower was completed in 1962 it was an official bomb shelter. We can’t find any records of who would have been invited, how many people it could hold, or how long they could stay. Its no longer used as a functioning bomb shelter but they thought the sign was historic, so it’s been left on the building.
The tower is the control center for releasing water out of the reservoir. It goes all the way to the bottom of the lake where there are 3 – 36” pipes that feed into a 12’9” pipe that runs through the dam to outlet near the stilling basin behind the dam. There are valves or “gates” on each of the pipes that a dam operator can open or close as needed to release or store water.
The wooden platform on the dam was specifically built to be an osprey nest.
Yes, just south of the tower there is another pipe that carries water to generate hydroelectricity. The power plant is operated by Eagle Creek Hydropower.
The footprints in the concrete are survey landmarks and are throughout the spillway complex. Each year someone goes out and stands in the impressions and takes a picture. The engineers can then use the pictures to see if the landscape has moved over time. Or, if there was an earthquake they would be able to look for changes in the area.
This was my view for about 15 minutes while waiting at a construction stop by the lake yesterday.
We love the pencil drawing! That is down at the outlet where the water comes out of the 12’9” pipe and flows into the stilling basin.
Thank you, Ranger Tim!
Release, pencil, matted and framed to approximately 14×17”, $400
After I got the answers from Ranger Tim, I had more questions. I’ll put those in a blog post tomorrow.
Painting #38 of Tulare County’s best bridge (according by your Central California artist) is inching forward into excellence. Can you see the incremental improvements?
We can probably consider it all finished now, EXCEPT FOR THE BRIDGE ITSELF!
Ahem. Excuse me for shouting. It just surprises me that after I put an enormous amount of concentration and effort into the painting that the most important part remains to be detailed.
Maybe it would be fun if I did a series of posts with all the different versions I’ve painted of this bridge.
But first, this one needs to be finished.
Here is a photo taken with my real camera instead of the inferior phone camera; the colors aren’t as strong, but neither is it as pixelated, which doesn’t matter here on the interwebs.
We call this the Oak Grove Bridge; people who don’t know it very well might call it the Kaweah River Bridge or the Mineral King Road Bridge or the East Fork Bridge. Those names sort of work.
Not that bridge
There are folks who, when they see my paintings or drawings of the bridge, say, “I’ve eaten at that restaurant”. They are wrong—the only eatery at the Oak Grove bridge might be the tailgate of one’s pick-em-up truck. The Pumpkin Hollow (“Gateway”) bridge is at the confluence of the East and Middle Forks of the Kaweah River. It isn’t over a deep canyon, just one lane wide, and with a single arch.
See the difference?
Maybe it is time to draw the bridge again in pencil. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve done that; there are only 2 versions in my computer, because so many drawings didn’t get scanned or reproduced or even photographed in my early days.
Eagle Lake (a painting formerly known as a dog’s breakfast), 7×14”, oil on wrapped canvas, $200, currently drying, destined for the Silver City Store, unless it sells first from this little spot on the interwebs.
Oak Grove Bridge
The Oak Grove Bridge is a bit more challenging. I started with the attitude of “close enough” and as usual when drawing or painting architectural subjects, I ended up measuring and redoing several things.
The width of each arch needed to be the same, and the top of the bridge was too thick.
So I measured, redrew the arches (yes, with my paintbrush—anyone here have a problem with that?), lowered the top of the bridge, and then planted some manzanita on the lower left. I also started locating various rocks.
You’d think that after painting this forty-eleven* times, I’d have all the rocks and the arch proportions memorized. You’d be wrong in that thinking. I could make it up, but I’d also be wrong.
Such a grand little bridge for our slightly down-at-the-heels Tulare County. There are plans to turn it into a pedestrian-only bridge with a stout replacement safe for driving upstream of this classic one. The county had to do the eminent domain thing to acquire the land, and I have a feeling this will be a long, disruptive, and messy construction project.
Change can be so difficult.
Thus, for now we must enjoy the bridge as it was and as it is, and not think about as it shall be.
*This is actually #38, if I kept count correctly, which is doubtful.
No more confusion* over “Lake Kaweah” or Kaweah Lake: here is an official sign.
The Mineral King Preservation Society organized a tour of the dam that creates Lake Kaweah. I have been there, but it was before the new fusegates were built in 2004. The purpose of that previous trip was to get photos for this drawing. That’s story for another blog post sometime. Maybe.
We met in the parking lot at the Lemon Hill Visitor Center. The name must be a nod to Lemon Cove, since the dam is closer to Lemon Cove than to Three Rivers. This photo looks over the marina where all the houseboats live, toward the dam. As usual, the lake is very full this time of year.
We drove back to the highway, headed downhill, then turned below the dam and went through a couple of security gates with cameras, to park near the tower.
We all loved the views in spite of the hazy quality of the air. Haze? Smog? Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Looking north up Greasy Cove.
Looking southeast toward the marina
Our guide was very very new and didn’t know a whole lot. We were all very curious about the bootprints imprinted on 4 concrete pads below us, and the 4 red bootprints under shallow water on the lake side and the 2 red bootprints on the spillway side.
These are the fusegates. Each of the six is a little different level, so that in the case of a giant flood, only one gate at a time will open and get pushed aside. This ensures that the water flooding downstream will go in a somewhat regulated fashion rather than all at once. (I learned this from a knowledgeable fellow tourist.) The guide thought that the gates get tested every so often to be sure that they will open if there is a catastrophic flood.
There was a hawk with a nest on something that looked as if it was constructed for that purpose.
I loved the views on the downstream side of the dam. Dry Creek Road is over there, heading up into the hills and eventually into the mountains.
Here are 2 more photos of the tower. I don’t know what purpose it serves; it has a radioactive symbol on it by the door, which we were not invited to go through. Maybe it is a place for a couple of people to hide in the event of a nuclear bomb. I don’t know who those 2 unlucky people would be.
After the tour, our MKPS organizer invited us to send her any questions that she will pass along to the normal tour guide. OF COURSE I HAD QUESTIONS!! (Are you surprised by this?)
QUESTIONS
1. How long would it take to go from minimum pool to full, if there was a huge storm? Maybe a better way to phrase this is: What is the shortest amount of time it has taken in the past for the lake to fill?
2. Why is there a radioactive symbol on the tower?
3. What purpose does the tower serve?
4. Was that round wooden platform near the tower built specifically for a hawk to build its nest?
5. Is the water ever used to generate electricity?
6. Why the red footprints (4 on the lake side and 2 on the spillway side) and the ones pressed into the concrete squares??
More will be revealed in the fullness of time. Maybe…. it seems that the more ways there are to communicate, the less likely that responses appear. I do feel quite hopeful about this set of questions.
*Provided I can remember because it is possible that the confusion is embedded too deeply in my memory.
This might take more time to read than you want to spend. You also might not find it interesting. You can skip it today—I’ll still be your friend.
In thinking about all the distractions and how long it has been since I last painted, I realized several things, the most glaring that. . .
. . . I missed several important selling opportunities here in Three Rivers this spring.
What a Slacker
(1) The Studio Tour weekend: Did it include Three Rivers this year? This event alternates areas each year. It used to be an exclusive Three Rivers event, but I stopped after it grew to involve the entire county. It eats up an entire weekend and involves many strangers coming to my home. No thanks.
(2) First Saturday —haven’t participated in that for many years because I don’t like waiting in my studio all day, jumping up every time I hear a car go past to see if they are pulling into my driveway, helping tottery people up my steps, and then being squished with strangers in my little shed of a studio. No thanks.
(3) A busy Easter weekend in the local shops. Oops, didn’t have anything new to take.
(4) I’m skipping the Redbud Festival too. Lots of work to set up, poor attendance in the last handful of years I’ve been there, standing around on numb feet (because when a vendor sits, it appears as if he is disinterested) and not wanting to work on Sunday all add up to No Thanks to festivals, bazaars, boutiques and all such events.
These guys would HATE having strangers invade their space—my painting workshop doubles as their home.
Good grief, it’s a wonder that I can stay in business as a local artist.
After 33 years of full time artisting, arting, scratching out a living with paintbrushes and pencils, I seem to have developed enough ways of earning a living that I can be a little pickier.
But then again, when I had a solo show in Tulare last August, I thought I had it all figured out and almost didn’t bring any pencil drawings. Boy was I wrong—pencil drawings were all that sold!
Such is the business of art. The best I can do is return phone calls and emails, finish work on time, keep improving old skills and learning new ones.
What I do
Editing, proofreading, book design, drawing in pencil, oil painting, painting murals, teaching regular group and private drawing lessons, giving talks about drawing, publishing books (coloring, cabins, and wildflowers for me; a variety of topics for other people), printing and selling notecards and calendars, designing and painting signs, logo design, teaching drawing and oil painting workshops, an occasional solo show, accepting commissions, selling through local shops, selling from my website and to people who call or ask to visit my studio—it all provides great variety, and continues to hold my interest.
This is a fantastic place to teach drawing lessons and workshops.
What I don’t do
Notice that the above list doesn’t include the aforementioned boutiques/bazaars/festivals, or lending my work to places of business so that they don’t have to buy it but can pretend that it is actually going to sell while people are in their offices for other purposes. It doesn’t include giving art to fund raisers or annual beg-a-thons (hint: I will give many charities who ask a free Wilsonia book, or even a certificate for a free private drawing lesson). There’s nothing on the list about participating in shows with entry fees, joining in themed group shows, or schlepping my art to decorate someone’s annual banquet to give people something to do while they are waiting for dinner to begin. I have done all of these things in the past and am thankful to be able to decline such “opportunities for exposure”. The beginners and youngsters can do those things, but I learned that a person can die of exposure. (Yes, I do make exceptions from time to time.)
Why would I ever want to leave here if I didn’t have to?
What About The Internet?
I also don’t sell via Facebook, Instagram, or Etsy. These platforms require copious amounts of time online, building up a following, participating in discussions and commenting and “liking”, being visible, staying connected. I try to keep my connections real rather than virtual, and as much as I try to limit screen time, I’m still on the computer way more than I want to be: photos, communications, photo editing, blogging, more photos, book editing, book design, and even more photos for many reasons and uses, plus reading and commenting regularly on a handful of blogs, which have brought a handful of sales and new friendships.
This was a fun place to give a talk about earning a living with art and how I got to where I am, which really, isn’t anything to brag about. It came with lunch, which we all needed after a very stressful hour before the meeting began of trying to make the powerpoint projector work. (Next time I’ll bring my trusty laptop.)
P.S. Notice also that the list doesn’t include showing in galleries: this means for-profit galleries. There are none in Tulare County, only non-profits, run by volunteers, where I have had my solo shows.
Conclusion
Using pencils, oil paint, and murals, I make art that you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.
P.S. I happily accept commissions, which means I make custom art for people. I hope you know that!
THE BOOK IS FINISHED! It was a ten-year project, with a giant distraction of a different book getting written and published first—Tales of TB: White Plague of the North, available through BookBaby. Here’s the link: Tales of TB
But that was last year.
This year, the book is Springville’s Hospital: Fighting TB in Tulare County.
Dr. William Winn, a (now retired) pulmonologist (that means lung doctor), hired me to illustrate a few things for this book that he’d been wanting to write. I asked if he had an editor, and after I explained the role, he hired me for that, in addition to three illustrations.
He clearly loves research, and the Springville book got pushed aside when we realized he was accidentally accumulating enough material for a different book about tuberculosis. After FINALLY finishing Tales of TB, I urged him to write about Springville’s TB hospital, a place that ignited my curiosity back when I first saw it in about 5th or 6th grade. (I’ve always loved old buildings, always always always. Am I being unclear?)
Bill encountered some serious health set-backs, and I finally accepted the fact that he would not be able to complete the book to his satisfaction. (Perfectionism can be a real obstacle to progress, but you can bet that he was a fabulous doctor.) I told him that he had enough chapters for a good book, not the one he had hoped for, but still a good and important book.
The Big Push
He gave me the go-ahead, so I gathered all those chapters (multiple versions of them, sigh) and arranged them into order, finally reading it as a book instead of little bits and pieces, dividing some into two chapters, turning some into appendices, rearranging paragraphs (yeppers, still editing), cobbling enough together for an afterword. Then re-editing and proofreading, gathering and scanning many photos, doing the Photoshop Junior thing, finding captions, and figuring out where each photo belonged in the book. After that came formatting, which I promise you don’t want to hear about. Then oops, what is the title? Bill hadn’t looked that far ahead, so I wrote a list, and he chose one in a phone conversation we had. Oh, oops, I needed to design the cover, and OH NO, he didn’t write a “blurb” for the back. Alrighty then, after some prayer and a night or two lying awake staring at the ceiling, I was able to complete that. I even learned how to turn an ISBN into a bar code, and the final step was to set it up to be sold through the Lulu bookstore.
Now, I am waiting for my copy.
Here is a link to a post I wrote about one of the illustrations back in 2017: Edythe
Good sunlit photo but before it was quite finished.
When I was designing the Ivanhoe Library mural, I dug around for photos of a building that is cemented in my memory as a beautiful old structure. (Apparently, I’ve loved old buildings all my life.) I found a photo of the Ivanhoe School auditorium in Laura Spalding’s book Ivanhoe—the Town with Three Names: Klink, Venice Hill, Ivanhoe. I was confused that her book identified it as “Ivanhoe Community Hall”, but I recognized it instantly as the building where I learned to play the clarinet*, gave my campaign speech to be the school president**, checked out books, and played the piano for the jazz band.
When I finished painting it, I added “Ivanhoe School Auditorium” and then thought it would be nice to provide the year it was built along with the year it went away.
Like most things in life, that was easier said than done. The librarian called the History Room at the main library branch, and was told it was built in 1932 and demolished in 1948.
Nope and nope. Architecturally speaking, it is clearly older than 1932, and since I graduated from Ivanhoe in 1973, I KNEW it was standing past 1948.
So, I went to Visalia (had to go anyway to retrieve Momscar with its new starter) and visited the History Room. Library Historian Hunter and I pulled three thick folders from a filing cabinet and started flipping through all sorts of old papers.
Like much in life, the building’s dates are complicated, far too complicated to simply put as “19XX – 19??” on the mural.
Here’s what we learned in two different places, along with Spalding’s book:
It was built around 1926 as a community hall. Then, maybe in 1932, or maybe 1937, “the community, who being unable to meet the indebtedness gladly disposed of it to the school.” One source says it was moved in 1932, another says it was moved in 1937; a third source says it was moved in spring of 1939.
Nowhere have I found the year that the building was demolished. Maybe demolition records aren’t kept, because the demolishers are embarrassed to be part of destroying history, or maybe because it is viewed as a hazard or junk to be gotten rid of, rather than something old and beautiful that has reached the end of its functional life.
So, the painting of the old school auditorium will not have dates, only its title as I recall it: Ivanhoe School Auditorium.
When I was a regular patron of the Ivanhoe library, sometimes we had to go to the main library in Visalia in order to find enough good material to write a term paper or do a report. What is now the children’s library used to be the entire Visalia library, which I found to be stunning and overwhelming. I also thought the building was beautiful, because it is. The architectural style is like the house my dad grew up in, built in 1932. (The house—the library was completed in 1936, so it was clearly the same era.)
P.S. I drew the library in 1989 before the new one got built.
P.P.S. I also stopped by a retail store in Visalia to see a childhood friend from Ivanhoe who told me the school library wasn’t in the bay window but was in a door off the porch. That’s why I added a hint of a door on the otherwise dark and bland front porch. I sure would like to find more photos of the building, both in and out, but those were the days before everyone carried a camera.
The mural looked like this when I arrived in Ivanhoe (photo from the end of the previous painting day—I arrived early enough that the light wasn’t yet on the mural.)
After talking to an old friend who remembered more details than I, I added a hint of a door on the porch of the old auditorium. (Please excuse the poor quality of the After photo!)
Then I added orange blossoms. These are only important if you are up close and inspecting the mural; they are irrelevant if you are riding a fast horse.
Next, I flailed around for a while, trying to figure out where to work next. The idea that I might finish had me a little wound up, wondering if it was possible, wondering how to prioritize. The rooster rose to the top of the list—all those colors!
Here are the feet, before and after.
Next, I sat on the ground, now redwood chips rather than mud, and began the quail.
I stood back, studied the mural while visiting with my cousin on the phone, and decided that the blue sky in the Twin Buttes inset was too blue, too flat, too perfect.
Okay, now let’s look at the whole thing. This was a quick-quick-quick-before-the-tree-shades-it shot.
Some more staring and thinking brought me to the conclusion that despite simplifying the packing label, I needed to not abbreviate Klink to Klink Citrus; the name was Klink Citrus Association. And since I couldn’t figure out how to legibly paint “Tulare County, California” on the wall’s rough surface, I simply added “Ivanhoe.”
Throughout the day, I touched up a few more things, brightening the arms of the wind machine, tightening up the edges of the smudge pots, closing up gaps around some of the insets, putter, putter, tinker, tinker.
Enough, already! I signed it. Even with the guidelines of the bricks, my name went crooked. YOU TRY WRITING YOUR NAME WITH A PAINTBRUSH WHILE LYING ON THE GROUND!
Okay, one more photo before it was completely finished but also before the shadows hit it.
One last look.
I loved working on this mural—the commute, the ease of not working on ladders, the subject matter, the neighborhood, being at the library of my youth, meeting the various people who stopped by, the roosters, the patrolling dogs and yowling cats, all of it.
THANK YOU, IVANHOE!
P.S. An inside mural begins today, Lord willing, etc. . . if I do begin, it will be on the blog on Wednesday. Tomorrow is a little history tidbit about the mural.
Last week I did not work on the mural for reasons that are irrelevant to my public life, as shared here with my tens of readers. The week before last, actually, since I show you on Mondays what I did on Fridays. Never mind.
This is how it looked last; it’s kind of hard to see things accurately in the late afternoon sun and shadow.
When I got to the library on Friday, it looked like this:
Wait, what is missing?? The mulberry trees were pruned, and THE REDWOOD LOG IS GONE, ALONG WITH THE STUMP! Whoops. That was a monument. Sure made nice chips on the ground and So Much Easier to see and work on the mural!!
There is a saying out there that when you have a difficult job facing you, i.e.,“a frog”, you should “eat the frog first”. So, I did: Ladder Man.
After I painted Ladder Man (this was the 2nd or 3rd attempt), Intern correctly and objectively pointed out that he was too small. (Thank goodness for Intern.) So, I kept Ladder Man the same size but moved him farther away in the orchard, conveniently placed behind the Twin Buttes inset so that the wonky ladder wasn’t visible.
Intern worked on orange blossoms for 3+ hours. (Thank goodness for Intern.) Then I dripped some paint on the bright orange on the label, tried to wipe it off, and then Intern turned it into a star, to be fixed later. I hope we remember all the Fix-it-Laters. . .
While Intern worked on the zillions of tiny white dots masquerading as distant orange blossoms, along with gray-ish green dots in the shadows, I tackled the next frog on the menu—painting the old Ivanhoe School Auditorium on that very rough wall surface, minus a T-square and a triangle, which I would be using if I was drawing it in pencil, or perhaps even when painting if the wall had been plastered.
I worked from left to right, across the inset, just as I would do if drawing in pencil. Yes, I was drawing with my paintbrush!
Time to stand back and admire all the progress, with the sunshine and clear treeless and logless view.
Then I decided to label the Auditorium inset, because no one will know what it is unless I tell them.
That was such a success (with space remaining to put in the year it was built and the year it was torn down if I am able to learn that information) that I decided to help people know what Twin Buttes are. That helped fill the too-big real estate of the road.
I sat down in the redwood wood chips which replaced the mud, and began fixing the label. You can see how the daylight changed during that interval to the late afternoon sunshine which casts a golden glow.
Please admire the detailed orange blossoms and navel on the label’s orange:
Further, note the claws on the rooster along with a hint of a shadow. This appeared on the actual label when I held it in the formerly unavailable bright sunshine.
Throughout the process of painting this mural, I continually use the measurement of “best viewed from the back of a fast horse”. After detailing the auditorium, Intern said it was “getting to be slow horse quality.”
I wonder if I’ll be able to finish it next Friday. Prolly not, when I consider how many orange blossoms remain, along with an uncontrollable desire to make the oranges brighter throughout. I also want to add a few more details, because those are the types of things that keep people looking closely.
To top off the great day of painting, there were PEOPLE IN THE LIBRARY!! Is this because the mural is drawing attention to this great free resource in this poor, tiny town of few benefits other than mountain views and the smell of orange blossoms each spring?
