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. […]
The Building in the Library Mural
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 […]
Library Mural, Day Thirteen, FINISHED!
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 […]
Library Mural, Day Twelve
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 […]
A Day in Sequoia National Park
We live in the foothills at the entrance to Sequoia National Park, which we simply call “The Park”. It’s right here in Tulare County! Because we can go anytime, sometimes we don’t go for several years. Yesterday I had the opportunity to go, so I went. Let’s have some photos. The Squatter’s Cabin has this […]
Library Mural, Day Eleven
Day Eleven was a day of doubt, feeling like a fraud, an imposter, a Jane Bag-of-Donuts masquerading as an artist. This is probably a result of attempting to paint something with an inadequate photo, on a very rough wall, in a space where I couldn’t back up quickly to observe from a distance and then […]
Library Mural, Day Ten
I left sunny Three Rivers and headed down into the fog. I remember worse fog when I lived outside of Ivanhoe with my parents, so this wasn’t too awful. The mural looked like this. I seem to forget where I left off from week to week. I’m pleased with the repaired mountains. Intern and my […]
Library Mural, Day Eight
In case you are wondering, all the previous days’ blog posts croaked with my website. So, here is the best I can do to recreate the most current day for you. These orange trees have been “skirted”, which means pruned so nothing touches the ground. I tried to fix the trees on the mural to […]
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe is an unincorporated town in Tulare County. I grew up about 4 miles away, and then we moved to about 2 miles away. (Well, I probably didn’t grow up there but I lived there until I moved away at 18 and maybe I grew up then.) The only places I was really familiar with […]
Library Mural, Day Six
If you subscribe to my blog, you probably received an email last night about a new post. It is scheduled to publish on Friday, but I hit the wrong button. Then I immediately rescheduled it. So, you may have read Friday’s already (or you may have no idea at all what I am talking about […]