Tales from the field #22

On Thursday I had to go over to Borrego Springs for an Art meeting.  I was held up by gazillions of wonderful visitors looking for the right place to stop to look at flowers.  Of course you can’t see flowers in detail when you’re driving at 55 – the speed limit along the S22 which for those non-locals is the only road between Salton City and Borrego Springs.

I don’t know what it is, but it’s one of my ‘private collection’ because I’m apparently the only person who goes where this flower is.

By the time I was late for the meeting, I’d composed this in my head and plan to put it on a sign at the corner of S22.

Superbloom

While you’re trolling for flowers at 20,
that vehicle that’s riding your ass
is a local that’s late getting somewhere,
so please let the tailgater pass!

Catalina Show

Yesterday at Vanguard Gallery in Moreno Valley, I hung the (mostly) plein-air art of four ladies who love to paint scenes around Catalina Island.  Terry d.Chacon, Joan Coffey,  Patricia Rose Ford and Nita Harper.  There was quite a lot of artwork and it was a feat of engineering and organization to get as much of their wonderful work in as possible.  Their reception is on November 10th, 3-6pm.

Pat and Terry.

A very full wall! Lot’s to choose from.

Riverside Art Museum Membership Show

I arrived at the reception for the Riverside Art Museum Membership show later than intended (ah, traffic in Temecula) and just caught the tail end of the awards.  Ran into a friend of mine – r. mike nichols.  He hadn’t won an award, and neither had I, apparently, but his friend Mike had.  Here are some images from the show.

Did you guess which one was mine?  It’s the one behind the pig’s ear…..  Actually I kinda like that pig. 

Messing about in boats

I have to say that this was one painting (or pair of paintings) executed under the most hostile of weathers.  No, not so much heat, but the desiccating wind.  I had to stop on the second morning and go back for a short session closer to dawn on the third day, and then it was a struggle.  The good news is that once I’d drawn up the letters, I could quickly go from one side to the other, painting layers, knowing full well that that my start point would be completely dry by the time I returned to it in about 25 minutes.  At the end of the second day I had to quit because the paint was drying on the brush.  The east side of the boat was too hot to work, and the west side, in the shade and wind, I was shivering.  And I still had to figure out how to spray with an acrylic glaze with the UV component – in a stiff breeze.

Nevertheless ‘Poseidon’ has its name on its sides and today will be test launched.  Eventually this boat will carry a solar powered pump which will pump water from the Salton Sea into the marina ‘fingers’ in Desert Shores, to maintain the water level and mitigate red agae.  Launch day is on Sunday.

Calexico 110th birthday art show.

Yesterday evening was the reception for the Calexico 110th birthday celebration at the Carmen Durazo Cultural Arts center. The art show had 110 pieces of art in there. Fortunately it’s a big hall, and there were some paintings in the lobby of which I didn’t take photos.
The reception was well attended and there was a short speech by the Mayor, followed by a group photo of all the participating artists that were present.  Enjoy the show!

A life-in-the-desert moment.

I thought for some time that the hole that was dug under the fence at the south corner of my yard was a jack-rabbit construction.  The cottontails can get through the chain fence, but not the jack-rabbits, so they would need a way of getting in if they wanted to get some water from the bottom half of the birdbath.  But I did begin to suspect that hole was rather larger than jack-rabbits needed.  I was right.

This morning I saw a coyote walking down the street outside my window. He glanced over at the birdbath and looked at the water level, then continued along the fence out of sight behind the plants. A moment later indeed he reappeared but did not initially go for a drink.

Maybe he’s curious about the movement of the blinds…

He turned and walked round the house to the west and I lost sight of him – there’s no window on that side of the house.  The pigeons, feeding at the back suddenly scattered so I knew he was close.  Went back hopefully to the bedroom window and was rewarded.  Looks like android movies upload seamlessly to Windows10, so I hope this works for you!  I wasn’t able to upload it into my post, but I was able to put it on my website: CoyoteInYard

 

Imperial County Tourism

 

Not many people think of Imperial County California – one of the poorest counties in the nation, and one of the more sparsely populated – as a tourist destination.  But there’s actually an amazing amount of things to do here. Yesterday Doug and I went to fill him in on some of the places I’ve taken others when he’s not been with me.  First we visited the mudpots, then stopped in Calipatria for lunch.  We recommend Archie’s – on the east side of 111 about a block north of the stop sign.  You can’t miss this totem pole!

 

 

 

Not only did we have a fun time, but we found an new spot – the Gold Rock Trading Post and Museum.

 

Sadly the extra time we spent exploring Gold Rock meant we had little time at the Center of the World, but they’re both places we’d go back to. I’m compiling a list of Touristy Things in Imperial County on my website which I’ll update from time to time as I find new things – and I’ll work on timings and places to stay in between.  I am figuring it would be very easy to spend a week here if you’re not into simply lounging by the pool.

This is at the State Park, just south of North Shore

If you are, then in answer to a question many people ask – YES! – you can swim safely in the Salton Sea and here is Park Ranger Jose Renteria who does just that quite often.

This is for you

“The reflecting pool”, probably 2005. The posts seen below are entirely under water.

Supporting the restoration of the Salton Sea and making it stable and renewable is not just for the Sea, it’s not just for me and the sunrises that I paint, it’s for anyone in the US who eats vegetables.  Allowing the Salton Sea to dry up will destroy the most fertile farmland in the country.

“The reflection pool”, January 2015

I have not met the star in the movie, but I know some of the production crew!  Please support their goal to make a longer movie about Randy’s journey, in order to publicize the need to act now.

“The Reflecting Pool”, January 2016.  The posts seen above are to my left.

 

You can donate on Kickstarter to this project.   Please do so.

 

Newer Work #42

#1217 David’s Sunset. Oil on canvas, 39×17″. $550.

 

 

This skyscape was painted from a friend’s photograph of a sunset across the Pacific Ocean.  A bit of a departure for me as my usual sun-over-water paintings are sunrises.  Most west coasters think only of the sun going down into the water – but I live on a small stretch of land where it not only comes up over the water, but at about a month around winter solstice appears to come up out of the water.  (I just have to be weird.)  And of course this had to be a weird size of stretcher bars I up-cycled from somewhere I can’t remember.

 

Being spat at. (Bucket list item done!)

Arrived back from the show in Boulder City, NV happy to meet a couple friends from blogland who had arrived during my absence. They’d never visited this part of the world before, so we spent a couple days doing the Imperial County Tourist thing.  One item they were interested in finding was the mudpots.  I’m glad they pressed me on this as I’ve also wanted to find the mudpots of Imperial County since I heard about them perhaps ten years ago.  So, four or five sets of directions later and several dirt roads, we got there.

Forever blowing bubbles…..

 

 

I was surprised that the mudpots are actually around six feet high – from pics I’d seen before I thought they were knee-height.  Once we got near them, not only are they a visual item, but we discovered they made quiet hissing and gurgling noises.  A few of them were active enough to produce small mud eruptions and I was actually close enough to get spat on.  Got a few shots of the action, this is probably the best one.  I wonder if last week’s earthquake swarm in the area invigorates them or calms them down?