Slough Creek

Slough Creek Overlook, Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park,
48 x 58 inches, oil on canvas, curio cabinet, 8 x 59 inches.

One of the core pieces from the show, The Artifact of Landscape, opening with a reception tomorrow at the Lockhart Gallery, 5 - 7 pm. The Gallery is located at 26 Main Street in Geneseo New York.

This piece is representative of a new direction in my work, landscape on a scale large enough to have a presence in front of the viewer, combined with a cabinet full of artifacts of and from that landscape. The close-ups below are the cabinet contents, spread between plaster casts of buffalo, grizzly and wolf tracks.

The Artifact of Landscape

Wasp

Flight

From a Red Tailed Hawk, I think.

Fox

Fox, from closer to home, the woods out behind out house in South Lima, where we walk with the dogs most every day.

Wishes for a wonderful New Year.

January Moonlight, 36 x 48 inches, oil on linen.

Artifact

ar⋅ti⋅fact - a handmade object, as a tool, or the remains of one, as a shard of pottery, characteristic of an earlier time or cultural stage, esp. such an object found at an archaeological excavation.




Molly's footprint. She's our 70 lb. lab/hound princess.

I don't know when I first made a cast- maybe a project in Cub Scouts, maybe in school. But the process always fascinated me, and I've made a few over the years.





A wolf track, the cast made along the Ivishak river several years ago.

A lot of people have the impression that wolves are like big dogs, like 100 lb. German Shepherd. I did, til my son and I saw them in Yellowstone a few summers back. They are like shepherds, just way bigger. Like a shepherd and a half. The track is almost 4 inches wide. Measure your hand. Wilderness makes you feel small. Vulnerable. I like to think it puts me in my place.

While I was in Alaska, I saw several grizzly tracks, and each time, my hair was on end, a queasy stomach. Lots of tracks, but none sharp enough to cast. Yes, I did have enough plaster, despite the weight limit on the bush plane. Not so many clean clothes, but I had the plaster. Just no sharp, well defined tracks.



The Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. Between here and the Hayden Valley, tough to say which is my favorite place in the park. Last year I fished the Lamar River too late into the evening. Til dark. The Lamar Valley, home to wolves, black bear and grizzlies.

I tried to be very quiet back to the van. A walk on wobbly legs, a sinking feeling in my stomach. Turned out fine.

But when I opened a package the other day, in the warm, safe confines of my studio, the sinking feeling was there instantly. I didn't make the cast, but I guess as a post-modernist, I'll appropriate it.



What's with the casts?

It's taken me a while to get here, I don't want to spill it all in one post.