My plein air painting buddy Cathy, invited me over to sketch her wisteria which was blooming in her beautiful, backyard Zen garden.
Cathy is a graphic designer and her wonderful design sense is apparent throughout her home and garden. I loved being in the presence of the quiet empty spaces, balanced with beautifully designed sculptural installations of plantings, ceramics, orchids and bonsais; and Japanese style fences, stones used to simulate streams and landscape features.
With a fountain tinkling, bees visiting the wisteria and hummingbirds sipping from the fuchsia while we sat in the shade sketching, it was a wonderful way to end the day feeling relaxed and at peace.
Rodeo Shore, plein air oil on panel, 9x12 in. (click image to enlarge)
The little shoreline park in Rodeo where we painted Sunday is funky like the town itself, but a fun place to paint. Click here to see some of Sue Wilson’s cool photos of the area or her little video of some of us in Da Group painting there. This beach is about 40 feet from the railroad tracks where freight trains and Amtrak trains rumble by, whistles blowing, every 20 minutes or so. One train made me laugh: an engine pulling another two dozen engines which were all riding backwards. It looked so silly.
On the north end of the little beach there’s a broken down old pier and a couple of tin shacks. The shacks and pier are all that remains of the “resort” that a man with big dreams (but apparently little common sense) built there on a former industrial dump. In his later years he allowed a homeless encampment to flourish on his property. When he died his heirs had the vagrants evicted. To get even, they burned the resort down to the ground. The property is worth less than nothing because of the clean up needed due to the toxins under the ground.
Dumps to Cities
Most of the bayfront land in the San Francisco Bay Area is built on former dumps. A combination of ignorance, greed, and “out of sight, out of mind” thinking, led cities and businesses to dump everything from tires and batteries to whole cars; from industrial waste to ordinary garbage into the beautiful bay, eventually creating “landfill” upon which homes, hotels, parks and major freeways were built.
I remember going to the dump at the Berkeley waterfront where you drove up (holding your nose) and dumped your trash in a pile on the ground, seagulls flying overhead. Then the bulldozers would push it into big hills. Now that dump is hidden under Cesar Chavez Park, home of the Berkeley Kite Festival. The park has air vents to allow the methane gas to escape from the garbage dump buried underneath the grassy hills and waterfront trails. Vents won’t help buildings on landfill if there’s a big earthquake and the landfill undergoes liquefaction.
Now trash goes first to a warehouse “transfer station” where it is sorted and then piled onto trucks and hauled to a dump/landfill in another town. (And in my own bit of “out of sight, out of mind” I realized I didn’t know where it went and had to look it up). It’s trucked to Livermore, land of rolling hills and wind farms.
Dump amidst the lovely Livermore rolling hills
I’ve heard that all the Bay Area dump/landfills are all going to be full within the near future. I hope we learn to do a better job of recycling and precycling before that happens.
Trash and Art
And now to tie this digression about dumps back to art, San Francisco offers an artist in residence program at the Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center where San Francisco’s garbage goes before being trucked away. Artists get 24-hour access to a well-equipped studio, a monthly stipend, and an exhibit at the end of their residency.
After working at my “day job” most of Monday, a day I usually don’t work, I grabbed my painting gear and headed to this field covered in brilliant mustard grass. I’d driven by the field the day before and was desperate to paint it. By then it was about 4:30 and the sun, which had been shining brightly all day, had disappeared behind clouds on its way down. A chilly, foggy breeze blew in from the nearby Bay but the mustard grass was still glowing.
I set up in the parking lot of the Ocean View Elementary School in Albany, looking through a chainlink fence at the field. It is part of U.C. Berkeley’s Gill Tract, a 14-acre agriculture research field owned by the university. Until recently the field was a pine forest, but the university just cut down all 314 Monterey Pines because they were infected with pitch canker and were deemed hazardous.
Several children who were being picked up from after-school activities dragged their moms over to see what I was doing. One little boy told me that my trees looked “so realistic!” He made my day because I’d been thinking they were awful. Another little girl said she liked to paint too. I asked her what she liked to paint with (thinking watercolor? acrylic?) and she said, “purple….and orange….and yellow…you know, colors!” acting like I was really dumb to be asking that question.
With the light fading fast I packed up and went home after about an hour and a half. Tonight, with the workweek finally over I returned to the painting. From memory I made a few adjustments, lightening the hills a bit, adding more dimension to the field and trying to do a little something with the trees, which maybe I should have just left alone since they looked better before like the little boy said.
Ink & Watercolor in Strathmore drawing sketchbook, 6×8″ (Larger)
After my dentist appointment today I took a walk up to College Avenue in the Elmwood district of Berkeley, foraging for lunch. I chose Ferrari’s Deli where I had a delicious grilled “Perugia” sandwich (roasted pork sirloin, black truffle butter and Asiago cheese on toasted ciabatta bread). I sat a sidewalk table to eat, with a view of Mrs. Dalloway’s bookstore across the street. Then I got out my sketchbook and started drawing, sad that I’d left my watercolors in my car, half a mile away.
I took a couple photos (fearing I wouldn’t remember all the colors, like the orange reflection of Ferrari’s awning appearing in Mrs. Dalloway’s windows) and then added the watercolor at home tonight. The paper in this sketchbook is not designed for wet media but works fine if you don’t overwork it. I like it because it’s just the right size, the paper is nice, especially for drawing, and quite inexpensive.
Ink and watercolor in 6×8″ Strathmore Drawing sketchbook(Larger)
This sketch is all about pausing in a busy day to sit and draw, taking advantage of a little sun between rainstorms, and enjoying feeling free. Until I began the sketch, I hadn’t realized how beautiful (and extraordinarily complicated) the landmark building (photo) of the North Berkeley Public Library is.
Freedom from stuff
My feeling of freedom came from filling three shopping bags with books I no longer needed and taking them to my favorite used book store, Black Oak Books. They gave me store credit for two-thirds of the books (which I promptly traded for three books I had on hold).
I could have sold the remaining bag of books on Amazon or at another used bookstore, but decided to just let them go. I dropped them off at the library as a donation and walked out empty handed, feeling quite pleased. Instead of rushing on to the next task, I plopped down on a bench and started sketching.
Now I have space on my bookshelves and room in my car (the three bags had been hogging my backseat for two weeks). And I love that wonderful spacious feeling that comes from removing clutter, whether physical or mental, from my life.
About the sketch: As you can see, my study of perspective hasn’t quite paid off yet. (The doors and windows slant the opposite direction from the roofline of the front wall). I drew with a purple Micron Pigma pen and then added watercolor at home. I tried to remember the colors of the walls but realized I didn’t pay enough attention to what was in light and in shadow. To practice using visual memory, I purposely didn’t take a photo or look at one on line.
So now I can see that my visual memory needs work, along with my perspective drawing. How great to know that there is no end to learning as an artist. I never have to worry about getting bored. Painting and learning are my two favorite things in life!
Purple ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook(Larger)
I love overhearing snippets of other people’s conversations and how they flavor my sketches in cafes. I’ve drawn and scribbled overheard conversations at Peet’s Coffee’s 4th Street shop in Berkeley before. When I saw Pete Scully‘s fantastic sketches with conversation snippets I thought I’d try it his way with the words in little boxes. But I’m not as tidy at printing as he is.
Purple ink and watercolor in small Moleskine watercolor notebook(Larger)
So on this one I wrote the words I overheard on the newspaper above. Maybe the passerby didn’t really say, “…and I got all my potatoes back, you know…” – my hearing isn’t what it used to be so sometimes my imagination fills in the blanks with things that make me laugh. I can hear the words but the consonants aren’t clear.
It’s amazing how one wrong consonant can change the meaning of a sentence. (He says, “Hey, guess what! I got a hog!”…so I’m thinking…he got a pig?! oh maybe he got a Harley motorcycle, they call those “hogs”….and then I realize as he goes on talking that he said he got a DOG, not a HOG and he said it was BIG not a PIG!)
Jana Bouc, Artist 
