Buddha and Sac
Arlee, Montana
2015

A statue of Buddha holding a Sacagawea doll at the Garden of a Thousand Buddhas.

Spring Hike
Storm Castle Mountain, Montana
2015

Storm Castle Mountain lived up to it’s name when a friend and I hiked to the top yesterday. Fortunately our hike was not during the actual storm, rather it was just after the storm had passed through the night before. We started out in brisk, overcast weather but hit snow and fog a few hundred feet below the summit. In spite of how it might look, it was actually a very pleasant hike, even in the snowy parts, largely due to the absence of any significant wind. It was very pretty with the fog and the hoarfrost on the trees. My only complaint was the view from the top was not the expansive views up the canyon we expected. Instead we sat on the edge of a cliff and stared out into a monochrome, neutral gray scene of fog.

Dolce far niente or the sweetness of doing nothing at all, is a concept I greatly admire but have a hard time ever implementing myself. The painting by Angelo Morbelli in a recent Blue Lantern blog post here, is a nicely romantic illustration of the concept and would, had it been a photograph I’d taken, have been a great addition to my “Girl Reading a Book” series, later broadened and renamed Lectio. (Search for either title on this blog for examples, one of which is shown below.)

Twilight
Angelo Morbelli

Girl Reading a Book #20
Larry Blackwood

1,000 Buddhas
Arlee, Montana
2015

At the Garden of a Thousand Buddhas. They don’t quite have 1,000 yet, but they’re buddha maker is working hard and they’re closing in on it.

I don’t leave for the Downtown Denver Art Festival for a few days yet but I’ve already been packing my van.. Every year I change the mix of boxes, equipment etc. somewhat so I have to make sure everything still fits nicely. I’m a real stickler when it comes to the way I load the van; I don’t like things sliding or bouncing around so everything has to fit snugly, but not too tight.

A pet peeve of mine is rattles, clanks, and other noises in moving vehicles. The Fashion Queen can attest to that–many a time I’ve had her crawling around the car looking for the source of an odd noise while I drive. You can imagine what a challenge eliminating noise in a van full of miscellaneous boxes, booth tent poles etc. (Do you suppose that’s why the Fashion Queen only accompanies me to a select few out of town art shows?) I remember one trip where I must have pulled off the road 10 times in the first 50 miles after leaving an art show to try and adjust things to eliminate a particularly annoying clanking sound I just couldn’t figure out the source of.

Streets and Creeks #1
Missoula, Montana
2015

Instead of the macro photo that it is, this image is reminiscent of a view of streets and creeks from a high altitude.

Heart of Stone
Bozeman, Montana
2014

A decaying, wet leaf appears to be merging with the concrete on which it has become plastered to–kind of a faux fossil.

Concrete Abstract
Birmingham, Alabama
2015

Compare this abstract formation to the natural one I posted a couple of days ago.

Every year before the summer art shows begin I like to set up my booth and play around with the arrangement of the work I want to hang. By prearranging the work, and leaving the hooks in the panels, setting up does not take so long when I get to a show. It also helps me decide what extra work to carry along with me to replace what sells.

When I moved my studio into our new house in town, it left my old studio in my workshop at our mountain house mostly empty. Surprisingly (for me anyway–I seem to act like I abhor unfilled space) it has stayed way. The size of the studio gave me just enough space to set up the booth panels inside out of the rain and occasional spring snow.

You can tell what images have been selling best lately at these shows by the predominance of crow and ravens on the walls. There’s a good amount of other work as well though, but most of them are on a wall of panels just to the left of what can be seen in this photo.

Man in the Maze
Tucson, Arizona
2015

The man in the Man in the Maze symbol has a name, I’itoi. He is the creator god in the cosmology of the Tohono O’odham and Pima Indians and the image appears frequently in their crafts. Interestingly enough, the symbol in this particular image is on the wall of the Catholic Mission San Xavier del Bac.

It would seem that the story of I’itoi would represent a conflicting view of creation to that of the Catholic faith, but then the Catholic church has historically  been quite good at integrating into their own religion (at least locally) the existing religious symbols and ideas of the peoples who they convert to Christianity. (The Celtic Cross, for example, predates Christianity and had pagan myths attached to it long before it became integral to Catholicism in Ireland.)