Reelfoot Lake, TN

I painted this as a commission work and am really pleased with it.  It's a 16 x 20 acrylic on stretched canvas and took me quite a few days to complete.  The reflections in the water were difficult to work out but I think they're quite accurate. I love cranes and added one, flying in the background. Now I'll have to dig up photos of our vacation last fall to Port St. Joe.  There were oodles of shots of Cranes in the water there.

Next up, though, a commission work for an eye doctor's office.  The staff are buying it as a gift for their boss for Christmas. 

Tangent: Wholesome foods and more

Wearing my other hat for a while today (international trade consultant), I came across the U.S. company Wholesome Sweeteners Incorporated based in Texas.  They are God's gift to high fructose corn syrup, artificial chemical sweeteners, and other crap that's not good for us. 

While researching that company, I came across their links page which is just chock full of links to all things healthy, wholesome, nutritious, and gourmand, too! 

I'm keeping this short so I can go make art.  Enjoy.

Painting on the porch in the rain

There's something about porches, don't you think?  When you are able to let go of the critical "I should be elsewhere" mindset and just hang on a porch doing whatever.  If you're like me, you find it liberating and reinvigorating.  To me it's the ultimate "Hominid's revenge" where we who stand on two feet and have opposible thumbs and think and plan and scheme, can come in close contact with the great outdoors without ... you know ... really being out there!  Where mother nature can rain down in all her splendor but we stay dry.  Where mosquitos and other bugs of all kinds swarm around hoping to feast on our fleshy skin and red blood.

God bless Lucilla!  That's all I can say... Despite her cosmopolitan ways she had the foresight to add on a splendid and expansive porch to her Sylvan Park home, complete with screening, high-end ceiling fans and a bug-proof flooring barrier too.  So outside on the porch we of the Collaborative Artists Network (Nashville) who were in town painted. Judi has commenced her journey back to Geneve, Switzerland where we are hoping she'll establish a CAN Chapter.  Margot is in the xenophobic state of Arizona babysitting children this week and recuperating from what sounds like a huge cold and laryngitis.  Lynne was recuperating closer to home after two exhausting weeks of setting up and arranging her show at the Gas Lamp in Nashville.

And so it was that Barbara, Lucilla and I found ourselves enjoying the splendor of her porch, some great food she prepared (but wasn't supposed to), and one another's company.  We didn't so much paint as talk and learn and plan for the future of our group and more.  In the end, I set about playing.  One of my paintings took on a "Georgia O'Keefe-ish" style, according to Lucilla and Lynne who showed up late to grace us with her presence.  They claim it was because I had today's afternoon gynecological appointment on my mind.  I put dots to represent cave dwellings on the hillside, but it definitely needs more work before I post it here.

I'm exhausted now, having gone to the doctor (just an annual checkup and all is well, in case you're wondering) and gotten stuck in commuter traffic.  My BFF from New Jersey claims we could never live there, given the amount of commuter traffic they endure daily. Even though it took me a full hour to get home from downtown, Nashville's nowhere among the worst cities for traffic. Well, the microwave's buzzing and my chicken chili's done. The dog's pouting and hoping for a walk too, so signing off.

Arts and the left-brain: high school edition

I think I've mentioned to y'all that I never had any substantial arts education before college beyond flunking out of piano lessons in pre-school and the plastic, generic recorder in fourth grade at St. Henry's School. Seriously, there was none until my college music appreciation class which I got absolutely nothing out of since I'm still musically illiterate. I did okay academically and in fact began my collegiate studies with the intention of majoring in engineering. Thankfully, I changed my major to Mass Communications and while focused on journalism, did put in a hefty number of hours in visual communications. 

I got to thinking about the value of arts education when I recently found studies that show that four years of art and or music in high school equate to higher performance on SAT's as this chart shows.

In addition, students who take four years of some form of arts are far less likely to drop out of school. Seems to me Tennessee and federal lawmakers need to take heed of this when factoring in funding for the arts.

Need more than just a couple of charts?

The findings are consistant according to this 1999 article by AP writer Carl Hartman.  But a 1998 in-depth Harvard statistical study roundly disputes this broader claim and identified strong correlations in only three areas: 
     Listening to Music and Spatial-Temporal Reasoning
     Learning to Play Music and Spatial Reasoning
     Classroom Drama and Verbal Skills

The Harvard study makes one assertion that I think all educators and parents and policy makers should completely stand by, though: 

"Let's stop requiring more of the arts than of other subjects. The arts are the only school subjects that 

have been challenged to demonstrate transfer as a justification for their usefulness. If we required 

physical education to demonstrate transfer to science, the results might be no better, and 

probably would be worse. So, it is notable that the arts can demonstrate any transfer at all."

I'm not telling you what to do but I plan to write my legislators - state and federal - and make sure they keep funding for arts education off the budget chopping block.  Personally and ideally, I see investing more heavily in the arts (globally) equating to lower costs for defense.  Hmmm.  Another good future blog study methinks! 

Tune in in the next few days for "Arts and the left-brain: corporate success edition."

Of Weddings and Music

This past weekend, my brother Barry Walsh, a fabulous keyboard player in his own right (who has a wonderful instrumental CD that's great inspiration BTW), married his love of many years, Gretchen Peters.  That the two have always made incredible, beautiful music together is a given within Nashville and the Folk and Country Music Communities.  Gretchen has an amazing voice, crafts songs of such intelligence and power, and as importantly, Barry doesn't just play along.  He listens, adds his interpretation, and accents each song perfectly.  I'm what you might call musically illiterate but even I get that when watching them.

And it's not just on the auditory level that these two relate.  They are wonderfully matched in so many ways ... both very smart and intellectually curious, quirky, and fun, and it is so great to see them together and obviously, this happy together. It's been a bit of a journey for them but I can proudly say I knew from the very first that this day would come.

And this was a wedding noone that was there will ever forget, if only for the perfection of it.  The night before, a whole slew of us were bused out to Green's Grocery in Leiper's Fork.  It's a lovely intimate venue that harkens back to the 30s and 40s in its simplicity. There, Barry played for Gretchen (and the lucky audience) a song he wrote for her and she answered with her song about him "The Way You Move Me." As if that wasn't enough, others played, including the dynamic Marshall Chapman, Gretchen's fellow "Wine, Women & Song" partners Matraca Berg and Suzy Bogguss, Rodney Crowell and Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Supporting them all night was Christine Bougie, a wonderful steel guitar player from Toronto.  I love that instrument anyway and her style was just wonderful.  We went home happy, full and sure they couldn't ever top that night.

But they did.

Planned beautifully, the ceremony took place right after the 6 p.m. bells rang at Assumption Church in Nashville where we all stood in the churchyard below.  Unplanned but uncannily perfect was the appearance of an old invalid who rode by on his scooter, surveyed the goings-on, waved and went on his way.  My brother Barry waved back as fellow siblings nudged one another just knowing it was the ghost of our father who loved to play pranks on us while riding his own scooter before he passed away four years ago.  I'm sure it was him, giving Barry & Gretchen his blessing. To top off the emotion of them saying their vows, Rodney Crowell performed an acoustic version of a lovely song he written about life and family entitled "I know Love is All I Need."  I'm told video taken from behind me of his performance shows one of my arms holding the video camera up and the other hand coming to my eyes with a tissue.  Frequently.  It was moving.

Then there was the first dance.  Gretchen has written with Bryan Adams for many years and formed a tight bond of friendship.  He made a promise to her, arranged his schedule, and was able to come in for it.  And he sang their first song.  It's funny, my hubby and I married to one of his songs (Everything I do), my sister got engaged to that same song, and now, our brother was having Bryan peform their first dance (Heaven), live!  After this, there were more performances by those who'd been there the night before and other great musicians.  Our family got jammin' when Rodney launched into Elvira accompanied by Jeff Hanna and a flock of singers joined in.  We stayed up there on the dance floor and joined hands to sing along with "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and I swear, at that moment, I didn't think anything could top this weekend.

But then there were the sky lanterns.  Two dozen of these wonderful things were lit by the wedding guests and sent skyward over the Nashville night sky.  Reading through tweets she follows the next day, Gretchen saw some neighbor observed the presence of several UFO's above Germantown.  I enjoyed seeing the lanterns fly off but even more loved the warm glow that lit peoples faces as they were lighting the lanterns.   Ahhhh.  Just beautiful.  Every last minute of it. 

So with all excitement, I've done no painting at all lately.  Just haven't had it in me.  But I am itching to get back to it.  So stay tuned!