We’re away for the holidays this year (sketches to come, I’m sure), so instead of a tree at our house, I’ll have to settle for a picture of one. But I tell you what: there are few things more lovely than sitting for hours by the tree, basking in its glow and sketching every ornament, reliving the memories associated with each as you go.
Wherever you are today—at home or on the road—I wish you all the light and warmth of the season, with the very best of your holiday memories.
Merry Christmas.
The Tailor and I have a fairly massive collection of vintage holiday music on vinyl. Some of these are great (Bing! Burl!), and some are terrible (it’s not my fault we own a Lawrence Welk album!), but what they have in common is some seriously fabulous mid-century graphic design and typography. So while the Tailor rummages through record store bins for familiar tunes, I’m taking a good hard look at serifs and script.
You know…just in case the big guy wonders where all the toys are kept.
Now, I have a thing for mid-century Christmas decorations anyway. But a 160-foot star that’s been glowing in all its 4300-bulb glory for over fifty years running? Well, that’s a holiday tradition I can get behind.
This is by far the best use of a chandelier fixture I’ve ever seen. Now if only I could convince the Tailor to let me hang our tree upside-down…
Okay, I just have to say it: I usually have mixed feelings about historical reenactments—even the best ones. While I love the idea of immersing myself in a time and place, costumed interpreters (for all their talents and lovely enthusiasm) tend to bug the heck out of me. I don’t know what it is, but all my little tricks and skills for remaining inconspicuous while sketching just fly right out the window at these places. Without fail, the reenacters find me, notice me, and interact with me, when all I wanted to do was disappear and sketch. “Ah! Good lady! I see you are preparing an engraving—” Yeah, yeah. Whatever, that’s nice. If you need me, I’ll be hiding behind this here cannon.
For all my grumpiness (and, in this case, reluctance to reveal my paltry, rusty French), it’s awfully good fun to sketch in a place like that. And I think I may have found the solution to my interpreter-phobia: visit on a bitterly cold weekday, in the off-season, just after a big tour bus of cruise ship passengers leaves for the day.
And that’s how I got to have the entire, enormous village of Louisbourg to myself for a whole afternoon.
I was first drawn to Louisbourg (no pun intended) because I found out that this year marked the settlement’s 300th anniversary. As there aren’t too many places in our little New World that can boast that kind of longevity, it felt somehow important to take part in that, even in my small way.
But also, Louisbourg was incredibly out of the way for me on this trip—it required almost a full day’s diversion to get there and back. Its location on the remote Atlantic shore of Cape Breton made it truly feel like an outpost of civilization (which, of course, it was)—and that’s saying something, as I’d just come from the Cabot Trail. So getting there felt like an accomplishment, like I’d somehow earned a merit badge for my journey.
Either way, all my shyness aside, it felt like I’d had my own private, self-guided tour of the past—and that’s well worth a detour.
The Tailor and I had completely different reasons for wanting to visit Thomas Edison’s laboratory. For my part, they had me at “National Park”—and it didn’t hurt that there existed a hilarious song about the place (which, let me tell you, played on repeat in my head for a good month afterward).
But the Tailor’s a scientist and a tinkerer at heart, so the century-old chemistry lab spoke to his very soul—
—not to mention all the iconic inventions around every corner.
Most of the machinery, chemicals and gadgets were incomprehensible to me, but I found myself getting sucked in, too. I absolutely fell in love with the sheer clutter of the place. If they say a messy workspace is a sign of genius…
…well, then clearly, we were in the presence of one of the greats.
Last week’s Nature Lab post put me in an “educational” frame of mind this weekend—so I thought I’d devote this week to museum sketches. First up are some brand new ones from just a couple of days ago, when I finally had the chance to see the spectacular exhibit of Peruvian art and artifacts at the Seattle Art Museum. The show covers 3,000 years of Peruvian history, so it’s a lot to take in—but it’s worth every scrap of attention you’ve got. That’s where a sketchbook comes in handy, actually—for me, it helps process all that sensory overload, so I can look back later and remember the experience as more than just an art blur.
(A word to fellow sketchers, if you go: museum rules allow sketching only with a pencil inside the galleries—which are pretty dimly lit. So I had to rough these out quickly, squinting with my nose an inch from the book, and then sprint for the nearest coffee shop afterward to ink and paint while I could still remember any color details.)
My favorite part of the show was the fact that it covered both pre-Columbian cultures and art done during and after the Conquista—so even though the sudden switch in subject matter was jarring, it was easy to see how the cultural influence—surprisingly—went in both directions.
So if you find yourself in Seattle over the holidays, grab a sketchbook and take yourself out on an art date. The show is only up through January 5, but if you make the effort to get there, you won’t be disappointed.
Speaking of taxidermy, Wednesday’s post reminded me of my trip back to Providence a couple of years ago, to show the Tailor around my old city and my alma mater. He was politely interested in my tour of the campus, but I knew he’d completely freak out (and I was right, he did) when I showed him my favorite haunt of all: the Nature Lab.
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent in this place, but needless to say, this building was a second home for three years of my life. Now before you think I’m a total nutcase for spending all that time in a room full of dead things, let me explain. The Nature Lab exists for a very specific purpose: to provide real, no-kidding, three-dimensional reference material for drawing.
RISD feels very strongly (and if you read this blog, you know I do, too) about the importance of drawing from life. When you sketch something tangible, right in front of you, all sorts of sneaky extra knowledge (understanding of anatomy and structure! A real grasp of 3-D space! An interest in science!) takes root in your brain, making you a far better artist than any photograph ever could. In this age of Google image searches and the Inter-tubes’ enabling of half-baked research, this stuff is more important than ever.
The Nature Lab was founded in 1937—and it remains remarkably unchanged today. So the result is a stunning combination of natural history museum and down-home lending library. RISD still operates its specimen collections as if the Internet never existed, and I love that (ask me sometime about the glorious Picture Collection—their circulating library of half a million physical image clippings!).
When I was a student here, I was mostly entranced by sketching the individual objects in the collection. (I mean, how often do you get to touch a baboon skull?) But now it’s the overall effect of the whole that gets me. This place is the ultimate cabinet of curiosities—and proof that you really can get lost in one room.
The Nelson is a small museum—small enough that I thought the short visit we had time for would be plenty, sketching included.
And then I discovered the wall of antique cowboy spurs, just as we were about to leave.
Needless to say, if I had been wearing spurs at the time, the Tailor never would have been able to drag me out of there.