Birds, birds, birds

I've recently started drawing simple birds and adding them to the textured drawings that I have been doing for 60 plus years. I started doing the textured drawings on the edge of notebook paper in boring junior high classes in about 1957. Some of the bird images come from photographs I've taken some from images from books. I'm planning to continue this play and hope to start adding other creatures soon.

Raven at the Beach

Carlie and I were walking at Glass Beach a couple of days ago and a large raven was doing an odd and interesting thing, fluffing/puffing out the feathers on it's head and neck and opening it's mouth. I think it was making some soft sounds but the ocean was too loud for me to hear clearly. It did this for several minutes and let us get to within 6 feet of it while it was doing it. It seemed ritualistic somehow, although Carlie wondered if it had something stuck in it's throat perhaps. When it stopped doing it, it starting walking around and I made soft clucking sounds to it. It walked to within probably 4 feet from me but then some other people came along the trail and it flew off. BUT I was able to take a lot of pictures during the time that it was close and got one that I really like. I've taken a lot of pictures of ravens here over the years but never one that shows the subtle colors and shades of it's feathers like this one

Buck in the Yard

When we recently returned from being out of town I found this handsome fellow hanging out in the back yard. We live in a neighborhood of houses in Ft. Bragg and the house next to ours has a very large yard, the size of 3 or 4 normal sized yards and is filled with trees and nobody lives full time in the big old house that is on the property. Because of this, various critters sometimes hang out there. Raccoons, possums, a month or so ago a very loud barn owl was there at night sometimes and, of course deer, like this one and the occasional skunk. They come up from Pudding Creek which is north of us and is an avenue for a lot of diverse wildlife as the water flows from the east and into the ocean near where we live. Normally I chase deer back over the fence into the big yard but I liked looking at this young guy so let him stay until he decided it was time to depart.

Bee out Back

This little guy was back on my back deck today. I think he was on his last legs as he wouldn't move much even when I touched him gently. The situation let me take lots of pictures from lots of different angles though and I got this one which I really like. Trying to have more flowers for pollinators each year. This is a native here on the coast but I forgot its name.

Up in My Artio

I've converted most of the second floor of my house into an Artio where I have tables and shelves and easels set up where I do drawing, painting, collage work and play music. The intensity with which I pursue these activities varies through time but it feels as if the upcoming year will see a lot of work/play done there. The picture on the left is of the left half of a collage of images I have been working on for a few weeks. The finished collage will be 20 x 30 inches. One of my long term obsessions is harvesting images from magazines and books. I go through 5 to 10 magazines a day and a  couple of books and tear and cut out images. I have boxes and boxes full of images, some from as long as 20 years ago. Upcoming are collages in which I will integrate drawn elements, painting, words and perhaps handmade papers.

Ever since I started doodling and drawing on the edges of notebook paper in junior high school 60 years ago I've had a fascination with pattern and texture and line and still do. This drawing to the right is 17 x 20 inches.

Another collage done last year, magazine images, papers from Racine's, a little drawing.

Another drawing of pattern and texture. The colored background was created with stamping using a stamp that I made from a rubber eraser. I used a felt tipped calligraphy pen to add the color. It is 20 x 30 inches.

And finally a mixture of collage,  (the red lines and yellow sun) and drawing (the textured red dots). 10 x 14 inches.

Who knows what if anything this all means? I only know that I enjoy it, I'm peaceful and happy when I'm doing it and sometimes people enjoy seeing them.

Our Trip to Salem, Oregon

We just spent almost 12 days on our trip to Oregon recently to sell our Mixed Metal Jewels at the Salem Art Fair & Festival and enjoy spending time on the beautiful Oregon coast after the fair. We are happy to report that the fair was very successful and enjoyable for us.

We are happy to have entered the semi-retired phase of our jewelry making career. One can drive from our home in Ft. Bragg, CA to Salem, Oregon in 9 or 10 hours but we took three days and made stops along the way. One of the most interesting stops was at a facility called the Cascades Raptor Center in the southern part of Eugene, Oregon where injured or abandoned birds of prey of a variety of species are taken care of. The top priority is to try to get the bird to a state where it can be released back into the wild with a hope of survival. They have a hospital facility where the focus is on healing and privacy for the birds and visitors are not allowed.
Many birds that they take in though, for a variety of reasons, physical and psychological, would have a very small chance of surviving in the wild. These are in aviaries and can be viewed by visitors to the center. At any given time there are 55 to 65 raptors that can be seen, owls, hawks, eagles, vultures, falcons, kites, ospreys and others. It was a special experience to be able to see these magnificent creatures up close and to be able to take pictures. There are staff and volunteers who act as handlers for some of the birds and bring them outside to exercise and to allow people to see them close up and tell visitors about their lives and stories. I really enjoyed seeing an osprey up close, they fly above our house sometimes here on the California coast and I sometimes see them flying in from the ocean with a fish in their claws on the way to their nests in river canyons. I learned a lot about them that I didn't know, that they actually dive into the water to catch fish for example and that they have some of the sharpest claws in the world of birds. I also learned that eagles often follow them and take the fish that they have caught. Eagles can't dive in the water, they can only catch fish on the surface (or steal them from the successful osprey).

The website for the center is CASCADE RAPTOR CENTER
It is well worth a visit. Easy to find and a small admission charge. Parking may sometimes be a little of a problem but not an insurmountable one.

Trip to Anza Borrego State Park

 In mid March we took a break from the rain here on the Mendocino Coast and traveled down south to Anza Borrego state park south of the Palm Springs area. We've been there before when we used to do a March Art Fair in La Quinta near Palm Springs and we always enjoyed our time there. On our trip south it rained, often intensely, and a lot all the way until we reached the Santa Barbara area. Being in that area brought back memories as we lived in the Ventura/Ojai area for a number of years 40 years ago.

The first day in Anza Borrego was a little bit of a shock since it was 30 degrees warmer there than at home. We hiked up canyons and across hills each day of our stay and enjoyed the cactus and wild flowers in great profusion. We had recently purchased a new set of binoculars that in addition to letting us see big horn sheep up on the mountain tops were able to focus close so that we could stand up and look at flowers and insects with them and it was like looking at them with a very high powered magnifying glass. We could actually see

them better than we could see them if we got on our knees and got our eyes close to them. It was exciting. We ran into a great swarm of caterpillars in one area, thousands of them, eating plants and flowers with great gusto. Every few years this seems to happen, sometimes locals said there are so many on the highways that the roads become slippery and dangerous after many have been run over and the surface becomes slimy. Although we didn't see them, we heard tales of a specie of hawk that feed on the caterpillars in great numbers.

To the  right are some of the fascinating welded steel sculptures scattered in the desert around the town of Borrego Springs created by Ricardo Breceda. The amount of work that have gone into some of them is amazing. I always love rust.
To see more of his work go to his WEBSITE
A couple of times in the last year we have found really sweet places to stay on our travels through AirBnB. Just outside Borrego Springs we stayed in this great little house with everything we needed to be comfortable, jack rabbits and humming birds in the yard and less than the cost of any of the local motels.