musings from the studio and beyond ~
dawn chandler’s reflections on art and life. . . .
of pith, sharp vicious teeth, and free art
My high school senior English professor used to wear a pith helmet. I don’t remember the specific circumstances required for him to don the pith helmet, but they had something to do with intellectual pithiness. I also remember that it was rarely donned, but when it was, it was a rather humorous and joyful event.
Here in my household we honor a pith helmet — The Esteemed Pith Helmet — three or four times per year; basically whenever I get around to writing the latest edition of my oh-so-occasional Studio Art Notes Newsletter. Different from my blog and social media posts, my Studio Art Notes Newsletter is a niftily-formatted epistle to friends, family and followers, highlighting recent paintings, sketches, riveting art facts & tales, random musings, inspiring quotes, show announcements, museum exhibitions you don’t want to miss, and more. Additionally, there’s usually a coupon code for 15 – 20% for my online art store.
Without question, the single most anticipated highlight of all is….. The Random Wilson Pic.
Still, that doesn’t explain the donning of The Esteemed Pith Helmet.
This is tricky, because I want to tell you about The Esteemed Pith Helmet, without revealing too much info.
Here goes:
Hidden in the text of my Studio Art Notes Newsletter is a wee little contest. It’s an amusing little game my readers, Wilson and I play, with a series of questions whose answers are found in the newsletter. Anyone passing the intellectual rigor of the wee little contest then has their name written onto a paper tag, which is then placed in The Esteemed Pith Helmet.
Two years worth of Dawn Chandlder’s Studio Art Notes wee little contest entries.
followers have to work a wee little bit a few times per year: indeed, they have to read my Studio Art Notes Newsletter, sleuth the wee little contest, and enter.
Now listen, I’ve had some people accuse me of lying about the wee little contest, because they haven’t been able to find it, and therefore they assume it’s not there. But I assure you, it is real, and if you’re a subscriber and you haven’t found it, it’s because you haven’t looked hard enough. If and when you DO find it, you’re going to to gasp, “Ah-HAAAA!” and feel more than a wee bit clever, which, of course, you are.
Over there —> are the latest more-than-a-wee-bit-clever readers who sleuthed the contest and SHAZAM! had their name drawn with slobber out of the Esteemed Pith Helmet and won a painting!
And here are the paintings they won:
Left, April Clouds Build Over Taos Mountains, oil on panel, en plein air, 5″ x 7″ went to Lindsay Wood; right, Summer Solstice Aspens, oil on panel, en plein air, 8″ x 10″ went to Ray Czech. Congratulations!
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.–Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (3.1.56-90)
back to the high meadows of new mexico . . . .
our 2015 ‘sole sister’ trek winding our way across philmont’s south country ~ july 2015 ~ photo by dawn chandler
We had been camped on the far edge of the high south meadow. The evening before we were lead up a west slope trail, where, just beyond the ridge in the blaze of sun sinking quickly before us, we stood at a fence line, and watched color radiate from a point just beyond Wheeler.*
That night, we slept in the company of evergreen and aspen.
For five nights we slept upon the earth.
For six days we breathed deeply the high country air.
Morning glistened with the promise of winding trails and clear streams; of paintbrush and iris and penstemon; of trailside conversation, songs and laughter and perhaps even — no, definitely — a bear sighting both magical and maybe a little too close for comfort.
All in a day.
All in a week.
All on the trails of Northen New Mexico.
my most recent — and as of yet untitled — painting of apache springs, philmont
This memory is from a series of days in July, 2015 when I had the joy of backpacking again at Philmont — the place where I first fell in love with New Mexico back in my teens and college years. This time I returned to the trails of Colfax County with thirteen other women, nearly all of us former camp staff members; every one of us possessing a deep soulful connection to “The Ranch.”
when rain finally comes to new mexico, by dawn chandler ~ oil on canvas ~ 36” x 24” (prints available here }
We had chosen a “South Country” itinerary for our trek, in part because the South Country is a bit more verdant than Philmont’s North Country,’ and some of us just really wanted to enjoy again the lushness of those high mountain meadows and streams.
Little did we know when planning our itinerary that 2015 would be The Year of Rain.
The Year of Green.
I’m talking Ireland-type green, as captured over there —>
in my 2016 painting, When Rain [Finally] Comes to New Mexico
(which I jokingly subtitled “Yes, It Really Was That Green” )
Day three of our hike brought us to Apache Springs Camp, tucked away in Philmont’s far southwest corner — a place I had visited only once before c.1983, and then for only a few hours. It’s a beautiful, beautiful spot, and I regret not venturing there in my youthful summer’s days off decades before.
Just a few weeks ago I finished a new painting from this journey — the painting pictured above. It captures a moment during our morning departure from Apache Springs, Most of us had made it down to the cabin already, but a couple of us straggled behind, lingering in the light dancing across that long stretch of 
aspen-edged meadow. No surprise that the forester among us had the wisdom to linger longest in the light. For I’m pretty sure that solitary hiker is Mary Stuever: former Philmont Ranger turned New Mexico Forester, gifted author of The Forester’s Log.
Several possible titles for this painting are ricocheting through my head, but I can’t quite settle on one.
But perhaps you have some suggestions for a title?
If so, I welcome them.
(Feel free to, comment below or via of my studio FaceBook page where I’ll share this post shortly.)
Meanwhile, there’s so many more paintings I’ve been meaning to do of this trip . . . Here’s what I’ve completed so far,:
morning of our first day by dawn chandler oil on panel ~ 12” x 16” {details here}
east from rayado canyon by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 9” x 12” {details here}
apache springs summer evening ~ by dawn chandler oil on panel ~ 12” x 16” {details here}
*apache springs sunset by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 8” x 10” {sold}
early morning light at beaubien by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 9” x 12” {details here}
beaubien light by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 9” x 12” {details here}
daybreak at crater lake – gazing toward the tooth by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 9” x 12” {details here}
july morning, crater lake camp by dawn chandler ~ oil on panel ~ 9” x 12” {details here}
And again. . . .
some unsolicited advice from me to you
Forgive me, but I’m going to give you some advice.
Well okay — it’s stronger than that: I’m going to tell you what to do. I’m going to implore you. Entreat you. BESEECH YOU to do this, now:
Go to Nebraska.
Yes, Nebraska.
If you simply can’t get there now, then get it on your calendar and get there NEXT year. In March. You’ve got to go in March, in the first days of Spring. If you wait much longer, you’ll be too late.
Go there — go to Nebraska:
Make your way to the Platte River, near Kearney.
Get there before sunrise. Or sunset.
Bundle-up — it’s cold.
Stand, facing the water, and wait.
Be quiet. Be still.
Listen. Listen. Listen.
Keep waiting.
And prepare.
Prepare
to have a small Grinch part of your heart that’s been shut down for months, maybe even years, open up and expand as it takes flight
with 100,000 pairs of wings.
Prepare
to be awed — staggeringly awed — by the sheer density of grace. Grace like you’ve never seen before. Grace like you’ve never imagined.
Prepare
to feel a piercing in your throat and a welling in your eyes as you realize that in all your years of thinking you knew something, you realize that you’ve known nothing.
Prepare to feel small.
Prepare to feel your heart made huge.
Prepare
to go to Nebraska
Now.
Because what’s waiting for you in the middle of the Great Plains is this: The annual spring migration of sandhill cranes. Thousands upon thousands of sandhill cranes. Half-a-million. That’s one elegant winged being for every person living in Albuquerque. Or Sacremento. Or Tucson. Or Atlanta. For a span of about three weeks in March 80% of the world’s crane population — 80%!! — fills the Nebraska sky in elongated clouds of grey stitchery. Come evening, they seek the river — shallow water, just 6” deep — to roost for the night. For unlike herons, they can’t roost in trees. They must have shallow water.**
Come daybreak, they begin to stir, and soon rise in magnificent flocks, as they spread out to the surrounding fields, to fill their half-million small bellies with grain, grubs, insects and seeds.
They are here to rest and refuel, having departed their southern wintering grounds some weeks earlier. Soon they will continue on their journey. By the time they reach their nesting grounds far, far north in the extreme reaches of Canada, Alaska and Siberia, they will have traveled some 4,000 miles.
Can you or I really even fathom that? That distance? That effort?
Doubtful.
The Annual Sandhill Crane Migration { map via the Grand Island, Nebraska website visitgrandisland.com/ }
One of the things that surprises me most about the cranes is the fact that I never even knew about them til last year. Here I am an avid outdoorswoman, who prides herself on knowing a thing or two about Nature and the environment. Who likes to think she has an awareness of and is attuned to the seasons and creatures of the wilds a bit more than most people. Yet as I’ve written before, I don’t think the cranes were ever even on my radar till about a year ago. Though I’d seen cranes before, I had never really seen cranes before. And I certainly had no idea that one of the greatest, most epic natural migrations of the world occurs right here, just a day’s drive from where I live.
How did I miss this for so long?
I guess it’s because, as with so many things, we don’t see the cranes until we’re ready to see them.
The cranes can’t find us until we’re ready to be found by them, ready to have our hearts enlarged and lifted by their cooing trill, their black-tipped wings, their perfect awkward elegance.
I’m just grateful I was finally ready to be found by them.
Are you ready?
All the photographs pictured here were taken by Dawn Chandler in the first week of Spring 2017 in and around the Iain Nicholson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary, near Kearney, Nebraska.
**The Platte River has diminished considerably in the last few decades, due to modern demands. “Since the mid-20th century, this river has shrunk significantly. This reduction in size is attributed in part to its waters being used for irrigation, and to a much greater extent to the waters diverted and used by the growing population of Colorado, which has outstripped the ability of its groundwater to sustain them.”
revealing the open pages of my wallet
It’s all in a book, a little bigger than my palm.
When I shared The Book with an acquaintance, her voice fell silent as she slowly turned and considered the pages.
“I feel,” she said in a near whisper, carefully turning each page . . .
“. . . as though I’m paging through your diary… or looking through your wallet.”
That was 25 years ago.
The Book holds within its leaves my first focused foray into collage; my first really satisfying immersion into abstraction.
Until The Book, I had been painting colossal canvases — some 9′ x 3.5’ — trying to abstract landscape with oil paint. My efforts were frustrated — I didn’t really know what I was doing. But then a seminar with one of my mentors in the Art of Collage, coupled with a brief encounter with a mathematician/closeted-artist, who kept a small blank book in which he glued the minutia of his days — matchbook tops, wine bottle labels, chocolate wrappers, ticket stubs, notations — lead me one spring afternoon to find my own small blank book and set about filling its pages.
You know the concept of “Flow” — where you are so completely focused on the task at hand, that you seem to rise outside of yourself and glide effortlessly through the effort? That is what I experienced in the making of The Book. For days I sat on the floor of my graduate school studio, surrounded by baskets of papers and cloth and dried teabags, prints and paint rags salvaged from studio rubbish bins, and every sort of paper trash blowing in the Philadelphia April wind. I remember being utterly joyful — mesmerized with the delight of discovery — as I explored color and texture and design and visual weight and volume and boldness and delicacy and balance and. . . and. . . and. . . it just seemed like I was discovering Art for the first time. Completely consumed in the act of creating, I glued bits of this and that and that and this onto the pages of my tiny book.
When finally — and rather gingerly — I shared my small fat volume with another mentor, he, too, fell silent as he, with his huge hands, gently turned from one tiny collage to the next, quietly considering each:
“This feels like a prayer book . . .
It seems like, until now, in order to express yourself, you have felt like you need to lace up your hiking boots and yell. But what this tender little book tells me is that instead of wearing your hiking boots, you should put on your bedroom slippers . . . and whisper. . .
You’ve found your voice here.”
Books of whispers.
I went on to make several in the months following that first excursion.
They’ve all been tucked away in a little box in a trunk.
Recently I’ve sought them again.
Turning the pages of these small visual diaries fills me with deep satisfaction. Indeed, they fill me with desire to whisper into small pages again . . . .
Hmmm. . . .
If you’d like to root through my “wallet” and see all of the pages of that first book of collages — The Book of Collage, Volume I — come, tune in to my Instagram account where I’ve recently posted close-ups of each page: instagram.com/taosdawn.
Soon I’ll share Volume, II — and perhaps even recent whispers . . . .
where art lives . . . .
What art offers is space — a certain breathing room for the spirit.
~ John Updike
Who doesn’t love venturing into an artist’s studio? Even I — myself an artist — love visiting other creative’s studios.
Artist Francis Bacon’s studio; photo by Perry Ogden.
I delight in seeing the arrangement of materials — some tidy, some chaotic explosions — and the variety of colors, and textures of STUFF, the weird and amusing found objects, snippets of scribble, spills and splatters, dinged up boxes and boards, worn furnishings, rusted bits of whatnot, papers and things piled and pinned and taped and thrown. It’s like looking into an artist’s wallet or their diary or their bedroom or — dare I say ? — their soul.
Artist Markus Lupertz in his studio.
Sign on my studio door.
There are times when I am happy to welcome people into my studio, and other times when I want to keep it private. The latter is usually when I’ve got a lot of experiments going on. At these stages I’m still feeling my way — trying to find my voice — and feeling perhaps a little vulnerable, unwilling just yet to open myself up to the rest of the world for comment.
Funny, as I write this, a studio memory has surfaced: I was in grad school in Philadephia, and a distant relative — some half-cousin removed to the nth degree, whom I did not know — got in touch with me. It turned out his office was just a few blocks from my studio. As I recall, he had a vague connection to art — had studied architecture or urban planning or some such at Penn some years back (he was a bit older than I). And so hearing through the family grapevine that I was nearby, he called to ask if he could come by and see my work, and then perhaps we could have lunch together.
A few days later he came by my studio, and, after walking around and looking at my paintings — all works in progress — he started verbally critiquing my work, and doing so rather negatively. Arrogantly. Pompously.
What?!
I couldn’t quite decide which I felt more: offense or incredulous amusement!
Stunned by his ill-breeding — surely a trait of the other side of his family { sniff } — he was never invited back.
Good riddance!
Meanwhile, I kept on painting.
THAT, however, is not the studio story I intended to share just now. Rather, I want to share a studio story from a couple months ago** which is this:
One day in late October I received an email from Kimberly Conrad, the Denver, Colorado artist and editor of Where Art Lives Magazine — the richly illustrated digital publication featuring artists of the extensive Where Art Lives web hub.
Turns out she was going to be visiting Santa Fe to meet and photograph several Santa Fe artists and their studios, and wondered if she could perhaps add me to her list. It was all very last minute, as she had originally assumed — based on my website “taosdawn.com” — that I live in Taos. Unfortunately her tight schedule wouldn’t allow for a Taos visit. Lamenting this to our mutual friend and art sista Joan Fullerton, Joan informed her, “Dawn doesn’t live in Taos anymore; she lives in Santa Fe!”
An email here, a phone call there, and next thing I know I’m busy vacuuming clouds of black dog hair from my white studio floor, and straightening dozens of crooked pictures on the walls, as I prepared for the arrival of Where Art Lives.
QUITE the opposite of my grad school visitation described above, my visit with Where Art Lives was most pleasant. Kimberly and her entourage are clearly as enchanted by artists’ studios as I am, viewing an artist’s space with a mixture of reverence, curiosity, awe and delight, whilst inquiring about paintings and materials, work habits, processes sources of inspiration, and more.
While she said my studio and I would be highlighted in the next issue of Where Art Lives, never did I imagine to see my studio and living space spread across 8-pages of a cool art magazine!
Please help me thank Where Art Lives Magazine by checking out their December issue here (my studio is featured on pages 158 – 165).
[And the January issue just came out here ]
Meanwhile — thanks to Kimberly Conrad and Where Art Lives — here is one place where art lives in Santa Fe:
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** If you subscribe to my groovy Studio Art Notes newsletter and read the late autumn ’16 edition, then you already know this news — and to you I say: 1) THANK YOU for being a subscriber! and, 2) apologies for the redundant news!