9-29-04
We have overflowing classes this quarter. While we're not complaining, we are experiencing some growing pains. In my drawing class room, we have just enough space to fit in 20 students at our 20 easels. Yesterday, I had 31 students and we had to turn away another 10 more.
     In my intro to web class, I had 34 students show up for 30 computers. To make matters more interesting, 3 of the computers didn't have internet connections, and the brand new ceiling mounted projector doesn't work. When I tried to get our old projector to work, I spent the first half hour of class finding enough working connector cords.
       When I finally got a signal from the lcd projector to shine light on the top of the whiteboard and the bottom of the wall (the new electric powered projector screen is still unwired), the green channel wasn't working. Fortunately, this is an old problem that I was able to solve in the usual manner by pulling the crt plug out and twisting the wire 3 times, then plugging it back in with some rotational stress on the wire...works like a charm.
    After that the class went like clockwork and the students surprised me by staying all day, instead of drifting out early. We may have a serious group of students this quarter. They kept asking questions right up to and beyond quitting time at 3:30. Not that I am complaining, I love it when the students find the subject so interesting they get drawn into the puzzle and bite off more than they can chew.
    I've still not looked at any of the 6 paintings I completed on my vacation, probably because I'm still savoring my glowing memories of the hours I spent painting them. Why rain on my memory parade by exposing them to the hard light of day? If they all suck it would tarnish the great memories. Better to let them age for a while until I don't care anymore.
       I tried a new medium yesterday: Sue bought some flowers and I drew them in pen and ink, then colored them in with colored pencil. It turned out surprisingly well. Usually I aim to get as close to real life as possible, but the bizarre combination of pen and ink, with lightly stroked on colored pencil makes realism quite impossible. Instead, it looks like it was intentionally meant to be an artistic interpretation, and is quite charming. Even my wife and son like it, and they don't like art. Oh, Clint draws a little and has the gift, but doesn't use it.
    I've begun building my lesson plans in Illustrator after studying a book on graphic design during the break. My handouts have a very professional look now and even impressed our graphics and pre-press instructor. "Not bad for a PC guy!" was her comment.

9-21-04
Driving up Interstate 5 south of Portland a couple days ago I was suffused with the happy glow of returning home from a great vacation. All my plans had come up roses. The weather had been excellent, my paintings had made me smile, the car had run great, I had no complaints. I can't say that very often these last few years, or should I say decades. The setting sun was shining it's warm hues of ochre and pink through glorious thunderheads hovering over the coastal mountains. I'd just driven over those same mountains through a blinding hail storm fierce enough to force people off the road.
      Out of the seven days, I'd only had about eight hours of rain and used it to good purpose (driving, washing clothes). For me, a good vacation means that I've got a lot of paintings done, and six and a half paintings in seven days isn't bad. The half painting was a pen and ink drawing done one evening after my afternoon painting got rained out.
         I've not looked at any of the paintings since finishing them. When I paint, I'm not looking so much for the finished product as for the experience of creating. There is an old saying that applies here: "It's not the destination, it's the journey".
       I am of course curious to know if they are as good as the tourists seemed to think they were. But, I am all too aware that weekend painters like myself have a high failure rate (as far as a sellable product). My reluctance to view them afterwards boils down to this: why would I want to tarnish my wonderful memories of painting them with the harsh reality of judging their monetary value? I'll get around to it, just not right now.

Here is a day by day breakdown of the trip:

9-12-04, Sunday and Monday, traveling there:
         I left home at 9 PM after worrying for an hour with Sue about our overdue son. He was overdue from an afternoon sea kayaking trip. I learned later that his kayaking buddy (a newbie) had fallen out of and overturned his kayak. Fortunately Clint had made him wear my wet suit and was able to talk him through a self rescue using the paddle float.
     I drove down to where Highway 205 rejoins I-5 south of Portland before pulling into a rest area around 1 AM and dozed in the back of the pickup until 8:30 the next morning. I drove south on I-5 until I reached a road that would take me west to Bandon on the central Oregon coast and arrived there at 5 PM.
    Unlike the last time I was there seven years ago the sun was out and the view of the sea stacks was stunning. I camped at the nearby state park and roller bladed in the gloaming out to the Bandon lighthouse where I watched the sun sink slowly into the horizon. I watched in fascination as the waves swept majestically in from the Pacific, booming loudly offshore before quietly hissing up the beach and swirling around my sandaled feet. This, I thought to myself, is the life.

9-14-04, Tuesday, the first painting:
         In the morning I parked at the northern picnic area in Bandon and hiked south along the beach in front of town, searching for a paint-able location. While looking around for a good location I explored this tunnel under a sea stack, surprised to find that the block wide sea stack was honey combed with tunnels of all sizes. This one was 7 feet high and felt safe despite the occasional knee high wave. Thinking the tide was out for good I'd just set my pack down to take the photo when a knee high wave came swooshing through the tunnel and I had to make a frantic grab for my backpack full of paper and pastel sticks.
         After camping and painting at Bandon, I drove an hour south to Cape Blanco, reaching it at sunset where I parked on the high bluff overlooking the lighthouse. As I heated up my fish dinner on the tail gate, the light faded to black while every 20 seconds the huge 30 mile long beam of light rotated slowly over my head. Because the light is lower than the bluff behind it, when it swept around toward me it lit up the dark line of forest behind me, the oval beam of light sweeping over the trees for long seconds, the beam changing colors magically as it shined though the evening mist rising from the land.
        It is a magical place and one is comforted to think that the light has been there for a hundred years, and will probably be there long after we are gone. Only one other car was at the windy overlook, and they were also cooking dinner in the dirt by their car as the sky grew dark, except for that long slowly rotating beam of light.

9-16-04, Wednesday and Thursday, Trinidad, California:
         I love the Cape Blanco light, but it is an evil tease. Exactly as happened seven years ago, when I woke up in the morning full of plans to paint the light, it was raining hard. I drove a couple hours south to Brookings where I found a public library where I could check weather online. Northern California looked hopeful and I drove south toward Trinidad, California, a place I've never visited.
     Trinidad is a painters (and surfers) dream. In addition to a half dozen public and private campgrounds, it has 5 miles of rocky coastline studded with seastacks of all shapes and sizes. In between the seastacks are long sandy beaches where surfers ply their magic while whales frolic offshore.
      The town of Trinidad itself has a long protected fishing harbor in the lee of Trinidad head, a seastack so large it has an electrical station on top with transmitters and radar disks. A steep narrow road winds around the head up to off limits Coast Guard housing. Nicely maintained hiking trails wind up the steep sides of the head. Wherever there is a good view, sturdy benches have been cemented into the rock below the low brush, which has been carefully trimmed just low enough to see over, but not so low as not to act as a windbreak against the stiff northerly winds.
      Each bench has a memorial plaque "dedicated to the memory of so and so by some other so and so". It's a little tacky, but at least they found a way to build some bomber benches that will stand the test of time.
       I reached town too late to paint but found some promising easel locations. In the morning I drove south of town a couple minutes to Luffenholtz Beach where I braved the stiff breeze and painted the view north for 3 hours. After a lunch break I hiked up Trinidad Head where I painted for another 3 hours, capturing the view looking north toward Patrick's Point. At the extreme west end of the head there is a rocky summit reached by a short scramble. Here I have to stop and tell a story within a story:

      Two young women in their early twenties, both very fit and lovely are hiking up a lonely trail in Trinidad, California. The trail is long and hot and winds up around a 600 foot sea stack, at the top of which is a coast guard weather station. There are numerous side spurs on this long winding trail leading out to various craggy viewpoints around the huge seastack. One can easily spend several hours exploring the many trails and summits of Trinidad head.
       It is getting late, but these two have been here before and know where to find the best evening view on the head. From near the top of the main summit, they take a poorly marked rocky side trail that leads up toward 2 solitary benches cemented into the rocky top of the western most summit of the head.
    As they scramble up the last few rocky steps to the relatively flat summit, they are startled to see a solitary man. "Oh look!" one says to the other, "it's a painter". Despite his appearance as an artist, girls can never be to careful and they look at each other in alarm, wondering if it's safe to approach. He hasn't shaved in several days and looks to be in his late forties, judging by the weathered face and the graying hair.
        They are somewhat reassured by his clothes, which mark him as one of those men without a fashion sense: the ragged, very short cut off blue jeans, old scruffy sandals and a long sleeved yellow shirt, probably bought at the goodwill that hasn't seen an iron in many years.
     Still, they look at one another in apprehension, wondering if it's safe to approach a strange man this far out in the middle of nowhere. But as they cautiously step forward to view the painting he greets them kindly and they see that the painting is magnificent. They realize that anyone who would hike this far, and who could paint like that...well, all their fears melt away and we are instant friends.
      They try to give me their dog, one of those white and black fire house dogs. The prettier one, though they are both very lovely and beaming with good health, stands very close, admiring my painting and let's me pet her dog. She says she found it somewhere and needs to find a new owner. Her landlord won't let her have dogs.
      The dog is truly mellow, and I'd love to take it home but for the complications. More to the point is what is unsaid. They both seem totally blown away by stumbling upon a talented artist at the top of a lonely mountain, like moses finding the tablets or something.... Perhaps it was just the foolish dreams of an old man, but I think I could have taken either one of them home along with the dog, had I but asked.
      Sadly, I told them my wife would kill me if I brought home a dog, but they seemed unfazed, telling me they had an advertisement up at the health food restaurant listing their phone number if I changed my mind...about the dog that is.

9-18-04, Friday and Saturday:
         It rained hard Thursday night. I was tired in the morning from my double painting session the day before so I decided to visit a laundromat while I waited for the weather to stabilize. In the afternoon I hiked around north of town looking for a good view and ended up at Patrick's Point.
        This is an amazing State Park perched on a high bluff with trails leading out to the summits of several huge sea stacks. The view points were thronged with crowds so I hiked down to the rocks below and started a painting looking up at Wedding Rock. Just as I finished the under drawing it began to rain.
     With a long sigh I packed up and hiked up to the top of Wedding Rock to at least take some photos with my Canon G5. The rain stopped, but realizing it was too late to start another painting I spent a couple hours working on a pen and ink sketch looking north, working until dusk.
      In the morning I drove back to Luffenholtz beach south of town and spent 4 hours painting another view of rock and surf, this time looking south toward my location of the day before. I'd set up my easel down the hill side about 100 feet from the road for a better view. When the painting began to look good I found myself wishing I hadn't started painting so far from the road. I was born a ham and actually enjoy having the occasional tourist walk by and gawk at my work, as long as there aren't so many as to be distracting.
    What the heck, I was feeling a bit lonely anyway so I hauled the easel up the steep garbage strewn trail to the roadside and finished it on the shoulder. The cars were stopping anyway for the view and I received some nice compliments, the nicest of which was a young woman walking along by herself who stopped briefly to say, "that is just gorgeous!". You gotta love that.
       I paint because it warms my heart. But occasionally my paintings are so good they will bring perfect strangers to a standstill. When it strikes a chord in their heart as well, they tell me so in words and it reaffirms what I basically knew already: this is what I was born to do.
     I hiked back to the truck, made a quick sandwich and drove the ten minutes back to Trinidad head where I again painted the evening light, this time painting lower down on the head and capturing the 20 foot blue green swells as they broke into mottled surf and coasted several hundred yards to shore, leaving long stretches of iridescent green and brilliant white foam in the water.
     I must have been feeling lonely because once again, as soon as the painting was almost done I hiked up to the benches at the viewpoint to share my enthusiasm with any passer's by. Several stopped and commented on the beauty of my work. One single woman surprised me by saying she had seen me painting up on the head from the beach a half mile away and had hiked up the head, hoping to catch a glimpse of my work. That's dedication!

9-18-04, Saturday and the drive north into Oregon:
         I ate a pickup gate dinner of unsalted potato chips and yogurt before hitting 101 north in the darkness, hoping against the odds that I would find the Cape Blanco light ready for a sunny morning painting. It was, of course, raining cats and dogs when I arrived 2 hours later and I continued north to Bandon where I slept in back of a mini mall to save the $20 camping fee.

9-19-04, Sunday and the drive home:
        When I woke up the sun was peaking through the clouds. I'd had enough rock and surf paintings by then wanted to paint something touched by the hand of man. I pinned my hopes on the Heceta Head lighthouse and motored north. When I arrived a couple hours later I was surprised to find it bright and sunny.
    I've painted many lighthouses but am always a little hesitant when I first arrive. The yard is usually quite small and I take up a fair amount of square feet with my pack and my easel, often creating quite a spectacle. The light house tour staff said they didn't mind, as long as they got the painting...wink, wink.
      There were thunderheads out on the horizon but they seemed a distant threat. A more serious problem was the flies. I've never seen flies that bad, even up on the meadows of Mt Rainier. They weren't biting, thankfully, but possessed an insatiable curiosity.
       They seemed to know when something was unusual and paid little attention to the grass or the trail or the light house itself. They found my person extremely interesting, with an emphasis on my skin which they found endlessly fascinating. For the casual tourist who hiked up, waited 5 minutes for a tour, snapped a few photos and left, they were only a brief nuisance.
       The flies must have thought they were in fly heaven when they found a sucker who would hold perfectly still for 4 hours, never moving more than a few inches.
        There were times when I had 4 exploring under my sleeves on both arms, three on my face and a half dozen on my hands. The flies and I eventually reached an agreement: I'd allow them to go anywhere they wanted, as long as they stayed out of my nostrils and eyes, something they continually violated. Thank god I'd warn long johns under my shorts.
     The tourists hiked up for the light house tour in a regular stream and the curious ones would usually prowl by to see if I was any good while they waited for their turn on the tour. I got a few nice compliments, but most people were unable to see past the flies crawling all over my body and quickly walked away.
      The light house tour staff walked by regularly to observe my progress. As the painting went from a laboriously drawn charcoal rendering to a few strokes of color, to an almost finished painting, their tentative pauses by my easel became slower until, toward the end they would stop and stare, a couple wondering aloud how long it took to get that good at something so rare.

9-19-04, midnight
Looking around my small home network (laptop and a full size computer) tonight I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I've just walked in after driving 6 hours home from the Heceta head Light out on the Oregon coast. Having done nothing but paint all day and sleep in sleazy campgrounds for 7 days I'm struck by the contrast between where I've been and this little den of computers. Compared to the totally natural feeling of following my muse for a week, all the time and energy I've poured into mastering a job in "high tech" over the last 7 years seems rather sad.
      Standing here and staring at these strange little humming electrical boxes, it is supremely clear to me where my heart lies. I'm a painter, and this is a cop out day job, the price I pay for having a family. Unlike Paul Gauguin who abandoned his wife and children in Paris to paint in the South Pacific, I will continue to live the life of a frustrated artist, pinning my hopes and dreams on the occasional week of freedom.

9-8-04
Climbed in Leavenworth with Sue and Lisa over Labor Day. The rope got stuck in a chimney above Jello Tower while Lisa was following the "step across" pitch. I felt fairly helpless looking down on the tops of their heads from 100 feet above while they tried to pull the rope out of the crack.
       I felt it go into the crack as I was leading, but the chimneys above the crack were both bombay in nature and I was more concerned about not dropping out of them than some manageable rope drag.
       Fortunately it was a busy day on Jello Tower and two young climbers were on hand to help the damsel's in distress. One was about 20, dressed in short ragged white shorts and no shirt. Sue said later that he looked like a movie start. At any rate, while the women in my family drooled over the handsome climbers, one of them waltzed up to where Lisa was stuck below a roof and helped her to saw the rope back and forth through the crack until it popped out.
        He down climbed to the belay to pursue his own climbing agenda and Lisa began following the route again. Thirty feet farther up, the rope she was towing for Sue to follow on got stuck in the same damn crack. Lisa freaked out, thinking she was trapped between a rope that was pulling her up and one that was pulling her down.
      I could see her by then and told her to unclip the rope that was stuck in the crack from her waist and anchor it to one of my nearby protection pieces. She did this and climbed up to the belay. I anchored her, then had her put me on belay and climbed down to the crack that had been grabbing ropes all day.
      I stuck a piece in the hole to prevent the rope from entering the constriction. For good measure I also put a directional piece in lower that guided the rope well away from the problem area. Finally I climbed back up to Lisa and we brought Sue up. It had been a while by then and she was full of angry words about how she hated climbing, was never coming up on castle rock again under any circumstances and needed water terribly and needed to pee, had a pounding headache and several other things I can't remember. It's sad how the older one's wife gets, the better they get at whining.
       The next day we climbed at Mad Meadows and had a much nicer time. It's amazing how bigger the holds become when I've been climbing regularly. These are routes that have severely unnerved me in the past, but as I cruised up through the cruxes, all I could think about was how user friendly the holds were.
     Putting my foot on one hold on a roof move, I marveled at how the finger sized depression in the slab fit the side of my foot as if it were custom carved for that purpose. It was a very exposed move above a roof, but I was more interested in the perfect footholds.
     When I returned on Tuesday I found an email asking me if I was available to work on the school web site. It turned out to be about 24 hours of work which I spread out over 4 days. I was usually the only one in the building as school is out right now. It was weird walking down the long darkened hallways to my little windowless cave of an office.
     To get to my office, I have to walk through the main entrance, down a long hallway and unlock an inner hallway inside of which is my little office. I plug in my laptop, connect to the network and start copying and pasting code. It's far from glamorous work, but it pays well and we needed the money.
     Now that that is done I'm going to spend some time landscape and seascape painting, may not even turn on my computer for a whole week.

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