New series: “Blackboards” and “Kerubim” open in SOFA Friday

“Black Elk Antlers,” acrylic and oil stick on wood, Suzanne Edminster

It’s always exciting to have a new series choose you. It makes you famous with yourself. A great notion has flown down to take you away its talons, like a mythical bird, the Roc. This bird only sees you.

Cretaceous Roc by Hodari Nundu

This year two new series occurred in me, “Blackboards” and “Kerubim.”

I think much art lies outside conscious control. These do. Each “Blackboard” develops itself. I have no idea of what the end result will be when I start. It’s childlike. I see this, then I see that, then I turn the board and see something else. I tell stories. They develop out of the darkness of dream, the blackness of the childhood chalkboard, with markings and erasures like chalk. And they can disappear like dreams too.

I believe art visits us. The Kerubim series (see below) is about visitation of ideas and phenomenon, texting from beyond, and decoding. Cherubim are very old, going back to Assyria and Babylonia. They orbit, rotate, have wheels, flames, eyes, thrones, and messages.

Chair Ubim, acrylic on Arches paper, Suzanne Edminster

If you can make it, drop by during August. The opening is in my studio, Friday August 5, 5-8 PM (invite below). I’m happy to be showing with Chris Beards, an astonishing mixed media sculptor. I’ll be releasing images on this site through the month of August for those of you who are far away.

It’s so much more interesting to be visited by Rocs or Muses than it is to watch summer blockbusters. With ideas, when the blockbuster opens, you become its personal theatre. I wish you happy visitations.

Suzanne

Implied large version

Access the Facebook invitation here. We are also open for Artwalk on Saturday and Sunday.

Painting the trance with Jesse Reno

by Suzanne Edminster

I took a two-day workshop with Jesse Reno in Portland recently. In the glare of the plastic-covered hotel conference room, under alarming chandeliers and migraine-friendly fluorescent lights, Jesse led us down the rabbit hole to the place where composition meets dreamtime.

On a studio visit to Jesse Reno

Even if you don’t especially want cosmic floating eyes, bitey teeth, and monsters in your work, Reno’s rigorous approach is compelling. Starting with random strokes of paint applied primarily with hands and a few brushes, he asks the students to focus on what is on the painting surface, NOT a pre-formed vision or an invisible viewer or reviewer. There is no end in sight, only process. Figures may appear and be obliterated. At least two paintings are started simultaneously.

In focusing only on what is there, Jesse asked us to respond only to the immediate and present world of the painting in any stage of chaos. One student asked if doing a particular move–some outlining, I think– would “help the viewer.” “F….. the viewer,” he told one student. Your allegiance is to yourself and the mess on the page. Another student asked if she could cut out the head of one painting and collage it on another. (She apparently liked the head but disliked the rest of the work– the common problem of the “precious” spot that dominates the rest of the work.) He said that she could, but she would be avoiding the problem. The problem is staying with the process through the dark, murky stages where nothing is working, internally or in the painting.

Reno works with only five colors of acrylic paint, his hands, and a few brushes. The limitations provide a framework to contain an extremely intuitive approach. His method is to consider only what appears at the moment, and to spontaneously follow every impulse. In this sense, it feels like meditation, where one loses focus on the breath and continually brings it back. At the same time, a governing aesthetic is in operation, an unusual combination with intuition. Each handstroke produces its own small story, especially as the mind of the painter begins to see figures in the mess. This method has a distinguished provenance; Leonardo da Vinci espoused it, even though apparently people mocked it even in his time, given the slightly defensive tone of his quote.

“Look at walls splashed with a number of stains, or stones of various mixed colours. If you have to invent some scene, you can see there resemblances to a number of landscapes, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, great plains, valleys and hills, in various ways. Also you can see various battles, and lively postures of strange figures, expressions on faces, costumes and an infinite number of things, which you can reduce to good integrated form. This happens on such walls and varicoloured stones, (which act) like the sound of bells, in whose peeling you can find every name and word that you can imagine.

Do not despise my opinion, when I remind you that it should not hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or the ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which, if you consider them well, you may find really marvelous ideas. The mind of the painter is stimulated to new discoveries, the composition of battles of animals and men, various compositions of landscapes and monstrous things, such as devils and similar things, which may bring you honor, because by indistinct things the mind is stimulated to new inventions.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

I find it interesting that da Vinci mentions “monstrous things, such as devils and similar things,” which are often seen in Reno’s work. He mentions composition twice. Composition– and what lies beyond it– has been a recurrent theme for me this year. I can’t know the intent of the original Italian, but it inspired me to look into the root of the word. Compose has some wonderful non-aesthetic meanings: to be composed, be still and calm. The root comes from the Latin and Greek. Com means “together,”, and pose comes from to stop, cease, or to place in repose, a pause, a stop. Each time we stop to bring elements together, and then pause, we have composed. We pause or stop together.

Martini amidst the media– my workshop table

Back to the class. Reno sometimes models or speaks aloud both his aesthetic and narrative process. “I don’t like this, so I’ll try a little green.” “The horseshoe is in the elf’s stomach now.” My experience was that of following traces of soul or dream which emerge through paint marks, a distinct feeling of scouting or tracking. One can follow the trace or lose the track and fall off the road. Sometimes the highway is clear, but often you have to take the machete into the jungle.

When a painting emerges, it has been retrieved by a long and arduous process. It is full of information for the painter. The viewer is on his own. It’s not really about shamans, monsters, animals, tricksters, but about the process by which they emerged— or submerged, or de-composed.

Chicken with cigarette. A narrative emerges, but cannot be forced. And the story changes its ending constantly. Slippery paint, slippery slope, a wild ride.

Saltworkstudio Art Blog turns six.

My shadow on Arizona petroglyphs.

Dear interweb world humans, beings, friends, voyeurs, and artists,

Thanks for following me all these years! It has been a journey reflective of my inner world, a composition of shadow and light, beauty and imperfection.

Turquoise Window World, an early painting post from the blog

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. I have to break through an invisible membrane of fear every time. As an introvert, sometimes I don’t even enjoy posting carefully edited versions of my life and paintings. I’ve constantly struggled to be “authentic” with the innately inauthentic medium of social media and blogging. At times I have been both over and under-attached to your reactions, first living for them– the fabled “stats”– and then rejecting them entirely.

Floating beauties from the Naples Archaeological Museum

I think the high point of authenticity for me is, ironically, not the art blog, but the Camino de Santiago pilgrim posts. I really perceived the blog, during the time of being on the road, as a tentacle of true connection. I could feel support reaching through it. The art, if you can call it that, was completely unrevised– the messy notebook pages.

Portals of color, locked, Spain

Pilgrim sketchbook, Camino de Santiago

Looking forward, I find myself increasingly interested in pure abstraction and an authentic gesture. I want distance from approval and marketing and time to develop on my own without outside pressure, time to grow a new set of metaphors. So I’ve decided to take 2016 as a learning year, not showing year.

I won’t be doing open studios, except for our local events. I am going to paint at the Art and Soul Retreat in Portland this March. These 5 days in a hotel room, painting and sketching, should be fun and instructive. I’m excited to finally be studying with Jesse Reno. I think he is a master of staying with the process until the final image, however eccentric, emerges. I hope to focus on composition with Jane Davies. I’m looking forward to cooking on the hotel room iron! (Just kidding. Sort of.) I will be in the Sheraton Airport Hotel, car-free, and am thinking about how to keep costs low. It will be a rather fancy art garret. I’m bringing plastic sheeting so I can paint in the room if I want, storing the paintings on the extra bed.Let me know if you have ideas for hotel room survival.

At home, projects include new chicks in March, and planters for the heritage grapevines we got as starts from the UC Davis plant ark. The grapes are no longer grown in France, having been hybridized, but they are the ones that appear in many old masterpieces. An ancient strain has been preserved and will grow on our arbor, or so we hope. The grapes themselves are perhaps these that Monet painted, pale green with a rosy cast.

Monet-Still-Life-with-Apples-and-Grapes-1880

Both chicks and grapes grow fast once they start. I wish you a surge of new growth as well in the Lunar New Year.

Suzanne

The Cherubim Experiments and Winterblast

I’m doing experimental mark making and painting. I start with automatic writing on each surface with drawing tools: conte, graphite, China marker, charcoal, oil pastel. Then I white or obliterate areas of the writing or painting. I follow ideas as they arise. From automatic writing I get ideas and phrases. An example: “History seeks to remember the mantra.”

I am fascinated with the process of making “sense” of random marks, images, words, and events. The creativity lies not so much in the painting process as in the slow excavation of meaning out of fields of chance.

As I worked on this series of 3 20″ x 20″ paper pieces, the word “Cherubim” appeared to me. Originally lions and bulls with wings, they “devolved” into Valentine Cherubs. Cherubim guard the Tree of Life. Cherubim guard The Big Chair, that is, God’s Throne: Chair-u-bim. It seems that floating forms, surreal automatism, and a bit of religious icon are melding in this series.

Experiments are risky. That’s why they call it “risk taking” and not “sure thing making.” Below you can see one in progress. I know they are done when a certain internal narrative about them crystallizes like rock candy in my mind. The point of “finishing” is in my psyche, not in the painting itself.

Process painting in the Cherubinm series

Process painting in the Cherubim series

I think the real old-style Cherubim would be terrifying, more like wheels of UFO flame or hybrid winged lions, yet we know that sometimes monsters guard the gates we must enter as artists. I go forward with some trust in the process. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, friends.

Suzanne

If you’re in Northern California this Saturday, November 14, come to Winterblast, the best homemade holiday EVER. I’ll be there with the studio doors open… if I’m not dancing in the street.

Winterblast 2015!

Big Magic and Big-I Imagination

Suzanne Edminster

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic on a background of
paintings by Suzanne Edminster

Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert, is the latest in a tidal wave of creativity books, and a very fine one. I believe it will be the go-to creativity guide for the next decade. It was only in the last twenty years that bookstores developed sections devoted to creativity in the written or visual arts. For many years it was just If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland , Art and Fear by David Bayles, or The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. And you never knew what section to find them in the bookstore; they were obscure. Gilbert’s message is not new. In fact it is ancient, but is desperately needed today. Why are we dealing with an erosion in the basic knowledge of how imagination and creativity work? Is creativity among our endangered species? Why is a book on creativity a best seller, besides the fact that Gilbert writes like an angel, or a daimon? Anyway, Big Magic was in my bag during my recent open studios. Interesting that its cover is abstract art. Hey, I make that stuff.

Over Underworld, Suzanne Edminster

I approve of Big Magic and its exploration of Big-I Imagination. I first learned the tenets of Imagination that Gilbert espouses through studying the Romantic Poets with poet Diane di Prima. The primacy of Imagination was stressed; the world be damned, and often was. David Meltzer taught gematria and the concepts word-as-creator, letter as energy, word itself creating the universe, for good or creepiness…. go Golem!

Letters create Golem- check out his forehead

I’ve always been lucky with teachers; I was taught about Blake’s Spiritual Sensation. The line was drawn deeply in the existential sand. Imagination is more important than reality. It creates reality, in fact. Ideas exist independently of us. The Big-I Imaginations fly, walk, swim, or lump about all on their own, shedding light and shadow, ambrosia and dung.

Blake said Imagination is Spiritual Sensation

Diane di Prima also taught Western Magical tradition and guided visualization to students back in the 1980s, long before the vogue, as part of her own rich creative resources. In Big Magic, Gilbert quotes her friend and mine, Caroline Casey: “Better a trickster than a martyr be.” And Gilbert has the right idea on gods, spirits, angels, archetypes: they are both real and unreal, terribly important and trivial at the same time. Her approach is positive and full of stubborn gladness and a durable mysticism. I think it is the creativity book for our time, just as The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron touched a nerve in the 1980s. Cameron’s book was based on an archetype of wounding, addiction, and a 12-step style reclamation of damaged creative impulse. I prefer Gilbert’s straight-ahead optimism and humor.

Here’s what I loved in the book: The return of the notion of the individual creative daimon or genius. We each have a little whiz-bang spirit assigned to us at birth to guide or goad us. Ideas have lives independent of us. Court them, invite them, respect them, don’t ignore them too long. If you lack inspiration, curiosity and showing up are enough. Permission– Bob Burridge’s permission slips for painting, for example. The right kind of entitlement. Her own experience with the Day Job: no shame, keep it as long as you need to. Your art is not actually your “baby.” You can’t dissect, discard, neglect, or chop up a real baby. You can’t ignore it in garages or sell it.

Bob Burridge’s Permission Slip

She’s so funny! How to speak to your inner critic: “It’s best to be insistent, but affable. Repeat yourself, but don’t get shrill. Speak to your darkest and most negative interior voices the way a hostage negotiator speaks to a violent psychopath: calmly, but firmly.”

And when you’re in a lull– as I am right now, exhausted from open studios and down with a cold– she writes, “Any motion whatsover beats intertia, because inspiration will always be drawn to motion. Make something. Do something. Do anything.” And some sort of inspiration has visited… the next step in narrative abstraction, the next series, maybe called “Themis.” Or not. Or maybe some silly illustrated journaling or un-sellable Metaphoracards. But something, something, to give a little pinch of snuff or spice or something stronger to my daimon.

Metaphoracard “Help”

In Sonoma County, one person in ten describes themselves as some kind of artist. For each one of those, there may be a hundred who want to be. In the meantime, we swim in a polluted ocean of information and mind-waste created by nameless others. (I have just read the excellent novel The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. The book postulates a nightmarish culture where we all must hear everyone’s thoughts, all the time, a decent metaphor for the interweb. Fortunately, in his book, men are more susceptible than women to this infection.)We have become greedy gluttons of instant, fragmented nano-art rather than makers of a modest, enlivening, everyday creation. Everyone wants to be an artist. Gilbert’s Big Magic could help.

Suzanne– and thanks to the talented Adrian Mendoza for the portrait

Suzanne at Art Trails 2015. Photo: Adrian Mendoza

Spiritual Congruency and Road Trips

Road to Ojai Foundation

On our road trips last summer, Scott and I developed an idea we called “spiritual congruence.” Every place, every direction we headed, every style of experience– from rough travel to luxury— moved either toward greater congruity with the flow or time or what was needed… or away from it. For example, spiritual congruence on a camping trip might produce a campsite like this one, on the Olympic National Park peninsula.

This was a campsite that “just happened” to be open in the busiest campground in the National Park, just when we needed it, without reservation.

Behind our campsite, Olympic National Park

We first invented the term when we landed at a cabin that looked great on Yelp, but felt really soulless. It was expensive and unsettling… it was supposed to be the “honeymoon cabin” but it was coldly over-decorated in black and grey, graveyard colors, an attempt at modernity and elegance that failed and became merely frigid and depressing. We had hoped for a cozy, kitschy, pine paneled little place. We were surprised at how disturbing it was. After all, we had weathered true travel crises with equanimity and humor. But the vibe was bad. We started talking about it. There was no congruity with who we were or what we wanted from the trip. We sacrificed a hundred bucks, took the hit, and checked out.

The last time we experienced this deep disquiet, an anxiety bordering on fear, was on another road trip when we were heading to the Badlands of North Dakota. We wanted to see Mount Rushmore. As we drove, an overwhelming oppression enveloped us. It was so profound that we decided to cancel our trip. We checked into a motel, where we both had nightmares all night, and turned right around the next day. Perhaps it was the blood-soaked, coal-ripped country around us, the country of so many Native American massacres. Or maybe the earth itself was bleeding from strip mining.

Spiritual congruence is a flow state where outer world and inner move together. We got up before dawn to go tidepooling on Beach 4; light, water, and tidal treasures.

Sometimes it doesn’t come too easily. We were only 10 miles away from Dungeness Point, yet could not find fresh, cooked, whole crab for a whole week. We only found overpriced restaurants with crab salads and such. I even tried crabbing, with no luck! We finally found a roadside stand after hard searching. We cracked our crab congruency and ate it without butter on paper plates… ahhh.

My yurt at Ojai, with alstromeria I was taking back to plant at home

Ojai, lizard swallowing bug bigger than his head.

Keep Klickitat County Green sign

At my aunt’s beach cottage on Puget Sound, on her porch looking in.

Scott and crab

Near Cape Flattery, Olympic peninsula

Sometimes you can make your own little snail shell world so you can be spiritually congruent on the beach even on a rainy day. This setup of campfire in a can, beach shelter, and lowboy chairs makes even a windy, cold day a beach day.

My beloved “campfire in a can”

I am very interested in those states where, even where there might be discomfort, there is a larger flow or current of rightness, agreement, moving together: spiritual congruency. How can our little lives be folded in like egg whites to the cake batter of the wide and glorious world? I sense it more in travel than in my daily life. But it must exist everywhere, in minor and major states of grace. I think a lot about how to make my life more like the road trip it really is.

Orange wall, purple boots, and an open studi

I am open for Art Trails this year in Studio 33 one more weekend, on October 17 and 18. Come visit. I have the Camino notebook pages up, and have decided to take the plunge and make a book.

A Trace of Gold

A Trace of Gold series at La Crema Tasting Room

Selfie with “Phaistos”

It’s been a summer full of road trips, but my newest show, “A Trace of Gold” is staying put, on view at La Crema tasting room in Healdsburg through September 2015. It has been great to have such an elegant space to display them. I’m told that tasting room patrons have a few glasses of the outstanding Pinot Noir , then take each other’s photos in front of them. Larger scale paintings– these are four foot by five– take you into totally new spaces. You enter the particular alternate universe of that painting in a way different from other work. The broken gold metal leaf catches the light, even in near-darkness. I painted these to try to catch something both fragile and eternal, like our lives.

Over Underworld at La Crema

Suzanne Edminster, The Phaistos, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas, 48 x 60

Right now I’m writing from Mendocino, artful and artsy, charming and pretentious. I’m staying for a night in a watertower art studio– more on that in my next post. This is my third road trip of the summer. Not to stretch the metaphor too much, but larger work is really a bit like travel that takes you into odd worlds. It’s the closest we have to time and space travel through wormholes. The brush is your vehicle, jalopy or spaceship. Now I really have stretched that metaphor to the breaking point. Next post will be the real road trips. Don’t disembark yet.

Lucid Art Foundation: Critique as Mentorship

Suzanne Edminster

It’s easy to make fun of abstract artists. You only have to watch some TV to see the cultural perspective on abstraction. In sitcoms, Hal from Malcolm in the Middle throws so much paint on a canvas in his garage that the whole painted surface crumbles off in a paint avalanche.

Hal as abstract artist

In Grace and Frankie, a recent Netflix sitcom, space cadet Frankie (Lily Tomlin) paints two dots on a canvas and stares at those two dots for three days, stuck. (This fictional studio led Tomlin’s co-star Jane Fonda into trying painting and ceramics.) And in Mad Men, Don buys a painting, under pressure, and sits wondering what it is and whether he’s been conned. (This painting was created by my friend Karina Nishi Marcus.)

No one really can tell you what abstraction is. You’re doing this passionate, ridiculous, solitary, incomprehensible, contemplative, snake-oil-salesman of a job. Who can advise you? Where can you go for professional critique or discourse outside an MFA program?

This Saturday I loaded up my ancient truck with 4 paintings, all large, two new and two older. I had been accepted as a participant in an ongoing seminar sponsored by the Lucid Art Foundation. The seminar was held at The Dance Palace at Point Reyes Station, a renovated church in an idyllic setting. It’s not a painting seminar: it’s critique provided by professor and painter Jeremy Morgan.

Morgan verbally examines and critiques your paintings. I found it more of a mentoring process. Much of the critique is devoted to sources and origins, or possible artists to research that might have resonate with your own style. In this way the critique widens its viewpoint from the art at hand to encompass an expanse of history and connections. His examination leads not so much back into the paintings as outward from them into the next possibilities. My critique took about 35 minutes. Three people were critiqued in the three hour segment.

All participants were handed index cards to write their own notes or observations for the painter. At the end of the critique, these cards were handed to the artist. This allows the whole group to participate, but not interrupt the critique. Some of my cards are shown below, but it was really the critique from Jeremy that felt like a light shining into my process. I felt my art had been seen. And looking at others’ art for a long stretch of time felt both intense and satisfying. We so seldom spend more than a half an hour just being with a painting, unless you’re the one painting it.

Comments on my work from other artists at the seminar

This reminded me of my arts education in poetry. I studied in the New College of California Poetics program with poets Diane di Prima, David Meltzer, and Robert Duncan (partner of the artist Jess), and others. The poets chose NOT to teach in a creative writing format. Instead, the classes were devoted to examination of poets and their root sources. It was assumed that if you were a writer, you would write, independent of a program. Instead they wanted to offer the heart of their practices, their source material: myth, Kabbalah, deconstruction, archaic history, visual arts, Hermeticism, alchemy, other poets, natural history. These were the only treasure they could bring us; the rest was up to us. Poetry is the most abstract of the written arts. In a strange way, this odd education equipped me to enter the wilderness of non-objective painting.

Robert Duncan and Jess

Point Reyes Station is idyllic. I went with Nishi. Before the class we hit a bookstore and went cheese tasting at the Cowgirl Creamery, where I bought Red Hawk and membrillo, which I had not tasted since Spain. The day was beautiful. The town borders lagoons, meadows, riparian forests, and everything is walkable. At sunset, eating sandwiches in front of the view, we both said that Turner would have been right at home, notebook out, getting that Claude Lorrain smudge of eucalyptus on the windy horizon.

Point Reyes Station Barn

Find more information on the Lucid Art seminar with Jeremy Morgan.

The Goose Game: Painting by Chance

Suzanne Edminster

I decided to compose two large abstract paintings for The Goose Game series using rolls of the dice and the old European board game, the Goose Game. I’d let chance dictate the process.

I used notebook pages and wrote either thematic or painterly elements in a list , randomly numbering them 2 to 12 to correspond with dice rolls.

You can see it’s a real mix: all the way from “use neocolors” to “holy spirit.” This way of working does have a lineage. John Cage used the I Ching to compose music, notably “Music of Changes”, including the notorious Roaring Silence segment. I found out about this during the eighties in New College, San Francisco, where a teacher, either Robert Duncan or Duncan McNaughton, friends of poet and musician Lou Harrison, who apparently also used the I Ching to compose, brought it up in class. Less known is that John Cage also used it to compose prints, monoprints and lithographs, during the seventies, at the end of his life.

The best article on this I’ve found on John Cage and his use of the I Ching is on S J Marshall’s fine site, Calling Crane in the Shade . For painting, I found the process beautifully meditative. Quiet and slow, it let each element unfold by itself until I was done with it, with little anxiety or the press of “I could do this, I could change that.” Most important, it gave comfort to be rid of the tumult of “What should I do?”

It was calming and centering to give away the control to a larger element, as I did when I was walking the Camino de Santiago. The Goose Game is an ancient European board game that has many metaphors for pilgrimage, which is why I chose it. This all sounds so odd. I find it interesting that abstract composers and artists are drawn to chance in creation. Something larger moves through us.

I’ll be happy to share more about my process at the opening of The Goose Game, Friday May 1st, 2015, 5-8 PM, in the Backstreet Gallery. I’m located down Art Alley in SOFA Santa Rosa. I’ll give an artist talk at 7 PM. You can play the Goose Game if you visit.

Suzanne Edminster, Wind Over Water, The Goose Game Series. Acrylic and gold metal leaf on canvas, 45 x 60.

Turner at the Getty Center, Sketching, and Other L.A. Adventures

Suzanne Edminster

Some days are generous, magnanimous in their gifts of beauty. We spent last Sunday in Los Angeles at the Getty Center for the amazing show of Turners on loan from the Tate, Painting Set Free. The sweep, majesty, and freedom of expression in this exhibit was exhilarating. No photos were allowed, but we did do a little portrait by a poster, below.

Turner goats

The exhibit was an entire education in painting. I was surprised to find many late Turners with overtly mythical themes. I was more used to seeing Turner as a sort of visual journalist: the steam train, the fire, the storm, and so on. The allegorical paintings were fantasies constructed from elements of his imagination rather than “real” landscapes, closer to Claude Lorrain’s beautiful, improbable visions, and often were linked to lines of epic poetry he was reading. Because they weren’t “real,” you could see how he played with his favorite elements….. the black smudge tree, a centrifugal swirl, the blue rectangle mountain. The landscape was never literal and the gods very subtle; the Zeus and Europa painting had no bull and barely a maiden. It’s no news that Turner, when unrestrained, condensed many motifs down to a beautiful abstraction.

We both enjoyed the Sample Studies,watercolors he did as prototypes for larger pieces to be painted for patrons to order. You’d choose the one you liked best and he’d do it on up for you.

A Turner Sample Study, Watercolor

Any painting could grow and change organically at any point. At times he submitted extremely rough paintings to the Academy and literally finished them on Varnishing Day. I enjoyed details I had never seen before: his animals, the characteristic smudge of a foreground tree, a focal point exactly at the center of composition. The whole effect of Turner after Turner was breathtaking. We gawked like the flamingos we had seen at the Los Angeles Zoo the day before.

The Getty Center has a Sketching Room where, in the manner of old, one can copy masterpieces. You’re provided with a drawing bench, a board, and materials. I wish they had more variety, but I chose The Allegory of Magnaminity by Giordano. People wandered in. It seems the general museum public is shocked and amazed at the actual making of a sketch in a museum by normal people. There were 10 drawing stations and they were all full. We sketchers became the exhibit!

Giordano Painting I copied

I used the conte and charcoal, then watercolor from my travel kit.

Suzanne Edminster, sketch at Getty Center

We ended up at the Armand Hammer Museum of UCLA. It’s an often-missed contemporary art museum that was a knockout. Nestled in Westwood, it has an intimate feeling. Both museums were free, another treat. Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 was an interesting conceptual show. We were lucky enough to catch the artist in person giving a talk. In my own words, his work is based on playing with and revealing various systems of interpreting visual information. The data that comprised “tree” could be translated by assigning numerical or other values into a grid, a musical notation, or a graph. All of our perceptions are based on a sensory translation of information. He makes his alternate translation visible.

The cultural wildlife was varied: allegorical lions, Turner goats, grid trees, and real flamingos. Only in L.A.!

Experimental Monotype Step by Step

Monotypes are odd birds, strange fruit. It’s not a painting, yet not reproducible. It can’t clone, but emits ghosts, flickering between positive and negative images. Since it’s almost purely process, and resists planned end results, it’s an artist’s playground. Here’s my process to make one print, step by step.

These are Akua intaglio Inks, made with soy oil for easy clean up. My glass worktop is an old shower door recycled by my husband. The plate you see above is 18″ x 26″, thin plastic from TAPP. I’ve inked it up with warm colors and a few dark marks to get me started. I used an etching press for the prints.

Above, the first run from the plate. Below, another run, with magenta added for depth.

Now I press on a goose I carved with a Dremel engraver and etching needles on a plastic plate.

On the right you can see “brayer geese” from running the brayer over the plate and transfering it. Ghost geese! Then, the strange point where Chance takes her hand to the process happened. I wanted to add a dark layer in my next transfer. I spread random lines of dark ink and picked it up with a large roller. The rounded pattern ended up looking like bird and egg forms! I had just seen a Motherwell at the DeYoung and was reminded of his use of dark form over light.

Here you can see the plexiglass plate set over the paper so I could get an idea of what it might look like. Strange, but I found it compelling, so I rolled it through the press.

Suzanne Edminster, monotype, Goose Game

Finished! At the same time, I had been working on another. Both of these were done with the same plate. I just kept wiping the plate and applying more colors in different variations. Here is the second monotype in the series.

It’s exhilarating to be aligned for a moment to the unpredictable processes of making.

Creative Manifestos and Monolithic Maidens

The “creative manifesto” is a popular idea right now. You’ll find a good variety, and they’re fun. But I have a problem with the word manifesto, which has a political agenda. A manifesto is to unite a group under a banner, to inspire. I suggest a creative “declaration”, from the old Latin, to make clear. The root has implications of brightness, to call out clarity, to make a contract– thus “declaring” taxes. It is a commitment, not a call to action.

Rather than another bullet point list, it’s challenging to try to condense your artist statement into a sentence or two. This should be a statement that will always return you to the authentic reason why you make art.

“My creativity feels like a divine gift to me, and I honor the gift by making my art about Spirit. I want to express the numinous quality of life, where the elements of nature and the stories and the stones and the places of power come alive and speak to us on a deeper level. ” Caren Catterall

“I paint from a longing to give form to what is hidden, even to me, until I paint it.” Susan Cornelis

“I work spontaneously to grow paintings as Nature creates, looking through the visible world to the undercurrents of inner forces.” Karina Nishi Marcus

And mine:

“I explore archaic worlds to forge ancient metaphor into contemporary vision.” Suzanne Edminster

As Americans, we can’t hear the word “declaration” without the word “independence” implied. But these concise declarations, with their brevity, clarity and commitment, are at the foundation of creative structure. Fuzzy, overused “creativity” differs from demanding, grounded creation, where the spark is made, however imperfectly, manifest.

A thanks to Melanie at Catbird Quilt Studio for bringing up the idea of creative manifesto!

Art from Art

In Santa Rosa Junior College’s beautiful print show, 30 Years of SRJC Printmaking, I came on students doing drawings of Caren Catterall’s Giantess series of prints. They drew in the manner of illustrated journaling, with notes and impressions on the page along with the sketches. Art ripples out. You can see the prints on Caren’s website.

Students at SRJC drawing from Caren Catterall prints

Art Critique 101

On Saturday I and a group of around 30 others paid a fee to see three fine painters critique a group of mostly-amateur paintings. Paintings were lined up along the walls. The group– Marc Perlman, Chester Arnold and Frances McCormack-– selected paintings to bring on stage. The audience eavesdropped on their three-way conversation about each piece. It was an interesting, unusual event that I had never seen outside an art class.

My painting was not chosen. I offer some random takeaways from the event, and a few impressions.

Framing counts. Never use garage sale frames. Never ever, even if they “fit.” If you respect your piece, either hang it unframed or design a new frame for it.
Just because you have an emotional connection to a surface doesn’t mean it helps the painting. One good pop art work was painted on a piece of wood from a crate. True, the crate had come from France and the Louvre, but the nail holes weren’t doing the painting any good. Your emotional attachment does not make a difference to the viewer.
Composition, color, design, content, meaning and drawing were discussed, but much of the time they talked materials. Inferior materials can sink a painting. Buy the best you can.
One really cannot defend a less-successful work if you bring it out in public, because the public decides on its success. Give your paintings a chance by using good materials.
One good painting was still wet. The wetness dominated the critique of the painting, smearing black paint all over Mark Perlman’s hands. One element out of place can keep the viewer from appreciating your work.
One painting was an exact copy of a Cezanne. The critics’ consensus seemed to be that if you wish to learn through copying, copy a hundred paintings , not just one. Really do it and allow yourself to learn.
If you are doing a genre painting, such as a sort of linear, geometric, Mondrian-type abstraction, it helps to imitate the absolutely flat and smooth surface generally found in such paintings. Heavy impasto and imprecise lines don’t belong to that type of painting. Lobsters are good, so are strawberries, but you don’t want to mash them together.

I would add, however awkward, stand by your paintings, like Tammy Wynette singing “Stand by your Man.” Criticism has a place. My mentor always said that he painted for other painters. Never, ever paint because you think you might know what someone might like or approve of. Stand by your paintings, but you don’t necessarily have to show, or keep, every one. It’s only one point in an endless timeline of process.

I so appreciated the kind yet keen remarks of the commentors. Never did they deride a work of art or cross the line into condescension.

Aspen, Suzanne Edminster

My own painting I had to criticize myself. It’s not the one at the top of the post, or the one at the side here, but one in a series in gold metal leaf that is quite similar. I didn’t get a good enough photo of it to post, as the gold metal leaf makes it difficult to photograph. Anyway, the negatives: careless, poorly conceived, not enough surface field depth or variety of line– too superficial. The positives: use of an interesting material, strong sense of gesture and movement, and good composition with interesting colors.

I am primarily self-taught and thus self-critiqued. I’m not sure I could have lived through four years of this in art school. What are your responses to critique and criticism?

Stand by your art.

Afternote: Satri Pencak kindly cited my blog. She has a fine curatorial website. I appreciate her discerning take on events and artists in Sonoma County.

Camino Collection and Corrick’s Culture

For this post I’ve decided to back carefully out of the darker underworld of the Screwtape for Artists letters, and turn to brighter horizons. I’ve gathered my Camino de Santiago posts from last year into one chronological story for you. The photos give me a little spirit whiff again of wheat fields, wine, virgins, horizons. For a moment I was back in the land of blossoms and boots, mazes and muses. I hope you enjoy them.

I have a show hosted by the lovely people at Corricks featuring Sonoma County Art Trails artists. It’s me and the amazing Joel Bennett. Hope you can make it on Friday, if you’re in the area. Spring is almost here, a good time to consider your upcoming pilgrimage, wherever it may take you. Suzanne

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 4: Deserving

Goose Game, Suzanne Edminster

For new readers, you can find an introduction to the Screwtape for Artists letters here.

My Dear Wormseed,

Excellent work lately, my friend. The Artist/Subject’s vague sense of victimization– our beloved martyred feeling, so handy for invisible destruction– is well under way. The joyous act of artmaking is actually quite difficult to martyrize, but you are doing a good job here. Humans make art under the most horrendous conditions. Art is a pernicious vermin that invades everywhere and is hard to stamp out.

Here’s a tip: remember that the coffin of the complaining victim is constructed with the nails of DESERVE. Whenever the Artist seems to move forward with energy, pound another DESERVING nail into that brainpan. She DESERVES a break, a cookie, an afternoon off, a cappuccino, to procrastinate just one more day. Here the DESERVE acts as a somehow “earned” reward. The more DESERVING, the less creating.

I am so glad that we have managed to sever the word from it’s original root, which has no “built-in” reward. It simply means to serve completely or fully. The Heroic Artist was very good for our cause in the 20th century: all those tortured men smoking and drinking and screwing themselves to death because they deserved it as artists. In the 21st century the women are taking the helm of the arts, and a new technique for destruction, victimization or the martyr impulse, must be assiduously and viciously cultivated.

In contagion,
Your scabrous Mentor,
Screwtape

Letter 1, Letter 2 and Letter 3.

The Goose Game

The Goose Game is a series of 63 monoprints and monotypes based on my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. The Goose Game is also a European child’s board game similar to Chutes and Ladders with 63 squares. It may have been a mnemonic device used by the Templars to give illiterate medieval pilgrims a “map” to guide them. Forms of this labyrinth-style board game may stretch back to ancient Greece, where the legend is that Greek soldiers invented it to while away time on the beach during their ten-year siege on Troy.

Monoprint Making

I’m new to monoprint, but I have noticed that it seems to have a pronounced time element embedded into it. Once it runs through the press once, or twice, it is largely fixed, set, done. You get the feeling that each run of the press is a literal compression and limitation of energy, like the joint in a stalk of bamboo.

The press bed presents a threshold of before (the roller pressure) and after. In a metaphorical way, each print could be seen as a dream from the “bed” of the press, with traces remaining and fading.

We are at a hinge in time right now, the Lunar New Year before the Spring Equinox. This is my post 100, and I hope for a hundred more. I wish you good dreams in the year to come.

Ancient Egyptian Blue: How the World’s First Synthetic Pigment Is Producing Tomorrow’s Brave—and Colorful–New World

Just for fun, a news flash on the first known ancient synthetic pigment from Egypt. It hovers between aquamarine and lapis. Even sculptures from the Parthenon show traces of it. Now I have to pull myself away from youtube videos of snoring hummingbirds and ruby-eyed lavender boas. Have a great weekend.

AntiquityNOW

Have you ever noticed that the AntiquityNOW website has splashes of a particular set of vibrant colors? Perhaps you’ve even found the Our Colors section on our site that reveals the ancient history behind our beauteous array. One color, specifically the deep blue, is particularly intriguing with its 4,500-year-old past, its surprising relevance for today’s scientific inquiry and its future promise for such fields as medicine and communications technology.

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Chekhov’s Ashtray

Goose Game series, Suzanne Edminster

“Always remember the famous story of Anton Chekhov, who, when asked about his compositional method, picked up an ashtray and said, ‘This is my compositional method. Tomorrow I will write a story called ‘The Ashtray.'”

Anton Chekhov, from the book Cartooning by Ivan Brunetti

As a former smoker, ashtrays are fascinating fossils from a past life. What a great prompt, though: write or create art based on memories of ashtrays. I love this book by Brunetti, part of my interest in the uncharted land where word meets image. Why are comics seen as lowbrow? Doesn’t it take twice as much skill to write a graphic novel as a “real” one? What is so not-fine-art about cartooning? Will an artist who writes, or a writer who arts, inevitably be separated out into “better writer” or “better artist?” Not that I care. Much.

Sometimes the random is all we need.

I’ve added Cartooning to my short shelf of astonishing books on creativity, applicable to any art form. Here’s the last paragraph.

“Although you have no control over the future, you have control over what your are creating right now, and if what you create is honest, it will be compelling. Whether or not it is truly good will be decided long after you are dead. But if you hedge your bets, compromise, prevaricate… are are lost. Something has to be at stake, a part of you has to die and be reborn into your work, if it is to ‘live’ on that sheet of paper, cave wall, or assemblage of pixels. In the end, all we can do is try our best. We are none of us perfect.”

Ivan Brunetti

A Wild Goose Chase and Mr. Turner

Goose Game monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I’ve making experimental monoprints in a series I call the Goose Game. All artists are on a wild goose chase, pursuing an ever-vanishing Muse. There’s no sense to it. Even inventors, or artists of function, have to get lost repeatedly, fumbling in the darkness, before the light goes on. Abstraction, or any creating from nothing, is just plain crazy.

I had a chop made in the form of a rubber stamp. The symbols mean goose, board game, luck, art. A Shakespearean origin of the term “wild goose chase” said it was a kind of horse event where the leader swerved crazily around and the rest of the riders had to follow him. We follow our instincts up the mountain and into the muck and over continents, with the wild goose.

I just saw the film Mr. Turner, and I am so glad I did. He was on a wild goose chase of a new vision of land, water and air, though he was often reviled. Some people say “nothing happens” in the film. Nothing happens, except life. He coughs through bitter winters, scribbling in notebooks, attacking the canvas, day after day until death. We walk with him through vast horizons and empty beaches; never again will we see these views so free of humanity. This film shows the big belly, humble scratching. and wide horizon of Turner’s creation. It’s a treat. Everything happens.

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 3: On Originality

Monotype experiment, Suzanne Edminster

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Stormy weather outside, for California, that is. There’s a beautiful grey light against the too-early bloom of the magnolia petals outside the classroom door.

This C.S. Lewis quote really spoke to me, especially as I flounder about in a new media for a while. Reduced to the status of a beginner, questions of originality pale against simple technical ignorance. As I get older, I feel less unique and special, less original, as a person. I share experience with so many, and, as and adult, know it.

Dear Wormseed,

Congratulations on the recent sale of the Gauguin for 300 million dollars. A flood of artists will feel discouraged in their own art, and the price obscures the painting itself completely, making it nearly impossible to view with fresh eyes. Corruption rules!

The Subject-Artist recently proposed making a tableau of dream images. This is very dangerous, as these inner vapors carry far too much information and spirit, and may speak to others as well. Keep her in the familiar territory of easily understood beauty, like your recent Artist-Subject Thomas Kincaid. You earned a sizeable bonus on him, did you not?

You are on still on shaky ground with the daily studio visits. You must redouble your efforts to keep her away, or you will feel the consequences. Keep your team on the streets with graffiti– it was brilliant to unify the art impulse with vandalism. Keep it up.

In Venom–

Screwtape

Archived: Letter 1 and Letter 2

A Heavenly Lake of Beer: St. Brigid’s Day Blessing

I publish this each year at this time to remind us of great lakes of beer, lambs, groundhogs, milkmaids, and miracles. This includes St. Brigid’s Blessing, well worth reading. Tired of groundhog day? Celebrate St. Brigid instead.

Saint Patrick, meet your better half!

Brigid is a jolly saint of babies, poets, cows, scholars, travelers, and beer (the last attribution mine). She’s a vernal saint associated with the green fire of rising spring energy. Her Day is February 2, Imbolc. In Celtic mythology this the beginning of pre-spring, lambing, and lactation… birth and milk in the animal folk. She is a patron Saint of milk and milk givers, beast and human.

Groundhog Day was formerly Bear Day. It’s time for us all to come out of the winter hibernation now. Artists, this means you. And in this year of drought, a bit of St. Brigid’s spring rain would be very healing.

She studied under St. Patrick, founded her own convent, and tended the poor. Some– I am one– think that she surpassed him in his time.

I often do series cow series that I associate with her, but what I love about her is this list of her best and deepest wishes for the world. Read through to the last two lines, then get yourself a brewsky.

I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.

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Screwtape for Artists, Letter 2: Studio Time

Goose Game series monoprint, Suzanne Edminster

I decided to ask my artist friend Karina Nishi Marcus to join me in a studio time game. From January 30 to February 14, we’re going into our studios every day. The only rule is to walk in and touch something. That’s it. We’re curious what effect that it may have on our productivity. We do email check ins to report without judgement how we’re doing. I’ll let you know how it goes. Care to join us?

Here’s the second Screwtape letter for artists. In case you have just joined me, you can read the introduction to the letter series here. It is a letter to the demon Wormseed, who’s trying to capture the Artist’s soul.

My Stygian colleague Wormseed,

The situation with the Artist grows worse and worse. Each day she enters her studio, your goal fades like the bright colors of the Old Masters or the wild painting on Greek columns. You, Wormseed, have been assigned to suffer Inquisition Number 25631 to remind you to keep working harder. It won’t end soon enough. If only you could succeed as well as the your brother Ifrit did recently in the book burnings. Murdering books is the most delicious snack after eating souls.

I’m afraid you may have to concede defeat on keeping her out of the studio, a tactic which worked so well for so long. Now you must concentrate on subtleties. Early exposure of immature work is a sure-fire way to shut off the tap. Refusal to “practice the scales” of repetitive trials is also good. Perfectionism is a superbly subtle dagger… it bleeds out their disgusting passion for making in a very satisfactory manner.

I see you have activated the string of disquieting dreams that used to derail her from her work in the past. Even those seem to be ineffective: she’s broken their code and now know that they mean she is creating something new. However, a good nightmare or emotional crisis can go quite far. Just don’t let her make any art from them, or the jig is up.

I hope for your sake that you make more progress soon. A molecule of your diabolical existence vanishes each time a brush stroke or line is applied to paper, a reversed Dorian Grey. ( You were involved with him as well, though Oscar escaped us at the end, and after such a promising start. ) I have my faceted fly eye upon you. Do not fail again.

Your ball and chain,

Screwtape

P.S. Despite our continual efforts at the destruction of beauty, new painted caves continue to be found, obscured masterpieces restored. To offset this, the internet offers so many new opportunities for degrading artists, especially if they identify with digital “fame.” The hand of the artist is chopped off and dismembered from the Work, carried out to sea in an exquisite virtual tsunami of mediocrity. Divide et impera!

Screwtape for Artists, Letter 1

Suzanne Edminster, mixed media on paper

The Screwtape Letters, written by C.S. Lewis in 1942, is a series of wickedly funny and ominous letters from a higher demon, Screwtape, to a sub-demon, Wormword, who is in charge of corrupting a human soul or “patient.” Of late, it has been fashionable to read of “gremlins” who want to steal your creativity, block you, and so on. I’ve never been fond of the word gremlin. It’s actually a 20th century coinage used for mechanical problems on airplanes, and is “imaginary.” It trivializes and reduces temptation to a cute, manageable, pet-like critter and whitewashes the tempters’ fierce battle for your art.

Artists deal with the shadow; it comes with the territory. But I think we need to correctly name our underworld enemy, and honor it with a measure of gravitas. In this spirit I have hacked the cosmic mailbox to expose some new Screwtape letters for artists, written to a certain Wormseed, who has been assigned the soul of my art. Read the original: it’s a fresh as ever today. I write these to discover what I might have to say to myself about my life and art.

My dear Wormseed,

I see you have been making good progress with the Artist. She’s slowly slipping into a low-key despair, which is always a highly desirable state. Since the advent of the Internet, which I had a large role in creating, your job is so much easier! In some senses, the progress from the medieval artisan to the 21st “artist” has been our major achievement in the Arts. Ironic, isn’t it, that those stone masons, as hungry and poor as they were, accurately carved our likenesses as gargoyles. Portraiture was not dead! Despite oppression and all the fabulous corruption of that Church, they were often closer to escaping us than the sleekly fed, well-medicated artists of today. The Cathedral of Technology holds so many new opportunities for us!

But I digress. I see she’s starting a new project. This is your chance to make more progress. Please amplify the level of distraction in her life. A turn to “reality”– money, job, status, looks, and so on– is one of the best methods we know, because it is so supported by the society at large. Involve her in her own reality show drama, as opposed to her actual life. By all means, keep her from daily walks and home cooked meals, as these fortify her, stopping up those wonderful chinks and holes through which we enter. And DO NOT LET HER OPEN JOURNALS OR SKETCHBOOKS. As soon as she creates even one word or line, our power begins to ebb.

If you keep her in this state of stasis, you will soon see a satisfactory decay. Best of luck to you. Sorry about the turn to non-toxic materials in her studio. You can’t win them all.

Your Master,

Screwtape

On Value and Being Seen

This is an amazing blog by the extremely perceptive Summer Pierre. Her “three reasons” were a gift to me that helped clarify why I am an artist. Her notes on commissions, pleasing others, and the Internet are invaluable. This was republished by WordPress in freshly pressed and recieved a lot of well-deserved attention. Enjoy.

Paper Pencil Life

Longtime reader Sarah asked in the comments on my post about Edith Pearlman if I could share my thoughts on how I skate the inevitable line of doing work for work sake and doing work to be seen. To which I say:

Oh boy–how much time do you have?

Every artist I know struggles with this dynamic–don’t you? Isn’t this at the very core of wanting a life in the arts? You have something to say and don’t you want someone to hear it/see it? This seems like a very simple idea, though we know it is not. The minute someone DOES hear/see/notice your work is when things get really FUNKY.

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Leaning Into Twenty Fifteen

I am leaning into the curve of 2015. In November I dressed up my studio to honor lights in the darkness by decorating paper lanterns for Winterblast, solstice, and Christmas. I respond strongly to the annual winter darkness, and I’ve heard many other artists say this too. It’s a time of a lot of inspiration seeds or acorns stored to use later in the year. (Don’t hide them so well you can’t find them, though.) I chose two themes, Cave and Matisse. One is glowing in the dark recesses of the past, and one is jumping with color into the future. There’s a link to my instructions for making them at the end.

Cave and Matisse Lanterns

I did a lot of family things this year. It’s easy to overvalue the things that “show” and are visible. Visual artists do this all the time. Home, family, the elders, and ancestors are the deep roots that feed us, invisibly. I cooked a goose and that was very complicated indeed, but was delicious. It was called “roast beef” in the past because the sliced goose is brown and really does taste like beef. And why not? Geese are land grazers, the cows of the bird world. I did this as an edible metaphor to kick off my work on my new series for 2015, The Goose Game. The Christmas goose is eaten, though wishbone, stock and fat are left– the old ways. Come on over and I’ll roast potatoes in goose fat for you– I got that hint from a 1940s James Beard cookbook and they are amazing.

My Goose is Cooked and a Cat Likes It Just Fine

I’ll be starting a Goose Game monotype series soon, using Akua soy inks and etching press. You can come along for the ride: I’ll be posting process photos and blogs. January is coming to an end and a new year is unfurling like a fern frond. Lean into that spiral. Here are Saltworkstudio’s lantern instructions. Enjoy.

From Camino to Collaboration

Four Hands Painting Exhibit Information and Facebook Invitation
Dear Friends,

This is a belated thank-you note for following me on my Camino journey, both inner and outer. Many of you have asked how the Camino has changed me. I am just three months out of it now, and have resumed my art life. Events have “followed fast and followed faster,” as Edgar Allen Poe would say.

What changes are showing up at this point after the Camino? I feel lighter and more complete with my life as it is. I am more able to celebrate who I am, rather than mourning who or what I don’t have, or focusing overmuch on my mistakes. This change seems subtle but profound. I have created some new paintings, filled with gold leaf and gold light, that may have emerged from the many gilded churches of Spain. Projects are coming to completion, including the Four Hands Painting collaboration with knockout artist and close friend Susan Cornelis. Our show is called The Golden Thread– the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth.

It’s not all sweetness and light, though. My world seems to be full of beautiful, artistic women who have contracted cancer. If I were the kind of person who reads omens– and you know I am– I would say that life is issuing a kind of Carpe Diem announcement, a Tempus Fugit warning. I remember the wonderful Franciscan chapel of Rome filled with little skulls and hourglasses of time flying by, made of browned bones mounted on sky-blue crypt walls. Scott and I visited this crypt, and I was surprised at the beauty and delicacy of the art. Part of my life feels like this.. a skull with butterfly wings.

So what’s it to be? Bliss or bones or golden thread, skull or butterfly wings, or some delicate combination of all these?

I’m glad to be on the road with you again. This time, the road is my life. Yours, Suzanne

My Camino Experience

I´m heading out of this gorgeous station in Porto, Portugal to catch an overnight train to Madrid, a sleeper. I can count on the fingers of one hand my overnight trains– once to Paris, once to Cochin in South India, and now once to Madrid. There is always a romance to it, even if it´s just a little sleeping berth. I want to wind up my Camino posts to you. I am not really sure I can answer all your questions. The ones about art and change will have to play out in the future.

I talked for a long time to Koos, a South African now living in Switzerland. He hiked from Geneva to Logrono, Spain… 1200 km? A long way, anyway. He did not finish the Camino in a classical sense, yet I was struck by our similarities in experience.

What I want to say to you is this. On the Camino, every day is like a world. Koos and I both had the experience of worlds of thought and contemplation opening through the walking. I see each day of the Camino like a drop of clear water teeming with event, yet magnifying a certain aspect of thought. Connections are made. You are walking in nature, so it´s healthy; beauty and your physical movement work together to support you. Only connect. It´s better, for me, than writing in a notenook or talking to someone.

It´s as if you walk further into your purpose. We lack the time for contemplation in our lives. Walking is one way to give that time back. I believe it makes a difference that we name it a pilgrimage, and to do it for a month or more. The historical and religious resonance supports us and makes it sacred. Everyone gets something different according to their needs; my insights might interest you, but they won´t be yours.

I´m winding up my trip now and may not write again, but I may store away some impressions for you from the Prado. I doubt I can walk through the world´s great museums as gracefully as I did through the days of the Camino, but I can try.

We both had the experience of childhood memories comin g up. Thereºs time to really think about them. You are supported by the activity, so the deep emotions can come up and go through you as you walk. Many people report memories. And you slowly have the chance to observe how you order your world, to take little signs and signals from nature, or from the Great Mind, or God.

My next door neighbor Neil is walking the Pacific Crest Trail for five months. I wonder if the experience is similar?

We both carried with us a list of three goals. They are private: I won´t share them with you, and he didn´t share his with me. Slowly, as you carry these things with you as you might an object in your backpack, they may transform. New metaphors, meanings, and interpretations of your life occur, all within the great open book of nature.

I think it´s important that we name it a pilgrimage. ^The historical and religious resonances support us and gives it a lovely weight. And it´s important to go for a month or more.

I went with the love, support, and daily Facetime conversations with my husband Scott. Scott, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

Thank you to my readers and those who have responded. You are part of my proof of a gloriously generous universe. Suzanne

Camino Questions, Part One

I think I opened Pandora´s box when I asked for questions! Here we go. I´m loving Porto… parts of it remind me of Naples. And it´s warm, so to sit out on the roof terrace at night, surrounded by lights, is a great pleasure. The first photo in the post is from the terrace at night; I´ve enjoyed three nights of this.

Was there anything you would have done differently to prepare for the Camino?

I think I was okay with my prep. I started training in January for a June departure. The best thing I did was to learn how to use trekking poles properly. This sounds simple, but it´s not intuitive. Though I´ve had an ACL operation on my left knee, and my ankles are vulnerable, I had no trouble at all with joints or muscles. I used little leather kayaking fingerless gloves with the poles and that enabled me to use the pole straps easily and well. I saw a lot of people using two poles improperly. Don’t bother to buy them right before your trip. If you don´t practice with them so you are comfortable, it will provide no benefit. In the future I would BRING A SMALLER PACK. I found that my 45 liter plus pack was on the large side. Everyone always brings too much gear and has to leave some behind. I was so jealous of people with smaller packs. Mine, however, was smaller than some. Don´t go for superlight weight at the expense of comfort. Do not bring anything that is the slightest bit uncomfortable. Don´t bring dressup clothes… you won´t use them, not even a skirt. Buy something new when the Camino is over. Ladies, one nice scarf, one pair of earrings (I broke two pairs underway) or your one piece of jewelry, and a lipstick or eyeliner will make you feel like a queen.

The best things I brought was my iphone, a Joby Gorilla bendy tripod with a phone holder, and a full-sized Brookstone folding wireless keyboard. I didn’t need an ipad with this setup, and I didn’t need a camera. It also made strangers come up to me all the time and take notes on the setup! I brought a semilarge sketchbook and was happy with that, a small set of watercolors. I liked having a sarong along as a towel, privacy shield, scarf, skirt, blanket, picnic blanket, and so on. Many Europeans carry a smaller pack and a larger waistpack. I used a larger moneybelt in front, under my shirt for easy access, for passport, credit cards, cash and phone. You may not like the look of a waistpack, but they are secure and very practical. Don´t carry your phone in your pocket, loose. Zip it away routinely somewhere.

Hey folks, the Camino is COLD in the summer. Bring an extra layer. I would bring a light Merino wool top and leggings…. spiffy long underwear… at any season. I only brought one pair of pants and the leggings… worked well. By cold, I mean in the 40s and 50s. Even if you don´t use them in the warmer parts, you will in the mountains and Galicia. To really prep, you have to hike a lot with your pack and your boots, with a fully loaded pack and poles. By the way, I wore runners, and did okay, but I wish I had taken boots. This was not necessarily for ankle support, but because parts of the trail are quite rough and stony underfoot.I felt I had to be careful as I walked of the bottoms of my feet. But you have to decide for yourself. I had two blisters once, then not one other the whole trip.

BRING A GOOD PAIR OF WALKING SANDALS as your alternates. I took adjustable Tevas. Don´t bring flipflops… I met at least 4 people who threw them out and had to buy better sandals in Spain, because your feet swell and can need pampering and support after walking. I also enjoyed having a somewhat hardier daypack than the ultra super flimsy ones… I got a packable one by Eagle Creek. Also, all the Europeans have little ultralight synthetic sleeping bags that pack to the size of a liter of water. They are not common here, but my Marmot nanowave 55 was quite similar. Your sleeping bag should weigh under two pounds. If you are older, or a larger person, your pack will be bigger. I bought an Altus poncho, which is a raincoat with a hump in the back that goes over your pack, in Spain, and I loved it. They are not made commonly in the USA yet. You can buy an Altus and a sleeping bag in Europe before you start.

Take MORE TIME and more money than you think you need. This is standard travel advice, of course, but be willing to be flexible with what your ideas are for the Camino. You probably will want to or have to change plans. I didnºt reserve anywhere and was glad. You can always use booking.com a couple of days before. Walk at your own pace. You´ll see folks doing 40 or even 50 kilometers a day. Let them. Use your smarts and intuition to tell you where to start and end.

Is it better to go alone or with another? It depends, of course, but I have so say that for sheer contemplative time, going alone is great. You have to be in tune with your hiking partner. Many women go alone. It is just interesting to go alone with your thoughts and your conversations with the Beyond. It is very safe for women, especially if you are not in the first bloom of youth. Apples and oranges, alone or together: It´s your Camino. Most useful gear: a set of around 8 large safety pins to use as clothespins, and an elastic travel washline. You need the pins to keep your clothes on the line when thery´re hanging out a third story window or whipping around in an alpine wind, and you can use the pins to pin the still damp clothes to the outside of your pack. I prefer thick hiking socks and they take a long time to dry. I took a small shred of beatup towel to use first to dry my body, then throw on the slippery floor to stand on. All the showers are tile and tend to be dangerously slippery. I carried a regular old bandana everywhere and used it for so many things. Often bathrooms have no soap or paper towels.

Mentally or emotionally, what would I have left behind? It´s easy to whip out pat answers to this one. You need a lot of patience with yourself and others, and to leave judgement of yourself or others behind. I saw a lot of folks get into trouble with a competitive feeling, especially when you´re older and less fit and comparing yourself to athletic youngsters. But I will rant a bit about an attitude that caused me personal problems. This may not sound very spiritual. I wish I could say something more enlightened-sounding.

The thing that caused me big trouble was taking a tourist approach to Camino lodging rather than a pilgrim approach. The pilgrim approach is to take what is there, be grateful for shelter and company, and to laugh off any problems the next day. After all, it´s only one night. You don´t have to rush or reserve or prefer or angle to choose a better place. You know God is taking care of you: trust.

The tourist approach is to read ahead, to plan, to try to figure out what might be the best place. Of course, you want to stay somewhere that is not horrible. But most hostels are fine. I found that when I tried to pre-read, angle, plan, or consider reserving, it did not do me any good at all. Rather, the opposite occurred: I became critical, pissy, and discontent with what I got.

I am not even sure planning has that much to do with it. I am sitting here in an exsquisite townhouse hostel, a Porto villa from the 1800s, and I am only here because it was the only one that kept popping up on Booking.com, not among my first choices. I personally wish I could have left this demanding, deserving, entitled feeling behind. As a pilgrim, you take what is there, and you are SO HAPPY just to stop walking. My worst mental problems came from confusing being a pilgrim with the comforts of 21st century tourism. True hospitality is so simple.

Left Behind

Here in Porto, Portugal, I´m sitting in a beautiful hostel, a real hostel this time, that has won many prizes. It´s in a renovated townhouse in the center of old Porto: high French windows in each room, billowing white curtains, views of the port and river. I am in a woman´s dorm of six, and am about to go upstairs to a breakfast, up the old wooden stairs to the rooftop kitchen area. Once again, I feel like I am borne along on some gentle river of right place, right time. And there´s a computer that seems to work.

I left things behind, and lost things, on this trip. Let´s start with the physical. That pack is your home, and when things are lost or stolen, the shock is disproportionate. I lost three items, probably because I left them behind~~ sarong, prescription sunglasses, and a pair of underwear.

This whole trip I have been experimenting with flow. I decided that when things went wrong, that was a signal to stop and do something else, in other words, to actually change something. I think it was Einstein that said you can´t solve problems on the level they were created, but have to step outside them to another place. This loss of items sounds laughable when I list it, but these losses caused my stomach to lurch. In the damp weather, having only two pairs of underwear left me no margin of error for drying them. The sarong was my security item~~ scarf, pillowcase, bedcover, blanket, modesty while changing, and a curtain for my bunk if I wanted privacy. Oh, and it was my towel too. And sunglasses.

When I encountered bad events, feelings, and bad days, I had the time to do a few existential experiments. My idea was that if things were going wrong, or I was freaked out, I could change my ideas and plans to something that felt better. This sounds so simple, but often in life we are bent on a course. If you have an awful work day, you stay at work and tough it out. But I didn´t have to do that here.

So when I lost things, or became fearful of hiking alone in the green, dripping Galician woods, I could read these as gentle nudges to change plans. It worked well. When I got an infected blister, it gave me two days in a hotel room to reconsider how I approached the walk. I think one reason my walk was so wonderful is that I let painful signs actually give me a message to change, and I could act on them.

I also had some bad dreams on the Camino. I think that we brush through layers of religion, history, blood and war when we walk through these places. The cathedrals are full of blood, bones, skulls, body parts, and monsters, the gargoyles. When you start to align yourself with the good, I think the shadow can be activated. I am used to this. I often have bad dreams when I start innovative creative projects. When you step outside your comfort zone, your subconcious mind knows it. There is often a kickback, like firing a gun. I believe all dreams are meant to help us, and are messages, so I don´t worry as much about uncomfortable dreams as I used to.

The Camino is a metaphor. How wonderful to leave things behind! I could leave the dream in a church, or at a tree, or in a cafe, and hike on. All of life is a process of leaving things behind. We can read that as loss, or a new chance. I did my final leaving behind of deep things at the alter of St. James. I left behind the same things the ancients did: old wounds and sins and temptations, atonement. I feel like I literally left them behind for the saint, or history, or nature, or God, to return to the cycle of the universe. We leave things behind and face the new day freer.

By the way, after I started this post, I found my blue sarong in a ball in the bottom of my pack! My friend returned! Ah, synchronicity. Go figure.

Camino de Santiago: Money, Time, Distance

Several people have asked me to comment on some of the practical aspects of my June-July 2014 Camino. I must emphasize that these are my opinions only, and that many will disagree. There are many available sources to use to form your own opinion.

Money: from California estimate $1500 or more for a round trip ticket, $300 more for travel in Spain (train, bus, taxi). For a 40 day trip, I would budget $60 a day…. around 40 Euros. This is high, but you will want the occasional hotel and dinner out. That makes $2400 + 1800 = $4200. You may also spend 300-500 on the right pack, shoes, small sleeping bag. Make sure you have a good working credit and debit card. Credit Unions have far lower fees than regular banks for withdrawing cash or using credit cards abroad, so get set up with a credit union. You can of course spend less daily. I often relied on a tomato salad with bread and tuna , fruit on the side, that I made in a hostel kitchen.

Time: I would give it at least 40 days for the whole thing. The Brierley guide is excellent, but if you want to stop to smell the roses, I would walk two days for each of his stages. Choose shorter stages, or choose a portion of the route to walk.

Distance: If you were backpacking in the Sierra, you probably would not walk 15 miles a day. Unless you are sure you can do it, 30 km a day is a long, long way. I saw many people injured and ill from trying to do too much. Also, starting in the Pyranees seems to me to be a point where many people injure themselves or get ill. Go shorter distances, start very very slowly, and WALK AT YOUR OWN PACE. This may not fit the guidebooks. I must emphasize that it is crucial you do everything you can to remain healthy. I saw so many people almost punishing themselves, and harming their bodies, on this trip, pushing on when they should have stopped.

You get a Compostella for walking the last 100 km into Santiago, starting in Sarria. So thousands of people, and schoolchildren, choose this route because it is the easiest way to the document. The path is very crowded and is a very different vibe than other parts of the Camino. That is the rule of the Catholic Church– walk the last one hundred. The Camino is far more than the document. You might consider an alternative route and skip the Compostela. God will understand.

The Inner Camino

I’m sitting here in the Santiago bus station, waiting for the express bus to Portugal. I thought I’d take a moment to share with you some thoughts about my Camino. I made a list of reasons to walk before I left, and reflected on them as I walked. But I’m one of the lucky ones. Two of the main reasons I walked were out of gratitude for my beautiful life, and for enjoyment.

People walk for many reasons. Many are in the midst of personal catastrophe, change, or deep loss. I met a woman who, in the midst of recurring cancers, was left by her husband for another woman. She had never been alone in her life, having married young. Her pain was tangible, but walking seemed to be keeping her positive in a way nothing else could. She said in amazement, “I still have my life. ” Another man carried the picture of his wife on the back of his pack. She passed away a few days before their 50th wedding anniversary. He was walking joyously in her honor. Several people were carrying remains of loved ones with them.

This post has now crashed twice on me, and I’ve lost blocks of writing. But I’ll try one more time to continue.

Dear readers, could you help me out by posting questions in the comments column? I am feeling like Someone doesn’t want me to write right now. According to my experimental theory of staying in the flow, this means I should stop writing and do something else. Go ahead, ask me any question you are curious about: packing list, physical aspects, emotional questions. Be personal. I’ll answer everything in the next post, and share more about my inner Camino. Please help me out, and I’ll answer all in the next post. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Greetings from the End of the World

I’m writing you from my favorite cafe at the end of the world, a cheery place to counteract all the endings. Seagulls shriek, cry, bark, howl, meow, and moan; I’ve never heard anything like it, all day and all night. A person with too much imagination could easily hear them as the souls of the damned, wailing before they are carried away. Did I mention that Finisterre is built on a graveyard? Hey, I watch movies: I know what happens when you build on burial sites. Or maybe only Americans notice.

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Ghost Cafes and Silver UFOs

I can hear the shriek of seagulls outside in the pre-dawn light as I sit writing to you from the ghost cafe in Santiago. It’s a very ephemeral city, forbidding when cold and grey, a huge party town with people from all over the world when sunlit, and everyone, everyone, with strong legs and a look of relief.

The cafe is actually part of the wonderful Hostal Susa. Hostals in Spain are not youth hostels or albergues, but rather grouped with pensiones or lower-priced hotels. I have a tiny, immaculate room with a bathroom in the middle of the old town of Santiago for 20 euros a night… the lowest price yet. There is a bar-cafe attached to the hostal, but visually blocked and closed off from the street. It is only accessible if you have a room, yet two people work there. Dishes are washed, but there is nothing but coffee and scanty, used-up bottles of liquor on the shelf… if you can get in. There is a menu, but when I picked it up, the barman, with a look of alarm on his face, asked me to put it down, as nothing on the menu was available. And yet, I sit here writing to you, with the magic of Spain tolerating me..

I realize I am skipping the days before my arrival in Santiago. I’ll share that in another post. I arrived on July 3, but saved my entry into the Cathedral until 7AM the next day, to avoid the crowds. The seagulls were shrieking and it was raining, with the echo of a Galician bagpipe filling the square.
Every pilgrim is supposed to do 4 things, more or less in order. The first is to admire the portal with the Tree of Jesse, designed by the master artist/architect, Master Matteo. There are so many portals to the Cathedral that I had no idea which one that was. Then you enter the vast, new universe of space that is the cathedral. They actually designed it to be a Cathedral of Stars, for Compostella, field of stars. That’s the positive reading. It was really built on an ancient Roman cemetery . Anyway, it is about the transition into other worlds, whether the starry Way or the passages of death.
In the old days you could walk up to the Saint and touch his feet. That is no longer allowed, to preserve the sacred marble. Personally, I think that to touch the place where millions have touched with a full heart is worth a lot more than the sculpture.
It’s an amazing place. So much of the gothic stonework was painted in the old days, but for some reason the paint is never restored. I know from illuminated manuscripts how vivid the pigments were. Yet the original paint is faded and almost gone, increasing the forbidding aspect of the cathedral.
So now I have not been able to do two out of the four things that pilgrims traditionally did. On to number three. This was news to me, but apparently there is actually a chance to touch your forehead to the head of an image of Master Matteo in order to receive divine artistic inspiration! Bring it on, said I. So I set out to search for Master Mateo.
But I couldn’t find him, lost in the echoing dampness of the Cathedral. It’s dark in there on a rainy morning.
Then God intervened. A German woman cathedral docent approached me and asked in German if I needed help. Apparently there is a mass in German in a side chapel at 7:30 and she thought I was looking for that. She spoke no English, but I could use my German to ask for the location of Master Matteo.
One of the towers is under renovation. You can see it here. I had hardly noticed, as any Gothic cathedral has so many towers that having a couple of spares is not a problem.

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So I went under the draped tower and there, barricaded in darkness, was Master Matteo, a delightful, lovingly executed sculpture around 4 feet high, just right for the shorter midieval pilgrim to lean over and get some forehead inspiration. But there were iron barricades and almost total darkness. So I asked myself, what would Matteo do ? He would find a creative solution.
First I used my bendy tripod and a low light program to take a picture of him. But I couldn’t stand being so close to him and not touching him. I reached out my arm, and I swear I was within an inch of touching him, but no dice. Time for another plan. You are talking to a woman who actually managed to take rubbings from Assyrian bas-reliefs under the noses of the guards in the British Museum. This was not going to stop me.
I checked the area and no one was around so I stepped through the first layer of iron bar barricades. I was close enough then to press my hand against his forehead. I left it there for awhile until the cold of the stone seeped in, then pressed my hand to my forehead. I could swear the Master smiled.

Part of the deal was to draw him as well, so this is my journal page.

The last of the four items is to visit the silver box full of bones, and say your prayers. So I did.
My timing has been so good… I found out from Severin, the Swiss colossus youth who always knows everything, that every Friday night they have a mass where they swing the giant incense holder. The Botafumerio is an icon of the pilgrimage, and you also saw it in the film The Way. So I went 1 1/2 hours early to get a place in a pew underneath the action, having learned from Christmas in Rome that you don’t fool around with the big masses if you want to get a seat. The timing was good…. the Cathedral filled with around 1200 people. They don’t swing the thing every day.
You have to wait through the whole Mass to get to the good part– the Catholic Church knows how to keep people in their seats. They are firm. “Silencio! Silencio!” But finally the B.F. is lowered. Up there in the vast cathedral space it looks around 2 feet high. Then it is lowered and you see that it is bigger than a man. They pour coals into it and heap on the incense, then raise it and begin a controlled swing over your heads.
What the films can’t show you is that it is on fire, sparkling with red flame from the bottom, and emitting these giant clouds of sweet smelling smoke: copal and frankincense, if I’m not mistaken. It’s just the most joyful thing to be under… you instinctively duck as it goes over your head. Everyone was smiling and laughing… you have never seen anything like it, and never will again. Talk about an unidentified flying object!
I’m always glad to leave the church… I felt like a ginormous golden Baroque angel was glaring at me through one eye. I wish we could skip the Baroque decoration and just take the music. This photo gives an idea of how full the church was.

I feel full, happy, and yes, blessed by the Cathedral. The seagull shrieks are calling me on to the coast, so I’m hopping a bus to Finisterrae, the end of the ancient world. Many consider it to be the natural, prehistoric end of the Way. The two workers in Ghost Cafe have spent the last hours reading the newspaper, and I, the only customer, am ready to pay up and get on the road. I’ll write you from the Atlantic coast, and I’ll tell you more of the saga of my journey.
Santiago is like a goth girl, full of spikes and jewelry and Celtic signs, very emo, and tattooed with the marks of millions of pilgrims. I leave her now, but will probably return. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Beautiful, Eerie Galicia

Since I last wrote you, I’ve been on the road for four days in the manure-pungent hobbit-land of Galicia. In spite of the thousand years of Camino passing through, it is still remote, with stone houses topped with grey slate roofs, a lot of mossy rock. The photo above is of tombs, many decorated with the twin towers of Santiago: the tomb as a cathedral, which Santiago is. Created around the dubious bones of a discovered saint, and on the site of old Roman cemeteries, there is more than a bit of death built in to the pilgrimage. But nature redeems the melancholy at times. It is spectacular here.

I am mostly walking through green tunnels. I discovered yesterday that I could make it rain on me, even when it wasn’t raining. As I passed under certain trees, a pattering would start, as if the tree was raining only for me. It was strange and delightful. Often no drops would fall on me, but water was clearly dropping in a delightful way. I experimented and found out that my footsteps and two walking sticks were enough to send an imperceptible signal through the roots up into the branches. I could feel myself enclosed in a delicate, quivering bubble of green world, where I felt the reality that a flap of a butterfly’s wing can start a chain reaction… viscerally felt it. This tree language felt communicative and magical, as if the trees were greeting me.

On the other hand, some trees really scared me. They seemed positively threatening, especially this one with the pentangle hung in the branches and piles of salt at the roots. Witches are common here in Galicia, and with due respect to nature worship, I am not sure all of them are benificent. The Galicians would agree, even though they have shrunk their local witches into little cute souvenir dolls. This is the kind of tree that might grab you in these old-growth forests.

Misty mornings, cold– in the 50s– and often rain. I was walking through the forest and came on a little old lady selling raspberries and a beautiful fuschia colored raspberry liquor in a little bottle. She took me for five euros for a basket of strawberries and a small bottle of whatever that drink was. I don’t know if she was a good or bad witch… I suspect just mischievous. That was a hard day, over 15 kilometers and late in the day. I had to do some business for a morning in Sarria, the biggest city around. Travelers, do you remember how much time and energy it takes just to get into a new town and find an ATM and a store? I was buying a new pancho for the rain, one with sleeves and zipper, like a raincoat that can cover a backpack.

You know you’re doing real travel when the locals don’t really care that much about you. Though not pleasant, you can be sure that you are in the midst of true travel. There is a good tourist structure here and there in the woods though… adequate albergues. But some parts of the day I was just grateful to hear traffic somewhere, anywhere, or see another hiker. I am still hiking mostly by myself…wonderful for contemplation, but sometimes eerie in the green, stony world of Galicia.

Donkey and Company

This beautiful girl, Jenny, came all the way up the Le Puy route, over 60 days into her journey with her French master. They stayed at the country place because there was a stall for her and a couch for him. I told you it was the right kind of inn.

This hound would lay directly in front of the albergue entrance so you had to step over him to get in. Later I saw the three huge German shepherds roaming through the fog like spirits of wolves. I’m walking in fog and chill wind, but thankfully no rain. I am sitting in the first place in the mountains of Galicia that has weefee , so I can post a few pictures.

The fire, as a primal element, deserves its own photo.The owner would heap huge logs covered with moss and lichen into it, and urged us to dry our shoes in front of it. Here’s a travel tip: stuff old pages ripped out of your guidebook into your shoes to help dry them.

Beautiful brown cows make a beautiful fresh cheese with the consistency of soft tofu. A heap is served on a plate with a little compressed square of quince jam to eat it with. Delicious!

This is a beautiful 12th century virgin. She is the patroness of O Cebreiro, and her feast day is celebrated on my birthday. Since it is the custom to dress up many of the more doll-like virgins in costumes, I felt free to dress her up digitally, and a halo appeared. The landscape is just honeycombed with virgins, each dripping a blessing into a little village.

The thunderstorm that soaked me.

A sadly graffittied shrine to a virgin of the Camino. You can see the mural on one side and the defacing on the other. This was on my creepiest walk, right in the middle of the day. I saw only vandalism and violation and not one other person, either caminante or citizen. It was during the siesta apocalypse outside Ponferrada. Suburbs are the scariest walking of all.

<img src=”https://saltworkstudio.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/20140629-091934-33574463.jpg” alt=”20140629-091934-33574463.jpg” class=”alignnone size-full” />This isn’t my sketchbook, but an image from the Templar Library. I was struck by the ancient illuminations. They have a dream-like quality. These illuminated manuscripts must be the most beautiful books ever made.
Have to get back on the trail now. Suzanne

Getting soaked and warming up

No pictures today. The heart of Celtiberia here in Galicia rejects internet waves, just as the Templar church would cut off any phone reception. I can’t put in pictures so I will have to, as Ruskin put it, word-paint. I have been reading Ruskin and Yeats, the kind of books you can get from Gutenberg. org, the source of thousands of copyright-free books. I loaded a lot of classics I had never gotten around to before I left. I did have a few KIndle books I bought, but I knew the classics were lurking. It’s sort of like eating all the junk food in the house first and then being left with actual nutrition.
Today I walked for four hours in a windy, chilly downpour in the middle of June. Heading down the mountain I climbed with the steed Carlotta, I felt like I was paying for the angelic ascension by a sort of hellish descent. It must have been in the forties, with horizontal rain and pretty good winds. Once again, I seemed to be walking alone for hours. I felt like the giant black slugs I saw on the pavement… moving soooo slowly. I just had a quick coffee before I started, so at a certain point in the morning I found myself with a hot chocolate, bread and cheese from yesterday, one hardboiled egg, a soaked travel salt, and a small glass of cognac to warm up… brunch. I got back on the road and the rain got worse. I slowly soaked up water, wicking it up from extremities as my shoes filled with water.
And yet… it’s all so beautiful. Spurs of a brilliant fuschia foxglove flower are everywhere, and hidden waterfalls are running. Because this is not a plain old backpacking trip, I am working on a good outlook as I walk. It’s not to Pollyanna up an uncomfortable situation– walking alone on a strange mountain in a big storm– but to try to notice the beauty around in the middle of my discomfort.
The first room I tried to stay in didn’t work out, and I’m glad it didn’t. I’ve landed in a solid country paradise, with a huge wood stove pumping out heat, home made Galician soup, chickens pecking among the tables, and heaters in the albergue room that are actually pumping out heat. This reminds me of the Wanderhutte my former in-laws, Hans and Paula, used to run. That place was always full of farmers and travellers, like this one. The so-called town has about 50 people so it’s the only game in town. It’s a throwback, the kind of country place that hardly exists any more in California: real, hospitable, cheap, a grandma in front of the fire, and local guys from town at the bar. They’re discussing things in Galician, yet another Spanish language.
Ruskin would say, if you can’t actually draw, paint a picture with words. Shoes and boots are drying in front of the cast iron stove. I watched someone take off their shoes and their socks literally steamed! An orange rocker is reserved for the grandma. A Swiss youth who looks like the hope of the blond nations is chatting with a dismayed middle aged German couple. The chickens were let out of the bottom of the farmhouse as soon as the rain stopped , and are pecking and crowing among the plastic outdoor cafe furniture. The plain molded plastic chairs sensibly have holes in the seats to let rain run out. Now why don’t we do that? The hostess yells at me, not because she’s angry, but because if you yell, the foreigners understand better. Three huge, dispirited German shepherds are lying sadly in the courtyard, too tired to interact with guests, A black and white kitten is in the woodpile. And behind it all, the beautiful hills of Galicia loom, spotlit with gathering thunderheads filtering the late afternoon sun.
I could never have found such a perfect place to stay if I had spent days on the internet and in guide books. I am working on abandoning myself to the travel spirit, intuition, and guidance. I have good friends in the books I’m reading.
The poignancy of this journey is that it can hold so many emotions, and so much beauty and fatigue, in a single day, or even a single moment. Last night I saw one of the historical contenders for Holy Grail, a golden chalice with a golden sun like disk in it . It was lovely, and the setting was amazing… the original 9th century church, arguably the oldest church still in original form on the Camino. I watched people kneel before it and pray, while outside, drunk tourists were posing and singing. What use can this ancient myth have for us?
In the churchyard, the cemetery, the graves are raised slate boxes, one for each family. I have also seen tombs that look exactly like vertical bank or gun safes, including a lock and stainless steel handle. While the revelers sang, an old grandma went into the churchyard and spoke quietly to someone who lived in the slate box of her family. Her ancestors may well have lived in the same place for over a thousand years.
Yeats, in Celtic Twilight, said, that it was not so much what one believed, but that one’s beliefs can somehow be knit together, to make a cloak that keeps us warm. Here in this Celtic land, I am willing to believe a bit in fairies, virgins, and miracles. I am traveling through and inside a landscape of rich metaphor. And I am so glad for the soulful spirits that knit me together and keep me warm. It’s really cold here, and I’ll need it. Suzanne

Ayee, Carlotta

This is Carlotta, my sort-of friend for three hours climbing into the ancient hilltop village of O’Cebreiro. The landscape looks like this. To Carlotta it all looks like food.

It was three hours of pure bliss. Julia and I both hired horses from Victor, who guided us and the mounts up the mountain. I haven’t ridden a horse since childhood and it was great. We went through dark tunnels of forest, breaking out to amazing views on the switchbacks. Carlotta likes to eat. My only instructions with her were 1) don’t make any fast moves or she’ll throw you and 2) don’t let her eat. Both were easier said than done. She wanted to lean in to eat all the way along, and Victor would shout “Ayee, Carlotta!” I like to graze too, so I could sympathize. Eventually I got better at controlling her, but as Victor said, wisely, “Horses are big.”

That’s Bonnie trying to drink water from a flowing pilgrim spigot, although there were plentiful horse troughs. I found myself going up a mountain on a horse by accident. I had walked a few miles out of town and someone called out to me, “Are you on the Pilgrim’s Forum?” It’s an online information site about the pilgrimage. We started talking at a bus stop. Julia is from Britain and Nadine is Australian. Turns out they had this plan to take horses up. I asked if they minded if I joined in… the rest is history. Horse’s shoes on stony paths really do sound like the coconut shells of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And they have a 10th C. chalice in the church. Close enough.
I bought Victor and his daughter Carlotta a beer afterwards. He would like to develop a sort of Pony Express for the Camino, with horses, half day rides and food and lodging. I loved this ride so much. Victor told us that you can ride horses directly into one entrance of the Cathedral of Santiago. Can you imagine the steps of the horses echoing in Gothic arches? I would love to do this.

Dawn now, and veils of mist drift through. I have decided to stay one more day. This place has a sort of poignant, piercing beauty I have felt in only a few places: Big Sur, the Lofoten Islands in Norway, Karpathos in Greece, Hampi in India. I’ll catch up with my writing and sketching.

I keep losing photographs and writing because there’s no wifi here. I’m doing everything on a wavery data signal from my phone. Time to stop.
More later, I hope. Suzanne

Life’s Not Just Blossoms and Busty Beer Taps

This morning was a very flowery walk, on this bright Sunday right at midsummer. The Solstice is called Sommerwende in German–summer’s hinge, summer’s turning point. in a tiny village I ran into a personal Gabriel angel carrying lilies.

As I’m sitting here at this very moment church bells are ringing madly. Congregants are carrying an effigy of the Virgin into the hills to a shrine, some combination of Solstice with the Virgin. The Catholic Church always covers all its bases.

Flowers were strewn in the path of the effigy. I think that’s what I saw in another village I walked through today, the sidewalk blossoming with wildflowers for a block or so. The trailside flowers are spectacular too. See why I said it was a flowery day?

The bells just stopped… they literally pounded the heck out of my ears for a half an hour. There’s no way to miss that it’s midsummer. I started out in the church to see it, but I felt like a voyeur. This celebration is for the village, not for me. The ancient bells turn 360 degrees, mounted on a huge wooden top that rotates on an axis. Centrifugal force keeps them turning. They have not stopped after all. The turn of the season is worth a little noise.
I was so lucky to stop in this village to witness this. I got a lovely bed in its own cubicle, with a view out the French doors. This hotel is built in an old monastery and the owner is a pilgrim himself and built in some luxury pilgrim lodging.

I am walking much too slowly to do the entire Camino in just six weeks, what with flowers and paintings and magic soup and monasteries. I am about twice as slow as the guidebook. I’ll be going on to Galicia to finish up and get my Compostela. Galicia is Celtic and believes in its witches. The main witch of Galicia is made into beer taps. She’s very inspiring, and whispered to me that it was okay to skip ahead.

It’s this kind of breezy day, with high horsetail cirrus clouds all prancing toward the west, in the direction of the Camino.
Your slow Camino wanderer, Suzanne

Soupa Magica

The thunder rolled down the valley like waves crashing on the beach, with lightning flashing an irregular strobe. We didn’t care, tucked away into the smallest (10 people), most magical albergue, an ancient village building where all the rooms slope and exposed beams are not a designer fashion.

The village has only 50 souls and no stores. The Pan (bread) truck, a white van I’ve seen everywhere in Spain, skids into the plaza and begins earsplitting honking. For many minutes. Bread is a matter of urgency.

I’ve had the feeling this whole trip of being enclosed in a kind of bell jar of bird song, and even more strongly here. Swallows thread the sky with the invisible silk of flight. The village is cradled in rolling farmland, much of it in poppies. I walked through many fields of blossom today. I could not help but remember the Wicked Witch of Oz crooning “Poppies…”

This albergue is the home of Acacio and Orietta. They are good friends with the author Paolo Coelho and there’s a book in which you can leave a message for him. Their business is run entirely on donation. Both of the couple have walked he camino many time. Their house is full of books, warmth, easy chairs, and superb hospitality.

Cameras can’t catch the implacable golden sweep of the wheatfields, and a photo can’t convey the warmth of that dinner. “Soupa magica” is Acacio’s term for pilgrim soup, a combination of soup and the Portugese sopa.

It’s difficult to write about the Camino. A lot of your inner experience is private. The writing tends either to become Shirley Maclaine-ish or degenerate into a kilometer-sore foot-lodging blog. Orietta told me that a way a pilgrim can give something back for all the kindness extended is by the sharing of experience: being hospitable and open in your heart to sharing what you know.

Thank you, Acacio and Orietta. Acacio is an passionate advocate for the inner necessity of the Camino. He also has much hidden knowledge about the history and soul of the Camino, but you’ll have to ask him yourself, over a bowl of Soupa Magica.
Suzanne

Chicken Church

Writing you from Santo Domingo, where the magnficent Gothic cathedral keeps live chickens inside to commemorate a milagro, a miracle. I’ve been waiting all trip for this because I had a dream about it some months ago
The day started badly but ended well. Every night I take off my glasses and put them in a stuff sack in the bottom of my sleeping bag along with phone, passport and money. When I took them off this morning, an earpiece had broken off. In a foreign country, this can seem to be a really big problem, but I closed my eyes and thought “What would Scott do?” He’s the guy who can fix anything.
Here’s what I might do, before I became a wise Peregrino: panic, don’t change schedule, stick glasses with duct tape, have lousy, sticky and disfunctional glasses for the rest of the trip. Here’s what Scott would do: while away several hours until an optician opened and have them fixed. So I had a coffee, potato and egg tortilla, and an Aquarius (fizzy Gatorade type drink, supposedly with electrolytes). For two hours. And painted a few notebook pages. The nice thing about the illustrated journal is that it always gives you something to do. And I got them fixed.

By that time it was late in the morning, so I decided to take the bus to Santa Domingo. And I’m so glad I did. It turned into a completely relaxed, pleasant day. I had one of those extended lunches at a cafe facing the cathedral. I went to the small prayer meeting offered by the brothers who ran the albergue. I did laundry and visited the backyard chicken coop that supplies the cathedral chickens, who are not even on ground level but in a ridiculously backlight sort of alter a story high so you can’t even interact with them. Now that was disappointing, but I went back to talk to the patio chickens.
The albergue is lovely. The cathedral is grand and I think I saw Santa Domingo’s skull, but I’m not sure. He was a supercool saint. He came from a poor, lower class family and so the church nixed his becoming a priest. He said, fine, and proceeded to build a pilgrim bridge, a hospital, and improve the roads and highways… and founded a town and a cathedral. The church’s loss was the pilgrim’s gain. Domingo was a do-er and fixer, as is Scott, and like Scott, he can often be found with a few chickens at his feet. It was a day where a possible mishap was transformed into a fine, unexpected travel day.
True confession: I LOVE deciding things on the spur of the moment. What a luxury, what freedom. I’m grateful that everyone has been so kind– the optician fixed the glasses without charge because I’m a pilgrim. It’s the little things. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Scenes from Logrono to Navarette

Anti-bull killing for sport. I agree. It must be a horrible way for an animal to die.

I love these abstract pilgrims! I’m the one on the right.

The virgins are growing very strange, dense, and encrusted, very asiatic. I am in deep water here. Though adept with Christian symbols, I often have NO IDEA what’s going on. The churches are magnificent, creepy Twilight Zones, where it seems the saint figures might well come alive and walk around. Often they fill an elegant Romanesque shell with gold Baroque madness floor to ceiling, as if an insane pastry chef had frosted a plain loaf with dozens of giant glittery sugar roses.

I just lost paragraphs of writing. NO wifi and 90 beds in a room.. but free! Wish me luck tonight in the sea of (hopefully serene) sleepers. I’ll write more when I actually have wifi to support all the photo uploads. Buen Camino, Suzanne

From my Travel Sketchbook

When I get my Pilgrim Passport stamped, I also have them put their stamp somewhere on a blank page of my travel sketchbook. This starts a painted travel collage-sketch of that place. I do one or more most days, another reason why I enjoy shorter hiking days.
This painted sketch of apples in a basket got me a jar of garden flowers and a free glass of wine from a Basque grandma. I am not above making sure that when I bring out my notebook at check in time– my Pilgrim Passport is stored in it– that the person sees the paintings. I’ve gotten some special treatment from it, I think: a slightly better bed and so on. They are really just for me, a sensory-rich artifact of that fleeting time.

Turtles in an ancient pond in the middle of a walled garden, orchids on the counter of the Kind Albergue Keeper Jose, a gargoyle from an octagonal Templar chapel— all were drawn from life. My little travel kit is always close at hand. People want to watch me sketching and photograph me; I’m an oddball pilgrim. These are no masterpieces, but they are expressive and unify me with the place for a brief moment.

I am reading The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton on my Kindle app. It’s marvelous. He provides brief meditations on famous travelers, then links them to a travel experience of his own. I live on Humboldt Street, named after the amazing traveler and scientist, Alexander von Humboldt. De Botton tells a story of Humboldt’s travels, then concludes with this remark.
Instead of bringing back 16,000 new plant species, we might return from our journey with a collection of small, unfeted but life-enhancing thoughts.
That’s the travel sketchbook. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Hotel: Thrill of victory or agony of da feet?

Wednesday, June 18
Just words, I think, for now, no images. Whew! I just escaped teeming Dorm Land, no place for me or my phone to recharge. Am in a delightful small nowhere bar, sitting on a chair near an electrical outlet. I have no table– there are outlets near tables but none of them work. They were cheerful, though, and directed me proudly to the random outlets that did work. My “table” is a bar stool. I am nursing some kind of tart rose. Thank you, Bar La Oca, for the smiles. I find Spain enormously welcoming.

The 90 person dorm room tonight will pose a challenge to my mild claustrophobia. It’s now a dangerous maze of packs in the tiny walkways. Paranoid, adult thought: hope there’s not a fire. The hip young have ruthlessly taken over all the communal tables for complex, delicious dinners…. I never cooked like that in a hostel. The albergue is donativo, free. My own dinner was a melon with some Serrano ham strewn over it and eaten in front of the shallow river. I guess I managed to download some photos after all. All are at the end of the post.

I know that before I walked I wanted to know some details. Just to say, I did walk 17 km today, about 11 miles, going very slowly for my feet. It was mostly through vineyards and the paths were either gravel or paved. Weather has been perfect the whole trip, in the 50s at night and warming during the day, not dissimilar to Santa Rosa. Here are some practical details for you.

Showers are complex because you have to stay decent before you step in, and carry all your valuables, as well as your toiletries and the clothes you change into, with you. So you are jamming and balancing. Everything of any value comes into the shower with you. The tile floors are uniformly slippery. Then you get in and press a knob like the controlled flow knobs in sinks in public restrooms, and 10 seconds of either freezing, lukewarm, or scalding water comes out, then cuts off. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat!

American’s packs are too big. The Europeans are cruising along with packs about the size of a daypack. I have lightened mine up some… never mind what. But I have pack envy. There are no silk sleep sheets. Everyone has an ultralight bag about the size of a football or a bottle of water. They have a tiny lining, very similar to my Marmot Nano 55, which has worked great for me.

Girls, my most prized outfit is a loose tank and a running skort with shorts under it. I use it for after hiking, swimming, and to sleep. The all purpose wardrobe! Dress it up with a scarf!

My day: wake up at 5 AM. Take my roll of clothing and toiletries out of the dorm, to a restroom or kitchen, to dress. Drag pack out. Drag sleeping bag off bed and stuff in other room. Rearrange pack, sometimes for a half hour or more. Wash. Wish for coffee, but drink a liter of water if I can choke it down. Other people are up, tripping over each other. Tend to feet for the day with whatever combo of fixups you have: tape, moleskin, compeed, bandaids, antibiotic cream, anti friction cream, what have you. Put on shoes. This isn’t easy, as you aren’t allowed to keep your shoes with you, but must put them on a shelf in another room. Same thing for poles. When you get your shoes on, marvel how good they feel without a pack on.
Then lurch out and start your day. Stop for a coffee at the first bar and sneak eat your yoghurt, then walk on. Sun’s getting warmer now… stop on trail, pee, put on hat and sunglasses. And walk.

Today I met some beautiful people, and it was just like the films where you have soulful talks while walking through lush vineyards. Oliver, French, was great: we discussed mind-body issues and how the brain can’t interpret where pain originates. He’s in the straw hat. Then Billy, an American college student I’d seen twice, struck up a series of questions about The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and Joseph Campbell’s mythology. “Have you heard of Joseph Campbell?” he asked politely. He made a beautiful metaphor…. he said that he thinks the Camino is, for him, a coming out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur, following the golden thread. And the golden thread is just one step in front of the other, and you don’t know where you’re going, but he trusts it.
I probably won’t ever see them again, but that statement lacks the high drama it might have in other contexts. You just never know. You spent some good time, and that’s enough. I talked to some women, as well, but none of them would allow me to take her photo because we all, er, don’t exactly look our best. I, for example, resemble a plump nun while walking, completely covered head to foot with long loose pants, long loose shirt, and one of those dorko cover-everything hats with a wimple, I mean flap, in back. In purple. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I just wanted to say, I have never felt in danger this whole trip. I have felt cared for and protected the entire time.

I usually stop walking around 12 or 1. I learned a lesson about pushing too hard. You can read the story below

This took place last Sunday and Monday, after realizing I had really wrecked my feet– and my aplomb– with the fabled 21k day.

I took a taxi to Logrono today for another rest day and checked into another pilgrim dorm. My mood was low. There are several kinds of dorms, municipal– run, perhaps for hundreds of years, by the city, parochial, run by the church, and private dorms which have sprung up everywhere. I chose a private dorm, and it wasn’t a good choice. I’m finding out that often the better bet for true hospitality can come in institutional packages, from people who’ve been housing pilgrims for a couple centuries or so. The dorm I chose was a private one, which can be great, but can also be oriented more to the tidal wave of pilgrim dough than the pilgrim. They can be sloppy about hygiene.

I unloaded my stuff, had a shower with soap I bought from the Euro version of a dollar store. The shower was not pleasant, with a dirty floor and warmish water. Then I went for a walk. When I returned,the room had that body smell, which unfortunately was a stinky redux of the night before.

I’m finding out that a disturbing night has a real impact. The night before, it was the awful body odor, like unwashed clothes of the homeless, emanating from the towel and pack of a man across from me. The Italian guy in the bunk directly over was grossed out too. Luckily my bed was by a window. We asked the manager of the albergue to talk to the guy about moving his pack outside, but he never did. The Italian guy’s girlfriend offered me some Vicks to rub under my nose, the same thing the coroner uses for examining corpses. I should have taken it.

I don’t know how much I want to write about a bad mood or event. They happen in travel and in life. But my feeling of oppression increased in the Logrono dorm I had chosen . By chance, I was the only woman in the room and it felt, not dangerous, but just too much. I was filled with regret about not just waiting around for a few hours for the normal church dorms to open. My impatience tripped me up, just like it did with the 21 km day. Hmmmmmm…. could there possibly be a lesson there?

My mood darkened, dangerously so. When you travel alone, you have only yourself to rely on, and a bad mood poses a real handicap. My feet were really hurting– I could feel an infection starting in the sole of my foot, the same sole that would have to step into public showers. So when I saw a hotel, I just walked up and checked in, then walked back to the albergue and picked my stuff up.

Scott had to talk me down. I stayed off my feet in a sterile business hotel, with deep bathtub. It took two days for my feet to heal up. I felt guilty, impatient, grateful, sad, stuck in sterility when life just teemed outside. And it was a hundred percent my own bad decision.

I am so lucky I have the bucks to take a hotel when I want or need to. But it still feels like a tiny bit of defeat. Strange, I meet many people who feel defeated if they can’t do 30 to 40 km, 20-plus miles, a day! We all have our points of pride.

I think that 30 Km is a very long day even for the twenty somethings. People are really getting injured going that far. In my own mind, which is still full of judgement, I call them “The New Penitents,” punishing themselves through painful walking. I’m sure they think of me as a dilettante. By the way, all the “recommended” divisions of the Camino are 20 to 30 km. I have so enjoyed going more slowly.

I think I’m really more of a wanderer than a trekker. I’m considering visiting the one of the oldest monastery sites in Europe tomorrow, back to the 6th century. It wanders off the beaten path. But then, so do I. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Divine Beauty vs. Iphonzilla

Each day of walking is like a world, and you can never tell what will happen. All of these photos are from one day, yesterday. But they don’t tell the whole story. In the midst of all of it, there were mishaps, enough of them to really jar me and test the travel spirit.

I left the adaptor plug for the Iphone in a socket in that village that starts with a Z. Panicked, I ran around stores to try to find an adaptor. A lovely lady at an art store had some, but Iphonezilla didn’t like them. Finally I went to what they call a “China Store” and bought a fake Iphone charger with the proper prongs. Now my phone takes hours to charge, but no it works. I wrestled with that horrible question of attachment to the device. I do a lot on it: photograph, blog, Facetime with Scott. Perhaps some of you know the feeling of running around in a foreign culture with that emergency feeling in the pit of your stomach. It took hours. I bought watercolor paper I didn’t need to patronize the art supply/ hardware store lady, and some cologne I probably did need at the China store for all their help with my phone. Iphonezilla ate a large part of my day, then would not charge, keeping me up late, as you should never leave your phone unattended. I wanted to talk to my husband Scott on his birthday.

My weird vasculitis was acting up again. I’m vain enough to not show you a picture of it; it’s disfiguring but not dangerous. In fact, it was a conversation starter. I got 5 versions in 5 languages of “Are you all right? And what is that?” Then everyone would tell me it was heat rash or an allergy. But it got me introduced.

That hostel was industrial and no nonsense. When you’ve hosted a thousand years of pilgrims, you know how to do it. Already fried from the phone thing and the leg thing, the snoring thing in my room of 8 women almost did me in. I slept not more than 2 hours last night, really pissed off at the snore monster, a spry French woman in her seventies.

Then the day began again, and after walking, a compassionate hospitalero (inkeeper for pilgrims) snuck me into a private room to catch up on my rest. This simple act of kindness touched me deeply, and saved my day. The following photos are from this, my 4th day on the road. Estella tomorrow— maybe. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Camino Secret Gem

Hola from the extremely slow pilgrim. Today I didn’t walk 12.8 km. I’m between Pamplona and Puente de la Reina. That’s all you need to know. And I’m in a little gem of an albergue, drinking white wine on a red tablecloth in the late afternoon and writing you, dear reader.

This giant baguette filled with chorizo will last me for 2 more days. The soda and sandwich cost 2.70 E. It could have been beer, no extra charge. I get a full course dinner for wine and desert here, my first meal with other pilgrims. I slept like a baby last night in a room full of elderly Frenchmen; apparently I was in a French “wave”. Today I ran into- not literally, thank goodness– herds of the not-rare-enough species MAMILS– Middle Aged Men in Lycra, normally on bicycles, sending their luggage, include colognes, ahead. Not all of them, of course.. everyone has been sweet and polite, the way life should be. And I am a MAWILC, a middle aged woman in loose clothing. We are the only ones wearing long sleeved shirts and pants. Ah, those limb-exposing, sleek youngsters are lovely.
Got up at a respectable 6:30 and the whole albergue was leaving. Everyone leaves at once, but the waves soon vanish, especially if you’re hiking slowly. And I stop, I confess, to photograph and sketch. It”s my Grand Tour, after all; I choose to be Ruskin-esque and enter the world through my pen. But it takes TIIIIIIIME.Time to see the wheat and smell the poppies. If I stopped to smell every rose in Spain, you’d never see me again.

Tip: I tear out pages with maps from the Brierley guidebook and carry them in my pocket. It’s helped me several times when I’ve had to ask directions: nothing like a hard copy. And my small compass mounted right on the chin strap of my backpack is really invaluable. I feel like a child with an address label sewn in. Do they even do that anymore?
Since you read this far, I enclose the abstract photo of roses blowing in the wind. Ultreia!

Walled Spanish Garden, with Pilgrim Totem animal

How far have I walked today? I think I’ll keep that a secret for now and tell you how far I haven’t walked. I haven’t walked 25 km. And I ended up in paradise, the Mirabel Roncal. It has a walled garden from long, long ago with museum like lawn ornaments, beautiful rooms, tables and gardens everywhere, and a great pilgrim totem, a turtle pond.

I am the turtle, eating a fine lunch in the garden with a beer from a soft drink machine, and olives and olive oil bought from the same snack automat. I added my own spanish seedless pear–Scott, take note!–and cheese, and a garden full of roses. Why would I want to leave?

I don’t really deserve such beauty, but there it is anyway. It’s a hard life, being a pilgrim.
Re the not-walked kilometers: the standard guide, Brierley, divides the Camino into stages. I will be sure to tell you each day how far in the current guidebook stage I didn’t walk. Remember my icon, the turtle.

I am saving my complaints, philosophical ideas, spiritual opening, etc. etc. for another blog. Don’t worry… you’re not getting off that easy. But for now the birds and butterflies drowse in the sun, and there may be a basque dinner to eat. The owner liked my sketches of the place, so maybe I can dine out in fine Basque fashion on those. Now back to bliss. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Pamplona Unbound

I have a crush on Pamplona.
Pamplona is seductive. In fact, the whole journey I’ve had nothing but good luck. People have helped me. Small dark men are courtly and helpful. My hotel is beautiful. I see swallows over tile roofs and hear peacocks calling at night and roosters in the morning.
And when I got to Pamplona, the whole city was engaged in a local Black and Red night, with concerts on every corner, and dancing in the street. You can’t describe it: a euphoria and a warm wind, everyone smiling.

Best of travel: a room with a view, travel luck stays strong, easy connections. I watch the stream of pilgrims go by and know I’ll be joining them tomorrow.
Worst of travel: traveling alone, there’s no one to watch the pack or carry my passport and money. I have to drag the pack into every bathroom. I used to give Scott my passport to carry. No more. I’m in the “training” stage of the journey where I have to constantly check my money belt, securing my phone, etc. Yes, I’m sometimes lonely, but I already feel captured by Spain… happy prisoner.
My room has a view over Roman and Navarro forts, to the hills, where I’ll head tomorrow. Buen Camino, Suzanne

Packing for the Camino: The Seventeen Pound Riddle

I’m leaving tomorrow! But I’ve been packing for months.

There are so many excellent packing lists online already for the Camino de Santiago that I won’t add another one. I used several of them for ideas and reference. I was aiming for a 17 pound pack and am in that range. Rather than a list of things I’m taking, I’ll share with you a list of questions I developed for each item.

Positive = Plus and Negative = Minus. Each item had to come out strongly on the plus side.

Positive Indicators

Is it multifunctional? Can I use it for more than one thing? example: a tank top and shorts can double as swimsuit, while a sarong can be a towel, a seat, a privacy cover, a skirt and a shawl.
Will I really use it daily or almost every day? I ended up not taking a dress or skirt, as I didn’t think I’d wear them enough. I didn’t bring a tent or bivy sack.
Will it keep me warm and dry? I have been cold in southern European summers a lot. I’m taking a small sleeping bag rather than a sleep sheet, and plenty of layers of clothing.
Will it add a lot to my physical or mental comfort? (Iphone for contact with Scott, a pillowcase, a little typing keypad for blogging on the Iphone.)

(more…)

The e e Cummings series

These paintings all have a poet’s title. I think they may be new to many. Enjoy!

Illustrated Journaling Doodle

Illustrated journaling lets you make connections… salt, the etchings on the cafe wall, appetite. Somehow these disparate things come together in a good way, sort of like doing collage with pieces of your consciousness.

Camino art supplies: sketchbook, paints, IPhone, no camera!

Well, I joined the 21st century this month and got an Iphone. I decided to leave the camera behind for several reasons. It’s not really a photo-documentary trip, as I want to sketch far more than photograph. I don’t want to be tied to a camera, and a camera is heavy and bulky for (more…)

Foolish Sketching and Big Nature

Fools flocked and chattered in Occidental, California on Saturday April 4 for a traditional Fools celebration. Susan Cornelis, Carole Flaherty and I went out to sketch from life. The subjects were moving and in crowds, for me the toughest kind of sketchbook challenge.

Carole Flaherty sketching

Susan and Carole have been participating in Bay Area Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawls. Carole had a lovely setup with her self-designed travel watercolor set and everything clipped and attached to a small drawing board. Susan loaned me her tiny Pocket Palette to try. I’m terrible at this kind of sketching, so it was good to do it on a Foolish day when everything was allowed. This sort of sketching from life takes plein air to a new level. It is meditative and process-oriented. My style tends to be more of an illustrated journal, with writing and collage. I kept a sketchbook through Spain, and at other times, but am entirely untutored in the finer points of more realistic rendering, and am hoping to improve.

Sketchbook, Suzanne Edminster

Suzanne Edminster, sketch at Getty Center

Sketchbook, Suzanne Edminster– Suzanne and Scott in Rome

Fears of Sketching

I might as well make a checklist of my sketching fears, and get them out of the way as soon as possible. On Saturday I accomplished all of them.

Fear of doing a really lousy sketch. Check. Around 5 times.
Fear of doing a really lousy sketch while others sketching are doing better ones. Check.
Fear of just not being up to the task— moving figurative subjects. Check.
Fear of messing up pages in a bound notebook. They will always be there as flubs. Check.
Fear that if I share the messy process of learning, I will be seen as less accomplished in my painting. Check.

I was happy to have some of my sketching doctors give me a critique, over Prosecco and prosciutto at the Underwood in Graton. Here are some of Susan’s sketches from the day. My Rx: mechanical pencil, slower more continuous lines in ink, some media suggestions. (I’m hearing that a new-to-me brush pen favorite is the Pentel.) I’m taking an online sketching class from Marc Taro Holmes which is really excellent. There is a new wave of arts education and it lives online. What if we all came to art school with many skills and techniques, and the ways and means, spiritual and practical, of living as an artist were taught by generous, seasoned masters?

I want to sketch people in life, not in a figure class. I think my best sketches recently were done in DMVs. It took me 3 tries to get a replacement for the license which was lost or stolen. Learning to sketch is a metaphor for letting a new identity emerge. And it’s not always comfortable.

Big Old Nature

My artist friend Laura Foster Corben and I went into a grove of coastal old-growth redwoods on a misty, rainy day. It used to have the worlds tallest tree at around 380 feet. Now taller trees have been measured, but these seem tall enough to me. I was struck by the primitive nature of these trees. Inverting the black and white lets me see the almost palm-like form of these titans in Montgomery Woods State Natural Preserve.

A sunburst or natural altar of giant roots.

The eerie magic of the giant redwood forest puts those sketching fears in their proper, tiny place.

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by Suzanne Edminster

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Suzanne Edminster

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Suzanne Edminster

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Suzanne Edminster

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Suzanne Edminster

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Art from Art

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My Dear Wormseed,

In contagion, Your scabrous Mentor, Screwtape

The Goose Game

Monoprint Making

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Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

C. S. Lewis

Dear Wormseed,

In Venom–

Screwtape

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My Stygian colleague Wormseed,

Screwtape

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My dear Wormseed,

Your Master,

Screwtape

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In contagion,
Your scabrous Mentor,
Screwtape