Today I drew plein air! It was the PERFECT Alaska summer day. Warm, blue skies, puffy clouds, dragonflies soaring, tourists strolling, dogs walking, skateboarders whizzing, and… hot dog carts flaming, sizzling, and sending up puffs of smoke. I was magnetized by the one in front of the federal building at 4h and G. As I drew, I smelled mustard and onions frying. I wondered if they would have tofu pups or salmon dogs. No, but they did have chicken hot dogs, so after I was finished drawing, I downed one, dripping with mustard and saurkraut.

I sat on the edge of the long planter in front of the Federal Building, feet in the planter, behind the bushes, but with a good view of the hot dog cart. I drew the scene to the tune of chattering magpies and singing chickadees playing in the shrubs closeby. The smell of frying onions and mustard provided aromatherapy.

The hardest part was drawing the vendor, who was in constant motion. She was such a lovely lady, and she laughed with good humor to see how she had turned out– not at all as beautiful as she really was.

The end effect on me was to be in a state of open-eyed meditation. I was calm, at peace, and aware of each breath and each step I took on the walk home. I am grateful that when I give my earnest attention to drawing I often “wake up” from the dreams spun by the chattering mind.

The theme this week was (again) the mysterious confluence of inside and outside. I drew the window reflections I saw as I sat on a bench on our deck. Our house appears like a tiny cottage from the front, but it is u-shaped toward the back, with a room on either side completing the u– inside of which is a deck. Arching over the deck is a large crabapple tree. Each of the rooms has a picture window facing the window across from it. This is quite a reflective spot! In the drawing it is not so easy to determine what is a reflection and what is “not” a reflection.

The effect of drawing so many layers of reflection and non-reflection was to afford to me a heightened awareness of my own insides. I also felt a visceral connection to the things around me. It was as if I were “inside” of them. I felt palpably “part of” the objects in my environment.

This drawing was inspired by the thought: the mysterious confluence of inside and outside. The first day I sat in a third chair on a little platform at Modern Dwellers, a chocolate-lover’s heaven; I drew the scene in the alley outside the glass wall. The second day, I drew the outside of that building, looking into the window I had looked out of– from Side Street Espresso across the street (The tiny chair in the window is the back of the left chair in the “inside” drawing.) The third day I returned to Modern Dwellers with Anda and drew the woman behind the counter.

The high point of it all was the surprise of the rising sun as I sat at Side Street Espresso. I can’t remember the time, but it must have been at least 6 hours after the sunrise I had been up for in the morning. I had a second sunrise on that day!

The moment of surprise, the second dawn, reminds me that true joy is  experienced only in the present moment. When the sense of past and future, and of here and there, converge into the “now,”  the joy I think I have lost dawns again.

Brian and I spent two nights camping on the flats in Hope in our vintage camper. Hope is a Gold Rush town just across the Turnagain Arm from Anchorage. The cradling effect of the mountains, the dance of the tides, and the path of the summer sun are tranquilizing. Hope is able to absorb quite a number of people and their dogs of every description and perform its magic upon all.

I took the plunge of drawing multiple images in circles. Brian suggested different sizes. The first drawing I did was of Brian reading in the camper with the view across the arm in the background. The second drawing was my first plein air drawing (the fisherman standing in Resurrection Creek). The last drawing is of the Hope Social Hall. Inside was the beginning setup for a wedding reception– a four-tier wedding cake at the far end of the hall, decorated with live flowers. Unfortunately, we had to leave before the action picked up!

This house and yard have captured my imagination for years. There is no front walk; the grass goes right up to the porch stairs. The house (one of the oldest in Anchorage) and landscaping, kept up only to a point, hold sacred a past richly full of memories for a family in this town. It is a true gift, a jewel. My fears that I would be asked to move were unfounded. In five hours, the only person who approached me was Anda, on a run, who wanted a ride home.

As I positioned myself at the corner of 10th Avenue and and “I” Street, attracted by the wide open spaces of the Delaney Park Strip, and–more specifically– by the reflection of the island of flowers in a puddle, I didn’t realize that the final picture would contain personal memories. My dentist’s office, the home once lived in by a now-deceased friend, and a church where our storytellers’ guild has told stories are all in the picture. There are more memories packed into the Park Strip for me, and for many others.

The Park Strip used to be the only runway in Anchorage. It is now a long, grassy island that extends for many blocks east to west between 9th and 10th. It is a gathering place for community events. (On 9/11 hundreds of people gathered spontaneously on the portion just to the left of the flower island where there is a tall American flag.)

There was a lot of activity going on in the summer sun while I sat in the car and drew the picture. There were skateboarders, a mother changing a toddler’s diapers, tourists taking photos, cyclists, a lady carrying a little dog, people flying kites. Two motor cyclists drove up and parked right in the puddle to take pictures of each other. There was a steady flow of traffic going past me. That parcel of land, does indeed contain a lot! I admit to being more at home in the quiet neighborhood next to the vacant lot, but I am certain that this was the perfect spot for me to be drawing yesterday.

I learned that NOT doing a mock-up composition ahead of time caused headaches I could not rescind once the pen was put to paper. That’s okay, I’m learning, one step at a time!

There’s more to a vacant lot than meets the eye. A vacant lot holds mysteries, evokes questions, offers space to breathe– space that is tempered with the uneasy feeling that it might not be there much longer. This vacant lot is in South Addition, close to where we live, and “catty-corner” from the Fire Island Bakery (birthplace of chewy slow-rising breads and buttery croissants to rival European bakeries). The side view mirror of our vintage truck/camper is peeking in from the bottom; I haven’t to date been able to go “plein air.” How will I hold up to four or five hours perching outside on a small stool with the wind tugging at the paper? That’s the question gnawing at my mind.

Our house was built in 1954 from a kit (kind of like a puzzle) in this first suburb of Anchorage (South Addition).The original owner was a first rate gardener, and the house was on the garden tour at the time.

The Sitka Rose Hedge still gets a lot of attention. Noses are stuck in it every day. The day I did this drawing a neighbor remarked, “I could stand here and smell it for hours.” Last year Brian decided to get rid of it because he has a constant battle with an invasive weed; his arms were in shreds from weeding amongst the rose thorns. Several neighbors mounted a protest, so he put down a weed mat and hoped for the best.

The sun is a door knocker, not a gate ornament. There are stars in the hedge because the roses have five petals, leaving a star shape when the petals fall off. Which is apropos because I was focusing on this quote when I did the drawing:

Peace mounts to the heavens, the heavens descend to earth, earth lies under the heavens, everyone is strong.

–Victory Song of the Morrigan, Book of Fermoy

http://www.mythicalireland.com/

There are two roads out of Anchorage, one heading northward and one heading east and ultimately south where it splits into two roads, one headed to Seward and the other to the Kenai Peninsula. The road along the Turnagain Arm is classified an “All American Road,” of which there are 31 total in the US. Brian and I parked in the pullout across the road from where we procure our drinking water, which gushes generously at all times from the mountain rock.

The guardrail for the pullout is in the lower left, and both the road and the railroad track can be seen winding their way along the contour of the mountains. The waters of the Turnagain Arm are tidal and always shifting, sometimes glistening like thousands of diamonds in the sun. The town of Hope is to the right, on the other side of the Arm. Cordova is to the southeast, on the other side of the dark mountains (see previous word portrait post).

I love alleys, and I knew I wanted to draw an alley scene. However, I just couldn’t find the “right” spot and I was tiring of driving around our area, so I settled on parking in our own little parking lot next to our garage on our own alley. I parked sideways so I could open the car window and comfortably peruse the scene. The ants ended up being out of proportion, but then, by merit of their activity, perhaps they deserve extra notice.