Judy – Page 101 – Dear Liza

Halloween

Dear Liza,

Saturday was Halloween! It was a clear, stunningly bright day, and just a tiny bit chilly. After breakfast and crosswords, Auntie Bridgett and I had some things to do.

First, we drove over to St. Stephen’s Church on SE 41st Street for their Harvest Parade and Food Drive. Grandpa Nelson and I had seen the signs about it the day before on our way to Zach’s Shack, and I really wanted to see kids in costumes.

We chatted with the teachers in charge as a few families began to assemble, gave them our donation for the local food bank, and walked down the block. This time of year makes Portland so pretty! The trees changing, the flowers giving their last blast of color…. it takes my breath away.

As we wandered, a very friendly black cat hopped her fence to come say hello. She rubbed and purred with us until another person came down the sidewalk. “Gotta go, bye!” She seemed to say, and headed off for more pets.

The parade was very low-key, with kids and families organized by grade levels. They had a scavenger hunt of things to look for: black cat (check!) spider webs, pumpkins, and such. Everyone was in costume, but we seemed to be the only non-school people watching. We sat on the corner across from them and waved and clapped, telling everyone how great they looked. Some even waved back!

When I had seen enough happy kids to hold me for a while, we headed to the grocery store. With Election Day coming and Portland tending to over-react to politics, we thought it wise to stock up. We didn’t want to be running out of cream if protesters are out.

The Art Journaling Secrets Unleashed challenge was Orange. I didn’t feel very inspired, to be honest. As much as I have come to appreciate orange this Fall, the color reminds me too much of Mr. Trump’s fake tan. I thought of trying a portrait of him (it would certainly be orange) but I didn’t like the idea of spending all day with someone so unpleasant. So I decided on a collage page, with his silly pumpkin head having a tiny role to play.

We listened to Vince Guaraldi’s soundtrack for “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and had a quiet afternoon. Dinner was tamales from Safeway, which were tasty, though we still haven’t found reliable, Salinas-quality Mexican food here in Portland.

We played Presidential Trivia and watched Steven Colbert, then Neil Simon’s mystery spoof, “Murder by Death”, and it was time for bed. It was certainly the quietest Halloween I have ever spent, but it was Covid-appropriate.

I hope you had a wonderful, fun, sweet Halloween.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Candy Collage

Dear Liza,

On Thursday I got to try something I didn’t even know would work. The “Art Journaling Secrets Unleashed” challenge topic was “Candy”. I love candy, but I didn’t want to try and draw a piece of candy; it felt too hard and no fun at all.

We have LOTS of candy around the house, so I looked at the wrappers and decided they looked like flowers. Maybe I could make a collage out of them?

But the wrappers are waxed paper… can you collage with waxed paper? I didn’t find anything about it online, so I just jumped in on my own. Figuring that the main problem was the wax itself, I put the wrappers between layers of an old towel and ironed them to get some of the wax out.

Then I cut out some square bits from miniature Tootsie Rolls, and flowers and leaves from Tootsie Pops and fruit chews, and laid them out to make a vase and bouquet. It looked….. okay.

After lunch, I took another look and realized it needed some context. A place for the vase to sit, a background for it to sit in front of. I was sure happy I hadn’t glued the pieces down yet! Since my flowers were all bright pinks and oranges, I made to table and background cool blue and purple.

Then came the real test: I glued the still- waxy wrappers down, using Modge Podge and a brush, and sure enough, they stuck!

I put in some shading and lines with colored pencils and a micron pen to make the edges stand out more, and I was done. I was pleased and surprised. I learned something new and discovered a whole new set of materials to play with.

Tomorrow’s challenge is “Masks”. That should be fun! Paint, crayons, collage, fabric…. the possibilities are endless. Maybe even candy wrappers. Yum, yum, yum…

Love,

Grandma Judy

Seven Months In

Dear Liza,

Yep, it’s been seven months (and a few days) since Dr. Fauci announced the quarantine. Spring and summer have come and gone, and our overnight temperatures are below freezing here in Portland. Winter is heading our way.

Late spring snow, the first week of quarantine

Many things have changed, for certain. Shakespeare in the Parks, big band concerts on the grass, and theatrical performances of any kind are a sweet, distant memory. Eating in restaurants, chatting with friendly waiters and total strangers, is now pretty much unthinkable. Cheering for the Pickles or the Thorns would be the height of social irresponsibility.

Silliness at the Pickles game, last summer

And travel to Paris? Out of the question. Totally. Big, heavy sigh.

Even going to visit family, sitting on a sofa and playing games with grandkids, just isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

But many things, important things, are still with us. Love, even at a distance, is still love. Watching you decorate a cookie house via ZOOM or walking a corn maze with the cousins is a reminder of who I am and what ties I have in this world. Waking up and having coffee with Auntie Bridgett. Doing crosswords and taking walks with Grandpa Nelson. Watching horror movies and baking shows.

I guess all this is to say that we are still holding on, seven months into the lockdown. We wear our masks and social distance and try to be patient with take-out.

Hang in there, kiddo. I will see you soon.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Fun with Stencils

Dear Liza,

I am still doing the Art-Ober challenge with my friend Ruth Inman. The Facebook page is called “Art journaling Secrets Unleashed” and there are quite a few folks playing along.

Some of the challenges, like “sea life” or “alcohol”, have connected with me, a memory or a place I love. But others are more generic, like “stars” and “circles”.

So, for those, I have been trying out new techniques, new ways of making pictures besides just painting with a brush. Tracing, splattering, sponge printing… these are new to me and I am figuring them out.

Tuesday’s challenge was “pumpkins”. I like pumpkins, but couldn’t think of any interesting way to paint one. So I made some stencils. First, I painted the night sky and some ground in watercolors.

Then I cut a pumpkin stencil and started layering on colors in acrylic. I used a brush, a sponge, and even that netting that is used to bag avocados.

The purple background kept showing through my orange, but I persevered, layering on the colors. Wanting to distract myself from the muddy looking pumpkin, I cut a stencil for the moon and laid down some white and blue with a bit of rubber mat. I liked how that turned out, because it was fine that some of the sky showed through.

Putting in the moon. The paper clip holds the stencil and keeps the page from curling

Looking back at the pumpkin, I realized it was muddy from the purple AND flat. I laid in lines for shadows with acrylic and when that didn’t work, tried some micron lines and Posca market highlights.

But the darn purple still showed through! After a long walk to the market and lunch, Auntie Bridgett Spicer suggested an orange Posca marker to bring some really bright orange to the picture. It was finally good enough for me to stop.

If I were to do this same picture again, I would use the pumpkin shaped cut-out from the stencil to mask the paper way back when I put in the sky, so the pumpkin would have been painted on white instead of purple, which would eliminate the muddiness.

I still am not totally happy with it, but it is better. And better, every day, is all I can ask.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Fall Color

Dear Liza,

In Fall, Portland puts on some really fabulous colors. And today was so bright and chilly that we went out for a walk to enjoy them.

I love walking in the late afternoon because the light pours beautifully through the leaves.

The cosmos flowers one of our neighbors planted have gotten taller than me! They looked so pretty against the bright blue sky.

The last of the sunflowers are still blooming nicely just beside the cosmos.

We were getting very chilly on our walk, and passed by the Nandinas on our way home.

The weather forecast for to night is 29 degrees, just a little below freezing. I have moved the geraniums from Great Grandma Billie’s garden closer to the house and will cover them with a sheet to protect them from the frost.

Our movie for the evening is Cary Grant in “Arsenic and Old Lace”.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Topaz Farm

Dear Liza,

On Friday I got to spend a wonderful evening with Auntie Katie and Cousins Jasper and Kestrel. It was a real adventure!

Auntie Katie drove us through Friday evening rush hour traffic up to Sauvie Island. We went to a farm where her friend Peggy works, called the Topaz Farm. It was nearly 5:00 when we got there, but Peggy assured us that there was a lot of fun to be had before the sun went down.

Kestrel and Jasper had great fun running around the extremely diverse pumpkin patch, admiring and adopting pumpkins as they went along. “George” would get googly eyes and a feathered hat, Kestrel decided, and a little white one would sit and watch.

Once the pumpkins were corralled in the car, Peggy took us over to meet the goats. There were several goats, including one just a month old. We were allowed to feed them bunches of basil, which made everyone smell delightfully of pesto.

There were also turkeys, ducks, and an outstanding Goth chicken.

The pigs had gone to sleep by that time, but the sign in their pen let us know what sort of sneaky critters they were!

The sun was beginning to go down as we headed into the Corn Maze. There were maps posted at every checkpoint, and we still managed to get delightfully lost. We picked and nibbled some corn, and Jasper held into an ear “as a weapon, just in case”.

Auntie Katie and Kestrel, tramping through the corn maze

We wandered into the barn where all sorts of apple things were being sold. Cider, caramel apples, hand pies, and mushrooms, all got loaded into a box. We sat out in the gathering dark and enjoyed feeling almost normal, almost pre-Covid. We bought some kettle corn for Grandpa Nelson and the kids climbed in a tree until it was literally too dark to see.

I was one tired, happy Grandma by the time I got home. Life is good. Stay safe, stay well.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Our Halloween Movies

Dear Liza,

You know we don’t like gory movies, but we do like monsters, witches, aliens and such. Our movie selections this year have been a fun mix of really old and newer ones.

The Mummy, Dracula and The Creature from the Black Lagoon are household favorites. They have the benefit of not being a re-make of anything, but the first of their genre. We enjoy the old sets and costumes, and the dialogue about ‘modern day’ science vs. superstition.

Some classics are not as popular. We dislike every single character in the original Frankenstein and its first sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein. There just isn’t anyone to root for. The vain doctor, his fiancé-greedy best friend, his loving but idiotic fiancé, all act against their own interests at every turn. We can only sympathize with the Monster, who hasn’t got a chance. It is frustrating.

We enjoy the 1950’s scientific monsters, which usually involve the monster arriving on an asteroid. The Day of the Triffids, The Blob, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers have different levels of scariness, but all show regular folks dealing with really weird stuff.

It Came From Outer Space depicts the aliens as just a ship full of (really ugly) guys who have engine trouble, needing a few spare parts and a little help, just hoping to get off the planet alive. The movie shows the small minded Earthlings as “hating anything they don’t understand”. This is a refrain in many of the movies from the 1950s.

Maybe my all time favorite, The Day the Earth Stood Still shows the alien (played by Michael Rennie) as a messenger of subtlety and intelligence.. Arriving as he does at the height of the Cold War, he puts our petty planetary squabbles into perspective. “Live in Peace”, he warns, “Or face obliteration.”

Vincent Price, of course, features in our Halloween selection. His House on Haunted Hill and House of Wax are eerie and surprising and just gruesome enough to have the spirit of the season.

Kay Hammond shows Margaret Rutherford that she is indeed “there”.

British post-War silliness is delightful in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit (starring the dotty Margaret Rutherford and a very young Rex Harrison). Rex Harrison is also handsome in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, from the same era.

Newer movies we have enjoyed are the musical Little Shop of Horrors and Bette Midler’s slightly shrill Hocus Pocus. They are much less atmospheric than the older movies, but a little levity is welcome in these odd times.

I hope you will try some of our favorites and add them to your own list!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Surprise Spring

Dear Liza,

About a month ago I told you about my bonsai pot, which I call The Hundred Acre Wood, getting all its leaves droopy because of the smoke from the forest fires nearby. They hadn’t changed color for fall, their leaves had simply wilted.

The Hundred Acre Wood is only a few years old, which is very young for a bonsai. The ones you see in the Japanese Garden are a hundred years old or more, being taken care of by skilled, devoted gardeners. Mine is just a baby!

I was even more worried when all the leaves shriveled. Was my tiny forest dead? How were other trees reacting? I decided to put it back out on the patio once the air quality was back to normal, and wait for spring.

Well, I didn’t have to wait that long! My confused birches are sprouting new leaves as though it was spring already. Not all of them, but two of the five, and now I don’t know what to think.

Did the smokey darkness put them into an early hibernation, and have they now moved past their imagined winter into next spring already? Has anyone else heard of this smoke induced dormancy?

As always, with bonsai, we will practice patience. We will wait and see.

Love,

Grandma Judy

The Other Dandelion

Dear Liza,

Yesterday I told you that I had made two sketches of a dandelion, and only used one. Here is what I did (and learned) with the other one.

I put in watercolor green for the distant lawn, but it looked flat and not ‘distant’. And the fence wasn’t right.

But I fiddled with it. I think this ‘fiddling’ is what they call The Artistic Process. Auntie Bridgett showed me how to shade the grass so it would recede, and I played with the fence to make the boards look more like boards.

By the time I was mostly happy with it, Grandpa Nelson was ready to go for a walk. We enjoyed the cool fall sunshine, changing leaves, and tiny weeds growing from our latest rains.

And then I saw it. My mistake.

I had drawn a dandelion and put on the wrong leaf! Dandelions are so-called because someone thought their leaves looked like the tooth of a lion (dent du Leon). And I had put in a leaf that was more of a langue du chat. Could I fix it?

I could try. I picked a leaf and took it home to trace. I cut and colored and placed them as best I could over the wrong leaves. And it is better.

My mother always said that since we got smarter when we made mistakes, she must be the smartest woman on the planet. Today, I learned about leaves, paying attention to details, my own capacity for patience, and the myriad ways to correct errors.

So, educationally speaking, it was a good day.

Love,

Grandma Judy

More Mixed Media

Dear Lisa,

I have told you about the October Mixed Media challenge I have been doing. Each day there is a new thing to make a picture of, like ‘birds’ or ‘fence’. You can use any style and material you like, then you take a picture of it and post it on the Facebook page.

The other day, the challenge was ‘weeds’. I made a sketch of a dandelion growing in a crack in the sidewalk by a stone wall, but while I was working on it, I got the idea of doing it in collage. So I turned the page of my art journal and sketched the picture again.

I wanted to make lots of layers, so I used acrylic paints and a sponge to paint in grey mortar and some green moss. Then I cut up our voter’s pamphlet (after we filled out our ballots) for the cement and stone wall. I hid most of the text with a few coats of acrylic paint.

I did a few chores while I waited for all that to dry, and then played with greens to put in moss and tiny weeds, and got the basic dandelion put in. Then I put in details with waterproof pens and a white posca marker.

It wasn’t as perfect as I wanted, but I couldn’t think of what to do to make it better, so I called it done. I will tell you what happened with the other sketch tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy