Judy – Page 49 – Dear Liza

Changing Journals

Dear Liza,

I have fallen in love with keeping an Art Journal.
For a long time, I was intimidated by trying to do ART that was good enough for a BOOK.

But now I see it differently. It is a way to corral my art of a certain period, so I don’t end up with a floating cloud of sketches and color experiments. It also can show my growth as an artist, like we used to keep student portfolios… baby pictures growing to better pictures. (With a fair number of screw-ups in between, of course.)

When I retired, Krista Sabaska gave me a large format journal as a retirement gift. I started using it in 2021. It started out as an “Art with Liza” journal, for drawings we did together during our Zoom calls. You would give me a phrase and I would draw it. This one was “The Paranoid Android is surprised.”

As time went on, it became a place where I could put ideas for other projects. I made a bunch of sketches for Cousin Kestrel’s Christmas present in 2021, then stuck them in the Journal so I would have them all together.

I got more comfortable with making art in the Journal as my insecure ‘student’ brain got used to the fact that I was not going to be graded! It is MY book.
I used it for processing lots of ideas, like you moving to Denmark…

And me getting older, by keeping my birthday celebration alive in a collage.

And now, the inevitable has happened.
This friendly Journal with a year and a half of art in it … is full. But I can’t stop keeping an Art Journal! It is fun, gives me a place to doodle, and makes me brave by keeping my ideas safe from prying eyes.

Fortunately, Auntie Katie gave me this Journal years ago, and it has been waiting for me.

I knew I needed to do some collage in it right away, to break the ice and introduce myself. The first two pages are very much where my brain is…

And I think we are going to be friends.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A New Baby for the Hundred Acre Wood

Dear Liza,

I have told you about my bonsai forest, The Hundred Acre Wood. I’ve been nurturing it along for a few years now.

This past winter was extra cold and long, and the cotoneaster didn’t survive. In this picture taken back in March, you can see that the larch is sprouting a bit and the bunchy juniper is fine, but the cotoneaster is not waking up.

I have been on the lookout for a tiny Japanese maple to put in. I love the delicate umbrella shape and the tiny skinny leaves.

And it just so happened that on a walk the other day, sharp-eyed Auntie Bridgett saw this tiny tree growing under exactly the sort of tree I was looking for, not a foot from the sidewalk! Being careful to not disturb the soil or the tree and to be gentle with his thread-like roots, I peeled away some moss and dug the little guy out, carrying him home in my loving hand.

I chose the right sized tools for the job…

Removed the dead cotoneaster and loosened up the soil…

And ever-so-gently placed him in his new home. I laid the moss from his home bed around him to make his new spot feel like home.

Here is the new Hundred Acre Wood, with its newest addition, Mr. Naito.

I named the baby Japanese Maple after Bill Naito, who was a Portland businessman and leader of the Japanese community here in Portland back in the 1970s. Our Naito Parkway which runs along the West Bank of the Willamette River in downtown is named after him, as well.

I will keep him watered and let you know of his progress.

Love,

Grandma Judy

May Flowers, Part 1

Dear Liza,

Ruthie Inman is at it again! She has our Zoom Art class making lovely things and having fun. Since we are all in different places (Metamora, Illinois, Portland, Oregon and Edinburgh, Scotland) we meet over Zoom. Since she likes an element of surprise, she usually gives us just enough directions to get part of the project done, without giving it all away at once.

Her first direction was “collect newspaper, black and white text only.” This took a while, but having an artist in the house helps.

While we were in the Zoom meeting, Ruthie had us paint our sheets of newspaper whatever colors we chose. I pulled hand-me-down acrylics out of my box and slathered them on while we all chatted. I laid them aside, making sure they were mostly dry before they got piled up.

Our papers had time to get completely dry by our next meeting, and the next direction was “cut the papers in irregular circles, to stack into five layers, largest on the bottom, smallest on the top.” This needed some thinking. How big? Which color on the top? Which on the bottom? My biggest layer ended up being about four inches across.

Flowers. We were definitely making flowers.

After some fiddling around, I made my choice and started snipping. I love things that don’t need to be measured!

Then came the tricky bit… putting all the layers together. Depending on what we had handy, we all used different techniques. I chose five shafted buttons and, at Ruthie’s suggestion, used small twist-ties to keep them in place. Here’s how they looked, front and back.

Ruthie sent us a guide for the next part of the project, a mosaic art piece of a bicycle and a basket, and I trimmed and traced it into a piece of heavy watercolor paper for the mosaic to come, editing it as I went.

The theory is that the bike’s basket will be overflowing with the flowers.
I’ll show you what comes next at the end of the month, when we get it done.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Ducky Mother’s Day

Dear Liza,

Sunday was Mother’s Day. It was also almost 90 degrees F here in Portland.

Still, I was determined to spend the day somewhere pretty with Auntie Katie and the Cousins. I walked through a very pretty neighborhood full of azaleas to Ladd’s Addition and helped Katie pack a wonderful picnic. When Jasper and Kestrel arrived, we took the Orange Line train to Bybee station and walked a ways around the golf course to the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden.

There was a certain amount of grumbling about the heat, of course.
But we found a shady spot by the lake and settled in. We enjoyed delicious hunks of bread with creamy cheese, strawberries, and radishes.

And as we sat there, a Momma duck and her three babies swam over, hopped out just by our feet, had a grooming lesson and then fell asleep. Right there. It was magical.

And of course, when you get to witness magic, you want to share it. Kestrel quietly walked around, letting people know there were adorable sleeping baby ducks right over here, if they wanted to see them. Many did, and it was nice to see grown up people go all Gaga over the fluffy babies.

When we were full and rested, we packed up and walked around the lake. We found that there was a sale of Rhodies and azaleas, to share the wonderful plants and help support the garden. Auntie Katie found a plant for her garden at Books with Pictures.

The garden folks would haul the heavy plant to the entrance on a wagon, so we were free to make our way back. But we couldn’t carry the plant on the train, it was too heavy and the weather was just getting hotter.

We took some silly selfies and appreciated the incredible blooms, and debated how to get home. Lyft? Uber? Call home? That was it. Grandpa Nelson said he would come fetch us.

And after a very warm day and a very crowded ride home, we all got to relax in our cool houses.
It was a Mother’s Day much like motherhood itself: a bit busy, a bit out of control, but full of love and memories.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Warming Up!

Dear Liza,

We are predicted to have a heat wave in all the western states this coming week, so I headed down to Portland Nursery to gear up! The whole place was very full of happy people. I hunted for a tiny Japanese maple for my bonsai Hundred Acre Wood, but the ones they had were way too big. They did have this extra-large bonsai, called a Penjing. But still no tiny maple for me.

I did find five cherry tomato plants and six lettuce starts, and walked them home. I put them on our balcony to be safe from the predicted thunderstorms.

By then it was noon, so Auntie Bridgett and I had the first-of-many lunches on the balcony, sharing our space with Mouse, the veggies, and whatever neighbors strolled by. When the storms were taken out of the forecast, I hauled the new plants to the Blair Community Garden and put them in.

It was a happy, sweaty, exhausting hour, for sure. But it was what I have been waiting for since March! Getting my hands in dirt is always so satisfying.

Now I need to rig some sort of sun shade to protect my baby lettuces from the upcoming 90 degree heat.

It’ll work out. It always does.
Love,

Grandma Judy

Danish Practice

Dear Liza,

Learning Danish is a real challenge! I have been working at it on Duolingo every day since you moved to Denmark in August, and I am still at “baby talk” level. I know you and your folks are working hard at it, too.

I started using art to help me learn vocabulary a few months ago.

You know I’ve been studying French for a few years now, and there are words that have been adopted into Danish from French! Words like ‘restaurant’, and ‘menu’ and ‘toilet’ are Danish, as well as English and French. So there are a few gimme’s, as they say.

But those only go so far, and Danish has another difficulty.

Pronunciation!
Danish has TWENTY vowel sounds, at least three which do not happen in English. They all seem to be a variety of ‘o’, ranging from a puckered ‘oooo’ in the front of your mouth to a broader sound that sounds like you are choking on a potato. The consonants tend to get left off, leaving a pudding of vowel sounds that is hard for me to differentiate.

Also, Danish doesn’t pronounce the ‘d’ in the middle or end of a word, but it is still there (sometimes doubled) in the spelling. So ‘bondegård’, which means ‘farm’, is pronounced ‘bonnygo’. See what I mean?

I know you will work hard at Danish and get the hang of it well before I do, since it is all around you. Maybe you can help me when I come visit.

Love,

Grandma Judy

First Picnic of 2023

Dear Liza,

Sunday was a not-quite-sunny, not-quite-warm day, but I went to the vegetable garden to pull weeds and pick up the endless piles of Camélia blooms that drop on my plot. By the time I got back to the house, I was all warmed up. So when Auntie Bridgett suggested a picnic, I was all for it!

We made some egg salad, grabbed apples, celery, crackers, and our picnic blanket. The neighborhood was very azalea-forward with almost neon colors.

We noticed that the ground was damp, so we chose a table on the high ground. We kept our jackets on.

Still, the park was pretty, green, and scented with four o’clocks and tulips. An excellent church choir was singing across the road at the Laurelhurst Club, which made everything special.

We enjoyed our simple lunch as the crows and squirrels came by.

As we ate, however, the clouds got cloudier and the breeze got breezier. We finished up with a square of chocolate, packed up our slim supplies, and took a turn around Firwood Lake on our way home. The fireplace felt good as we settled in to watch the Giants play the Brewers.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Free Comic Book Day!

Dear Liza,

Our lovely spring walk took us all the way down to Auntie Katie’s bookshop, Books with Pictures! And since it was Free Comic Book Day, there were all sorts of things going on!

Auntie Katie met us, all dressed up this fabulous outfit.

Then I ran into Cousin Kestrel, who had done such a nice job painting her own knees, I asked to to put some abstract plants on my face.

I’d say that’s a real improvement!

We were there to visit, but most folks were there for comics! There were so many people there to shop and pick out their free comics, there was a line out the door. It was wonderful to see the shop so full!

We got snacks at the Underbite food truck, listened to Courage Music, and then headed home.

On our way down Clinton Street, we saw this adorable fairy village hiding in the garden of a tiny house. Portland always has such fun surprises!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Colors of Spring

Dear Liza,

We all went out for a walk Saturday, and since it is spring, we wore overcoats and boots and carried umbrellas…. Just in case.

But even though there were some massive clouds, we didn’t get a drop of rain! Just oodles and oodles of flowers. Wisteria has draped itself over arbors….

The cherry trees have dropped their pink snow drifts all over Ladd’s Addition…

Dogwoods are just too pretty to be believed…

And the lilacs were being lovely and smelling fabulous!

I’ll tell you about where we were headed…. Tomorrow!

Love,

Grandma Judy

National Cartoonist’s Day

Dear Liza,

Friday was National Cartoonist’s Day, and I celebrated it by reading my two favorite cartoonists. The first, Gary Trudeau, has written Doonesbury since 1968. I started reading it in our local newspaper when I was in high school, collecting the paperback collections as they came out.

The characters and stories in the strips were funny, intelligent takes on people very much like people I knew. Crazy Zonker Harris reminded me of one of my brothers, and Americanism zealot B.D. reminded me of the other one. The strips spoofed college sports, the anti-war movement, women’s liberation … all the hot-button topics of my teenage years.

The series of strips about Phred, the Vietcong terrorist, and his struggles during the war was enlightened and delightful.

Bridgett Spicer is my other favorite cartoonist, and your own Auntie Bridgett. She started writing her first comic strip, Squid Row, in 2002. It ran for in the Monterey Herald newspaper from 2009 to 2014.

It told stories about people I knew, too. Starving artists and their search for art supplies and folks with irrational fears of garden gnomes… people everyone could relate to. Like Gary Trudeau, Bridgett shows her characters’ flaws as well as their strengths.

Squid Row wasn’t nearly as political as Doonesbury, but every now and then Bridgett felt the need to make a comment on world affairs. When there was a controversy about cartoonists drawing the prophet Mohammed, she made this strip about a cab driver.

In 2015, she closed out Squid Row and started Randie and Ryan, showing her two main characters’ adventures as newlyweds. And when we moved to Portland, so did Randie and Ryan! That strip ran for four years.

After a few months , she started other projects and let the cartooning slide for a while. Then, in 2021, her friend Jack Kent, who does the comic Sketchy People and was working for our local Willamette Weekly, offered her a spot on their comics page. Who could turn that down?

Auntie Beeswax is a slightly eccentric lady who lives in Portland. She is always upbeat as she cares for bees, cats, chickens, and her melancholy niece, Mallory.

I love seeing our everyday life in the comic strip. A well-done comic takes real life and lets you see it differently.

PS. You can find all Bridgett’s works, including paintings, collages, and lots of comics, at bridgettspicerart.com

Love,

Grandma Judy