SUMMER IS EASY AND THE FISH ARE JUMPING

ASHEVILLE IN THE BLUE RIDGE AND SMOKEY MOUNTAINS

A BLUE MIST HANGS AND THE CLOUDS DRIFT LOW

Family Farms Leicester, North Carolina 

SUMMER FLOWERS ARE BLOOMING, THE CAROLINA LILIES, THE 

RHODODENDRON IS FLOWERING IN WHITE CLUMPS ALONG THE STEEP 

MOUNTAINSIDE, COWS ARE LAZILY EATING ABUNDANT GRASSES, CROWS SIT 

AMONG THE CORN STALKS THAT WILL LATER BE FEED FOR ANIMALS FOR THE

WINTER, TRACTORS ARE PLOWING, ROWS ARE MOUNDING, SEEDS PLANTED 

AND THE SUMMER CROPS ARE FLOURISHING

Carolina Lilly as I call it  

 

It is easy to be lazy in the summer as the line from "Porgy and Bess" says.  Summertime, when the living is easy.  I have posted less because I have been under time constraint to finish a major piece for an art show.  It is now done and shipped.  It is in my mind to expand the theme I started working with in this last piece.  I have been working with assemblage and high relief collage in themes that revolve around immigration, difference in cultures and cultural blending of people and nations.  Another area of interest is communication.  My Mother for the past 11 years has lived with the effects of a stroke that left her with sever communication problems and aphasia.  I have learned so much from my Mother's condition these past 11 years while I have been intensely involved in her care and her adjustment to her situation.  Also having worked in special education half my career as an art teacher has given me experience with severe handicaps of all kinds that effected their ability to communicate.  These themes are fascinating to me..how we communicate, how we perceive communication, how we use parts of our brains and not others, and what happens if part of your brain is damaged, but you can communicate with what is working?  We also communicate differently depending on our up bringing, experiences and our culture.  When I taught overseas in the Philippines I had to take a course in culture communication and how to understand cultural sensitivity.  So this is the areas I am going to explore in my art this summer and fall while at the mountain studio.  That is if I don't get to lazy while the fish are jumping!

The Next Stop on Our Open Studio Tour of Leicester

Gallery downstairs

Leicester Open Art Studio Tour continues with the work and studio of Olga Dorenko.  Olga is a tiny mite of a woman, but  I think a power house also.  I would have liked to talk more to her about her background and art, but it was a busy day for her with lots of visitors. I did find out she is from Russia.  Her art is detailed, skilled and imaginative.  You can feel the fall leaves brilliant orange as they burst forth like the sun behind a barn or the swirl of the mountain winds as they sweep leaves into a funnel of fall frenzy.  Her brush strokes are incredibly fine and smooth.  I think her paintings are so finely painted it must take her a very long time for one painting.  She had a two story studio, with exhibition space below and her painting studio above.  The home was separate with a pool and gazebo.  It looked quite wonderful.  I can only imagine.  I hope to learn more about Olga and her work in future shows.  In the meantime I will share these photo's with you and link you with her website.  

view from painting studio upstairs

View of gazebo, pool and home

Upstairs Painting Studio with skylights for natural light

http://olgadorenko.com

DID YOU SAY STUDIO TOUR!? WHAT FUN, LET'S GO!!!

LEICESTER 

There are so many artists in Western North Carolina if you throw a stick you are bound to hit one!  Of course we are teasing, but Asheville and the surrounding area is so full of craft artists that one could imagine it to be so. 

Wild Berry Bed and Breakfast 

Have you ever gone on a scavenger hunt?  Well, the Leicester Artists Tour is very much like one.  Wildberry Bed and Breakfast is one of the sponsors and the very first place we go on the tour. There you can get a map, see a preview of the artists works, and get a sense of the kind of roads we will encounter on this day. Loose steep gravel, and one way roads are very common on the back mountain tour.  It would help to have four wheel drive which we don't have, but our trusty Pilot Honda will make it just fine.  The Blue Ridge Mountains are beautiful and as we goes through the tour, it is evident that nature is as much the artist, as the artisans we are going to visit.  Tucked back in the hidden coves and high atop mountain ridges artists studios dot the area. It is a tremendous treat to get to see artist studio's anytime and see where creativity happens.  Each studio is as unique as the individuals who create there.  First on our list is Doc Welty, potter. Tomorrow we will look at more studio's on the tour.  

Doc Welty's Enchanting Mountain Pottery Studio

Glazing Shelves are loaded with a recent unloading

Doc has three kilns, 2 propane gas and one wood firing

The glazes have an old feel about them

Plenty of visitors buying

Recent Craft Magazine highlight of Doc

I love these two tables, a bargain for anyone!!!

From Doc's wheel he has a good view of the house, when his wife calls him in for lunch.

Portraits and Still Life /an uncommon view

Classical portraits are usually full face or side view, perhaps with a little Rembrandt lighting if we look at a three fourth's view with shading.  Typical still life's are flowers or fruits or game set in a stilted formal fashion.  But I think we can think of them both differently.  Each tells us something about the subject we are contemplating, each gives us information that helps us form an opinion and draws us in to want to know more.  I think of them as time capsules, a bit of history and culture snatched in a moments time:stolen away for the future to time travel backwards.  If quantum physics is correct and we experience time horizontally and not  in a linear fashion, then we are in the future and past at the same time. 

Here are a few portraits and still life's that tells us a story or give us information leaving work for our imaginations to do.  In art I never like to over define anything for my viewers...art should leave a sense of mystery, an intriguing of the mind, and a tug at the soul.  We should all be able to bring a sense of ourselves to the art work without the artist telling us his view to overtly.  And so these pieces I have presented below offer a twist of classical formats for you perusal. 

Portrait of My Nephew

Thanksgiving

Photo portrait by Elizabeth Gordon

Shutters and Shadows/ Portrait of a Southern Lady

Charleston, South Carolina             Elizabeth Gordon

Still life Green screen and Red Barn Window

Old Leicester Road  Leicester, North Carolina              by Elizabeth Gordon

Fall leaves with Crane

Asheville, North Carolina        by Elizabeth Gordon

Boo, Mountain Dog in Repose  

          Blossom Ridge, Leiscester, North Carolina     Photo by Elizabeth A. Suggs

I Love Cows

Cow in Black and White with Curves                                                                                photo by elizabeth gordon

My Grandmother had a dairy which she built to take care of her four kids and a disabled husband during the great depression.  She named her cows Susie...all her cows were named Susie.  My Mother told  me when I was five I would beg to stop whenever I saw a cow.  I loved their big soft kind eyes, their slow moving grace, and  a kind of ageless presence.  Cows are beautiful and they are one of everyones favorite animals.  We see them in paintings and pastoral scenes throughout the ages.
I loved this photo.  I took it on the way to buy milk ironically. I stopped in the middle of the road, not so safely I might add, but I did get the shot.  Her head is low, her gaze is steady, her mood is ever peaceful.  

Mountain Morning Log

It is early morning in the mountains of Leicester/Asheville mountains. From my loft bedroom I can see the leaves dancing in the wind. The light is peaking through branches like a child playing hide and seek. I love this tree house loft, you really feel as if you are up among the trees. A cold front came through last night and it will much cooler today and tonight. For someone who hasn't been in lower than 80 degrees all summer it feels quite chilly! Vinci is asleep. He is enjoying the mountain smells, the mountain dogs that visit, and hanging out the window on our afternoon drives. He is not quite sure about the cows and horses, for a city dog they seem all very strange. But he hangs his head out the window and sniffs in the cool mountain air, it seems to refresh him as it does me. A drive down Potato Creek road seems to do us both good. Watching the farmers harvest crops and plant new ones is a revival of the earth so basic and ancient it is affirming to watch. The tobacco leaves are ready for picking and some are drying in sepia tones in old wood barnes with rough hewn siding. The world is different here, no sirens, no traffic, no airplanes, less rush, more simple. I can feel the layers of tension rolling off, and a settling in of my self, a centering of myself. I sleep better in this cool mountain air and for right now most worries are far far away. It is a good place within me and within this place of natures beauty to do art. I think it is hard not to do art when surrounded by nature's beauty.