A Snappy Dresser

Avian markings always fascinate me, and the stark black and white pattern with the little red hat on this red-bellied woodpecker is so intricate I couldn’t pass it up. The thing that’s so interesting about each bird’s feather pattern is that it has two distinctly different views: one with wings folded, like this, and quite another when wings are spread and flying.

This black and white checkerboard becomes black and white stripes when the big guy takes off; the male and female in this species of woodpecker are distinguished by the amount of red, the female only on the back of her neck, the male extending up and over the head to the beak. And despite all that red up top, there is a more rare red-headed woodpecker, so this species is named for a pretty insignificant amount of red on its belly.

I was so inspired by his outfit that I wore black and white with a red beret.

Here is a link to photos of other birds on this blog, mostly from my own backyard.

Among other sites on the internet, a great site to identify birds is All About Birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. I also use my very battered copy of Peterson’s Guide to the Birds of North America; there are many others, but after 25 years I practically have mine memorized. Here’s a link to a new, updated edition that sounds pretty exciting.

I also have a number of articles on The Creative Cat (believe it or not) regarding managing a Backyard Wildlife Habitat and feeding and providing habitat for wild birds in your yard.

Abandoned

It’s amazing what a bright winter afternoon can make look interesting and encourage you to explore.

This abandoned rail line was installed over 100 years ago and leads to the original Superior Steel building and what’s been added on to it. Now the rail line has fallen into disuse as have most of the buildings which comprised Superior Steel, but on a bright, stark winter afternoon there is something lovely in their shabby, peeling and rusty countenance, softened by ripened grasses, Queen Anne’s Lace, dock and sumac trees.

Alight

So many frozen droplets, each one a different color in the dawn light.

Not to miss a daily image, this was from last January, one of my favorites.

Vintage Glass, pastel © B.E. Kazmarski

I spent the afternoon minding the shop at Carnegie Antiques today and decided to paint a little sketch of a table of glassware that has recently arrived at the shop.

Judi, the shop owner, had organized this table of decorative glassware last week; when I was in I was enchanted by all the colors and shapes and patterns. Remembering it, I decided the next time I was in I would paint that table of glass.

Unlike other subjects, glass is translucent, both having a shape and allowing other shapes to be seen through it. It has a color but other colors can be seen through it as well, modified by the color of the glass. And instead of casting a deep shadow, it casts a pool of colored light on a table top.

Detail of painting.

This painting is about 10″ x 12″ in chalk pastel on Wallis sanded pastel paper; you can see the color of the paper in the lower left corner and here and there throughout the painting. I painted it in about 90 minutes, then touched up a few things when I got home with pastel colors I didn’t have in my little traveling box. There are four different shades of blue here, two shades of green and three of the cranberry glass. My traveling box is a cheap set of mostly primaries and secondaries, perhaps an extra shade of some of the like red-orange or apple green, plus black, white and mid-gray. I can capture quite a bit with those pastels by blending in place, but not always the nuances of glass.

I see things I’d like to work on—the background for one, which I like rough and sketchy but I want a little more color in it and can’t decide which. I began with pale yellow, then added blue, then green then pale violet. On the table I may mess around with the glass a little more to define the pieces, but mostly the doily under the blue bowl in the center does not look like a doily. It will come to me.

Detail of painting.

But there is glass from nearly every era there, opalescent milk glass, Depression glass, colored, etched, painted, plus napkins and napkin rings over on the right and two hobnail lamps with cranberry glass, one a nice respectable table lamp and the other a naked lady with a lampshade on her head. Those Victorians knew how to entertain themselves.

When it’s done, I think I’ll buy one of Judi’s highly decorative vintage gold frames and use that to frame it.

Though the shop sells vintage items from the mid-19th century to mid-20th century, I have a room with my artwork in the building. It helps to be friends with the owner, and I’m grateful to have this display space and also enjoy my time there where I am totally unplugged—no cell phone, no computer or wireless, just a radio or a recorded book if I care to bring one. It’s a real break from the usual day. I put out the “open” flag and people stop in to browse, what fun.

Detail of painting.

I usually do a little rearranging and cleaning in my little room, sometimes a lot, but when I don’t have a lot to do I bring a project with me that, again, can be done while unplugged, like writing, which I will often do in pen on a good old-fashioned tablet, or a crochet project, and a take a lunch I can heat up. After the busy-ness of working at home it’s nice to get a quiet spot now and then.

Helen L. Kazmarski

My mother died a year ago today. I first wrote this post after her memorial; today we remember her.

I recently lost my mother at age 85 after so many levels of illness in her life: decades of chronic conditions and surgeries, the lung cancer ten years ago that weakened and eventually put her in personal care, the beginnings of dementia two years ago, the move to skilled nursing a year ago, the weight loss and greater need for care all leading to the last few months of decline.

She was in the hospital with the last bout of congestive heart failure when she died. The night she died my brother and I went to her room at the nursing home to take the few possessions she had left there; I didn’t want to go back there if I didn’t need to, and I knew the next few days would be very busy. I was holding back sobs as we walked in, but words were forming in my head and when we entered I took a small scrap of paper and wrote a few of them down. That was enough to ease my heart for the moment, setting the intent, enough to get me through that and back home.

After several phone calls, a visit from a friend and more calls, I had my time alone and was up quite late. As I sat in the quiet of the night outside watching the snow gently fill the air and fall in a soft blanket on the ground, the poem came to me in nearly one complete piece. I carefully went inside and tiptoed to my desk, wrote it down slowly, line for line, all as if I was afraid I’d scare it away, all the beautiful words I’d been thinking, or maybe I’d break it, like a bubble. I changed very little in a rewrite. I had decided I would go through with my poetry reading, just two days after my mother died, because it was an opportunity to share her with others, and to read the new poem, and that I would also read it at the little service we’d have for her at the funeral home.

I could never encapsulate 85 years of a life into one blog post or one photo or one poem, so I won’t even try, but I want to share this. The photo above is the one we placed in our mother’s casket, her wedding photo from 1946 when she was 21 years old. The little scrap of red in the lower left corner is the shirt she wore, the one she loved best, and I knew she’d want to be remembered in it; our mother was one who could wear a red chiffon blouse in her casket and be proud.

I’ve also written a post over on The Creative Cat about this process of loss.

Without further ado, here is the poem.

About My Mother

Regardless of the many outstanding qualities any person may have
we are essentially remembered for only one of them.
In my mother, all would agree
this one would be her remarkable beauty.

All through her life the compliments trailed her
as she carefully maintained “the look”, her look, so glamorous,
from tailored suits to taffeta dresses to palazzo pants,
hair perfectly styled, nails manicured and painted
a collar set just so, cuffs casually turned back,
hair worn long past the age of 50,
a dark, even tan and shorts into her 80s,
lipstick always perfectly applied,
and even at 84
people marveled on her perfect skin,
dark curly hair,
and big bright smile.

I see that smile
when I see my sister smile,
and I see my mother’s active, athletic bearing
when I look at my brother,
and her gray eyes are mine.
In each of her grandchildren
and great-grandchildren
I see her round face,
graceful hands, pert nose,
proud upright posture
and a million other of her features and habits
and in all of us
her wild curly hair
is part of her legacy to us.

When we look at each other from now on
we will see the part of her she gave to each of us,
this little cluster of people who came from her
and who were her greatest treasure,
and when she looks at us from wherever she is
she will know that
she cannot be forgotten.

Passing Storm

The sun breaks through storm clouds and highlights the steeples of St. Mary’s Church and creates a rainbow over McKees Rocks, PA.

I’ve wanted to photograph this church for years, its steeples rising far above the industrial buildings around it as it stands before a hillside of homes. I knew I wanted to capture the moment when sunlight illuminated the steeples and crosses as the church would stand out against the landscape.

Today was an oddly warm January day, all of yesterday’s snow washed away by heavy rains and warm winds whipping the trees in all directions, clouds racing at all levels across the sky. I was lost in what I was actually looking for but found the tiny intersection of brick streets where the church stood. Watching the coming storm knew there was a chance I’d get the photo I wanted so I abandoned the junkyard I’d been looking for in order to purchase a back window for my Ford Escort and raced for the best vantage for the church with the hill of homes behind it as the rain battered my car and the plastic over the missing back window opening flapped in the wind.

Following the contour of the land I wound around a tight little suburban street and found a spot where I could see the entire valley except for a privacy fence in someone’s yard. I waited in my car until the rain began to slow and I could see the brilliant pale yellow light spilling out from the edge of the storm cloud. The clouds continued to move to the east, behind the church, forming the perfect deep purple backdrop made even darker as the light increased. The sun finally washed over the church and the houses on the hill and…

…a huge, perfect rainbow! Rainbows can be prosaic, used as symbols for far too many things, but this was truly the rainbow after the storm, simply a result of the conditions, interpret it as you will. I only had my little point and shoot, but I held it as high above the fence as I could as the last of the rain soaked my hair and jacket, hit the focus button and took a few shots.

McKees Rocks is a pretty rough and tumble place to say the least. On the outskirts of Pittsburgh, heavily industrialized and settled by thousands of East Europeans the mills and manufacturing were built along the Ohio River and in the valley where the rail lines followed the flood plain along Chartiers Creek. Houses were built on narrow winding streets clinging to hillsides, and the huge square-block-sized Catholic and Orthodox churches built in the center of each neighborhood. Along with the mills went the jobs and much of what is there has fallen into disuse, buildings are condemned, neighborhood assistance programs spring up to help those who live there now.

Unnamed Tributary, pastel © B.E. Kazmarski

On a quiet sunny winter afternoon this little unnamed tributary surely had a lot to say, babbling along over rocks and shelves of slate and limestone on its way to Scrubgrass Creek a distance away. I see a few things I’d still like to do with it but I’m pretty pleased. The light changes quickly at this time of year, and I had to work quickly.

Off in the woods today, I stood in the snow and painted a little pastel sketch as well as took photos of the snowy hollow at Kane’s Woods in Scott Township, PA. I’ve been waiting for a significant snowfall, enough to give good even cover to most of the leaf litter. Much of this conservation area faces north and doesn’t catch significant sunlight, especially in the winter when the sun’s angle is low, but this little hollow and the hill next to it face south. Once the sun gets into the hollow it just fills it up, especially when snow can reflect it in all directions.

The Kane Woods Conservation Area is a place I’ve known since I was a child, before it was conserved and trails were established, but my lifetime of visiting and that of others is what inspired Scott Conservancy to consider the site worth working for.

There's me, feeling a little silly.

I’ll be featured in one of the newsletters I design, this for Allegheny Land Trust, in a feature called “GreenTalk” to say a little bit about what conserving green space means to me. I needed a photo to go along with my Q&A, and since I’m the photographer I have very few of me. I asked a friend to take a few with my camera.

Along with the benefits of preserving water quality and air quality, protecting steep slopes from erosion and landslides and managing stormwater naturally, greenspace at the same time provides natural recreation areas that require little maintenance compared to a playground or formal park with accommodations. And for me, it provides a subject for my creative efforts, my paintings, photos, poems, and just a place to rest my eyes and ears from the onslaught of digital and social information and just listen to the breeze and the birds and watch the sunlight play across the snow.

Frost art.

A clear night at zero degrees Fahrenheit yields an abstract design of frosted areas on the window from dense, nearly opaque areas, a translucent tracery of curlicues and curves and mysterious fine lines like a map of thought.

Late Christmas

I leave my holiday decorations up until Candlemas/Immolc, February 2, the day that winter begins to give over to spring. Tonight’s snow on the lights and colored glittery ornaments is inspiringly beautiful.

Green Bottles

They were destined for the recycling bin, so I left them by the door in order to trip over them on my way out so I’d remember to take them to the bin. When I walked back into the room, the sun had risen full force and I couldn’t believe what I saw. Sometimes these scenes feel like a gift, and the certainly awaken my creative senses for a day of design at my computer.