An Artist's Date with Charles Burchfield

As I confided yesterday, I am working through Julia Cameron's famous book "The Artist's Way." I am on Chapter Two and yesterday I decided it was time for my second Artist's Date.

These are forays you make on your own, to anywhere -- it is just supposed to be something you enjoy, something that's fun. Technically you are supposed to plan them in advance. Yeah right, as Leonard Pennario used to say. I will get better at this however right now I am just trying to make sure these Artist's Dates happen. You do a chapter of the book a week and one Artist's Date a week. This weekend is kind of crowded and I wanted to make sure I did not fall behind with things.

I have a list of possibilities for Artist's Dates. It is easy to overthink them and I have vowed not to. I think I get the gist of it, which is to step out of your routine, do something different.

So yesterday I carved out a couple of hours and sallied out to the Burchfield Nature Center in Gardenville, i.e. West Seneca. It was actually not far from Cazenovia Park where I went for my first Artist's Date. South Buffalo and West Seneca are neighbors.

And speaking of neighbors, guess what was right across the street from the Burchfield Nature Center?

Beautiful Fourteen Holy Helpers!

The Burchfield Nature Center is a kind of mystery to me. Even after going there I was unable to determine its exact connection with Charles Burchfield. Did C.B. live there? Was it at least his property? I cannot figure that out and there was no one I could ask.

However it was new to me and I enjoyed, even in what amounted to bitter cold, walking on the wooden pathways and standing at the edge of the rushing creek.

 

 

What creek is this? That is another question.

From time to time plaques showed you pictures of Burchfield's wacky nature paintings. They would tell you he liked painting poplar trees, things like that. 

 

It left me wanting more information.

I wanted to know if it were these particular poplar trees he painted!

Did he paint this exact creek?

I am sentimental. I will have to look up these answers. One goofy thing about all this is I was friends with his daughter. My friend Michelle introduced me to Charles Burchfield's daughter Catherine Parker. Catherine was at my house several times. I was at her studio. I saw her at other friends' houses. Did I ever ask her one question about her dad? No!

Back then I knew nothing about Burchfield and I just was not curious. Which probably helped my friendship with her -- she must have gotten sick of people asking her about her famous father. But still.

Couldn't I at least have asked one question?

Back to yesterday. The Burchfield Nature Center itself, this sprawling wealthy-looking house, was closed. It was just me and the cold. I actually think this was a day Burchfield would have liked. I think he would have liked the color palette.

 

He loved this time of year, very early spring. He also loved the approach of winter. He liked the drama of our seasons here in Buffalo.

I walked around for about 45 minutes, thinking about things like this, and then I went on to Part Two of my Artist Date, which was to visit a nursery and treat myself to some plants. Gardenville was named for all its nurseries. 

I thought I might buy one or two plants. Yeah right -- again.

I came home with about a dozen! Here is my cart at Rudolph's, on Clinton Street.

 

When I got them home I arranged my acquisitions in the sun room. And the flora, I now say, were the best part of the Artist's Date. Last night, as I was getting ready to go rehearse with the St. Louis Choir, I was sort of fretting about how the day had gone. I wasted too much time, I thought. I have a lot of work to do. That Artist's Date ate too much of my day. I should do them on Sundays. You are supposed to fritter away Sundays, not Thursdays.

Then I looked up and saw all those flowers and ferns. And I thought, this is a day I will remember.

With pleasure.

Bring Flowers of the Fairest

 

Today my house cleaning continued. Really, cleaning does not actually say it. I wished I had one of those construction debris thingies attached to the window so I could just dump stuff into it!

Finally in the evening I went outside and picked some violets. I was going to do a painting of them. However when I got inside with them I had another idea.

I remembered when I was little and we used to put flowers in front of our statue of the Blessed Mother. I loved that about May. We would say a decade of the Rosary and sing a song, maybe "'Tis the Month of Our Mother," something like that. I always remember those beautiful evenings, like tonight -- warm, fragrant. Howard and I ate dinner on the porch tonight and the air had the aroma of flowers.

I do not think I ever thought to do this in my adult life, but tonight I thought, I will put these violets in front of my statue of Our Lady.

Now things grew complicated. For one thing I could not find the right size vase. For another I have two statues of Our Lady. What to do? What to do?

I have them arranged on the sun porch with St. Joseph in the middle. Remember the statue of St. Joseph, how I got it? That is this statue.

After reviewing the situation I finally put the violets in front of Our Lady of Mount Carmel because her eyes seemed to go sweetly in the direction of the flowers. Heck, it really doesn't matter, you know? Whatever statue the flowers go in front of, they go in front of Our Lady. 

The Our Lady of Mount Carmel statue also is special to me because Howard fixed it. Jeoffry knocked her down once when I foolishly had the statues on the radiator. I remember Howard breaking the news to me. "It's bad," he said. But then he glued her back together. I was so grateful because my mother had given me this statue.

Long story short, now we have violets in front of her. I said a "Hail, Holy Queen," a prayer that I love, and I really loved continuing my childhood tradition, after all this time.

Now I have this song on my brain...

Oh Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today...

Queen of the angels, Queen of the May!

My mysterious roses

 These are the roses in front of my house!

Here I am, a loser of a gardener, and yet the rosebushes I put in a long time ago have just grown like weeds. My neighbor taught me to prune them a few years ago and so I have been doing a little of that. And maybe it is true that a little goes a long way. Because look at them!

 As I have perhaps mentioned before, these roses are miraculous in their way. For a brief shining week or so, my garden is the wonder of the block. However this year that week has stretched to three weeks. I think that is because Howard cut down this weedy tree that was growing among them. The tree must have been stifling one of the rose bushes, the one with hot pink roses. This year I am seeing a lot more of them.

This week has seen the flowering of the big rose bush in front of the house, the gigantic rambling rose with ice-cream-pink flowers. 

 

 

Let me tell you one thing.

Whatever gardening I do these days, I do it proudly!

I walk about the, ahem, grounds with my head held high. Surely people who are stopped in traffic in front of my house, they are looking at me with awe. 

Look, they say. There is the gardener who grew those roses!

They are saying: I wish I had roses like hers!

They wonder: What is her secret?

I wish I knew!

 

 

When flowers find you

Yesterday before Mass I took a peek at The Buffalo News because we were having no coffee hour on this particular day and so I could take a minute to breathe.

There was this story by my friend Susan Martin about what decorators advised for your home. Decorators, I love that idea. People used to have decorators back in the 1960s. Leonard Pennario had a decorator. Everyone did.

But anyway. One decorator said there was nothing like fresh flowers to make your house feel beautiful.

As I may have mentioned I have been cleaning the house and tidying it hoping that it makes my life less chaotic and I can reach all of my goals with no exceptions. I thought hmmm. The roses are blooming outside! And/or maybe I should go out and buy some flowers.

However.

Flowers found me!

After Mass, there being no coffee hour, I asked my friend Meghan who sings with me in the choir if she wanted to go grab coffee. Which she did. We went to the Public at the Hotel Lafayette where we enjoyed coffee and yummy sausage sandwiches.

And as we were dining, this woman came up and offered us flowers!

They were her bridal centerpieces. She had just been married the night before at the Lafayette. Her husband was with her.

I told her best wishes on her wedding being that my mother told me to say best wishes to the bride and congratulations to the groom. And Meghan and I gladly accepted the centerpieces! Here is Meghan with the flowers. The bride is in the background. Her husband is to the left, I do believe. And in the background is a table full of guys who were accompanied by a big white poodle dog. I should have gotten the dog in the picture. The guys also accepted flowers!

Thank you, newly married gal!

I went home and the flowers went well in my dining room. I should post a picture but I would like to do a little more cleaning up first.

For now at the top of the post I put up a sketch I was doing not long ago at the Botanical Gardens. I pompously signed it even though I was not done with it. I was also with Meghan, now that I think of it, on that occasion. She is my sketching buddy. But more importantly...

She is the flower child!

My encounter with Aretha Franklin

I was sad to hear a few days ago of the passing of Aretha Franklin. She died so young. And it gets me on a personal level, because of the time my path crossed hers.

It was a unique encounter! The saga began with a phone interview I did for The Buffalo News.

This particular call was an accident. Our pop music critic, Jeff Miers, happened to be on vacation when Aretha's publicist called offering the interview. We did not want to say no to an interview with Aretha Franklin, seeing that she lived in Buffalo as a girl. So I stepped up to the plate. I put myself through a quick crash course on her career -- I was an expert on Leonard Pennario, not on Aretha Franklin -- and then the diva and I spoke.

Here is the interview I did. Reading back on the interview I smiled remembering how when I mentioned I played the piano, and began asking her about her own playing, she seemed to relax and brighten. Pianists love to talk to other pianists!

But the real fun began afterwards.

It was right as I was telling her goodbye -- isn't it funny how that is when people come out with stuff? Aretha began talking about the friends she had as a little girl in Buffalo.

She wondered if I could help her get in touch with this family. And so I did. First I put together a story, a kind of shout-out to them. Blassingame, the name was.

Subsequently I was able to get a hold of Wayne Blassingame on Facebook. We had a bunch of friends in common and so I was able to message him. Aretha had remembered him as the baby of the family. She had been sort of sweet on his older brother, Gordon.

Aretha came to town and as you can see in The News' photos, was delighted that she was able to meet Wayne, who still lives in Buffalo and, may I add, is still my Facebook friend. Meanwhile, I got to talk with Gordon Blassingame.

We ran that story under the subtle title, "Aretha Franklin's Childhood Crush Tells All." I believe I wrote that headline.

The whole experience really touched me. You could tell Aretha was taking stock of her life. You could tell she was looking back wondering what things might have been like if her life had been different. This boy Gordon Blassingame -- well, he was now, like her, in his 70s -- she had tried to reconnect with him a couple of times in his single days, after their paths separated. Once, when she showed up looking for him in a limo, he was out of town.

He struck me as a salt-of-the-earth guy, the kind of man every girl would be lucky to marry. He had been in the military, joining the Marines. Then he had settled down to a job in public transit, and retired with what I imagine must be a good pension. He had been married to his wife for 41 years and hoped to top his parents' record of 50 years of marriage. He chuckled that he and his wife joked about Aretha from time to time, affectionately.

No wonder Aretha had seen something in him. A celebrity's life can be lonely and I bet you wish for that kind of normalcy, for a good faithful man to stand between you and the world.

My Aretha Franklin story did not end when her concert did.

A few days later, this gigantic bouquet of flowers arrived at work. That is the bouquet in the picture at the top! Howard found it. The flowers were from Aretha, with a note thanking me for helping her reconnect with her friends.

I think we did an email back-and-forth after that. I know I wrote her to thank her, and she mentioned to me that when she next came to Buffalo maybe I could give her a tour of The Buffalo News. Which, we all would have loved that. But she did not come back here, at least not that she knew. She did come back from time to time, we heard, to visit her mother's grave in Forest Lawn.

It got so I liked to go to Forest Lawn too! Too bad we never realized we had that in common.

I sort of thought I would get to meet her one day. She had invited me to say hello at Artpark, but I think I had to be at the Philharmonic or someplace. Plus I learned a long time ago not really to listen when artists invite you to meet them backstage. Who needs another stranger backstage, you know? And those situations do not bring out the best in me.

I still cannot actually name one Aretha Franklin song aside from "R-E-S-P-E-C-T." But I began jokingly to think of her as my buddy. My buddy, Aretha. I said a prayer for her when, in the car, I heard she had died. We should all say our prayers for Aretha Franklin, pray that she makes it to heaven. I have a feeling she will.

She was more than the Queen of Soul.

She was a gracious lady.

Mary, get your gun

You know me, the minute it hits 80 degrees, that oven goes on!

I feel like baking.  It is just how it is. Sunday is approaching, and the coffee hour. And so this evening I decided it was time to test out the Mirro cookie press.

This was a reward after a day of hard work. I read up on how to make Spritz cookies successfully and then I just had at it. I used a traditional Betty Crocker recipe. I whirred it up in the World War II Mixmaster, selected a pinwheel pattern, fit the dough into the Mirro press and --

Fail.

OK, I got some cookies that were not too bad. But mostly I just could not quite get the hang of it. I will work on it! But the good news is --

Here is where it is great to be me. Upstairs the other day when I was looking for something else, I found a 1950s Cookie Chef Trig-A-Matic Pastry Gun. Just like this one in the picture.

It was still in its original box.

With a price tag attached, $2. That seems to be the going rate I pay for these things. The Mixmaster had also been $2.

Frustrated by my incompetence with the Mirro, I did not have a hope in the world this Cookie Chef gun would work. But I read the instructions on the box. Then I scraped up all my mistake cookies and packed the dough into the gun, and ...

Success!

I pulled the trigger and I thought, I will believe this when I see it. But lo. I lifted up the gun and there was this perfect little flower cookie.

I pulled it again and there was another.

This thing is perfect!. Looking through my holdings I see I have another model too, a plastic pastry gun made in West Germany. It is quaint to have things made in West Germany. But I cannot imagine it topping this Trig-a-Matic. Those cookies up at the top? They are mine!

Lots of fun to be had for what, $1.50? That is about what you pay for a half pound of butter.

Flour power, flower power --

Whatever it is, it works!

Flower power

Yesterday I was out on assignment with my friend Sharon who is a photographer for The Buffalo News. And we passed a booth where people were selling bouquets for Hospice.

Must buy!! Both of us picked one up.

That is an $8 not badly spent. All of us treat ourselves to flowers way too rarely if you ask me. Now you have a good excuse because it is for a good cause.

I went home and the first thing I did was put my bouquet in a yellow vase. I was all excited about it. Then I cleaned off the table around the vase. There is an Israeli folk story about that. A woman buys a beautiful vase and brings it home, and then the vase looks out of place on the messy table, so she cleans around it on the table where she placed it. Then the table looks out of place in the messy room, so she cleans up the room. Then the room looks out of place because it is clean and so -- well, this is the point at which I usually run out of gas, but the woman in the story, she cleans up the whole house. All because of that vase!

Jeoffry took time to smell the roses.

It makes me think of all the times I pass those flowers at Albrecht Discount and everyone else but me is buying them. I know those flowers are not for a cause, unless you consider Aldi a cause, which I do sometimes. But they are pretty and cheap and I do see a lot of people buying them, men and women alike.

It also makes me think that this summer I must work to cultivate my, ahem, cutting garden. Spring is beginning early this year, methinks. We will have extra time to plan and strategize and get an early start.

This will be a good and colorful year!