Sep 26, 2010 | Art
I’ve been nursing a sore back over the weekend so progress has slowed as I prepare for the October Open Studio event. But I’ve got the yurt pretty well in shape and most of the interior work is on the walls. Wish the floor was nearly as clean as it looks in the picture.
I printed some large images of poplar bark with moss and lichen and hung them on the outside of the yurt around the door. They hide some of the less attractive spots on the yurt exterior. Beyond that it’s either WTF? or je ne sais quoi, depending on your personal vocabulary.
Puts me in mind of a local hunter who hunts on wooded land that adjoins our property during deer season. Came over and confronted me about my banners hanging in woods. Accused me of putting them up to scare off “his” deer. I guess that’s why context is always so important when you’re looking at art.
Nothing to do with anything but it got up to 98 yesterday (ridiculous for September 25 and a record breaker). Weather finally broke today and it’s cooler and raining. Seems like it hasn’t rained around here since the Bush administration so it’s very very welcome. Creeks are dry and wildlife is looking a bit desperate. Predators have been braving our dogs to poach our ducks, which usually means times are tough in the woods.
Got a new batch of banners printed and hope to be hanging them in the woods later in the week if the back heals and the rain stops. That and a bit more general clean-up and we’ll be ready!
So mark October 16 and October 17 on your calendar. Come and visit. Leaves will be turning. See a real live yurt! See some art. Heck, buy some art. Major credit cards accepted!
Here’s the details.
Part of the Alamance Open Studio Tour.
Sep 14, 2010 | Bourbon
There are folks who claim that Elijah Craig, a Baptist minister, colonial-era pioneer and capitalist entrepreneur, invented bourbon. That he was the first person to age whiskey in the charred oak barrels that give it its flavor and color. And there are folks who beg to differ. I don’t have a dog in that particular fight. However, there is no question that Craig was one of a number of serious distillers in the area around Bourbon County Kentucky back about the time that George Washington was being sworn in on a bible.(1)
He apparently did establish Kentucky’s first classical school, build Kentucky’s first hemp rope facility, its first cloth mill, its first paper mill, first lumber mill and first grist mill. He was either brilliant or he just got there before anyone else and took credit for everything. Ironically, he eventually died poor, which I’m sure more than one Baptist blames on the bourbon and hemp.
So anyway we had another anniversary to celebrate last evening and we chose to give Elijah Craig 12 Year Old Small Batch Bourbon a try. (There’s also an Elijah Craig 18 Year Old bourbon, but we couldn’t wait that long.)
The first thing you notice is that EJ12 has a great top with a big old impressive cork, which probably deserves a better bottle. Not a big fan of the bottle. The liquid color is dark and rich. Probably from spending 4-8 more years in a barrel than most typical bourbons. Beyond that my expertise flags and I rely on the Liquor Snob:
“Usually we like our drinks to be relatively simple. But Elijah Craig 12 Year Old posed us a challenge. There was a strong rye taste, spicy and heated. But then, we also tasted fruit, citrus and berries. And what else, maybe some of that butterscotch we smelled, as well as the woodiness of the oak? Yessir, it’s all there. When we breathed in, we could feel the heat rushing into our lungs.”
Yeah, what he said. That fire in the lungs thing.
Anyway, our feeling was that EJ12 might be a bit much for a night on the town drowning your sorrows, but incredibly attention-grabbing for a slow sipping whiskey out on the deck as the sun’s going down. Of course the sun’s also going down while you’re drowning your sorrows, but then the last thing you need is some bogus poetic nature display just when you’re working up a good batch of righteous indignity to spew all over the person who has so egregiously rained on your parade.
So on our binary scale of zero-to-one, we gave Elijah Craig 12 Year Old a one.
(1) Our first President made some money on the side selling bourbon. It was 175 years later that President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation that declared bourbon “America’s Native Spirit.” Sort of our Champagne as it were. Luckily for those Presidents there was no significant talk radio at the time.
Sep 10, 2010 | Art
Really wish Storm King Wavefield by Maya Lin was in my back yard.
Sep 10, 2010 | Bourbon
Bourbon milkshakes. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. Musta died and gone to heaven.
Sep 9, 2010 | Art
So I’ve been working on the inside of the yurt to turn it into a studio gallery. Got some lights up and got some semi-transparent panels (biodegradable corroplast) mounted to hang work on. In real life it isn’t quite as cool as the picture, but I’m so tired of being intimidated by all the impossibly clean, anally precise, geometrically elegant images I see coming from those damn Dutch designers that I’ll let it pass for what it looks like. You’ll have to come by and check it out yourself if you doubt it.
And then there’s the grounds outside the yurt…
This is a subset of our local flash crop mob: Linda, Lynn and Ann plus a whole flock of dogs (Maggie, Gerret and Girlfriend). They represent a local group of folks who have nothing better to do with their time then to help other folks with large tedious jobs like picking up huge quantities of sticks and downed limbs in our woods leading up to the yurt just so it looks a little bit better. This is how they spent their Labor Day weekend.
Are they a warm-hearted altruistic bunch? Do they represent a vanishing set of values in this crazy world? Are these the kinds of young folks you wish your sons and daughters would marry? (I mean assuming you’re now in your 80s and your kids are single and pushing 60.) Well so it would seem, unless you follow them after the sun goes down…
