Oct 18, 2010 | Art
So we had a glorious weekend for the Open Studio Tour and a great crowd for a first annual event. Folks seemed to love walking through the woods to look at the outdoor banners and finally arriving at the yurt gallery with the indoor work. I really got no pictures of the crowd because I was talking all the time, but it’s great to find that there are so many folks with a genuine interest in art in this area.
Below is a bench I made from a large poplar that came down in a storm here a while back. It has one of my favorite quotes on it, “I wake each morning torn between the desire to improve the world and the desire to enjoy it. It makes it hard to plan the day. –E.B. White.” It was outside the entrance to the yurt for folks who wanted to sit for a moment after the walk.
In the middle picture are two groups, one coming up the hill, one going down, both stopping to look at a banner that’s just out of the frame. You might notice Gerret on the far right hiding behind a tree waiting to lick another unsuspecting visitor to death. We buried a lot visitors this weekend.
And at third picture is some folks looking at the Bourbon, Dogs and Art official shot glasses in the yurt. (Clik pix to embiggen.)
I prepared a down-and-dirty catalog of the outdoor banners for folks since they were scattered about. Here’s the catalog as a screen-resolution PDF if you’re curious.
And finally, we sliced the yurt down one side and stretched it out flat so I could get a picture of all the work hanging inside in one photograph.
Gallery Panorama (click to enlarge)
Everything’s going to remain in situ (that’s Latin for I gotta catch up on some other stuff now so this stuff isn’t going anywhere) for a while, so I’d be happy to have visitors by appointment. Just call or email. We’re usually here.
Oct 16, 2010 | Art, Bourbon, Dogs
Driveway Entry Sign - Photo Andrew Burnham
Tired but compelled to post.
Studio Tour starts tomorrow. It’s been very odd but very invigorating to be so focused for an extended period on something that’s so self-involved. I probably couldn’t do it all day every day, but it’s been like getting a sabbatical after so many years of prioritizing other stuff.
Less art than illustration, here’s a banner I just put up in the woods that features Chigger and Woody, both gone now but it was them that put the “dogs” in Bourbon, Dogs and Art and so this banner was for them and for me. It’s not for sale.
Banner: Chigger and Woody
Wednesday was the 13th, so we celebrated our monthly sunset anniversary with a toast of Woodford Reserve, a small batch bourbon that bills itself the official bourbon of the Kentucky Derby. “Small batch” is basically a way of saying that it might taste different from bottle to bottle or year to year. If you’re someone who’s keeping score, our bottle was from Batch 69, Bottle 879. Great bottle with a cool wood top cork. Here’s what Jim in Whisky Magazine said about Woodford Reserve:
“Nose: Pronounced oak, softened by fruity rye and gentle vanilla. A little toffee and honey. Palate: Big, big lift off with a powerful oaky-rye surge and an immediate arrival of spice. Toasty toward the middle with the corn arriving late on. Finish: Long, cocoa and oak finale, burnt toast with a spread of honey.”
We especially agreed with the “burnt toast with a spread of honey” part. How could you have a drink and not think of burnt toast and honey? At least from here on out.
If you want poetry, then here’s our old iPhone app standby F. Paul Pacult:
“The lovely bronze color shines in the light; absolute purity. The first few sniffs detect restrained, lightly roasted kernel/bean-like scents; additional undisturbed time in the copita opens up the bouquet as added aromas of saddle leather, tobacco leaf, and walnut eventually come to the fore. The palate entry is semisweet, candied, and creamy; by midpalate the taste profile includes pepper, welcome spirity heat, oak resin, and caramel corn. Ends gracefully and leanly, showing the delicate, ultra-sophisticated side of bourbon.”
Think that guy doesn’t get laid? Anyway, on Tweetsie’s and my binary scale of zero-to-one with one being better than zero, we give Woodford Reserve a solid one.
Woodford Reserve and the official "Bourbon, Dogs and Art" shot glass! At sunset!
But I buried the lede! Note the first appearance of the official “Bourbon, Dogs and Art” shot glass! Available to all at this weekend’s studio tour and soon to be available here on BDA!
Oct 8, 2010 | Art
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in getting ready for the open studio tour next week, it’s that I’m not the guy I used to be. What used to take one day to accomplish, now takes two plus an ice pack and two Aleve. I thought knee surgery was supposed to fix that. Oh well. Don’t know where I’d be without the help of the previously featured firestorm flash crop mop and my good wife Tweetsie.
Luckily, I’m out of work, so I can afford to spend 48 hours doing 24 hours worth of work. I just can’t afford anything else.
But things are looking up, and I expect to have things in relatively decent order when thousands of ravenous, art-starved potential patrons beat a path up our drive to dine on bourbon dogs, bourbon balls and look at art.
This week I finished installing some new art in the woods. There’s this green leaf banner that blends right in with the foliage right now but will stick out like a neon sign come late fall and winter.
Green leaf 48x66
And then there’s this dried grass image that will do just about the opposite and blend in like camoflage when the leaves fall off the trees.
Brown grass with rock - 72x36
I love to watch these images change as the sun moves across the sky, as the weather changes, as the seasons change. It’s like having nature as a collaborator.
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.
