“What the Pilgrims Saw I & II”

I did two paintings in Province Lands in August 2012. They are related  to a history of the landscape of outer Cape Cod, as well as a nod to its place in US contemporary art history though only obvious to me.  One painting is more abstract and one more realistic.

They depict part of the very end of Cape Cod near Provincetown but where it changes from Provincetown to Province Lands. That is exactly where the Pilgrims first landed (and is now part of our national park system- Cape Cod National Seashore). They signed the Mayflower Compact within 100 yards of the more realistic of the two paintings showing the high dune. Who can say with the shifting sands of the outer Cape what that spot looked like then but it is the spot. This is a couple months before they moved on to Plymouth as more suitable. By the way, the business about Plymouth Rock  is “all malarkey, a public relations stunt”.

Interesting that they always identified the Provincetown harbor and the land of the outer Cape (called Province Lands) as public land (for fishing) and that even when they incorporated it into a town in early 1700’s you still could not have title to your land. Early socialists! So it is fitting so much of it is now within the Cape Cod National Seashore.

We stay about 6 miles from this site every summer and bike through this area pretty much every other day on a 20 something mile bike ride. It is so lovely, sparse and desert-like yet with the outer ocean right there!

Also there are the dune shacks which are a piece of American art history and American literature history. Notable inhabitants of the dune shacks were poets e.e. cummings, Harry Kemp and Mary Oliver; painters Edwin Dickinson, Boris Margo, Willem de Koonig and Jackson Pollock; and authors Eugene O’Neill, Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer.

The dune shacks are in part now managed by Cape Cod National Seashore and one of them could be located in the more abstract of my two paintings, but I did not paint one. This area is just adjacent geographically to where the Pilgrims landed. Artists can apply to get a chunk of time in a shack  to paint, and we have often gone on long sunset walks with the national park guides to visit an artist during their residency .

Here is a Smithsonian piece on the Dune Shacks and Province Lands. And here is a video.

More info

Sunday June 24, 2012  10AM-4PM  3rd Annual yART Sale on the lawn at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PCA).

This year in my tent at booth #6 I am adding an experience. After you pick out some of my cards or just one card, you are invited to sit down in my “Throne of the Greeting Card” (alias Throne of Procrastination!)  and write the damn thing. BYO address book. I will have stamps and pens available. My philosophy right now is… you cannot do everything, attend all the summer events, have the vacation of your dreams, or possibly even see all 70 booths. But you can come to a halt, sit down and write a loved one and send it snail mail.

Of course I will have a number of things in the way of art and photography and prints. 70 artists and craftspeople and makers are involved. On the lawn next door at Mellon Park, Bach Beethoven and Brunch hosts a free concert from 10:30AM -12Noon. I think it’s klezmer that day. Inside PCA are a group of really interesting exhibits through July 22. Oh that’s right I’m in one of the very interesting shows. 2nd Floor, turn left at top of stairs, look for this picture.

Pile it on. We Vote!       watercolor/collage by Carol Skinger

I am a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Artists along with nearly 300 other members. I am inviting you to an art opening where I am pleased to say one of my pieces will be shown. Pittsburgh Society of Artists will open their exhibit titled “Tone it Up!” With a reception at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts this Friday,  May 11, 2012  5:30pm – 9:00pm. Exhibit runs till July 22, 2012.

My piece titled “Pile it on. We Vote!” consists of collaged watercolor and prints, including birch tree wallpaper decals. I hope you will come to the opening or see the exhibit before it closes.

Where? Pittsburgh Center for the Arts 6300 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Map. They are carrying single greeting cards of my image for the duration of the show. Alternative Mother’s Day card?? Also here in sets of 4.

This is only one of four exhibits opening the same night at the same place, so it will be an exciting night. Plenty of stimulating art to see and many people, both artists and audience to cross paths with. Thank you PF/PCA!!!

Pittsburgh is so fortunate to have Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PF/PCA). Everyone  can take art classes there, see a Calliope concert, go to constantly changing art shows both local and national, and support local artists by buying their work at the shop.  If you are a member of one of the 8 art guilds associated with PF/PCA as I am, your group competes to be included in exhibits like this with the other  art guilds. Happily the Pittsburgh Society of Artists submission for our show titled “Tone it Up!” made the cut. Even then with nearly 300 members we have to submit our work for the competative process of being juried into the exhibit. In addition, all guild exhibits at PF/PCA are also open to other guild members to try to jury into. When you get into a show you are so happy.

To gain some insight into why these four winning proposals for exhibits fit with the overall philosophy of Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts (PF/PCA) I have taken a quote from their website:

“We believe that cultivating a fertile environment for artistic exploration and expression is essential to the community’s growth. It is crucial that art (making it and showing it) is accessible, especially in time of conflict and fear. The creation of art is inextricably linked to free thought; and should never be limited by fear or the pragmatic demands of the open market. Art inspires community, at every level, to advance cultural dialogue. PF/PCA provides opportunities for this sort of dialogue by focusing on both content, and space, creating environments that encourage an open exchange of images and ideas.”

And that I believe, is why we are lucky in Pittsburgh to have Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

Looking at the whole complex:  Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in the Marshall building & Scaife building, Mellon Park and the Phipps Garden Center at Mellon Park, we would not have such bold statements and lovely grounds and buildings in which to make them, to show art, buy art, take art classes, go to a Bach Beethoven and Brunch concert, hear a Calliope Concert, take in the annual PCA Y’Art Sale, or take a great walk – without the passing of Pittsburgh’s guilded age.

I wonder what the ghosts of R. B. Mellon his wife Jeannie King Mellon, Alan Scaife and his wife Sarah Mellon Scaife,  and Charles D. Marshall would think of all the art going on- on the grounds and in the buildings of the whole setting which includes Pittsburgh Center for the Arts?

In some cases we have  the grounds only, after the building was demolished as in the case of Richard Beatty Mellon’s 65 room mansion, though we do still have the walled garden from the grounds of the house. Next to the mansion  was a garage and a carriage house. The carriage house was donated to the city and is now the Phipps Garden Center at Mellon Park. The footprint of the mansion  is what you are walking on when you take a walk in Mellon Park.

Richard Beatty Mellon House completed 1909, demolished 1941

In 1929, Mellon  chose landscape architects Vitale and Geiffert to develop the Walled Garden. The property originally had been laid out in 1912 by Pittsburgh architects Alden and Harlow with subsequent work by the Olmsted Brothers firm of Brookline, Massachusetts. But we don’t know that actual building any more. It’s gone.

The building everyone associates with Pittsburgh Center for the Arts is the Marshall Building built in 1912, now painted yellow. Charles D. Marshall, president and co-owner of the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, built his mansion in 1912. A formal, 17th century Carolean-inspired building. In 1943, Charles Marshall donated his house Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, originally named The Arts and Crafts Center of Pittsburgh.  The first organizational meeting November 27, 1944.

Marshall Building

A Tudor revival mansion on the Mellon Estate still exists. Constructed in 1904, it was given as a wedding gift in 1927 to R.B.’s daughter, Sarah, who married Alan Magee Scaife, a fifth generation industrialist and Mellon National Bank Director. In February 1946, the Scaifes donated their home and property to the city. This mansion is now the Scaife Building and houses art classes for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

Scaife Building- if you want to study the draggable and clickable map of the site in 1923 you can see where the R.B. Mellon house was relative to the Marshall and Scaife buildings which still exist. Map

So thanks to Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts for making so many great spaces available to Pittsburgh for making and showing and selling art! Description of the four shows opening at the same time. Come to the opening and see them all!

Tone it Up! Pittsburgh Society of Artists

2012: End of Time Pittsburgh Print Group

Recreation/Renewal/Rebirth  Society of Sculptors

Lenses and Filters, through the Needle’s Eye  Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh

In addition, in film/video Selected Shorts from Pittsburgh Filmmakers members.

Wonderful new facilities  continue to be built and used at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

There is a very warm uplifted way you feel when you get something to work in a painting. Moments of doubt can lift sometimes after you think the painting was lost.  I hope (and I think) I captured that spirit in this photograph of my cousin Margaret with her watercolor painting two days ago.

Early watercolors by Andrew Wyeth when he was in his early 20’s are very loose and not anything like the work most people know him for. Looking at a book I have of his youthful watercolors inspired  Margaret to paint this  watercolor she is holding up.

Margaret offered to spend her spring vacation visiting and helping me while I had foot surgery.  She asked if we could spend time working together before the operation to give her some pointers with her painting. She has looked at my paintings and liked the spirit in which I work.

I do not formally offer painting classes but do at times worked with aspiring artists.  I had the chance to mentor Margaret (who is a Tango teacher in Halifax) when she visited from Nova Scotia recently. She brought along some really nice watercolor equipment having taken what sounded like a lovely introductory watercolor class in the south of France a couple of years ago.

She also had a few items delivered to our house from Blick’s as art supplies in Nova Scotia can be more expensive and not have many choices.

I found the Winsor & Newton Artists’ watercolor “large pans” that Margaret ordered pretty interesting and hadn’t seen them before. For the most part I tend to take partial or whole tubes of professional grade Winsor & Newton and squirt them into ramekins which you can get inexpensively at Target. You can work off these for any amount of time by just adding some water, but for painting outdoors I take smaller pan sets.

Margaret is quite committed to plein air painting, which I found refreshing as I have mostly traded outdoors long ago for working in the studio. Though theoretically I love painting outdoors, in practice I only do it in the summer on Cape Cod.  However I was quite inspired by her enthusiasm for painting outdoors and I hope to try it more.

I was  hamstrung by some post surgery on one of my feet, so for the most part she could work without too much bother from me after some initial words and brief demos.  This worked well as she is very motivated to paint so  timidity about watercolor was not an issue.

Margaret’s plein air painting in our yard:

Last year was the first time I attended the party (art, food, music) and fundraiser called Love of Friends. They raise funds for  Planned Parenthood (among other causes they support).  It is ALWAYS on Valentines Day…has a DJ, folks with HULA hoops, a great group of people. Artists and craftspersons with stuff they make and sell are also there. That’s where I come in. I will attend and bring along my original art and photography. It is at Bakery Square this year, home to Google (Pittsburgh site).

Love of Friends