The Conversation

“How long has it been? 6, 7 years, maybe.”

“How is your bog?”

“That’s a sad story. It was great, I had collected some very rare plants. I’d go to the Okefenokee, this was when I was doing my botanical drawings, and the botanists would give me specimens to take home.  It was out in my front yard behind that white fence. Some days I’d come home and people would be peering over the fence to look at it. It was very exotic.  But then we had a few year of drought it was hard to get out there and water enough after midnight. One year I went away for a few weeks on a grant, it might have been when I was looking at Walter Anderson’s work, when I came home it was all but gone. I thought the hardier plants would survive, but they were pretty shriveled up.”

“Cool pots, I like the way they work as a group, black and white.”

“You knew I was doing pottery.”

“I remember something about ceremonial oil pots.”

“After that I continued.  It was a way to do something during the winter when work made it impossible to do art. I use latex masks for the little ones. It was lot of detail work first you paint on the latex then dip it in black glaze, pull off the latex and paint white where the mask was. I was really involved in the process. But I’m taking a break from pottery now. “

“I do some too, I started with tiles for the kitchen and then kept going. I learned how to throw this year.”

“Are you still gardening?”

“I still have plots in a community garden and there’s my little back yard. My idea every year is to get as much out of both spaces as possible. At first I was lured by all the seed catalog descriptions and photos of abundance. There is so much you can grow that I’d pack the plots.  By July the beans would be choking the tomatoes and climbing over the greens. I start everything from seed. You get this whole pack of tomatoes and I’d start twenty of four different kinds.  Then plant them out in half of a plot.”

‘Lots of tomatoes.”

“That was part of the problem. By growing too many things I didn’t get as much. When you have a 4 by 12 foot rectangle to work with you have to reign in the plans.’

‘Last year I grew only Brandywines and only four plants, I had my best harvest. Friends were asking be how I did it! But also last year I grew too many turnips and the roly polys got the ones I didn’t harvest right away, and the bitter melons grew over the tomatillos, they got especially wild when their typee trellis collapsed after the hurricane. So there’s always something. There’s always someone growing something cool that I didn’t think of. One year another gardener grew red noodle beans. Now I grow them every season. They’re abundant, the bean beetles don’t eat them and they look great. They have theses tow feet long deep red beans that grow in clusters.”

“So you grow them because you like the way they look? Do you plan the garden so you can use it for photos or do photos happen because of the garden plan.”

“OK so it’s some of both. But I can’t control what grows in the next plot so there are always visual surprises.”

“I would have a garden but the summer is my time to get in the studio and do a lot of work.”

"I do spend a crazy amount of time lost in the garden. Wandering from plot to plot. If I have my camera, forget it! I have a plan this year to really get grow most of the vegetables we eat. Especially greens, peppers, the noodle beans and tomatoes. I find that some things grow better in my back yard in pots, especially hot peppers and certain green. I want to use my backyard better. It’s strewn with pots right now and there’s the green winter compost bin  there must be a way to organize it better. I’m going to try not to fill up the yard with house plants, and use mor of of the containers for crops. And then there are the  Xmas trees past. I use them to block a hole in the fence but maybe chicken wire would do the job and I’d get more room. It’s a small yard after all. I’m inspired by all the urban farms cropping up in my neighborhood."

"Urban Farms?"

"It’s funny, Community gardens used to be the thing but now people are talking about farming. They even have chickens, although hawks and raccoons get them some of them."

"So I’ve done my seed survey and ordered mostly greens. I have the calabash tomatoes, fish pepper, lettuce,   and bitter melon seeds from Monticello. When we were at Monticello we visited the garden, it’s a long narrow terrace overlooking the Blue Ridge mountains, there were vestiges of the garden from last year and greens that overwintered. The gardener gave me a handful of Texas bird peppers from the dried plants. I had a baggie handy from collecting shells in Florida. She said not to touch the pepper seeds  with bare hands because they’re really hot. I like the connection to the past. Did you know that they grew bitter melons as ornamentals in Colonial Philadelphia? I read about Jefferson growing then at Monticello and found a Peale painting of vegetables including a ripe bitter melon split open with those wild red seed pods."

"You always were cooking interesting things. You had that Indian cookbook before any of us thought about that kind of food."

"The most exotic thing we were eating then was Pizza with green chiles!"

"What are you teaching now? Are you still into color theory?"

"I’m in foundations now. I do teach color theory.  It’s different though.  Now there is a curriculum requirements that I have to meet. But I do my own mix of color theory.  I start with Albers then extend it with other color theories I’ve studied. I try to make them do projects that reflect on the past using their world today. Did you do Albers in school? I didn’t."

"Albers was the color theory we did.  I spent ages doing the exercises with Coloraid paper and rubber cement. I remember the smell like it was yesterday. It was like a game. I’d get carried away looking for colors that worked especially well.  I still have many of my Albers studies. Do you think it really works"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know his theory was that if you did all of these exercises. Really did them and explored all of the color interactions in his book, you would achieve a sensitivity to color. It was as though by doing these you were assimilated the color knowledge. Like learning Welsh."

"When you paint do you actually think about color theory or do things happen because you’ve spent so much time on the theory?"

"I think you work the Albers problems and something happens, weather it sticks or is relevant is hard to say. I could spend hours looking at the meditation on a square."

"My mother-in-law had the series in her apartment. I was amazed and in awe of it at first, they were the real thing. Just there lining one of her walls. She had this very white apartment. Clean and modern."

 "I have my copy of The Interaction of Color from college and the newer edition. I read some of it now and then. It’s still illuminating."

"I was at an alumni meeting at Arcadia/Beaver and I went to the art studio. I always have to. It’s always the same. The same smells. The printing presses we used are in the same place."

"And the Albers studies were on the wall."