Buckminster Fuller at The Whitney
Above: My family's dome, Vermont, 1972, and a short video from the Whitney about Buckminster Fuller Buckminster Fuller is currently, in fact, being touted as one of the "Greatest Visionary of the Twentieth Century" by the Whitney Museum here in New York. I actually know very little about Fuller, even though his work has had a relatively profound effect on my family. Just after my sister and I were born, my parents built a geodesic dome based on Fuller's designs and theories. It was a brave and revolutionary thing to do, especially considering the building site, which was at the top of a mountain surrounded by a thousand acres of wilderness in northern Vermont, with nothing but dairy farms and small towns for 60 miles in every direction beyond. I remember very little, but do recall very clearly the feeling of waking up inside that huge space, which was not divided by walls, and looking up into that vast kaleidoscope of a ceiling to the clear panel at the very top of the roof. I also remember spending a lot of time scampering around on its platform through the summer when it was being built, in my underpants, playing with nails. I think we only lived there for a year or so. There was eventually a small fire, I think, and then maybe a failure of part of the structure, a cold winter, a period of poverty, a Vietnam war, a lack of jobs, maybe the dome itself worked but the world around it just didn't, maybe it was the other way around, its hard to remember or know exactly. When we did abandon it, we didn't go far. The land still belonged to my family, my uncle lived at the bottom of the hill in the stone house that he had built and the old farmhouse at the end of the road filled up with our cousins every summer, with their mothers who drove shiny station wagons and their tennis racquets and their gainfully employed fathers. Among that summerhouse circle, The Dome quickly became our storied but ruined homeland. Our cousins came from Bethesda and Brooklyn, Land of Excellent Public Schools and Ballet Classes, we came from The Dome, Land of Shoeless-ness, Unplanned Kittens, and Head-Lice. It stayed with us for a very long time. I could tell by the way my cousins used the term "The Dome" that their parents had always doubted it. And while I admit feeling awkward and different because of it, I also remember something else. I remember feeling brave. For fifteen years or so after we left the dome we could still see it clearly from my uncles house, Its bare skeleton of big beams rising up among an increasingly overgrown meadow. Eventually the trees around it grew, and its beams were salvaged and used for something else. Even the cleared patch of meadow around it and the flat expanse where my mother's vegetable garden was has now been completely overtaken by a young forest of birch and maple. I hiked around up there a few years ago and found nothing left. I wasn't even sure I was in the right spot until I found, gleaming white on the forest floor and surrounded by thick moss, the big porcelain double sink that had once stood in our kitchen. Had it not been such a surreal thing to find in the middle of the woods, and had it weighed less than fifty pounds, I would have carted it back with me. Not just for the sake of nostalgia, mind you, but because it was a beautiful sink. It was the kind of sink that, if I came across it at the 25th street flea market, I would have paid a fortune for it, found a way to drag it home ten blocks, and redesigned my kitchen around it. Removing it from it's natural habitat, however, had seemed like a barbaric thing to do. Anyway, the Fuller exhibit was wonderful. TC was moved especially by the large scale models of the pre-fab homes, and the never-realized plan for floating cities that might have hovered over the earth in cloud-like spheres. I found myself standing very near the room-sized geodesic dome that had been constructed from a cardboard kit, wondering where I might purchase such a thing, and asking myself how long it might stand in a New England field next summer before being beaten down by rain and absorbed by the ground beneath it. and more pictures of our dome....
My Dog Lobo
Last night I admitted to an artist friend over dinner that I was considering pitching it all for a career as a portrait painter of dogs and cats.
The last time I was as tempted to make a major career change was when I was backpacking through Yosemite National Park and stopped at one of the High Sierra Camps to take a swim and have lunch. These camps provide beds and meals in the high country for people who want the multi-day experience of backpacking without carrying 25-40 pounds on their backs. It was there that I met Lucille, a native New Yorker who was spending her summer living and working at one of the camps. One of her duties - get ready to be struck with a lightning rod of self doubt about your own career choice as I did - was to make the sack lunches and to decorate the brown bags that they came in. Can you imagine? Such bliss. A day for Lucille might also include the cleaning of a pit toilet, or chasing off a grumbly bear but STILL. Who would mind such interruptions? I begged her to let me decorate a few and within moments found myself lost in a spacey, arty haze, demanding more colors from her well used box of nubby little crayons, scrawling pictures of bears and berries and cautionary diagrams of poison ivy. I was unstoppable, and probably a little unbearable.
Of course, I returned to my day job a few days later, and haven't really questioned much career wise since. Until, that is, Lobo came along. After a few quick sketching sessions I realized that I could be perfectly content drawing or painting pictures of people's pets. Why not? I do live in Chelsea, after all, where dogs and cats rule and non stroller-bound children are rarely sighted. Oh wait, I already have a job. OK, maybe just on weekends.... Maybe just my pets.....
Squash Season
My mother always had massive and prolific vegetable and flower gardens during out short summers in northern Vermont, as did most of our neighbors. Zuchinni, pumpkins and squash would always grow best. I remember being almost frightened by the alarming rate at which these plants could take over one's yard, and how stealthily they moved as they claimed new territory. It was as though they were intentionally holding perfectly still when you were watching them, and then creeping towards you as you napped or played with your back turned. Then one day in August, without warning, you would look out the kitchen window towards the garden and find a cucumber or pumpkin plant pressing it's sticky little tendril against the glass in a startling, if not menacing, way. I found it unsettling, and it never failed to completely freak out our cats.
We would eat as much as we could, in a halfhearted effort to hold back the tide, but two very small little girls and one grown woman can only do so much. Our neighbors faced similar issues, and by the end of summer you had to be careful to lock your car doors while you ran into the post office for five minutes or you would end up with a backseat full of gifted produce.
Truth be told, most kinds of squash keeps very well when stored in a cool, dark place, but is best when eaten fresh. Farmer's markets everywhere are filling up with this season's squash right now, at excellent prices. There are about a million and half recipes for Butternut, Acorn, and Delicata squash hovering around on the internet, but the one below is a simple favorite, perfect for any of these varieties. Serve it as you would a sweet potato-like side dish. I like to leave the skin on when cooking, which pulls away easily after broiling. For a more savory flavor, replace the clove and nutmeg with crushed garlic and thyme.. really yummy!
Roasted Acorn Squash
1 medium sized acorn squash (or two delicata, or one butternut)
2Tb olive il or melted butter
2TB Brown Sugar
1/2t each nutmeg, cayenne or white pepper, and ground cloves
Cut squash in half and remove seeds from center. Quarter the squash, then cut each quarter in half, and then in half again, until you have sections that are about 1/2" thick.
Lay squash sections flat on lightly greased baking sheet, brush with melted butter or olive oil Sprinkle liberally with ground cloves, brown sugar, and nutmeg, salt and cayenne pepper
Broil for twenty minutes, or until the edges of the sections become a little bit crispy and squash is soft throughout. Serve immediately!
Cats Like to Feel Secure
As I mentioned in my last post, my cat is not a exactly dainty. Yesterday he stuffed himself into a 9" cake pan in one of my cupboards, there were bits of him overflowing in every direction. This morning, before he was awake, I replaced it with a giant turkey roasting pan. We are both acting like nothing happened but I can tell he likes it much better.
Here is a drawing of one of Denyse's cats, who also likes to stuff himself into things slightly smaller than he is. This is his box. He likes to be pushed around in it.
Men I Have Loved
This artwork is part of the "Men I Have Loved" series, a collection of drawings that I have been working on since 2003 that
Beso didn't live with me. He was a visitor, scratching at my heavy wooden door in the early early morning, smelling of trash and street and a nights worth of carousing. I would always let him in, give him a little scold, and let him follow me back to bed. I would tell him he could only sleep at the foot of the bed, but when I woke up he was always next to me, his head tucked under my chin. My weakness for him, as well as my ancient and drafty stone house, made it impossible to
push him away. He would have his breakfast with me, then walk me to the studio or work, where he would wait outside my classrooms and flirt with the girls or beg for pastry at the canteen. He loved taking long naps in the protected gardens in the old hacienda that was our campus. Afterwards, he would come back home with me for a good meal of chicken and rice and a small siesta, but he would always want out by dusk and be gone again until early morning. I would always try to convince him to stay, to keep him with me for company in the evenings, when i had a fire going and felt especially far from home, but he always grew restless, and always left at dusk.
On the day I left the city for good he stuck to me like never before , I think he knew all of the signs from all of the girls before me, and thought maybe one of us would take him with us back to wherever it was that we had come from, but I was going to be traveling for many more months and then returning to a cabin and a job in the State Parks where dogs were not allowed.. and so could not take him with me. We had a very tearful goodbye. I still keep a photo of him, and I have to admit that it is one of the hardest to look at.
I've since had many other love affairs with dogs and cats and horses and even a gerbil or two, but have never forgotten Beso, which I think is why, night before last, I found myself at La Guardia airport, waiting for the arrival of a dog named Lobo, and his cat.
Three months ago I stumbled across Lobo on the website of an organization called Stray From the Heart. SFTH places homeless dogs in loving homes. Many of their dogs come from Quito Ecuador, where a veterinarian named Linda literally picks animals up off the streets, administers necessary care (in Lobo's case, a badly broken hip), and finds them new homes in the USA. When I called STFH to tell them that I wanted to give Lobo a home, they told me that he had a cat. "They are extremely attached to each-other", explained a woman named Toni, and Lobo would be "extremely sad to have to leave him". At the time,TC was watching the olympic qualifying finals for men's swimming, and was completely
distracted, so when I asked him what he thought of taking a "kitty" as well (twenty seconds after someone had broken some sort of very important record) he was still caught up in the moment and agreed with me that this was an exceptionally good idea. We both pictured a tiny, scrawny kitten, nestled under the wing of our new dog, completely devoted to his protector and their new home. So there I was, some weeks later, waiting at the airport for my dog... and his cat.
supporting spouses and friends, were standing at attention when a young woman, a seasoned baggage handler, came out from behind the conveyor belts and asked loudly "Who is waiting for the cat??" "Me!" I announced, proudly. "THAT", replied the baggage handler, eyes wide and hands on hips, "IS ONE BIG M------- F------- CAT." And then, suddenly, there they were. A smallish, shy looking fawn colored dog, tail between his legs, and in the crate next to his, was Benito. The largest cat I had ever seen. Everyone seems to be settling in. Last night we all slept together, and I woke from a dream that I was playing volleyball and kept getting hit in the chest really hard with the ball to find Benito walking across me for probably the tenth time. Later I woke up again to find him curled up on TC's chest. "how sweet." I said. "caaaan't breeeathe." was TC's whispered, labored reply. Toni had told us that Benito likes to place both paws on your chest, which sounded like a
really sweet little cat thing. He approached me on the sofa this morning and placed his massive paws on my chest, just as she had described, only as soon as I petted him, he curled up his big claws, clutching the fabric of my blouse and pulled himself towards me, angling his face so that his eyes met my own in a locked gaze. It felt less like a sweet cat thing and more like a I-am-being-roughed-up-by-a-raccoon thing.
