The maquette for my sculptural installation completed, I turned to making a larger version: five and half inch square faces. Since I’m working with cubes, the sized is not doubled, but cubed; of course, this makes for much more wood!
I had a moment of terror yesterday.
Even though I think I know all about it, a really solid grasp of the distinction between the additive and subtractive primary colors and their separate, nuanced properties can feel just beyond my reach. We tend to work preferentially in one or other of the color spheres, depending on our metier. I’ve decided to explore color by painting wooden blocks. These blocks I’ll paint will have one face with a color from CYMK (cyan|magneta|yellow|black) and one face from RGB (red|green|blue) color space.
Waking to strong offshore breezes, I created a new photographic work, mindful of Nick's observation in The Great Gatsby that "... man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation ... face to face with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."
I met a fox today, hiking home on the Ridge Trail. This is our first truly sunny day at the Djerassi Ranch, and I chose, perhaps unwisely, to pack a lunch and go exploring for natural pigments. On the way back, I was struggling with an incline, drenched with sweat, stopping for rest at every small pocket of shade along the path. I came over a small rise and there he was, three short paces away, frozen in the middle of the path. He seemed as surprised as I to share this moment in the woods.
Scientific Delirium Madness, Djerassi 2018. An Essay
Here on the ranch, on the western side of the Santa Cruz mountains, the sea mist begins its slow roll back towards the Pacific Ocean.
We saw breakers yesterday out at San Gregorio, a flash of white foam on the horizon, the rest of the ocean blanketed in fog. Drove the Skyline through the Redwoods, past old Methuselah. A tree so old and big we had to stop, all be it briefly, to stand with our mouths agape trying to see the top.
While writing a novel at Djerassi, I've been drawn sideways to create a phootographic work capturing the creative fire and awe induced by this place.
As a writer of a novel, experiencing the first week of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program has been both distracting and provocative.
