New Work - First Friday Post - May 4th

Happy May everyone!

The month is off to a wonderful start here with perfect Spring weather, (which most say is still to cool but perfect for me!) and lots of Spring love as the birds find their mates and start next building. Our feeders and container garden are full of Red Finches, Juncos, Swallows, Starlings and both regular and Golden Crown Sparrows.

Also, the annual reshuffling of the crows has taken place. I go from having a flock of 30 or so all autumn and winter, a murder of juveniles I believe, as I know that crows go through this social phase and it always starts in the late summer after they all hatch and fledge.

From late summer on, the whole group visits me each morning and they know my whistle and will come whenever I am around town and have a treat for them! I've been "followed" from the bakery or the Post Office several times, starting with one or two who put out the call when I whistle and, by the time I get back home (just a few blocks away from either) it may grow to a dozen or more!  Crows have the ability to recognize faces and I have seen them, on many occasions, sitting on theories in town and they turn their heads and look down at me as I walk by. If it's one of "my" crows, they'll follow. I usually carry a pocket full of dry treats for them during this time.

They also know how to call me.  I will sit at out front windows in the mornings writing and, if  am distracted and don't notice the rising light, they fly from the back of the building around to the front, taking up a place on the wires and they'll let me know, in no uncertain terms, what time it is. ;)

Come March they all suddenly disperse and for a few weeks I get a break. I may not see a single crow in the mornings then. Some of that seems to revolve around daylight savings time and the change in the light. . .but I assume that this is also the pairing/nesting phase and they are busying other things. :)

 I always leave food out for them but never see more than one or two at a time. Then, suddenly, they start to return. First one pair. Then another, and then, this morning, twelve crows waiting at the break of day! Soon though it will be just the males who will stockpile food in their mouths and try to carry as much back to their nests as they can manage. I've watched countless times as a crow tries to fit one more salmon cat kibble or piece of egg in it's mouth only to lose the whole mouthful.

But my favorite part will come in late summer.  Once the young are hatched and fledged, the adults  bring them by to teach them about the morning"routine". Though by this time it is hard to tell a young crow from their parent in size, the easiest way is to watch them land on wires where the young crows haven't quite got the hang of it all yet and bob back and forth trying to learn their balance in the wind or rain. I never get tired of that! And if I'm lucky,  I'll get a few days where the adults are still feeding them. The group lands and the young stand their with their mouths open waiting to be fed. This is at the very end of the raising stage so it only lasts for a day or so until the parents decide to make them fend for themselves.

I love these avian hallmarks of the seasons.  Each year we wait with that strange anticipation, as if in fear that any or all of them might not return. . . but they always do. :)

So on to some new work for the season as well!

A Classic "castle" tower scene. 

Potted Fairy House

One of the new creations I've been working on: Stone Troll!!

Windmill with Tulips and delicate sails! 

Egyptian Otter statue very similar to one in the Met Museum.

Thoth as a baboon and Khonsu as a kite/hawk. Both lunar deities.

Gardener's house featuring large polymer flowers. 

I hope you enjoyed the peak at the latest work and I look forward to sharing more as time goes on.

I'll be changing up my routine a bit. I am close to launching a separate blog/site for my Makings of a Maker posts. I feel like I would like to write in greater detail about the processes of making a living from art/craft from start to finish but without it being tied to me here or at Etsy.

I know that probably does not make much sense but I want it to be separate from my shops, which I will mention where necessary but I think it would be more helpful to allow people to find their own way to what works for them without the influence of my own or any perception that I have something to sell. Those weekly posts seem to get the most views/reads, near double to my others, so that has been encouraging.

It may be month or two away but, when it comes, I will swap out that weekly post with one abut living in a small town (pop 800) which I also hope will inspire some. I was reading an article recently about the number of 20 somethings who cite having feelings of despair and anxiety over their futures and while I know 20 somethings aren't about to move to small towns in droves, I want to speak to the way that it was simply the knowing that I always HAD choices was, I believe, a big part of why I never felt that despair. The awareness that I was making choices and that I was creating my world, not the other way around. .  . Anyway, more on that to come.

Thank you, as always, for dropping by!

nicolas
xoxo

The Weight of Existence

It has been 8 months since we left the city. . .  there are ways I feel the change in a very immediate sense and then, in other ways, the changes are not as noticed until something brings them to our attention.

Yesterday morning, with dawn light just beginning to pour over the coast range,  I sat here looking out the window and watched the sky begin to glow. I turned away to begin my work day and, after a minute or two, I turned back realizing there was something outside the window that was just "off".

A quick survey of the surrounding area told me it was that there seemed to be an inordinate number of gulls and crows flying about.  To see these scavenger birds, along with herons, pelicans, swallows, terns, cormorants and geese is, of course, not at all uncommon. But to see them so close, circling and perched on the wires across the street, calling so shrill in the early morning, just seemed out of place.

As I watched, several of the birds took advantage of the lack of traffic on the road to swoop down and land at, what I then saw, was a dead seagull. It had been hit in the night by a car or truck. It lay on it's back, it's brilliant white wings spread out and slightly upward as if awaiting a deliverance from that hard asphalt spot.

I watched for a minute as crows and gulls approached and, it occurred to me that the crows were busy feeding upon the gull while it's kin seemed to be trying to pull at it's feathers. . . almost as if to remove it from the road.

A few seconds later I could hear the sound of a car approaching on the road and, as it reached the spot, it had to slow. The crows, always keen and aware in busy road conditions, had safely flown up to the wires again but the seagulls, more used to the lull of the bay and the ocean and at worst, a passing fishing boat, did not make a great attempt to get out of the way of the car.  

The car passed by going around the site and, a moment later another approached and I watched the same scene play out.

I decided I could not wait a moment longer and I immediately threw on the first jacket I could find and grabbed a large garbage bag and headed barefoot down the steps and out the door.

I reached the street and saw no vehicles coming. The crows and gulls had returned to their tasks around the fallen bird. They scattered as I approached, again the gulls not clearing the way but just moving along the road a bit,  and I stood over the gull, it's wings spread a full 3 to 4 feet tip to tip and each feather along the span still so perfectly and beautifully aligned.

I bent over and covered the bird with the bag and scooped it up as quickly as I could and, having not thought beyond this moment, stood in the street unsure what to do next.

Before that thought could be completed I was overtaken with the realization that a bird like this, that I had watched and marveled at it being so magnificent and impressive in the air, and even in the prone death pose on the ground, could weigh so little now here in my hands. The thought carried me unconsciously and I found myself then on the side of the road holding onto the bird, wrapped in the bag and I could not help but be fixated on it's lightness. . . and consumed with the thought of the weight of it's existence.

My entire day was affected. . . as was the next and still, today, it hangs there within me. 

8 months ago, and all the years prior living in the city, I would not have noticed "too many" birds gathering anywhere or if there was any rhythm or pattern to their movements at all.  I have loved birds all my life but not since the days of my childhood, when I would lay on my back beneath my grandmothers bird feeder and watch them in awe and wonder as they flew in and out of the tree have I felt that I was truly a part of this life WITH them. . .

There is no going back for me. . . the weight of my existence is growing noticeably and considerably lighter since I chose this place. What it allows for is more room to breathe and to grow, more emptying of the old and unnecessary and a stronger belief, as I often express in my visual art, that there is a theory of flight that just may allow us to, one day, spread our own wings and ascend.

nicolas

Crows on the Wire

The morning begins, as most do, with the CAW of the crows outside on the wire. . .  even here in the foggy coastal pre-dawn, it is as it was in the city. . .  and for that reminder I am grateful.

Moving from the city to a very small, oft forgotten, coastal town has already brought about the clarity I was seeking in the move. Ten years in a city, albeit a very progressive and nature-loving city, had worn me down. Draining the life out of me, as cities tend to do once we have grown beyond caring about the nightlife, the constant buzz and the exterior fascinations as all are distractions from who we are or where we are going. Or sometimes just reliefs from the truth we know too well.

Three weeks here and I feel compelled to write again. To make imagery. I feel compelled to dig in deeper to my own internal world and bring forth what has been stewing all those years.

To open fully.
To grow.

Looking back at those city years, it was a slow disintegration. I didn't wake up one day and decide I hated the city again. It slowly wore me down. Slowly ate away at the awe I hold for nature around me. And I mean by this, true nature not what many city dwellers, particularly in Portland, consider to be green or sustainable which is, by it's very definition, inclusive mostly of the well being of human beings only.

The truth is, as I began preparing to move, I heard story after story from others who "dream" of such a move. Of such a life. And, though I would often shake my head and smile, I felt like treating these people as I finally needed to with myself and bluntly saying "Then get off your ass and change your life, make decisions and leave things behind so you CAN move and live where you want.

It is cheaper here. Yes, that's right. Living on a clamming and fishing bay 5 minutes from the ocean is cheaper. Much cheaper. In a town set against the quickly rising hills that surround the bay,  I now walk two blocks to the Post Office and two blocks to the local bakery which serves up 3 freshly made doughnuts for one dollar! Three blocks to the local supermarket which FEELS like a local supermarket. . . smells like a local supermarket. . . as those A & P's of my youth always did.

Historic rail cars sit just across the road on their tracks and the local coffeehouse, what I really think a coffeehouse should be, welcomes community and conversation all day long as the proprietor serves up her amazing cranberry scones and freshly made chowder. Not 50 choices for every possible diet or "lifestyle choice". Just one delicious scone. Take it or leave it but don't complain about it.

I didn't realize how much people in the city complain.  How pervasive it is that even in writing it I had to really think if it were true. But it is. It is just that it becomes such a normal aspect of so many people's lives that it seems like normal conversation. But it is not. And I was falling into it as well.

So let's focus on here. . . THIS is where I have wanted to be. The town name is of no importance. It is the place. The setting.  The fact that here, I can reinvent myself and begin again in a place where others may see decay and economic repression, I find the beauty of what used to be, what is and what could be again.

My first day here a woman in the coffeehouse actually recognized me. Not from the city and businesses I owned there but from the small town I lived in on this coast some 15 years ago. From the bakery I owned and the sandwiches I made there all those years ago. It was a bit of a shock and unsettling to be truthful but also, I know it is a part of reinventing oneself. It is necessary to acknowledge all that has come before and to accept it. 

There are,as so many paragraphs that start, "there are two types of people". In this case I am speaking of those that feel compelled to remain in the habitat they grew up in and to do as the rest of the "herd" do those that can wander and move and adapt and who can make change in their lives and leave the past behind. Those who choose what is better for them. Even when "better" means a little harder or more uncertain.

We, of this group are the crows of the human world. We adapt and we move and we find ourselves making our way home in whatever landscape we  have chosen to dwell.

There is space here.
To roam
To breathe
To live out each day fully and to explore how to create a life that I WANT to live for the coming weeks and months and years.

Will it play out that way? Time will tell. . . and I know that the crows will watch it all from their vantage point and caw as they do everywhere, every day.

And I will smile at that here. . . as I always do.