Summer Camp in sight!

 

The very thought of summer camp brings seasonal excitement that goes back more than 70 years now (yikes!). I loved being in the woods all day (so it seemed), swimming endlessly (the one “sport” I excelled in), feeling the mystery of campfires, learning new skills with new friends – choosing my own colours to make my own boondoggle.  Those camps of long ago are long gone now, but the memory lingers on.

 

But that strong pull of the season has made “Summer Camp” a regular part of my art year – as I’ve learned that Summer Camp is where you find it.

This year my plan is a variation on past themes.  I've looked at paintings of different types of landscapes by known artists, then looked for a similar local vista and recreated it, maybe in the style of the artist, maybe using new media, whatever unfolds.  If I get carried away, I’ll also do the artist’s portrait.

And I did get carried away when I cut the ribbon to open this year’s Summer Camp.  What better artist to lead the way than Georges Seurat, whose “Sunday Afternoon”  at Chicago’s Art Institute was the first real painting I ever saw.  Love at first sight!

With its shoreline theme, Seurat’s “Evening at Honfleur” made a useful match with Ambleside, the shoreline in the photo above.

 

So here’s Ambleside in the style of Seurat.

 

What if it were hanging on the Art Institute’s walls?  Just think:  Instant acclaim for me if only it were large enough.

 

Onward now to portraits of Seurat, both of them in pastel but applied differently.

 

It’s so hard to turn lights out at the end of the first day of Summer Camp -- so I kept going.   I’d also been attracted by this engraving with a shoreline at “The Bay of Naples,” by new-to-me artist, Elizabeth Greatorex. 

 

Her very name is intriguing.  A type of dinosaur?  No, it’s more likely related to “great rocks,” or a half-dozen other Anglo-Saxon possibilities.

 

Without years of supervised study, I can't replicate Ambleside as an engraving.  Instead I chose the simplest printmaking technique – preparing a textured, inked “plate” and stamping it on my paper.

 

An interim stage:

With additional blotting and rubbing, here’s the final “Shoreline/Great Rocks.”

 

And Elizabeth herself?  

Same method, stamping the paper with inked texture.

 

The finale:  Does she look a little like “A Rare Bird With Feathers”? 

 

In this get-up, she just might fit in with the party crowd.  Let the summer begin!

 

Can't see the circus for the ferns

 

I’d expected this last painting in the “Audition Series” to announce the results of Fern Andra’s  successful candidates as she recruited new members for her circus.  She certainly looks like a self-possessed entrepreneur ready to think big and make the tough choices.

 

Since marketing is one concern of any big boss, one of the questions she would have asked herself at each audition must have been, “How will they look on a poster?”

 

So I began the final “Audition” painting with some sketches based on Fern, looking mildly amused and analytical, and with a plan to place various prototype posters beside her.

 

But seriously, do any of these look like they’d stay within the confines of a frame?

 

I

No.  They’re probably part of that unwieldly group I’d already christened “The Polypody Players.” 

 

Meanwhile, my ongoing fern research had turned up this painting, “The Fern Gatherer”, by a 19^th c. British artist I’d never heard of, Charles Lidderdale. 

 

I was mesmerized by this young girl and came to think of the contents of her basket as representing the succession of oddments that catch my fancy and never let go. (bricks, vintage houses, circuses, now ferns).  My friend M speculated, on reading my previous post about pteridomania (19th century fern madness), that maybe that’s when “Fern” was originally used as a girl’s name.  Well, Careful Reader M, you’re on target once again.  Back to the internet for me, and I found your suggestion confirmed – with artist Lidderdale’s painting illustrating a list of notable “Ferns” and our own Fern Andra at the top of the list!

 

How could I not try to make a kind of copy of this painting?  Early stage:

 

Mid-stage:

 

And the finale:  “The Fern Gatherer after Lidderdale” copyright 2026.

 

Seriously – despite my four tries, the face is the wrong size and my version comes nowhere near Lidderdale’s original. But still – Ferns in all their variations continue to enchant me; even follow me, you might say, as this book recently greeted me from a library display.

 

And next up?  Summer Camp begins.  Will it be as lively and instructive as events unfolding in Nice, France, in this very week ahead?  We will see.

 

 

Under the Big Top

Oops!  Bring on the clowns – that’s the wrong big top, for our purpose today anyway.  It’s the ceiling of the beloved Orpheum Theatre – let’s not even imagine it with high wires and tightrope walkers.

 

I’m drawn to those images, though, as I look out my kitchen window toward the building going up a block to the north.

 

Very big on safety ropes I am, even as I wonder how circus professionals do without.  I imagine those super-skills are top of mind for the remarkable Fern Andra as she continues to audition new players.

 

Okay, then.  Let’s get this show on the road.  Whoo hoo!  According to Idioms Online, “This idiom alludes to a theatrical production or perhaps a roadshow, such as a circus, going on tour. The precise origin is unknown, but it has been used since at least the 1940s.”

 

Getting started:

 

Moving right along.

 

And the finale, “Under the Big Top” (Audition Series, copyright 2026.)

 

This deserved another cup of coffee and a restful interlude with a book I’d just checked out from the VanDusen Library.

OMG!! In that mysterious way that things sometimes unfold, I saw that there was a chapter on ferns.  You’ve heard of Tulipomania?  Well, Richard Mabey describes a similar phenomenon, the 19^th century fern craze called pteridomania. 

 

At that time, there was a roaring enthusiasm for fern motifs in the decorative arts and an even louder roar for collecting and growing ferns – like these ferns in a Wardian case  (think terrarium).   

 

Mabey reminded me, too, of something I knew perfectly well:-- that ferns were living and thriving well before the dinosaur era, and there’s ample fossil evidence to testify to the species’ lifespan.

 

As I followed the internet trail and became more and more infatuated, I asked Google:  "Are ferns addictive?"  The answer:  “No, but they can be highly captivating and easily lead to a plant-collecting hobby.”  Well, not for me.  I’d just as soon let them run wild along my back fence while I stick with the pictures and the stories.

 

In our next edition, Fern Andra will have chosen from the auditioning players.  Do you think this guy will make the cut?

 

Fiddlefaddle -- or something more?

 

We’re still at auditions for Fern Andra’s circus, and there’s still so much to explore beneath those fronds.  Some circus aficionados have the coordination and nerve to imagine themselves as skilled high-flyers.  Others (like me) just love the history and the lore – the energy, the patterns, the drama of skilled bodies in motion, and the centuries of evolution in the arts.  And if my group might be daunted even by the game of “Wordle”, some of us never miss a chance to check a word’s etymology.

 

For instance, we can learn that the word “fern” is associated with words suggesting delicacy like feather, leaf, wing. 

 

In fact,  

"The plant's ability to appear as if from nothing accounts for the ancient belief that fern seeds conferred invisibility (1590s)."

 ..as shown here:

 

Who would imagine that from such modest starts would come a whole tradition, in many parts of the world, of gathering fiddleheads – the still-curled frond – for delectable spring-time eating?

 

Despite appearances, there’s nothing wispy about the dynamo performer, director, producer Fern Andra who this series celebrates as she conducts auditions for some hot new talent for her latest tour.

 

As I delved for historic images of both Fern and circus, I happened on this gorgeous late 19^th century painting “Acrobat with Violin” by Italian artist Antonio Mancini. 

 

Well!  Couldn’t we say that’s a fiddle he’s holding?  And there’s a very long tradition of stringed instruments associated with the circus.  Chagall and his “Green Violin” come readily to mind.

 

Then, as my mind whirred off into fantastic territory, my search produced a photo of an older…dare I say stodgier?...Fern.

 

In this profile pose, she evoked my long-time infatuation with what might be one of the most beautiful “fiddles” ever – the viola da gamba. (short form:  “viol”)

 

Take a quick glean here to see a lovely collection of the fabulous carved heads that distinguish these cello-cousins.

 

My wheels were turning – Fern, fiddles, fiddlesticks, fiddleheads…  I knew it was meant to be when I found a schematic drawing of a viol…

 

..that recalled the engraving of the famous challenging acrobatic maneuver.

 

All right.  We’re under way with some small sketches and the first underlayer.

 

I had thought an undercoat of iridescent copper would lend some pizzazz, but it just dulled the colours added on top.

‘

But I pressed on, resolving to splash brightly as best I could.  Here’s the final outcome:  “Fiddlesticks and Fiddleheads” (copyright 2026, Audition Series).   (Professional  musicians, please don’t scrutinize the placements of strings and fingers).

 

Yes, it’s another example of how I can get carried away.  Someday I think I should do a series based on the concept that’s a keyword for many great artists:  Simplicity.  That would be a real stretch.