A Melissa H

Halibut Point

2011-05-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

The quarried coast at Gloucester

contrasts sharply for its short distance from

the tip of Cape Cod.

From the most protracted transition of land to water

we cut to the chiseled intersections.

On my way home to Ann Arbor.

if you look really closely

2011-05-08T15:29:00.000-07:00

You might see the Right whales that slithered into the sunset

on my last night.

I heard them before I saw them.

Alone, my imagination convinces me of an exchange.

The finest of farewells.

winding down

2011-04-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

Last day approaching suggests a summary.

But there is no outline that can approximate my time here.

Provincetown helps you get in sync from the inside out.

Friday night oysters and clams at Victor's then

the Porchside followed by

the A-house little bar and

Lord knows how many negronis later...

a fitting farewell with David.

I'll be back.

This place has taken hold.

wharf and dunes

2011-04-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

gathering souvenirs

2011-04-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

the little cut through to Commercial from

Bradford where the famous A-House lives

Herring Cove from the dunes

sweating in a t-shirt; spring must be

here at last.

Ptown places

2011-04-25T05:51:00.000-07:00

7 gosnold st under the town hall

from town hall square

feels like this place is a part of me now.

the thought of leaving is hard to swallow.

gosnold at commercial again

2011-04-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

another wired puppy

2011-04-14T18:15:00.000-07:00

this series is kept alive by visiting friends

who drink coffee.

I wait and draw.

picnic spot

2011-04-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

start of another view out the kitchen window

you can just make out Race Point Lighthouse

in the distance.

A choice location

black and white at hatches harbor

2011-04-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

one

two

three

four

tides at the switch

2011-04-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

Herring Cove

2011-04-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

It was a perfect day.

I found my favorite rock so far. It has two clear white lines

that come together for a short segment, then continue around.

I saw a seal who I am certain was Brita. She swam in close just outside the run,

bobbed around a bit as I waved.

I pieced together silky segments of Right whales,

cutting the horizon

tails wagging, then back to flat,

black crescents arc so close

the muffled sounds of their spray came to shore.

My picnic driftwood bench aligned with the Race Point Lighthouse.

I got on a drawing roll.

The tide was low and I jumped shy of the bank only once.

more magical Hatches Harbor

2011-04-14T16:53:00.000-07:00

got my hands on a tide chart;

when you hit the low just right,

it's a drawing extravaganza.

Long Point then home again

2011-04-07T19:36:00.000-07:00

from Long Point looking at Woods End Lighthouse

pilgrim monument from library window of

7 Gosnold Street

Long Point

2011-04-07T19:28:00.000-07:00

crossing all the way over the breakwater to Long Point's

shores where diversity dazzles in stones,

all tiny specimens compared to

Herring Cove's ocean currency.

breakwater (and other things too)

2011-04-05T18:36:00.000-07:00

Like steel shavings to a magnet,

shipwrecks to Cape Cod.

A map noting locations over time before

construction of the Cape Cod Canal in 1914.

East End on a rainy day

2011-04-05T14:53:00.000-07:00

whip that nature into service

2011-04-05T14:15:00.000-07:00

hedges and trees doing their architectural thang

on the upper east side

where bradford and commercial merge

Late Afternoon Stroll

2011-04-03T17:41:00.001-07:00

west end of commercial street

convergence of towers

Cape Cod Bay

the endless wrap

2011-04-03T17:39:00.000-07:00

moving fast

2011-04-03T17:34:00.000-07:00

almost got pushed up and over the dunes,

tides coming in

at Hatches Harbor

high tides

2011-04-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

nippy but stellar sunday

hike in hatches harbor

iphoning in the sun

hardly made it a block away

2011-04-02T12:38:00.001-07:00

Gosnold St. toward the Bay

another down Gosnold St.

from town hall steps

before I got caught in those cracks again,

shallow but deep.

downtown Provincetown

2011-04-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

sitting on the steps of town hall

Walking the Breakwater to Long Point

2011-04-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

looking back across to Race Point

More iPhanny Flirtations

2011-04-01T09:38:00.000-07:00

walking back from the breakwater along Commercial

from the window of the library on 7 Gosnold St.

7 Gosnold tucked up against Town Hall

2011-03-30T18:15:00.001-07:00

down Bradford Street,

post Mussel Beach

Spin Euphoria

Law Street toward bay

2011-03-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

Miller Hill at Bradford Street

2011-03-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

I show the sequence because I fear it gets worse, or at least,

it makes me want to avoid the transparence feature.

(features are usually iffy)

Opacity demands clarity, precision with placement, distribution.

You see the construction, or lack of,

explicitly. Whether a move adds to the illumination of what is happening,

or whether is just sits there filling space.

Hawthorne's direct approach. Paint it out.

The overlaps of sky color interrupt.

In the iPad version of Brushes, there is a playback option.

It is always recording how you made the image.

Big to haul around though.

milling about town today

2011-03-30T15:52:00.001-07:00

sitting opposite town hall looking toward Adam's Pharmacy

down Law Street toward Cape Cod Bay

BOLOS

2011-03-30T15:43:00.000-07:00

Bolos are part of the reason I've taken up spinning here.

They are a Portuguese breakfast bread,

something between challah, brioche, a bialy, and an english muffin.

Folks at spinning call them portuguese muffins and

they send them to family members once they've gotten hooked.

Slice them long ways like a bagel and toast.

These have raisins, but the plain are better - hints of lemon.

Add morning tea, and for a start, it is hard to beat.

Ferret

2011-03-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

Noticed today when I read further down the sign,

that the missing ferret’s name is Mousey and she is gentle.

She was last seen heading down Commercial St. toward town hall on November 20^th.

Hope she’s ferreted her way back home now.

another Bradford St. from the kitchen window

2011-03-29T18:50:00.000-07:00

between the gap at Gosnold and Commercial

2011-03-29T18:41:00.000-07:00

iStroking Time

2011-03-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Pilgrim Monument from dunes near Pilgrim Lake

Atlantic Ocean

wearing down

2011-03-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

The sand swallows it all.

Dig deep enough or fly fast enough,

you might get to

do it all over.

Dunes near Pilgrim Lake

2011-03-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

Pilgrims hiked all about here searching for fresh water.

Way back in 1620; they stayed for several hard weeks.

down Center Street across Commercial

2011-03-29T18:20:00.000-07:00

Cape Cod Bay

Den Window

2011-03-28T18:15:00.000-07:00

7 Gosnold Street

iphone collage

2011-03-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

Hatches Harbor at Herring Cove

slivers and rivers of Hatches Harbor

2011-03-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

bloated fudge bellies

Commercial Street

2011-03-26T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hatches Harbor

2011-03-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

the west end view back

2011-03-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

from an empty porch at the red inn

from 7 Gosnold Street

2011-03-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Chasing Dickinson

2011-03-25T14:59:00.000-07:00

From the window seat of 7 Gosnold Street

I’ve been looking at my new Edwin Dickinson (1891-1978) catalog. He lived in Provincetown from 1912-1937, taking in swoop of art development (including Eugene O’Neill’s first play production in 1916). He drew and painted on Pearl Street. His teacher, Charles Hawthorne’s method centers on the “premier coup” technique, the first strike. Work was accomplished in one sitting and not revisited in the studio. Direct observation is the core.

It’s a technique I try to practice. Henri Cartier Bresson had a similar attitude about photography. You can often see the edges of the film on his prints as a testament to his print what you take philosophy.

Dickinson's work has two distinct aspects: the immediate “first strike” images, and the hyper planned, fantastical compositions of bigger scale. I prefer the down and dirty.

Small paintings stretch their ragged beaches into neighbors’ yards. He makes quick knowing strokes of coarse texture, and in whose traces, individual bristle strokes jolt our sense of scale. Things become recognizable. Little tiny people picnicking, once lost in a brushstroke, let you breathe the ocean. His pencil drawings feel like paintings, soft wispy tones snapped into formal coherence by a single drafted line.

sunrise at Gosnold Street & Commercial

2011-03-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Reward for Missing Ferret

I saw the sign in a store window and now in a car.

Wonder if it’s the same errant ferret.

winter kicks back

2011-03-25T14:22:00.000-07:00

Crocuses recoil under

graceful but rude early dusting,

yesterday's twinkle of spring's smile.

Time proves variable again when you live right under the chimes of Town Hall, reminding at those insistent intervals, of its steady passing. One for the half hour and the number of the hour on the hour, sweet sonic booms resonate through this old house, rattling clapboards and storm windows.

Swept into a drawing, I don't hear the chimes. Asleep at night, the waves dissipate into the pewter sky. They do not change, the beats of our lives, but sometimes they are hard to witness.

Marconi hoped we could outrun those sonic blasts and go back through time.

Wellfleet was his spot.

welcome spring

2011-03-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

New England style

white like the clam chowder

Cape Cod Bay

2011-03-22T18:08:00.000-07:00

a rainy dusk to dark transition

from the Mews.

tides

2011-03-22T17:50:00.000-07:00

Where am I?

Yesterday you were an expansive beach.

Make no assumptions.

Pearl Street Again

2011-03-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Fudge Judging

2011-03-22T15:29:00.000-07:00

No amount of spinning can swirl away gains from a complete Provincetown fudge comparison report, so I’ll break it out here at four. The prevailing flavor is penuche with walnuts or pecans - number one and descending: the Purple Feather; The Penny Patch; The Fudge Factory; and finally, Cabot’s.

Fudge should be dense, rich, not struggling to hold its shape as the Fudge Factory’s. It should not be waxy like Cabot’s. And the Purple Feather, I have to admit, technically falls out of the control of my scientific method since it was maple flavor. And maple is not penuche as one proprietor told me. penuche is brown sugar, butter and only vanilla flavoring. Maybe she thought since I was from the south I should go ahead and merge maple and penuche. One less thing to rattle around in that head.

(Note that these are off-season results.

Turnover may affect freshness, though I hear fudge lasts a long time)

What makes fudge, fudge? Cathy asks.

I hope the answer is not something like sweetened condensed or

partially evaporated milk products.

Ignorance is best in this instance.

I fear corn syrup is the winner.

labored and quick

2011-03-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

Pilgrim Monument from Standish Street x 2

Sometimes straight edges get under my skin, and bristle my nerves,

line after line ratcheting up crankiness.

When I dip into the iTaffy,

my sugar stabilizes.

Nothing like a little glaze.

states of matter

2011-03-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

commercial street and hatches harbor

commercial street bend west end

2011-03-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

charcoal herring cove

2011-03-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

Pearl Street

2011-03-18T16:01:00.000-07:00

from the wired puppy cafe

strolling Provincetown

2011-03-18T15:57:00.000-07:00

St. Patrick's Day Post

2011-03-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

Seaside Charms

iBeach

2011-03-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

more Herring Cove

2011-03-17T18:19:00.000-07:00

The run's relentless markings

leave spines of sand

porous and proud.

Graphite

2011-03-17T17:44:00.000-07:00

Something about soft 6B lead lures me right in;

old before its time,

knowing having never met.

While drawing the dunes at Herring Cove, I thought of a yoga pose.

I cant remember the name, but the aim

is to be strong, anchored in your base,

and floating, heading out in torso and arms.

Coexistent opposites.

Bradford St. from the kitchen window

2011-03-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ancients and Symmetry

2011-03-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

I’m told they’re the eldest rock of the infinite mass washing ashore on this outermost reach of beach. Their dotted look and egg shape signal potentially thousands of years. The older the rock is, the closer to symmetrical. Not necessarily spherical, but like a three dimensional ellipse, identical about two axes.

Roll around in the muck long enough and you’ll come out smooth and even. Scratchy edges, wounds, elated unions, grudges, thrills of victory, flickers of brilliance, eventually amalgamate, offset, and hone until there is nothing left to chip.

HERRING COVE

2011-03-15T07:30:00.000-07:00

iphone as unwitting artist

2011-03-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

iphanny, iphiler has her own ideas about collage.

Ocean the Master Drafter

2011-03-15T07:03:00.001-07:00

Framing tides handicraft,
shimmering on earth’s etch-a-sketch.
Call it sculpture or drawing depending on where you are.
Kneeling beside, tombstone vines twist into braids; standing above,
wispy lines carve shadows of relief.
Short lived all, soon ghosts
erased by displacement.

Here I am

No over here

There I was

I can see my fingernails growing here.

It must be the salty mist or

Provincetown pink.

patterns of commercial street

2011-03-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

a very rough note

the deep and infinite

fall into the smallest of slots.

tiny ocean snippets

anchor

busy gaps.

PTOWN POSTS

2011-03-14T17:10:00.000-07:00

from the pier, down commercial street, and into an alley

trying to stay out of the wind

Provincetown

2011-03-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

I know it sounds like I might be exaggerating, but it rained all the way

from Cleveland to this point, and then out ahead,

just above the town itself,

the sky opened up.

(not quite) Appalachian Spring

2011-03-14T15:46:00.000-07:00

diagramming as usual with the iphone brushes

golden arbor

2011-03-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

Cameron Park Raleigh

Chasing Spring

2011-03-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

This notion recurs when the ground thaws, turns to mud, and trees are hard to bring into focus for their greenish haze. Late February in North Carolina jolted it to the fore - plotting a path of constant burgeoning, a route mapped by temperature, where one remains in a steady state of budding. It might start in Alabama round Valentine’s Day, then weave northward, hovering on that sweet spot between 69 and 71.

Everywhere you look you see it, in tree shapes, exploding blossoms - an on the edge quiver. Nature’s fixation on reproduction is prevalent, and the lift is real.

home travels

2011-03-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

read the dusty palm or the holes

another map of the road

perhaps provincetown is embedded among the peninsulas

new views

2011-02-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

hats off to the UMMA addition

for making us pause in its cracks

and look back

R O A D M A P

2011-02-16T18:23:00.000-08:00

three friends share a flan

VALUE

2011-02-16T18:15:00.000-08:00

I know the term is complex, down deep.

But to me this is value.

Roadhouse side of greens (collards) $3.50

now on its third meal.

A few still linger in the fridge.

A four for?

follow your nose

2011-02-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

You hear it all the time: folks who teach drawing teach people to see.
I’m afraid that expression has come to work on me in the same way a breed of yoga teachers say, feel the flow.
I just don’t.

I do see, thankfully, and so far of all my students do as well.
Metaphors are seductive, but clarity sparkles.
So, see what?
What is possible, what is in front of us, how things relate or don’t?

Hacking my way to specificity, this is my new goal.

daily frames of pomona

2011-02-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

Frameworks and I have a taunting sort of relationship.

We think we need one another, but

we are not sure.

For now, the windows of my house

offer a respite from the questioning.

Does framing lead to a framework?

office window

2011-02-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

eight inches and melting before

ground trades with figure.

did he see a shadow?

Triangulated when Wet

2011-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

I still use my first digital camera, the Nikon 990,

but the handidandiness of my iphanny4

makes it only occasional.

I miss its rotating body,

lens swinging separately from screen.

I miss that sense of a world opening up,

like it gave me when I first discovered its macro capacities.

But I stray. Isaac, my dog and long captive subject, lured me off track.

His fur is the point, though, in recalling what Vince told me the

sculptor George Demetrios (20^th century Gloucester, MA Sculptor)

said about organizing hair on a head, or body.

"Think about how it groups itself in forms of triangles, hair

connecting and resolving in a shape, which for the most part is pointed."

barton dam

2011-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

rituals of bird hills walk

2011-02-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

barton pond frozen

chasing a figure

Bread Love

2010-12-16T12:55:00.000-08:00

Might there be a message in my

recent bread encounters?

First they wont let go of each other, then

the end slices get together.

Imagine the holes, not as shot through, but forming.

drawing white

2010-12-15T15:00:00.001-08:00

that Huron River's twisted my iphone values

store-bought effects cling to lines of sight

Some are fueled by challenge, reaching for the seemingly impossible.

You'll never be able to make that, lad.

And the mighty scores.

Me, I am the opposite. Moving only when praised, I require inordinate amounts.

But when a comparison strokes my chord, I feel launched.

There is something to say after all.

A sketch for a noticer to call out.

Look here, see that?

So, thanks for your email just now.

1200 Pomona Road

2010-11-09T07:40:00.001-08:00

old drawings of same beautiful view

nothing like home

even if you missed fall

leaves give way to vistas

and all is possible

Full Circle

2010-11-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

Back to Little Gransden again today where we found

Blue, the sweetest working dog, inexplicably thinner.

Blood tests arriving shortly.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

He sat on my lap, gingerly, not so strong as before,

then put his long neck and thick head on my shoulder.

I almost burst into tears.

Cambridge

2010-11-03T15:12:00.000-07:00

Weeping willows are big yellow brushes now,

still hovering above the Cam;

punts rest mostly empty

in the misty fall turning winter.

I can understand people in the streets again.

Lines

2010-11-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

First the Gare du Nord for a ticket change, then

the falafel place at the end of Rue des Ecouffes.

All set to depart Paris tomorrow on the Eurostar across the chunnel.

Auvoir, it's been swell.

Beyond all expectation.

Galeries Lafayette

2010-11-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

They got their trippy Christmas stuff up before Halloween hit.

Rue des Ecouffes

2010-10-31T16:27:00.000-07:00

view each way from #8

Biking along the Seine

2010-10-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

the most photographed spot in Paris, point of the island

Sunday Seine

2010-10-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

Skateboarding in the tunnel where Diana crashed.

And for all practical purposes, died.

Well it may not be that tunnel after all.

Looks familiar, but we were unsure.

What does happen is the highway next to the Seine is given over to pedestrians.

It changes speed every Sunday.

This afternoon I biked and the girls skated, long board.

I pulled on a couple of occasions, up the long or steep hills.

A thrilling way to fly through Paris.

We did it again tonight;

walls pull in closer, from a bicycle.

You can take in big public spaces.

Circle the squares of the Louvre.

Jeu de Paume

2010-10-30T13:36:00.001-07:00

scanned Kertesz photograph

When I hit the Polaroid section of the André Kertész exhibition, I had to step back and look away. The emotional density peaks here, grief manifest in tiny little squares. Tears at least blur and soften the searing sorrow that permeates photographs of colored figurines leaning into one another against varying backgrounds. Kertesz loved his Elizabeth, lived with her for sixty years, lost her to death, then found her again in the form of a tiny glass figurine. He took her around and made more photographs, seeking resurrection perhaps. In a show that builds literally (early images the size of negatives gradually give way to larger prints) and conceptually (complexity of topic, expansion of means), you find yourself getting more roped in as the rooms keep coming, each one filled with more rawness than the next. His work is marked by very different phases – photography as seeing, as a business, and then again as a narrative art.

walking home last night

2010-10-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

Origins of my weekly ritual

2010-10-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Tastes, or maybe just particular foods, evoke home for me. Pimento cheese and barbeque means North Carolina in general; peanuts, peeled apples and honey my grandfather, pound cake my grandmother, creamed mints and cheese sticks are Elkin. It goes on.

Yesterday, however, here in Paris, I went home in the 11^th arrondisement where the bakery, L’Autre Boulange, sits at 43 rue Montreuill. It is the place where an NC State professor of Philosophy spent a sabbatical learning about true sourdough bread maybe twenty years ago. From him I got the starter I use weekly in making bread. Unsure of the details of its real origin, this is as close to seeing its birthplace as I might get. In my battered French, I managed to make it clear that I knew David, and that I baked with the levain imported from their bakery. Peggy, the daughter of the couple David studied under, nodded. It’s been over fifteen years, I said, conscious that my measure hardly registered next to their generations.

The place itself equates tools with decorations, blends handcrafted breads into backgrounds of rubble walls, and stripes its whitewash with extra long bannetons (the linen lined baskets where breads do their final rise). You could almost smell the passage of time in the decades of crust.

Does this mean I can call Paris a home?

Ecole des Beaux-Arts

2010-10-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Traveling inspires an urge to correspond that sometimes precipitates a profound sense of connection or at least prying into realms not normally unearthed. Though, as I mentioned much earlier in this trip, I lament the advent of technology in certain ways, the hyper present wifi that enables immediate communication (I couldn’t live without it now – don’t get me wrong), this heightened level of exchange characterizes an email I got from my father a few days ago regarding the conception of my birth.

Go to the Rue Des Beaux Arts and see if the Hotel de Nice is still there. That is where my parents lived while my father was studying at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, the spoils for winning the Paris Prize. And apparently this is the place where the idea of me was born. I knew to a certain degree as architects owe our existences to the Ecole, but this took on an entirely new meaning. In honor of my new knowledge we held a macaron contest in one of its courtyards.

from the bateau with the iphoneau

2010-10-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

Cruising the Seine

2010-10-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

Mashing it up on the Bateau Mouches

slow boat fast draw