Molly Hashimoto

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat 2009

Sunset on Pyramid Peak is something I try to see every time I am visiting the North Cascades Institute Environmental Learning Center. As I write some of my last posts about the Artist Retreat, this image seems appropriate for closure, the end of day. I am hoping to do a few more posts, including some sketches, both my own and a few promised ones from my students.

 

Marlene Brannen studied with Jocelyn Curry at the Artist Retreat; I first met her several years ago when she joined me for a class I taught on journals at Daniel Smith Artist Materials.  She is a longtime student of the process of journal-keeping and has studied with many of the contemporary masters of the form.  It was a delight to meet up with her once again.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat: Haiku

Len and Beth Eisenhood joined us at the artist retreat last weekend. Len worked with me in the watercolor class, and Beth studied with Jocelyn Curry in the journal class.  Beth wrote to me and kindly shared this beautiful haiku she wrote while sketching in the meadow at Bridge Creek in the North Cascades.  In her note she mentioned that she was wearing a lime-green shirt as she sat sketching.

--wasp circling round me

let's share this bright-green field--

my blouse, your grasses

       --Beth Eisenhood

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat: People

On Saturday evening, Katie Roloson gave a presentation about the relationship between artists and the environment.  She shared highlights from the thesis she had written for her master's degree. I especially enjoyed Katie sharing some of the interviews with artists that she had conducted as part of her research. One of the probing questions she had asked artists was about how the environment might be a medium for them. In the case of stone sculptors, it was especially apparent, as they went out in search of stones that spoke to them of the form of the creatures they would be carving.

Katie's interest in art is no surprise, as she is an artist. She  has been my staff assistant on numerous occasions and I've always enjoyed seeing the work she produces during our workshops. She keeps a nature journal, and has done some marvelous colored pencil sketches of birds and mammals of the North Cascades.  To the right are several of the fine sketches she did during the retreat.

I find it fascinating that so many of the graduate students and staff at the North Cascades Institute aare artists and writers. Kelly Berger was our grad student coordinator at the retreat; she is pictured above at Katie's presentation, just to the right of Katie.  She is an accomplished natural science illustrator.  The photographer Ansel Adams wrote: The great wilderness areas, designated for perpetuation of the intangible qualities of nature, must be given appropriate use and interpretation, and complete protection.  Perhaps one of the most positive ways of achieving this objective is to encourage writers, artists, and photographers to utilize these profoundly beautiful areas as sources of inspiration and interpretation to the fullest possible extent. It is necessary to penetrate the illusion of mere 'scenery' to acheive a more profound understanding of the world about us.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat: People

Associated Press reporter Shannon Dininny spent a couple of days at the North Cascades Institute doing research for a story she is writing on the Institute and its programs. Here she is interviewing a student from my watercolor class, Donna Woodland of Montoursville, Pennsylvania.

Cathy Dempsey and her mother Joan Dempsey have been coming to the Institute's Environmental Learning Center to paint with me since it opened four years ago. They take great joy in sharing the beauty of the surroundings and painting in each other's company.  I love teaching mother/daughter duos: it is always fun!

Below are two of Cathy's paintings, one of the forest near the Learning Center, and the other of the amazing color of Diablo Lake in July, seen through the forest.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat: People

Pictured here are several of the Parks Climate Challenge students, stopping in at the Learning Center after spending several days on Ross Lake in North Cascades National Park.  These young people are exceptional students from inner city high schools all over the United States, whom the North Cascades Institute has brought together this summer to learn all about the North Cascades and climate change issues.  When they return to their home communities they will  serve as ambassadors for the national parks and will continue to advocate for change on climate issues as well.  They enjoyed our Art Walk, strolling around the classrooms viewing the art exhibit we put together at the Retreat, and this is one of the outstanding journals created in Jocelyn's class.

Shelly Sharp created a very nice sketch of the running water at Sourdough Creek just north of the Learning Center.  On our last day, students walked out there and did a fairly carefully observed drawing of the rocks and tumbling water before returning to the classroom to paint in watercolor.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat: People

Watercolor student Mary Nash explained what she had learned in the four days of the retreat to a few of the students from Jocelyn Curry's journal class.  On the final day of the retreat we had the chance to share our work with the other groups, as well as to visit them in their classrooms.

Pictured here are Jocelyn Curry and her students Sue Adam and Helen Todd, with Jocelyn's journals on the table in front of them.

Kristen Gilje was the other teacher at the retreat; she and her students spent their four days creating colorful silk banners and scarves inspired by the natural world around the North Cascades Institute's  Environmental Learning Center.

North Cascades Artist Retreat: Flora & Fauna

This sculpture made of recycled materials presided over our meals in the  dining hall. North Cascades Institute staff naturalist and educator Katie Roloson had worked with the children at the previous week's Family Getaway to create the bear, who at first glance appeared to have stumbled in out of the surrounding forest!

Below Liberty Bell Mountain Katie discovered a Longhorn Pine Sawyer Beetle: here she displays it in all its long-horned glory.

At Bridge Creek meadow we saw several different wildflowers, including the lupine below.I demonstrated painting a whole meadow full of them, using wet-into-wet techniques.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat 2009

At the annual Artist Retreat which took place at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center, we spent one day off campus, taking in the view at Washington Pass.  Just below the Pass we painted the Early Winters Spires, part of Liberty Bell Mountain, and watched the moon hovering between South and North Early Winters Spires. A view like this one might have inspired a classic Japanese woodblock print, and I am reminded of the work of Chiura Obata , who painted at Yosemite in the 1920s.

North Cascades Institute Artist Retreat 2009

 This photo really sums up the joy of spending day after day painting watercolor en plein air at the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center. As I looked at all the workshop participants painting in the avenue of towering Douglas firs, I was reminded of a Gothic cathedral. I'm not the first person to whom this analogy has occurred, but viewing this scene, I thought again of how much great art has been inspired by the natural world.  I stood at the nave, looking down towards the choir, sunlight bathing the painters as it poured through the south clerestory windows in the tree tops.  And each of the painters here came up with some of their best work of the Retreat.

New Mexico Sketches

Driving west from Taos gives fine views of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains just to the north, dramatic cloud formations and the resulting dynamic of light and shadow.  I did this sketch in two stages, first painting the sky, as it was going to dictate the light and dark patterns of the landscape. Once that was dry I painted the mountains and foreground all at once, using a wet in wet technique to carve out the mountain shapes and cast the cloud shadows. Georgia O'Keeffe painted many views of the mountains around her home in New Mexico.  Among my favorites are ones where she appears to sculpt the mountain forms.  Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico/Out Back of Marie's and Purple Hills are a couple of paintings I especially admire.

Here is another view I sketched of San Francisco de Asis Church in Rancho de Taos. O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams were drawn to this adobe masterpiece, and while visiting I took several photos of it from slightly different vantage points.  Learn more about how these artists influenced one another at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's  current exhibit Georgia O'Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities.  More than 100 works are on display.