Maxfield Parrish Skies

In my line of work, I have stayed in some very nice hotels. While I usually take the opportunity to appreciate the lovely surroundings I rarely pay much attention to the artwork that graces the walls. I like art well enough, but I'm more concerned with  the details of how to make my unadorned meeting room attractive and functional. I leave the ambiance of lobbies and guest rooms to the hotel.

Not having studied art, it is no surprise that when I first ran a meeting at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs and was assigned space in the Maxfield Parrish room I wondered who he was to get a room named after him. The answer I received was that he was an artist who was a friend of the hotel’s original owner. Call me unobservant but I made no connection between the merchandise in the gift shop on which there was embossed a richly colored depiction of the Broadmoor with a lake in front of it and the name Maxfield Parrish. Nor did I connect the name to the numerous paintings of sprites in pastoral settings with the same brilliant blue skies, peach tinted clouds and mossy green trees I’d seen in art books growing up.

Nonetheless, whenever I’m at the Broadmoor, I take a few moments in the quiet hours of dawn to stand at my hotel room window taking in the last serenity I will know before taking my clip board and cell phone to the clanging, fluorescent lit back hallways and clinking, clunking ballrooms where breakfast is being set out. Even in those few blessed minutes of peace looking out at the lake with the mountains rising behind the resort, the morning air shimmering in pink, and the grey sky transforming to lapis, I never made the connection between that view and a work of art, much less with the artist.

I obviously got the point that sunrise was beautiful and serene, even otherworldly, but nope, I did not think of Maxfield Parrish until one year when Salt drove down to spend an evening with me. As usual, I was busy with some type of tangled problem that had to be resolved before morning, so he was set adrift to wander the halls of the hotel. When I caught up with him for a late dinner, he had just torn himself away from a set of paintings he’d seen in a hallway. He asked if I knew who Maxfield Parrish was, and I said “Yes. There’s a meeting room named after him. He’s some friend of the former owner.” Salt kindly did not conclude I was an idiot, and showed me that my hotel key had a Maxfield Parrish painting printed on it. He had also just found some of Parrish’s paintings in the hotel. Salt was looking forward to more free time to look for more. Ahh. . . the connections were in place. Parrish’s famous – I know this now – depiction of the Broadmoor is very much like my early morning view, except the lake is in the wrong place, which I understand was Parrish’s artistic license.

 From then on Salt and I would point out Maxfield Parrish skies whenever we ran across them during our early morning commutes and as we sat watching the sun set over the foothills in our old home. These skies are not particularly common anywhere else I’ve lived and even at our old home they were a noteworthy occurrence.

This is how I know I am one of the most fortunate people in the world to live where I do now. I often tell people that although we have no view of the mountains from our new house, we have Colorado to the west with great, rustic ponderosas towering overhead and we have Kansas to the east where we can see thunderstorms fifty miles away over the plains. We also see rainbows after every storm, we enjoy the longest sunrises and we can see the glow of brilliant sunsets shining through the trees. Every day has at least one, if not more, Maxfield Parrish moment.

Looking out the window in the morning is a great treat for me and last weekend I opened my eyes at sunrise to see the a white gold light pushing its way over the horizon to the east of us. Through our west facing window I looked out at the burly ponderosas, which were catching a peach colored light that muted the deep forest green of the needles and lit their wide trunks dappled in burnt umber and charcoal. The sky behind them shone blue, but the gold cast to the very air was awe inspiring. There is something about this light that makes everything ordinary appear in a way that one has never seen it before; indeed I look at the sky, the ponderosas, the deer in the yard with the wonder of someone seeing these mysterious things for the first time.

There are many who call Maxfield Parrish’s pastoral settings “fantasy,” his androgynous figures “angelic,” and his skies “ethereal.”  I’m beginning to disagree, since I doubt I live in Maxfield Parrish's imagination. This is every day for me. 

http://www.parrishhousefoundation.org/index.html

Best Overalls

Strawberry Pickers on the Chivers Estate near Ely. 1944.
Source: Museum of English Rural Life

The fashion buzz is that overalls are the hot trend for this summer. My grandfather, who bought his overalls at the feed store, would be a bit perplexed at Farfetch's offering of J Brand overalls for 562 dollars. Though, I must admit J Brand overalls are mighty pretty on the tall, lithe model sporting them for the website. I don’t think granddad was as interested in having an outfit with good lines so much as he was in keeping hog poop off of his shirts, which can be achieved for a small percentage of Farfetch’s price. Nonetheless, one should give kudos to J Brand for making overalls that look good on any woman. 

My Favorite Farm Day... So Far

Along with the warm days and green grass of summer comes one of the best parts of living in the foothills: visitors. A few weeks ago we had an open house cookout, but the real rush of visitors began this week with the arrival of my niece and her roommate. I was able to take the day off yesterday to spend a little time with them in what turned out to be a great little farm day and a wonderful outing.

The day began at 4:45 a.m., when my boyfriend, Salt, got up for work. The sky was just grey with light, but I knew I had a lot of chores to get done and he would appreciate a little relief from the regular Monday morning rituals. So, I leapt from bed to let the dogs out and start the coffee. When the dogs came in, I gave them their medications and breakfast. Then, I went downstairs to feed the cat and the fish. I cleaned out the cat box, then headed out to the garage to feed the chickens in their new home.

After I waved goodbye to Salt, I made the bed and hauled the trash and recycling down to the gate. A bright golden sun had just risen over the horizon. It was a pretty day. We’d had a rainstorm the night before,

The Fruits of Our Labors

It takes skills and knowledge to have any successful career, which is why I am sure that professional ditch diggers would not be impressed by either my talent or intellect if they saw me hacking away at the dirt in our yard.

It's so bad, that one might wonder why I even try. Well... for starters, I’m not entirely helpless or hopeless. What I lack in technique or training, I make up for with perseverance. Any digging, leveling, soil moving project is still slow going for me, but I can certainly stick to the task a lot longer than when I first started this gardening project.

Secondly, the only other person here who could do it is my boyfriend, Salt, whose talents are better used elsewhere. While I have been playing in the dirt, Salt has been designing and building the deer fence and planters. When he got done with that he started a little garden of his own next to the garage and began construction on safer entry steps. This is in addition to the pergola he is building as a grape arbor.

When he says, “I think I’ll build some steps,” I imagine how I would go about it. For me, it would involve night after night of sketches and rough measurements. I would consult search engines to find how-to guides. I would go to the building center with a painstakingly crafted, long, detailed list, then I would struggle to the point of exhaustion loading the lumber into the truck. After having exhausted myself mentally and physically for weeks, I would finally off-load the lumber (dropping at least one on my foot). That moment would be the zenith of the project, as I would look back at how much I have accomplished and look forward to the thrill of construction (and completion) immediately before me. At that point, I would realize I can't hold a circular saw and operate it at the same time, ending my project in a tragedy of dashed hopes.

You can see how it is a matter of practicality that I have very little to do with the process when Salt says, “I think I’ll build some steps.”   The way he goes about it is to take some measurements, sketch in a small memo pad for a few minutes, and make a quick trip to the building center. When he returns, he completes the demolition, puts up a safety barrier (in the highly likely event I forget the steps are gone), levels the ground and puts in footers before the first day is done.

His sketches are rough and he’s designing as he goes, but even his half-finished stairs, fences, decks, et cetera are beautiful enough to make me giddy with anticipation. The loveliest part is that he does finish, quickly, usually on the second or third day. One would think it was effortless if it weren't for the fact he is covered with sawdust, sweat and dirt. The end product is a union of form and function. I am unceasingly in awe at the artistry of what he's built. Though he makes a special effort to make his creations attractive, he'll explain the practicality of the beautiful thingy (my term) that's holding the entire construction together.

Living with a talented artist who has such practical skills can be a bit demoralizing. Although one of my virtues is the ability to put my ego on a shelf, I still have those fleeting thoughts about how pathetic my own endeavors seem in comparison. I try to content myself with what I can do. While Salt constructs the Taj of decks, I keep the drill batteries charged, pick up scrap wood, put away discarded tools, and of course dig. There are lots of digging projects like sinking the footers under the deer fence, leveling the raised planters, cultivating the soil under the planters, filling the planters with top soil, mixing in compost, moving plants, and spreading mulch. It's too bad that all of my practice digging has not blossomed into a talent. 

I'm hoping that gardening will turn out to be my medium, but it's not exactly the kind of endeavor that shows immediate results. I did get the plants into the planters and they have survived five weeks, but I wouldn't say it's beautiful yet and I could kill it all at any time.  Nonetheless, the yard has come a long way with Salt's amazing construction and my determined shoveling, so I'm including a slide show so you can see the progress we've made so far. Enjoy.