Adult Parents and Adult Children

Jesse makes good use of our studio chalkboard to problem-solve.

If you are just coming across this blog for the first time, let me say that we are both extremely glad that we took the plunge and moved to Bear River. There is one thing wrong with it though. Our 2 adult children and 1 son-in-law don’t live here. After 15 months, it is dawning on me that I will always miss their presence and their energy and that I will never feel completely OK about living in a different province or country than they do.

Emily on top of the Bear River world in September

At the same time, if I add up all the visits we’ve had with them this year, we’ve been very lucky to spend a total of almost 2 months with them. Skype (free online telephone with live video from computer to computer) has been a gift from the Goddesses to us as well as cheap long-distance cards, Facebook, email and the Blogisphere.

Skyping from the pool in LA

We just finished up a wonderful visit with our son, Jesse. This is his third visit to Bear River, but his first to our studio at the Oakdene and to the house that we’re renovating. Of course, we couldn’t wait to show him the house progress so we started off the visit with some right-of-passage plaster demolition.

Poking plaster out.

Jesse and I bashed out plaster bits from between the lathe work, necessary so that the future drywall sheets will hang flat. The bashing part doesn’t sound like a big deal when you say it really fast, but let me tell you… the walls that Jesse and I worked on had cement in between the lathing and scraping it out used all kinds of arm and shoulder muscles that didn’t want to fully cooperate. (Speaking for myself).

This year's Christmas tree was my potted Bay tree.

Fortunately for both Jesse and for me, the falling of our Oak trees in the wind storm would take out the hydro pole and render the house un-renovatable for the remainder of his visit!

We spent some good time working together in the studio where Larry and Jesse worked on a ring while I painted. 

Working on metalwork was a welcome diversion for Larry

I enjoyed watching my 2 favorite men in the world working together and seeing Larry pass his knowledge and skills to our son.

Bits of Silver and Gold that will become a ring

Larry showed Jesse how to melt his pieces together. It’s a bit tricky because too little heat means that the metal won’t fuse properly, but  too much heat melts the metal away like a river. Initially Jesse overheated his piece.

In the end, his ring worked out very well.

"A" is for Anarchist

I worked on a new painting while the metal smithers moved metal. I am inspired by the zillions of rose-hip bushes and branches that are everywhere in Bear River and I hope to depict that in this painting. I am also intrigued with the reflections of our big windows. The objects in the painting have references to my parents.

The beginnings of an acrylic still-life

It felt great to be in the studio again and especially with my loved ones.

My friend Barbara Muir keeps a daily art blog and she paints and draws a lot of exciting portraiture. I was thinking about her work and was inspired to draw Jesse while he took a break from life-planning and silversmithing.

While I sketched Jesse, I remembered the drawings I did of him while he was a sleeping baby, 28 years ago. How could I know then that my children would actually grow up and that I would still feel as connected to them and to their future and their lives as I did back then.

Our kids are interesting, beautiful, creative adults now and our times together are worth more than all the silver and the gold in the whole wild world.

Jesse and Larry relax on Christmas Day

When is a Woodpile like a Needle in a Haystack?

Larry's carefully stacked woodpile

Recently. Larry has been working on a jewelry commission- a beautiful silver and gold ring set with a green stone. While he was out this morning, I decided to photograph it in many different settings; in a flower, on a leaf and in a bowl of water. (Hey, I’m experimenting).

  

Then I glanced over at Larry’s beautifully stacked woodpile and carefully placed the ring on top of his stacked logs. Can you guess where this, or rather the ring, is going?

All the elements were present

Well, let’s just say that it took a tumble and when I carefully removed the top two rows of logs to pick it up, it slid some more and then disappeared. I began to excavate the pile, row by row, which is easier said than done, because stacked wood likes to roll back down onto the ground. At first I flung the pieces to the back of the stacks, but after I had emptied the first row, without success, I began to panic and imagined that the ring had caught in a piece of log that I had hurled.

I was working up a double sweat here….from handling wood and from anticipating the huge disappointment, frustration and annoyance that Larry would be feeling. I had coveted the ring….had I subconsciously ‘lost’ it? Would the ring melt if it landed in the furnace?

We’ll leave me for the time being dismantling the second row of logs as the threatened thunderstorm approaches, both figuratively and metaphorically.

Lately Larry and I are talking to people about heating systems because we want to install an economical and efficient system in our next house. Wood pellets vs. wood vs. geothermal.  We had a little gathering in the studio last week and the two BIG topics were a) heating systems and b) gardening.  

Although Larry and I both grew up with belching coal furnaces and then with converted coal-to-oil furnaces, it is a rare house in rural Nova Scotia that doesn’t have some source of wood heat. The house we are living in has two furnaces; one for oil and one for wood. When the wood furnace drops below the set temperature,  the oil furnace clicks on. It’s a pretty sensible system, but it still depends on electricity to circulate the hot air.

Rob's woodpile

People tell us here that electricity blackouts lasting 3 days are a regular winter occurrence, though we didn’t experience that last winter. That’s why so many people have high efficiency wood stoves in the main room of their houses. Also, wood is currently 1/4 of the cost of oil. I hope you haven’t fallen asleep at all these details, but let’s face it, Shelter is right up there in Mazlow’s heirarchy of human needs.

Don's woodpile

Larry and I have differing views about the perfect heating system and he’s leaning towards a wood pellet stove. According to the literature, you just dump a bag of pellets into the stove every 5 days and it feeds itself and regulates the heat too. To me they look like large rabbit droppings and there’s the noise factor of a continously blowing fan that bothers me.

Larry"s woodpile (yesterday)

Up until this morning, I have thought of wood heat as the ideal system. I think the fragrance of the burning wood, the crackle of the flames, the glowing coals and the colour of the light add up to a true sensual experience. That was before I lost a ring in the stack and spent 1/2 an hour moving wood around. Man, those logs are HEAVY! HARD! …TIRING. After 1/2 an hour, I thought of the many hours Larry has spent stacking wood outside to dry and how many more hours it will require to stack it in the basement to feed the hungry furnace. Why I almost had myself talked back into oil heating, when what did I glimpse on the ground, but a silver flash!

Can you see the silver glint on the ground?

I still had time to take one last photo of Larry’s creation before he got home. And what the heck; I think I’m going to volunteer to help him stack wood in the cellar.

Anniversary Ring, by Larry Knox, Studio Three http://studiothree.wordpress.com