Carrasco Studio

She Rises

Yeah, I'm Back from the land of Vicoden and  Underground Cloud Travels.

My hip replacement is healing beautifully (a loud hurrah for the excellent care of Swedish Hospital (Seattle) and the tender nursing of my partner Phil. ) He is my medication Nazi and my bath administrator, otherwise known as the PLA, Preventor of Limburger Armpits.

Last night I went off my pain pills and had no pain, but must admit that I was wide awake until 5 this morning.  Oh well, I had nothing else on the line for today other than eat, drink, dabble in watercolors and haul myself around with my invaluable walker. Besides, I was able to finish "Seabisquit) by Lauren Hillerbrand...an excellent book by the way.  I have read 9 books in the past nine days.  Phil goes over to pick them up from my branch library a block away with the instructions not to pick out anything too heavy, like Plato or Kant's "Discourse of Reason".

I creak around the house with my walker like a frigate at sail....windlass squeaking, masts flapping, rolling and tossing....and must do the same for the next 3 weeks.  I can't put weight on my right leg for that amount of time.

I've just started drawing and painting again, and will be back for more regular blogging.

I have a very cool project to start designing.....a magical forest...7'x 12' on canvas.  Since this whole hip thing started with a fall off a scaffold 20 years ago, I am bagging most of the onsite mural jobs, which is not a big deal for me, since almost all my stuff  for the past ten years has been done on canvas and installed later, anyhow.  Will stay in touch and show my process, Facebook friends and others.....  PS...just got notification that my class was accepted for the IDAL convention in Portland this June.  Check it out, Art Fiends.

Painting Carrousel Horses

This is an old post on my blog from before I joined Facebook.  My friend Jeff Raum, a most excellent painter, has been commissioned to do a painting of an armored carousel horse, and I thought I would put this out there for him (and anyone else who might find it interesting).  This carousel work got me started on decorative painting and murals. (Long ago, when the earth was cooling)

In 1983 I was askesd by a friend if I would be interested in painting the antique wooden carousel animals in Spokane's Riverfront Park.  It wasn't restoration in the sense of repairing the original finish....the badly neglected horses had been totally stripped and repainted in 1976 for the Spokane World's Fair.  My painting was done because  the horses are loved to death and ridden nine months out of the year, and belt buckles, shoes and purses take their toll on the finish and need repainting every two or so years.

The animals, which include a fearsome tiger, a swan, a dragon and a giraffe, total 58 in all, and were sculpted by Charles Loof in the early 1900's and presented to his daughter as a wedding present when she married the owner of Spokane's Natatorium Park.  My grandmother and granddad, who rode them as did succeeding generations of my family down to my own son, Carlos, told me that people used to take the trolley to the park to dance, and end their evenings with a ride on the merry-go-round.  It sounds terribly romantic, and there is a definite aura about the animals, somewhat like the old statues of the saints.  So many hopes and dreams were carried on the back of these lovely sculptures.  Here's a watercolor I painted of the horses, and the warrior horse stands out because he is so dramatic.  

 

I would work on the animals for two months in the dead of  winter, and  I can tell you that winter in Spokane is an event.  It snows. And snows. And snows.  The park staff ...mostly guys....would come in and prep the horses for me....filling and sanding during the day,, and I would paint them.  I used Pratt and Lambert Alkyd paint because it was hard and brilliant, and it's a wonder  I can still put 2 and 2 together, because the fumes were awful.  No ventilation to speak of , and if we opened the door of the glass house of the carrousel, I would freeze to death.  However, I ended up painting all 58 at four different times.  Even after I moved to S.Carolina, they flew me up to paint.

I would paint until about 9 pm, and dark comes early in Spokane latitudes.  The snow would build up in glittering piles outside, and I would be alone in my world of brilliant animals.  They gleamed in their enameled splendour.....their pretty Arab heads with dished profiles and flared nostrils, their arched necks  and  tumbled manes.  Their tails were/are real, and their eyes and jewels are glass.  There is a place in Kansas where you can get carousel horse tails and glass jewels and eyes, in case you wondered.

The field mice would come out at night to eat the leftover popcorn, and were totally fearless.....doing acrobat leaps over my boots and behaving disgracefully. Sex. drugs(popcorn heightens mouse libido, evidently) and rock and roll. 

 Finally it would be time to go home, and I'd clean my brushes, spread my rags outside, and close the heavy glass door with a click I can still remember with my fingers. The park could be a threatening place at night and I was an easy target, working inside the brightly lit glass house, but I was never bothered.  Only once, while I waited for a bus, did a guy make kung foo moves all around me for about 15 minutes.  That was a little weird, but I think he was fighting imaginary enemies, not me.

A woman named Martha was my boss, and she kept the machines of the merry-go -round in good condition. I liked Martha and respected her sensitivity and good sense.
I wrote and illustrated a story about carousel animals who came alive on winter nights and went out to play in the snow with Martha.  She was a wizard at night and brought them alive with her magic wand. I imagine her as she is in my watercolors...wearing her billed cap and Carhart overalls, polishing the brass and feeding the mice.