Goldwell, February 2009
In February, 2009, Jer and I went to Beatty, Nevada, where I had a workspace residency with the Goldwell Open Air Museum for 6 weeks. Beatty is over the Funeral Mountains, west of Death Valley, 220 miles south of Reno, 110 miles north of Las Vegas, an area where residents watched the lights of atomic testing in the 1950′s. Beatty is close to Yucca Mountain to the east (erstwhile repository of nuclear waste) just over the Funeral Mountains from Death Valley, and host to a large talus pile from the vat leach gold mine of the Barrick Mining Corporation. In short, a fantastic place from which to contemplate with ” a cold eye” life, death and painting the Void.
I’m a landscape artist, who also dabbles in wacky city- and- hamlet-scapes. The six weeks at Goldwell’s Red Barn studio, four miles out of town and as isolated in time and space as I ever have been, provided me with a wealth of paintings, ideas, and thoughts. I blogged a daily record, mostly mundane, of my time there and added photos to it on this blog.
I have created this page to provide a chronological portrait of the experience, making a “chapter” for each posting, starting with the first day of the residency. The blog posts are available in reverse chronological order on the regular pages of this blog, so here I’ve edited the posts a bit and made somewhat more sense of the chronology. I have also added a final post.
I regret the clumsiness of the chapter links, but will embed a link to the next chapter in each post so the faithful reader of the entire residency can move from one day to the next without returning here.
Chapter 1: Day 1: Paintings from on the road; the Phoenix Inn, rising from the desert
Chapter 2: Day 2, Setting up the Red Barn Studio; the First Painting
Chapter 3: Rocks and the First Landscape: “South from the Red Barn”
Chapter4: Landscape, Cactus and “East from the Red Barn (Ladd Mountain)”
Chapter5: Painting Beatty: Paul Richen, and “The Exchange Club”, Photo and Painting
Chapter 6: A Whine about the Woodblock Carving Workshop
Chapter 7: Woodblocks of “The Clarno Palisades” and “Miocene”
Chapter 8: First Attempts to Paint the Goldwell Statuary and its Surrounds
Chapter 9: Much Socializing and Painting the Bullfrog Mountain East
Chapter 10: Excellent Painting Day, with Photos only of the Scenery
Chapter 11: “The Sourdough Saloon” and the New Laptop, as Well as Social Commentary
Chapter 12: Two paintings of Bonanza Mountain Completed, and More Work on the Goldwell Sculpture Garden Painting
Chapter 13: Painting to the West: “The Bullfrog Hills” and the “Backside of Bonanza Mountain“
Chapter 14: Plans and Panics and Painting “The Bottle House” at Rhyolite
Chapter 15: A Windy Day Spent Socializing and Tweaking the Bullfrogs and the Backside
Chapter 16: Painting the Lida Playa at Gold Point and from the Goldwell House in Beatty
Chapter 17: “The Amargosa River from Valley Street” and chores
Chapter 18: More on “Shorty’s Rebellion” and “The Bottle House”; Also Photos from Laptop
Chapter 19 : Continuation of tweaks and much futzing about
Chapter 20: Open Studio, More Bullfrog Hills and “progress” on Shorty’s Rebellion
Chapter 21:Â Cistern Workers, Approaching Beatty, PM, and the Bullfrog Hills
Chapter 22: Tweaking Paintings, Visiting the Cemetery, and Carrying On
Chapter 23:Â Photos of Beatty paintings spots as well as Rhyolite potentials
Chapter 24: Rhyolite Photos for the Big Board and Studio Walls, with Paintings
Chapter 25: Death Valley Scenes and Ruminations on Cameras versus Eyes
Chapter 26: Tweaking Bare Mountains, The Rhyolite Panorama, and the Exchange Club (Free Parking)
Chapter 27: “Golden Canyon” in Death Valley, Photos and Painting (draft 1) and Mindy Hill
Chapter 28: The Beatty Map Canvas and the Rhyolite Panorama (long version)
Chapter 29: The Barrick Mine, The Rhyolite Ghost Town Vale, Golden Canyon (final version) and Beatty Map
Chapter 30: More Versions: The Barrick Mine and Shorty’s Rebellion (smaller version) and the Golden Canyon Revisited (in drafts).
Chapter 31: Finished Versions of Golden Canyon, Free Parking, and Bare Mountain and Work in Progress (Golden Canyon Revisited), Also Start of a new, last Canvas).
Chapter 32: Work. No Photos. Broke the Toilet Lid. No Good, Pretty Awful Day.
Chapter 33: Continuing to tweak the Barrick Mine and Golden Canyon Revisited. Further work on Amargosa Playa2, and a happy final masonite-support painting of the Amargosa Valley (Amargosa Playa 3)
Chapter 34: A Couple of Days off, with nothing but coffee and a Pretty Sunset to Show, Days 34 &Â 35
Chapter 35:Â More Vacationing, with Dust Storms in Death Valley Documented
Chapter 36: Paintings: Between Beatty and Rhyolite and The Beatty Merc
Chapter 37: Zabriskie Point, Death Valley
Chapter 38: Preparation for the Open Studio, a Tour of Titus Canyon (undocumented), and visiting friends. No Photos.
Chapter 39: Photos from the Final Days : March 29 and 30, 2009
Chapter 40: After-words, September, 2009
