Well, this is a real reservoir problem: in an Iowa study of hundreds of deer sampled between April 2020 and January 2021, eighty percent tested positive for COVID-19.
deer
Whiterock Conservancy Journal 2
in Residencies
The fourth day of my residency at the Whiterock Conservancy involved taking the Gator UTV out to the Garst Farmhouse Historic District - a long trip! We saw a coyote for just a moment, and several turkey vultures. There was also a ridiculously friendly miniature donkey at the farm who I enjoyed making the acquaintance of. I didn’t take many photos on this day as I had discovered to my dismay the previous night when attempting to swap out and recharge my very low camera battery that I had somehow managed to overlook packing my charger and spare battery (which was charging in it). I’m still not sure how that happened; it’s one of the most important items to bring along and I’m usually so good at packing! I think it’s a combination of not having traveled much the past year along with a more procrastinated packing approach (admittedly in part due to the proximity of the residency).
I was just beginning to resign myself to needing to drive a round-trip five hour journey to retrieve it when my friends all came together for me and managed to send the charger and spare on their way with a friend who was arriving to join our party that evening. After she got here with my fully charged spare and the charger itself, I was so relieved! We celebrated by going on a five-person evening hike of the Shooting Star Trail. It has a lot of beautiful ferns, and I found two absolutely tiny wild strawberries which I harvested for chromatography purposes.
The fifth day of our residency brought another two of my friends and their children! We set off as a group of eight on a hike of the Pond Hopper Trail with its abandoned log cabin, explored the beach again, and checked out the River House Barn.
On the sixth day, the eight of us hiked the Riverside Trail and explored the 805 Cabin area. We then went on the Templeton Rye distillery tour in nearby Templeton, IA! In the late afternoon, we returned to the beach and I harvested some of the “blue” clay that is a part of the cliffside across the river while a couple of my friends played in the river and were nibbled upon by minnows. To get to the clay, I needed to cross the river, squelch through the very-eager-to-eat-shoes opposite bank, and then climb up a relatively steep cliffside before digging it out and trying not to gather too many rocks, roots, dirt, and other materials in the process. I didn’t get a ton of it - maybe six or seven pounds - as after the vein I was digging became exhausted, the others were all even higher and I thought they were too steep to tackle. Plus I was worried about trying to manage too heavy a weight on the return journey!
It was an even more precarious climb back down with the clay in hand, and crossing the river while laden also proved difficult! I resolved to go a second time and make use of the walking stick in the house to get some more from a bit higher up. The rest of the evening I cleaned most of the clay of rocks, pebbles, sandstone grit, and roots. One of my friends departed to start her own adventure hiking the Loess Hills for four days.
We took it pretty easy on the seventh day in the morning. I had been told that there was both “blue” and red clay in the land trust, but while I was told explicitly where the blue clay could be harvested, the red clay was just an aside. In the afternoon, we went on a Gator adventure to try to see if there was red clay harvestable in this other cliffside we’d seen on the way to the Garst Farmhouse. Unfortunately, when we got up close and started poking, it was all sandstone and solid rock; we managed to harvest about a teaspoon of red clay from one tiny little pocket! Later on I asked the groundskeeper who told me about the red clay where it was located, and he tried and failed to find it as well. He said it’s only harvestable in particular seasons/weather events and it’s just not possible right now.
Late that afternoon my two friends with their children also went back home, so it was just me and my two remaining friends who had arrived at night on the second day. We went on an evening Gator trip to see the final stretch of double track trail that we hadn’t yet explored on the other side of the bridge near the Garst Farmhouse, and were rewarded with a swooping show by a flock of swallows (which was nigh unphotographable due to their speed and size).
On the eighth day, we visited Des Moines as none of the three of us had been there before!
Intercambiador ACART Residency Journal 11 - New Artwork!
I really like how this piece turned out. A number of people have asked me about the background/paper, and yes, I did paint the background as well including the darker spots - the paper started off white. But no, I didn't handmake the paper, though it is artesanal! I bought it at Jeco here in Madrid.
The Ninth Hour, acrylic on paper, 11 3/8 x 15".
Cerdeira Village Residency Journal 4
Most of this residency has been studio time; I have done a couple other things, though! The first was a quick evening outing to Lousã with a part-time employee named the Portuguese variant of Juan which is João, which I can't easily pronounce. He didn't know it, but there was actually a celebration in town that evening honoring Nossa Senhora da Piedade in a procession that took her from her white church atop a cliff near town into the town itself. Apparently in a few weeks, they will celebrate as she makes the return trip as well. I had a fartura, which is a Portuguese variant of a churro (without chocolate), while Julia and João had ice cream. João then grew jealous of my fartura, however, and we got in line to get him one as well!
We also dropped by Lousã the next day to get a few more groceries; I also wanted to get packing materials to ship my very fragile turtle sculpture - the branches and lichens needed something really special! Luckily, we found it at a "Chinese shop," which is just as it sounds - a large shop run by Chinese families that has lower-quality goods at cheap prices but has an enormous variety. I found an area that had pillows and pillow stuffings, including little styrofoam balls used in bean bags and travel neck pillows. I am hopeful they will be the perfect packing material to go around the delicate parts of my pieces, and supplemented them with bubble wrap and some fiber fluff as well.
Apart from that, every day has been a studio day up until Wednesday, May 31st. This day, Julia and I decided that we would go see the Parque Biológico (Quinta da Paiva) at the nearby town of Miranda do Corvo. It's basically a small wildlife sanctuary/zoo, run by a group that provides disability services and has an interesting take on our universe (that we are one of a multiverse and that there is definitively alien life in our own). Nuno was going to take us as a tour guide, but that plan fell through - instead, Kerstin dropped us off at the Parque Biológico entrance and told us to walk back into town when done to take a bus to Lousã and then a taxi from Lousã to Cerdeira Village.
The Parque Biológico started off somewhat disappointingly with fairly common animals like pigeons, ducks, and geese, and then their bears seemed to be kind of stressed, so I was not sure what I was going to think of the place. But then we saw some very expressively nosed boars and then happened upon a beautiful group of spotted deer. We noticed one making a weird noise. When we came upon her, we saw that she had a little baby deer with her! We ended up seeing some employees who told us the baby was nine hours old. It was so cute, and still hadn't quite worked out how its legs worked. Julia and I felt quite lucky, as we had considered going the day before and would have missed seeing it. We later realized that if we had come even an hour or so later, too, the mother and baby had moved inside to get shade and we wouldn't have seen it then, either.
We next saw some lynxes, and then realized we had skipped the fox enclosure and doubled back. When we got there, I noticed there was a kit near the fox we spotted, too! The mother fox was in pretty rough shape (missing part of an ear and with a non-functional front limb), but she still had a beautiful face and was clearly acclimated to humans. After a while, she seemed to decide she could trust us with her kit and moved back while we oohed and ahhed over it.
The fawn and the kit were by far the best highlights of the Parque Biológico, but we also saw a wolf, some llamas, a very small reptile house with bearded dragons, spotted salamanders, and snakes, and a number of birds of prey. There was also a section small mammals like mongoose, badgers, and martins. There also happened to be a gerbil hut, which was kind of funny, and the gerbils had just had a litter, too - they were clearly also maybe hours old if that, as they were still little pink, blind, writhing creatures. Finally, at the end there was a domesticated animals area. Due to the fawn and the kit, I found the Parque Biológico to be a great experience! Afterward, we walked into the town center, eventually found the bus station, and then stopped for a quick brunch (vegetable soup, grilled cheese, and decaf coffee for me; grilled cheese and coffee for Julia) before catching the bus back to Lousã. In Lousã, we stopped at a pastelaria to buy some dessert and more coffee (decaf and with milk for me, this time) as well as some take-away dessert. Then we called a taxi and rode back up to Cerdeira!
Aside from these outings, all of my time has been spent in the studio. I'll share what my second project has been shortly!