The 4th of July

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, car wash, Celebrations, Cutler City, Drawings, Family photos, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

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4th of July, beach, family, fireworks, thelargestferncontest

Well, America. All that it means to us…the history, the narrative, the many wonderful people just trying to live a life. Maybe the fourth of July is when I can put aside the politics and the incessant bad news of NPR and just revel in what I think summer in America is…for me anyway…

Pie for instance…(apple in this case)

sunny and cloudy days at the beach…

picnics

drawing

Flags

traffic (unfortunately)…

fireworks…

builders…

the judging of the largest fern contest…

and then a change of gears for me…

off to Sisters tomorrow for quilting, on to Camp Sherman for Art Camp…see you soon!

So What About Blogs?

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Bonnie Hull, City, Cutler City, Drawings, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Salem, Uncategorized

≈ 17 Comments

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Angelita Surmon, Anna Fidler, Charles Hartman Fine Art, Christy Wyckoff, Damien Gilley, PNAA, summer fun, The Habit of Drawing, Waterstone Gallery

My blog posts have fallen off (and so have my statistics!)…maybe blogs are going the way of all things in this fast world of ours? My need to provide a narrative thread for this blog is slipping as I do more and more on Instagram…quick image, one line…done. The trouble with it is you have to have a smart phone to participate…which makes it kind of a “club”…something to think about. Opinions?

So my blog titles have been pretty generic and inclusive of a bunch of stuff…this one included. Our weeks seem chopped up, disjointed, not narrative in form. But, after 3 weeks, we HAVE done a bunch of stuff so here’s a sampling, June as July roars towards us…

We visited Christy and Laura Wyckoff recently. Christy is a master print maker, painter, glass artist, retired teacher, and Laura is a writer. They live in a big old Portland four-square house that they have done interesting things to including removing all walls on the second floor to make a big studio for Christy to work in.

…and Sidney came too…

but “NO PHOTO”

I was chatting with Laura and Sidney and acting overly polite so neglected to get photos of the great wall texture, the nice sitting area, etc…I did get these though, painted by Christy some years ago on plaster fragments on a chimney after seeing all the frescoes in Italy…

Piccolo Park was visited at a rare time when we were the only ones there!?!

We took in Anna Fidler’s show at Charles Hartman Fine Art…

took a lunch break at Pearl Bakery

and saw Angelita Sermon’s paintings and glass at Waterstone…

did a sleep over at Fernridge (Sidney’s house)

and then of course…SUMMER!

Damien Gilley spoke informally about the mural he’s painting in a Salem alley

I taught a drawing class…and they were brave…

It was called “The Habit of Drawing”…week one they came and got a book and I gave them things to think about, they went away with the assignment to “draw every day” and came back a week later to talk about what happened and show the results. It was fun…

“Do a selfie”

“Do something to the cover if you want…”

and then we headed to the beach to beat the heat…

Here’s my brother Howard’s watercolor of how our beach house might have grown…

Fog banks rolling in as the valley heats up…

Okay July…heading right at you!

Creative Thinking When Zoning Fails

29 Monday May 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Architecture, Beach, Cutler City, Modern Life, Oregon, Small Buildings, Uncategorized

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Cutler City, Ebb Street, Giotto, new constuction, old construction, Sassetta, scale in buildings, zoning

“Densification” “Infill”…modern words. These words weren’t part of the vocabulary 25 years ago when we bought this little beach house…

Across the street was a heavily wooded lot with huckleberries, salal, shorepines, rhoadies…it looked like this…and birds lived here…”habitat.”

For 25 years we rolled up to our house knowing that one day we’d drive in and find something different there…and it finally happened. The people to the north bought the lot and for a couple of years left it alone, but plans were afoot for a garage with an apartment above for their children and one day we drove up to see this…trees all cut down…

and Friday, after a two week absence…

The thing to keep in mind here is that all but one house on Ebb Street is one story, and this garage is taller than the one two story house. And here is the old view from inside, and the new…

We, on the other hand, were not allowed to put on a small front porch so made do with a pergola…

But, hilariously, I put a photo on Instagram this weekend and have received suggestions to think of it as an Italian villa…Roger and my brother suggested a paintings by Sassetta and Giotto…

and Rachel thought maybe just an Italian villa…

…so now, we are amused. Sort of.

The Varied Life

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Cutler City, Drawings, Quilting, Trees, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

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Alden Mason, Art, Artists, Cutler City, Drawings, Edgefield, Henk Pander, Jon Bunce, Quilts

I keep waiting for a coherent body of photos, events, thoughts to surface (other than the car wash)…to no avail. I guess the life I’m leading is chaotic these days, so lets go anyway…we left the car wash and headed east …first stop Edgefield, a destination spot in a former poor farm…odd but true, and now very beautiful…

Our room had tons of windows and was lovely day and night…

and then we headed east stopping briefly at Vista House

Hood River, Dufur, Maupin, Madras, Sisters…over the pass

down into Salem in the middle of a spring wind storm…

Studio time…

We’ve spent some time with the laughing boy…

and visited some artists including Henk

and we took Jon Bunce a funny little painting of his boyhood home that Mary Lou Zeek found at a junk sale…

We had a play-date at Sara and Marcus’ house where Sidney fed the fish and made a play-dough birthday cake…

I worked on the cross quilt…

we saw a nice Alden Mason painting at Mark Humpal’s (with a rug made by Amanda Snyder in front…)

and we went to the beach where the view from our living room has looked about like this for the last 25 years…

and virtually every time we have driven up we have expected to see the trees cut and a mobile home on the site…and finally…the day came…

there’s more probably, but not for tonight.

The Heart of the Summer

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Celebrations, Cutler City, Family photos, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

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beach, Cutler City, family vacation, Fourth of July, MaryLou Zeek, Oregon Coast, Siletz Bay

That’s what I always think the 4th of July is, the heart of the summer, the time of blueberries and peaches…even though there are still three more months ahead and only one behind…(too many years on the academic schedule I guess.) And for us the 4th of July means the beach…this year like most of the last 24… Our little part of the beachy world looks like this, looking back toward land and then looking across the bay to the spit…

From our vantage points around our small neighborhood we look south and west, see the tides move and the sun set, watch the fireworks…

and this year there was special magic afoot…

things that had been lost were re-found…

NEW things were found…

…a few things found new life (thanks Lisa, thanks Zach)…

there were games…

drama…

sports…

the chef was in the kitchen…

the table was ready…

the clean-up crew was efficient and worked fast…

and though our house is small…

there’s room…

And of course a few traditions were continued…

Nearby we found the PERFECT view lot of our dreams (but sadly not our bank account)

had waaaayyy too much fun…

and came home with a little bit of laundry (that would be 6 loads…)

the only wish for next year? A washer and a dryer…

The SIX at the Beach

24 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Art work, Art World, Artists, Beach, Cutler City, Drawings, Just visual, Modern Life, PNAA, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

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Art, Cafe Mundo, Cutler City, PNAA, Rick Bartow, Salem Art Group, The SIX

The work of a Salem group of women artists has been up at the Compass Gallery this month…me, Katy Viegland, Kathy Shen, Nancy Eng, Tory Brokenshire and Dayna Collins.

We get together monthly, often to make work, sometimes for a brief road trip. A couple of times every year we “retreat” for four or so days to work and talk…but mostly work. And eat…going out for dinner at the end of long work days is restorative, and at the beach we chose places with a good view or with good karma.

We took over the Green’s beach house on day one and within the hour everybody was set up and working…

and the first night we ate at Kyllo’s

the sun was so bright Dayna had to go into movie star mode…

I, as usual, just kept drawing…

the first days were sunny on the deck…

but then the mist started rolling in…

with the sun breaking through at night number two’s dinner venue Tidal Raves…

…me still drawing…

and then day three the rains started in earnest causing the necessity for creative rainwear…

off to Newport for dinner number three at Cafe Mundo, a favorite of painter Rick Bartow…

we were six and couldn’t sit at one of the tables the late and lamented Bartow painted…

but we did sit across from a wonderful Bartow painting with an homage twirling in front of it…

and then I headed down the street to my own cozy cottage for an early morning get-away…

The Week Between…

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Bike Rides, Books, Cutler City, Drawings, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Sky, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

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beach house, Cutler City, drawing, New Year, old bikes, refrigerator poetry, Siletz Bay

Wasn’t that nice?? I just loved the whole week nothing at all to do…well, stuff to do for sure, but without the need to FOCUS…as I’m always reminding myself to do. When we got to the beach I noted some of the poems that arrive occasionally on the fridge…

so we took it to heart…two days we took the same route from Road’s end to Cutler City chasing the sunset, as I mentioned in the last post. One day it was sunset at 4:41…then 4:43 (today 4:45)…YAY!

We had some sunny days to ride bikes…(relics, like us kind of)…

after a leisurely breakfast….

Time to read…

to draw…

and sew (the Moda block 2015 quilt with several of the blocks edited out…and several unscripted ones added in…ugh).

to play…

We wandered aimlessly just taking pictures of this beautiful place in the world…like this nice one of R’s from a solitary sunset beach walk….a hole in the sky…

Sometimes on foot, sometimes in the car when it rained…

Time to fly, to start a new year, to write more, draw more, sew more, love more…if we are lucky enough to have the chance…and–of course–we have to…

Happy New Year all you birds…

Quick Beach Visit

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Bike Rides, Cutler City, Just visual, Modern Life, Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

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beach house, beach life, Cutler City, new fence, old bikes, Siletz Bay

We had a new fence built this week, between our house and the house-of-constant-renters…maybe you remember how it looked the summer before last..here…so we zoomed over to take a look…it’s good!

It poured and blew and sheeted down on Saturday…

but today dawned sunny and clear and perfect for getting out the sweet old bikes…wedding bikes from that long-ago day 46 years ago…

It was beautiful today and high tide on Siletz Bay….

…everybody in town was busy…

off home we went.

Taking the Short Cut

26 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Cutler City, Just visual, Modern Life, Oregon, Trees

≈ 4 Comments

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beach, coming home, Schooner Creek, short cuts

We had to leave the beach today…

but when we got to the highway it was (as Doug would say) “a parking lot.” As we inched north we decided to take the “secret” shortcut…(I trust you not to tell anyone),

(YAY…it was raining!)

and head up Schooner Creek…

When we got the beach house years ago our friend Don told us about the Schooner Creek road…his grandma had a house in Cutler City and they often used the “secret” route. Maybe twice a summer season we use it, and today was the day…

The road follows the lovely Schooner Creek about thirteen beautiful miles on a gravel road…(you can see my quilt reflected in the window lest you think I was just riding and not working…) eventually rejoining the highway at Rose Lodge.

this is a clear cut replanted in 2006…

and this one needs a little work…

There isn’t much around out there…

but eventually we made it home to water the limelights

have dinner on the deck…

and enjoy the white flowers in the dusky garden, coming on alarmingly early but beautiful nonetheless…

Editing Cutler City

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by bonniehull in Beach, Cutler City, Modern Life, Think local, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

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beach cottages, Cutler City, Siletz Bay

In our two plus weeks at the beach I rode my bike around our neighborhood, Cutler City, several times a day. Sometimes I had my camera and took pictures of my favorite small cottages, the “old” Cutler City….little cottages for fishermen built on the sand. Many many of these are gone and some (like ours) have been put on foundations.

The charm of the houses themselves and the scale of the community are what attracted us to Cutler City years ago. Small. Intimate. Easy to care for. Sand on the floor. Over the years big houses have been built on the edge of the Bay and the neighborhood’s perimeter by people who can afford to capture the view…in the center there are many deteriorating 1970’s and 1980’s ranch houses, quite a few double wides jammed onto (sadly in my view) lots cleared of all kinds of native growth. When you ride or walk around you can’t help but see the whole range of building.

HOWEVER, in a blog you can edit out the ones you don’t want to look at, so here’s is my edited version of Cutler City…a sweet neighborhood on the Siletz Bay.