Sargent

Yesterday I went on a trip with the illustration department and had a chance to vi set the BYU art museum with Ben and some others. Dixon had told me that there was an original John Singer Sargent there and I was stoked. I asked Ben about it and he confirmed the good news, and was excited for me, as it would be the first time I had seen a Sargent original. When we got there is wasn't in it's usual place, and I was getting nervous. Ben asked the museum people and walked me to it-- and there it was. I was dumbfounded, I couldn't talk, I couldn't swallow, I couldn't breathe. It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life. It was a portrait on the old Mrs. Edward Goetz, painted three months prior to her death. Sargent captured her soul in paint and left it there for me to see. Such a beautiful woman, with life and death glinting in her aged eyes. Sargent has the most god given ability to imbued his paintings with life energy. It was beyond any likeness I could wish to capture, even past the "exactness" that I strive for. It was life. He painted that portrait so incredibly, that I could almost feel her breath on my face. It was without a doubt, one of the most spiritual experiences of my life, and has changed my art forever more. It is no more shallow and weak--at least I hope not. I am bent on creating life, not brushstrokes representative of something. Paint that immortalizes my subject for all time. I would like to thank Sargent for painting it for me, it was a personal lesson from the greatest portrait master of all time.


http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Mrs_Edward_Goetz.htm (not at all what is is like in real life.)

Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold

her hardest hue to hold

her early leaf's a flower

but only so an hour

so leaf subsides to leaf

so eden sank to grief

dawn goes down to day

nothing gold can stay

When I saw this mom standing in the garden I though of this poem. I had to memorize it in the fifth grade. Now when I think about it, it's really a depressing but uplifting poem that encompasess my artist's statement. Hold on to the small moments life gives you. Because in the end, that's all you have. "live in the moment, bloom where you're planted." Its all the same. the "Nothing gold can stay" part is sucky... but true I guess.

"My Lady love"--Richard Schmid

I just thought you would want to see some pictures of the horses, and especially Lady--the doll.

Dad has a grass fetish

Mom has started mowing the grass in between the trees where we normally reward our horses, dad has decided to create his own reward system that mom doesn't mow down. It started small, but like a virus it has spread and is still spreading. We in the corporate sense need to keep it wet, and weed it, but in the end I truly think it will be worth it-- Jo and my Lady baby will love it. So here are some pictures of our "Horse reward system".

In Loving Memory

Lucy died. Actually it is far more tragic and eery than that. A few days ago we smelled the foulest odor of a skunk. At which point we discovered Lucy was missing. We called for her, and went looking for her, but to no avail-- she was gone. We still haven't found her, and that is the most disturbing part, but our theory is the following: She got sprayed by the skunk, and her aged, arthritic body couldn't take any more. After years of being humiliated and chased by cats and I must confess a certain lack of love-- she crawled limply on her forelegs through the briars and thorns for 500 miles, until she could no longer hear our frantic calls and collapsed in a heap of fur and blood and died in her own stench.

Pretty sad.

OUR NEW BABY!!

Well, not quite, and mom thinks that is a fortunate thing. We tended Dr. Tyler's new dog for the week while he and his wife jumpped ship and went to Chicago. She was an inside dog until mom was fed up with her, and then became condemmed to outdoors---at which point she howeled and barked until we were all nuts. Over all though, it wasn't bad... I like dogs. P.S. She's not as small as the pictures make her seem, she is a beagle coonhound cross, and pretty large.

I'm The Gardener Here... And I like it.

These are some pictures that I took the same day to give Jami and you other people a feeling of being with us.. This is mom in her garden, harvesting her tomatoes, so cute. And the pumpkin is only one of the giants that will be used for our now "traditional" family Halloween party. Sorry folks, I already dibbed this one. :)

A fun saturday work project

Many of you are under the impression that this is only my blog, but really it's the families blog--I just happen to be the only one that makes posts. So I just wanted to post on the completely ordinary-ness of Wilson Saturdays. We had a fun day... doing homework, going to young women's meetings, and other ordinary things like a family work project and ending the day with an episode of Gilligan's Island. Our work project this Saturday consisted of finally redoing the mound. After it having had several revisions we settled on re-rocking it, but this time--no lava rock. We used a rock regional to cedar city and cut down the mound considerably so that they wouldn't roll off onto the lawn. In the end I think it looks nice, and mom loves it which is the most important part. She had me design the arrangement of rocks and stump and stuff so it would be compositionally aesthetic. The mound is still off balance, but without doing something drastic, it is far improved.

FINALLY, a camera cord.

No, we haven't found the camera cord but Jeremy is a fascinating person who took initiative to make one for us, so from here on out, more pictures! :)