Our little getaway in Santa Fe

I’m in a post-show phase here where I’m out of stuff to really talk about, although I manage to pop onto Facebook about once a day and quack, which is what I think one does when one isn’t tweeting. I hope I can get this out of my system but in the meantime I hope you’ll forgive the long pause. I’ve actually been writing non-stop but it’s not all that blog-worthy.

The view from a cliff dwelling, Bandelier National Monument

With your kind indulgence I’ll just post some nice pictures from a lovely few day get-away in New Mexico. I did some sketches around Santa Fe and Bandelier National Monument, including one watercolor from the mouth of a cave dwelling on the side of a cliff. That’s a beautiful place and worth a trip. And then there’s the most fabulous art store in town, Artisans, where I nearly fainted with joy just seeing the pastel selection. I came out of there with colors all over my face from trying to pinch myself.

Chili Roaster at Santa Fe Farmer's Market

Our sweet little Casita with its walled garden and hollyhocks, just like my grandparents in Taos used to grow.

We rented a little cottage on a side street near the Railyard and from there could walk everywhere. Canyon Road was a good morning in art for us, more or less. I looked at art while Ant Man drank tea and read a book. Dinner was simple and featured tequila.

Fall colors of New Mexico: chamisa in bloom

A hike on the Audubon trails featured flocks of evening grosbeaks and singing Townsend’s solitaires.

We also made the pilgrimage to High Country Gardens, a world-class nursery. Ant Man and I stocked up on salvias, lavenders, artemesia and asters; nice silver and purple additions to the Motmot garden color scheme back home. A Prius will hold a lot of plants and long drives are made better with all that scented oxygen coursing through one’s lungs. A vacation is a lovely thing no matter where you go.

Hope you’re all doing well, too.

Kids like it, too. Drawing the Motmot at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma

Now it all feels real. John Brandenburg of The Oklahoman reviews Drawing the Motmot.

I think he likes it.

Dr. Frank N Furter, drawn in lipstick at Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School. This is after he took off his lab coat. 2 minute pose.

I promise to post some opening-night pics from Drawing the Motmot, The Exhibit, but because I live so much in the moment I have to tell you about what I did last night- I went to a life-drawing event that’s been popping up around the country: Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. It’s a combination of life-drawing and cabaret, a refreshing and fun way to draw like a fiend and win prizes. I went to the OKC branch and had a blast. I did 15 drawings, including a little sketch on toilet paper (provided) and one with lipstick (provided), plus I won a t-shirt and tickets to the Girlie Show, another OKC art event.

Naughty bell-hop just before stripping down to her corset. 1 minute pose.

At Dr. Sketchy’s there’s a theme for each month’s session. Last night was Rocky Horror Picture Show and next time it’ll be James Bond. Can’t wait to see the costumes for that.

Dr. Frank N Furter tussles with his lovely assistant, now in a tutu. 5 minute pose.

The two models last night were professional actors and singers. Songs from Rocky Horror were performed. Costumes, changed between intermissions, were killer (and fun to draw) and featured a naughty bell-hop, naughty ballarina and naughty transvestite doctor. (One attendee got a little overly-enthused and very, very sadly stripped down to nothing but his gold lamé thong) Drawing commenced with 1 minute poses, progressing up to 20 minutes. Bursts of song and dance punctuated the sketching sessions.

A quiet moment on the leopard print couch. Models confide, or conspire? 20 minute pose.

We sure know how to have fun around here. And it’s wonderful practice, a good way to loosen up, sharpen your drawing skills, and get totally entertained in the bargain!

Exhausted models sprawl; 20 minute pose.

The Canopy Tower Lodge's top deck, a splendid spot for birders and birds. The big yellow ball? This was once a Canal Zone radar station back in the day. Now it's a really neat place to watch (and sketch) birds and a really nice place to stay, too.

I talk a lot about Barro Colorado Island, having been a frequent visitor over the past 15 years. But there’s a lot to explore in the canal zone. The architectural beauty of Gamboa and the biodiversity of nearby Pipeline Road, for instance. Antbirds are a favorite group of mine and on the mainland they are more diverse and abundant. An army ant swarm on BCI is exciting, but on Pipeline Road, it’s a serious birder’s fiesta.

Cashew nuts in a Gamboa garden.

Gamboa was originally built for the employees of the Canal in the early part of the last century. The houses are wooden and old-fashioned, tin-roofed and designed to stay cool in the tropical climate. Most are raised up on stilts for air-circulation beneath the floor-boards. They are high-ceilinged and tall-windowed and cooled by prevailing breezes and slowly spinning fans. Palms, avocado and mango trees shade Gamboa’s streets where parakeets swirl and fill the air with cries at dusk. Trogons and motmots hunt at the edge of the grassy playground in the middle of town as though it were a big treefall gap in the middle of the jungle. The jungle starts where the pavement ends.

"Canal Zone- Orange-chinned parakeets on mangos" Graphite and pastel on paper, 16" x 20". From field sketches made on a balcony in Gamboa.

During my last week on BCI last May I treated myself to a night’s stay at the famous Canopy Tower Lodge in Gamboa. It’s a charming experience for the nature traveler. A converted radar station perched at the top of a hill near the Chagres River, its rooms are arranged in rings lining the outer walls of the metal structure. My own room was small, tidy and tight like a ship’s cabin and I had the odd sensation 0f being aboard an ocean liner in a rolling green sea. My window opened to branches and sky. I fell asleep watching nightjars crisscross the airspace.

Early morning birding on the Canopy Tower Lodge's top deck, with strong coffee in china cups. A time and place to see the highest amount of activity, and the birds were good, too.

The uppermost floor was a reading room/dining hall; a big open space with couches and hammocks and small tables and chairs at every window for viewing toucans, honeycreepers and tamarins (tiny totally adorable monkeys). Flowering vines attracted purple-crowned fairy hummingbirds. Wine was served. Dinner was divine. The top deck, a roof platform, was reached by climbing up through a hatch from the dining hall. From here I could look directly into the treetops and watch the sun burn off the morning fog in ghostly streamers. Toucans croaked from the tips of snags, tamarins nursed their babies. Scopes were set up so far-away birds-scaled pigeons and blue cotingas- could be brought into closer view. Coffee was served.

Guides at the Canopy Tower Lodge. Carlos could find (and point out) anything, and seemed to knew every bird in the forest like an old friend.

The best thing about the Canopy Tower were their birding guides, all local naturalists. I tagged along on a few field trips, including one to the Summit Ponds, where we got three species of kingfishers and great looks at boatbilled herons and gray-necked woodrails. Guides Carlos Bethancourt and José Soto let me sketch through their scopes to my heart’s content. They even found me my lifer great potoo, and let me draw that, too. The pace was surprisingly relaxed, unusual since birders are often in a hurry to move on and see the next species. But this group was a hiking club from Portland, Oregon, and they were interested in everything from  ants on the ground to trees in the forest. The vibe was mellow. No one gnashed their teeth, tapped their foot or even looked at their watch. I got to bliss out drawing birds and couldn’t believe my luck.

Boat billed heron at the Summit Ponds, Gamboa. Carlos not only let me sketch through his scope but kindly taught me some digiscoping techniques.

Next: Birding the Pipeline Road.

Sketched at the Summit Ponds, Gamboa, and at the Canopy Tower Lodge.

The Canopy Tower Lodge, an old canal zone radar station converted into a delightful birder's haven. Great color scheme, isn't it?

Canopy Tower Lodge, interior view.

Trail marker on Barro Colorado Island. The Big Tree has its own sign. It's that big.

Thirty feet wide at the base

The Big Tree is coming to town. As part of Drawing the Motmot, An Artist’s View of Tropical Nature (please see the sidebar), it’s going up on the wall at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in all its gigantic glory and splendor.

Big action at SNOMNH- Frank Wick and Tom Luczycki of the Exhibits Department unroll the test strip.

The entire show goes up this week and next in the Brown Gallery at the Sam Noble, splitting the space with Darwin At The Museum, an exhibit in partnership with the University of Oklahoma’s awesome History of Science Collection. Both shows open together October 10.

Yours truly, for scale. All 5'2 3/4" of me.

I’ve spent hours drawing at the foot of The Big Tree on Panama’s Barro Colorado Island, shaded under the canopy of those bountiful branches. Toucans, parrots and monkeys frequent the treetops and trogons and motmots haunt the understory. It’s a tree for the ages. The label caption says it better:

There is something irresistible about a great tree. We wonder at its great age, imposing shape and humbling size. We measure ourselves against the huge trunk, posing with it for a human scale we can grasp.

With greatness, however, come burdens. Big tropical trees become platforms for epiphytes, some trees nearly disappearing under their festive air-plant gardens. Smothered by bromeliad clusters, cascades of orchids, and winding lianas up to a kilometer long, a tree rids itself of hangers-on by dropping limbs or shedding bark. Eventually the top-heavy tree crashes to the ground with half a forest in its branches.

Trees are the life-support of the tropical rainforest. They provide food, housing, shade, protection and perches. They create highways for ants and monkeys and pathways to the sky for sun-loving vines. They make the very oxygen we breathe. Barro Colorado Island, 2009

This Ceiba pentandra emerges from the rest of the canopy, crown covering nearly half an acre. Colossal fins support the trunk where I sit and draw. In the holy circle of the buttressed roots, I commune with the gentle, mighty gods of nature. Barro Colorado Island, 2005

Out in the BCI forest last May I fixed my camera to a tripod and took a series of “stitchable” photos of the Big Tree. Back at SNOMNH, the graphics department put the shots together and the results are spectacular. They printed out a test strip last week, inviting me over for the unveiling. The huge tree will stretch 17 feet from floor to ceiling and cover half of one wall of the gallery (we’re using just half the tree’s width to leave room for the artwork) Awesome. Totally awesome.

Capuchin monkeys rove and leap high overhead as I step through loops of lianas dropping from the branches of the canopy giant. I once sat in a Ceiba’s crown on a limb as broad as a horse’s back. Far below me a troupe of these monkeys moved through lower trees, unaware of our switch in altitude. Barro Colorado Island, 2007