Open Studios: Botetourt, Part I

Botetourt County held its first "Open Studios" event over the Halloween weekend. Sixteen artists opened up their studios and homes to the public so that art lovers could get a glimpse of their workspace and purchase their wares.

My husband and I were able to take in a few of the artists' studios on Sunday. I feel sure if you're interested in the artwork, these artists would love to sell you something.

Ed Bordett is a Fincastle artist. The following information is an updated revision of an article I wrote about him for The Fincastle Herald in 2005.

Ed Bordett, a folksy Fincastle town councilman, has his studio in the back of his own gallery, Art Images.

Ed Bordett's artwork.

His shop on Main Street was the town’s first art gallery, if you don’t count woodworking shops and other non-painting creative endeavors scattered about the area. He took over an old garage about ten years ago, giving him lots of space in which to paint and collect antiques and curiosities, which he is fond of doing.

Bordett’s been a member of the Fincastle community for about 25 years. He paints scenes from the locality and from his native New York.

Fincastle sculpturer Joyce Hilliou says Fincastle is lucky to have artists of Bordett’s caliber in the area. “Ed’s work is great,” she says. “I think Ed is indisputably a master of serigraph paintings.”
Serigraph paintings are original works of art that are similar yet unique. They are created with a silk-screen process that separates colors and transfers them onto a screen. When the screen contacts paper, the color is forced through a stencil. The process is repeated up to 40 times for color.

That’s just one of the things Bordett does. He also creates oil paintings, etchings, monotypes, and some commercial artwork. He has won many awards and honors for his work and businesses commission paintings from him.

My husband really liked Ed Bordett's version of a cow.

He has always been an artist. Bordett attended the National Academy of Fine Arts in New York City and graduated from the Ringling School of Art. He’s been in the area since 1975; he moved to Fincastle in the mid-1980s. He’s been on town council since 1997. He’s chaired the Fincastle Festival’s art show, served on the board of Alleghany Highlands Art Center, has been a member of the grant review board for the Virginia Commission for the Arts, and co-president of Market Gallery & Studios cooperative in Roanoke.

He takes his artwork on the road 12-15 times a year, showing at juried shows on the east coast. He’s also husband to wife Becky and father of two.

His artwork focuses on color and light, what he calls a visual mix of the activity around him. He attempts to convey his emotions and feelings toward his subject when he paints.

Ed Bordett's image of Fincastle at Christmas.

Fincastle, he says, doesn’t have the same high energy as New York, but he sees a lot of similar geometric shapes and patterns. This comes through in his use of light across the surface of his art.

He paints from photos and sketches, depending on the subject and the way the subject matter caught his fancy. He sometimes creates small studies of a subject before moving onto a larger painting.

He works among a jumble of antiques, with the cracks in the walls of the old building as a backdrop and a partially-played chess game near an old sofa. The room is littered with easels, large and small, and half-finished canvases. He doesn’t keep regular hours, though that could change if the town begins to have a cultural climate change that indicates an interest in local arts.

"Buying isn’t the only thing,” he says of the arts and their work. He wants folks to look, too, and contemplate the artist’s vision.

That vision has sustained him well for a very long time, and he has no plans to give it up.

“I’ve just always been lucky enough to pursue what I want to do,” Bordett says as he cradles an ancient yet beautifully painted box he picked up at auction. “I’m extremely fortunate.”

Another Ed Bordett view of Fincastle at Christmas.

New Footwear

My foot had been bothering me for quite some time, and yesterday I went to the podiatrist about it.

She gave me new footwear for my right foot:

Ain't it lovely?

Definitely the next thing in designer wear.

The verdict was that an arthritic big toe forced my second toe to move into major support mode. This resulted in a tiny little stress fracture and something called metatarsalgia.

I'll be in the funny little shoe for a few weeks.

If I'm out and you see me in sneakers and not this thing, don't be surprised. I am not too keen on wearing it outside of the house. I guess it will depend on how much walking I have to do wherever I am going.

Booo!

Saturday Light

The snow began to fall late yesterday. An early snow, for our area. The flakes were big, fat, and wet, falling quickly but melting right away.

I cannot recall a snow before Halloween.

The morning dawned wet and gray. Fog hid the Blue Ridge Mountains from view.

This little one turned up in the front yard and decided to stay awhile. I went out on the front porch and stood not 20 feet away. We had a long conversation, Miss Deer and I.

The moment I had been waiting for arrived, and the sun shone brilliantly off the yellow leaves.

The fog remained and I still could not see the mountains.

Is there anything better than sunshine slipping through the clouds on a brisk October morning?

Li'l Miss Deer hung around a good while as I stood and snapped pictures.

Finally the fog lifted. Snow on the mountain two days before Halloween!

Is there any better sign that we are part of this world than our ability to see it? All we need do is open our eyes and look around.

I find great solace in this picture. For me it is a blend of man and nature, and an example that if we try we can make it all work together.

I hope you find your light on this intriguing day.

Books: Promise Me

Promise Me
By Richard Paul Evans
Copyright 2010
Audiobook

This is the weirdest Richard Paul Evans book I have read, and I have read at least five, maybe six, of his books. It is safe to say that I like the writer.

In Promise Me, Beth is the mother of Charlotte, a six-year old who is not feeling well. Her husband has an affair and then dies from pancreatic cancer. A man comes into her life, helps her out, and turns out to be someone completely unexpected.

If this book had been sent to a publisher by a first-time author, I feel sure it would have been rejected hands down. Fortunately for Evans, he's a best-selling author and probably at that point in his career where a boo-boo every now and then isn't going to wreck his life.

The book is told in a diary format, which Evans uses to better effect in The Walk. The Walk is the first of a trilogy, and I have read both parts, with the second being Miles to Go. I confess after reading Promise Me, I have some concerns about how The Walk trilogy ends. I will try not to be too upset if aliens suddenly beam up the protagonist when that third book comes out.

Anyway, the diary format works well, and our heroine, Beth, is a strong character with a good voice. However, the book goes all fantasy/sci-fi on the reader. This would be fine if you knew it was a fantasy or sci-fi book when you pick it up, but your first real hint of this is more than halfway through the book. The only inkling that there might be a curve ball comes early, but it's such a small hint that any reader who misses it can be forgiven for dismissing it.

Evans does very well with these tear-jerking books that bring up issues like infidelity, death of a loved one, illness, moving on with life, etc., etc., but I don't think bringing in a time traveler is really the way to indicate resolution. As it is, this book has nearly incestuous undertones and I can see why some people call it creepy on the Amazon reviews.

The story is science fiction masquerading as mainstream fiction, and it doesn't do either very well. It is understandable that readers would be upset with this book.

To be fair I can see that he has been heading in this direction. Some of his works have a supernatural or super-spiritual quality to them but they were never completely unbelievable. People have strange things happen all the time and he never slipped beyond the boundaries of disbelief - until this book. Though I confess The Gift, which was published in 2007, was a little far out there. It still didn't push the limits like Promise Me.

His editor really should have made him rewrite the thing from the middle to the end.

Thursday Thirteen

I'm the type of person who . . .

1. . . . writes down what she wants to say before she says it.

2. . . . reads everything she sees, even the labels on food, books she doesn't particularly care for, and articles that state the opinions of "the other side," whatever that may be.



My nails don't look quite this bad today.

3. . . . bites her nails when she is bored, tired, or frustrated (and one of my most-viewed pages on my blog is this one, with pictures of my chewed-up nails, though my nails don't look that bad now).


4. . . . loves to live in the country, where the air is sweeter and the sounds are clearer.


5. . . . thinks Halloween is the best holiday ever, because free candy is definitely worth putting on a costume and ringing a bell for.



6. . . . needs to be hugged a lot, and thinks that if more people hugged and said, "I like you," the world would be a much better place.

7. . . .  believes in a safety net, because most people do work hard and want to work, but sometimes bad stuff happens and it's nobody's fault.

8. . . . makes people laugh without actually meaning to by offering wry, witty running commentary on the many facets of life (too bad it doesn't come through in my writing very often).

9. . . .  enjoys her friends and family and is often puzzled as to their actions and reactions about this and that and the other things.

Hollins University, a bastion
of the liberal arts.

10. . . . enjoys history, architecture, geology, psychology, and literature; you know, the liberal arts, those things about half the country believe have no value.


11. . . . wears conservative, nice Alfred Dunner clothing when she really wants to wear cottony bohemian tie-dye and look like this; I need to lose a lot more weight first.

Two of my clocks.

12. . . . collects postcards, Dept. 56 village houses, and clocks.

13. . . . drives too fast, walks too slow, listens well, and loves ferociously.



Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 214th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Oh Deer! Up Close & Personal

Sometimes I am amazed at what I see out the front door! Check out the close-ups in this video. Have you ever felt so close to a deer?

Our House is a Very Fine House

I don't often post exterior images of our house, mostly because there isn't a very good place to take a decent photo of it. The front yard slopes down a lot and that makes it difficult to take a pretty picture.

However, my house is in the picture. It is not the white one. It is way in the distance. It is directly under the white cloud over the mountain, not quite a third of the way from the left.

Maybe this is better? See, there it is! Our little ranch, hidden on the hill.

And this would be the best I can do from the other side of the farm. The house is hardly visible from the road; most people don't know it is there. We built it ourselves, with our own two hands in 1987.

On a Clear Day

I think it is impossible to take a bad photo on a day like today.

The pollen count is less than 1.

The sky is a pale, lovely blue.

The trees wear their finest colors.

So I went up to the highest point on the farm, and shot a few pictures. I took these with my Canon.

This is the view from the backside of the farm, and it is not one many people get to see. There is only one spot on the place with this scenery; generally it is all wooded and so the forest is all we see. But in one place there is a little opening, and this is the view. The house is as huge as it looks: it belongs to some specialist doctor.



This is the backside of my mother-in-law's house. She has a lovely view of those mountains, doesn't she?

Just a shot of pretty trees.

These homes are on the farm, too, but they are not family. The home on the far left is my husband's old home place; it is where he was raised until my in-laws built the current house. The home on the right was built around 2005; some of the farmland had to be sold after Grandma passed away to satisfy the contents of her will.

The chicken coops, outbuildings, and the first pond. The chicken coops no longer hold chickens; they hold hay. Grandma's house is beside the pond in the midst of those trees. The house was built about 1816.

Godwin Cemetery, Fincastle, Autumn 2011

The top of the hill at Godwin Cemetery, which is in Fincastle near the rear of the town, is one of my favorite spots to take photos. This morning I ventured out to the library and then ran up the hill. It was a chilly but lovely day, with a crisp, clear sky and the remnants of the change of leaves still speckling the mountains.

I used a filter on a few of these photos.

The steeple belongs to the Fincastle Presbyterian Church.

This is pretty much my eternal view, as we've spots in the Firebaugh section awaiting us. Of course my perspective will probably be a little lower. Six feet under instead of five feet above.

Fincastle Methodist Church in the foreground and the Botetourt County Courthouse in the rear. The children's playground equipment, while not new, is an interesting juxtaposition to the tombstones, don't you think?

I love this shot. You can see Fincastle Methodist Church, the Botetourt County Courthouse, and the Fincastle Presbyterian Church.

Fincastle Presbyterian Church. This is one of my favorite scenes, the church steeple with the mountain behind.

The county courthouse on the right and the Presbyterian Church on the left.

The steeples, from left, are the Fincastle Methodist Church, then St. Mark's Episcopal Church, and then the Botetourt County Courthouse in the far right. There's also a cell tower on the left on top of the hill. I can remember when that wasn't there.

The small steeple in the middle of this picture belongs to the old Fincastle Baptist Church building. It is now a private home.

Autumn Colors Have Arrived

Autumn's here! All dressed up and ready for the party!

Thursday Thirteen

Apparently I am brain dead, so today these are things that start with the letter "B."

1. Bitch. This word can be a noun or a verb. It is frequently used as a pejorative word to describe women and men who are perceived as acting as women. It is also the name of a female dog and when used as a verb, it is the act of complaining. The fact that this is the first word that came to my mind for the letter B is somewhat troubling.

2. Bastard. This would be the male version of the above word, used as a noun to describe an illegitimate child and as a verb to describe a mean, despicable person, usually a man. I am also troubled that this is the second word that came to mind this morning. Perhaps my day is starting out rough?

3. B-Complex Vitamin. This is a vitamin that encompasses many of the category of vitamins known as "B" vitamins. "B" vitamins are important in cell metabolism. They are good for healthy skin and hair and help the immune system and the nervous system. They are also supposed to help ward off pancreatic cancer. The B vitamins are Vitamin B1 (thiamine), Vitamin B2 (riboflavin), Vitamin B3 (niacin or niacinamide), Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid), Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine, pyridoxal, or pyridoxamine, or pyridoxine hydrochloride), Vitamin B7 (biotin), Vitamin B9 (folic acid), and Vitamin B12 (various cobalamins; commonly cyanocobalamin in vitamin supplements).

4. Baggins. Bilbo and Frodo Baggins are the two most famous hobbits from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Bilbo found the ring in The Hobbit (soon to be a major motion picture) and Frodo carried the ring to Mount Doom to destroy it in Lord of the Rings.

5. Bacchanalia. This is a wild gathering or party that involves a lot of drinking and promiscuity. In ancient Greece, wild and crazy boys and girls held such events to honor the god Bacchus (Dionysus). I think I attended a few of these when I was in high school, but my life has been pretty quiet since then.

6. Bag lady. These are those sad looking homeless women who carry their belongings in shopping carts or bags. A 2006 study showed that almost half of all women fear ending up as a bag lady. Ninety percent of women in that study felt financially insecure. What does this say about our society?

7. Barn. This is a place where farmers put things and where animals might live. A barn can hold machinery, hay, cows, chickens, horses, etc., and sometimes people if they have nowhere else to go. Some are red, some are white, some burn down in the dark of night.

8. Bear. Bears are great big carnivorous mammals that we sometimes see on the farm. A bear can also be the state of the stock market (a pessimistic market), something you have or hold, as in to bear a scar or to bear arms, or to hold something up, as in to bear weight, among other things. The bear on the left was in our alfalfa field in 2009.

9. Bewitch. When you bewitch someone, you put a spell or a hex on them, or maybe you magnetize them with your charm. In the late 1960s and early 70s there was a show on called Bewitched that starred Elizabeth Montgomery. She crinkled her nose to cast a spell.



10. Bird. Our warm-blooded feathered friends come in many shapes and sizes. Some can't even fly while others zip around the big blue sky like little mosquitoes. We have many birds around our house, including finches, blue jays, cardinals, robins, and wild turkeys. The picture on the right was shot with a trail camera.

11. Black Death. This was the name given to a period of time in the Middle Ages during which a lot of people died from bubonic plague in Europe. It killed somewhere between 30 and 60 percent of the population. It was thought to have originated in China and then traveled from there along the Silk Road. It took Europe 150 years to recover from this one event.

12. Bleak. How you feel when you have little hope, or maybe how you look if you've been sick for a while. It also is a description for a barren place with little shelter.

13. Bones. Those things that hold up your skin. It is also a color and used as a verb it means to take the bones from, as in boning a fish. Walking bones are called skeletons and you see them a lot around this time as we gear up for Halloween. In Appalachia, you can also play the bones, which is an interesting thing to see and hear.


Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here. I've been playing for a while and this is my 213th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Cows

Turkeys!

Turkeys from the trail camera. I enlarged the last shot just to get a better look. I think these are all turkey hens as they do not have a beard.

On the Cusp of Change

The peak time for tree color here on the farm will probably be the middle of this week. It's already peaking on the mountains.

Lovely yellows on the trees.

A little bit of red!

A blushing crimson.

A squirrel on the fence!

Birds of a feather.