Brushes and Books A watercolor a week and a bonus book review from Catharine Woods

It’s finally here! Boulder’s Open Studios Tour begins Friday evening with a reception at the Boulder Public Library from 6-8 pm. Artists’ studios will be open on October 6, 7, 13 and 14 from noon until 6 pm. I hope you will join me in my studio at 5236 Gallatin Place, Boulder, CO 80303. (Studio #114 on the Open Studios map.) I will have many original watercolors available for sale, including a good selection of smaller, more affordable paintings. Cook books, giclée prints, and cards will be available and I will also have a 2013 calendar available for purchase.. Please tell your friends to visit, too!

I will be doing painting demonstrations from 2-3 on Saturday, Oct. 7 and Saturday, Oct. 13.

Perhaps this will be your first time to visit studios during the Open Studios tour. If so, here’s how it works. Visit the exhibit at the library (there’s one piece from each participating artist) or purchase the Open Studios map (visit the Open Studios website at http://www.openstudios.org/ to see where you can buy it), and choose some artists that you would like to visit. Then look for the yellow Open Studios signs to help you locate the studios, and walk right in! There’s no cost (unless you purchase the map), and no obligation to buy anything, although the artists hope that you will fall in love with something and want to buy it!

I hope to see you soon—

Over the almost seven years since Hurricane Katrina came ashore, I’ve read quite a few books about the experience. Some have been non-fiction; some have explored the event through fiction. (Non-fiction: The Great Deluge by Douglas Brinkley; Nine Lives by Dan Baum; Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza. Fiction: City of Refuge by Tom Piazza; Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran; The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke.) All have added to my understanding of the event and of New Orleans, as did the experience of spending a week in New Orleans helping with rebuilding efforts. I’ve recently added two more titles to this list: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (non-fiction) and Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward (fiction).

Salvage the Bones, a National Book Award winner, is the only book I’ve read about Katrina set outside of New Orleans. It takes place in rural Mississippi, and begins twelve days before Katrina makes landfall. The protagonist, Esch, is fifteen, motherless, poor, pregnant, has an alcoholic father, and several brothers, including one who raises pit bulls for dog fights. (She’s also fascinated by Greek mythology.) Could things get any worse? Why, yes, yes it could. A major hurricane could take direct aim at her home. I can’t say that I enjoyed reading this book–in fact, I found it quite difficult to read, but I couldn’t put it down. It was difficult to read because of the dog fights and several other vividly described gory incidents; however, the writing and the plot were compelling.

In addition to the violence and gore in this book, I felt that there was a disconnect between the language used in direct dialog (non-standard grammar and dialect) by Esch and her internal narrative, which was grammatically correct, literary, and filled with metaphor. I think our spoken words and the words in our heads are much more similar than this.

Zeitoun, set in New Orleans, was also a disturbing book. It recounts the story of Zeitoun, a Syrian American, who was living in New Orleans with his wife and children and owned a painting and contracting business as well as some rental properties. He sent his family to Baton Rouge, but he stayed in New Orleans to keep an eye on their property and business. After the storm, he paddled around the area in his canoe, helping to rescue people and feeding dogs that had been left behind. And then…he’s arrested for something he didn’t do and is imprisoned for weeks and isn’t allowed to contact anyone. His family begins to believe that he is dead. Things continue to go wrong, with miscommunication and bureaucratic foul-ups compounded by racism, abuse of power, and frightened people who didn’t know what they were doing. This book was published in 2009, and things continue to go wrong for this family. Zeitoun was charged earlier this year in a domestic violence incident.

These are both hard books to read, but necessary. No one book can give a complete picture of the impact of Katrina–we need to hear many voices and many perspectives to record this devastating event.

A window at the Murten, Switzerland, police station, in an old castle.

Brushes: I seem to be getting worse, rather than better, at updating this blog.  I really don’t have a good excuse, just that life has been busy.  We had a wedding in the family this summer, then came Open Studios, and I’ve just returned from a trip to Switzerland to visit my daughter, who is there for a study abroad experience.  The sketch I’ve included is from my travel journal from the trip to Switzerland–I collected lots of new reference material and hope to start some landscape paintings soon.

Books: While traveling, I read Room, by Emma Donoghue. I’m struggling with how I should write about this book.  It has received a great deal of attention lately, as it was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but didn’t win. As a former librarian, my impulse is to give you just enough information about the plot, characters, and setting to whet your appetite and make you want to read this book.  However, this is a book that, ideally, should be wrapped in a plain cover and handed directly to a reader.  The reader should be told, “Read this, and then let’s talk about it.”  The less you know about this book when you begin to read, the  stronger the impact it will have on you.  Because I think it will probably appear on many  “Best of 2010” lists, the opportunity to read it without having heard too much about it is shrinking fast.   So I’ll just say this:  Room is about the bond between parent and child, reality, and isolation, and it will stay with you long after you read it.  There are sections so gripping that you will not want to put it down, and sections that are so intense that you MUST put it down.  Given the setting and the  situation, it could have been sensationalistic, but it isn’t.  Do try to read it before someone else tells you too much.