painting

My next pop-up show: Atherton Arts Foundation September 15, 2017

| WildTomato

I’m honored to be one of eleven local artists exhibiting for one night only for the Atherton Arts Foundation Fall Reception on Friday, September 15, 2017, at Jennings Pavilion, Holbrook-Palmer Park, 150 Watkins Ave, Atherton, California.

In celebration of the show’s theme, “Through Artists’ Eyes: Land, Sea and Sky”, I will be showing a collection of my plein air watercolor sketches, all created on location in outdoor settings during my travels to Yosemite, Gettysburg, Vermont, Idaho, and out my front door in Half Moon Bay, California. I will also have copies of my Badass Women Portraits book, prints and cards available for purchase.

I hope you will join me!

Atherton Arts Foundation Fall Reception featuring 11 local artists

Yosemite Series: Day Eleven

| WildTomato

Day 11: Friday Finale, Milkweed Beetles, & Food Upcycling

Today’s forecasted high is 103 degrees. It is the last day of work for the volunteer crew. Two other times in the past, I’ve participated in the picnic table building, so I remember certain things quite well. The vice grips used by one person to hold the head of a stripped bolt, while a power drill is used by another to unscrew the nut from the other side. Moving wood planks and metal hardware into position, placing nuts and hitting them with the power drills. Recharging the drills. Painting the wood planks. Lifting, flipping, and carrying the finished tables.

This year I don’t do any of that. It’s Randy and the other eleven volunteers who pile into the van each morning and drive over to Lower Pines campground, near the amphitheater, to do this work. Continue reading →

Whales whales whales

| WildTomato

It’s been hard to ride my bike continuously along the coastal trail these past few days. Every few feet I am stopped in my tracks by a breaching whale or pair or three! I have begun to observe how the birds show us where the next whale will breach. And I love seeing pairs breach in unison!

Plus, have you ever heard a whale honk?

Whales remembered from Quarry Park view point

Being Still

| WildTomato

 

Farm Fatales visit 1

This was a place built by women.

She had come to meet a friend at her home on top of the hill. Her friend wasn’t home.

Maybe she’d remembered the wrong day. So she walked down the hill a bit, looking for a neighbor who might know.

Only to spot a woman banging on her water tank’s reverse thread coupling with a hammer yelling, “WHY? WHY? WHY?”.

It was, she says, a sister-in-need moment.

Time to help with the skills she had learned all those summers of her childhood on her uncle’s ranch in Oregon. She knew how to live in the weeds. Always carried a toolbox in her truck. Had one that very day, in fact, just another walk up the hill. She would end up fixing the toilet, too, and staying another seventeen years.

Continue reading →