Jean Glaser 
Animal
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Dog Camp was so much Fun!

8/14/2016

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We just got back yesterday from dog camp at Yellowstone Dog Sports in Red Lodge, Montana!  What a blast! We had tons of activities, lots of interesting people and dogs. 

There was Herding, Tracking, Nosework, Creative Movement, Dock Diving, Flyball, Lure Coursing, Treiball, Manners, Tricks. They had crafts, leash and collar making, and painting a portrait of your dog, ( I begged off that one)  early morning Bird Walks. CGC and CGCA instruction and certification. I could go on and on.... oops, I am.

Great lectures on Dog nutrition, and the Montana Locale that we were in. 

Great food, lots of fresh air the temperatures were good not too hot or too cold. 

I think a great time was had by all, Two leggeds and 4 leggeds!

This year we learned to take it a bit easier and not to try to do everything that was offered. We were up by 7AM if not earlier and in bed between 8:30 - 9:30PM beat but happy.

We had a free afternoon and wandered thru Red Lodge, first time in 3 years we've had the time. 





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Checking out new and interesting things.

7/15/2016

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I have come to the conclusion that I am getting way to staid in my way of thinking and doing things, I need to be more adventurous and branch out to see new things. So I have decided to take field trips on my own every week or so just to get some of the creative juices flowing.

Today I heard about a small bluegrass festival in Wallsburg, Utah,  about an hour from here.  On the Erickson Ranch.

Richard W. Erickson is a collector of all sorts of things machinery especially, and he has bunches of it built a small village around it and has a foundation to take care of it.

There are whole buildings of period collections, a church, a general store, garages, houses with everything you may have found in them in the 30's or 40's or 50's.

He especially loves machinery of all types, cars, train engines, motor cycles, of which there are over 100 and many of them have been restored and to a functioning condition. 


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What an amazing collection of all sorts of stuff. 

Some big, some small, an amazing reference on the past.

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He has a print shop with this typeface cabinet, I thought the slanted drawers were pretty unique.
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I was just in awe walking around looking at everything.

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Then as added icing on the cake there was really fun Blue Grass music too.
These guys were some jammers in between groups and they asked the audience for a name and someone shouted Mudsuckers and they were really good!

A fine day all around!

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Plants, that grow where you don't want them.

6/19/2016

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Disclaimer: this is an Oriental Poppy and it does grow where I want it.

You know it is so odd, I will never understand the serendipity of plants. I've been working away in the garden trying to make it look like something other than a weedy jungle, constantly amazed at what plants grow out of control no matter what you do to them, while the plants that you baby and nurture  fail to thrive or just die.

I have lived in this house for 30 years, amazing how time flies. I really didn't ever think I would be a gardener or like being one at all. When we were kids we always had to work in the yard prior to doing things we wanted. I just never really got into it. 

When I first moved in all there was, were weeds and sagebrush growing around the house. I had no idea where to even begin. I began without really knowing what to do or how.  I bought lots of plants at plant sales, started scoping out end of season sales in big box stores and nurseries. The lot is large  at least at the time for one person to take care of it seemed pretty large and didn't understand about amending soil or figuring out how before attempting to grow things. Over the years I managed to kill a fair amount of plants. However they do say if you haven't killed a type of plant in your yard 3 times give it another try. 

I kept plugging away, if something didn't work I'd try something else. One of my neighbors was a big gardener always out in the yard in the summer, many of the older plants came from her. She was a house cleaner by trade and about that time it occurred to me that yard work was like house work only outside.


During the time we owned a restaurant, I did almost nothing in the yard. If things lived it was because they were tough and could withstand the climate here. I had no irrigation system other than a hose and nozzle and in the winter the temperature was often in negative 20's. I remember visiting The Luther Burbank Botanical Garden in Santa Rosa Calif. one summer and talking to the head gardener. He asked where we lived and what zone we were in and when I said Park City and zone 1-3 he said "Oh dark side of the moon." 

It only got better from there.

I kept buying and plants and trying to make thing look good.  We got married in 2000 so of course I had to make the yard look presentable. The weeds had taken over everything. In hacking away at them I found plants that I thought were long dead,  either surrounded by weeds to the point that I couldn't see them or the deer had eaten them down to almost nothing.  I kept weeding and planting. 

10 years ago I took a master gardener course that was 2 years long done by the Utah State extension dept. Man the things that I found out that I hadn't known. This kind of course makes you aware of all the things that you didn't know and still don't. I have so many more questions about everything in the plant world.

I should have amended the soil prior to planting anything, oops big mistake. This is the main reason after 30 years I am still dealing with bad soil, lots of clay and very alkaline. 

But, I digress, I was supposed to be writing about plants and what grows really, really well and what doesn't.

Back in the old days around my house if someone had a plant that they said could be invasive or fast growing, I was all over it. I remember buying vetch from one of the gardening catalogs because it said it was a great ground cover and grew really fast. That was my first invasive and it does exactly what the catalog said it would grew really fast, I put it on our hill and it has covered a great deal of it. The only saving grace is it is really easy to pull out.

Next I saw a plant at a little nursery that had a beautiful perennial garden and asked about it and was told it was phlox but it could be invasive and would cover a lot ground, silly me I said "perfect"!  I bought two 2 gallon pots and put them in the perennial garden here. I ripped half of it out 5 or 6 years ago as it was taking over the garden. I am in the process of ripping it all out, as it is now about 10 feet square and choking out plants I really like.

Then there is the lambs ear, no one mentioned how fast it grows I had 4 of these that I set along the drive way they are everywhere now.  But if you find the native one while in the woods they make great toilet paper.

Then one year I thought I need help and my husband said go to the nursery and get a plan, sounds really wonderful, so I did. They planted 3 rabbit brush, they took over the yard and neighborhood . We completely took them out 3 years ago, cut them to the ground, "HA" we were wrong they refused to die. They are  once again taking over.

These four were the worst of my decisions.

I have several other plants that want to encroach everywhere but in the race for world domination they just aren't as bad as their cousins above. They are Lemon Cat Mint, (hey it smells really good). Fever few, (has really pretty little daisy like flowers), Pink Rugosa Rose, it was in the overwintered group at the nursery it was a great deal, right. 

I just don't understand the plants I would love to grow that I baby and fertilize and water and talk to most of them give up the ghost in the first season. 

They say weeds are plants that grow where you don't want them. Why are they so able to avoid adversity and thrive, be they weeds, bindweed, thistle, dyers woad, etc. or just plants that tend towards invasive.

I don't understand back to my books.





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They're Alive!

6/13/2016

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I would say that the majority of the paintings that I create are memorials to deceased animals.

I always hope that the paintings make people feel closer to the animals that they have lost.  Photos, are wonderful and with smart phones and all the varying gadgets we have loads and loads of photos.  This being said the paintings seem to create an interaction.
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There is no distinction between the images of the animals on my easel as to whether they are in this dimension  or the next, but they do seem ready to speak, or ask to be stroked.

"Princess"  9x12 Acrylic on Paper

I find it interesting that my two most recent paintings are both living and still able to nudge  their humans.
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" Missy"  14x11 Acrylic on Panel

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Death to Dust...

5/31/2016

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We decided to declare war on the dust in the house this Memorial Weekend. When one lives in a log house, you think of the charm, the uniqueness and the history of log homes in our country. The thing no one tells you about is how with many curved surfaces, they are wonderful magnets for dust and one of the many benefits that no one mentions is that they require dusting or vacuuming at least when you start to envision a play land of Disney proportions for Dust Bunnies. 
 
We removed all the art from the walls, and as luck would have it we got to rearrange most of it. Then we brought in ladders for the high ceilings and Craig was the wielder of the backpack vacuum and I then came by and wiped them down with a damp rag. We have one room left to do but we feel it was a huge accomplishment! 

​Now on to the yard!

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Life, a bit soggy but moving forward.

5/16/2016

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We got back from New Mexico and hit the ground running, at least that is what it feels like.

I have been busy with things around here, digging out wretched thistle, hoping it doesn't get a solid foothold in the yard.  We have been fortunate enough to get tons of rain this spring; living in the second  driest state in the nation, I try, never to complain about any moisture we receive. It is more reminiscent of a green jungle outside than a high desert.

But I digress, besides the rapidly over growing state  my yard is in, I have been walking the dogs, when it hasn't been too soggy outside and painting up a storm or two in the studio. Actually I finished two animal portraits and have begun sketches on a third this week. 




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"Hannah"

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​"Young Giraffe"

"Missy",  this is a trade I am working on with an artist I met in Chimayo, New Mexico. She is a tin artist, Sharon Candelario.

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This is the piece I am trading a portrait of Missy for. This is one of my preliminary sketches.

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Re-charging creative batteries.

5/6/2016

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 ​We went on a little trip to Santa Fe and Taos to relax, eat wonderful food and see lots of great art! Craig, gifted me the trip as a 60th Birthday Present! How did I get so lucky?

We flew into Albuquerque and drove to Santa Fe where we spent 3 nights at a lovely historic B&B " The Turquoise Bear", the property dates from the 1800's and was a creative gathering place. The rooms are all named for poets. We were in the Willa Cather room. http://www.turquoisebear.com/santa-fe-inn-history.html 

The landscape is  unique there. The  blue sky takes up a huge chunk of the vista and the landscape is dotted with Pinons and Junipers.

There is something about adobe architecture that is so comforting, maybe it is the roundness of this style but it's almost like coming home. The colors are rich and warm and very comforting. 





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We wandered around, always plenty to see. There is no shortage of galleries or art in Santa Fe. We visited  the Museum  of International Folk Art, and the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. Along the sidewalk in front of the Museum of New Mexico are plaques in the sidewalk of New Mexico Artists of all genre similar to Hollywood but no hand prints. We saw part of Canyon Road which is a beautiful street of galleries. ​

There was excellent food, including a  visit to  one of our favorite restaurants "Pasquals".  We  had an interesting salad at a modern Indian Restaurant "Raaga" it was a flash fried spinach salad!

From there we drove to Taos by way of the High Road which is lined with galleries and artist studios and amazing vistas. We stopped in Chimayo to see the Adobe Church built in the 1800's and visit some of the local galleries. We met a tin artist Sharon Candelario and saw her gallery we are doing a trade, one of her pieces for a painting of her dog.

Taos our second stop,  a charming town,  rural but definitely an art community. We stayed in another adobe from the 1800's, a B&B named "Adobe Pines"   http://www.adobepines.com/. There were two sweet pups for petting and 22 chickens, that supplied us with eggs. We got to experience a meditation maze, and peaceful atmosphere to relax and unwind.

​Now I feel all geared up to make art!
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Motivation or not.

4/13/2016

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In a bit of a funk where work is concerned lately. Forcing myself out of it, never an easy task. A series of small things that pushed me off my creative track for awhile, moving forward now, hopefully.

I have been working hard on a my latest portrait but ran into a bit of a road block, trying to find some images that would allow me to pull out  the essence of one of the dogs in it. New ideas are kicking around in my head and think I have a path forward.

I applied for a statewide art competition which I was not accepted into. This happened last year as well. Not a big deal, they get many many submissions, it will happen all in good time. 

I was in the process of completing paperwork for a show proposal in a nearby city and inadvertently downloaded a computer virus, arrrggghhh! Hate when this happens, luckily for me my techy husband was here and fixed it, with no damage done.  Proposal submitted but won't here back till sometime in June.

For some reason these all ganged up together and stole my motivation. I just don't feel the energy to do anything but am forcing myself to just move.  I need to just accomplish a few things that go smoothly and I will be back on track. I  am making lists and crossing things off with a flourish. Up, up and away!

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Wow, so that's what a Caucus is like!

3/22/2016

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I have never before attended a political caucus, I was just floored! I think every Democrat in Park City was there.  They held it in a middle school, the parking lot was jammed and the parking lot of the church next door to the school too. Thousands of people, amazing! I ended up parking about half a mile away on the road, which would have been no big deal but it was a white-out blizzard. Of course now that I am home it is clearing and the sun is trying to peek out, to set. Go figure. 

Most of the time in Utah there are so many Republicans that it doesn't matter if we vote Democrat or not, because we just don't count here.  I think Park City and a section of Salt Lake were the only ones to vote Democrat in the state and so the electoral votes always go to the Republicans. It is tough being disenfranchised. 

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Oldies but Goodies!

3/9/2016

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I was going thru some of my photos the other day and ran across some of the pieces from a show I had back in the 80's I was doing sculptural, mixed media, pieces at the time. It was a tongue in cheek show, titled "Ceremonial Non-Functional Women's Armor"  The premise was, that I believe the world would be a much less violent place with women running it. Thought I would post some pics, just for fun.
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Chastity Briefs to Keep White Knights Shining and Untarnished on Their Crusades. 

This was a really fun piece to do. I went into one of the large and at that time very Mormon Dept. Stores in Salt Lake City,  ZCMI, to the Men's Dept. looking for just the right briefs. I found these silver ones and a sales clerk came up and asked what size I was looking for he looked very confused when I told him the size wasn't important.
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Ribboned Shield.

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Gauntlets.
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Armor For Carmen Miranda.

This piece was originally done as a commission for Hal Linden and his wife. After completing it they refused it saying it was trite, contrived and heavy.  I kept it, telling myself I would never do another commission. Ironically most of my current pieces are commissions. I think this is one reason I want my clients involved in my art, for them, thru th
​e entire process.
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    I am a painter of animals. There has always been a connection for me and this is how I share it.

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