Blog
July 22nd, 2009
Maybe I’m still not over the shock of moving from Zone Two to Zone Eight, but the sheer variety of fresh produce ’round these parts never ceases to amaze me. Now, if I can barely contain my excitement over what I see at the farmer’s market every week, you can imagine the heart attack I had when the Tailor and I discovered Tacoma’s very own Blueberry Park.
That’s right: a public park. Filled to the brim with blueberry bushes. Four thousand of them. Once upon a time this was a working blueberry farm—after the farm folded or moved on, the land sat vacant and overgrown for years. Eventually Metro Parks took over the land, and decided to free the sixty-year-old bushes from the bracken.
It took years of volunteer labor and many passes by a goat herd to hack back (or eat, depending on one’s preference) the scotch broom and blackberry vines. Now, though, the jungle is mostly kept at bay, and the result is an incredible bounty of pesticide-free berries. The best part? The pickin’ is free. Yes—all the fresh blueberries you, or I, or anyone and their maiden aunt can possibly pick, as many times as we like, for free. And with 4,000 bushes, there’s more than enough to go around. Talk about your tax dollars at work.
The Tailor and I woke up before the sun today for our third berry-picking session. Our two previous trips to Blueberry Park didn’t yield much, as we were a little early for blueberry season. Today, though, an impressive crop was ready to take home, so with metal pails in hand, we dove right in.
The sound of those first berries hitting the bottom of my pail—kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk—reminded me of one of my favorite children’s books of all time.
Since we had big plans for these berries, we made sure to arrive with a full stomach.
Well, alright, I did eat a few (even with my dirty hands).
This is the yield of three hours’ work.
That’s a two-gallon bucket, mind you. We don’t mess around!
Our ultimate goal? The same as Sal’s mum: winter preserves. After all, if you’re a seasonal foodie, the only way to indulge a January craving for berries is to pop open one of your home-canned mason jars.
This sparkling jam, yielded by just four quarts of berries, is only the beginning.
Our house is filled with the scent of baking and the excitement of so many possibilities—pies, pancakes, syrup, glazes, dried berries. What would you do with all the berries you can pick?
Grab a pail, head to south Tacoma, and find out.
July 13th, 2009
First, invite your family down for the day. Squeeze out some fresh lemonade;
and fry up a free-range chicken.
Then mix up some cream, sugar, and fresh berries (plus just a pinch of that lemon juice to bring out the flavor);
pack ice and salt around it;
and start crankin’.
Let everyone pitch in—the longer you churn, the harder it’ll get.
Finally, when even teamwork won’t turn that handle, you’re ready.
And hey, presto—
summer in a bowl.
If all that ice cream gives you a chill, just head for the hot shop;
gather around the fire;
and bask in the perfect day you made.
July 6th, 2009
In my (so far) limited experience, Washingtonians tend to be outdoor types—and with good reason. With so much beauty at our fingertips, it’s no wonder that with the first hint of a sunny day, we’re out in force. Add to that the near-clockwork arrival of the dry season by Independence Day, and the fact that huge swaths of the mountains are inaccessible for nine months out of the year—well, you can see where I’m going with this. Since the Fourth of July was kind enough to fall on a Saturday this year, the cities emptied and thousands headed Outward. And this year, though we’re normally Off-Season, Off-the-Beaten-Path types, the Tailor and I were no exception. Like zombies we staggered outdoors to pack our tiny Subaru sedan—must … go … camping!
We knew it was probably folly, but we had a goal in mind: find a beautiful, mountainous campsite away from the teeming hordes. We knew Mount Rainier would be out of the question, as were the Olympic Peninsula, Mount St. Helens, or any other popular tourist destinations—but even though we had a head start by leaving on Thursday afternoon, our hope faded as we saw the crush of fellow vacationers on the freeway. “Camper … camper … RV … canoe … RV … kayaks … cyclists … camper,” the Tailor droned, counting cars, “this was a dumb idea.” Yet as our route took us on smaller and smaller roads, the number of fellow travelers dwindled almost to none. It began to seem like our instincts were right after all.
Our destination? The Morrison Creek Campground, located on the southern slope of Mount Adams, Rainier’s slightly-smaller, lesser-known brother.
While we were nervous of the possibility of any volcano attracting busloads of holiday tourists, our choice had a couple of points in our favor. For one thing, one can’t reserve a campsite in a national forest; all sites are taken on a first-come, first-served basis. For another, Morrison Creek is in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.
The only way to get there from the north is to use the system of Forest Service roads that wind through the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest. The paved sections are breathtakingly beautiful and super fun to drive (especially with a stick shift; I felt like I was filming a car commercial). The “unimproved” stretches, on the other hand, range from challenging to terrifying. Mindful of the consequences of puncturing an oil pan or snapping an axle on a holiday weekend in one of the most remote pockets of the state, I took my sweet time picking my way around the detritus of recent rock slides and dodging monstrous potholes.
When we pitched our tent just as the last light faded, however, we knew that it was absolutely worth the trip. Our campsite was in a lovely, secluded spot, adjacent to the Creek, just below the last traces of mountain snow, and surrounded by pockets of blooming beargrass. And to our immense surprise, we had Adams almost entirely to ourselves, for the whole weekend—funny, considering that the next campground, three miles up the road, was crawling with mountain climbers.
I was hoping our travels would afford us at least one view of Rainier in the distance—that way I’d have another sketch to add to my store of potential artist book imagery. FS Route 23, however, doesn’t afford such a vista, and any potential viewpoint reached by hiking trail was well out of range of our abilities. A two-mile hike from our tent did give us a spectacular, alpine-meadow view of Adams, though—and I realized that for my research purposes, I could use the peak as a sort of stunt double.
From certain angles, Adams is remarkably similar to Rainier (and people often mistake one for the another when viewed from a distance). All the more reason to use my time there for drawing. I was surprised to see, however, how drastically Adams’ appearance changed, depending on the vantage point. This is the view from Bird Lake, on Yakama Nation land, just a couple of miles (as the crow flies) east of Morrison Creek:
And though there was nowhere to sit to capture it in my sketchbook, a gap in the trees gave me the chance to glimpse another stand-in to the south: Mount Hood.
What an incredible weekend. As you can probably guess, Adams is on the short list for Best Camping Spots Ever, and I’m sure we’ll end up returning again and again. Next time, though, it might behoove us to reconsider our mode of transportation; it’s doable in a compact car (just barely), but I think I’d rather rent a pickup truck—or a mountain goat.
June 19th, 2009
What with a string of out-of-town visitors and deadlines to distract us, the Tailor and I let our first anniversary slide by without much fanfare. This week, however, we remembered the nostalgic, circa-early-1980s, licensed-character Wilton cake pans we borrowed from his parents last winter, and decided a belated, totally un-wedding-like anniversary cake was in order. (Sane people just go out for a nice dinner.)
When I was a kid I loved the weird, hairy-looking frosting on those Cookie Monster and Pac Man cakes, but I don’t remember actually having one at any of my birthdays (I usually requested pumpkin pie, still my favorite). So this was my chance to both relive and rewrite my childhood—and to try my hand at creating that bizarre, strangely satisfying frosting texture.
The Tailor found a white cake recipe in our favorite cook book (we have three copies!), and we modified an icing recipe to include only butter, sugar, vanilla and cream (about the only thing you’ll ever see me using shortening for is cleaning letterpress equipment). Then I noticed that the cake mold left room to write a message in icing—and my eyes strayed to my decorating tip, which was shaped curiously like a calligraphy pen nib. So I couldn’t resist attempting a little edible typography. The cake wasn’t large enough to write “Happy Anniversary” with any typographic flair—and that’s not my style anyway. So I went with something a little more down-to-earth, and, well, appropriate to the medium:
(We did. Most joyfully. My edible kerning needs some work, though…)
June 11th, 2009
Today we dished out our first strawberries and cream of the season—cause for major celebration at our house. Now, lest you get the idea that I’m either entirely too easily amused, or have never heard of a supermarket, let me explain. The Tailor and I do our best to eat locally, organically, and seasonally—and we’re lucky to live in a part of the world with lots of like-minded people who do the same. I think, however, that we tend to fall in the, uh, hardcore variety of seasonal foodies. I’m sure this topic will crop up again in the future, so I’ll save you the spiel. For now, let’s just say that if Mount Rainier happened to go ka-blooey some winter, cutting T-Town off from any supply routes into the city, we could live on our stored food for a good three or four months before we started beadily eyeing the squirrel population. Sure, it’s probably a little nutty, but what it boils down to is the fact that we only eat asparagus in the few short weeks every year that it’s available locally—and we don’t buy any produce between November and April. So for me that first beautiful mouthful of fresh, perfect, tiny strawberries is better than any birthday present (though I admit to occasionally breaking down and impulse-buying California berries two months early when my will is weak).
All of this is to say that living seasonally certainly teaches one to learn the cycles of the year (so as not to miss the asparagus, you know), and to appreciate the best parts of every season, however brief they may be. So while I was utterly failing to save the rest of the berries for later, I reflected on how thankful I am for the lovely, prolonged spring we enjoy ’round these parts (in the Great White North, it passes in a pink flash). And then I remembered that I owe you some tulip photos.
(See how my brain works? I’m a walking non-sequitur.)
Long before we moved here, I’d heard stories of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, of the magic of standing in a sweeping vista of rainbow blooms, seeming to end only where the Cascades began.
The stories left out one important point, however: the light. As soon as the sun cleared the clouds, every flower burst into a neon glow, filling the valley with unreal color.
You know, for a place that claims to be grey so much of the time, my digital color correcting skills are getting awfully rusty.
May 19th, 2009
Item number 4,732 from the Bucket List:
Hike to the very tippity-tip of Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point of the continental United States.
Stand leaning into the wind and rain, back to the trees, discovering how sea stars and cormorants spend their Mondays.
Gaze out to open sea with the spray crashing in your ears, erosion and subduction shaping the world beneath your very feet.
And marvel at all three thousand land-mass miles extending behind you.
Check.
April 18th, 2009
My work tends to deal heavily in flowery typography and ornamental Victorian doodads, so this book has become a constant companion. It’s a reprint of an 1897 design primer, and displays a series of increasingly abstracted renderings of various flora, from realistic illustration to graphic pattern. Most of the patterns in the book aren’t really my cup of tea, but they get the wheels turning and make me think in terms of filtering my sketches and observations into graphic elements. And since I’m in need of some new reference material, both for upcoming letterpress projects and for the new artist book I’m working on (more on that another time), I thought I’d see what spring in the Northwest had to offer. So on Thursday my friend Nicole and I took a little field trip to the Washington Park Arboretum in Seattle and strolled along Azalea Way, cameras in hand.
And boy howdy, those cherry trees weren’t kidding.
Everywhere I turn I hear complaints about how pokey spring has been ’round these parts, but I have to say—if this is late, I can’t even imagine what “early” means. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve lived anywhere that had blossoming trees by early April. We had a late spring in Minneapolis last year, the last spring I lived there—which meant that it was Memorial Day before the blooms had anything to say about it (I know, because I was fretting about the bare trees right up until my wedding that weekend). So I’ll take this Northwestern spring, and be very, very glad.
The sun decided to join us, illuminating every perfect bloom in turn.
A few magnolia varieties were ready for their close-up;
while the saucer magnolias thought they’d sit this one out. But those branches! Each tree looked exactly like a candelabra.
Not to be outdone by the trees, the shrubs and perennials had their say as well.
Even the greenery was super-saturated (no need for Photoshop today!).
I came away with a head full of ideas, and my work cut out for me. Nicole and I weren’t the only artists out that day, either; Azalea Way was just crawling with oil painters, watercolorists and photographers—and other like-minded folk who seemed to have quit their day jobs to do what they love.
The ducks, however, were working overtime that day.
April 6th, 2009
Spring made her grand entrance this weekend, sweeping in with the first warm, flawless day of the year—complete with guest appearances by Mount Rainier and the sun. ‘Round these parts, it’s almost criminal to miss a day like that—as evidenced by the sidewalks, parks and shorelines packed with grateful Tacomans.
So believe me, the significance of a big group of steadfast book and art lovers eschewing the perfect weather in favor of hearing me blather on about sketchbooks and photopolymer isn’t lost on me. Many, many thanks to everyone who came to either the gallery talk yesterday or the exhibit opening on Thursday (or both!). You made both events a huge success, and your enthusiastic presence made me feel so welcome to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been the new kid on the block many times in my life, but I’ve never felt so at home so quickly as I do here in T-town. Thank you.
March 31st, 2009
Oof. The first sentence is always the hardest—I feel like I’m college again, desperately trying to choke out an introductory paragraph to a term paper.
Wait a minute. My first sentence was “Oof.” Great, way to set the bar low. Can we start again, please?
Ahem: my name is Chandler O’Leary and this is my blog.
Not much better than “Oof,” but it’s a start. It feels a little strange to type that out loud, actually. For a couple of years I kept an anonymous online journal (blown to smithereens now), but as the posts dealt increasingly with my work, and less and less with anything else, it seemed silly not to go public. And since I get a lot of questions about my work process, why not keep an ongoing record?
So for the most part I’ll leave personal stuff out of it (this blog is intended for shameless self-promotion professional updates), but I’m sure the occasional Other Thing will sneak in. Therefore, to continue a tradition, anyone not publicly “out” in the art (or art blogging, or internet) world will be referred to by a pseudonym. Just sayin’.
Anyway, here I am. I run a little illustration/lettering/letterpress studio called Anagram Press. Almost exactly eight months ago my husband (referred to from here on out as the Tailor, because he makes his own clothing) and I packed up everything we owned, crammed engineered it into a 26-foot moving truck*, and moved to Tacoma, Washington. I quit my day job as a graphic designer and transformed Anagram Press into a full-time career.
It’s a little terrifying to be one’s own boss (and assistant; and account manager), but every day I’m reminded that this was the right decision. I’ve fallen head-over-heels for Tacoma, and so far, at least, the studio has hit the ground running. Besides, I’ve got my favorite t-shirt for a healthy dose of perspective: it reads “I draw pictures all day.”
Welcome.
* Like Tetris, except the boxes didn’t disappear when we filled in a row.
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