Clouds at the Cole Gallery

Last Saturday, the clouds marched into Edmonds, Washington. The Edmonds Bookshop hosted me for a noon-time presentation on my book, A Sideways Look at Clouds. I arrived a bit early at this wonderful independent bookstore, browsed for a bit, and one of the bookstore staff members lead me next door to the Cole Gallery. As if there weren't enough clouds in the sky or in my book...here was a gallery full of clouds, part of an exhibit entitled  "Color, Light, and Atmosphere--Luminous Landscapes" featuring the works of Amanda Houston and David Marty.

I was thrilled to have so many paintings in one big room, rather than have to chase down the clouds in paintings displayed in multi-storied, multi-roomed art museums. No one would disagree with me that most of the paintings on display were of clouds, even though the exhibit was described as, "Stunning skies, glowing sunsets, quiet lakes and sunlit forests are part of the varied subjects in our latest show featuring a beautiful collection of landscape paintings..."

What? We know what makes the sky stunning. Clouds. We know what makes the difference between a ho-hum sunset and a spectacular one. Clouds. We know what often makes a landscape painting luminous. Clouds.  As I've said here and elsewhere, we should really call them cloudscapes and cloudsets. 

Terminology aside, Amanda Houston really gets the clouds. By chance, this Willamette Valley artist was in the Cole Gallery when I stopped in last Saturday, so I got the pleasure of meeting her and hearing about her fascinating with clouds in the Pacific Northwest. 

Just look at this stunning oil painting (36 x 48) called "Breaking Through." There's the dark clouds in the distance looking somewhat stable and then there are the brighter, peach-hued close-up clouds that are doing something more dynamic.

Upon closer inspection, it looks like the clouds have been swept. This is exactly the look of clouds that are trailing precipitation--known as virga--as they deteriorate after a storm. Virgo evaporates in the atmosphere and never reaches the ground. 

Look even closer at the artists brush strokes and you'll see--or feel, really--that she has captured the crazy energy of these clouds. Energy as lines and energy as color. Look how many colors she has included in her clouds. If you saw this detail of "Breaking Through" you might not guess that you're seeing a cloud. They should be white or gray or pink you might say. Well, sometimes they are but the more you look (and this is the goal of my book, after all) the more you will see that clouds capture all the colors of the rainbow. 

And that Amanda Houston has captured one of the many spectacular moments in the life of a cloud. She has matched the intensity of this skycape with and intensity of her artistic vision.

So...if you find yourself in charming downtown Edmonds, Washington, be sure to stop by Edmonds Bookshop (they have signed copies of A Sideways Look at Clouds) and the Cole Gallery next door. "Color, Light, and Atmosphere--Luminous Landscapes" is on exhibit until February 12. 

Pushing Up the Sky

I first encountered this charming woodcut eight years ago in Ella E. Clark's book, Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest as I began my research for A Sideways Look at Clouds. I wrote about it in this 2010 blog but did not include this illustration or the Snohomish creation story behind it in my book. There were just too many wonderful local tribal stories about the sky and clouds to do justice to them in my book. 

In a nutshell, the story (sourced by Clark to a book written by Chief William Shelton in 1935) describes the work of several Puget Sound tribes to lift the sky--a sky so low that they bumped their heads on it. Using poles crafted from the giant fir trees and while shouting  "Ya-hoh!" (meaning "lift together") the men of the tribes managed to push the sky up to where it is now. Chief Shelton noted that in his day, the Snohomish still shouted "Ya-hoh" when doing hard work together.

On mid-winter days like today, when the the sky (aka the clouds, the thick altostratus clouds) seem a bit oppressive, I think of this story--not because I'd like the clouds to shove off, but because of the hard work required of us to keep the planet whole, to protect our natural resources, and environmental protections for wildlife and wild places.

The Indian Legends of the Pacific Northwest was first published in 1953 with a 50th anniversary edition issued in 2003 by the University of California Press. Last year, a volunteer for South Sound Climate Reality Leaders, handed me a flier outside the Capital Mall movie theater where I had just watched An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Al Gore's follow up to An Inconvenient Truth). The flier featured a simple illustration--clearly adapted from Inverary's Ya-hohing sky pushers. Only there was only one person using a pole--the rest were pushing the clouds with their hands. And one of the four figures was a woman. And, there was no story to explain the illustration. There was a poem--"heiroglyphic stairway" from A Love Letter to the Milkyway by Drew Dellinger.

Ya-hoh!  Ya-hoh! Ya-hoh!

Sideways Plus #4 +MASS+

Oh, dear. It's been nearly two months since my last blog posting. What can I say but...wait for it...the  clouds got in my way. 

The last quarter of 2017 was a busy one ushering my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds, into the world of readers, skywatchers, cloud lovers, and hunched-over texting addicts. I hope those of you who bought my book (thank you!) are enjoying it, looking up more, and are appreciating the sky and clouds in new ways.

As you may recall, I am posting an excerpt and supplemental content for each chapter of my book you to enjoy. In case you missed them, here are the links to the first three: Prologue /Cloud /Visible 

Recall that each chapter of my book covers one term in the definition of a cloud: a visible mass of water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere above the earth. This fourth posting covers the chapter on mass--not Pacific Northwest weather guru Cliff Mass, but the mass that is a cloud. 

"Though 'mass' has many meanings, the best fit for a cloud comes from the Oxford English Dictionary: 'a dense aggregation of objects having the appearance of a single, continuous body.'

The 'objects' in a cloud are primarily water molecules, billions of them, aggregated into liquid droplets and ice crystals, billions upon billions of them, further aggregated into a single cloud or cloud formation.

The density of this aggregation varies with the type of cloud at atmospheric conditions in which they form. According to one estimated, a typical Cumulus cloud contains about four-thousandths of an ounce of water per cubic yard. This is about a marble's worth of water in a space the side of a loveseat. A typical small Cumulus cloud contains over a million pounds of water--a weight equivalent to roughly one hundred elephants."

from A Sideways Look at Clouds

One of the most fascinating and troublesome problems I encountered understanding "mass" was understanding how so much water could float. Water--the most amazing molecule in the universe--has a trick: as water vapor condenses to liquid water, it releases a tiny bit of energy, known as "latent heat," which gives it the boost it needs to rise above the surrounding cooler air.

My other big problem was visualizing how the mass that is a cloud becomes visible. Part of my problem was imagining the  invisible water vapor in our atmosphere and the invisible process of convection that is largely responsible for many of our favorite clouds (cumulus, for instance). 

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is the process by which warmer air (at the surface of the earth) rises into the cooler air. Many science text books feature diagrams like this one, which relies on arrows to "explain" what is happening.

Convection is one way air is lifted in the atmosphere. On paper, watercolor artist "lift" clouds using paint and a paper towel. To my delight, I found this out in person while sitting in on a watercolor class at the Olympia Center. After several attempts (chronicled on pages 80-85 in my book), I managed to work the paper towel in the wet paint just so to create some masses that could be recognized as clouds. Sure, there's an elephant trunk in the center cloud and a witch's profile in another, but it sure was fun trying to make paint appear to float. 

If you want to try it yourself, here is a very short YouTube video to get you started. 

Next Up: Sideways Plus #4: +Water+

"Sideways" on Tour

As if on cue, the clouds returned to the Pacific Northwest as Mountaineers Books' released my new book, A Sideways Look at Clouds. The clouds never do anything on cue, so their timing is notable here. (Even stranger, Hurricane Maria made landfall as I was starting my book tour).

The clouds have been dramatic this fall and I've been on the road encouraging readers to look up and enjoy the every-changing drama in the skies at bookstores and other venues in Olympia, Seattle, Bellingham, Marysville, Kirkland, Portland, and Washington, DC. (Check out my events calendar for upcoming talks and book signings).

More than talking about my book and sharing some of my photos of the spectacular clouds we have in the Pacific Northwest, I've loved answering their questions about clouds: How exactly does it rain? When is a cloud a "cloud" and when do you call them "clouds?" Why do we have so many clouds here? What's the deal with high and low pressure? Are clouds changing? I am going to create a FAQs page to answer all of these and more.

I've also loved hearing people's stories about clouds. Here is one story (handwritten) and delivered to me at the 2017 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association (PNBA) trade show by Mary Anne Fraser, manager of Brilliant Moon books in Shelton.

"100 years ago, when I'd just turned twelve, I spent met hard-earned babysitting wages on a small Kodak camera. Within an hour the complete roll was filled and my mom (knowing how excited I'd been about this long-awaited purchase) offered to take the roll to our local "Pay and Save" to have my photos developed.

The week-long wait was finally over and I ran to the car to discover what my new hobby had delivered. Before I could open the obviously already opened packet, my mom said to me in a rather disappointed voice: "They're all clouds."

I looked at her, waiting for the rest of the observation ("They're beautiful." "I love the one that looks like an otter." "What an artist's eye you have.") but, alas, that was the sum total of her opinion.

I, on the other hand, was thrilled. Yes, they WERE all clouds."

While in Portland, I visited KATU-TV to talk with Helen Raptis on "AMNW" and Tra'Renee Chambers on "Afternoon Live" and also with Jefferson Smith, host of "XRAY in the Morning" (skip to 1:54:48) before my talk at Powell's on Hawthorne

After my interview on "Afternoon Live," the on-set photographer, Mark Plut, showed me photographs of his two recent paintings--of clouds!  "I too am fascinated by clouds," Mark told me, "especially how to paint them." In the first painting, Mark as painted a sky washed with what look like cirrostratus clouds to me. In the second painting, the landscape is transformed by more dynamic cumulus and altocumulus clouds. What a difference, eh? Thank you, Mark!

And because you can never have too many clouds--or paintings of clouds--in the Pacific Northwest, I went on a cloud hunt at the Portland Museum of Art. What a bonanza of clouds! Here is a gallery of a few of my favorites. 

Oskar Kokoschka/Tuileries Gardens, Paris; George Inness/Apezzo Pass, Titian's House; Joe Goode/Torn Cloud Painting; Robert Henri/Rue de Rennes; Robert Goonough/Grey Development; N.C. Wyeth/Rip Van Winkle, endpaper illustration; [forgot to photograph the label of the skyscrapers in the clouds--ooops]; George Michel/Landscape; ibid/detail of cloud

REMEMBER....EARTH WITHOUT ART is JUST "EH"

Speaking of...I'll be signing books at the 37th Annual  Wild Arts Festival at Montgomery Park in Portland, OR. The festival runs November 18-19 and benefits the fabulous Audubon Society of Portland. I'll be there Sunday noon-4 p.m. along with 36 other authors (and more than 200 artists) whose work is inspired by nature.