CHRISTMAS IN BROWN COUNTY. INDIANA

Christmas in Nashville, Indiana, 8 x 18 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

We celebrated Christmas with a mini-reunion with my siblings in Brown County, Indiana.  One sister didn't come, but those who did had a splendid holiday.  We stayed at the Abe Martin Lodge in Brown County State Park, which I highly recommend, and not just because it is named after the great newspaper cartoon character created by Indianapolis writer/artist Kin Hubbard.  Christmas morning we went into the nearby town of Nashville.  It was overcast but unseasonably warm-- almost 50 degrees.  I made this on-site drawing across a 2-page spread in my sketchbook.  After working on it about half an hour I had to put my gloves on to finish it, making this the second piece of artwork I created wearing gloves.  The first was a watercolor of the Grand Canyon I painted from the South Rim one December.

The big gingerbread Victorian at the right once housed the John Dillinger Museum, a remarkable collection of artifacts, memorabilia, and ephemera telling the story of the notorious 1930s bank robber.  I wonder what happened to the collection after the museum closed.  At the left is the biggest sycamore tree I have ever seen.  I bet it was already growing there when George Rogers Clark (no relation) drove the British out of Indiana and Illinois and in fact all the territory between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes during the American Revolution.

AN HOMAGE TO KIN HUBBARD

Fisherman, Brown County, Indiana, 12 x 9 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark  AVAILABLE

I did this one by the spillway at Strahl Lake in Brown County, Indiana a couple of years ago.  Say, that fisherman... That's not old Abe Martin, is it?... No, it couldn't be.......

PLOW ZONE

Plow Zone,  24 x 40 inch oil and pencil over acrylic sized paper by George C. Clark    SOLD

Plow Zone is a studio painting of spring plowing in the corn and soybean fields around my wife's late aunt and uncle's farm in Carroll County, Indiana.  I stained a sheet of Japanese Toyoshi printmaking paper a paper bag brown color with an acrylic sizing process I described earlier.  Then I washed in the sky color in semi-opaque acrylic.  The painting was completed with oil paint and Prismacolor colored pencils.  It was purchased in the 1980s for the corporate offices in Desplaines, Illinois, of the Sandoz Crop Protection Corporation, the American subsidiary of Sandoz/Novartis AG of Switzerland.  The American operation was eventually relocated back to Europe, and I have been told its art collection is now in Denmark.

The title Plow Zone is the archeological term that describes the first foot or two of soil in a cultivated field where found artifacts cannot be dated by their depth because you have to assume the earth has been jumbled repeatedly by plows and other cultivating implements.  After a rainfall on recently plowed earth is the best time for archeologists to do a field survey looking for artifacts on the surface as indicators of a site's potential for further study and possible excavation.

BROWN COUNTY CATBIRD

Catbird at the Suet Feeder, Brown County State Park, Indiana, 5 x 6 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

I went to the opening of the Kinsey Institute Juried Show at Indiana University that I have a figure painting in last weekend.  You can see a NOT SAFE FOR WORK posting about that show at whatsnewfromgeorgecclark.tumblr.com.  I arrived the night before the opening and stayed in Nashville, Indiana, about 16 miles from the campus in Bloomington.  Nashville is the gateway to Brown County State Park, which preserves the beautiful highlands of south central Indiana that have been attracting artists since the Nineteenth Century.  The Abe Martin Lodge there is named after the newspaper comic character created by cartoonist and humorist Kin Hubbard, and features many examples of his art.  I spent most of Friday hiking and sketching in the park.  At the Nature Center they have an observation room where you can watch birds and small forest creatures feeding through a big one-way glass window.  I sketched this catbird feeding upside-down on the suet feeder.

AUNT MARY'S BEGONIAS

Aunt Mary's Begonias, 6 x 5 inch ink and colored pencil drawing by George C. Clark   SOLD

We arrived early for a visit to my wife's Aunt Mary on the farm in Delphi, Indiana, and she wasn't home from an errand yet.  While waiting for her I sat on the deck outside her house and drew the flowers in one of her planters.

THE FARM IN DELPHI, INDIANA

The White Fence, Delphi, Indiana, 29 x 23 inch oil and pencil on paper by George C. Clark    SOLD

Another painting of the farm in Delphi.