A Little, Little Bird Birding

I have been getting a regular diet of bird watching over this past year from the bay window in the kitchen eating area in my dad's California Central Valley house. We have watched the seasons change from spring, to summer, to autumn, to winter, and now back to spring. This past winter we decided to install a hummingbird feeder just outside the window to complement the bird seed one across the lawn - the results have been worth it.

A male Anna's Hummingbird

Our splatters of overall meal-time bird watching have often involved Anna's hummingbirds, males, females, and immature males (no more than two at a time, mostly a solo performance). I have been thinking about the effort as: A little, little bird birding.

Merlin iPhone ap

My Merlin Bird Identification application for my iPhone produced by the Cornell University Ornithology Laboratory worked well, once again. I wish there were more than 400 birds in its database - many common identifications can be easily accomplished by clicking on the GUI - graphical use interface, but I keep running into a few limitations once-in-a-while. Regardless, a little sugar syrup produced by my wife in my dad's kitchen has done its part attracting this subject of many discussions around the table: morning, noon, and evening - What was that flash out out there? Was that a hummingbird? More often than not, those were Mourning Doves, White-capped Sparrows, House Sparrows, Blue Jays, or House Finch - still, can be hopeful for the metallic-green streaks that come to sudden stops, take a sip, and again slip away.

6100 Moonstone Beach Drive - A Trace of Ellie Bogardus

Google Maps, 6100 Moonstone Drive

The Cambria Coast Gallery, 6100 Moonstone Drive, has been mentioned in records where artist Ellie Bogardus had displayed her art. By my memory, I remember the location hosting the Seago Gallery and most recently,

Wearable art advertisement

the Moonstone Redwood Gallery. Also mentioned in a recent post about an article featuring Ellie in the Cambrian newspaper - she had a gallery showing was mention in 1983. A flier also turned up in my mom's files for Wearable Art - I am sure this is for items like the sweatshirt I posted about earlier. Not only does my mom still wear one of these, but my sister-in-law has one that was worn by my niece when young, and I received a photograph of one from a blog acquaintance in Italy. These silk-screen prints were marketed through the Cambria Coast Gallery. I like the descriptors of her art's subjects in the flier:

Outrageous

Zany

Bright sherbet colors

An untitled Bogardus acrylic

A more refined, fine-arts-style advertisement of Bogradus art is found in a glossy print from the Challis Galleries in Laguna Beach, California that featured "New Paintings" by Bogardus, Bunkall, Frame, Leeper, Post and Simandle in October 1980. An untitled 28" x 28" acrylic by Ellie was was shown with examples by the other artists. The gallery closed its doors in 2011.

Turn Back The Pages - Artist Ellie Bogardus in the News

My wife has been caring for my dad in his home for the past four months - my mom moved to assisted living in November. While going through some of my mom's things still in the house, Jan came across a newspaper article about Ellie Bogardus in the Cambrian dated August 18, 1983. Like Ellie's paintings, the text in the local paper was bright and descriptive, and biographic - tells a story about the artist, much like her paintings. The writer, Shirley Howell, is mentioned as an alumnus of the paper in an article this past summer about the Cambrian moving office locations. Whether Howell is one of the youngish staff shown in this photograph, I don't know, but this picture also gives a feeling of fanciful playfulness, like an Ellie painting.

The Cambrian staff in the 1970's

But of greater interest to me is the cross-referencing of Bogardus's painting The Streaker in the news article, that it was on display at the Cambria Coast Gallery (a photograph of the piece is found in an earlier post), as well as mention of another work, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, that is captioned by Howell: "...a typical part crowd which includes a banker and his wife, a retired actor, a gossip columnist and others." The article mentions Ellie having done a European tour in the 1960's. I was a gentleman in Italy who came across my my blog and furnished me the photograph of The Streaker - his brother had received the painting from Ellie when he visited her in 1982 (perhaps the memory of dates was slightly off since the painting was on display in 1983).

Shown in the newspaper article is photograph of the artist in her studio - the only one I have seen of her working at her craft.

Bogardus at work in her studio

Also, a copy of news photo of Ellie with her painting Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Artist with her painting

________________________
The Cambrian, August 18, 1983 – Page 13
Life’s episodes on canvas
Ellie’s paintings depict fat cats, dancing friends and more…

Story and photos by Shirley Howell

Ellie Bogardus pulls her acrylic painting right out of life’s most impressionable episodes.

Plucked from daily experiences in the kitchen or in her garden, with fat cats, dancing friends, at gourmet picnics or parties, her characters burst from the canvas in bold, simple designs and electrifying purples, oranges, reds, blues and greens.

Each with a story to tell, the images convey Ellie’s excitement with life.

“I’m just a born wacko – that’s all!” the Park Hill artist explained with a subtle smile. With a tongue-in-cheek, child-like quality evident, Ellie appears to relish the idea of unfolding a story.

“They’re like my children,” she said. “They’re something that come from me. And they do have a story behind them.”

One enormous painting call “The Streaker,” currently on exhibit at the Cambria Coast Gallery, paints the story of a naked man about to job through a park full of people. The viewer observes that, upon his jaunt down the winding path, the streaker will encounter a nun with some children, three old men, a woman eating a sandwich, a mother pushing a baby stroller and more, with a good possibility that he may upset all of them.

Another painting, depicting a sleeping cat (a favorite subject), a burning table lamp and a bird stepping out of a cage in the background, is aptly named “Impending Disaster.”

“You know something is going to happen,” Ellie says with a twinkle in her eyes.

A native of Long Beach, Ellie attended Chouinard Art School in Lost Angeles and has a long list of illustration credits, including the designing of background for the animated “Fractured Fairy Tales” and “Crusader Rabbit” and more recent Charlie Brown specials.

Following a six-month world tour during the 1960”s, Ellie settled in Paris, where she designed several award-winnings films for Les Cinemastes.

Although she insists that other artists have not influenced her work and that she has never had to “search around to find a style,” Ellie became familiar with the work of Henri Matisse after friends pointed out the resemblance between her work and the impressionist painter’s.

“I did some research one day and found out that he was born in Cateau, France, and didn’t live far from a town called Cambrai,” she disclosed. “And he also died the same year I went into school. I thought that was sort of strange – I don’t know if there is such a thing as split souls.”

When Ellie is not working in her enormous seaside garden or concocting a gourmet meal with husband Mike (lovingly portrayed as a pleasantly-plump television watcher in her painting, “The Man, His Dog and His Woman”), she is creating detailed backdrops for Garfield the cat and his friends to [gallivant] about in their upcoming movie.

The artist also has ready for publishing two children’s books and a gourmet cookbook that she has written and illustrated.

Several of Ellie’s painting will be included in “Creatures – Wild and Otherwise,” a show opening on Saturday at the Cambria Coast Gallery. A wine and cheese reception for the show will be held from 4-7 p.m. (The public is invited).

From The Distant Past - Never Read The Harper Lee Opus

From the NY Times, Harper Lee Among the Books

Once in a while, a small reminder of a pleasure long past - I had forgotten I missed Bloom County.

Hotel California - The One And Only

There is such a place, the Hotel California. I didn't have a clue that the place is real and is in Todos Santos in southern Baja California. As it turned out, a new Colorado State University facility has been built in Todos Santos, and since there wasn't room in the normal hotel that staff stay in when visiting, I was booked one night in the famous inn. It seems that none of the members of the Eagles band ever stayed there, much less that the band worked on there album's song while staying there. The hotel makes no such claims. But it was still a fun place to stay, and eat. Really good chile rellenos were served in the restaurant; the whole place is nicely decorated, as you would think things should look in Baja; and the government is upgrading all utilities by burying cables under the streets - Hurricane Odile wrecked havoc all over the southern Baja peninsula.

Chile relleno for lunch

A primitive style portrait

Street view outside the hotel

Utilities upgrade in the street

______________________
Addition made on January 19, 2016
Four days after making this post, Glenn Frey, one of the founders of the Eagles and the voice behind the song Hotel California died. His video obituary in the Washington Post is here.

Quiet Monday Morning Birding

Early September seems a long time ago, given the recurring snow we have received in Northern Colorado. The leaves were on the trees, and sitting on the patio was pleasant. Now the outdoor activities are restricted to clearing the driveway and sidewalk of snow - three significant efforts so far, and another predicted for the weekend. Following are snapshots of the birds, and a squirrel, that hung around back then.

Common Yellowthroat

Black-capped Chickadee

Great-tailed Grackle

Fox Squirrel

The Fox Squirrel here on the Front Range is not as much an acrobat as the Eastern Gray Squirrel were were accoustomed to in Annapolis, and so they have not been as much of a pest. Our pole system to hold our bird feeders does the job nicely with the squirrel baffle, and didn't have to be upgraded to a racoon baffle instead, as we used in Maryland.

Blue Jay

Eurasian Collared-Dove

House Sparrow

Anna's Hummingbird

A Blue Gumball Called Oregon

Pray for blue

A friend of our son posted a video advertisement for a new series that will be presented the next three weeks at their church. It touched a place deep inside of me. My gumball is Oregon. I have always thought about how green is our home state - today it has become blue. As it happens, I am slowly making my way through Tim Keller's book titled, Prayer. I have been mixing it with a slow read of the book of Proverbs - a chapter at a time. I can add in a prayer for blue as well - a hope for a blue gumball named Oregon.