I can't believe we ate the whole thing

Oh m 'gawd... we did... we glutonously ate all 60 pounds of oysters (minus their shell weight) in two dinners. SOOOOOoooooo goooood! BURP!

But then there was the clean up of all of those big pans and trays... They were too big to go in the dishwasher.... Thank goodness for non-stick-ware ....the big pots, pans, and trays hand-washed clean really easily.... But drying them did take up a lot of counter space.

Plus, I felt morally obligated to haul the 57 pounds of empty shells (in the white bag below) to the oyster shell recycling center 15 miles away.

One can get killed trying turning off the busy Interstate Highway onto the small dirt lane that leads to the shell recycling center at Huntington Beach State Park.... South Carolina is a strange place... it does not force a surcharge to recycle plastic, glass or aluminum. But it asks its residents to recylce oyster shells. ( below)

But the fall scenery in the park was worth the risk.

Adventures in Fine Dining: Oyster Roast

Monday evening Bruce and I expanded our culinary skills by learning how to cook fresh oysters.



As many of you know, oyster beds extend all along the eastern coastline .
Here in South Carolina, oysters can be found growing in the mudflats of all of our marshes.



From September through April these succulent bivalves are in season. Anyone with the proper fishing licences can collect them. But it is usually easier and less work to go down to our local shrimp dock and purchase a bushelful of oysters for $20.



A bushel (shown above) is about 60 pounds. That may sound like an awful lot of oyters for two people, but 95 % of that weight is shell. That means that a bushel probably provided 3 lbs ( more or less) of actual edible oyster... That's still an awful lot of food for two people , so we only had half of them on Monday and will have them again tonight. (Next time we will plan ahead and invite the neighbors).

After hosing the mud off of oysters off outside, the cooking process is easy... just bring lots of heavily salted water to a boil, and drop the oysters in for approximately 5 minutes.

To serve them, lift from the water, drain, and place the cooked oysters in a large metal container. You also have to provide a old bucket for the empty shells. Many local restaurants have a hole cut in the center of their oyster roast tables with the shell bucket placed under the hole. Restaurants use buffet style plastic trays are used insead of plates (we used cookie trays) . One also need a roll of paper towels , and if one is wearing nice clothes.. a bib.

Then all you need to complete the feast is a proper oyster shucking knife, a little melted butter, and a healthy appetite.

CC celebrates her birthday

I celebrated my birthday this week. I spent most of the day playing in my 2nd story herb garden. I set out lots of colorful winter vegatables amidst the herbs ... chard, kale, flowering cabbage, red sorrel. All their brighly colored foliage made the area look very cheerful and inviting. The weather was wonderful, so it was truly a joy to be outside all day.

That evening Bruce took me to the Rice Paddy Restaurant in Geogetown for dinner. I had a mustard crusted lamb entree and PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM for desert. I haven't had Peppermint Icecream since we left California.... MMMMM So good. It's one of my favorite deserts.

I got lots and lots of cards from freinds and family. One of my favorites was an email message a friend sent with George Carlin's thoughs on aging. I thought you all might like to read it.

"Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids?

If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. 'How old are you?' 'I'm four and a half!' You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five! That's the key.

You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. 'How old are you?' 'I'm gonna be 16!' You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life ! You become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony.YOU BECOME 21. YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk! He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're Just a sour-dumpling.. What's wrong? What's changed? You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 and your dreams are gone...But! wait!! !

You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would! So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and make it to 60.

You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into ! your 80's and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; 'I Was JUST 92.

'Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. 'I'm 100 and a half!' May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!! "

Presenting James and Bodil Jacobs

Jim and Bodil just sent us these photos of their wedding in Gibraltar last October. They make a beautiful couple.

Plein Air.. my style

I know I make a lot of noise about art, and you probably wonder if I ever really do get around to seriously attemptting to paint anything. The answer is yes. It has taken me awhile to learn the local color ( both chromatically and socially) but I am committed to painting the unique beauty I see in my surrounding environment.

Proof positive are my two most recent plein air paintings .

The first is a view of a house on the the fourteenth green from across the marsh .
Below it is a photo I took the evening I was painting it.






The second painting is an evening view of the Pwleys Island marsh from the Pawleys Island Yacht Cub ... and a corresponding reference photo

Plein air Painting Charleston Style

The Charleston Fine Arts Council Designated Nov 5-7th as Fine Arts weekend, and the entire city got in the act with art walks, gala openings in the city's many museums, and auctions to benefit various art causes. I haven't met a signle plein air painter since I moved here, so I was very excited to read that the council was sponsoring a PLEIN AIR event in Washington Park.
Boy was I in for a surprise!



Plein Air painting as I know it usually means the artist painting(1) a small landscape or architectural scene(2) that is being looked at on location (3) in a somewhat impressionistic manner (4) to capture a the local color of what is seen. (5) They are almost always small because (6) one is trying to capture the image before the light changes.

In Charleston, Plein air seems to mean anything that you paint in plain air out of doors.
There were people realistically painting remote landscapes from photographs ( Above).
And creating watercolor seascapes from photographs (Below)





Some of the artists set up still lives complete with settings to direct the light ( above)
or brought a model and posed her on a bench ( below)






The participating artists had been invited to donate work towards an auction which raised money for the Charleston high school district art program. Much of what was donated were graghics, abstracts, and or decorative art pieces ( above).



There were a couple of artists who were trying to paint the local scenery,
I didn't envy them trying to see their subject matter through the crowds.



The winning piece of art from the exhibit was what appeared to be a colored photograph of a pelican. ( Even if I am mistaken and it was a incredibly realistic hand rendered pelican... I don't know how it could be called plein air). Oh well, plein air or not, the effort and money went to a good cause, so no complaints.



I guess this is what I will have to call a learning experience. I'm sure there are plein air artists out there. I just have to keep looking.

Sea Coast Artist Annual Show

The Seacoast Artist Guild's Annual Show had it's opening on Saturday night.
The gala was held at the Guild's gallery in Litchfield.



A portion of the sales goes to support art in the local school, so the show was well attended by both the public and the local artists.



There were $1500 in prizes being offered including a $500 prize for best in show. That generated a lot of high quality entries, and the competition was stiff.

Silk screen art.. fun, fun fun!!!!

One of CC's (one of my many) long term goals has been to learn how to create fine art mono-prints. Some of these are created with silk screen processes and others with various press processes. I have had little to no experience with either process, so when a two-day class on silk screening opened up at the local community college, I couldn't resist. When I arrived on the first day, I learned that the class' objective was not quite what I had hoped for ... it called for developing a monotone print for holiday greeting cards. But hey... who says you have to follow the curriculum if you already have your degree (:

Everyone else in the class came out with a set of lovely snow-flake or christmas tree holiday cards. My results was a single Picasso-like four-color print that I had a lot of fun creating . It was even more fun to look at the finished print from different angles.

Question: What do you see in this print when you look at it from different angles? I'll tell you later what we see, but bear in mind I was really trying to play with this as non objective . ( which means, I really did not have an concrete object in mind when I created the design0.

#1



#2



#3



Our answers
#1 California Happy Cow
#2 Red Barron ( Snoopy)
#3 An artist's palette

Needless to say I had a lot of fun with this....but I also learned a lot... \

First: There is a lot of up fron work involved in the design

Second: Cutting the stencils required ten time the amount of time the printing does.

Third: You better know your colors and how to blend them before you put it on the screen.

Fourth: If you want to make multiple prints of the same design use different screens for each color

Fifth: This is a very messy process. You need a very large stainless steel industrial sink to clean the screens as soon as you finish a print. ( or you will ruin a very expensive silk screen frame) I will probably never work with silk screening on anything larger than a 5X7 inch print as long as I am living in this condo.... I just don't have the place or space to clean the equipment

Georgetown County Watermedia Association

Work at the Shell shops has prevented Cece from attending any of the monthly membership meeting of local artists groups . Now that the tourist season is over, Cece is happy to be able to get together with other artists. The Georgetown County Water Media Association sponsors regular mini at its bi-monthly meetings and every quarter hosts a three day workshop. It also exhibits members works at the Rice Museum Gallery and sponsors larger exhibitions with is parent organization the SC Water-media Society.

This month's GCWS mini-workshop was all about acrylic painting. President Mary Schneider pointed out that it are the acrylic and multimedia entries that are winning the most awards at shows these days, so it behooves us all to learn more about the media.




Award winning artist, Kate Lagaly demonstrated to us about how she uses fluid watercolors and acrylic media to generate highly textured objective art , and acrylic mediums as a background for designer art.



A mother of several active children, Kate has come up with several creative ways to capture lost moments for art. Here she is showing us how she water color paints on table tops, because the round ground can be placed atop a steering wheel while she is waiting to pick her children up from school or a game. Look at the detail she is able to achieve with watercolor over an acrylic ground.



Award winning abstract Artist Dian Ammetton likes to use thick acrylics paints. She says that she loves to work with Acrylic because of it is an increadably versatile media. When mixed used thin as Kate does it approximates the fluidity and transparency of watercolor . When thick opaque acrylics are chose it can look like pastel, ( see painting by below)




Dian like to use thick transparent acrylics over thick opaques to achieve and oil color like finish. She also loves that it dries quickly so she can paint over areas she doesn't like.

Sea Coast Artist's Guild

Cece was feeling the need to socialize more with other active artists. On Tuesday (11/2/09) she joined the Sea Coast Artist's Guild and attended her first Guild meeting. I was pleased to find out that the organization has 125 active members and regularly sponsors events including mini workshops at their meetings. I also was surprised by the quality of the workshop that was given by member who talked about how he creates his Unique Copper Fish. It was truly informative.



The presentation was thorough and covered all aspects of the process, from where he acquires his supplies, to the tools he uses to mold them, and how he goes about pricing them.






If you want to see more of Dennis' work go to Dennis Cordeiro - Unique Copper Fish