scottmerrickdotme is live!

 So, I've been working on this for a few months, along with painting, traveling, and recuperating from a near devastating first bout with gout. Here it is:

https://scottmerrick.me

I'd appreciate it if you'd take a minute to click around and look and if you see anything not working or have any recommendations to make it better, pop me a comment in "Contact". That is all. For now. :)

March, Coming Up on an Anniversary

I don't mean we are marching towards it, but maybe in a metaphorical sense. It's just 36 years of being legally married. She is my best friend and my life's love. More, please.

I'm doing my things, painting, fishing (not much on accounta the weather), playing some music, taking care of the hacienda, walking my doggy. Lee Ann's working on work, continuing to make Tinwings better in all ways, and maybe keeping a big announcement to herself for a while. No, she's not preggie. 

I completed another painting in what I foresee will be a little series of "vivid rorschach" paintings. I cleverly call it "vivid rorschach 2".

vivid rorschach 2, acrylics on stretched canvas, 16x20 inches, by Scott Merrick 2023

These are fun, especially when planned to mirror color relationships of one another. And I am really enjoying playing with the palate knives. Feel free to click on over to the original to think about what the hell this guy is doing with them. 

I'm going to head down to downtown Nashville this morning to see if I can find some painting-worthy images for my collection of iphotography. Then I'll do lunch at 3rd and Lindsley, timed to enjoy WMOT Roots Radio's "Finally Friday" trifecta of great emerging (and experienced) musical talents. If you are anywhere nearby, or you plan to visit Nashville, this is a must do. The chili and beer is good alll by itself. If you are not in our fair city (Tennessee's liberal bastion now under state administrative attack in an unprecedented way), tune into 89.5 FM from noon to two pm every Friday to listen. A gem always.

See ya.

 Hello.

The mid-February Nashville weather is just plain weird. Here on Valentines Day 2023 it'll reach a high of 65 degrees today. And...

HERE it is on Friday, the 24th, and it reached 80 degrees yesterday. I went to my art class in a short sleeved Orvis shirt and cargo shorts. It's now 41 with a predicted high of only 52. It's Spring, it's Summer, it's Winter again. The plants are going "hell yeah" and budding and even blossoming. Little do they know. 

On the bright side here's the entry into my online Gratefulness Journal today: "Nashville weather, for its perfect mix of moderate and surprisingly otherwise." 

I started that journal during the pandemic and, a lot like my blog, it suffers periods of neglect but I always come back to it. It's private to me, but maybe some inquisitive spawn of mine will discover it and share it one day after I've floated away. I am convinced it is good to me to reflect on my blessings, though I remain unconvinced that society has it right on who/what is doing the blessing.

I finished a painting yesterday that I estimate represents maybe 50 or 60 hours of devotion to light, color, texture, and reflection. It's called "reflection on the ridge" and owes to its existence my friendship with Rocky Alvey and if I counted the hours of light-watching in camping chairs at his home and photographic opportunities there (which most often required putting down my cigar and/or my glass of bourbon on the rocks), okay, maybe 100 hours. Maybe 200. Hmmmmm...

"reflection on the ridge", acrylics on stretched canvas, 2023 by scott merrick

I want to post an abstract in progress and I want you to look at it very closely and will welcome any advice in comments. I for one am leaning toward calling it complete. I'm calling it "vivid rorschach" for now...

"vivid rorschach", acrylic on stretch canvas, by scott merrick 2023

There. I've addressed the blog neglect issue for this day, and I hope you have a good one, whenever you may be reading/viewing this. Peace out.

It's the merry end of January

 ...and I'm pleased that this may be the last day I'll be putting brush to painting on a piece I've been working on for around a month. It is an attempt to capture the mood and lighting in my pal Matt Melon's small detached garage workshop in East Nashville, on a cold day when he was working and invited me and my buddy Rocky Alvey over to watch Columbo reruns on his laptop with studio sound hooked up, whiskey's in hand, and cigars lit. My plan is to gift it to him for his great new workshop under construction in Lyles, TN. Here's a panorama pic of that featuring Rocky and Matt: 

I took a photo of Matt at one point that was head-down, mask-on, torch blazing...

And here's the current state of the image I have been working on. I will post the "finished" one after my class today with master Charles Brindley. As Charles says, "the artist paints the seen and the unseen, often to share what contributes to the piece's whole. I know many artists who are literalists, tied to reproducing everything in great detail and accuracy. They are, by and large, the unhappiest people I know. This afternoon I will be adding a very few little details and a blended blue glaze layer that will bring the fire to life, and it will be complete. I'll add it below this version when it's done. Just sharin'...

(added later: the final, signed piece, delivered to the collection of Matt Melon on 012823

Good day on ya.

Why?

 Well, I don't know.

I just know the arrival of each day is the opportunity to discover how one's being at any moment is important. I'm working on a song, a painting, and a...what? There have to be three things, don't there? 

What's the third thing?

The song is this (dashed parts are phrasings I need to remember):

If-I-had a timemachine clock

that ticked while it tocked

I don't think I'd turn back its hands

I many not have had

as much as I want

but believe it's bout all I can stand

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

It's warmed up to freezing

which has me believing

that I may go outside today

I got nothing to do

but write this for you

to sing what I have to say

Although you may not hear it

or come anywhere near it

I'll quietly sing it and play

You-may-not-be around

to hear the sound

but that goddamn tree fell anyway

instrumental break 

Ahhhh, retirement

Stayin' alive 

is the sole requirement

I did my time walkin' the line

and now that it's mine

I play all the time

instrumental break

I will put on my hat

my coat and my gloves

and take my dog out for a walk

it may sound lame 

but just the same

sometimes I wish he could talk

Scheduliberation

the ultimate vacation

I did my time walking those lines

and now that it's mine

I play all the time...

The current painting is of my friend and brother Matt Melon, he of Magic Metal Designs fame, from a photo I took of him working while my friend and brother, Rocky Alvey, and I sat watching Columbo reruns on Matt's laptop, smoking cigars, and drinking bourbon in his makeshift workshop in East Nashville on a  cold November day. Matt is welding and well, I guess I just love the photo image and wanted it to be (more or less) immortalized in acrylics on canvas, as if my painting it would do that. When I finish it I want it to live on the wall of the big shop he's building outside of Lyles, TN. I'm still working on it:

The third thing is you. I don't thank you enough. I don't tell you I love you enough. I need to work harder to do both of those things. Thank you. I love you. If I didn't have a mental image of you I would not be able to do this. I do. Maybe I should paint that. Maybe it's too vast to reproduce, or maybe too miniscule.

Brrrrrrr December

 Okay, it's not nearly as cold as most years at this time but I'll repeat that Tennessee cold is colder than any other because of the omni-present humidity. That humidity is cursed in the summer and the winter with equanimity. 

On a happier topic, I'm beginning work on a new painting, another dive into another arena of complete inexpertise (there is some uncertainty if this last is actually a word, but apparently Wictionary approves).

I had a chill (in every sense of the term) experience at my friend Matt Melon's detached garage workshop in Madison a few weeks ago, sitting with mutual friend Rocky Alvey, smoking cigars, drinking some Green River bourbon, and watching Colombo episodes on Matt's laptop while Matt worked (see https://www.magicmetaldesigns.com/ for how truly magical his metal artistry is). I snapped some pics and one of them is this one:

Matt Melon making magic

There are soooo many angles and objects in this image that I may well tame it down. On the other hand, that is what gives it its interest, so I may lean more toward realism than I have really yet to do. It's never boring, largely because if it seems to be getting that way, I will veer away onto other paths of decisions. Stay tuned.

I recently finished a pic I alluded to in my previous post (https://scottmerrick.blogspot.com/2022/11/december-2022-looks-to-be.html) and I'm pretty happy with it. Anyway, here are two stages of it--the first is what I brought into the workshop, and the second is what I consider the finished piece:

UPDATE 121622:

I attended the awesome Blended/Broken Color full-day workshop led by sensei Charles Brindley yesterday at Scarritt Bennet Conference Center and Charles made some suggestions for my "rocky's ridge" painting that I spent the whole afternoon implementing, (pictures above). Luckily for me, ten feet away from me in the full-to-capacity painting studio the amazing beautiful and amazing Amanda Shires was working on several absolutely beautiful abstract canvases. I got to meet her at the end of the day when Charles gathered the artists around my easel to view the final painting. I laughed when he told them "this guy came out of nowhere" to learn painting. Amanda was painting with her mother, Lisa, also a very capable artist, and both were really, really nice human beings. New adoring Amanda fan, check.

On another topic--Yesterday my brother Ed and I sat in on a Zoom meeting with our first cousin twice removed, Kathy M., who lives in California and who recently tracked me down via this blog. Her mother, the daughter of our half-aunt (nothing is simple), recently passed away and left behind what appeared in Kathy's background to be a dozen or so bankers boxes of letters and photographs. I won't be sharing these as they come my way, but childhood pictures of our dad, baby pictures of us with our mom, and the like  are exciting to look forward to. As of now the only baby pic I have of me is on the cover of my novel, Lives, and Kathy has already sent me another one. Who's that grumpy baby?

Mom and me at 4 months old

I look forward to continued correspondence with this distant newly in-touch cousin!

Finally (let's just go for it--is this the randomest blogpost ever?) I'm hitting The Blue Room Bar at Third Man Records Friday night, with my pal Rocky, for a show featuring the Lockland Strings, a group of East Nashville musicians who get together and perform a concert once a month or so. I am all giddy and expectatious (sic) to see Madi Diaz live, as well as to be introduced to a tidy handful of other performers I have not heard, until I put together this playlist on Spotify with one "record" from each artist who will be there. Feel free to listen, and I do recommend randomizing, if you can't make the show. (Note: Peter Mulvey will not be there, but it was the album with SistaStrings I found that features the most of them.)

Cheers! Have a lovely Winter Holidays season! 

Wait! I want to share that Thursday night we'll be attending "A Sonos Christmas," live at the Parthenon and getting to hear our marvelous, beautiful, talented, and, well, perfect daughter Miranda sing. She auditioned for the choir a couple months ago and was embraced into it, happily. Although I had the pleasure of attending the Timbre Cierpke Christmas Concert at a Nashville church this past Thursday and got to hear her sing, my honey has not and I couldn't be more excited to sit at the base of the golden Athena and share that experience with my life's love. Well, I couldn't be more excited until Friday at the Blue Room!

Now go be good and have fun!

December 2022 Looks to Be...

 ...a fairly normal month. Which is to say that, yes, anything can happen.

It's thickly foggy outside my studio window this morning, Saturday, 26 November, 2022. I have been delivering food orders for my dearest's business, Tinwings, for a couple weeks now and despite that twice-weekly addition to my schedule I do miss my painting classes with graphics master Charles Brindley, which are suspended until the first week in January. I took a lovely full day Brindley workshop on underpainting and paint application techniques a couple weeks ago, and did enjoy the drive up to his home in Adairville, Kentucky to do so. I'm just rambling here so stop me anytime. 

I finished my penitentiary painting (because at some point you just have to call it done) and I'm pretty good with it. 

After a still frame from Brian Siskind's brilliant video portrait of the abandoned Tennessee State Prison, "On the Inside"

The day of the painting class in KY I started a new canvas, which is an attempt to capture the mood of a photo I took up at my friend Rocky's ridge. Here's the photo:

Sunset on Rocky's ridge

The colors are beginning to work, as I apply layer after layer to the canvas. I think this will be a long effort. Yes, I expect it will. One pervasive challenge is implementing the transition between what is seen and what is not seen until it is painted. Charles says "We artists paint what is seen and what is unseen" and has said that "visual literalists must be the unhappiest people in the world." I smile.

My Life's Love Lee Ann and I went out last night! We were invited to go downtown on a Friday night, and though we don't normally venture out on weekend nights, our friend Michael Sharpe's Sinatra tribute set in the gorgeously decked out bar within the Hyatt Holston House last night was early in the evening, and we wanted to see the show mainly to support him. We were thoroughly entertained! Michael's voice is perfect for the iconic Rat Pack crooner style. Technically on target, he pays effective respect to his phrasings and is pitch-on throughout. I believe that those long pitch-perfect word endings can only be achieved by hours of rehearsal and a perceptive and self-critical ear. The trick in that is to do the trick without it sounding like a trick, and he's certainly mastered it. Michael also brings an infectious joy to his show--a little self-deprecating banter here, a sizable helping of music trivia there, the well-placed prop; he's got it all.

Michael Sharpe in a li'l Happy Holidays pose with my sweetie, Lee Ann

I have a rare day off with my honey today--Tinwings is traditionally closed on Thanksgiving and the following weekend. We have ambitious plans to relax around the house. A little day-drinking may well be involved. A nap. Certainly a nap. 

I hope things are well in your world and I say come on, December, come ON!

November, comin' right up!

 Time's a'flyin'. As I always say, "Time is money and money is time and we ain't got all day."

One of my many bosses at Williams Island Club in North Miami Beach, Florida used to proclaim while stomping his diminutive frame through the about-to-open restaurant, straightening place settings, "It's only a job of work. Get it done!" I was the Club Manager and it never sounded as good in my nondescript Nashville accent as it did in his high-pitched South African one. 

So, I say to me own self this chilly October's end Friday morning, "Get it done."

I performed a proof-of-concept camping road-trip back starting Oct. 17, driving to Montgomery, Texas, that little lake town with its twin city of Conroe, to visit my dear older brother. On the way I stopped outside of Charlotte, TN to have a brief visit with childhood friend John Depriest, after fortuitiously passing his remote house and turning around at the first opportunity to do so. After driving halfway through Arkansas, I camped at Iron Mountain Campground at DeGray Lake, arriving there after 7 hours driving, around dusk, setting up my Oasis tent, sleeping in Casper, my new Kia Soul, on an air mattress in the back, awakening cold and on a deflated air mattress around midnight, blowing it up with the electric pump and pulling it into the tent, turning on a borrowed (thank you, Rocky!) ceramic heater, and awakening snug and warm in my sleeping bag to 36 degree pre-dawn. I broke camp in the dark and headed out to the nearby interstate Cracker Barrel for a big breakfast, only to discover it closed due to an overnight power outage. Around Texarkana, TX the interstate route became obsolete and I hit 300 or so miles of state highways, enjoying the fall colors and everything else about the drive. 

You can thumb through my pics at https://photos.app.goo.gl/E8B3LFXNQWtxJmFeA . It was a good trip in a number of ways, not the least of which was the chance to be with my brother, the other last man standing from our nuclear family, and visiting with old friends along the way. I really enjoyed the drive down to Texas City with Ed and our unproductive but relaxing fishing at "the longest fishing pier in the world," the Texas City Dike.

Fishing at the Texas City Dike

On the way back,  I stopped and had dinner and a spare bed at the home of childhood friend Ross Bandy and his lovely wife Donna. They are retiring together in 2023 and I was able to pass on now-expert advice about this new leg of life, for what it is worth. It's all about scheduliberation, you know. 
Now that I'm back home, I attended my painting class with Master Charles Brindley yesterday and did some more work on my current acrylics project, working from stills from friend Brian Siskind's award winning film, "On the Inside." Here's the film, and you can read more about it at tnstateprisonfilm.com. Thanks to Brian for his permission to screen-grab and paint. 

And here are some snaps of my first OTI painting in progress, on reclaimed 2x12 lumber:

At the very end of class, Charles gave me suggestions for how to approach the bars and I'll be spending the day today on bars, as opposed to in bars, or behind bars, to create the bases for varying washes that will retain the depth of the darkness within the cells and still convey the abandonment of the structure. This'll be fun.

More bars

More bars. I thought about taping for clean lines but the process for building up the negative spaces and tidying up their relationships with the bars is intriguingly meditative. There is much more to do before completion, including fixing that bottom left shadow of open door and thinking about whether the texture for the central open door is what I want.

October? Really?

 Allllllllllrighty, then...

It's early October. I spent some time yesterday putting together a little 41 song playlist of one of my favorite songs, one we covered in Alaska Summer/Summersong back in '77, in The Last Frontier Band in '79, and on the cruise ships in (I think) '81. This new mini-infatuation with listening to versions of songs is made simple by Spotify and I'm having fun with it. If you have Spotify, I suggest listening in the app and sorting it by duration--that way you'll get any remasters/rereleases played back to back for comparison. And there's one lurking in there that's not a cover, but rather a song by the same name. I like to leave those in for fun. Fun fact: the 11+ "The End" Doors masterpiece was included in the search results originally and I almost left it in since in the duration sort it came at the end. Ha.

Listen (might take a moment to load):

 

On other fronts, I had a fun one-night camping experience at Cheatham Lock and Dam last week. I had intended to make it two nights but the first night's low was 46 degrees and the 2nd was predicted to hit 40 and I discovered over a long first night's "sleep" that I needed a little more gear. I have that now, and my upcoming road trip to Texas to see my much-loved bro' will be more comfy camping. It's a 12 hour + drive and I plan to break it up with a night camping at another US Corps of Engineers dam campground. I like dam campgrounds. Dam campgrounds are damn good. Here's the view from the fishing chair outside my new tent. This will soon be a painting.

pano at dusk, cheatham lake (really just a wide spot in the mighty cumberland river)

By the bye, I am loving my painting classes (really an "Open Studio") with Charles Brindley. I learn a little each time I am in the room with him, and the two classes a week for 3 hours duration are perfect. Here are the two pieces, one on canvas on one on upscaled 2x6 discarded lumber, that I most recently completed:

purple vetch, barbed wire, and montana

riders on a piece of brownland farm in franklin

That be all for the mo'. I'm not gonna promise to blog more regularly. Something about scheduliberatedness has made me comfortable with doing it when I do it and not when I don't. You should try it in all kinds of scenarios. It's a dam good thing (sic).

Painting and Learning

 So. I'm very excited about visiting renowned painter Charles Brindley's class at Scarritt-Bennet Center here in Nashville, across from the Peabody at Vanderbilt Campus I attended 'way back in the early '90s . I first met Charles at University School of Nashville's Artclectic, which my wife, Lee Ann, was leading (she did so for 10 years of its biggest growth). I taught at USN for 14 years, and Lee Ann was deeply involved in both, in part because both our beautiful children attended school there and in part because USN was her alma mater. I was immensely impressed by Charles' art--who could see and not be so?

I am not going to copy and paste evidence here, it's copious at his website: Get lost in the man's mastery of visual imagery at his online gallery at cbrindley.com. 

Charles' class info is at https://www.cbrindley.com/classes if you want more information about that. I am at least tentatively planning to enroll in one for the Fall semester to learn from the master and I'm buzzed about it. I haven't taken a class of any kind since graduating from Vanderbilt in 1995, and I am visiting tomorrow to see how they work and to assuage a little anxiety about doing so. We'll see.

I first started painting, again, during the pandemic, of course. I walk my dog every day. Just about to go out after jotting this down. There is a great deal of construction going on in my neighborhood, just like in virtually every neighborhood in Nashville, and people are moving in and out all the time. I keep an eye out in the construction lots and alleys for useful throwaways, and I started making Kountry Kraft signs for my front porch out of discarded 2x10s a couple years ago, first using Sharpie markers and graduating to a beginner's set of acrylic paints. Here's an example:

Hoppy Holidays, yes, a beer reference

Other signs include "Love Trumps Hate," "Only Love," REIMAGINE HOW SCHOOLS WORK," "Happy" (4th of July), "BOO!," "BeKind," and...you get the idea. I recently discarded my "Back 2 School" sign because, well, I ain't never going back. 

I am, however, going to class tomorrow and beginning regular participation twice a week starting September 8, barring some jolting turn-off during tomorrow's recon mission. I don't anticipate that. 

I take a lot of photos. Some are well-documented on my Facebook album, "ThingsOnTheGround." In November of 2021, I had to stop the car on the way down the hill from my dear buddy Rocky's home on the ridge above Little Marrowbone Creek Road to take a photo:

Some time later, likely around December, I took one of my reclaimed 2x10s and spray painted it flat white enamel, then spent the next maybe 3 months painting. On January 8 it looked like this:

and when it was "done," it looked like this:

I sketched it out in pencil, threw a plethora of color at it, mixing as I went, and just kept going until it satisfied me. I also extended its field to the edges of the lumber:

Since then, I've finished paintings from a photo of an ancient cinderblock building a couple blocks from my home and from a pic of a great blue heron perched solemnly atop a condo rooftop in Destin, Florida. I'm now working on a panorama view overlooking the grassy field of Brownland Farm horse ranch in Franklin, TN. I don't see an end to it. I've found the zone a few times where I am one with the brushstroke, intuitively understanding when something is right, or right enough, and smiling. I want that feeling again, often and deep.

Examining Charles Brindley's vast body of work at his website, I see that my own crude work with paints is just that, lacking realism, which is okay, and rudimentarily color mixed, which is understandable; and I know that anything I can learn from him will strengthen my experiences. I also believe I may be onto something with my choice of canvas. Building something meaningful and artistic from a discarded piece of lumber imbues it with something a little magical, I think.

That's all today. Watson is getting a little cranky and it's only getting hotter outside. Rain today though! And thankfully not flooding rain. Climate change is. Peace.

Friday ramblings

Hi. My goal is to be mostly scheduliberated. I can do this.

Let's see. Today is Friday and as of 5:36 this morning I have no appointments, just a loose commitment to Rocky for breakfast in Ashland City. There is no time set for that but it'll likely be early, in the 7 to 8 o'clock range. According to my iWatch it's only 61 degrees out there so an early walk with Watson, my "Australian Healer," is also likely. I primed a few rescued pieces of scrap lumber for painting yeseterday, and I have the image of the eerie cinder block wall mystery exterior door up on both monitors for reference, just waiting for a paintbrush to touch the wood for the first time. One "canvas", 10 1/2" by 5 1/2",  awaits on the tabletop easel I treated myself to last week. I will continue my online mandolin class with Sierra and that's at least an hour, maybe two. I doctored the hot tub chemical balances yesterday but I will check with a test strip today and do that again if needed today, though that's improbable. I may need to go get new kitchen flowers today since the yellow roses I bought and set out three days ago seem to be choking already. None of them has necked but it's in the near future according to their sad look. If the wind remains still out, I plan to finally pull out my drone and get it airborne again. Lots to do.

That's my report for the morning. I will check back here and assess my day in late afternoon. My plan is to make sure I am living healthy, practicing self care, making/creating, and doing just fine without a schedule. My goal is to be mostly scheduliberated. I can do this.

Good? Good.

LATER

Hi again. Immediately after typing the above I went down a rabbit hole at about.me, revising my info to reflect my new status as retired. Contacted Rocky and verified 9am at Cody's. Now I'm off to walk with my best canine friend.

MUCH LATER

Saturday morning. Up late, like right around 7:30, and spent some time at my desk cruising Instagram and posted a pic from the work finished to date on a new painting. I fleshed it out yesterday and added to it today, Just pencil on primed pine 2x6 lumber around 10 or 11 inches wide. Here's the pic:

I'll wash and sponge paint and who knows what all with this one. I love that the lumber piece is flawed/scraped along the top. And I will likely carry the image along the sides and bottom like I did for the goingdown Rocky's driveway painting. I think I'm on to something. At any rate, it's fun, and it's a new body of creative work for me. Ya.

I met Rocky's at Cody's right at  did not do 9. We had eggs over easy, bacon, grits, and biscuits and gravy. A heavy breakfast but it served as lunch as well. I did not do my mandolin class. Instead, I decided to change my strings on my damaged A-5 Gibson mandolin and my father-in-law's Framus classical guitar. That took, friends and neighbors, around 2 1/2 hours to do right. Then it took maybe 45 minutes to play it into keeping a tuning, as strings kept sliding and thankfully finally tightened up. I had to google how to tie classical guitar strings at the bridge. I don't think the beautiful guitar had been restrung in 3 decades or more--my father-in-law had it hanging on his wall and to my knowledge never played it. It all worked, and I then noodled on the thing, improvisationally, for another 45 minutes. Time flies when you're having fun. 

I did treat the hot tub. I did not go buy flowers, though I did toss the old ones out and get the dishwasher run and the kitchen parred up to neatness. Nor did I drone. But look at how many good things I have to choose from tomorrow, and the next day! Today, Lee Ann's home and we're planning a Saturday together. That, I love. 

So, that's a one-shot window into my retirement plan. I will not be doing this sort of blog post often. My retirement plan is: do something creative every day, spend good time walking my old pup, fish when I can, exercise and eat well, be with friends or enjoy my own company as often as I can, and spend time with my lovely love whenever I can. Music. Art. Writing. Gardening. Being. Exploring.

More later.