charlottehoffman.com Blog

From 7am at the dealership to 7pm arriving home.

Yesterday we drove down to Fresno.  Our main reason for being in Fresno was for David to photograph Valerie Runningwolf’s paintings.  Our ‘check engine’ light had been on for a while so David called the dealership to make arrangements to have the light checked.  We decided to arrive at the dealerships around 7am, this meant leaving the house by 6am.  When I got up at 5am I could see the sky was overcast.  The temperature was in the mid 40’s.  It was suppose to be warm in Fresno.

I was hoping for a spectacular sunrise but there were too many clouds blocking the sun.  The picture below was the most dramatic lighting as the sun rose above the Sierra Nevada.  I took the picture looking out David’s dirty window, between him and the steering wheel.  Not a quality picture but a nice reference photo.

There were wonderful clouds all the way down to the valley.  I liked the soft morning colors of the landscape with the expressive clouds above….again shot through the window of the car as we drove down the highway.

We arrived at the car dealership shortly after 7am.  Two and a half hours later the car was washed, the check engine light turned off, the bill paid to turn the light off, we were ready to go.  We came up with a list of activities to keep us busy till our 1:30 appointment with Valerie.  It had sprinkled while we were in the waiting room but the air temperature was comfortable. 

We went to a camera store, David’s choice.   Then we mutually decided to go to a new art gallery, the ‘Peppertree Gallery’.  We arrived at the gallery shortly after 11 but it was closed despite the hours stating it was open.  We peaked at the art through the windows, waited a bit but no one arrived to open the gallery.  We left the gallery, bought lunch and took it back to the gallery where we sat in the car, ate our food and looked at the artwork.  The sparrows provided moving entertainment.  The clouds had been breaking up and the air was quite warm.  We finished lunch and decided to buy some potting soil, my choice.  I had bought pots to grow vegetables but forgot to buy potting soil.  We then went to a bookstore and looked around until it was time to meet with Valerie at Gallery 25.   By then it was hot.  I’ve been used to pull over sweaters, 77 degrees felt like 99.

We fed coins into the parking meter in front of the gallery but the meter didn’t work correctly.  The city has quite a scheme going.  Put in a coin, allotted time registers, if you add more than 2 coins, the time doesn’t change after 2 so you just donated extra money.  We did this twice before we learned to only insert 2 coins.

I love Valerie’s work.  It’s emotional, spiritual, earthy, symbolic, it resonates with the inner core of your being.  At one point I asked if she had taken pictures of the show.  She hadn’t so I retrieved my camera from the car and took pictures.  They are all taken with natural light.  David had the track lights off since he was taking pictures of specific pieces.  Her show comes down this weekend.  Valerie’s work is carried by Timberline Gallery.

On the way home from Fresno I took more pictures out the car window.  The cloud in the middle looked like a leaping elephant with it’s trunk in the air.  I love the trees’ greens this time of year.  The variety of budding leaves and catkins give them colors of bronze, yellow greens, olive greens, gold greens, rust.  The buckeye provide green greens.  All these greens are mixed with grey greens of various shrubs and rich ochre and red hues of damp earth creating a rich tapestry.  Once all the trees have leafed out, summer dust has settled on the trees and earth dries to dull colors, the greens become homogenized, losing all the brilliant variations.

We stopped at Williams Gallery West on our way home.  I was given the painting below as an Easter gift by the owner of the gallery.  It’s a watercolor by Carol Lee Rayle, a fellow member of the Sierra Artists Co-Op Gallery.  Since I like chickens Jon thought of me when he saw the painting.  After we left the gallery we went grocery shopping, finally arriving home at 7pm.

The closing evening sky was beautiful.  I saw this out my art room window and raced outside to take a picture.  I thought the color was finished, put my camera into the house and went to put the chickens away for the night.  As I emerged from the coop the clouds were hot pink!  A wonderful scene to end a long day.