I haven’t posted any poetry for awhile, so here are two that I rather like. They are from “Modern Mongolian Poetry”, which was published by The State Publishing House in 1986. This was before the “changeover” from socialism, which started in 1990. So there will be 20th anniversary celebrations in Mongolia next year. Both photos were taken by me on my July trip to Mongolia.
AUTUMN ON THE STEPPE
The boundless and spacious wasteland
Spreads yellow; and full-grown grasses sway
Grasshoppers, the world is completely silent,
Only the cranes soar the sky.
From the brown-yellow surface of the golden world
A scent rises, pleasant but strange,
And on the stone-mans’ forehead
Hoar-frost melts like beads of sweat.
B. Rinchen
IT’S AN HONOUR TO BE HUMAN
“I am a human being.” These simple words
Have a ring of dignity and pride.
That’s why
I think that it is the highest honour
To be a human being
In body and soul.
I do not like it, I hate
To be flame in the heat,
Ice in the cold.
But to warm the one freezing to death,
To cool the one gasping in the heat-wave,
Not to flatter the powerful,
Not to insult the weak,
To lend a helping hand to those who stumble,
To encourage those who suffer-
That is how to be a human being.
If you’ve carried dignity and worth
As a banner of struggle,
If you’ve never compromised with cunning and baseness,
Buuz is one of the most popular foods in Mongolia. They are a small, round steamed “dumpling” with a mutton or beef filling. Mongols make (and eat) zillions of them for their holidays. Just for fun we had a “buuz party” a couple of weeks ago. One of the guests, and the chief buuz maker, was a young Mongol woman, Ganaa, who I met when I advertised for a Mongolian language tutor before my 2006 trip. Her husband is an American who she met when he was teaching English over there in the Peace Corps a few years ago.
I told everyone at the party the Mongol joke that I posted here last week as we scarfed down many buuz and some delicious salads. Ganaa then told us a story about how a family is all sitting around a table eating buuz. There is only one left on the platter when, suddenly, the lights go out. After a short time, the lights come back on and the solitary buuz is gone. Everyone looks at everyone else. Who took the last buuz?
This has apparently been a running joke in Mongolia for many years.
Here’s a photo of the first buuz I ever saw.
I was in western Mongolia, on my way back from the Khomiin Tal tahki reintroduction site. We stopped in a soum center (county seat equivalent) for lunch at this little buuz stand. The ladies made them to order and they were delicious! They were also somewhat bemused by my desire to take a picture of something so utterly ordinary (to them, of course). This was the first real Mongolian food I had ever had.
One of the many things I enjoy about traveling to other countries is learning what is considered humorous and to what extent it overlaps with what Americans find funny. This last July in Mongolia, I finally got a chance to explore this with my guide, who spoke very good English. I asked him about Mongol humor and he told me this joke (paraphrased to read smoothly):
An old man was sitting in his ger on a cold evening. The door opened (Mongols don’t knock. They just go in.) and a young man entered. The elder offered the young man milk tea and aruul. They sat and chatted. It grew late. The old man pointed to a mattress on the floor and asked the young man if he wanted a blanket. No, no, the young man said, he would be fine. “Are you sure?” said the old man, “It’s going to be cold tonight.” “No”, replied the young man, very firmly, “I will be fine.” “I can give you a blanket.” “No, I don’t need a blanket.” “Very well then.”
Morning came, the old man woke up, looked over and saw that the young man was lying under the mattress.
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Further contributions to what I hope will become a collection of Mongol jokes and humor would be greatly appreciated. Please send them to sfox at foxstudio dot biz.
Here are four more new paintings to go with the two I posted last week. I had a problem with the background in the last one and thought I’d show how it was and how I changed it.
Heading Down For Breakfast 8x10" oil on canvasboard (price on request)
Here is one of the takhi (Przewalski’s horse) that I saw when I was at the Khomiin Tal reintroduction site in western Mongolia in September of 2006. It was first light a group of horses were coming down out of the hills to graze.
Mongol Horse #4; Afternoon Graze 9x12" oil on canvasboard (price on request)
This was a harem stallion that I saw at Ikh Nartiin Chuluu last fall. He was also the model for Mongol Horse #2. It amazes me that, given the extreme environment that they are exposed to year in and year out, that these tough small horses grow such long manes and tails. But they do.
Top O' The Morning 10x8" oil on canvasboard (price on request)
I saw this Rocky Mountain bighorn lamb with his mother near Tower Campground in Yellowstone National Park a couple of years ago. They were by the side of the road, which lacked interest as a setting, to say the least. So I moved him.
Catching the Morning Light 9x12" oil on canvasboard (price on request)
This argali ram, along with five others, gave me an eyeful on my first morning at Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature Reserve in Mongolia in July. I wanted to work on capturing the quality of light without worrying about painting too many animals, so decided to start with a small painting. I had one idea for the rocks as you’ll see below but, on further review, something wasn’t working. Time to get out the scraper. What do you think was wrong? Answer below the second image.
First versionDetail of scraped out area
There were a couple of problems. One, in getting into the grooviness of painting the rocks, I completely lost track of my light source. The rocks are in full light, but are on the same plane as the ram. Buzzz. Second, I tried to use what I knew to design the rocks more or less from memory, which resulted in a boring, distracting (what an awful combination!) set of shapes. I went back to the rocks that were in the original photos and saw that they were much less rounded, which provided a needed contrast with the curves of the ram.
Taking a break from painting for the next week, so y’all are going to have to hang tuff to see the next step of the big argali painting. Tomorrow I’m off to the opening weekend festivities surrounding “Art and the Animal”, the annual majored juried show held by the Society of Animal Artists, of which I’m proud to have been a member since 2002. As those of you who follow this blog know, earlier in the year I learned that I had finally gotten into the show after coming up short for five or six years. I’ll try to blog a little of it while I’m there.
In other (great) news, along with some more pictures of the felt work:
Felt purse with horse motif
Yesterday I had an eagerly anticipated phone conversation with Gana Wingard, the Mongolian scientist (she’s married to an American attorney who specializes in natural resource law) who was my translator and liaison for my meetings with the herder women who live in and around the Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve. I came home on the 30th and she stayed to run the Earthwatch team, so I was out of touch for almost a month with anyone who could tell me what happened next.
The women went home the same day we left for Ulaanbaatar, but most of them plus more local men and women, came back on August 5 to clean out the spring that serves both the herders and the research camp. They also created some spots for the argali to drink.
Two physicians came and provided information and advice on infectious diseases like swine flu.
The Bag Governor and his wife (a “bag” is the smallest administrative unit in Mongolia) were there, too. Amgalaanbaatar, or Amgaa, who leads the argali research from the Mongolian side, gave them and the other local people who had not been at original meetings a briefing about the new association “Ikh Nart Is Our Future”. He also brought, by request, 3 meters of good thin felt from Ulaanbaatar that the ladies, according to Gana, very carefully divided up square foot by square foot.
Ibex purse custom made for a Chinese researcher studying argali; I did the drawing on the felt; the writing is old Mongolian script which, I think says "Ikh Nart" and the Mongol name they gave her "Ibex" or Yamar
The director of the association, Boloroo, was very happy to receive a laptop computer, which she badly needed for the association’s recordkeeping. The computer was given to her by the research project on the condition that I find a replacement, which is something I’ll be working on. If anyone reading this can donate or knows where I could buy reasonably, a good quality fairly new laptop, please let me know.
There has been no time for Amgaa to research prices for the felt press, so that has had to be put off until October.
Ikh Nart formalized a sister park relationship with Anza-Borrego State Park last fall. I haven’t really met any of the park people yet, but they have donated a fair amount of equipment and help with things like signs. Amgaa visited them in California in January, his first trip to the USA. Six people from the park were at Ikh Nart while Gana was there with the Earthwatch team. Boloroo came to the camp on a motorbike with a selection of craft items. The Anza-Borrego people bought over 100,000 tugrik (about $100) worth for themselves and as gifts. As you can imagine, I was thrilled to hear about this. Two of the American Earthwatch staff members also purchased over $150 of crafts. This means that at least a small income is already flowing to the women who showed up and worked so hard while I was there.
Eyeglass case; closure and stars from notions and extra craft things I brought as gifts
There are two more Earthwatch teams this year and Boloroo plans to visit each one. She has also contacted my guide who was interested in commissioning traditional felt rugs and it looks like something will happen there, too. All in all, a terrific beginning. It was hard not to have been there for what came next, but I’m looking forward to seeing everyone next year!
One woman also brought this child's khurem, or jacket, that she made, wanting to sell it because it was too big. All the ribbon decoration was done by hand. The jacket body is blue wool.
I started to write a reply to the (partially quoted) comment below and realized that the topic was worthy of its own post since, as you will see, I have strong opinions about the subject (Who, me?).
“I found your process very interesting…especially because I tend to ‘jump right in ass-first’ and not do any studies to figure out composition etc. I have no idea why I hate doing that…perhaps I am just impatient to get to the fun. of course this does cause problems!!…..Does Photoshop help you a lot in planning paintings? I have never once used it, I must admit…..You can re-position items in your photo using Photoshop? Man, Maybe I need to get a Photoshop For Dummies book!”
My response, which is intended to address the general issue, and not in any way the individual commenter who I quote above, is as follows:
I never use Photoshop for planning paintings in the way you describe. IMHO, it’s a pernicious trend that’s been used by way too many artists as an excuse to avoid the hard work of actually learning to DRAW.
It’s also very obvious a lot of the time when that’s how a picture has been put together. It looks like a bunch of bits with no cohesion. Animals that look pasted onto the background. Animals the wrong scale. Animals in a position that is impossible given the perspective of the setting. Light sources that don’t match. Uncorrected distortion from shooting the subject with a wide angle lens in which you end up with a back end view of something like an elk with a tiny butt that has an overly large head sticking out of it. Slavish adherence to the reference. Lack of variety of edges,with every edge same from front to back. No emotional punch or a point of view that’s unique. No exercise of the craft of painting. Just tedious rendering of Every Single Thing In The Photograph.
I’ve been in workshops watching artists beaver away at moving an animal around in a landscape on their computer and then transferring it directly to their canvas. Kind of pathetic, really. There’s a power and a mastery that comes from entering your subject directly into your brain by drawing it over and over. It’s how you learn what something looks like. Photoshopping short-circuits that. Look at who the top wildlife artists are and have been. They can all draw like crazy. Some stay with highly detailed work, like Carl Brenders, or push the limit of looseness, like Julie Chapman, but being able to draw lets them make the choice.
Copying a Photoshopped composition without having solid drawing skills cheats the artist out of all that is most important in the creative process, i.e. the creativity.
A painting is really just a series of judgments and choices. The better an artist gets at those, the better the paintings. Photoshopping images into a montage short-circuits this part of the painting process, too.
I realize that the struggle is a drag, but there isn’t any easy way to do good work that I’m aware of. The best work comes out of the struggle. I long ago lost count of the times I hit the wall on a painting, slid down to the floor, picked myself up and soldiered on until I broke through. It doesn’t happen as often now, but I know it could happen at any time.
What I do is go through a lot of paper. What you see in my posts are just a small sample. Since one of the reasons I’m an artist to begin with is that I always loved to draw from the time I was a little kid, it would defeat a main purpose of the exercise for me to eliminate that step. I also use a mirror to check my drawing for accuracy. It’s almost magical how errors jump out at you. Can’t use Photoshopped photographs for that.
I’ll just flatly say it- If you want to be any good, much less excel, as a painter of animals (or any other representational subject, for that matter), learn to draw. And draw live animals whenever possible. Period. No excuses.
Mongolia Photo of the Week
Start of national Naadam ceremony at Sukhbaatar Square, Ulaanbaatar; The band
I’ve been back a week now. Something special happened on this, my fourth trip. A lot of things came together for me and I was able to experience Mongolia and connect in ways that I hadn’t on previous trips, even though something kept driving me to return.
Some of it was simply gaining a familiarity that made this trip by turns exhilarating, relaxing and just plain fun, instead of low-level stressful. A lot of it was the two people I traveled with, Khatnaa, my guide for the first nine days, and Gana,with whom I traveled to Ikh Nart, who answered my questions with consideration and honesty, and helped me start to understand what it is to be a Mongol. But, mostly, I felt like the land itself let me in and then offered up treasure after treasure.
I’ll share some of those treasures over the next few posts. Today, it will be images of where Mongolia really starts – the land.
I love and grew up in forests, but traveling across the steppe on the earth roads is one of the things I most miss already.Small lake with demoiselle cranes in lower leftTahilgat HairhanLightning storm, Arburd Sands ger campKherlen Gul valley, morning light, Gun-Galuut Nature ReserveKherlen Gul and east slope of Baits Uul, morning light, Gun-Galuut Nature ReserveKherlen Gul valley, summer day, Gun-Galuut Nature ReserveRainbow over ger, Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature ReserveStorm light, Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature ReserveHorse and rider, early evening, Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature ReserveAspens amid the rocks, early evening, Baga Gazriin Chuluu Nature ReserveOncoming storm, Red Rocks ger camp, Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature ReserveRock formation, Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature ReserveMoonrise, Ikh Nartiin Chuluu Nature Reserve
My trip to Ikh Nart was amazingly successful. It seemed like all the stars aligned for my three days of meetings with the women who want to start a crafts cooperative.
It’s going to take a bit to sort it all out and write it down coherently, but the punchline is that they got the word out, fourteen women took a five day felt workshop a month or so ago, and, when they showed up at the research camp (a half hour early), their new Director, Boloroo, handed me a fourteen page proposal and the ladies spread almost two dozen felt craft items out on the tables we’d set up.
To say that we were off and running would be a major understatement. The ladies even had a name for their group- “Ikh Nart Is Our Future”- ready for my approval. I approved. Immediately.
I had purchased four meters of felt in UB to give them and, in three days, all of that was turned into slippers, purses, a large rug and a variety of other things.
I also brought the fabric for them to make del for my husband and I. They finished both of them, fully lined and all the fastenings made by hand, sewn on manual sewing machines and ironed with old irons heated on a propane stove, in three days.
The next step will be to work out the details of the $800 loan that they have requested to buy a felt press, since their intention is to make the felt themselves, not buy factory-made.
Gana Wingard, the biologist who made the trip with me as translator and liaison, was as blown away as I was at how much effort they had put into this. We were going to go out early and late to look for argali and ibex, but never had the time. The schedule and pace was set by the women and it was non-stop. I did see and photograph some argali on the way into the reserve and on the way out.
To Jeff Whiting and everyone at AFC- I can absolutely guarantee you that you have gotten your money’s worth and then some for awarding me this grant. There are single mothers and poor families who will be benefiting for years to come because you made it possible for me to go to Ikh Nart.
Here’s a few photos:
Argali ewe on rockThe ladies arrive at the research campLaying out Mongol felt rug designLadies working on felt projectsMe with new friendSewing my delA felt purse with Ikh Nart patch which was given to me as a giftReady for customers; eleven Aussies, as it turned outA "maikhan" or summer tent; me in my new del with the AFC FlagGroup shot, including Aussie tour group membersFour argali that we saw as we left the reserve this morning
But first, when we got back to UB, I needed to go by the Nomadic Journeys office and pay for the trip. Jan Wigsten, who I worked with to plan my itinerary, was in and he spent about a half hour with Hatnaa and I chatting and kind of de-briefing us about how the trip had gone. It was pretty windy when we went back to the car and by the time we were halfway down Peace Ave. on the way to the hotel, it had started to rain. By the time we pulled into the Narantuul’s parking lot it was……hailing. Hard. The water level in the parking lot was already rising, so, once again, Hatnaa positioned the car so that the back end faced the storm and we sat for about 20 minutes right by the entrance ramp to the hotel door, waiting for it to stop or at least just go back to rain.
We finally got me and my stuff inside and I got my long hot shower. I called one of the Mongolian scientists that I’m working with, Amgaa, and he was free for dinner. He came over to the hotel and we walked a short way down the street to a restaurant that serves Mongolian food. At that point, neither of us knew whether or not Gana Wingard was going to make it in.
But she called the next morning and said the flight from Seoul went with no problems. The storm had cleared out. She came over to the hotel with her nephew, who is in his third year of studying biology at the University. We all went to lunch and then braved the notorious Black Market, now called the Narantuul Market. Nothing illegal goes on there except pick-pocketing. The drill is to take nothing in with you except your money, which you hold in your hand. The market was busy, but not crowded and we had no problem at all. The best way to see it is to go in with no money and just walk around. Needless to say, I don’t have any photos.
It’s a huge covered area with stalls selling everything. Our mission was to buy three or four meters of felt for the herder women to experiment with since we think that they can do well making traditional Mongolian felt carpets to sell. I also bought all the fabric needed for them to make del for myself and my husband.
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The driver picks me up at 9am this morning. We then pick up Gana and head south to Ikh Nart. I will be back in UB sometime in the afternoon of the 28th. Gana has been told that it is very, very hot at the reserve. We will do our argali watching in the early morning and in the evening and have our meetings with the herder women during the day. Fortunately, I have found that the same felt covering that keeps a ger warm in cold weather, also keeps them reasonably cool when it’s hot. And the nights can be quite cool. I might even need my down sleeping bag.
I hope to post again at least once before I come home on the 30th.
Susan Fox, American Artist 