The Lonely Robot

Camp Pendalouan

In 1984, I spent the summer on the Camp Pendalouan staff in Montague, Michigan.  In addition to leading songs about the great ship Titanic around the campfire, walking through quaking bogs and marshes full of mud,  swimming every day in Big Blue Lake, I found myself teaching sailing and minding various cabins full of kids. 

I did the same again in the spring and summer of 1985, except this time I taught "nature lore", which basically meant we walked around the camp grounds to see what grew there, made tea from sassafras trees, and watched snakes eats the frogs and toads we caught around Big Blue Lake.  Great stuff.

I still say it was the best job I ever had.

This guy, Eddie Boersma, was on the staff, too.  He was always the guy with the camera, either still or Super 8, recording memories of the summer.  He was 70 or so when I worked there, and like most of the staff, we became friends.

Last year, at the age of 97, Eddie passed away.  When I learned that he had worked at Pendalouan pretty much until his final days, and that he had been there since the 1920s(!!), I was gobsmacked.  And kinda jealous.  Eddie spent his days doing what he loved, and wow what a mark he left on the thousands of kids who met him over the 70 years at camp.  

My boss at the camp back in the day was a guy named Daryl.  Daryl posted the news about Eddie on Facebook, and let the community know that there was a Eddie Boersma Memorial Fund being established in his memory, with the intent of helping kids get their most of their Pendalouan experience.

Having more time than money, I thought it would be a good idea to do a fund-raising print.  Daryl thought so too.  So I got to work.  I started with this flag, which I won on an e-bay auction a few years ago, trolling through the offerings looking for bits of nostalgia.  I think the pennant dates to the 1940s, and probably one just like it hung on Eddie's wall at the time:

Instead of the Y logo, I used the picture of Eddie above, which Daryl sent to me, and incorporated into the design. 

 

 

I printed 40 of them, making the prints at 8"h x 18"w, in order for them to be readily framed.  Here is the result:

I think I was able to capture his likeness :)  I really like the simplicity of the print, and am excited to get it into Daryl's hands for his fund-raising efforts.  I made a special one, number 1 of 40, for an auction.

 

I use watercolors for my hand-painted prints.

And here is the final result:

 

I am really honored that I got the chance to contribute to the memory of such a memorable man.

A Commission for a Painting

Here are some shots of the painting I just finished, commissioned by a collector in Atlanta. While I have painted this before, this painting is much larger -  60" wide by 30" high - and I really enjoyed working it at this size.  Like most of my work, it began with a photo.  I took this one in February 2008, while walking along the frozen shores of Lake Michigan near my hometown of Muskegon:

 

I ordered the canvas online at French Canvas.  They construct them in every imaginable size and build them to last.  

My first step was to paint a neutral gray background, then give it the splatter treatment to break it up a bit:

 

Next, I chopped in some tree forms by painting the negative space with some light blue:

When that was done, I painted in the shapes of the trees:

They needed branches, so those came next:

The thing that struck me about the scene was how a layer of snow had plastered itself on the trees, only in the direction of the wind coming from the lake.  So when I was painting white on the black trees, I kept on thinking about that:

Breaking up the white, playing once again with the negative space.  I added shadows on the ground, too, the same way.

 

The last step was to make the shadows on the ground more interesting:

 

When it was finished I signed it with my initials:

 

And then smiled for the camera:

 

April will be a big painting month.  I am going to work on about 20 smaller paintings for a show in May.  I'll be blogging about it here.