Big Sky at Livermore Winery
Painting by Stacey Gustafson
On Big Sky Livermore Winery
By Paul Chinick
Pink, red, purple, blue
Myriad of colors burst
Wondrous to behold
About Big Sky at Livermore Winery
By Lani Longshore
Lift my face
Watch the clouds
Genghis Khan worshiped the vast blue sky god
My sky goddess
Swirls colors to tantalize
Persuade me my feet
Are not glued to ground
Tilt
Falling is a form
Of flying
Why the sunset is red
By Susan Condeff
At sunset the path of sunlight to the eye is longest
Blue and green wavelengths are removed almost completely
Leaving orange and red to cast a fiery glow
The slow wind blew in malice
Summer’s heat blistered reasons
The joy of blue had left their lives
The newness of green buried
His fears have twisted into bitter emerald
He no longer discerns blue
Their lives heated to redness
Ruby in her eyes
anger played his fiddle
Crimson in her heart
danger shadowed his life
Red sky came
dusty orange clouds
Dragon’s blood
Red river leached from her
And she was no longer breathing fire
Big Sky
By Hector Timourian
grape vines in long narrow rows
sky turns wine color
zinfandel flavor comes forth
Red Craze
By Blake Heitzman
Red sunrise,
Red sunset,
Red noon.
Red sky,
Red land,
Red water,
Who would of thought?
Tuckle-tuckle jalopy, spindly wheels mired in mud.
Who would have foreseen gridlock,
Cities blanketed in smog, and, good Lord,
C-O-Two, the invisible assassin, wraps us like tinfoil on poi.
Scarlet high heeled shoes, slick and shiny, a symbol of liberation,
Body free, mind free, set free, a free spirit.
Red shoes—all the rage.
Coveting cool, men followed in timid burgundy or muddied red-brown.
Red spread shoe to hat and on:
Skirts, shifts, shirts,
Coats, pants, panties, bras, boxers, briefs—socks?
Hats, rust with floppy brims, red with white ribbons.
Caps, white with pink dots,
Red with white dots,
Knit stocking caps, yummy peppermint–pretty enough to eat.
Pink passion peddle-pushers, soft crimson blouses unbuttoned with tails knotted above the navel.
Frilled cherry lace, blossoming up the neck under bouncing locks of auburn.
Suits, burgundy with black strips, ties, gray with burgundy strips.
Humanity crazed by red.
No one foresaw—global chromatic adaptation,
Earth is a chameleon…
Red sunrise,
Red sunset,
Red noon.
Red sky,
Red soil,
Red rocks,
Red water,
Is it safe to drink?
Red-Dirt Memories and Surprises
By Pat Coyle
Ashley’s Joy and Big Sky at Livermore Winery, are Stacey Gustafson paintings posted for the Tri-Valley writers Winterfest Celebration.
In Ashley’s Joy, the young woman’s head is thrown back. Her rich dark brown hair flies out in a loose cascade against the turquoise sky – eyes closed as if laughing, mouth open in a big smile. Blue-white tube top with a curling faint pink upper edge is tight across and above her breasts. Shadows fall from her hair across her neck. Illuminated from the upper left, the right side of her face, neck, right shoulder and upper arm are in shadow. I‘m happy for her, for me. If we could ask, what story would she tell of us of her joy?
I gasped, almost lost my breath, when I saw Big Sky at Livermore Winery. Blue sky and vivid red orange clouds shaded to purple low on the horizon. Small green trees stood at the ends of vineyard rows.
These are reds and oranges I’ve not seen in this valley. Furrows between burnt ochre rows leap out of the canvas with bright turquoise. Another runs cobalt indigo blue straight to the horizon, narrowing in the distance. A thin band of blue separates the earth and sky before the low clouds’ purple froth. Bright luminous orange masses in the center and angles up to the right of the sky, then shades into light rose pink. The whole thing is so intense it takes my breath away.
***
Sitting in my daily morning meditation, I thought again of writing and Stacey Gustafson’s art. We only know of another what they share and show us. I was stunned when I saw the images of these two paintings. Why? Gorgeous and I’m just surprised. I know Stacey from critique group and the funny family-life pieces she now shares in her Patch column and blog.
What other treats does Stacey have for us? Or any of us for each other? It’s delightful to consider the range of expression that our friends, coworkers and acquaintances possess. What else? I’m not at all sure, but I’m glad to have taken a few moments to see all the pieces posted on our writer’s club site. I realize again how pleased I am to be in the company of this group who come together with a shared interest in writing, but as we see, with other gifts and talents as well. I offer thanks to Stacey and to others who share their art. They remind me of these rare and beautiful things our lives are and the multitudes we have inside us.
Reinforcing this point, Joel Lovell’s, January 3, 2013, New York Times Magazine piece, George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You’ll Read This Year, includes this: “… Saunders’ writes in a shed across the driveway from his house, On the shelves there are pictures of him … a great one from his jazz-fusion days of him playing a Fender Telecaster, with white-blond Johnny Winter hair to his shoulders. ‘In our lives, we’re many people,’ he said as he lifted the photo off the shelf.”
***
Stacey’s painting of the rich red dirt of the vineyard evoked my memory of Terry Southern’s Red-Dirt Marijuana: and Other Tastes. Who remembers Southern? His Wikipedia entry reminds us he was an American author, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style. Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the ’50s and contemporary of the Beat writers in Greenwich Village, he also helped change the style and substance of American films in the ’70s. His dark and often absurd satire helped shape sensibilities of several generations of writers, readers, directors and filmgoers. Tom Wolfe credits him as having invented New Journalism and his gift for writing memorable film dialogue was evident in Dr. Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, Easy Rider, and The Magic Christian. His work on Easy Rider helped create the independent film movement of the ’70s.
Southern was part of the cultural and personal transformation that impacted me from the mid-‘60s on, along with other black humor writers – J. P. Donleavey, Bruce Jay Friedman, et al. But Southern and his zany writing perhaps impacted me the most.
***
Days later, that intense red burnt ocher orange that Stacey used for the vineyard rows, flashed images to mind of Wyoming, forty-five miles northeast of Gillette. My family worked on a cattle and sheep ranch there, and I went to a one-room school from fifth grade until I started high school. Red bluffs and outcrops and pines made for rugged country. The red earth was part of it. Some of the year I rode horseback eight miles to the school, through this rough landscape, alive to the smell of horse, pine and sage, and the colors of this land.
A friend, just back from vacation in Hawaii, talked about the intense red dirt contrasting with rich greens of jungle foliage. Kauai is known for its red dirt, rusted volcano rock, turned into dirt over millions of years. It has spawned a line of clothing, Real Dirt Shirt Hawaii, organically dyed in 100% pure red dirt.
In October 2012, the first-ever in-depth analysis of Martian dirt from NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, revealed a mineralogical makeup similar to that of Hawaiian volcanic soils.
Stacey’s images evoked all these strange and mysterious connections and pathways. Speak memory.
***
At our December Tri-Valley writers meeting, I was in the lobby waiting to see if the staff could find some batteries for the lapel mic when Stacey walked in. I greeted her and spoke to her about her paintings. I told her it just blew me away to see them on the site, they were so powerful and I had no idea she painted.
She looked pleased. She said she’d been painting since she was eight years old or in eighth grade (I can’t remember which). Stacey found it involves a lot of the same creativity as writing, though writers were more fun, less inclined to take themselves so seriously. The young woman is her daughter. The vineyard painting is very large.
I told her of my recent project of learning to draw and writing about it. I’m just beginning, but I want to incorporate drawing as another element in my journaling, travel and other writing. She encouraged me to keep at it. Now Stacey knows that about me.
Fire and Spire