Thirty-Year Field Trip

Kim Cardoso

Waking in the one room cabin, I am reminded of the only time I lived alone. It was in an old house in north Baltimore. My bottom floor unit had a screen door that opened to the garden. The woman who lived upstairs had changed her name to a color, and I had a studio in the carriage house out back. My workbench was sturdy and had everything exactly where I needed it because my grandfather built it from my design. I collected loose cobblestones, railroad nails, tobacco pallets, and beach glass. I had a place for everything and time in my life to listen to their direction. I was a 23-year-old metalsmith embedded in a thriving art scene and considering an M.F.A. in sculpture, when I instead heeded the calling to become a midwife.

After a cross-country move and two decades of living, in 2013, I got reacquainted with myself at a weekend encaustic workshop with Sue Stover. Today, I live with three people and six animals and paint when I’m not seeing patients as a midwife and nurse practitioner at a community health clinic.

It is possible to create art one paint stroke at a time, chopping onions, or calling a patient with a diagnosis in between yellow and blue, but it requires determination. Needing time to focus, I applied for a 2021 Project Grant from International Encaustic Artists. My goals were to be alone and paint big. I knew the support would remove a barrier and, more importantly, keep me accountable.

Supplies

Gesso panel

I had no map on navigating five days of painting, so my residency started like most uncharted journeys - with delays. As my Airbnb favorites list grew, the search for the perfect place and date - and the unfamiliar feeling of putting myself first - held me back. Like a blank page, it took extreme efort to begin despite hearing my own patient recommendations, “Schedule time for yourself, no matter how small.”

Accountability kicked in, and I chose a miner’s cabin centered in the rolling, granite and oak studded hills I have loved since I moved to California.

My packing list grew as the date approached. I would travel on my birthday, the timely gift of self care not unnoticed. In October 2022, when I put the wood panels in my car, I forced myself to put a lot of the small ones back. I said out loud, “Go big. Go big in time and ideas.” I grabbed a bag of frozen soup and some veggie burgers about to meet their expiration date, left, and then had to turn around for my extension cord. When I was only two hours away from this experience that I had imagined for so long, I felt fear, not freedom. Was I going to be authentic? Was I going to focus on play and not production? Did I prepare enough encaustic medium? I had never watched a 4 x 3 foot panel absorb it. I should have asked someone how much it takes. Planning for this residency a year earlier, with a bank of cataloged feelings, I imagined creating or completing a body of work with my SUV stufed with paintings on the drive home. It unfolded in another way.

On the first quiet morning in Jamestown, CA, the sun rolling over the hills and touching my feet on the wood floor, I remembered the generous feeling of creative focus I had in my carriage house studio 30 years ago.

I began in my journal. “Abstract art is hard.” I can draw a person or a pear. To procrastinate, I often do just that, but I make art to step back from the places where I feel overstimulated and deeply moved. My work does not call out the pain and conflict I witness at work and in the world; it seeks a remedy.

I need to capture the awe of watching time change the colors of the hills, the joy of discovering a patch of moss, and the comfort of getting into bed at night knowing I’ve done my best. These moments are my impetus for abstraction because they are hard to capture.

Donuts, Encaustic and pencil on paper, 12 x 12 in One of the first of a new series I started on my field trip. It's from drone photography taken by my teenage son.

On the second day, I sat with a large rock. I took in the view of the long valley of mature oak and wondered what animals take shelter there. I sketched and photographed the valley, then I took a rubbing with graphite on newsprint. I wrote, “This rubbing is beautiful! It is art all by itself!” I waxed over it. I transferred the rubbing onto wax. Later, I covered a stone with encaustic medium. I was listening to the rocks.

On the third day, I decided, “Today I will tackle the big panel. I've been struggling with committing to a subject.” Over the days, I took myself out to lunch, put my feet in an icy river, and explored the mouth of a gold mine. And I painted, oh, did I paint!

Each day had no map, but the journey always led back to me.

On the last day, I wrote about the big paintings, “Now that I've done the first, the rest are not so scary.”

In the year since my time in the Sierra Foothills, a time I now call my Field Trip, I continued making and also exhibiting the 1,000 Series which takes its roots in that physical and inner landscape. No longer afraid to go big or schedule time to create, I rented a studio outside my home, where I find my focus three days a week or more. Now, instead of chopping onions while I heat up the paints, I look around at my beach rocks, potted succulents, and works in progress, and I wait for their direction.

How Not to

Forget, Encaustic, oil, graphite on wood, 36 x 36 in From the 1,000 Series that inspired the residency location… which inspired the work!

My Rental Criteria

• Good ventilation and deck or patio

• Good light

• A workspace

• An inspiring view and location

• A simple design aesthetic

• Not too many stairs

• A safe feeling

• In my price range

• Less than 4-hour drive from home

• Privacy (I didn’t want the owner or others stopping by to talk)

Packing List

• Tarps

• Craft paper, cardboard, old newspapers, aluminum catering lids to protect surfaces, picnic table clips, and blue tape

• Fire extinguisher (if not supplied)

• Fan

• Bag for trash to take home

• Extension cords

• Folding side table

• Box of gloves

• Apron

• Paper towels

• Medium, encaustic pigments, oil sticks, butane, torch, brushes, carving tools, empty mixing tins

• Wood panels

• Heavy watercolor paper

• Sketchbooks

• Low tack purple tape

• Gesso

• Collage materials

• Inspiring art book journal

• Bluetooth speaker

• Camera

• Tripod

• Chargers

• Baggies/containers for objects and samples

• A cleared schedule

• A goal

• A curious and flexible mind

• A loving heart

Prep Work

• Tape and gesso the wood panels

• Make medium

• Get fresh supplies

• Research the area

• Print stuf

• Plan food. Bring all to heat up and plan on a meal out every day or so.

Pictures of my grandfather, Melvin Hildebrand, and I from 1998, not too long after I shipped the bench he built for me from Maryland to California. These are from a trip the two of us took to Alaska, when I finished my midwifery training.