Remembering my Amazing Mother

Grab your coat and get your hat,

Leave your worries on the doorstep. 

Life can be so sweet

On the sunny side of the street.

Elizabeth Deanne Ibold, born November 10, 1928, at about 3 years old.

My mom, Elizabeth Deanne Ibold Wolff van de Velde, died on May 16, 2018 and I couldn’t manage to write a thing for 6 months. Then I wrote the 1st draft of this post.

Then I stopped again until today. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, 2020 and in 8 days it will be the 2nd anniversary of her death.

Why did it take me so long to be able to write this?

Is this how grief works?

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Despite the fact that her family was not Catholic, Elizabeth Deanne Ibold (now known to her friends as “E-Dee”) went to school at The Sacred Heart Academy in Chicago for 13 years, k-12.

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E-Dee followed her older sister to Depauw University and joined the same sorority, Alpha Chi Omega. Luckily she had naturally wavy hair so that she could easily achieve the permed sorority sister look! She met my father Klaus on a blind date organized by Alpha Chi and his International House at Wabash University.

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In 1950 she married Klaus Heinrich Wolff, a man 13 years her senior, a veteran of the German WWII army. Needless to say her parents weren’t thrilled.

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Their honeymoon in March was spent at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois.

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In 1953 Deanne and Klaus spent a year in Europe, living with his mother and step-father. Germany was still very war-shocked and it didn’t sound like much fun.

My mom loved being a mom, but she was also smart, ambitious and restless in her 1950s role as ‘Mid-Century mommy’.

She opted to stop at 2 children in an era of large families.

She wanted to DO things but her degree in art history wasn’t proving useful. She volunteered far and wide through the 60s and eventually, in the 70s, she settled her passion on the Middlebury Volunteer Ambulance Association. She became an EMT, a crew chief and ultimately attended Dartmouth to become one of the 1st Physician’s Assistants in 1974. It was around this time that she dropped one of the Ns in Deanne and became Deane to my sister and me and almost all her friends.

Her career in medicine focused on women’s health and included dozens of baby deliveries, as well as family medicine, years working for Planned Parenthood and The Shorewell Health Center. She was even Physician’s Assistant to Ben and Jerry at the Charlotte Family Health Center in the mid-80s!

She retired at 60 and changed her specialty to being an extraordinary Granny and an artist in multiple mediums.

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She had a kiln and made many tile paintings like these.

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  with me 1956

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  with Peri 1958

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  with me 1959

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  with Peri and me Christmas 1960

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  with Klaus, Peri and me 1961

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  With Peri, me, and Klaus 1962

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  with Peri and me 1967

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  with me, Klaus and Peri’s doll Paddywhack in 1968

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  with Peri and me 1970

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  with Pumpkin 1977

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  with me Pumpkin, and Flora 1980

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  with me 1984

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  with Brennan 1987

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  with Brennan 1988

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  with Brennan 1989

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  with Rowan 1990

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  with Rowan 1991

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  with Brennan and Rowan 1995

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  with Peri and Brennan 1996

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  with Brennan 1996

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  With Peri 1998

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  with me, Lucy, Brennan, Sabin and Rowan 2008

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  with Brennan 2013

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  with Boo 2013

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  with Marna, Peri, Boo and me 2012

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  with Rowan and me 2012

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  with me 2014

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  with Rowan 2017

She was a fun-loving and affectionate Mommy and Granny to my sister and me and my two sons and she had many beloved dogs over the years.

Deane’s excellent Scottish Shortbread

1 C softened butter

3/4 C confectioners sugar

1.5 C flour

.25 C cornstarch

1/8 t salt

mix, press into a sheet pan, 1” thick

Bake at 325 for 45 mins.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom, and

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.
           ~Dale Evans Rogers

For the love of Goats

Two new kids moved in down the road. They are black and white and have cunning little hooves. Their names are Thor and Clementine.

Goat kids have a certain vibe that enchants me. They are more playful than your average farm animal–leaping, frisking and gamboling, climbing on trees, seesaws and even children! They appear all over the place and my eye and paintbrush are always drawn to them.

A goat on Anegada Island in the British Virgin Islands.

Vermont goat in the snow

A San Francisco goat-tasked with keeping weeds down around the Bernal Heights reservoir.

Thor and Rufus

Old MacDonald and her goat BFF.

A white kid

Clementine

Some Virginia goats

Welcome Spring!

After a long Vermont winter we all get a little blue.

We all need to get outside! We need to leave our coats and hats and boots behind. We need to wear sneakers, ride bikes, see some green, roll in the grass, play ball, ride a pony and dig in the garden. Spring fever is a real thing!

I recently visited the kindergartners at Orwell Village School and talked about writing and art, filling your page and adding detail. They must have soaked it all in–like spring sunshine. Today I received this video, made with the help of their wonderful teacher Josh Martin:

ttps://spark.adobe.com/video/64dt3EAOZWEpqhttps://spark.adobe.com/video/64dt3EAOZWEpq

If this doesn’t get your spring juices flowing, nothing will!

ENJOY!

Today’s the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic

Assignment: Paint a picnic basket for the Henry Sheldon Museum’s 26th Annual  Pops Concert and Fireworks Display summer fundraiser.

Materials: basket, gouache paints, love.

Process: Get an idea, do some research, make a sketch.

You know me and bears, we seem to be inseparable lately.  So it wasn’t much of a leap to choose the lyrics to Teddy Bear’s Picnic as my inspiration. This version by Anne Murray is lovely, but beware–it is a major earworm!

I did a rough little pencil sketch, added some color and was set to do the finish.

I painted a sunny background, leaving the edges of the lid showing.

Once the background was dry I added the bears, flowers and more flowers.

Some bees create the lines for the text: Today’s the Day the Teddy Bears Have their Picnic!

And what is a picnic basket without a yummy surprise inside?

This basket is beautifully lined with padded linen and has the nifty chain to keep the lid at a comfortable angle.

Making the handles jolly with multicolored stripes was the final touch.

Summer seems WAY far away in this neck of the woods, but I know it’ll come someday and If you go down to the woods today, you’d better not go alone!
It’s lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home!
For ev’ry bear that ever there was will gather there for certain, because
Today’s the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic!

 

Joining the team at the 2018 Tunbridge World’s Fair

Teamwork is everything in my business of creating picture books. The author/illustrator team, the author/editor team, the illustrator/art director team, all of the above, plus the marketing team, bookstores, librarians, teachers, parents, grandparents–ALL of us are on the same team–to get good books into the hands of children.

So imagine my pleasure when I was asked by Robert Howe, Tunbridge Fair’s postermeister, to join his team and design the official poster for 2018. The theme is Celebrating Working Teams.

Of course the word Team can mean something different at the fair, but I still took it as a good omen.

The 1st time I went to the Tunbridge World’s Fair was with my parents, back in the early 1970s. We camped at a friend’s farm in nearby Chelsea and drove over to the fair, always held the 1st weekend after Labor Day. In those days there were still girlie shows at this and other Vermont Country fairs.

The Tunbridge World’s Fair was, and still is, a genuine agricultural experience, set in a lovely, narrow river valley.

There are horses, cattle and sheep, pigs, chickens, goats and rabbits proudly on display.  There is a midway with rides and game booths, and all the greasy, sweet fair food you could want.

Nowadays, I go to draw the animals and the people.

So it was no surprise that the poster I chose to design featured both.

I was lucky to be given excellent reference photos by two fair photographers: Nancy Cassidy and Mark Dixon. Drawing from elements of these and my own research material, I created a rough sketch.

Photo by Nancy Cassidy

photo by Nancy Cassidy

photo by Mark Dixon

Once I had a B&W linoleum print,  I painted it with gouache, layered a little painted carousel onto the girl’s tee, and added text in Photoshop.

I began by trying to match this old-timey font, found in the background of a photo, as my poster display type, but it didn’t enhance the finished artwork so I switched to Linolschrift for the finish.

The last adjustment was to eliminate the “gap tooth” on the little girl. The consensus was that it made her look a little too young.

I’m pleased with the finished product. I hope 2018 fair goers are too!

 

 

There’s a Fungus Amungus

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There are mushrooms EVERYWHERE! Days of rain here in northern New England have produced a sprouting, thrusting crop of fungus, some of them edible and choice.

Though I haven’t spotted any Chanterelles, like the ones Pumpkin is picking.

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The shapes and colors of mushrooms make them fun to draw and paint. I have probably drawn them my whole life.

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Lately I’ve been imagining them as tiny, secret houses.

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You can own your own, hand painted mushroom cottage here.

Happy Hunting!

Taking to the Ice

In the summer my front yard is a huge body of water, a playground for boats, swimmers and fishermen.

In the winter that water gets a hard shell of ice and becomes an entirely different playground, a brand new piece of “land” where we can walk, skate, and even drive snowmobiles and pickup trucks. Fishermen set up their shanties, forming cozy little villages.

As children we skated here with our mom and dog Lumpy.

When I illustrated my 1st book in 1983 I remembered times spent skating with my dog.

Cardinals in February from A Year of Birds by Ashley Wolff

During this Christmas break we got some lovely light snow and my sister and I set out to make this our new front yard.

We walked across the lake, following coyote tracks, and noticing where a bird landed, leaving wing and tail marks in the snow.

We made snow angels ,

built a buxom snow maiden,

did donuts,

drank cocktails,

and lost our balance!

Happy New Year.

Keep the wine handy.

We’re going to need it!

If you enjoyed this post, please  follow me here: Ashley Wolff Art on Facebook, my webpage , my Etsy shop, or Instagram. You can follow the blog by hitting the “follow blog” button at the top of the sidebar. 

 

 

 

Frog and Salamander Escort

You are invited to attend the

OTTER CREEK AUDUBON SOCIETY

2016 SALAMANDER ESCORT 

On evenings in early spring with the first relatively warm rains, salamanders and frogs move from upland wooded areas to breeding pools to mate and lay eggs. Often these migrations take the amphibians across roads.  At a site in Salisbury, Otter Creek Audubon and the Salisbury Conservation Commission help these amphibians safely reach their destination, collect data on numbers and species, and raise public awareness of these migrations.

a young escort with a Yellow Spotted Salamander

Important Guidelines for Data Gathering:

 Learn how to identify all the amphibians (we will help you on site).

 Make sure of your identification. If in doubt, ask someone with a clipboard. Do not guess.

 Keep track of how many of each species you move and if they are alive or dead.

 Be gentle with the amphibians. Handle as little as possible, preferably with moist hands.

 Release all amphibians off dirt portion of road onto shoulder in direction they were headed.

 Report your numbers to a data recorder with a clipboard before you start losing track.

 Check under and around your car for amphibians when you leave.

 Please approach the site and leave following the directions above to keep from adding to traffic over the crossing site.

 Park outside the crossing area in the designated location.

 Keep your eyes open for other crossing areas on your drive home and let us know if you find any.

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We did not escort any Eastern Newts, like this one, but I hope to see them later this spring.

If you enjoyed this post, please  follow me here: Ashley Wolff Art on Facebook, my webpage , my Etsy shop, or Instagram. You can follow the blog by hitting the “follow blog” button at the top of the sidebar.

Ghosts in the Sheetrock

Using only a carpenter’s graphite pencil line and a finger to smudge it, one evening I discovered a little fox face peering out of a mudded, sanded seam in the sheetrock. He said “Hi.”

After him ran a cocky hound with a stubby ear,

Followed by a bear who ate all the brownies.

Two birds admired each other,

and a stork drank lemonade, while a mouse preferred harder stuff.

For a brief period my new home progress included vast areas of gray sheetrock and joint compound. Every evening, after the workmen left, I discovered new characters on the walls. Some were rather grumpy.

This fellow’s hat made him feel important,

and this fellow didn’t like his neighbor.

This gent was more genial–

He tried to soothe the worrywart.

But someone was always suspicious or

feeling put out,

Until Molly appeared and told everyone to

“put your lips together and B L O W !”

Finally I discovered myself, holding my new home in my two, cupped hands.

I can’t wait to go home and enjoy it.

I know all those ghosts are still there, under a fresh coat of Marscapone cream paint.