Pages

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Echo, Echo

About to exit our west gate in the woods - running free.

An open letter to a master dog trainer:

Bruce,

     Thanks again for training us to train what you called an “alpha-active pointy-eared bitch.” Echo has become the great dog she was born to be and is the sweetest German shepherd we’ve ever known. Not a day goes by without her walking over to snuggle her head into our laps and have her ears scratched. We love her – thanks for that, too. It would not have worked out that way without your guidance.
     There’s bad news – terribly bad. Echo’s been off her food a bit, losing a little weight maybe, stopped laying on her side to sleep, and her breathing sometimes sounded a little raspy. Then one afternoon, running up the bank by the creek, Echo lost consciousness, tipped over like she was dead. That was a Saturday. We made a vet appointment for first thing Monday morning.

     You’d have been proud of Echo. We park at the vet’s, and I have her “heel” and “sit” outside so that Echo knows she’s working. We “heel” into a waiting room full of misbehaving dogs. Echo sticks to my side as we enter and we walk together to the scale where I turn a sharp right. Echo turns with me, stepping onto the scale. “Echo, sit!” Echo sits on the scale, her back to the yapping and barking. Seventy pounds – Echo has lost weight.
     “Echo, heel.” I spin away from the scale and march to the desk to check in. Echo glances at a Lab that wants to sniff noses (or something), but she turns right with me and sits on command with her back to the big black fella with the grizzled muzzle. I see her scan the room out of the corner of my eye. A fat cocker spaniel pulls on his leash, trying to get to Echo. Echo sits at alert but doesn’t make a move.
     We check in. “Heel.” I turn left this time. Echo scoots backward to clear room for me, and together we stride across the room to the last empty corner. The cocker lunges as we pass and a mutt that looks half Chihuahua rushes us yapping and snarling. Echo doesn’t flinch. I turn right on my heel and spin back to face the room. “Sit!” Echo turns with me and lands sitting, ears up, eyes bright, as alert as only a German shepherd can be. I reach down and pat her chest. “Good girl, Echo.
     The guy pulling back on the choking cocker says, “That’s a beautiful dog you got.”
     I smile and nod.
     The Chihuahua owner scoops her shivering mutt up and sits back in her chair. “He’s sure well behaved.”
     I nod. “We’re still working with her.”

     I stand in the corner. Echo sits. We wait for a spell until we’re called.
     “Echo, heel.” We walk across the room as one.
     A vet-tech reaches for the leash. “I’ll take her.”
     Echo looks over her shoulder as the vet-tech leads her into the back.
     “Be a good girl, Echo.”

     X-rays show a greatly enlarged heart and fluid on Echo’s lungs. Together the swollen organs push her esophagus up against her spine – the raspy breathing and difficulty eating and laying down. They don’t do a planned EKG, fearing that sedation will kill her.

     Meds for a week clear Echo’s lungs and the next Monday we go back for an EKG. The heart is as bad as feared – 50% too large and barely functioning. The Vet talks about when to put Echo down and gives her two years at the outside. Echo could drop dead any minute.

     We keep tight to a drug regimen and restrict her activity for a week, but this is a dog born to run, a powerful, athletic dog with a motor stuck in high gear. Echo is a dog that locked eyes with a mountain lion at 50 feet, and, when the lion broke and ran, chased that cat up a steep slope of loose, snow-covered rock. I tracked the pair. The cat took twelve to twenty-foot bounds up the sheer hillside. Echo made ten to fifteen-foot bounds, so, as I marveled at the trails in the snow, I was hopeful she would not close with the lion, hopeful I’d see her alive again.

     Yesterday, Mary and I walked with Echo up the creek and turned her loose so she could run free. We will not ask her not to live the life she has left. Her great grin and the sparkle in her eyes as she flew the swollen creek in one bound told us it’s the right thing to do. Echo will get to live as much as possible until living kills her. Echo is too great a dog to ask her for less.

     Thanks for that great dog, Bruce.

Forever in your debt – Mary, Mark, and Echo

Sunday, December 21, 2014

it takes a forest

In winter, cold dim days are slight punctuation for long nights; things in the forest are at rest.

Some twelve thousand years ago a cool damp clime held the northern Great Plains in a richly speciated tapestry of Spruce trees (Picea glauca), Twinflower (Linnaea borealis), Stair-step moss (Hylocomium spendens) and the like. Today, while most of that Spruce forest has retreated to more northern latitudes, certain elevations along with often steeply pitched and northerly aspects create the cool dampness that allows the great boreal spruce forest to linger here in the Black Hills of western South Dakota as a refugium.

 

 
In winter, these special spots hold a little more snow, a little more cold, and the promise of something amazing. It is the Fairy slipper orchid, Calypso bulbosa.  Over the winter and early spring only a single ragged leaf sprung the summer before is evidence of the magic to come.  In late May and early June, an energetic shoot bursts forth past the weathered leaf, erupting into a charming purply-pink gem.  Tiny stripes of red and white decorate its throat in celebration of a brief time in a dark forest.
 
 
In winter, these special spots hold a little more snow, a little more cold, and the promise of something amazing. It is the Fairy slipper orchid, Calypso bulbosa.  Over the winter and early spring only a single ragged leaf sprung the summer before is evidence of the magic to come.  In late May and early June, an energetic shoot bursts forth past the weathered leaf, erupting into a charming purply-pink gem.  Tiny stripes of red and white decorate its throat in celebration of a brief time in a dark forest.
 
 
The name ‘Calypso’ comes from the Greek word meaning ‘concealment’ a reference to the sheltered and somewhat hidden areas where they grow.  ‘Bulbosa’ refers to the tiny bulb-like corm from which it grows. 
 
As with all wild orchids, transplanting should never be attempted.

~ Mary
 
Calypso bulbosa

From my series of Native Orchids of the Black Hills – this is an original relief print ~ 6” x 11” ~ printed from multiple hand-cut linoleum blocks, and signed as a numbered edition of 100.  Made using archival ink on Okawara MM neutral pH paper and printed on a Whelan Pro Press at Green Ink Gallery & Studios in the Black Hills near Nemo, South Dakota.

Artist and amateur botanist, Mary Wipf lives and works in the Black Hills of South Dakota creating drawings, collages, fine marbled papers and silks, and original prints.

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • happily by appointment
.Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

Vies more posts from the orchid series...

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Bear Butte - Autumn Evening

Bear Butte – Autumn Evening
acrylic on board  ~  36" x 66"  ~  private collection
A great slumbering beast, a Dreamtime colossus, lifts from the heart of the land and sprawls out across amber Plains. Stony skin of the slopes aglow, ethers streaming radiant above, the mountain’s powers pulse bare and plain; its sunset incarnation whispers, stilling the soul. Bear Butte is a force. 


~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios ~ by appointment
605 342-2552 ~ www.greeninkgalleryandstudios.com
Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman - artists:

paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

Saturday, November 29, 2014

four from the badlands

Gold Gate - Red Ridge  
acrylic on canvas  ~  30" x 40"  ~  $2800
Blazing gold, amber, orange, and red, evening light settles as a shimmering skin on the buttes and ridges of the High Plains. Open space returns no echo. A gate awaits. 

Chalk Butte Road
acrylic & xerox transfer on board  ~  22" x 12"  ~  $600
 Undulating, serpentine, a vanishing ribbon of crunching gravel runs to exactly nowhere. Chalk Butte Road carries you off into the open, into the space and empty of a border country. 

Pink Morning Mist - Ochre Butte
acrylic on board  ~  27.5" x 17"  ~  $1000
 Dawn begins with a burning violet brightening to a glowing and gossamer pink, hiding the far buttes backing away to the western horizon where night runs off. Golden autumn grasses flame on a near slope. Yellow shafts of morning clip by the frazzled heads and careen through the red stalks of tufted little bluestem. 

Red Shirt Creek - Reprise
acrylic on board  ~  22" x 12"  ~  $600 
 Broken badlands country, twisting draws, sculpted ridges studded with juniper and sage, and bright conical buttes enfold the valley of the Red Shirt. A windswept sky, a tattered and streaked dome of gold, spreads across the jumbled land. 

~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios ~ by appointment
Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman - artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Harding County Autumn

Harding County Autumn  ~  30" x 48"
Harding County, morning light rises, lightening an eastern sky beyond a line of autumn clad buttes. Clouds build, silently forming above the barest breath of air and wandering away to a hazy horizon. Sections of wire, earth, and sky wait, poised in cool silence.

Medium: acrylic on canvas  ~  $2800

~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios ~ by appointment
Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman - artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers


Friday, November 9, 2012

Blitzen

He was a cat … just a cat.  There are amazing stories of cats showing up months after vanishing, acting all cool, like nothing’s new.  My gut says he’s gone like the echo in the barn behind calling: Blitz!  Blitzy Boy!  Blitzen!  My head says a Great Horned Owl took him – silently, quickly, and inexorably, because that’s they way they kill. 


Walking up the creek, a chill settling into a stony valley and a sun fallen, my heart still has me calling his name into dark tangled places where a cat could hide, searching an endless stillness for his faint voice, whistling our fluting cat call around bends and down new stretches of steely creek.  No answer … nothing.


There’s not much left when a cat disappears: a waiting bowl of food, tracks in sand, and sad smiles.  Smile … a tottering kitten trots over to be picked up.  Smile … a lanky, bone hard, and rigorously muscly creature careens around your lap purring with great verve, with an ecstasy that passes whimsically as he walks off, on to the next interest or urge.  (He was a cat… just a cat).  Smile … you about had to smile to pick him up.  Grimace wishing you’d picked him up one more time when he asked.  Half smile at the rangy fella pressing back hard against your stroking hand, at a sensation that will be with you all your days and that someday will make you smile more than it hollows you out, tightens the throat, and hotly blurs the vision.


He was a cat, all cat, and a special little guy … in the end.


Rest easy Blitzy Boy.


Saturday, July 7, 2012

Badlands Buttes – Wall Cloud


Badlands Buttes - Wall Cloud

In the evening, after the heat of day has raised a towering wall cloud, before the sun sinks low in the west, a shaft of sunlight finds a break in a darkening storm, streams down upon the land from the heavens, and turns the magic up.  Despite the brilliance of light effects, the ominous and overpowering presence of a gigantic storm cell, boiling on the open plains, dominates sky and earth; its slow inexorable churning power waits, dark and awesome to behold. 

Medium:  acrylic on canvas    ~    12” x 48”

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment
22435 Jim Creek Lane
Deadwood, SD 57732

Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers.


Friday, June 22, 2012

small thing

Another little rain on a cool cloud-veiled day… secret moist spaces tucked away enjoy these gifts from the sky.  Thickets, springs, swamps… in these untrammeled pockets where water hangs on, small treasures bask in the shade and dance with gnats that unaware, take on a squirt of pollen-loaded liquid to their backs as they do-si-do into minute triggers on the stigmas.  



Though these plants usually form extensive colonies, Listera convallarioides, also known as the ‘Broad-lipped twayblade’, is one of the least known of the orchids.  That they are elusive and rarely encountered is not surprising when one sees how small and inconspicuous they are, blending with other green vegetation in hidden cool areas. Once the dust-like seeds mature and disperse, if they find their situation hospitable, they grow underground for several years before rising above the ground to produce leaves and engage in photosynthesis.   





The genus Listera is named for the noted seventeenth century English physician and naturalist Martin Lister.  The specific epithet ‘convallarioides’ is from the Latin meaning "Convallaria-like," because the leaves of Listera convallarioides resembled those of the genus Convallaria, the Lily-of-the-Valley.     ~ Mary


Listera convallarioides

From my Native Orchids of North America series – this is an original relief print ~ 6” x 11” ~ printed from multiple hand-cut linoleum blocks, and signed as a numbered edition of 100.  Made using archival ink on Okawara MM neutral pH paper and printed on a Whelan Pro Press at Green Ink Gallery & Studios in the Black Hills near Nemo, South Dakota.

Artist and amateur botanist, Mary Wipf lives and works in the Black Hills of South Dakota creating drawings, collages, fine marbled papers and silks, and original prints.

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment


Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

View more posts from the orchid series...

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

hybrid works – acrylic & charcoal on canvas


Down in the Jumpoff  ~  34” x 21”  ~  $1450.00

Up in Harding County, SD, down in a place called the Jumpoff, there’s a world of sparsely grassed benches, pricklypear, sculpted buttes, cut-banks, rattlesnakes, and dry.  The sediments were laid down in an inland sea and pressed hard by time into soft stone.  Water wore the place out of its ancient beds.  Today, water is mostly sucked up by the gumbo and eaten by the dust; but a wild storm will tumble pounding across the broken space, raining hellishly hard, until the place is running wild and milky with land gone liquid.


Jumpoff Divide  ~  40” x 30”  ~  $1950.00

You fall off an undulating tableland and discover the Jumpoff – a broken land.  The clean clear air leans down, bending the grasses that top jumbled benches and jagged buttes.  A sheen of fleeting silvery light rolls with the wind over the short dry grasses.  Hold your breath – the burning breath of the world blows steadily into the void. 


Red Butte  ~  40” x 30”  ~  $1950.00
 You end up revisiting places, in the mind, on the ground… both.  Some are haunting, some inspiring, some quietly powerful.  Except for the wind, the song of the meadowlark if it’s spring or summer, or the cry of a wheeling hawk, Red Butte is on the quiet side.  It’s a place to linger. 


            *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *
All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment
Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

Thursday, December 22, 2011

an amazing thing

Each year, about now, I start craving the green world of plants.  Trudging along on the daily walk, encumbered by snow boots and coveralls, the heatless light of short days waning early, I contemplate living things at rest beneath the snow.  Barn chores are early and end the day.  It is a time of long darkness and of rest.


Consider the development of the Lesser ladies slipper (a.k.a. Cypripedium parviflorum), I do.  One seed pod may hold a whopping 16,700 seeds, some of which may disperse up to 900 miles.  With seeds remaining viable for up to 8 years, you might wonder that they haven’t replaced dandelions as the pan-global weed.  This amazing plant has a different strategy, much of it formulated underground, hidden from view.




The catch, the reason this beauty is not a weed, is an intricate relationship that the light, nutrition-less seed must form with not-always-present threads of mycorrhizal fungus in the ground before it develops into a flowering plant.  Utterly dependant on the fungi during its early life, the naked speck of a seed may spend from one to four years underground, working through several stages of development before a plant capable of photosynthesis sprouts.  And then, it will be many more years before it blooms.  The subterranean, clandestine, mycorrhizal relationship is essential to seed development, seedling establishment, and very possibly even adult winter dormancy.                                                                                       
                                                                                                                       ~ Mary

Cypripedium parviflorum
From my Native Orchids of North America series – this is an original relief print ~ 6” x 11” ~ printed from multiple hand-cut linoleum blocks, and signed as a numbered edition of 100.  Made using archival ink on Okawara MM neutral pH paper and printed on a Whelan Pro Press at Green Ink Gallery & Studios in the Black Hills near Nemo, South Dakota.

Artist & amateur botanist, Mary Wipf lives & works in the Black Hills of South Dakota creating drawings, collages, fine marbled papers & silks, and original prints.

All materials and pigments used meet the highest archival standards.

Green Ink Gallery & Studios • by appointment
Mary Wipf & Mark Zimmerman – artists:
paintings, drawings, original prints, and fine marbled silks & papers

View more posts from the orchid series...
Listera convallarioides: http://greeninkseen.blogspot.com/2012/06/small-thing.html