Sunday, April 19, 2020

The sunset tonight



I had to post this picture.

I was just getting ready to take a peek at the Metropolitan Opera's free opera tonight, which is "Der Rosenkavalier," and you know me and that opera. But suddenly out the window I saw these pink clouds.

All I could think of was, "And you will see the Son of Man coming on a cloud." However these were in the west, not the east.

In any case, beautiful!

I am always watching the sky. When I was a baby I would look for the moon in the sky in the middle of the afternoon. I would spot it. My mother remembered once I was saying "moon" and they thought they were not understanding me right. I was pointing at the sky.

And sure enough!

There was the moon, up in the blue sky.

Anyway, these clouds, this sunset.

They made my day!

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Our wacky spring



We are having a wacky spring here in Buffalo! In addition to everything else.

I took the picture up above walking in Delaware Park a couple of hours ago.

When I got home I took this picture.


That was out my back window!

You know one thing, walking in the park I thought how much I was appreciating what I saw.

This is my time of year!

I like weird weather!

Midsummer ... I am child of the summer, born on June 1, but summer is not my time. It would be, maybe, if I lived somewhere else. I love swimming, I love summer clothes, I love being able to walk around in long dresses and sandals. However...

There is something about the brooding weather that I love. The silence. The freedom to be with your own thoughts. The mists.

I cannot help it!

With which we give you Prince, "Sometimes It Snows In April."



Tuesday, April 14, 2020

My new Buffalo coloring challenge


I love coloring books and the other day I came up with my first coloring page. And I dared to start a coloring challenge!

Everyone is sitting around because of the coronavirus and is in need of fun and games. So I found this drawing I did of Lance Diamond Way. Lance Diamond Way is on Elmwood Avenue at the corner of West Utica. Lance used to sing at the Elmwood Lounge there. The Elmwood Lounge is now called Milkie's after its current and legendary owner Mike Milkie. That was where I drew this picture, looking out across the street.

That was a beautiful afternoon. My friend Meghan was with me and Mike Milkie sat down with us and reminisced about Lance and other things. I drank a beer. It is all too rare that life slows down like that and you have time to chill.

However later that day I never bothered looking back at my sketchbook. I thought: I would never have chosen that view and I will never have use for what I drew. The angle was tough, I thought. Plus I was talking while I was drawing and that does not always work out.

However. Oddly enough over the next few weeks that picture became one of my favorites. I kept finding myself going back to it. And when I decided to try doing up a coloring page, I immediately went for this picture.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone!

I had to re-draw it by hand because the original had shadows and such. I will have to post it so you see what I mean. It is a huge contrast! But otherwise I made no changes. The truck, the workers unloading the truck, the car across the street, everything was as I had originally drawn it. I love that in a sketch. I love to look at it and say: That is what I saw.

My drawing is on Facebook, on the page Mary Kunz Goldman Sketches, in case anyone wants to download it and try it.

Meanwhile above -- at the top of this post -- is an interpretation in Crayolas by Ryan Lysarz .... and here is one by my sister Margaret Mills. Ryan and I have been marveling at how for some reason they shared something of the same color scheme.


Our friend the author and poet Anne Apfel also used colors in that family.


She intended it to depict shadows falling at twilight. Some friends on Facebook said it reminded them of Ludwig Bemelman's "Madeline" books. Now I have such a big ego!

It is fascinating to me, all the different directions a picture can take depending on who is coloring it. I knew this was going to be fun, but not this much fun.

The things people come up with, I cannot get over it! I will have to post more tomorrow because I do not want to let everything out of the bag all at once. Because everyone is having fun with it we are going to add a new picture every week.

I am thinking next summer when this virus thing is past, we can have a show.

We can sip white wine and look at everyone's creations and celebrate what we have wrought!

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Holy Thursday in quarantine



Today is the first Holy Thursday ever that I could not go to Mass.

I found myself looking back on Holy Thursday Masses past. When my mother was around I would go to Mass with her, usually to Christ the King, our home church. Those Masses were in English and since getting into the Latin Mass, my patience with it was sometimes short.

Now I think: I would like any Mass at this point!

I have thought sometimes in the last weeks that maybe this is what some of this is about, to make us grateful for what we have. There is something sinister and frightening about being denied it because of the Coronavirus.

People say, services are being streamed online, but for a Catholic it is not the same thing. You do not receive Communion. And that is just the first thing. When you go to a beautiful Mass it is so sensual. There is the aroma of the incense. The music -- maybe you are singing it, maybe you are listening to it, but it is all around you. There is the participation -- even at a Traditional Latin Mass, you kneel at a certain point, you stand, you kneel again -- It is all so beautifully choreographed. How are you to do that in your living room?

And in the last few years, I began visiting the Seven Churches on Holy Thursday. I miss that.

It is a strange custom, not unique to Buffalo but not that common either. You visit seven different churches after Mass on Holy Thursday and at each church there is Adoration, and there are other people, doing what you are doing, visiting, praying. The idea is, you keep this vigil with Jesus, because His disciples did not. Whatever the reasoning, it is insanely beautiful. You do not get home until midnight or something.

In the three years I have been visiting the Seven Churches it has become part of me, to the extent that I forget I did not grow up with it. One thing is the chant in the video I posted up above. It is called "Pange Lingua." We sing it at Mass on Holy Thursday and as you visit the Seven Churches sometimes it is playing. In any event it is playing in your head. You do not forget it.

Just listening to that chant, Pange Lingua, I mistakenly think it goes back to my childhood. It brings with it the feeling of Holy Thursday. The early spring. The mud, the puddles as you go from church to church. One year, I dropped my veil in a puddle. Leave it to me!

The feeling of spring in the air, the wet leaves. The end of Lent. You are sick of Lent, it has gone on forever, finally you are nearing the end.

Also on Holy Thursday, the Mass starts -- or in my experience it has started -- with the chant that leads off "The Sound of Music." When the curtain rises on "The Sound of Music," the chant Richard Rodgers used ...



 ..is the chant we sing on Holy Thursday. Hahahaha... I interrupted the pre-Mass rehearsal a couple of years ago to say that. I said, "Guys! This is the chant that opens 'The Sound of Music'!" And everyone stared at me. LOL.

Gloria Patri et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

I miss this, when I cannot have it!

I think of all the churches we would have been visiting, deserted.

Next year, God willing, we will be back to normal!


Tuesday, April 7, 2020

The long and narrow sketchbook


Right before the Wuhan Flu curtailed my shopping, I went out to Hyatt, the great art supply store that happens to be just a couple of minutes from my house, and I bought a bunch of sketchbooks. That was smart, you know? Anyway, one of the sketchbooks was long and narrow.


It is Strathford and made of recycled paper. It is just cheap lightweight sketch paper and it cost $6 something.

This is turning into the best $6 something I ever spent in my life!

I am having so much fun with this sketchbook. When I bought it it was with the thought that it would make me see new possibilities in what was before my eyes. I would make it a game to find scenes that lent themselves to these new dimensions.

And it has worked out that way! It has been fun!

There are 50 sheets in the sketchbook and I think I have done 22 drawings so far. I have not torn one sheet out of the book, either. Not that I forbid myself to, it just has not happened.

Because the paper is so lightweight, or because I am not thinking commercially, I take a very relaxed approach with these drawings.

Here is the police radio station in Delaware Park.


I drew that yesterday. It was chilly but the sun was out. After that I sketched the little golf course kiosk, closed because of the virus. Notice now I have on gloves.


Then I thought I was going home but stopped to draw people hanging around outside the closed zoo, by the shuttered Cup & Cone.


The other day I drew the Cyclorama Building downtown. That is it at the top of the post!

 When I am through drawing something it is traditional for me to page through the whole sketchbook and review my work. I am doing more "serious" stuff in between these but I have to tell you this, these narrow sketches are a lot of fun.



I have done a million of them in Delaware Park. I had thought I had sketched everything there was to sketch in Delaware Park but this book opens up a lot of new possibilities. I'll have to post more of the Delaware Park pictures. There are about a dozen of them, I want to say.

I have done a lot of tall pictures too, not just long pictures. I can't wait to show them off.

I will have to do a Long and Narrow Sketchbook Tour!