Visual Art and Music

Music has been part of my life since I was a child and my parents were supportive of our music studies, renting and borrowing instruments, taking us to rehearsals, coming to concerts. This year marks the 36^th season I’ve been singing (or distance learning music) with some version of Seattle’s Medieval Women’s Choir, originally founded by the late, inimitable Margriet Tindemans. Drawn into a community which truly supports Early Music when Jim and I relocated from California, I found a group with no auditions and musicians of all levels of skill and experiences. (I really dislike juried shows in the art world, too, preferring self selecting and curated invitational exhibitions.) After the loss of Margriet in 2014, we worked ten years with Margriet’s Sequentia colleague, tenor Eric Menzel, a member of the voice faculty at the University of Oregon. We now are led by the next generation, soprano and vocal coach Marian Siebert, who has been part of the choir and its staff, notably our most visible soloist, for many years.

Margriet was quiet about her arrangements of our repertoire, silent about her role as editor and composer, usually done by hand in the days before Sibelius, and not as calligraphically inspired as composer Lou Harrison's, for whom I had done some score copying. Eric and Molly are meticulous in creating their editions, and we are now provided with elegant and scholarly as well as functional pdfs for tablets or print outs.

I'd like to invite you to the choir’s fall fundraiser, Fall Celebration of the Arts, featuring our choir’s outreach ensemble, Volat, led by Sally Mitchell, another long time member, singer and recorder instructor. Images shown below, I’ve contributed some prints to the silent auction part of the event and will display a new painting which is for sale, some proceeds to the choir.

Join us for our second annual showcase featuring the fine artistry of our talented members. Browse through a curated festival of artworks including watercolors, digital artwork, textiles, pottery, and drawings while enjoying Nordic-inspired food and beverages. 

2:00 – 5:00 pm | Saturday, November 21, 2026 | Swedish Club, Seattle (Queen Anne)
Tickets: $60

https://medievalwomenschoir.org/events/

We are also anticipating a welcoming throng at our winter holiday program with two performances this December of Birth and Rebirth: music for Christmas and the turn of the year
8:00 pm | Saturday, December 5, 2026 | St. James Cathedral, Seattle
3:00 pm | Sunday, December 6, 2026 | Christ Church, Tacoma
Tickets: $50, $40 & pay as you can

Molly has created a program which revisits music from our first performances in the 1990’s now infused with her own scholarship. Some is from the cathedral collections of manuscripts in northern Spain, others from England and Hildegard of Bingen; others are sacred seasonal favorites from the Winter Solstice. Yes, we do “German” pronunciation of Latin.

For more information about the coming season’s activities and concerts, see

https://medievalwomenschoir.org/

These fish are surrounded by fossil exoskeletons of resist print crinoids and trilobites, fish eggs and other plankton.

This work is basically a collagraph print with digital imagery of dragonflies taken from open source images photographed by entomologists in Texas and manipulated in Photoshop, printed on prepared Thai Unryu paper. The work is acid free and lightfast. The printmaking paper is Somerset buff. Technically, the work could be called monotype since each dragonfly group is different and the stems, catkins of the hazel were hand inked, making each print somewhat unique. The Hazel Tree Mother is inspired by several variants of the cinderella story including the ballet by Prokofiev. Signed and numbered by the artist.

Several of my painting and print series are inspired and informed by musical creations; others by plays, poetry, novels and scientific narratives. Enjoying live or recorded performances is such an important part of my art life that the recent pandemic closures inspired greater viewing of online performances.

It is with great regret that Jim and I are cancelling our participation in attending the Seattle Symphony season and the Seattle opera due to new invasive surveillance policies of the venues. These policies appear inspired by a fearful and controlling trend among professional “world class” venues throughout the US. I hadn’t completed subscription to the Pacific Northwest Ballet when these policies surfaced. They still offer online access. I’m developing a manifesto with the express intent of persuading the city of Seattle which owns and operates McCaw Hall and the Seattle Symphony which owns and operates (according to AI) “Benaroya Hall” to abandon these measures.

We go to the Symphony not to "relax or zone out," but to be intellectually stimulated by musical ideas of composers, the technical expertise of musicians and the good company in the audience to share the live experience. All these sensations are diminished by this security charade at the front door.

Meanwhile, check out this complaint by a San Franciscan music lover about these policies. If you know any other published references to this fascist take over of city life, please send them to my email or post them to me on Mastodon.

https://westsideobserver.net/25/11-anxiety-at-the-secure-sf-symphany.php

I've prepared a welcome letter for those who want to subscribe to my occasional posts here. The email is <pigeonpost@planetarttraces.info> or you can click on the "Subscribe" buttons. I'm still learning about the interfaces of these two communications, but I hope we can make them work and possibly start some community discussions about the attacks on arts and sciences.