watercolor/collage 134 7x14” at 3pm
3:14 PM: once i got settled and felt in a state to resume work on my watercolor/collages, i made 2 new ones. i changed the format i had been using in #130, 131,&132. i found a half used block of light weight watercolor paper in a 7x14” pad. that seemed convenient, so that’s what i’ll be using until i go through all the remaining sheets in the pad or i get tired of that & move on to something else.
i overruled my choice on #130, 131 and 132 to not allow any of the collaged pieces to overlap, but actually the only paper overlapping are a couple of pieces of tracing paper i used to push back a few of the passages that i deemed too strong. the other departure is that i used watercolor, crayon and graphite, especially noticeable in #134. i like the play between the marks on the collaged pieces and the marks i made.
if the first 129 watercolors in the 2020 watercolors series are an abstraction or simplification of my plein air gouaches and oils, these take it one step further. i’m getting ever closer to laying this out in a small book, which as yet is still in my head. interestingly, i learned just a few days ago that mondrian considered himself a naturalist painter. he began his career making studies of nature, and thought of his later work, with which most of us are familiar, just a next step in his process, but still based upon prototypes found in the natural world.
watercolor/collage 133 14 x 7”
the label from the comté we got yesterday
11:12 PM: yesterday was a 12 hour day; leaving for boulder at 8am, we returned about 8pm, exhausted. my two dentist appointments went well, and while i was at the dentist mikela was able to get most of our food shopping done at whole foods & trader joe’s. then we went together to costco to complete our shopping, trying to be a quick as possible and have the least exposure to any possible virus floating about. found one of my very favorite cheeses: comté, made in france and imported by costco. you can only find it at certain times of the year, and it’s one of the finest cheeses.
i’m going to try and switch gears, get out of my post boulder shock and get to work on something new. i’ll update as soon as that happens.
in the meantime, if you are interested in learning more about this cheese, how and where it’s made, read this. and as you will see, cheese making can be an art form; PROCESS is everything, as i keep pointing out in my blog posts.
The production and aging of Comté is founded on the ideas of partnership: between the earth and the farmer, the farmer and the cheesemaker and the cheesemaker and the affineur. All are invested in the end result: the highest quality Comté cheese.
Comté is made in a unique manner: milk is delivered from the farm to fruitières daily, where cheese is made. It is then passed on to affineurs who age the cheese a minimum of 4 months, up to several years. Each person along the supply chain is paid a premium for high quality cheese, a business model pioneered by Alix Jacquemin in 1860. In 1886 his daughter married Louis Rivoire. To this day, the name Rivoire represents highest quality Comté. Five generations later, the Rivoire family, along with 400 milk producers, 25 fruitières, and 3 head cellarmen, produces 110,000 Comté wheels for worldwide distribution every year.
At the core of Rivoire-Jacquemin’s business is an unparalleled expertise of quality selection and traceability. We know the exact origin of each cheese, the farmer, the maker and the micro-terroir. Breaking away from the traditional barrel ripening process, Alix Jacquemin invented the cave ripening. Today, our first rate maître affineur (cave master) supervises each and every wheel with constant care: salting, rubbing, flipping, and monitoring the aging process.
Time is key to our success. Rivoire Jacquemin prefers using the slower traditional method: requiring a traditional know-how, unlike our competition who favor large scale production and a standardized product with no personality.
Rivoire Jacquemin is the only affineur that rubs Comté with Guérande sea salt. In our 38 cellars, we only use spruce planks from Jura to shelve our wheels. State of the art thermostat technology allows our cellar managers to fine-tune temperature and humidity to optimize ripening. We grade each cheese to determine which are for sale aged 4 to 6 months and which are destined to be aged for up to 30