Springs Break

Hello from your returned-to-Gainesville, come-down-in-the-world penpal! I have been back in my room at Lee's for a week, and although I'm glad to be returned to normal routine and my room, which I like a lot, I miss having a whole lakeside retreat to myself. And I miss my bus pals: April, her dog Howdy and the driver John. John gave me a bag of apples from a farm called "Turkey Knob" which I shared with my class, and which I felt showed we'd struck up a nice relationship. I missed home when I tried making jokes about turkey knobs, I don't think that translates here. Or maybe the jokes were just bad. Or maybe they are just more serious about turkeys over here (good luck avoiding eating turkey in Florida - it's not a once-in-a-year hazard like at home but a perennial danger! Yuck!!)


Juniper Springs, photo by Julie O'Brien

A few weeks ago on a Friday we had a SAW class visit to two local-ish springs. We carpooled and drove in convoy about an hour outside Gainesville, first to Juniper Springs, then on to Silver Glen. Florida is on top of a large aquifer - it's their great natural resource. An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing permeable rock.

Let us pinch stuff from Wikipedia:

The Floridan aquifer system, composed of the Upper and Lower Floridan aquifers, is a thick sequence of carbonate rock which spans an area of about 100,000 square miles in the southeastern United States. It underlies the entire state of Florida and parts of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. It supplies 10m people with drinking water, and is the main supply for cities in northern and central Florida - which is where Gainesville is. So the springs, which occur all over, are areas where this water comes out of holes in the aquifer - the water averages between 70-75 degrees Fahrenheit, so quite cool, but beautiful and clear and full of fish, turtles and, in season, manatees!

Class pic! We are holding For Sale signs as we used them for underwater drawing! All pics above by Julie O'Brien.

The springs trip was lead by Tom's friend Margaret Tolbert, a local artist with a keen interest in the waterways here. Her friend Julie came with her underwater camera, hence the lovely photos above. I also took a ton - it was absolutely beautiful at both these springs, and what I'd imagined in my mind when I'd thought of Florida - clear water and jungle. It was a wonderful day, and really nice to hang out with everyone on a day trip too!

The above photos are taken at Juniper Springs, our first stop and my favourite spring. 

After swimming about and spending about an hour and a bit here, we got back in convoy and went on to another springs, Silver Glen. I didn't like the water bit here as much, but there was an incredible walk around the back along a river and through jungle, some pics from that below!

Happy to be in the jungle. Gators t-shirt, natch.

I wish these photos could better capture the beauty of this walk. I felt very lucky to have seen it.

IN SUMMARY:

'Gator sightings: 0. I feel I'm becoming a bit of a joke. I'm tempted to shoot the moon now, and try to be the lone person who spends eight months in Florida without a single gator-sighting.

Other animal news: I saw a turtle when I was kayaking in Melrose - more about that anon. And Mara my classmate saw an armadillo outside her house last week!! Then the next day she saw vultures eating an armadillo near her house - she's hoping not the same one, but it all seemed Peak Florida. Also did you know you get syphilis off armadillos? Everyone here seems to know that, but I didn't. Please send jokes about sex with armadillos to the usual address.

Insect updates: Lee my landlord says the extremely cockroach-like beetles in the kitchen at night are in fact only cockroach-adjacent, and gave them some cute name like bootle bugs. I am unfooled - a cockroach by any other name is still a foul, unwelcome, carapace-covered sponge dweller in my book.

Until soon, thanks for reading my friends! I miss you! xx

Santa Fe Lakeside

Greetings from your currently NOT Gainesville-correspondant, but your MELROSE person-on-the-ground!

When I asked my landlord if I could stay on renting my room at his house, there were two weekends that he'd pre-booked with guests. The first weekend I went to the Gainesville Retreat Centre, and for this final time of exile, Lee arranged with his friends that I would cat-sit and stay in their house for a week while they're away. 

Digital picture of the garden.

So here I am in the bustling metrop of Melrose - actually Melrose is an intersection with a gas station and a food shop that looks like the after-picture of a siege. The gas station, Chiappini's, is (according to Lee) a famous spot, and has been in the Chiappini family since the 30s. We met one of the brothers inside and he's selling up for $1m, if any of my back-home friends fancy a slight change of life! They sell fishing tackle and boast an assortment of slightly boozy-looking clientele who hang around drinking beers and smoking outside - but you could probably change all that, if you wanted!

See below for how I'm slumming it this week:

View from the house porch.

Looking to the right from the jetty.

Penny and Trey's jetty! 

The lovely house, looking back from the lake.

House through the cypresses.

Behind the "downtown" of Melrose is Santa Fe Lake, and Penny and Trey's house is one of about twenty bordering a bay that comes off the lake. It's an unbelievably beautiful place - a lovely house with a garden that leads to a jetty down to the water. I've been swimming, having been assured the alligators are just babies round here - and the water is lukewarm and whiskey-coloured from the tanins in the cypress (all the better for the allys to hide in, you might say). I've also done quite a bit of painting from their garden and cycling round the lake. I'm here until Monday, but I'd quite like to stay forever!

Here come lots of watercolours of the garden view and one of the lake round the corner!

There are two bus services a day between Melrose and Gainesville - it's about 45 minutes between the two. I phone the dispatch centre in Jacksonville after 6am, and tell the operator where the bus can stop and pick me up. On Monday there was just me and a woman called April on the 8am bus out, and the 4pm bus back. We each pay $2 each way, so I guess there are other buses subbing this Magenta Line! All the buses here have bike racks on the front - I'm borrowing Penny's bike, and here it is on the bus and ready to go!

This is actually from a photo of the (boiling!!) Sweetwater Wetlands.

I'll write again when I'm back in boring old Gainesville ;-) xx

Blues and oranges

I've been here nearly six weeks now! Time, as expected, is absolutely flying past me.

East Gainesville forest/jungle

I do all my food shopping here at Publix, a big supermarket. There are two nearby, but my favourite is about ten minutes up a bike path. It takes me past a jungly bit which Luan says scares him at night because of the Skunk Ape. The Skunk Ape is our local Bigfoot/Nessie character - also known as the Swamp Cabbage Man, which I think we can all agree is adorable - I'll keep you posted on any sightings. Being here is expensive for me because of the weak pound. But there's a real lack of economy products that aren't absolutely nasty. Cheap cheese here isn't cheese - ditto most everything else really. I've found a great cheese here called Snappy Croc - and it comes all the way from Australia. It's worth every penny of its ghastly $7 price-tag, but it's a bit scary. Though look what I spied this week! Hey ho chaps, it's the British Isle!

Surprisingly inexpensive, which makes me suspicious that they're all budget locally-made "British" - I invite you, my friends back home, to critique this selection. Weirdly (but excellently) it includes Mrs Ball's Chutney - I might actually buy some of that. But no Bovril :( - and does anyone know what Jim Jams Milk Cocoa Spread is? It sounds gross.

Being here is increasing my car hatred, and I've found myself fantasising about keying the big monster trucks I cycle by. This place is giving me criminal thoughts! Perhaps as this state is so lawless I'd get away with it. Although I suspect protecting their cars is something Americans are fanatical about. But I had a mini-trip with Rose, Elli and Rhys from class. We went to Michael's, which is a craft superstore. I do wish we had those back home! They are already going big on Halloween-selling here - and here I am with the local scarecrow.

New sweetheart/Greencard marriage candidate

A couple of weeks ago I left the UF library at about 6pm and came straight into the pre-Gators game crowd. The team plays home games about once every two Saturdays, and the area around the stadium becomes a sea of orange and blue. Gainesville is fairly themed with these colours anyway, this was something else. People "tailgate" for hours before the game - which due the nature of the pedestrianised campus here is less actual bumper-to-bumper and more people sitting outside their cars with mini marquees, picnics, and large coolers of beer. 

Bonafide frat party!! Photo taken from distance to avoid invitation to join the kegger (as if)

It was interesting to me to see that the audience comprises a lot of adults coming to watch this college game. But John, our history of comics teacher (also an Uber driver who offers us SAW students our first ride free!) is a big Gators fan and says the stadium (the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, apparently known popularly as "The Swamp", natch) holds 90,000 people and the Gators bring in an enormous amount of revenue to the sports programme - so it's all a big deal. I'd be miiiildly interested in going to watch a game, but the stadium apparently has no shade and the idea of sitting in this heat watching college football... not so much.

Ben Hill Griff looming over us all, all the time

Hey guys - I'll meet you at Gators Gate 7?

Local student halls wearing the Gators colours

Thanks for reading, my friends! Until soon!

SAW Part Two

I wanted to post a little more about our school. I mentioned our regular schedule for the weeks - we have now added another class; on Thursdays we have two hours of illustration with Leela Corman, who is an illustrator and comic-maker, as well as being married to Tom. I took her first class as a trial - given I've been illustrating for such a while I wasn't sure how much it could add much for me - but I loved it, so I'll be doing that for the next 9 weeks.

First view on coming in the door - click to enlarge a bit.

The library of comics here is fantastic - I'll share pics soon, there's a ton to read!

Tables round the side for working at.

Computer and scanning area.

Place for collating zines and comics!

We sit at this table each day and ABSORB KNOWLEDGE

I'm going to start recording more about the class content itself, but wanted to get some more photos up of the space.

I also went to two volunteer orientations at the Natural History Museum last week - all being well, I'll be a volunteer docent in a few weeks more. (For those who don't know, as I didn't - a docent is a museum guide, usually voluntary - docent comes from the Latin meaning to teach, or lecture.) I signed up to help with school visits, and with the Discovery Carts. For the latter, I've got my eye on the croc cart - it comes with an alligator and croc skull, some croc skin, babies in jars and various crocodilian good stuff. During the second orientation we had a talk from a local (and apparently internationally renowned) croc man, whose name I've forgotten so that bodes well for my knowledge-retention! My fellow docents put me at the other end of the age-scale from where I sit in class. There were about 40 retirees, and me. I spoke with a woman who has just received her badge for volunteering at the museum for 50 years! Anyway I'll obviously post more on here if all goes swimmingly and I'm soon your local croc guide.

Me and baby ally. I'm doing "ah shaaaame!" face, which after seeing this photo, I won't be doing any more ;-)

IN SUMMARY:
'Gator sightings: lots, all in jars.

SAW! Part One

This is a post about the school I came here to go to - SAW, the Sequential Artists' Workshop. But first, here is a picture of me outside school with my wonderful bike! 

Going native - please note lanyard with keys, and GATORS T-SHIRT!!! Important to represent, while I'm here.

For the last few years, I've had a growing feeling of wanting to make a change and have some kind of adventure - I knew I'd like to live somewhere different, and put myself into a new environment, but wasn't sure how or where. I considered applying for the Maison des auteurs in Angoulême in France (still something I'm interested in down the line) and also I'd love to one day spend a month in Santa Fe at the Anthony Ryder Studio. But then my friend Tom told me about SAW, and things came together for me from there.

Junk everywhere! SAW shares its space with a large junkyard, and a business which seems to make electrical things of some kind - it's mysterious, but you pass through their offices to go to the loo - I'll find out one of these days what it is they do.

SAW was founded by the cartoonist Tom Hart in 2011. Tom is a prolific cartoonist and was an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York for 10 years. I took a couple of his online courses, read his book "Rosalie Lightning" and signed up for his e-book and emails, and I really liked everything he was putting out. The ethos of the school was appealing too - community-based, small, with an emphasis on storytelling and drawing. I've wanted to study drawing in the US before now, but the costs have always been prohibitive - SAW keeps tuition fees low and affordable, and you pay on a sliding scale of what you can afford. So it seemed a good fit for an adventure - it was a leap of faith from there. 

I'd never been to Florida but was interested in coming to the US again, and seeing if the connection I felt from my years spent in California would still exist - though of course they are very different states. Florida appealed because of the promise of an outdoors, weirder life, one I hoped would be filled with different animals and plants - which it certainly is! There are lizards EVERYWHERE here - massive tick for me. (Speaking of which, no ticks yet, thank god! Although when I picked up the washing-up sponge last night a GIANT cockroach crawled over the other side of it - too grim. I just can't make friends with those repulsive f*&kers.)

There's definitely a comic story in here!

We have a regular weekly schedule here - Monday is Storytelling with Tom, Tuesdays are Comics History (last week was Hogarth so I felt relatively orientated - a feeling that will inevitably disappear as we get into 20th century comics!), Wednesdays are Traditional Drawing and Fridays are Figure Drawing. Most classes are three hours a day (plus homework), which gives a nice structure, while still leaving time for everything else.

There are eleven of us students; I'm the winner of come-from-furthest-away, and the oldest - most of my classmates are under 30. The other day I learned about XD (don't ask me, I didn't really understand) and scene haircuts. I'd like to say I play up my Englishness and confusion about these things on purpose, but I really am at sea. We did karaoke last week and I sang I Drove All Night - my classmates said afterwards they'd not known the song OR Roy Orbison - a brave new world, my friends! They are a friendly and talented group - I'm looking forward to seeing us all develop our work over this year.

The entrance to SAW - hiding behind this container... do you dare??

First view on coming in through the front door.

I'll post more about the school soon! xxx