On the drawing table in the coaches cottage, Caydance laid a large piece of white mulberry paper. Eventually hung from wooden newspaper racks in a place where light shone through layers of images, the sheets of paper, on which she drew images with archival pens and watercolor paint, were created separately. Each one was a host for intricate drawings.
Usually, she filled just one sheet of mulberry paper with detailed images and then -- on other sheets of paper -- created image environments that were compatible in look and feel, although each addressed different themes. This time she was creating three sheets on the same theme, moving between them as she added images to each painting. That the subject was a case she was working on would not be usual. That might mean, she was aware, that she would never be able to exhibit this work. But, because in this case, many histories were not known, she was using this process to clarify emerging issues.
Never before had she been hired to use her skills in iconograpy and iconology -- and her knowledge of the lives and works of artists -- to uncover the fate of a man, whose life had changed from an artist and art historian to a soldier on the battlefields of World War II. To begin, she painted the Hotel California trail, the site of the abandonned Studio/Workshop -- discovereed by Mei Chen, an architect with the firm that headed the hotel rennovation project.
When the telephone rang, Caydance had finished creating the hotel on the initial mulberry paper sheet. Now, beside it she was inserting painter Seldon Gile. As Gile's likeness emerged, he looked back at Caydance, as if his image was a reminder that Ted Treharne, the last known occupant of the abandoned studio, no longer roamed the East Bay hills. The telephone call was, she thought, probably for Griff. But, when she looked at the caller-id, it was evident that the call came from the winery in the Gold Country where Susanna lived and worked.
