sue clancy – artist

More work this week on commissioned artwork for holiday gifts – so let’s look at the trees. Vintage Books is pairing my fine art portraits of trees with some of their books about trees! Additionally Dec 9 they’ve asked me to do a live-drawing event from 1 to 3 in the afternoon.

Yes, I created a book of all of my tree portraits- you can preview the entire book here – https://www.blurb.com/b/11745659-portraits-of-trees

Tree book list in my book…

Some of the tree books at home…

Books and art go together for me like coffee and croissants. Books lead to art which leads to books which leads to art… It’s a call and response kind of relationship.

What live-drawing is like: people can come to the bookstore Vintage Books and show me a photo of anything meaningful to them and I will do my best to draw it and then put the finished art in a small frame for them. I will be live-drawing at a table in the middle of the bookstore. As you can see from the photos below my drawing and the frame aren’t much bigger than a cellphone.

I like doing live-drawing events in person because I get to meet people and they can see their artistic request happening on paper in reality. It’s like an oral storytelling event where a storyteller takes requests or prompts from their audience and then tells a story.

Also this week I am able to tell publicly about one of my, up till now, secret projects:

Recently with the permission and encouragement of poet and writer Anne McEnerny-Ogle I illustrated her poem celebrating local historian Pat Jollota and Pat’s work. Both Suzan Clark and JL Sullens aided and encouraged this project. With the poem text from Anne and my illustrations I created by hand a one-of-a-kind artist book titled “Pat the Pioneer”. This artist book is 7 inches tall, 5 inches wide when closed. it opens out to 5 feet 5 inches long. It was made by hand with ink, gouache, color pencils and collage on handmade paper.

In the photo you see me, Brad Richardson and a Clark County Historical Museum staff member holding the original artist book.

From the original artist book I created a very limited (fewer than 20) reproductions the sales of which benefit the Clark County Historical Museum.

The original artist book and the limited edition reproductions are only accessible here: https://cchmuseum.org/

Here’s a video flip-through of both the original book Pat The Pioneer and a look at the limited reproduction. https://youtu.be/0SUbCcycCnM?si=fsOzf2bELXJgnsBv

Perhaps you noticed my tree paintings in “Pat The Pioneer”? Yes, all of my tree artworks lately were related to this book. Another call and response kind of thing.

And, whew, Pat Jollota herself liked the book!

Art and life and stories and community and love… they mix together nicely in my mind.

Oh yes, and this week I’m releasing my newly published sketchbook A M Sketching- drawing done at breakfast. (See also my Substack newsletter also called A M Sketching)

I hope your week is pleasant. See you next Monday.