sue clancy – artist

I’ve been working towards “holidays” since about July, making my ABC’s: Artwork Books and Cards for holiday exhibits at the galleries. Such is the life of an artist. And it’s not just me it’s many artists who do this work-in-summer-for-the-holiday-season type of schedule. Creativity is very like running a marathon.

So come December sometimes I have to get creative about what gets me excited about the holidays. To get me over the finish line so to speak. My answer is Jolabokaflod. Or Holiday Book Flood as we call it because that’s easier to pronounce. More about that in a second…

In the A category of artwork: besides art commissions, which we can’t discuss because of gift giving, there’s a group holiday exhibit at the Caplan Art Designs Gallery. Here’s the Gallery owners dog looking at one of my sculptures. In the background you can see some of my other artworks.

Here’s a closer look.

At the Aurora Gallery they have my artwork and a large collection of 20 or so of my book titles.

The Aurora Gallery has my books sorted by title. I just love having my own little bookshelf full of unique artist books!

The Aurora Gallery also has my greeting cards.

Recently I delivered to the Aurora Gallery some new cards, and books, along with new fine art based on my portraits of trees for the holiday group exhibit there.

The rest of my portraits of trees art series, my books and cards will be going to Vintage Books… my tree portraits to be paired in a display with printed books by many other authors. In addition to the display the bookstore has asked me to do a live-drawing event on Dec 9 – which means someone can show me a photo on their phone and I will make a drawing… Here’s some practice for that…

Here’s the social media image the bookstore made about my upcoming event.

Here are details about the two books I’ve made recently that are new to the galleries and bookstore this week. You, my blog readers, and my Substack subscribers saw these books first:

Portraits Of Trees

And A M Sketching – drawing done at breakfast

Now about Jolabokaflod: Here’s a sketchbook page description of how we do our Holiday Book Flood.

So the gleeful holiday book gathering now begins!!! Some of these will be pulled from my own shelves.

For example I may pull down these books to help me maintain my holiday spirit: A Christmas Carol as illustrated by Roberto Innocenti and or Nutcracker by E. T. A. Hoffman with pictures by Maurice Sendak.

Our idea of Holiday Book Flood is to be cozy book centered for most of the month! We buy both new and used books for ourselves and each other (and for other people). We rummage our own TBR stacks that we already have (we depart from the Jolabokaflod tradition here) selecting options to read sooner rather than later.

Generally over the month we create special book stacks – especially ones set aside for Dec 24 and 25! Starting in early December my wife and I, in addition to the book gathering, we buy hot chocolate and consider the state of our pajamas and whether to get new ones.

While ostensibly our Holiday Book Flood is starting as indicated earlier I’m still quite busy with holiday art stuff for now.

Here are some books I’m reading currently that are cheerful and relevant to the current tree topic that I’ve been playing with for my Portraits Of Trees series.

More fun is happening over on my Substack newsletter… please join me there. I’m finding it easier, technically, to post on Substack. I’m continuing this wordpress blog but I may be posting a bit less as I take breaks for work and Jolabokaflod.

I hope you’re planning for your own coziness to see you through the season.

See you here next Monday. Probably.