This week the holiday begins at Caplan Art Designs with seven artists who have created 3D box sculptures. I’m one of the seven! My box sculpture is titled “Dogs On The Block”. Here’s a series of photos of my box. You know I like dogs…
More details about the exhibit of holiday boxes by seven artists.
Speaking further of dogs in art…there are several dog related artist books by me available at the Aurora Gallery. Here’s one of them…
And a dog appeared in my sketchbook this week
I’m also busy doing a few dog portrait commissions for holiday gifts so I’ll say no more about that.
Poetry about dogs is helpful reading material in the mornings before beginning a days dog portrait work.
On a non canine topic: I’m leaving Twitter. Besides here on this blog you can fetch me on Substack, Instagram, Facebook and now on Mastodon.
I hope your week is a pleasant one! See you next Monday.
It’s been a tough week. One friend died. Another is on hospice. I’ve also completed two commissions for holiday gifts and delivered them. So my bandwidth for writing this blog barely registers on the scales. Please forgive me. I’m still playing in my sketchbooks I just find it is easier (and soothing) to actually *be* creative than it is to talk *about* being creative.
A very happy highlight this week was when I was asked to sign books for two twin 4yr old fans of my work!
They had come over to my studio to see this book several times while I was making it! (Their grandparents live nextdoor) The kids are both quite helpful editors! The first time they saw my original artwork in progress I had done perhaps half of the book. I read some of the poems out loud to them. They seemed pleased! However there were blank pages. They pointed at the blank spots. “You’ll do a something here right? And here, and here, and here? A something?” I said that I would. They came back over the very next day. “Did you finish our book yet?”. I explained that these things take time to do, sometimes months, but that I was working as fast as I could. A month or so later they came over for a visit. “Did you finish our book yet?” This time I said that I almost had and would they like to see it? They looked at it with me and took turns very gently holding my original book (it’s the size of a credit card) and opening it carefully. The covers were still blank at that time. “You’ll do a something here right?” I said yes, and that it would become an ebook and a printed book too so even after I finished the original book covers there was still work to do before it was ready. “But there will be a something everywhere right?” They asked. I said yes.
Here below is a look at the printed book Patchwork Poems. It’s much larger, 8 x 11 inches, than my original artist book which is 2 x 3 inches. As per both of my 4yr old editor’s suggestion I made absolutely sure there is “a something” on every page! The magazine style format lets me do that so that’s one of the reasons this book is so much bigger than the original artwork.
Thank you in advance for sharing any of the above Patchwork Poems related links. Thank you most of all for staying as healthy and as happy as possible. I’m glad and grateful to you for reading my work and for your comments!
Recently a friend asked if I had made a book about my hearing experiences. Yes! In 2003 I made a one-of-a-kind book titled “Book Of Days And Ears”. It measures 3 inches tall 6 inches wide and is one inch thick. When fully opened it is a smidge more than 12 inches wide. The leather covers and the pages are hand sewn together with a Coptic stitch. This book binding style allows for page expansion, letting me sew additional elements into the binding and do thick collage applications on the pages themselves while still enabling the book to close.
Book of Days and Ears begins July 31 2003 and ends Oct 10 2003. It is a diary or journal style book with the date stamped on each entry. The entire book took place when we lived in Oklahoma and the main content, the overall “plot”, of the book is dealing with my hearing aid issues over the span of 3 months, trying to contact the hearing aid company and fussing with the mean dragon lady who worked there. The other staff were nice (nicer than others I’d encountered in Oklahoma) but during visits I had to get past dragon lady first. Here are just some of those pages.
Part of how I dealt with the hearing issue saga was through various art projects which I recorded in my book: paper marbleling sessions of which I sewed samples into the binding, letterpress and block printing project samples were glued onto the pages, art exhibits were documented by collaging parts of the event announcement on a page or actually sewing the event flyer into the binding. Here are a few of the art project related pages.
Of course in and amongst the pages shared above there are visits with friends, the death of a mentor/friend (the book artist and author Shereen LaPlantz), visits to bookstores and restaurants. And board games like backgammon which are ways to interconnect with people that don’t rely solely on the spoken/heard word. Here are a very few examples of this kind of page entry.
Here’s a video flip through of Book of Days and Ears https://youtu.be/2It3Vjl_Eao and me talking about it. You can see some book pages not pictured above. Did I mention that I talk about the book in the video? No, I couldn’t hear myself talking. I showed the video to my wife for sound checking prior to putting it on YouTube. Brave and cheeky of me eh? 😆😁
Fast forward away from 2003 Oklahoma to present day 2022 in Washington state and as I wrote last post… my current hearing aids stopped working and I visited a local hearing aid center, Vancouver Hearing Aid Center. Things are vastly better now: there is a button and a window in the hearing testing area, there are zero dragon ladies to deal with (Wow! An absence of mean dragons!!!), my supportive spouse is allowed to be with me and clear time tables, contact information etc details are given in written form! It’s almost as if they recognize that their clients might not hear well! Imagine that?! Anyway, I am still profoundly deaf just as I was in 2003 and as I was at age 8 see the hearing test chart below.
Progress has happened on my upcoming illustrated poetry book for Storyberries! Here are a few of those original pages.
I have finished the 3D block now and titled it “Dogs On The Block”. More photos will be taken, it will be varnished and delivery to the Caplan Art Designs gallery arranged. So more still to do.
This current hearing aid repair season (Ha!) we’re playing dominoes as well as reading books each evening. So I’ll leave you with the action packed photos below and see you next Monday!
My Gallery owner Amy at Caplan Art Designs had the idea to pair photos of the pets that inspired my Odditerrarium series portraits alongside my paintings! I swear I am so grateful to have her expertise! Two heads really are better than one sometimes.
The gallery has started doing posts like this. Isn’t this nice?!
I quickly followed her lead adding additional information such as how, like in this cat portrait, I refer to previous portraits I’ve done of this cat as well as alluding to other things relevant to the life of this cat and human. For all of my portraits I like to include something from the lives of pet and person. In this way my paintings can become a visual story.
As I wrote in my last post my hearing aid in my “good” ear had a problem. We went to the hearing aid repair place in hopes they could repair it while we waited. No luck. They asked me to leave it for a few days to see if another tech wizard could work a miracle. No luck again. So, long story short, when you’re reading this blog on Monday I’ll be at the audiologist getting a new hearing test, an evaluation and recommendations re hearing aids. Please wish me luck in the comments below!
Consequently this week has literally been quiet. I sketched a lot, much of it about perceptions, in my sketchbook as a self comfort. I shared the sketchbook pages in my email newsletter.
I read a lot, mostly Donna Leon mystery novels as I love those! Hearing is no issue when reading a book! Reading books was how I dealt with being a deaf child too! Here’s a picture of hearing-aid-less me in front of my books to cheer up by shelves (details here)
Luckily since I’m self employed hearing isn’t much of an issue really. My spouse and I now have either have a conversation or we do things, like cooking, we can’t do both at the same time as we did before. But that’s given both of us more attention to the conversations themselves and that’s been enjoyable!
I’ve also focused on my work and in the quiet I’ve made major progress on the cookbook I’m illustrating for Chef Kim Mahan of Class Cooking! I’m planning/hoping that will be available in early November in time to be a gift book for the holidays.
Here’s one part of the illustrated poetry book for children that I’ve been working on for Storyberries. Progress here!
Progress has been happening on my 3d box project too. As I worked on this side of the box cube I remembered to take photos of my stages of work! Aren’t you proud I remembered?! This box is being painted in acrylic so it will be durable enough to be in a kids room, handled, sat on etc.
One of my friends, Becky Ross Michael who writes a wonderful blog Platform No. 4, asked me last week if I had ever done an artist book about my hearing experiences. I have!! I will rummage around for it and take photos or do a video of it for sharing here next week.
My Odditerrarium exhibit is humming along nicely at the Caplan Art Designs Gallery! This week was another busy week and I’m grateful to have a Gallery collaborator who helps keep things going in many ways including with posts like this! What a nice way to show the pets that inspired the portraits in my exhibit!
Since I knew this week would be another busy one I carefully carved out some time to sketch. Because I’ve discovered I enjoy sharing step-by-step how I create my sketches I documented my sketchbook session and posted it here on my email newsletter. In the post I show the art supplies (like the NIL-TECH watercolor pencil set) and how I use them as well as how I got the idea for my sketch.
As you know from earlier posts I’ve been working on a new illustrated poetry book for Storyberries.com. Knowing I wouldn’t have much time to work I did “need to let it dry” kinds of tasks: I spray-fixed the pages and glued the still-raw boards for the book covers. In the last photo you see the small credit card sized book just before I set it up interlaced with wax paper and paperweights to dry while life happens.
Then a wonderful visit happened over three days with family! There were two college soccer games to attend in support of one family member. We ate in a number of locally owned restaurants. We went for a hike in a park. We played games of dominos well into the night. I didn’t photograph everything and I never managed to get everyone in the photos at the same time but this photo below was the most successful.
One family member was on the field being a goalie. Other family members were along sidelines taking photos of the action on the field. There were so many reasons we were seldom in the same places at the same time for a family photo. The games were active occasions!
The outdoor soccer games were also unseasonably warm and sunny, for the Pacific Northwest, as you can see below.
I wear two high powered hearing aids and have since I was 8 years old. My right ear is a bit better at hearing with hearing aids than my left one. I know well from past experiences that hearing aids are sensitive to heat, moisture and interference by hats – among many other things – so I try to be careful. I even remove my hearing aids before I use spray-fix on my art projects just in case.
Well, during the first soccer game I was enjoying listening to family members and the noisy hubbub of the game when suddenly everything went quiet as if a switch turned the sound off. My right ear was completely silent and I could barely hear, with the hearing aid in my left ear, the loud drums and shouting from the crowd. Immediately I told the family member who was talking to me that something had happened to my hearing aid. I told my wife too and excused myself to go to the car to see if I could replace a battery, adjust a setting that was knocked off by my hat or do something and get my hearing aid back on again. No such luck.
So I went back to the stadium and told my family that I’d be more deaf than usual the rest of the day. My hearing issue was no problem for anyone else, some sign language, repeating things patiently, and my lip reading skills could compensate. It was me that had a problem. In such scenarios I have FOMO, a Fear Of Missing Out. My family loves me and includes me in everything- I can trust and rely on that – it’s that they are all such good storytellers. They’re good storytellers in the literary sense of building suspense using nuances of wordplay, of voice tones and inflections, of playing shared family knowledge like a violin (in kind, gentle ways) while building towards a punchline. To miss some of the words or sentences means a high probability of missing the joke! If you know me at all you know how I love a good story so I had a serious case of FOMO!!! I didn’t want to miss any clever turn of phrase that would be said!
To cope with the FOMO I did my best to focus on the bigger picture of just enjoying their physical presence and to appreciate the things I did hear and let the rest go…and to just trust myself and them! I did my best to “catch the conversational drift” and add related stories of my own now and then. I tried to be as much a full participant as possible. It was hard at first to keep my FOMO from dropping down like a barricade between us but I leaned on trusting myself and everyone else. I imagined the conversation was a happy-accident style painting where an artist just trusts the creative process. I reminded myself that I like surrealism and nonsensical poetry – that I would be fine with things not being comprehensible. I recalled the art college essays I wrote about the artists John Cage, Rene Magritte, Joseph Cornell and Ray Johnson. I also remembered reading about Surrealism and Dadaist poetry and storytelling in addition to the art styles.
Later that day when we had dinner and as the evening cooled off my right hearing aid fluttered to a little more life. Not back to it’s normal power but I was glad of a wee bit more sound. After we were home I got out the hearing aid instructions and fiddled with the settings. During breakfast the next morning I fiddled with the settings some more and the second game day had a bit more – not normal but better- hearing in it. Still I practiced “just appreciating what I did hear” and “just trusting and loving”.
Here are some photos from the second soccer game of people I was just loving and trusting.
Our family soccer goalie is in the middle behind the fence. The 4 others are also family members.
And I found myself just enjoying our meals together and didn’t take photos. Except for this one at happy hour.
Stories got told over our domino games we had at our house till after midnight! In our quiet house I heard a bit more of the stories but it’s obvious that these hearing aids need repair! Will visit the hearing aid repair place asap!
So I learned this week that it really is true that “A little nonsense now and then is valued by the wisest people”, that art can help – even when it’s memories of art history essay papers, and also that just loving and trusting can lead to some of the happiest of experiences! What a great time I had with family!!!!
I hope your week is filled with love, trust and happiness too! See you next Monday.
My Odditerrarium fine art exhibit opens this Thursday Oct 6 from 6 to 8 pm at Caplan Art Designs! It’s been fun to think so much about what dogs and cats might think about! I hope others are amused too.
I’ve enjoyed titling paintings in ways that refer to aspects of mental life. Sometimes, like this painting below, I’ve been rather straightforward. This painting is titled “Intellect”.
Here’s a look at the exhibit in the process of going up on the wall at Caplan Art Designs. The gallery kindly sent me these photos. You can see more about my entire series here on my portfolio and I’m still very proud of the nonsense poem book related to my exhibit! Yes, copies of my book will be available at the Gallery and also available online here – with a full preview of the entire book too.
On another gallery wall there are 3 of my other paintings from other series.
Here’s a kid looking at one of my paintings before it got moved to a different place in the Gallery.
On my email newsletter recently I shared a few of the sketchbook pages where I’d thought, with a pen in hand, about thinking.
Over on NIL-TECH they wrote a really nice thing about my currently in progress drawing marathon…please click here to see it for yourself. It’s so nice! <blushing>
If you saw the above Reel then you’ll recognize the progress I’ve made in the photos below.
If you’re wondering how I’m managing so many projects at one time: I have 3 work stations in my studio. Each project has it’s own area with an art supply taboret between them with my color palettes and brushes sorted for each project. This way the projects and the supplies I’m using for each one are always ready. I’ll take turns working in short bursts almost daily on each project until they’re finished.
My sketchbooks and the art supplies I use for them are much more portable and roam with me from the coffee pot to the breakfast table or outside to our patio.
And here’s hoping the rest of this week goes smoothly for us all. See you next Monday.
A fun creative exercise is to list the good things in my life. As the saying goes here’s “a few of my favorite things”. Items on my list are in bold type.
Painting. Basset Hounds. Flowers. I combined these favorites in a mixed media painting titled “The Goods Of This Life”. It’s 8 x 11 inches and was made using ink, color pencil, gouache and collage on board.
Below is a closer look at my painting. This is a new piece in my Odditerrarium series for upcoming exhibit at Caplan Art Designs.
And yes, the orchids are a homage to my adopted Mom (mentioned last post).
Art supplies. I’ve been channeling my inner Julia Child and practicing talking while doing a drawing demonstration for NIL-TECH. In this video I’m sharing how I get my ideas and start a drawing using watercolor pencils.
The idea for this “Coffee Pup” drawing was inspired by the feeling of enjoying the first sip of good coffee. Coffee is another good thing.
Fountain pens and poetry and the awareness of caring… 3 more good things.
Family. That’s a really big good thing! A group of us got together to watch a great nephew’s university soccer game! We had such fun seeing each other and cheering for our nephew!
Friends are another really big good thing and cookouts … two more good things that I enjoy. Naturally I had put them in a poem in my artist book Patch La Belle.
Libraries. Oh my goodness libraries are such gifts! Both the public libraries and private libraries you assemble yourself at home are treasures!! We recently visited our local library for the first time since the pandemic began in early 2020. Since the pandemic started we’ve primarily checked out the ebooks. I certainly count ebooks among the good things in life but printed books… oh, it was such a treat to get print books during our recent visit!
One of these days I’ll write more about why libraries and books are so important in my creative life. But not in this post. In case you’re curious, however, about how books relate to my creative life I’ve begun keeping a public list of some of my favorite books that help me in my creativity here: https://bookshop.org/shop/clancy
I never know when a good thing will inspire art – which is why I keep lists in my sketchbook. If you haven’t already signed up to get my email newsletter in which I share my sketchbook pages please do! https://sueclancy.substack.com/
I hope your week contains many of the good things in your life…and that you’re able to notice them. See you next Monday.
My spouse’s sweet pepper plants are doing well in the heat! I stuffed the just picked peppers with cheese and roasted them with black beans, corn, zucchini and red onion. Tasted yummy!
The heat inspired me, as I’ve illustrated recently with a drawing demo, to stay in a cool place and finish reading a wonderful novel.
A Gentleman In Moscow by Towles was so good that when I finished reading I added it to my books-to-cheer-up-by shelf for rereading whenever I need a pick-me-up.
I got wonderful news from Storyberries this week – they’ve started a bookstore! (Here’s a direct link to some of my books https://www.bookstore.storyberries.com/product-tag/sue-clancy/ ) When I looked at the new store I discovered that of the 18 books by me on Storyberries 12 of my titles are spread between 3 categories: art books, poetry, ABC123!! What a fun surprise!!
When someone clicks on a bookstore link the viewer can sample the book, read about the book, click a button to read the book for free and now there’s an option to buy a print copy too! Below is a screenshot example of what it looks like, this is a screenshot and not operational, click this link if you want lights and action about my poetry book below.
Since we’re just having fun today here’s one of my illustrated poems from Patch La Belle so you can see how I’ve hand written all of the poem text for the book. I wrote with a felt tip pen. I went through lots of felt tip pens while working on this book. I already had a fountain pen so I was missing the ability to refill a pen but the fountain pen nib I had at the time of this project wasn’t bold enough. (This is how I knew what to request as a birthday gift! 😁 ) Anyway, here’s a poem.
This week the rest of my birthday present came in to our local pen and stationary store Oblation Papers and Press ! The extra fine nib fountain pen that I got the actual day of my birthday is now joined by a broad nib and a stub nib!
I love fountain pens for the ease of use that a good quality pen, like these TWSBI kind. They write and draw super smoothly have a built in converter which allows me to fill them with my preferred ink (Heart of Darkness by Noodlers Ink). Now there’s even fewer plastic bits of disposable felt tip pens to go into a land fill from my studio!
Right away I practiced writing an alphabet and drawing with each pen.
Here’s a single drawing I did with all 3 fountain pens. Yes, I totally see more handwritten illustrated poetry books in my future!
Over on my email newsletter A.M. Sketching I shared my favorite book about fountain pens and I’m sharing it here too just in case you’re curious.
To test how my new pens write over my gouache colors I wrote a poetic kind of phrase on a scrap of paper.
Then I painted an Earth in Space inspired by the “plaid” striations in my breakfast orange.
When the painting was dry I wrote my phrase as neatly as I could.
So you can see the page better…
…it worked fairly well! So, yes, I’ll definitely be doing more illustrated poetry!
The above mentioned novel by Towles is a hard act to follow but here’s what I’m reading and enjoying now. I’m thinking there may be some drawings of foxes and hedgehogs soon.
I also made some progress this week on a new painting for an upcoming fine art exhibit, there’s my current art exhibit to promote, there progress I could share on a new ABC123 category book (I have a category! Wahoo!! 🙌❤) but it’s early days in these projects and I’m tired of typing now.
I hope your week is sweetly filled with peppers, prose, poetry and pens just as you like them. See you next Monday.
A video look at the original book “A Scoop Of Letter Soup” is here on YouTube and I did manage to make an Instagram Reel of it too!! I wrote last post about learning about Reels so I’m still feeling “look I did it!” about my new skill!! 🤣 And I’ve made a portfolio page where my currently in progress series of short experimental art books will be collected as they appear as ebooks on Storyberries. At some future time I may gather them into a printed book but for now this portfolio page is where they’ll exist outside of Storyberries. I’m loving the pun of making books by hand that are distributed as ebooks!!
Here are some still photos of the book
In one of the little concertina book blanks I made and talked about in last weeks post I am starting a new illustrated poem book. This will be a slow project to be worked on around the edges of other projects. But here’s how it goes: In my poetry sketchbook, seen in the upper part of the photo below, I have some poems that seem worth working with. After selecting one of my sketchbook poem rough drafts I did a few thumbnail doodles on a scrap of paper to try different placements of my poem text and artwork. The thumbnail doodle that I like best can be seen on the lower right in these photos. To the left is the concertina book blank and my efforts at doing the hand lettering and drawing “for real” aka neatly and possibly worthy for public viewing.
One benefit of working in a concertina book is that I can easily slip a bit of wax paper under the page I’m working on in order to prevent bleed-through of my inks or gouache paints.
Here’s the finished page.
A post ot two ago I wrote about one of my favorite books by Mary Lasswell “Suds In Your Eye” as one of the hopepunk style books I cheer up by. Lasswell was writing in the 1940’s so finding print copies of her work has been a bit of a personal quest.
One of my coveted Lasswell titles “One On The House” came via mail this week! A side benefit of being someone who creates artist books is that I have most of the tools for minor book repair on hand. The copy I could find (and afford) of “One On The House” was listed in acceptable condition but with a cover-spine issue. As you can see below the cover is barely hanging on by threads.
But the outside of the cover-spine is fine!
So I took a strip of archival mulberry paper and trimmed it to fit.
Then I laid the trimmed mulberry strip on wax paper and covered one side of the mulberry strip with archival neutral ph glue. I took the photo below while the strip was still wet after being put in place so it is still shiny in appearance. I used the bone folder to press the just glued paper into the cover spine fold. When the glue dries the mulberry paper will almost disappear and blend in with the books original paper.
I slipped clean wax paper in the crevice of the patch so if any glue oozes as I close the cover it won’t harm the rest of the book. Then I put some paper weights on the cover and let the book dry overnight. There were two other weak sections of the book spine that got this same repair treatment which is why you see three pieces of wax paper in the book in the photo below.
I am a professional artist who knows a lot about creating books by hand but that’s not the same thing as being a book conservation or restoration expert. My repair attempts on books are not on rare or valuable books. My repair attempts are on books for my own use. My copy of “One On The House” cost me 6 dollars and I repaired it because I want to easily read it without without causing more damage to the book. If I hadn’t done the repairs I’d bet that after the first read through the book would have fallen completely apart. I also want to keep this book on my “bookshelf to cheer up by” – more on that in a sec – so I want the book to be as hale and hearty as possible. Anyway, a very good resource book for such minor repairs is “The Care and Feeding of Books Old and New” by Rosenberg and Marcowitz. And a good source for book making or repair supplies is https://www.talasonline.com/
This photo below is of my “books to cheer up by” section I mentioned earlier. As you can see the book I repaired has taken its place on the shelf next to The Annotated Arabian Nights.
We poured a bit of bourbon and said “cheers” to the newcomers on our cheer-up bookshelf! For my own mental health sake it feels good to have a shelf full of reliable sources of good cheer.
As you see in the above photo one of the books there is titled “Mrs. Rasmussen’s Book of One-Arm Cookery”. Mrs. Rasmussen is one of Mary Lasswell’s reoccurring fictional characters who is famous for being able to cook very good meals while holding her beer in one hand.
I made Mrs. Rasmussen’s super yummy chili recipe and rice while holding my bourbon. But I did set my glass down when I chopped the onion. Even so I think Mrs. Rasmussen would have cheered my efforts. It did taste good!
One of our local independent bookstores, Powell’s, did a fundraiser for Ukraine. Naturally my wife and I ordered books. More than one box of books was mailed to us but the stack of books in the photo below was what was delivered while the chili cooked and the bourbon flowed.
Here’s hoping you too have a collection of books, soup, fur-friends and people that you love that can help cheer you up. So cheers! Till next Monday.
This week war began and for a second being an artist felt frivolous. But in difficult times we need art more than ever. We need things and people that feed our spirits and remind us of why we’re glad to be alive. We need hope. That’s how we fight for democracy and win.
When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began I listened to the news and searched my bookshelves for a title I had gotten in 2003 not long after 9/11 and when war began in Iraq. My thoughts then, like now, turned to the role of artists during times of war. “Artists in Times of War” by Howard Zinn was very relevant in 2003 and still is even though the current event details are different.
Spoiler: artists are carriers of democracy. To quote from page 108 they are “profoundly democratic”. Democratic is defined as upholding, however imperfectly, the ideas of rule of law, of equality before the law, equality in access to resources, equality of representation in government and the human right of self determination. The Arts are a living language of a people, a dramatization of what they feel, what they need, what their hopes are … The Arts help people become self aware. Self-awareness helps people make choices and become active participants in their own lives and communities. That’s what makes living artists so dangerous in the viewpoint of authoritarians.
And perhaps equally important is the fact that artists help us, no matter how high flying the political rhetoric, to remember that the kids will still need to be entertained and educated, that adults will still need kindness, that dinner will still be wanted. Art, poetry and writing of all kinds can help us remember that the statistics a politician quotes represent actual people.
Speaking of dinner: a dear friend came over to visit for an evening and to ask me to sign some copies of two of my book titles that she plans to give as gifts! It was so good to see her!
After serving wine I signed copies of The Professional Dog and Numpurrs. I also did little drawings in each book!
We had a free ranging conversation about life, books, movies and my friend indulged me as I showed her my art projects in progress and outloud we played with what “could be”. This is an extremely exciting and valuable sort of conversation! Bouncing ideas around in loose “what if…” and “what about…” ways helps me in my creative process! It was so unbelievably good to get my friends input! Sharing artwork in its fragile beginning stages is risky and I’m so lucky to have trustworthy creative-playing friendships.
I made a new batch of potato soup (recipe last post) and when it was ready the three of us ate soup out of large mugs while sitting informally in the living room where it was warm and comfy.
I delighted in having fabric cocktail napkins with my Professional Dog portraits on them and enjoyed our friends chuckles when she saw the napkins!
Whenever I feel unsettled about world events besides talking with my spouse and trusted friends I deliberately tune in to awe. Meaning that I purposefully do some small thing that delights me, sparks my curiosity or causes me to notice something and say “wow!”. A good article I read this week on the topic of awe and why it’s important is here. An aspect of tuning in to the feeling of awe is to cultivate time to play in unstructured ways, to make time to wander, to ponder.
On a recent wandering meandering car drive we saw snowfall and large trees. That’s a guaranteed “wow” from me – I love the large evergreens any time of the year.
The feelings of awe, the feelings curiosity and the feelings of an aha moment are part of why I object so strongly to book banning (see a recent post). The attempts to control the mental resources available to others is a form of abuse. Banning preempts the victims ability to be self-aware and to be able use, as democracy offers, however imperfectly, the right of self determination. The restrictions of a person’s access to books and other mental resources is as serious as someone restricting a person’s access to food, water or healthcare.
During times of unrest I think taking the time to ponder is crucial because an artist is so much more than a reaction to or a mirror of society. If an artist is going to take action rather than simply knee jerk react to current events it takes time to think things through.
Here’s a paraphrased quote that I wrote on a card and thumbtacked to my studio wall.
Progress is happening on a new experimental art book for Storyberries! It’s a wordless visual poem about letter soup with only 10 panels plus front and back covers. 12 images total. Ink, acrylic and gouache are my art methods on another 2 inch square concertina zig zag folded book. I focused as I mentioned last post on rhythm, repetition and surprise. It will be a challenge to talk about this poem on this blog and on my social media without giving the poem’s punchline away immediately before Storyberries has a chance to distribute it but I’ll do my best.
In the photo below I’ve laid in the extreme dark and light areas to establish the contrast as well as to focus on the visual rhythm. I’m thinking of how the ebooks on Storyberries flow up and down so I’m designing my content to flow with that book motion. Will it work? I don’t know. 🤷♀️ Yes, my new poem is for a category on Storyberries called “experimental” for a reason! 🤣
The sortof weird thing is that I’ve not completely finished promoting “How The Cow Went Over The Moon” yet. So there might be some promotion overlap. Oh well. People read more than one book at a time anyway right?
A few evenings this week I took a break from reading “The Annotated Arabian Nights” to read “Suds in Your Eye” by Mary Lasswell. This book was published in 1942 when World War II began. What I’ve enjoyed about this book, besides seeing an artistic response to the wartime events of the 1942 era, is that no single person is the “hero” or center of the story. The story centers around how a group of people work together as a community. The concept of working together is also what drives the story plot. And “good food, great friends and cold beer” could be the books motto. This is such a good book to cheer up by! I’d list this book as an early example of the hopepunk genre (mentioned last post). And the illustrations are darling!
Besides the visit from a great friend this week my wife and I talked by phone with my adopted mom and big sister! Mom said she’s proud of me and that I’m to “Keep making art”! Big sister agreed! So I wrote the exact quote of Mom’s on a card and thumbtacked it to my studio wall just above the light switch for the room. That way I will always remember!
I hope your week contains many connections with your support system so that you feel encouraged to do all the good you can in this world.
