hearing

A hearing book and the cookbook is out!

A Creative Life, art gallery, art techniques, artist book, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, book design and layout, books, collage, creative thinking, drawing as thinking, handmade books, illustrated poem, illustrated recipe, illustrated shorts, illustration, Kim Cooks Sue Draws, mental health, poetry, publications - publishing, recipe illustration, sketchbook, visual thinking, words and pictures, writing and illustrating

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.

Very loud drum roll please!! The cookbook I’ve been illustrating is now available! It is titled Kim Cooks Sue Draws and can be gotten in person at Chef Kim Mahan’s culinary Class Cooking which is part of the winery Burnt Bridge Cellars. It is also available for shipping or as a downloadable pdf file from this link https://www.blurb.com/b/11301105-kim-cooks-sue-draws

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!

the trumpet illustrated

A Creative Life, animals in art, illustration, visual story, words and pictures, writing

Here’s another flash fiction writing effort – with an illustration by me of course.

The Trumpet  (Story and illustration by Sue Clancy)

Billy had very good hearing. He heard someone walking towards him on the sidewalk.  But he didn’t look up. He was busy with his toy cars, trucks and animals.

“That’s a Marmota Monax” said an old man pointing to one small brown stuffed animal sitting on top of a fire truck.  Billy looked up from the toys around him on the ground.  It was Mr. Haan the volunteer librarian at the natural history museum. Mr. Haan held his ear trumpet one end in his ear the other wider end pointed at Billy so he could hear in case Billy said something.

But Billy didn’t say anything. Billy stared.

A little blue bird flew up and perched on the old man’s shoulder and while Billy watched the bird hopped to the edge of the trumpet and began to sing.   Mr. Haan smiled through his white beard, laughed, and bent down again to Billy and the toys on the ground. “Yes sir, that’s a Marmota Monax alright.”  He looked at Billy while positioning his ear trumpet expectantly, the blue bird happily hovering in the air just above his head.

Billy still didn’t say anything and looked at the device pressed against the old man’s ear.  It was shiny and green and shaped like a funnel or maybe like a metal ice cream cone.  Billy liked ice cream cones. Chocolate was his favorite flavor. The ear trumpet glinted in the sunlight. “Wasn’t that a cold thing to put in your ear?” Billy wondered to himself.  Mr. Haan smelled as he always did at the museum; like old books and blueberries.  Blueberry ice cream is good too.

Lowering the ear trumpet, putting it in the pocket of his brown tweed jacket Mr. Haan smiled again “That’s a very nice Marmota Monax you’ve got there” he said pointing again at the stuffed animal. Then he continued walking down the sidewalk laughing, his blue bird flying after him, landing on his head, flying high again, perching on his shoulder, then up in the air, singing loudly the whole while.

Billy watched Mr. Haan thinking “What did he say? Something about a Mom-otter-moan-axe? What is that? And why did he keep pointing to Mister Groundhog?”

illustration by Sue Clancy to go with a flash fiction story "The Trumpet" also by Sue Clancy

illustration by Sue Clancy to go with a flash fiction story “The Trumpet” also by Sue Clancy