Jane Austen

Flamingos enjoying life in the Odditorium

A Creative Life, animals in art, art exhibit, art gallery, artist book, artistic inspirations, book design and layout, books, children's book, fine art, household surrealism, Odditorium, poetry, publications - publishing, sketchbook, visual thinking, words and pictures, writing, writing and illustrating

Frankly, I’m tired. But it’s the I’ve-played-hard good kind of tired. So more pictures and less text in this post and you get a special peek … I’ve been thinking about Kurt Vonnegut’s book If this isn’t nice what is? Here’s an article I enjoyed about this Vonnegut book. Here’s a photo of the book in my library with other Vonnegut titles.

Below is one of the poems I read during breakfast this week in a book called Animal Poems. It’s one of the titles in the Pocket Poetry series by Everyman’s Library. (I love this series! Especially with breakfast!) The poem in the photo is by Wiliam Cowper. I love the last line “The comfort of a reasonable joy.” So I’ve also been thinking how important it is to have regular reasonable enjoyments. I take the phrase “reasonable enjoyments” to mean the simple kind that don’t require lots of money, a travel agent or dressy clothes. Anyway, here’s the poem.

In my last post I talked about the pace of creative life. I’ve still been thinking about the skill of crafting daily rhythms and here’s a link to an inspiring article I read on the topic: https://www.wired.com/story/calendar-tips-post-pandemic-reentry-organization/  Maintaining a daily rhythm has enabled me – to get very tired 🤣 – but also to have nearly everything completely finished two weeks early prior to delivery of all the art and books for my Odditorium exhibit. Being early gives me flexibility to have time to rest as well as to deal with any unexpected issues.

Below are some of my sketchbook pages … and some kitchen gadgets I looked at and thought about as I worked on one of the last paintings for this exhibit.

Here’s a photo my spouse took of me working out how flamingos might carry things.

Below is the finished painting on my easel drying. Below that is a close up of the dry painting. I titled it “Is Not This Nice?” The title fits with my thoughts recently and echos the collage text I found in my falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was fun to find text written by Austen that was similar to what Vonnegut said.

Is Not This Nice? By Clancy – acrylic and collage on board

If the background of my painting reminds you of the ocean….we went there recently and seeing the sea lingered in my mind. The Pacific Ocean isn’t far from our house. I find it soothing to visit.

By now my studio is chock full of boxes of framed art ready for exhibit at Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs. This is part of how I earned my tiredness.

The other way I’ve been earning my tired is that I’ve been working on the exhibit catalog aka a picture book of my Odditorium exhibit. In addition to that I’ve been working on a kid friendly version of my exhibit catalog. Children need fine art in their lives too in my opinion. When I was a kid I would have loved to see a book talking about looking at fine art. That’s why I took the extra steps to make a children’s book version too. I have sent the kid friendly version to Storyberries.com and they have an exciting plan for the book design! Below is a screenshot of a post they did on Instagram about it!

Here’s a special early peek into the Odditorium – at my exhibit book!!! And a link so you can see the whole book!!! Even in the midst of being tired I’m excited!!

  • Front cover
  • Back cover
Odditorium by Sue Clancy – https://www.blurb.com/b/10698335-odditorium

One of my reasonable enjoyments this week was my spouse’s homemade biscuits for breakfast. The recipe is in my kitchen sketchbook Favorites So Far and you can see more of it here.

More next Monday about the Odditorium exhibit book and the other fun stuff…after I have a bit of rest. Hope you have a good week full of relaxation and reasonable enjoyments.

Crows, writing, art and the odd sandwich

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This week in the Odditorium aka household  surrealism I thought of how often I use the same pens to write and draw with.

It’s not surprising really as elsewhere in this blog I have written about the similarities I see between art making and writing. Here’s a link about that… https://sueclancy.com/similarities-of-art-and-writing/

These thoughts swirled in mind as I watched the crows in my yard. I don’t know where the wingtip shoes came from… but here they are in my sketchbook.

From my morning reading I added the quote from Plutarch. And I thought of how all too often we see only what we expect to see. It takes practice to work on our inner selves, to moderate our expectations and let things just be however they are. Then I put away my book and puttered in my studio cleaning things up, sorting pen nibs back into their places and cleaning the nib holders.

With these thoughts still swirling I started a new painting loosely based on my sketchbook page above. After a few days of work my spouse snapped this photo.

And then my spouse took this photo to show that sometimes I “hide” things on the edges of the paintings I do on cradled board.

Some time later I took a photo of the finished painting. I’ve titled it “Enjoyment”. I keep thinking of how we can choose to dip our pens in our pleasures and write them on our souls rather than rehearse the things that upset us. That choice can change one’s attitude and the kind of day one has.

Here’s a close up photo of the area of “Enjoyment” that contains the collage elements. I carefully chose text from the falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that I’ve mentioned in recent posts. So much of Austen’s work is a social comedy of people’s expectations and emotions. That’s why I choose this book for my collage source material besides the fact that it was already falling apart and was handy. (I have a collection of collage material to choose from and could have chosen some other theme.)

After I posted “Enjoyment” on social  media a friend who had studied poetry and Victorian literature in college commented that crows represent transformation. And the symbolism of crows was definitely on my mind. What a good word the word transformation is and I appreciate my friend for reminding me of it. When we are able to remember to enjoy the smallest of pleasures – and to be curious – we are in a position to transform moments of stress into something manageable.

Getting curious and writing and drawing (however well or poorly) are all tools of the emotional transformation process.

It wasn’t until later after conversation with my friend that I realized that in my new crow painting I echoed a theme (transformation) I have played with before. Such as when I took a tale by Aesop and made a wordless story “The Crow And The Water Jug” (you can also see the whole book via this link at Storyberries.com )

The Crow and the Water Jug – a wordless Aesop counting story – by Clancy https://www.blurb.com/b/10109198-the-crow-and-the-water-jug

More details about this children’s  book project on my portfolio page.

As I mentioned last post I’ve been working on writing a short summary for my entire fine art exhibit that I’m calling Odditorium.  Writing in my sketchbook as I work on art projects helps me focus my fine art onto a clear theme. I write my thoughts down as I work on fine art and vice versa so there’s a *lot* of both writing and art to winnow when it’s time to write an exhibit summary statement. Besides helping me sort my own thoughts the short summary text is something that Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs will use when talking about my exhibit with the public. Anyway, after more rewrites than most humans can count without a calculator here’s what I came up with:

Odditorium: I’ve been practicing household surrealism; painting visual stories inspired by looking in an uncommon way at common objects and plants. A useful mental health technique for dealing well with feelings is to deliberately look at the feeling in a new way. This is what I’m practicing when I do household surrealism. I take ordinary things found about the house and depict them in odd, different from the usual, ways so that instead of feeling mundane they evoke feelings of magic, wonder and laughter. Perhaps the flowers, the wine opener, the coffee mug are really souvenirs of pleasant moments in life?

I use gouache, ink, color pencil acrylic and collage to make my images. The collage text is from a falling apart copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen that I had in the house. Austen wrote about emotions and dealing with them so I enjoy the visual pun of including bits of her text in this series. I use animal characters because an animal behaving like a human highlights our humanity.

That’s the end of my statement which counts to about 200 words. I may tweak at it a bit more. But there it is.

No grand food experiments to crow (sorry!) about this week but I did repeat a reliably good sandwich recipe.

So I hope you have a very good week. See you next Monday?

Of civility, books, odd art and rice

A Creative Life, art exhibit, art gallery, Art Word Combinations, artistic inspirations, author illustrator, Gifts, household surrealism, Narrative Art, rabbits in art, sketchbook, visual thinking, words and pictures

I got my 2nd dose of the covid vaccine this week and I’m very glad! It did slow me down some so I did more than my usual reading, sketching and thinking.

I avidly follow and read the letters written by historian Dr. Heather Cox Richardson. Often I use her letters on current events and past history as a prompt for my creative sketchbook work.

This week I read this letter by Dr Richardson https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-7-2021 and did this sketch.

The next day I read this letter by Dr. Richardson https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-8-2021 and did this sketch.

Behind these sketchbook thoughts is my ongoing thinking about Jane Austen’s work. In her novels – Pride and Prejudice most certainly – Austen writes of civility and the social comedy of manners. I see Austen’s work as exploring how stories affect civility and how the presence of civility, or lack thereof, in turn affects not just the individual but also the people around them and the larger society.

Here’s some of the books I’ve been looking at (besides the ebook murder mysteries on my phone): Living With Books by Helen E. Haines, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (my new copy!), The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, Art Matters by Peter de Bolla, In the Presence of Fear by Wendell Berry.

So in multiple ways I’ve been pondering the mundane roll-sleeves-up get-hat-gloves-boots-on kind of work it takes to have a humane civilization. Pleasantness takes effort, talent and perseverance. It can take effort to remember to notice and accept when something is pleasant and then to share it.

As Kurt Vonnegut said “I urge you to please notice when you’re happy and exclaim or murmur or think at some point “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.””

The odd surprises which delight us in nature, in cooking, in art, in literature and in music help us to cope, to see things anew, to remember why we’re working so hard – and that’s what the Arts are for, I think, to help us remember our humanity, our capability to be humane.

Anyway, I eventually finished this painting and titled it “Of Civility”. As per my last post I used some collage text from my old falling apart copy of Pride and Prejudice. This is another piece for art exhibits later this year.

“Of Civility” – by Clancy- 10 x 8 inches- ink, gouache and collage on board

Yes, it may take effort sometimes to be civil and show civility … but forward looking pleasantness usually works out better. As Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Also while thinking on these topics I made a coffee mug design for my Zazzle shop. My hand lettering on the mug says “I love you…you’re probably thinking ‘but you don’t even know me’ … but if people can hate people they don’t even know then I can love…so, I love you.” (Yes, I consider this mug tangentially part of the “household surrealism” work I spoke of in my last post” – my whimsical enjoyment of mundane things which includes making items that could be given as gifts)

I Love You Mug by Clancy – click here for more info and ordering this mug – or look for other fun stuff here https://www.zazzle.com/store/sueclancy/collections

Speaking of mundane pleasures, thanks to “An Invitation To Indian Cooking” by Madhur Jaffrey, I have finally learned to consistently make good Basmati rice on the stovetop! (My rice cooker bit the dust so making rice stovetop became a project)

Some quotes I like about rice:

And here’s another sketchbook page … I keep thinking about this one…

I hope you have a pleasant week full of gentle stories, kindness, civility, some odd delightful surprises and a very good bowl of rice. See you next Monday?

Of odd hats flowers and books

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I’m practicing household surrealism as I work towards fine art exhibits later this year. Ordinary objects and plants are sources of inspiration.

Here’s a few sketchbook pages in which I’m playfully combining hats and plants.

Below are some primrose flowers a friend gave us. They sat on my table and I drew them and photographed them.

The flowers eventually became part of a hat in an acrylic painting I’ve titled “Of Sense”.

“Of Sense” – by Clancy- 10 x 8 inches- acrylic and collage on board

In my new series of artworks for exhibits at Burnt Bridge Cellars and Caplan Art Designs I’m using a bit of collage. The collage elements come from my old falling apart copy of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”.

I replaced that old Austen book with a newer intact copy. I’m enjoying my Austen collection. Just like a writer constructs a bibliography for a book being written I tend to have a bibliography behind my fine art exhibits. Jane Austen’s prominent in this year’s art bibliography … I plan to talk more about that in coming posts.

My sketchbooks also reveal what’s on my mind – and I’ll post pages from them too. My sketchbook pages in this post have quotes about dealing with emotions. Jane Austen’s work is about emotions and the social comedy of dealing with ones own emotions or reading the emotions of other people. So I’ve been thinking about that…

My most recent published sketchbook “Another Sketchbook” is a prequel to my current sketchbook and fine art series. You can see it here. Spoiler alert: it’s lots of drawings about books and cultivating one’s mental life.

It’s nothing new for me to be as fully my odd self as possible – in fact I’m doing this as I work towards my new fine art exhibits – but I saw this image below on Austin Kleon‘s Instagram – and I thought heck yes. So I’m going to continue to be odd with household things for a while as I contemplate emotional health and Jane Austen out loud – so to speak.

If you haven’t seen Austin Kleon’s books, blog or newsletter it’s worth a look.

My recent children’s book “This Rabbit” has been read over 11 thousand times on Storyberries.com as of this writing! Wow! Thank you! 🤗 And yes, I plan to make more kids books … as one of my followers you’ll be the first to know. But for a while there’ll be odd household surrealism from me in this space and I hope you enjoy it.

See you next Monday? Stay weird and know that you’re loved by the universe.