Eighty Black and White Drawings

Sometimes others offer suggestions that might be not bad ideas, but I resist acting upon them because they involve a lot of time and energy with no certain rewards. Yet I have followed two of them. The first one was to create a digital catalogue of my art works, replete with images, descriptions and catalogue numbers. It was a lot of work at first to hunt down older works and to scan old slides. But now I make it a daily habit to catalogue. At the very least, it makes images always at the ready to send to a client, upload to a web site, or have on hand for someone who might be writing about my work.

The second piece of advice also required a lot of work, but not fortunately not nearly as much cataloguing a life’s work. This second piece of advice I actually heard twice. And since I heard it twice it seemed like it would be worth considering. I had written a book of poetry many years ago for just over one hundred small square paintings. Someone at an exhibition of these paintings suggested I do them all over again as black and white drawings and create a book out of them. "Black and white would be so much more economical to print," he added.

Last year a friend helped create a PDF file of the book in color. "You might think about doing all these over again as drawings, as black and white would be so much easier to print," she mentioned. It would have been easiest at that point to simply suggest converting the color book into a black and white book, but I saw an opportunity here in that many of my paintings were created from drawings. Since these were only studies they were hastily done and not intended as finished products. But since I was already do so much work on paper I decided to flesh out these old drawings, creating new drawings when there were no preparatory sketches.

As the months have rolled by on this project, I’ve put together a nice collection of figurative drawings. I had settled on doing about eighty drawings and have just passed the halfway point at forty-four completions. The last two, the drawing for "The Contortion," and the drawing for "The Red Shirt" are here. But how, exactly does one convey the feeling of a red shirt in a black and white drawing?

Recycled Drawings

Going solar as well as going with a green roof on my house have both proven to be untenable. One for lack of sunshine, the other for lack of consensus. So I will be needing to do other things to reduce my carbon footprint. I do the usual recycling, composting of perishables, and although it’s a strain we’re holding out with just one car.

This week, I decided to recycle bad drawings. Hmmm...bad drawings. My client’s agent told her this week that all my drawings were bad, but that’s another story. Let’s just say that I’m recycling the drawings that I personally don’t like but are on decent paper that I wish to reuse rather than discard.

I chose a large charcoal and pastel drawing and applied an eraser to it. Scrubbing out the drawing in a rhythmic way created a ground texture that forms a new platform from which to work. The seated lady still comes through, ghost-like, so I decide to play with her form. Another figure enters...a man strolling and swinging a suitcase. I had grabbed him off the internet. Now the lady sprouts extra arms like a Tibetan goddess. Colors are added and something quite different emerges from the original.

Most of my work this summer will be like this. New drawings will be made from old ones until I run out of paper.   I hope that my paper does not run out before my inspiration to do this!

Science Marches On

Six weeks ago I took part in the South Carolina branch of the March for Science. There was something special about this march, a gathering really, of enthusiastic supporters of science and inspiring speakers. It occurred to me that this is really an ongoing march - a rally for fact based writing and research, a rally for responsible health care, a rally to side with those who put responsibility for the preservation of our planet’s resources above partisan politics.

I have not taken part in a rally since then, but have contacted a few of the speakers at this initial rally in hopes of finding out more about them. I heard back from just two, Professor Tameria Warren, and the poet Tara Powell. They make for an interesting contrast, Professor Warren so quiet and reflective and Ms. Powell so exuberant. Her rousing poem, "Incident Report," is published on the web for all: http://jasperproject.org/what-jasper-said/llxk9y9mslnkfyw7dt22gl9ahn5h96

Professor Warren, by contrast, sent me a hand written speech which seemed more like a private, intimate letter of concern. I felt a certain sense of honor to receive it. Her speech made a pithy yet earnest appeal for science education, especially to train youth of color, for it is more often than not their communities that bear the brunt of science skeptics, climate change deniers, and corporate greed over community need.

For my part, I made two more painted snakes appealing for proper, affordable health care for the citizens of this country. I hold out hope that one day we will have a sensible and empathetic government that truly represents the needs of its people. I have been giving alternative names to these painted snakes, based upon precious objects. These two are the turquoise snake and the ruby snake.

The painted snakes, in their bold messages from afar and intricate patterns up close, represent how I experience the world of science. Many think of science as an agglomeration of facts and figures that lead us to correct conclusions about reality. To me, science is about the infinite revealed through the wonders of scale. Like Tara Powell’s poem , science points outward towards the cosmos, evinced by the solar system worn on her son’s head. Science is also like professor Warren’s analysis of community, plunging ever inwards towards the structure of things. It is both micro and macrocosmic depending upon how we direct our gaze. How deep can we go? How far outward can we see?

Many are angered at the disrespect leveled at science today. I am saddened by those who would cut themselves off from the wonder of scale, from the desire to extend vision, hearing and touch out towards the universe and down to the very core of being.

Wraith Infirmity Muses Literary Magazine

Three drawings from my book manuscript, You Look Great! Making Invisible Disease Visible, were published today in Wraith Infirmity Literary Magazine.  The drawings illustrate various aspects of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.  I will discuss more about the individual drawings later.
https://wraithinfirmitymuses.wordpress.com/wraith-infirmity-muses-volume-1-1-spring-17/

A Congress of Crows

Last night I finished an illustration for Kristina Miller’s book Woodland Harmonies. The story was cleverly didactic and featured crows as the main characters. Although a children’s story in format, it has very much an adult theme - the crows get together after work to meet at a local bar in a tree called, naturally, The Crow Bar. Getting tipsy, they start to become, as Miller puts it, "a raucous caucus," and decide to challenge each other to a nest building contest. They then divide themselves into distinctly dysfunctional groups. One group has a dictatorial leader who tolerates no constructive input from the rest of the group. Others are overly analytical and can never seem to get the project started. Clearly they represent human dynamics at its worst as they attempt to build hopelessly ludicrous nests. Fortunately the story has a happy ending, with the one egalitarian group volunteering to help repair the nests of the other groups and show them how these things are done (had that group not had as much to drink?)

While doing some background research for the project, I came across a list of names for gatherings of different types of birds. A group of crows is called a congress of crows. Congress. Now that was a word I was trying to avoid thinking about these days. I noticed that there was no word for a gathering of booby birds. A senate of boobies anyone?