Studio Notes - September 2020
…and so we continue in these strange times. The days pass in indistinguishable fashion, one as similar to the previous as to the next. In some ways I find it to be comforting and certainly simpler.
On the other hand, I miss friends and restaurants and especially hugs. And sadness is a difficult companion.
For over thirty years, Kirby and I have spent two weeks at Morse Mountain Nature Preserve, in Phippsburg, Maine, in a rental house called Seagontz. It is on a two-mile long sand beach. It’s like going to church, attending an ecology class, spending time with friends as in college housing, cooking with the best of summer’s bounty, reading everything you think that you will read but don’t, and a continual therapy session, all rolled into one. We are grateful to be here, even though it is just the two of us.
Two drawings for the show Flight.
Night Flight (left), Awakening (right). Charcoal and pigment on gessoed paper. 2020. Each 17” x 22” framed.
To see: If you like food and travel and are curious about how things work, you might enjoy Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, a four-part series on Netflix based on the book of the same name by Samin Nosra. I have found myself smiling through each episode.
To do: Vote, pure and simple. And encourage at least five other people to vote. Volunteer to take them to the polls, wearing masks, of course or assist them in getting an absentee ballot…whatever it takes to perform this sacred act.
To read: Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Milkweed Editions. The tagline for the book is, “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.” I’m not sure that I would have been drawn to it if it had not been recommended by Jan Owen, a friend and fellow artist. It is beautifully written and it connects three significant and seemingly disparate belief systems, science, faith and the wonder of the natural world.
Fire Flight, also for the show Flight. Charcoal and pigment on gessoed paper. 2020. 26” x 34” framed.
Coming up:
Flight, an exhibition at Cove Street Arts in Portland, Maine. On view from September 24 - December 5, 2020
Then on to next year with a solo show and beginning to curate a show for 2022. Art persists.