Being Jane

I am feeling very much like a Jane Austen novel right now. Actually very much like Sense and Sensibility. But unlike Miss Austen's novels, I am not so certain of a happy ending. And I don't even have the benefit of an Edwardian dress.

The remedy

Hot chocolate cures everything. Even unproductive mornings.

Currently Reading

It has been a very long time since I have started and finished a book in one day. I picked up Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale after lunch and finished it after midnight. To say I was lost in the book would be an understatement. I was spellbound.

All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait. You want to know someone? Heart, mind, and soul? Ask him to tell you about when he was born. What you get won't be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing is more telling than a story.

The Thirteenth Tale is story about a famously elusive author who is dying and wants to record the most important and anticipated story of her career-- the truth about who she is. The story unfolds like a labyrinth that weaves around a truth that somehow eludes the reader. You grasp at fragments of understanding, congratulating yourself on piecing her life together. When in fact you have only another story. You have been lead on elaborate jaunt through memory and myth, only to find that the plot that has engrossed you so much is only a subplot. What is the real the story? What is the truth?

Tell me the truth, you echo the character's desire to know the truth, but from cover to cover you are also captivated by the story that gets you there.

Birds of a feather and a new semester

I finished my bird sketchbook, all 60 pages of it. I shall miss drawing them at the feeder. I will miss the birds in general. I have never seen a cardinal in the city.

It is a brand spankin' new semester, and my last. In May, the real world awaits. But for now it is a very cold Tuesday in January.

More Feathered Friends

"I would rather learn from one bird how to sing
than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance."

-e.e. cummings

"To Continue"

In an attempt to get myself out of a mid-January funk (also known as Artist’s Block) I was looking through Inspiration=Ideas: A Creativity Sourcebook for Graphic Designers by Petrula Vrontikis. The book asks successful designers from around the world to share what they are inspired by and how it informs their work. Although the book is geared toward designers, I found just reading the lists submitted by the designers to be very insightful. And I got thinking about what inspires and interests me at the moment. So here is my list:

1. Chairs. I have had chairs in the back of my mind for a couple of months. The vague idea that chairs can serve as surrogates for people. Empty chairs imply the absence of someone-- a guest, a visitor, a friend, a lover, an enemy. So I did some visual research and went to the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford and visited their collection of 18th century furniture and found some delightful colonial specimens.

2. Richard Serra. I went to Dia:Beacon in New York, last weekend and on installation view are Serra’s Torqued Ellipses. They are perhaps my favorite pieces of contemporary art. And I rediscovered Serra’s “Verb List Compilation: Actions to Relate to Oneself” (1967-1968). A list of 108 verbs to describe what sculpture can do. It fittingly ends with “to continue.”

3. Bird Watching. I have been sitting in the window sketching the birds at the feeder outside the kitchen window.

4. Speedball 2” Brayer. I’ve been using my favorite printmaking brayer as a paint roller for gouache with delightful results.

5. Henry the 8th and all his poor wives. I am an anglophile at heart. Hans Holbien was court painter to Henry the 8th and his portraits are so rich with detail and a harsh frankness.

6. Graph paper. I love working on graph paper. I recently found a new type of graph paper used to practice calligraphy so the whole grid is slanted.