fini

The ginko trees have turned golden. I feel like the rain. And in the eleventh hour October slips away like tea gone cold.

Maybe Sparrow (Day 31, fini)
pen and ink
3 x 2"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

30

I am not I, thou art not he or she, they are not they.

--Evelyn Waugh
(author's note Brideshead Revisited)

Birdcages (Day 30)
pen and ink
6 x 9"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

29

I think what you doodle is very revealing. Not what you draw consciously, but what emerges when you mind wanders. I always draw faces. I don't know why.

That face
pen and ink
1.5 x 1.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

27 + 2

So...Life happened between day 27 and day 29. And drawing did not.


Agatha (Day 29)
pen and ink
5.5 x 7.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Twenty-six

Someday...I will own a mid-century modern chair of my dreams. Until then, I will draw them.

Eames Eiffel Wire Chair (Day 26)
pen and ink
3.5 x 6.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Twenty five

I realized I haven't done a chair yet.

So here is a mid-century modern chair I came across today at the South End Antique Market. It was a particular green, and in the afternoon light it reminded me of Edward Hopper's Room in Brooklyn (1932). That patch of green light is mesmerizing.

Green chair (Day 25)
pen and ink
3.75 x 6"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

twenty four

The ibis was revered in ancient Egypt and is the symbol of the god Thoth, the creator of magic and the inventor of writing. He is thought to have created himself through the power of language.

There is something calligraphic about the skull of an ibis.

Ibis (Day 24, part 1)
pen and ink
6.5 x 2"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009





Thoth (Day 24, part 2)
pen and ink
6.5 x 2"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

22

Play With Fire (I got burned) (Day 22)
pen and ink
5. x 7"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

twenty-one

Wednesday.
Lovely night to drink Turkish coffee at a sidewalk cafe and muse on yellow umbrellas and the imagined destinations of planes flying overhead.

Cafe Umbrella (Day 21, part 1)
pen and ink
5.5 x 6.75"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009




Cafe Umbrellas (Day 21, part 2)
pen and ink
9 x 6.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Vingt

The Proust questionnaire asks-- What is your idea of perfect happiness?
I don't know yet.

Right now I am asking myself-- What are am I doing?
I don't know yet.


Hell is a blank page (Day 20)
pen and ink
6 x 1.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Breaking Ground Kenya

We can't change the big picture, but we can change the small picture, and these girls are the picture.

You may or may not know that I have been involved with the grassroots Boston charity One Home Many Hopes (ONMH). I became involved by chance through and art opening and since then these 32 orphaned girls in Mtwapa, Kenya, have found their way into my heart and thoughts. I think it is a very rare thing in the world to know that the money you give and good you do actually helps someone. In the case of One Home Many Hopes, I know it does. I know their names and they mean something to me.

Currently, all 32 girls and 3 ‘house mothers’ live in a one 4-bedroom house. So, One Home Many Hopes has launched Breaking Ground – a month-long, global fundraising effort from Oct. 19th, 2009 – Nov. 20th in cities and towns around the world. The goal is to bring in $70,000 (GBP 50,000) to build this family its first real home.

To learn more about One Home Many Hopes please visit http://www.onehomemanyhopes.org
To become involved in Breaking Ground Kenya please visit http://breakinggroundkenya.org
To donate please visit my fundraising page at http://www.firstgiving.com/katecastelli

Thank you.
--k

Eighteen

Today is an anniversary of sorts, I started this blog two years ago. I honestly don't know why. But it has been a valuable outlet for my current work and state of mind.

On a sidenote...it snowed today. I couldn't believe it.


Antlers (Day 18)
pen and ink
5.5 x 3.75"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Seventeen

Wildebeest Deux (Day 17)
pen and ink
5 x 10.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

XVI

Cervus canadensis (Day 16)
pen and ink
6 x 8"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Quindici

I have always found the Bialetti espresso maker elegantly intriguing.


Faceted Espresso (Macchinetta) (Day 15)
pen and ink
2.75 x 4"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Fourteen

Saratoga Bottle (Day 14)
pen and ink
9 x 3.75
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

four + nine

Penguins for O. (Day 13)
pen and ink
5.75 x 2.25"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Twelve

And now for something completely different...

Cell Phone Photo Soiree
hosted by Glovebox Boston at Midway Studios, Fort Point, Boston.

Photographs function like memories; they serve to record events and experiences that occurred in the past. With the emergence of digital technology, the process of making photographic images has never been so readily available. Production has become fast and effortless. Photos can be taken by the hundreds-- easily downloaded, sorted, and disseminated. All this can happen with the click of the mouse. In our digital age, it seems that everyone has become an instant artist. But what does that mean for professional image makers? Is everyone now an artist? And does the proliferation of photographic image affect our relationship to the world around us? How do digital technologies alter our relationship to the lived experience?

The traditional photographic print exists within the same physical space that we occupy-- a space that we often share with loved ones and friends. Indeed the printed image represents the past in a realm or experience that is quite different from the digital realm. But is our experience of the photographic print more substantial than that of a digital image? What are the advantages of one technology over the other? And how will these different forms of photographic production continue to shape our understanding of both the past and present?

-- Jodie Baehre, Stuart Steck, and Victor Yambao





Grid (Lechmere)
Digital image taken with Blackberry Tour 9630
variable dimensions
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

featured in the Cell Phone Photo Soiree

Eleven

A winged passenger wandering around the Harvard Square platform last night. Inbound or outbound my friend?

Red Line Pigeon (Day 11)
pen and ink
2.5 x 2"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Ten

I unabashedly love Starbucks. Say what you will, but that $3.64 cup makes me happy.

I find Starbucks oddly comforting. It is consistent in the best possible way. Starbucks in Cambridge is the same as Starbucks in Reykjavik.

I didn't really drink coffee until college. In my junior year when I was trying to work my way through a particularly dense art history course in Postmodernism, I would take all my texts and notebooks and fold myself up into a corner table and read for hours. Anyone who has read Jacques Lecan or Michel Foucault knows you need at least one espresso to even get through the first paragraph.

Now it is a habit to go and work or read or draw or escape. I like to melt into the corner and just watch the world.

Tall non-fat no-whip Hazelnut Mocha (Day 10)
pen and ink
2.75 x 4.75"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Nine

I really have no idea.

Homage to Man Ray (Day 9)
pen and ink
2.5 x 4"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Ate

Fortune cookies are one of the strangest forms I have ever tried to draw. They are so structural.

Does anyone ever actually eat the cookie? I don't. I just save the fortune. Tonight's seemed rather appropriate...








Musings on Fortune (Day 8)
pen and ink
5.75 x 8"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Seven

Look what I found tonight! Near the Park Plaza Hotel on Arlington Street.

Yeah...so no drawing today. No excuse other than utter exhaustion. My apologies. I will get back on the horse tomorrow.*

*Apparently I was so out of it last night that I saved this post as a draft and never published it. I need sleep.

Six

Another 11th hour post. At least I have a good excuse. Late night conversation over a divine cup of hot chocolate at L.A. Burdick on Brattle Street. Haven't been there in months. It's very decadent. The hot chocolate tastes like a melted chocolate bar. Also indulged in their petits macarons. They were out of my favorite lavender, so raspberry it was.

A rather sweet end to Tuesday.


Chocolat Chaud (Day 6)
pen and ink
6 x 4"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Five

Once upon a time people licked stamps and put them on hand-tinted postcards and sent them around the world. It took time. And elegance. And 12 Francs.

Postes (Day 5)
pen and ink
3 x 3.75"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Four

An eleventh hour doodle. A Greco-Roman doodle actually. One of those perfectly sculpted faces fragmented by history and left staring into the void for all eternity.

And with that thought, I bid you good-night.


Greco-Roman Doodle (Day 4)
grease pencil
2 x 4"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Trois

Portobellos (Day 3)
pen and ink
4.25 x 5.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

Two

I got glasses when I was in third grade. I wear them all the time (well...except to draw them...) I think I look strange without them.

Everything beyond 6 feet in front of me is foggy. I can never remember if that means I am near-sighted or far-sighted.

Four Eyes (Day 2)
pen and ink
4.5 x 6"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009

One

I've decided to post a drawing a day for the month of October. It's a personal challenge of sorts.

So on the inaugural morning I give you...a conversation between a tea and coffee drinker.

Cuppa (Day 1)
pen and ink
4 x 4.5"
copyright Kate Castelli 2009