The shadow cast by a drawn line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mary Cassatt's pastels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Drawing,

 

I met an artist this summer who said (of herself ) she was "such a 19th century artist" with a little delighted chuckle at her drawing.  At least I think she said 19th, now I worry she might have said 18th?  In any event, I took it to mean that she had an affinity for drawing detail and realism.  Her drawings were convincing and filled with specificity.  Also, and this is where it gets interesting, a quietness.  How did that get in there?  I don't know.  One of her drawings was filled with people and cars, and a giant radio antenna tower, yet is felt as open and calm as meadow with a few cows.  Is this how the 21st century looks if you draw it right?

 

Which is related in the usual Dodo round about way, to the image above; of Mary Cassatt's pastel boxes.  What beautiful cylinders of color!  I have many boxes and sets of pastels, and watercolors too, and I buy little palettes of eyeshadow for the same joy in possessing the little slabs of color all in their places. 

 

Last summer, at the Georgia O'Keeffe museum in Santa Fe, there were Ms.O'Keeffe's box of drawing things in a vitrine to be admired.  It was charming, and compelling, and even a bit haunted in all the best ways imaginable. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Georgia O'Keeffe's pastels.

 

 

 

 

Consider the etymology of the word pastel, and ponder with me it's relationship to one of the Spanish definitions of the word: cake.  Is the because cakes are also made of paste (ground flour say) or is it that the color of cakes is pale, or is it the shape of the French drawing crayon?  The Spanish pastel also can refer to el dibujo or el color (de tono suave).  All this puts me in a mood to bake a pale cake of great detail and calm, and then to draw said cake in pastel shades, like our old pal Wayne Thiebaud, except he never made the cakes he drew, which means, if you are inclined to be competitive, you can easily win this round of who's the most authentic draughtsperson* of desserts.,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Thiebaud, Four Cakes, pastel on paper, 1996.

 

 

 

 

 

Wayne Thiebaud, Pastel Scatter, pastel on paper, 1972.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*  Yes, it would have saved letters to write drafts-  vs. draughts- but isn't it fun to dabble in harmless excess?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sugar Snake

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Heart-Shaped World,

Today's project is to make sugar cookies with your pals- you might object, suggest that summer is not the time for sugar cookies, counter that we wait until the holidays of winter to decorate cookies.  Well, ok, wait if you must, but I met a man about a week ago who was practicing already for the dessert he plans to make at Christmas time:  Croquembouche.  It is a far more ambitious dessert than sugar cookies; Croquembouche is architectural, sophisticated, baroque, and glorious. 

 

 

Actually, sugar cookies are pretty glorious too.  Let's make some while we consider our holiday pastry choices....

 

Sugar Cookies (adapted from Martha Stewart's Baking Book)

2 cups butter

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

5 cups flour

 

Cream the butter with the sugar.  Add vanilla and salt.  Add eggs.  Add flour.  Refrigerate the dough for a few hours, or overnight. Roll it 1/4 inch thick and cut our shapes.  Bake your cookies at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Decorate them with the following glaze icing and colored sugar and sprinkles.

 

Icing Glaze (adapted from King Arthur Flour website)

 

2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar

2 tablespoons corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

a pinch of salt

2- 3 tablespoons milk.

 

Sift the sugar into a bowl, add corn syrup, vanilla, & salt:  Add milk until you get the consistency you desire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talkin' 'bout things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Wondering, 

 

You remember a few days ago I mentioned cello music and I didn't want to forget to tell you to listen to this fine cello music here.  My dj played a track called Things Fall Apart* a few weeks ago and I rushed right out to the internet and bought the whole production, called Reversal. 

 

Some of you remember the night, so long ago, when I fell for the cello and its' player.  To say I fell, to say I crushed on, as they do say now, is like saying, at the edge of the Grand Canyon, "Look, there's a little water carved depression in the landscape here."

This is family show, though, so I won't describe the feelings I have for a cello and its player, whomever they may be.  Let us say that the way the cello and its player breathe together is shockingly intimate and to see it and hear it is a very fine treat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*  Which makes me think of Der Lauf der Dinge.   A little more on the artists, right here.  I am also thinking now of Things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

open road

 

 

 

 

Dear Drivers,

I know, you have heard a lot, maybe even too much from me on this of late, but this beautiful song for today gets at the heart of my thoughts on the self-driving car.  I am neither ready nor willing to hand over all the beautiful motion of driving to our robot overlords.  What, I ask you over and over, is it to be human essentially?  What is the thing that makes humans different from machines or devices?  Does our dependence on devices and data storage threaten essential human-ness?

At the last of Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion's broadcast a few weeks ago, President Obama called in and said he thought it was stories that made humans human.  I think it might be empathy, but I love a good story, so I will make room for that being one of the markers as well.

Another idea is that what makes a human a human is asking questions.  Or maybe more properly, seeking answers.  Here's to being human, whatever it means, and I repeat:  What is it to be human?










PS

Yes, you are thinking:  What is empathy?  What is story?  What is artificial intelligence?  What is inquiry?  Once we have definitions for all of those terms, we will return to 'what is human?'  In the meantime, get out there, man, and don't delay: grab whatever you can of the pleasure of the open road, and write it down, draw it, paint it, save it; but not on your hard drive.







 

Fairy Tale

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

My friend M. is an artist- many of my friends are- and this is a fairy tale, not because it isn't true, but because it is. 

Once upon a time, when I was a Young Reader, I read about salons and happenings and clubs of people throughout history who met to talk shop -- to change the shape of meaning of all kinds,  These were my people, as they say now.  But they were all in books, weren't they?  to begin with, perhaps, but now I find all my conversations, all my thoughts and ideas are witnessed and comprised of folks who adore thinking and making manifest their ideas.

My pal M. the artist collects snapshots of people.  They come from thrift shops and antique stalls, and they are selected, in part, for consonance with a theme;  "A gaggle of women," say, or "people dancing."  They are all sizes and dates.  They are like a handful of human time, grabbed out of the great gyre of the anthropocene, and they have become un-tethered from their stories, from their kin, their families and friends. 

They are a little sad and a little lonely, to my mind, and I think, perhaps, to my friend M.'s mind also.  In fact, I think that 'collecting' these photographic orphans of time is actually a way to repair the losses.  To find a way to treasure these moments anew.  She has not seen their alone-ness as a deficit so much as a reason to care, an impetus to love these relatives and friends of who knows who -- they are her family and friends now, and they join many more.

In my initial one dimensional thoughts, I saw only what was missing, and not a place that invited something -- invited narrative and affection.  I have a few photos like this myself.  I collected old postcards, and when you flip and sift through them in antique shops, sometimes a stray snapshot of similar dimension is in the between.   I have a few, a very few, portraits of women like this, and I have adopted them as my audience, my readers, and my viewers, in my studio.  One, in particular, in a hat, with a very intentional gaze is the muse of elegance and strength.  Another woman, on the running board of a car, she is my muse of adventure.  For many years, I carried an image of Lucy Lawless as Xena, Warrior Princess and Martha Stewart in my wallet- because any question of what to do under any circumstance can be answered by their combined expertise. 

These orphaned photos after all, belong to our family, they are us, really.  We had a book, you know, on the shelf, all my years, called The Family of Man (which we all know means the family of all beings, because we are not so foolish as to let semiotics keep us from trying on a glass slipper).

This book's spine is all I remember of it- who knows now what was in it, and I won't check, but you can, if you must -- because that is all I needed of that books' message:  we are family, the family, one family.

This is why, dear friends of time and space, near and far, today's suggestion for a project for you is to seek out the glass slipper;  to find artists and thinkers to talk with.  Or, to find some people to imagine you would like to meet,  Or, at least to read the spines of books.  Or, to love one another.

 

Perfectly right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Everyday,

 

I go out everyday and arrange things into a kitchen sink drawing and I paste and cut and tape and mark and put it all under a Dover edition of Ulysses to dry while listening to cellos play; and this is all so terribly correct, so perfectly right, that I just had to write and let you know.  Please tell everyone for me, won't you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

PS

 

These are sculptures, not drawings, but you know that already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen to This.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Eared,

 

My dj brought me to this song a few evenings ago-  Don't you love the jangling bells and the rinky-tinky wall of sound redux?  And how about that Jackson Miriam Makeba Mahalia Jackson Nina Simone voice?  Nothing at all wrong with that!  If your dj don't play Mahalia, Miriam or Nina, y'all better turn your dials.