Traveling to Various Edges and Reporting Back

I believe it was YoYo Mah who said something like "The job of the artist is to travel to the edges and report back."  I love that job description, so tonight I'm reporting back from a couple of edges to which I traveled today.

Early this morning my critique group had its monthly meeting.  This meeting is as essential as bread for me.  It takes place at the edges where ideas are slowly coalescing and shy little buds are trying to unfurl.  We listen carefully to each other and gently push to help the speaker expand on articulations and clarify for her or himself what's going on.  Some of us take notes in words and/or pictures, and when I look back at the code on the page, I remember the conversation as well as the emotional tone and the undercurrents of ideas.

 I was starting a new notebook this morning, and I generally take meeting notes starting in the back.  So these pages should be read from right to left.  Of special note is drawing #1353, made when we spied a man from the nearby fitness center parading through the parking lot carrying an enormous barbell over his head, another edgy kind of event.

After crit group I went downtown and met two friends for lunch.  As we were walking through the blustery wind, we noticed down low on the sidewalk, rising to about a foot high up against a building, a row of tiny building facades, carefully made and placed just so on slanted supports that leveled the bases of the little buildings along the hilly sidewalk.  What a fine surprise!  Nothing better than unexpected interventions where you least expect to find them.  If you're lucky enough to be walking in Asheville, check out the block between Lexington and Broadway-- more specifically between Chicken Alley and Tingle Alley-- on the side of whatever street that is that runs past the downtown Y and the Masonic Temple.  As you go uphill they will be on your right, way down low, on the edge of the buildings that cling to a narrow strip of sidewalk, right before the red light at Broadway.

I included the bricks of a building behind one group for scale. The other two were a few feet downhill, up against a stucco building.   These are really tiny, brightly painted, a sort of post-modern row of facades.  Absolute treasures.  Couldn't find an artist's name, but thanks, whoever did this!