Wamboldtopia Sketch Crawl

Today the journal group that I'm in had its first sketch crawl.  We had heard about a private garden called Wamboldtopia (Wamboldtopia.com) near BookWorks (www.AshevilleBookWorks.com) that had been under growth and change for ten years, the masterwork of Damaris and Ricki Pierce.  The day was sunny and warm, and the garden is actually located near a fairly busy section of town;  but as soon as we passed under the stone archway entrance, we felt like we were in a cool, shady, hidden part of Italy, Bomarzo with its ancient sculpture garden, or an undeveloped and rarely -visited section of a forgotten hill town.

I like to notice what my eye is drawn to, and I kept finding myself parked in front of the several old-tombstone-like skull pieces that were made by Damaris and embedded in stone columns or walls made by Ricki. 

For my final drawing I did the tower (which is really a clever disguise of a chain-link fence at the property line-- pieces of insulation foam wrapped in hardware cloth covered with stucco with a real bell included and the fence top made to look like the top of a stone wall) and a poppy seed head, which reminded me of the skull pieces;  so I concocted my own poppy-head skull exploding its seeds. 

While at the garden I did pen sketches only and made color notes.  Later this evening I painted with watercolor and gouache and incorporated a few rubber stamps that I had on hand from another project.  The paper in this sketchbook is handmade from willow bast and abaca.

How to be a Slowpoke in a Museum

It's been a while since I've updated this blog, but my excuse is that I've been traveling and don't have a smart phone, etc. etc.  The journal pages above are from a day that I spent at the Museum of Modern Art with my son, visiting the spectacular German Expressionists show that is currently there.  What I love about taking my journal to a museum is that it slows me way down and lets me enter into relationship with a few pieces of work in a way I would not be able to do otherwise.  In this piece I wasn't going for careful drawing;  I wanted, rather, to find the general feeling of the two shows we saw that day (as well as the lovely but ridiculously expensive snack we had in the cafe).  On the left, Belgium artist Francis Alys,  and on the right, the snack and the German Expressionists.

Below are two pages that I did on another day while walking around the garment district in New York on a sketch crawl with some friends.  We were encountering rejection everywhere we went:  one store manager told us that if we drew in his place he would get in trouble with OSHA;  another place told us we could draw but we would have to pay.  We settled on drawing from the windows at a couple of  places.  Then we found a great manequin shop whose manager not only allowed us to draw but consented to sell me a lovely manequin hand, which shall be featured in my next Piece Works blog update (www.weRpiecework.blogspot.com).

On another day I went to the Brooklyn Museum with my sketch-crawling friends and visited the African section, one of my favorites.

I greatly enjoy standing for a long time drawing the African nkisi (power figures) whenever I can.  In these drawings I wasn't thinking about outcome, but just losing myself in the details, puzzling out how things fitted together, studying the forms.  Drawing is the best way I've found to do these things.  I have very tolerant and patient friends and family, but if I'm the only one in the group who is drawing, I just arrange to meet up with the others later.  The greatest fun is when others in the group are also drawing, but being the only one drawing doesn't need to be an impediment to taking your time to really, really see the pieces you love. 

Brains on Paper

My friend Ann Turkle, a writer and long-time journal keeper, refers to some journals as "brains on paper."  I keep a couple of journals that seem to be well-described by this label.  One of them is shown below in three views.  It's a design notebook that I use for Piece Works, a micro-project that a friend and I share (see our blog at www.weRpiecework.blogspot.com) in which we design,  make,  and sell wallets and things made out of upcycled materials-- birdseed bags, chip bags, coffee bags, etc.  We do a fair amount of custom work and a large amount of troubleshooting as we research the strongest materials and how best to use them. 


This is a fold-out page that I taped in.  It's a design for a custom wallet.

This page shows measurements and directions for the same job.

And this page shows some troubleshooting that we did early on in the project when we were refining our basic designs.  The book itself I made out of a bird seed bag using the design described in Tutorial #2.  No one would call this art journaling;  I think of it as essential journaling!

The Real Edible Book

Here's a photo of Maya's and my edible book.  This view shows the three Big Hogs looking at the Forest Hog (center, with chocolate jimmy hairs on his back).  The next view shows the broccoli and marzipan trees to better advantage, and also the quote that is pressed into the other side of the cake.
This view shows the edible book from the other direction,  showing the back view of the hogs and facing the forest hog.  You can also see the acorns and apples that the forest hog eats.  The grass is edible Easter grass.  I never knew such a thing existed!  In the background you can see a little bit of other books.  Check out www.AshevilleBookworks.com for a full report on the festival!

A Different Kind of Edge

 The pink forest hog in today's post is NOT from Tobacco Barn but is actually a marzipan hog that my granddaughter Maya and I made together for part of our entry in the April Fool's Day Edible Book Festival at our local center for the book, Asheville BookWorks (AshevilleBookWorks.com).  We made a cake and frosted it with fondant, then we arranged four marzipan pigs, some broccoli and marzipan trees, and some marzipan apples and acorns along with edible Easter grass to make a rendition of a favorite book of ours, Three Big Hogs by Manus Pinkwater.  We printed a quote from the book using plastic letters that Maya's mom had in her cake decorating box.

At the end of the festival, after the judging and voting for favorites, everyone ate the edible books.  All that was left of ours was our big forest hog minus one of his tusks (since repaired).  He looked lonely on the ravaged cake top, so I brought him home to live on my drawing table for a while, and made these drawings of him today.  (Maya won the prize for Best Child Book Artist, and our entry won the popular vote.  A fine time was had by all.)

Tutorial is Up

Yesterday I promised not only a tutorial from me but also nine others from friends of mine.  You can find mine in my topics column on the right under Tutorial 2.  The other tutorials that are being posted today are by Melly Testa and Kelly Nina Perkins.  To get to these, go to the "You Might Also Enjoy" column and click on their names.

Tomorrow you will find tutorials by Jane LaFazio, Carla Sonheim, and Tracie Lyn Huskamp.  And Thursday, check out Lyric Kinard, Alisa Burke, Judy Perez, and Jill Berry.  All their links are in the "You Might Also Enjoy" column.

News on the Tutorial Front AND Another Report from the Edge

When I started this blog I thought I would actually post tutorials from time to time, but as you may have noticed, to date I have posted exactly one.  Well, number two is on its way, thanks to some gentle prodding from a group of friends who have organized a tutorial event and have put a little pressure on me to actually POST one of my own.  For those of you who love tutorials and who enjoy checking out the cool things other people are up to, click on the following people, all on my list to the right titled "You Might Also Enjoy."   The tutors are the following:  Melly, Kelli, and I on Tuesday, March 29 (tomorrow);  Jane, Carla, and Tracie on Wednesday; and Lyric, Alisa, Judy, and Jill on Thursday.

On to Reports from the Edge:  By far the strangest object I encountered yesterday afternoon at the (freezing cold and damp) Tobacco Barn was a round pillow, the covering of which was made of pink ribbons and complicated crochet with a small doll attached to the top in a manner that I could only describe as bondage.  I could only begin the sketch that you see here-- the intricacy of the crochet defeated me-- but I think you can get the idea.  For $27 this pillow could be yours.

The second-most strange object was described on its tag as a "rusty child form."  I would have bought it if I had been able to come up with the $65 they were asking.  It looked like something Louise Bourgeois would have used in one of her installations.  The leg parts were painted wood, and the wire parts were --rusty.  It was life-sized for a 19th century child, proportions more adult than child.  No arms, no head.  Fabulous.

I drew both of these in my butter box journal, which is, sadly, almost full, and I will be making a new one.