back by popular demand

Just kidding (as I usually am).. but it has been too long!

another part of daily life

another instrument, like my calendar, for keeping time!  :)

done on a piece of scrap board, completely unsuitable for framing, but I may just frame it.

update: today one of my students was looking at this picture and she said, "oh! it's that thing!" and then she said, "It looks just like it…except there are no words, and the dots aren't in the right pattern."

My students are very discerning ;)

daily life

Thanks to my friends over at the sketch blog I have been thinking about ways to visually represent my "daily life". I first drew my radio & CD player, a huge part of my life, as a constant source of sound (not to mention news, and thought):

My day today was something like a cross between Ferris Bueller (the morning part, pre-Ferrari) and Wayne's World ("she will be mine, oh yes, she will be mine"), doing a bunch of different things, and then going to visit a guitar at Bernunzio's. 

But USUALLY it includes this:

That's me walking to work, with a viola and a violin.

With just a few of the things I usually see along the way.

(I had to include the Italian ice, because it's so yummy)

no indeed

sunday abstractions

j'ai une question

animals

I don't spend much time with animals. When I was young, we had a cat. Dad didn't want an "indoor cat", so we had an "outdoor cat". To this day I'm not quite sure what that means. I guess once in a while the cat's path crossed with ours. One day, when I was about 3, I saw our cat, his face bloodied, staggering through our yard. He'd been hit by a car, and he didn't die right away, just slowly, as I remember, before my eyes.

We never had another cat.

My mother and I "insinuated" (we used this word) a few animals into the house over the years: someone's geriatric guinea pig whom we cared for through his last year, ditto a lovely friendly gray rat named Marilyn, and then my first real pet, a young and spry rat, whom I had for 2 years and left with my mom when I went to college. He died that year peacefully in my mom's lap as she stroked him.

The theme over at the sketch blog is "animals" and unlike many of the other artists, I don't have any ready models, no dogs or cats. There are bunnies in our neighborhood but they're much too quick for me!

But there are apparently many creatures in my head, because they tend to pop up whenever I'm doodling. I don't always know what they are. Bear? Cat? Dog? Possum? Bird-like thing? Other?

stained glass

I love stained glass of all kinds. There is nothing like the color that is light filtered through richly colored glass.

I tried to go into a church today to see what it looked like from the inside, but when I opened the inner door (the outer door stood open) I found I had intruded on a concert! I closed the door again quickly and hoped that no one had noticed the split second of outside that I let in.

spring poems

THIS IS HOW

this is how we emerge from winter

shoes worn out,

needing a haircut,

sloppy, unshaven,

unready.

but the buds are ready.

and the world welcomes us

anyway.

MAGNOLIA

Magnolia,

why did you not send me a letter?

I wanted to know

the

moment     

your blossoms burst!

DAILY

Daily

I have to resist kissing things

Daily things,

things I pass

Bicycles, and trees

with little longing souls

sending out little buds

that break

like popcorn

and bloom

it just doesn't work this way