kale x 2

Ansel has always loved the Public Market, our enormous central farmers' market. He got up before dawn every week to go there and get his pick of the best vegetables.

When we met, I loved eating vegetables, but I did not love washing vegetables. "When you wash them, they're so sparkling, and fresh!" he said. He reminded me of how beautiful they are.

Now we go together to get the vegetables (but he still washes them).

bubble people

Yesterday we were talking about those plastic bubbles that you can wear and run around and bump into people.

rochester

It was a beautiful Easter day. Ansel and I went walking in the sunshine, down by the river, and stopped to sit outside the library so I could draw the view.

dead fish

Ansel and I went walking at Chimney Bluffs, on the shore of Lake Ontario, this weekend. It was my debut for walking in a sustained way outside, after having broken my toe over a month ago. It was wonderful.

On the rocky beach we saw a large dead fish. "Wow," I said.
Ansel handed me my sketchbook.

porch concert!

away 2

We were on a very comfortable, well-made and well-equipped canal boat, cruising down the Erie Canal. Life slows down; one starts to appreciate subtle changes in landscape and foliage, the bends in the "river". I didn't do a whole lot of sketching, being occupied with a whole lot of looking - but I did manage a pencil drawing of the front of our boat, the Canandaigua:

and some quick, faint sketches of a liftbridge in Brockport and another view of our boat:

Sorry they are so faint!

I came to love tying the boat up to a cleat on the dock - so effective and pleasing.

Also, seeing my city from such a different perspective was totally neat. We pulled up to a gas station next to the canal that Ansel and I knew otherwise from getting there by car, tied up our boat on the little dock, and hopped off and into the gas station for supplies. Then back to the water. Amazing!

show this friday

Hello everyone! 

Starting this FRIDAY, February 6,

some of my paintings, and some of the beautiful ceramics by my friend Marla Eklund will be on display at Fuego Coffee, 167 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester NY.

Please come by!

Drinks and snacks start at 7 pm.

the outside world

I passed by a girl on the sidewalk today. She was wearing a sweatshirt that said "I <3 dogs" (that <3 was of course a perfect little red heart). As we got closer, I saw that it said under that, in smaller print,

"It's humans that annoy me"

My little <3 felt a little sicker.

I am a human.

I am not, and never will be (in this lifetime at least) a dog, NY, yachting, or anything else that anyone might <3.

I am utterly, irrevocably, completely annoyingly human.

Life has been hard lately. People have annoyed me. I have annoyed other people. The people around me, the people I love, have been annoyed to the point of sickness by other people around them. 

Of course we're all annoyed by the people around us. They have opinions and habits that repel us. They get in our way. They say mean things, or things we perceive as being mean. We don't have the time or energy to deal with them, but we can't imagine a way to not deal with them.

They are hard to <3.

But that girl's sweatshirt, and the soul-sinking (to me) sentiment it expressed, reminded me that we all need to take responsibility.  The outside world, the world of other people, is not the only thing going on, even though we act as though it is. We are not at other people's mercy, though we act as though we were. We are thinking, feeling adults, with inner worlds that we carry around with us all the time. Taking all that stuff in, sorting it, reacting to it or not reacting to it, creating stories around it or deciding not to create stories around it, deciding what to think and feel about it. That is our responsibility.

reservoir

We are having some spectacularly gorgeous fall days. Full of sunshine and stillness. This is the gatehouse to a reservoir at the top of a hill. This hill gets the last of the sunshine on any given day. I did this painting around noontime in full sunshine however, sitting at the bottom of the hill in the shade.

apple time

I spent some time yesterday sitting on the grass between two lines of apple trees.

leah's elephant

I don't know who Leah Samson is, but I know she is an artist. Her cast bronze elephant stands with a bunch of its friends in front of an elementary school in my neighborhood. There is also a dolphin, a lion, a dinosaur, and several other creatures, all with wonderful personalities. This spunky little elephant, though, has a special place in my heart. I often visit him when I'm out on my walks.

bicycle sketching

I live in a great neighborhood. There are towering, shady trees. Beautiful houses, with interesting colors, trim, decorations, porches, plants, lanterns, flags...always something to look at. And on one grand avenue nearby, there are the old mansions of the Rochester city elite: George Eastman's, most notably, and those of all of his cronies and co-citizens, who vied to have the most elegant and elaborate homes.

It is a treat to ride around, run around, walk around.

Recently I rigged up a mobile sketching station on the handlebars of my bike.

Then I cruised around (helmeted, of course) and drew - whatever caught my eye, only as much as I could get while riding by. I was amazed at how much fun it was. The tempo and the situation meant that I couldn't get caught up in anything. It kept my intent pure, my focus pure. It was amazing to see the view of the thing I was drawing changing so quickly. There was flow, and the flow almost became my subject.

I found it funny how unrecognizable so many of the drawings were. And how recognizable elements of others were!

Here are just a few.

sketchbummel

Yesterday. They don't come more beautiful.

our fair city

a hymn to Rochester, fair, flowering, and flourishing.

a building I've always admired

a crazy radio tower at Cobbs Hill Reservoir

"tree"  :)  I rubbed the page in the grass for verisimilitude

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)

i am here

flowers for october

I've been admiring the hardy roses in my neighborhood, holding out through October. Here are some that give me a friendly whack in the head every time I walk by:

Some hollyhocks from back in June:

and a sunflower I met in Fairhaven, up on Little Sodus Bay.