the desert Series

When I finished the Spring semester of teaching, I was eager to head into the studio, for pure looking and silence. I often  think about the time that I camped in the desert, the macro and micro levels of experience- the landscape, plants, the close palate, the stripped down feeling of it. I have not been there since September, but I was inspired to make small drawings as meditation, as exploration, as memory and hand work. For this series of 50 I used walnut oil and prussian blue water color. This series is available on etsy. Enjoy

rip rap and lichen

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

pool and needles

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

fish hooks

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

arch and drag

walnut ink 

watercolor 

pen and brush

8" x 8"

work

Every thing that you do will be insignificant 

it is important that you do it

Ghandi

transitions

El Paso to Marfa

flying into Nevada

Marfa, Tx

"We live as separate beings, especially in the Western culture, separate from each other and separate from the earth. We may even believe that we can discern the boundaries between  the material world and ourselves, between the visible and the unseen. But none can say where the line is that divides inner from outer. Where do I begin? Where do I end? Where do I belong?

My life is made of countless journeys from 'here' to 'there'--- from this step to the next step as I walk across the room, from parents hearth to other shelters and commitments,  from one segment of time to another. Every displacement reveals an intermediate zone, which because it is neither here not there, is an encounter with the unique. In this place the extraordinary may touch the ordinary, but the opportunity has to be recognized. What is the experience of that transition? What do I leave behind and what do I discover on crossing the thresh hold from this moment, this place, to the next moment, a new place?" R Solnit from Wanderlust

windswept

Drawing 36 square charcoal on paper 2011

March is starting to show some force, spring trees are flowering, the snow drops beneath the pine trees are almost finished, and daffodils are unfolding everywhere I look. My dad and I happened to work in our respective gardens on March 1st. The need to plant feels pretty strong right now, but I'll order some arugula and spring mix soon. I just found the National Gallery of Art podcasts, and am slowly going through them. Today it's Jim Dine. Drawings are underway in the studio, and I'm trying to reclaim a lot of clay to start making sculpture. I am also thinking about a kite project that seems pretty irresistible right now with these spring winds beckoning...

listening

in scale

It is a common mistake to think that being in proportion means being small. Rather, it means being in scale, in making either a large or modest gesture, but doing it in a manner that lets us see the scale of our bodies embedded in its structure.

From Patterns of Home

The ten essentials of Enduring Design.

M. Jacobson, M. Silverstein, B. Winslow

from the archives

patch, lancaster pa

(excerpts from a letter to a friend...) creativity is giving, but it's not just defined in terms of a physical manifestation- it's how you see the world, how you move through it, and how you live your life. Making things is over rated. To me it really is how you shape your life and how you are shaped by it... be curious about who you are and how you are. give yourself time to read and rest... find ways to be anonymous. it can be really simple.

and don't make anything if you don't want to- just listen.

in Japan, there are mountains and rivers that are unpopulated, but i will probably be in cities like Osaka and Kyoto, and in the pottery villages. ( i hope) There won't be the same vastness and expansiveness (of the american west) but the cultural and language differences will make me feel isolated in the same way. There is no way to insert yourself into that culture, but i am somewhat used to that. What i hope to experience is the aesthetic of the everyday that my friends talk about. How beautifully the food is presented, at home, for every meal-- for the gardens and temples and ubiquity of clay in the realm of the everyday. We experienced a taste of it in Cyprus. the pithari, the roof tiles, plants in terra cotta on every corner. (you must have some of that in Israel?) Where i live, almost everything is plastic, utilitarian in the worst and ugliest sense... Japan is going to amaze and confound me. that is what i loved about the West, and that is what i love about traveling. It wakes me up in a way that nothing else does. it reminds me of how little i need to live and be content with. If i could figure out how to do that in my studio and my life, then we would be getting somewhere... i want time more than anything. I want to slow down. I want to have my solitary time. I want to go camping and hiking and be outside as much as possible. I don't want to work so hard for so little satisfaction... and when you go to your work, filled with ancient broken pots, look at your beautiful, slender, sensitive fingers and thank them for all that they know and do while your mind floats above.