“Science works with chunks and bits and pieces of things with the continuity presumed, and the artist works only with the continuities of things with the chunks and bits and pieces presumed.”

~Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainance

Last week I traveled to New York City.  This was only my third visit to the ginormous metropolis but it was the most relaxed visit I’ve had thus far due to a comfortable home base and a good long time to stay in town, not to mention friendly locals.  The primary reason for the trip was to accompany my friend kim on a music trip but I also knew that it would afford me the opportunity for some time on my own to think, draw and write in my sketchbook.  The week was filled with music, coffee, more music, amazing salads, subway rides, dog parks, more coffee, lots of thinking, writing and a bit of drawing.  From an art making perspective it felt very deep and nourishing.  Un-rushed, with very little schedule to adhere to, I just wandered around NYC some, watched Kim make a few new songs, and thought a great deal about art making, my career, and this balancing act called life.  It occurred to me that I don’t often have so much time on my hands to think and it felt really great.

Lately I have been so wrapped up in the business of art and the teaching of art that I haven’t allowed much time for the making of art.  My sketchbook is a great place to keep myself drawing and noticing the world around me, but I have not spent enough time actually working on the more conceptually sound art work that is a bit like therapy to me.  It’s been months since a concept has grabbed a hold of me and begged to be made into some semblance of a body of work.  A visit to the American Museum of Natural History reminded me of what makes me tick artistically.   The displays at the museum are nothing short of art in and of themselves.  I really loved all of the fossilized bones in the paleontology wing.  I find myself looking at these collected specimens and wondering where people fit into the puzzle.  We are the cause of so much extinction and yet capable of such beauty as well.  This dichotomy is interesting and worth exploring through visual art.  I wondered why we are compelled to make art when so much of nature is so beautiful to look at already.  Like I said, deep deep stuff.  But good to ponder.  A bit existential maybe, but healthy over all I think.

Some early drawings….

I look forward to pouring over my photographs from AMNH and hitting the library for further inspiration.  As usual, the sketchbook is capturing whatever pours out.

Besides the museum, a trip to the Tompkins Square park was another fun venture which resulted in a few dog drawings.  It has been quite awhile since I have made a point to draw dogs.  I suppose there is just no one to draw quite like old Caskie.  But I need to get back into dog drawings.  They are tremendously good exercise.

All the while I doodled and pondered the trappings of the visual art world, Kim was hard at work in the studio writing and demo-ing, meeting with important people and doing a show.  It is interesting to me how much work goes into art.  All forms of art are so much more process laden than most people ever realize,  and music is no different.

One new song has a line in it, “What do I know?”  That’s a good question.  I am often so filled with questions about what’s around the bend, where to go from here, what next? etc. etc. etc.  But when I think about what I do know instead of what I don’t, or even can’t know, I find some comfort.

I know that I am incredibly grateful for what I have.  I know that I may love traveling but I also love coming home to my quiet little acre and the group of people that I love most.  I know that I love the work I do and that while it hasn’t paid much quite yet financially, it’s rewards have been priceless in the form of growth and experience.  I spend quite a chunk of my writing and thinking time contemplating the financial end of my work.  While in NYC, I met up with a fellow artist who is also straddling the lines between business and art and making a go at life as a working artist.  It’s an adventure ride for certain.  But we plug away at work we know is important.  This is all we can do.

Quite a bit of snow has hit our area in the past few weeks.  Depending on who you talk to, this is either a wonderful miracle resulting in snow days, igloo building and soup making or just a huge pain in the keester.  I am of the former camp enjoying the slower pace of kids off school and spontaneous napping.  Art making often takes a different form in the winter.  Things like embroidery and quilting come out of their baskets while drawing (especially sketching outside) tends to take a back seat.  This is all well and good but I get a little squirrelly if I don’t put pencil to paper for too long.  So today I went outside with my camera to capture a few things to bring inside and maybe draw later in my sketchbook.

A snowy day provides a tremendous opportunity for studies in contrast.  I love the play of light versus dark and how this can begin to get abstract, especially when put into a drawing.  Below are a few snapshots…

Could this be a small sign of spring… maybe?

I think the skeletons of these little weeds make nice sketches, they are also fun to embroider.

The dogs love the snow, digging their noses deep in search of interesting scents.

Sometimes they get to play with the neighbor dog Buckley…. if they can catch her.

I hope this finds everyone warm and snug on this snowy day.  I think I’ll go back outside.

I love this time of year.  In a few days my family and I are hitting the road for the start of a summer of travels.  As we do every summer, we are heading to Maine to collectively fill our wells.  Hopefully we’ll have some sunshine this year after 3 years of nothin’ but rain.  But there is nothing we can do about the weather, and we adore the family-friends we see there each year.  As I usually do before a big trip, I am writing here to catch up on the wonders of what’s happening here at home, and to bid my few but loyal readers adieu until my next post which may be a month or more from now….

Being an artist requires a person to become something of an observer.  Whether that means observing one’s inner landscape, or observing the magic all around in one’s environment doesn’t really matter.  We simply observe.  And sometimes, capture that magic - with a photograph, a poem, a song, a work of art.  This is really what artists of all kinds do.  They (we) capture a brief moment in time, and manifest it into something more timeless.  In order to make room for this capturing, you’ll often find artists doing a tremendous amount of wandering.  For it is in this wandering that we are inspired.

This week I walked in Spring Grove Cemetery with Lisa like we often do and it was quite the nature day.  We came across a turtle laying her eggs just off the side of the road.  And a little fawn, who seems to often be around Esme’s Place at Spring Grove, peeked out at us this time and looks to be growing like a weed.

At home in the studio, in spite of the heat outdoors, I have had the wax table heated up a great deal recently and here’s what’s come of it….

Above is a work in progress that I hope to have finished before I leave for Maine for entry (should they accept it) into an “Earth” themed show at the Kennedy Heights Art Center.

Meanwhile, my old work, Tubular CM, has found it’s way up onto the walls at Salon Cherry Bomb in Hyde Park.  I put two installations of them up, one larger than the other, and they seem to work well in the space.  At the very least, they are out of storage.

The hardest part about leaving for a vacation is, well, leaving.  I hope that someday I can take my dogs with me to Maine and make a summer of it.  But alas, they’ll be staying here at their Kingdom across the Magical Bridge of Hope and Wonder with our house-sitter.  Caskie has not been well lately and we are waiting to get some test results back about what might be going on with him.  He’s been losing a lot of weight recently and just doesn’t seem to feel very well.  Today however he ate some chicken and rice and even played a bit with the other dogs in the yard.  So maybe we’ll get to have him around for awhile longer.

As the evening cools to a balmy, potentially storm-ridden night here at Chez Bogard, I wish a happy summer all around, with time enough to enjoy the company of family, friends and self.

I’m sure I’ll have lots to write after Irish Week at Swannanoa….

The above quote has been on my fridge for years.  It’s one of my favorites and I like to think I personify it in my life, at least part of the time.  Lately I have been thinking a lot about the act of drawing and how it applies to being aware and awake and alive.  A former student of mine and I have been researching creativity, its application in the work place and how the simple act of drawing can enhance, channel and release innovative thinking.  It has been an exciting and overwhelming project which we hope will enable us to bring our ideas into the corporate sphere, teaching people to collect their thoughts and ideas visually, by drawing in a sketchbook.

I have been diligently working in my own sketchbook in recent weeks to practice what I preach in some sense.  As school winds down into summer for the kids, my ideas are brewing for both my new project out in the “Real World”, as well as for studio plans.  My family and I have spent a great deal of time outdoors recently and that has given me fuel for the sketchbook as well as for my more academic research pursuits.  I am not sure how it works, (though I am currently doing a ton of reading about it) but the simple act of drawing, combined with walking and being outdoors is a magic tool for productivity and creative thinking.  It is my hope that I can successfully convey this notion to folks who have never tried drawing.  Drawing is one small way to be joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.  So is hiking and simply being outside.  At least for me.

Here are some Daily Dog Drawings from recent weeks….

We took Iris to the Red River Gorge for a long hike on the Wildcat Trail to Dog Fork Creek.  It was a great time, especially with only one dog.  Caskie is a little old for such a rough hike on difficult terrain, and River is still prone to running off and making a general nuisance of himself.  So we took just Iris and it was wonderful to spend the day just with her.  It turns out she likes fishing.  She would stare into the creek at the small minnows and then pounce on them.  I think given some time, she might have caught herself one.

The day after our day trip to the Gorge, Tony and I went on a rainy kayak trip with some friends, partly so I could test drive a boat that’s my size and for sale.  Paddling in the rain was surreal and sensual and I hope to do it again.  The temperature was warm enough that it was not uncomfortable and we all had a great time.  I am hoping to sell a couple of paintings at an upcoming show at the Art Academy so I can buy this boat…

This is Smoke.   He is a greyhound belonging to a family who emailed me after reading the write-up about my dog drawings on the blog Dog Art Today.  It is difficult to draw a dog (or really much of anything for that matter) from a photograph.  But for me it is an interesting exercise now and then, especially when the picture is of such a graceful sinewy creature as Smoke.  I much prefer drawing from life, when I occupy the same physical and temporal space as my subject.  At the very least, if I draw from a photograph, I like to have been the one taking the pictures, capturing the images to study later on with my line drawings. That said, I still couldn’t resist sketching this beautiful dog.  I hardly do him justice, to be sure.

I have been in the studio a bunch lately.  Drawing some, gathering images to update my website gallery, working in wax, making baby gifts.  I am enjoying this time immensely, especially knowing that Tornado Season (in other words, puppet season/ full time work for awhile) is right around the corner.  I know that my studio time suffers in the spring as I am stretched far too thin with teaching, doing puppet shows and keeping up with my busy kids.  This will be Jeni’s and my 3rd season on the road with the Red Cross’s Wind Around the Toybox production.  It’s an intense season but it is just that, a season.  This year, I think we see it for what it is and we are ready for the hard work and high energy level these shows demands of us.  Last year we saw over 10,000 children in the Tri-State area, providing a not-so-scary approach to Tornado Safety for little people.  It’s a great job and I am lucky to have it.  Shows will start up in February sometime and go through May and it is during this time that I will have to fit studio art into the available little spaces I find here and there.  That will have to be enough.

Until then, however, all’s quiet, except for the howling wind outside.  I have a fire going in the fireplace, the wax table on means the windows have to be open and a fan on for exhaust, but I bundle up and play there while I have the opportunity.

draw more

fret less

play more music

renew old friendships, nurture the new

find new outlets for this play that is my work

These are a few of the New Year’s resolutions that are floating around in my head.  I’m sure there will be more to come.  I’m sure I’ll be successful at some more than others.  But I am grateful for the coming of a new calendar year for the sense of a clean slate that it brings.  Time and its passing are relative. We can turn over a new leaf anytime we feel the need to shake things up a bit.  Perhaps that is my biggest hope for 2009, for myself and for others.  To remember that each new day brings the same promise and opportunity that a New Year does.  That each day deserves the same celebratory joy and commitment to a better life that we place upon January 1.  In the end, this is the only way to really live our lives.

Have a safe and happy New Year’s eve.

There is a lovely lack of structured time here in the studio this week with the kids off of school.  Everyone in the house is able to go about their business within the comforts of their own circadian rhythms - within reason, of course.  My 14 year old boy would gladly sleep all day and be up all night, which would make next week’s return to a normal school schedule excruciating.  I plan to get him up just after noon today.

I am always intrigued and somewhat enchanted by how much inspiration seems to head my way when I have the gift of unstructured time.  It is also amazing to me how much longer the days seems to last when they are not committed to the shackles of a regular schedule.  With the holidays finally calming down, I feel the deep need to get into the studio to work, but am a little rusty from lack of daily practice.  And so I turn to the nearest dog and draw.  Caskie is usually where I begin my artistic oiling (think Tin-Man in the Wizard of Oz).  He is basically a live scribble and really, really fun to draw - even when sleeping.

My friend Kim introduced me to a book called The Zen of Seeing: Seeing and Drawing as Meditation by Frederick Franck.  I love this notion of drawing as meditation.  Drawing requires a person to really observe something as the pen moves around the page.  How many people walk through the world each day, shackled to their daily schedules, not really seeing the world they live in?  It’s easy to do, and I am guilty of it myself at times when I have kids to take to school, jobs to do, errands to run.  The other night my husband and I went out to walk the dogs and he observed that the lit-up deer across the road actually move, ever so slowly, if one just watched for a bit.  The question then became, do all lit-up deer move?  Apparently not.  We’ve been watching.

My hope for the rest of this holiday break from routine is a continued awareness of myself in my surroundings.  Perhaps with the help of a daily dog, I can continue this sense of inspiration into the New Year.  Which reminds me, I need to get over to the office supply store for a new library date stamp.  2009 does not exist on my current one!

Happy New Year to everyone out there.  Go out for a walk, find something cool to look at and draw it.  It’s almost like yoga…

Sometimes the blogosphere might seem like a lonely place.  But I have always known that I keep this blog mainly for my own entertainment and structure.  I appreciate looking back over time at both my website (to which I need to add some recent work!) as well as my blog and seeing a build up of work over time.  Trends and patterns are easier to note when seen in hindsight and amidst a bulk of work.

That said, it is only human to be a little bit tickled when someone else checks out my blog and likes what they see.  LA based artist, Moira McLaughlin has featured my Daily Dogs on her blog, Dog Art Today, a lovely and friendly place to check out all things relating to art involving dogs.  I highly recommend checking out Moira’s site and letting her know you have visited.  I can speak from experience, it’s nice to know we bloggers aren’t alone out there.

Today is Christmas Eve and the weather outside is indeed frightful.  Rain - sideways.  I am grateful that at least it is no longer freezing rain, which had caused me some worry for the holiday travelers.  However you are planning to spend this holiday, I sincerely hope it is a safe and cozy one.  In spite of the rain, it’s pretty cozy here.  Happy holidays to you and yours.

I’ve been in the studio working lately which feels really good after what has been a bit of an art slump for me.  As constant company and inspiration, I have my three dogs, two of whom are beginning to act more like dogs, and less like puppies.  Above is Caskie who winds up getting drawn more when I am writing.  His black and white fur lends itself more to simply drawing without the painting.  The problem is then sometimes sketches of him wind up trapped in the daily griping and list making that occurs on occasion in my journals.  Thank goodness for Photoshop, right?

Meanwhile, Iris and River grow and grow and grow.  Yesterday River got nibbled by a spider (at least that is what the vet thinks, he says he sees it a lot around this time of year) and looked like a boxer who had gone a few too many rounds.  He is fine now with some injections of things like benadryl  and seems really no worse for the wear.  I wonder about these spiders however and have a date tonight with the shop-vac.  So a warning to any biting spider/insect in Chez Bogard…. run for the hills before sundown or else!!

Iris is my little naturalist, camped by the back door of the studio each day counting deer, bucks, squirrels and birds.  Constant vigilance, and nothing less from this little lady.

I love spending studio days with the dogs.  It’s really the best of both worlds; cozy companionship coupled with the healing balm of solitude.

Today is Election Day and I, along with millions of other Americans, am casting a vote today for my pick for President.  Let me just say, it’s time for a Change, yes we CAN.  ‘Nuf said.

Meanwhile, life goes on in spite of the world being a crazy place, or perhaps because of it.  I have been working a bit more in my sketch book recently, trying to make a positive example of myself for my wonderful students.  Like any good-for-you exercise, it feels great to be doing it….

Along with water color and mud, my book has a couple of polaroids in it.  I have been trying to figure out how to do polaroid transfers with not much luck.  I got this camera for 75 cents at a garage sale and have invested $17 for a strange 3V battery and then another $15 for a box of 10 exposure Fuji film that works with this camera model.  The guy at the shop where I bought the film told me this might not be the best for transfers, but by toying with the development time I might have some success.  It has been hit or miss thus far but I plan to keep trying and experimenting.  At the very least, I am having fun capturing these images and plan to hang on to the camera as yet another tool for making my sketchbook come alive in new and exciting ways.  I suppose there are cures for mild boredom.

If you have voted today, which I hope was tops on your to-do list, then get out into the world and experiment with some new art-making/ life-cataloguing stuff that you haven’t tried.  Polaroids are great, but so are digital photos and plain ol’ drawing.  I’m headed back out there to go live a little myself.

I’ll keep you posted.