It’s a delicate balance, this work thing.  On the one hand, over-scheduling myself can put me in the position of not having enough time and energy to make quality work (while still keeping up with life itself.)  On the other hand, too little work to do makes for artistic stagnancy and that can quickly spiral into dangerous psychological territory.  Ideally, if I can pluck away at some larger ideas while staying loose with smaller daily things I can stay balanced enough to do my best work as artist, mama, wife and friend.

Recently I signed up to be a part of The Sketchbook Project out of Brooklyn, New York.  This is a really great project that I consider to be something of a community art project.  None of the artists donating sketchbooks to this project are getting paid, in fact we paid to do this.  But here is how I look at it.  It’s exercise.  People spend billions of dollars each year on exercise for their bodies, why not pay a small fee and a bit of time each day to exercise your inner artist?  The first step in all this for me is to gesso all the pages in the book which is a moleskin brand blank book.

Generally I don’t use the moleskin books because of the paper.  Great for writing or even just pencil or pen drawing, but it doesn’t take watercolor very well.  With the gesso on the pages, they become more like blank slates that I plan to do collage work and maybe some paintings as semi daily exercises outside of my own sketchbook work (which try as I might not to, I still can take too seriously).  The book is due back to Brooklyn by January 2011 and will have a life of it’s own once out of my hands.  It’s good for me to do this sort of thing and let it go.

My theme for the Sketchbook Project is “I am a Scavenger”.  This is pretty much true, from nature bits to quotes to my own ideas, I am constantly scavenging around for new and potentially usable stuff…

Meanwhile, I have been working on an embroidery for a quilt I am making for a special show in the fall.  Here is the beginning…. just blocking in colors and getting the generic form of a howling wolf into place.  Already I love her and she seems to have some wonderful personality.  I will post more on this project as it comes nearer to fruition.  If any of you blog readers are crocheters or thrift store shoppers, I am looking for crocheted doilies (approx.3″-8″ diameter) to be a part of this piece as well.  Please contact me if you’d like to contribute!

But for now, I am back into the studio to draw my new favorite thing I read about in a book last night…. cave pearls!!!  (I think cave formations will translate nicely into wax this fall!)

Yesterday I went to the zoo.  I used to go all of the time with my kids when they were younger and before that I worked there as a teen and young adult.  I love the zoo.  It is the perfect place to go practice my drawing skills.  In the interest of practicing what I preach more by getting out and drawing more, I got myself a pass and plan to go as often as I can.  My friend Dan and I drew a number of animals during our visit.  His capacity for drawing far exceeds my own.  I consider my drawings “mere” sketches.

There are meerkats now in the cat house and they watch as the people stroll by.  They have great seriousness of purpose in their watchfulness.

Many animals, such as the snow leopard and the monitor lizard, could be found sleeping which makes them easier to draw.  But it is also fun to try and capture them awake and moving, like this Sumatran rhinoceros.  He had a mud bath, ate some leaves, and took a walk around his environment.  He is still a baby to a certain extent and I think it shows in his demeanor.

So for what it’s worth, here are a few sketches from yesterday’s zoo trip.  Bear in mind, they are mere sketches.  I’ll post more as they gather in my sketchbook.  practice, practice, practice.

“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.

Thankfully with the coming of spring, things have settled down (if only just a little) and I have had some time to enjoy my garden which is bursting this time of year with flowers mostly and a few greens I had popped in the ground earlier.  Here are some sketches and snapshots…

The weather is still cool enough to be enjoying greens straight from the garden!  Thankfully the deer seem to have had enough to eat elsewhere as they have left this bed pretty much alone for now.  Last fall we built a couple of raised beds in which we’ll grow basic veggies come summer.  My grandfather always warned never to plant veggies until the first full moon after mother’s day and so these beds lie in wait with only some garlic peeking out of the soil.

Much of what’s going on in my yard I inherited from the former owners of this house and I am just trying to keep it well tended as I learn how to be a gardener.  We have a wealth of flowering trees that bloom one after the other for about a solid month.  Redbud, azalea, magnolia, lilac, wisteria.  All really lovely to witness.

Last week my girl friends and I took a few hours to go to the local flower show where we saw all sorts of lovely things to draw and dream of putting into our own yards.  I could have walked around and drawn flowers all day!  I did get a few sketches into my book…

It feels really good to sink my toes back into my own turf and get back into the swing of things here at home.  Tina and I are finished with the Convention Center project and it was installed late last week.  I will post pictures of it in situ as soon as I can get them so stay tuned!  With that work completed, Adam and I are throwing renewed energy toward Drawing Down the Vision through continuous improvement on the website and the addition of a blog on that site about the benefits of drawing for everyone who may want to give it a try.  So pay the site a visit if you have a few minutes.  It is my hope that this work, albeit in a whole other world, will provide another avenue through which to share my love of keeping a vibrant sketchbook.

Speaking of sketchbooks, the Make the Book/ Fill the Book class had it’s final session a few weeks ago.  I so enjoyed meeting our students and working with Cody.  We already have ideas for changes and improvements for the next offering of the class which will hopefully be next fall.  The Art Academy has announced that in May 2011 I will be taking a group to Taos, New Mexico for a travel sketchbook course.  (download the class brochure and you’ll find the details in the catelog!)  This should prove to be a wonderful adventure for anyone who would like to travel and learn to keep an illuminated journal of the trip.  My best sketchbook pages always happen when I am traveling and seeing the world through fresh eyes.  You don’t have to be from Cincinnati to go on this trip by the way so if you care to join us, I will certainly keep you posted on the details as they firm up.

Well it looks like it has stopped raining for the time being so I am going to go for a run.   Happy spring!

It’s been a whirlwind, maelstrom of a time around here lately.  Months of work suddenly seemed to come to fruition recently and I have been working feverishly to keep it all afloat.  Drawing Down the Vision has had multiple pilot workshops and, coupled with a new and improved website, is ready for sale to receptive corporate audiences and beyond.  My business partner Adam and I are tremendously excited to see almost a year’s worth of work and research finally see the light of day.

The Artworks project for the Cincinnati Convention Center is “rounding third and heading for home” as they say here in Cincinnati.  Tina and I are in the finishing stages of making this huge project a reality.  We are technically ahead of the long list of things that need to be done, but it is still stressful as we prepare to move the work in a few weeks to the auto body shop for a finishing clear coat, and then finally on to the Convention Center for installation.  There is still much to be done, but we are plowing through it.  Yesterday I worked on two more faces, those of Christian Moerlein and Louis Hudepohl who will be in the part of the design that looks a bit like a brewery…

Being springtime, at least according to the calendar, it is also tornado season and that means puppets!!  (At least for me and my fellow Red Cross puppeteer Jeni!)  We did our first show of the season a couple of weeks ago and made it through with no discernible mistakes.  It is amazing to me how well we can remember our lines after only a couple of run through rehearsals and months off before that.  The depths of memory have no bounds it seems.

The Make a Book/ Fill a Book class at the Art Academy is approaching week 6.  Cody and I have a great group of 10 students who are bravely forging their way in their newly-made “re-purposed” journals.  Cody taught us all how to take an interesting old book cover and fill it with blank paper using traditional book binding techniques.  I have been introducing students to the various materials and techniques I use to then make a blank journal into a one of a kind, personalized sketch-journal.  The results have been delightful!!

Often, when I am in the midst of teaching this class or when I have a time of great externalized efforts, like recently, my sketchbook is along for the ride in my car or my bag, but doesn’t see much action inside.  I can go for weeks sometimes without sketching or writing.  This is a pattern with which I am familiar and I have learned not to be to hard on myself; that I will get back to it when things settle.  Last week, this pattern was shook up a bit.  In the middle of everything - I took a trip.  A badly needed respite from all of the work as well as the stress and grief from the trial of Esme’s murderer.  Although work has been so wonderfully busy, this trial opened up and salted wounds that had only gingerly begun to heal over the past year with all of our positive efforts to create a lasting legacy to someone lost so young.  Some time away was in order.

Months back, Tony and I had planned to join a group of Cincinnati area kayakers on a trip to the Gulf coast of Florida to swim with some manatees and to enjoy everything the Nature Coast has to offer.  We set up a hip yet responsible house sitter to hang out with the kids and dogs and off we went for paddling, snorkeling, and for me, some serious time in the sketchbook.  I am excited to share the fresh pages with my students this week when I get back to class.  Here are some highlights from my trip and from my sketchbook….

The drive to Florida was just under 900 miles and I slept a good bit of the way.  Once I awoke to look out the window at a huge peanut on top of a building.  Ah, Georgia.  We wound up in Cedar Key, Florida, a sleepy little island town and I was instantly smitten.  (My good ol’ friend Carol did remark, when have I traveled and not fallen in love with my surroundings?….. I think she has a point!)

We had hoped to paddle in the morning but awoke to storms.  Instead we walked around town and visited the museum and some little galleries and had some wonderful chowder at a place called Tony’s.

By the time we got to the campground the rain had pretty much stopped.  We were in for a week of majority sunshine!

Day one, Rainbow River.  It was the clearest water I had ever seen!!!!  So many gorgeous colors.  We kayaked and snorkeled and by the end of the day, I knew I needed a new wet suit top if I was not to suffer hypothermia….

Day 2 - Three Sisters springs, and swimming with manatees!!!  Thanks to my new friend and awesome photographer, Jamie Trammel, I have some shots of our time in the water with these gentle giants.  I could have done just this every day and would have been satisfied.  We wound up going back on day 4.  I love manatees.  Simple as that.

Under the water, they are very purpley in their grayness.  That is how I sketched them.

Day 3 - the Weeki Wachee River.  More clear blue water, snorkeling, rope swinging and even a few manatees toward the end of the paddle!!  This place is famous for its mermaid shows but we simply paddled and swam it’s waters.  Given more time, I would have liked to see the show.  Maybe next time!

While part of the group took the cars to the end of the line, those of us left behind arranged the kayaks for a colorful picture.  Here’s to random acts of guerilla art.

Later in the week, at the end of the trip, a few of us headed back to Cedar Key for a paddle to Atsena Otie Island which used to be where the actual town of Cedar Key was located.  It was washed away by a hurricane in 1896 and only a cemetery and building foundations are now present.  It is a lovely, quiet and haunting place and we spent quite a bit of time there poking around and drawing.

While paddling over, our friend Don picked up a little swallow that had died and brought it to shore so I could sketch it.  A sad but beautiful little thing.

I also sketched some horseshoe crab shells.  Tony found this one, completely intact.

The gravestones at Atsena Otie are old and beautiful and covered with lichen.  I took some rubbings into my book and wondered about the people that somehow managed a living on this far flung island.

So here I am, back in Ohio, on a cold, rainy Monday.  Vacations have a way of shaking up things and getting me far enough away from the norm that I can really take stock of things.  While away, I made working in my sketchbook everyday a huge priority, even forsaking the occasional paddle.  I simply can’t express how soothing this was and a huge reminder that I need to make it a priority in my daily life here in Ohio.  I found upon returning that I am feeling more centered and focused than before I left.  This is due in part from just resting and getting away from it all.  But I attribute it also to all of the drawing I did in my sketchbook.  As Adam and I move toward marketing our Drawing Down the Vision workshops to the generally non-drawing corporate crowd, I plan to practice what I preach more than I have been amidst recent stresses.  The act of picking up a pen and mapping out ones surroundings on paper (be they internal or external worlds) is crucial to staying centered and seeing broader connections.  This past week has reminded me of that.  I am grateful for it.

When it rains it pours, so the old saying goes, and it’s been pouring here.  I am in the midst of what I knew would be a busy, active time and I am just riding the waves as they come.  Last weekend was the Esme Kenney Memorial Benefit Concert.  It was, for lack of a more descriptive or colorful word, amazing.  Musicians Kim Taylor, Over-the-Rhine, Ric Hordinski, The Hiders, Jay Bolotin, and a few Riley School of Irish Music folks combined their talents to create an evening of fundraising, community, memorial and love, the likes of which I have never seen.  Artists from all genres donated items and gift certificates to outfit a spectacular silent auction.  Our committee, working so hard to make this incredible installation a reality, is now helping artist Jessie Henson get all of the pieces in place to get glass blown and steel fabricated to get the work built.  It’s a wild ride and it is giving all of us grieving for Esme a place to put our energies.  Something positive to hang onto and work for in the midst of the upcoming 1 year anniversary and impending criminal trial.  The night was full of magic and tears and special moments.  Jack not only played with Jeni and Simone from Riley School, but was invited by Kim to play a song with her.  I cried.

Meanwhile, the project I am proud to be a part of down at ArtWorks is now underway.  Below is a 3-d model that tina built to indicate all of the various pieces that will be incorporated into this huge relief mural (22 feet wide, 13 feet tall - ginormous!)  We have been handed what seems to be a dream team of teenagers who are our apprentice artists.  They are brilliant and are already working together to put their talents to work on Tina’s design.  Tina and I are working together to formulate further development of the overall design and to get the kids prepared for their in-process presentation to the folks at the Convention Center next week.  I think they will do a great job.

There are parts of this design that will involve painted portraits of historical figures from Cincinnati, while other parts will be made up of mixed media techniques to create more textural areas of interest.  Below are some “bricks” that will comprise a wall area in one part.

This is a rendering of Jennie Davis Porter, known for spearheading educational opportunities for african american children in the 1800’s.  As we explore Cincinnati’s history through this project, I’ll keep you posted and introduce you to our team of artists.  Busy as we will likely be, it’s already proving to be a tremendous amount of fun!

The ArtWorks project is not my only iron in the fire.  I am also continuing my work in the world of keeping a sketchbook.  Tonight is what we hope will be the final home-based pilot workshop for Drawing Down the Vision. We have polished our process enough to take it live to companies who are looking to inject some creativity into their work place.  Workshop participants will arrive to find their supplies wrapped up in cool little pods that I built.  They’ll get some fun pens, a small sketchbook to start collecting ideas in a new way, along with the “Atlas” which will guide them through the various exercises we have developed.  Adam and I are looking forward to a fun evening of drawing and looking at communication and productivity from a different perspective.

Next week I will be the visiting artist at UC’s Clermont campus in their Art Department.  I’ll be lecturing and then providing a workshop for a group of students in a drawing class.  This is such a tremendous opportunity and I am really looking forward to sharing my approach to the documentation of life and work via the sketchbook.  In a few weeks, I am back to where I essentially began to go public with all of this sketchy-ness in the first place, the Art Academy of Cincinnati.  Bookmaker Cody Calhoun and I will be co-teaching the “Make a Book/ Fill a Book” course which essentially combines my class with hers.  This will be new to both of us and we are really excited to get started!  The class is apparently full with a wait list so our students appear to be as excited as we are.

All of this is really extroverted and it’s good exercise for someone who generally likes to keep things fairly quiet.  But shy as I am, I do love people.  And I am currently working with some amazing people and getting the chance to present to lots of others who are interested in what I do.  It’s humbling and fabulous.  And I am grateful for it.

I’ll keep you posted in the weeks to come.

I had a meeting with Troy Brown today, head of the Community Education program at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, about plans for a travel sketching class to Taos, NM.  Since my trip to Taos late last summer, I have dreamed of taking a group of students there to soak up the beautiful light, Pueblo architecture and art history that the little town has to offer.  I would be ready to launch the trip now and make it happen in the spring of 2010, but alas, to make this class a reality I need to take into account the time frame that the proper level of preparation and advertising will take.  And so, we are scheduling the trip for the end of May/ early June, 2011.

On some level this feels really far into the future but actually, it’s not.  This time next year, the Art Academy Winter/ Spring catalog will go out with the trip to Taos offered as part of a package that includes preparatory sketchbook classes to discuss supplies, techniques and general plans for the trip.  If we get any takers from afar, I will work with those students independently online or via telephone.  In the meantime the next two catalogs, Summer and then Fall 2010 will give the Art Academy plenty of time and opportunity to make the class known and available to a wide range of potential students.  Perhaps I will even have the opportunity to head back to Taos between now and spring 2011 and seek out even more spectacular little places to sketch.

It is said that patience is a virtue, that good things come in their own time.  I am trusting that this is true.  My work cup is tremendously full right now with Drawing Down the Vision pilots happening this week and next.  I also received word late last week that I am to be the teaching artist on an ArtWorks project to be created for and installed in the Duke Energy Convention Center here in Cincinnati.  I’ll be working with project leader (and dear art buddy and friend) Tina Westerkamp as well as with local high school students who will be hired specifically to work on this project during January and February.  I will post photos from this new art adventure each step of the way here on the blog.  I am tremendously excited to be a part of an ArtWorks project, as usually their work happens in the summer time when I am feeding my gypsy soul.  There is much to keep me busy and engaged artistically between now and Spring 2011.  For this I am filled with gratitude.

This evening I emailed my sketchbook class encouraging them to get their sketchbooks out in the rain and experiment with what would happen if they tinted a page with some graphite and let a few rain drops fall.  This was just a whim of an idea, nothing I had ever tried myself….. so i tried it!

Here’s the tinted page indoors…

some rain drops, but not much is happening… the graphite is acting a bit like a resist.  Maybe I should have known this from art school?  Oh well, back indoors….

I add some Golden Absorbent Ground (a magical medium that makes cool things happen) to the right side of the page along with a few streaks of watercolor and go back out into the rain.  It’s beginning to get dark out but I like what happens….

Here is the book indoors.

Here… is what a raindrop is capable of given the right opportunity on the page.  I am inspired by this because it reminds me of what attracts me most to the medium of encaustic.

Below are a few new-ish pieces of work that have recently come off the wax table.  Any feedback or comments are always welcome.  I continue to be in experimentation mode with this medium….

I have been thinking a bunch lately about rivers, hearts and veins.

Meanwhile there is a lot happening in the sketchbook world… Drawing Down the Vision is near ready for launch and I am putting together a travel sketching workshop to my beloved soul home, Taos, NM which will happen in the spring if there is enough interest in it.  I am inspired by my new students at the Art Academy as I get to know them. Teaching is one of my greatest sources of creativity.

Wishing you fun in the rain…. as always, I will keep you posted as things progress.

There has been a lot on the proverbial plate here lately which is mildly stressful.  But mostly, excitement reigns as I navigate an increasingly busy schedule.  Our kids are back in school now and we have settled into something of a schedule with new bus routes and school hours.  Having them take the bus to and from school most days has opened up some more time for me in the studio and I have been taking full advantage.  The wax table has seen some activity and I am enjoying creating new works involving stones and pebbles.

For years (as long as I can remember actually) I have collected small stones from everywhere I go as minute physical reminders of a place.  Once at home, these pebbles are usually to be found lying around here and there as decoration and inspiration.  Sometimes I just like to carry one in my pocket.  I like to think I am borrowing them for a time until someday when I am done with them and they will go back outside.  I know other artists who use pebbles as not only inspiration, but as material.  Jennifer Neilsen of Solstice Designs creates beautiful jewelry out of stones she finds on the Maine coast and I am a proud owner of one of her pieces.

In recent encaustic work, as well as in the sketchbook, I have been meditating on how lovely each and every stone is and how no one is like any other.  They are a good bit like people.  I don’t use actual pebbles in these paintings but rather create simulacra of stones and pebbles that look as much like the real thing as possible.  I like the effect and the pebbles are convincing, even in person.  But why re-create pebbles?  I don’t really know the answer to that at this point.  I just know that I enjoy making them, which for me is half the battle in the studio.  If I am not engaged with my subject, I get easily sidetracked.  So for now, I am sculpting little stones and considering the notion of landscape from a top-down perspective.  Years of beach combing are finally paying off perhaps.  Here are some samples of what’s cookin’ at the wax table…

Kayaking continues to be my new love as I learn more about being comfortable in my boat.  We have had numerous opportunities to be out on the water recently which allows me to gather stones, take photographs and draw.

One of the unexpected things about kayaking that I find particularly enjoyable is the solitude and quiet to be found when out on the water, at least in mild weather and calm waters.  I get time and quiet to think about things, which is something I don’t allow enough of in my daily life.  Even when paddling with a group of people, there is enough space and time to do my own thing here and there and I love that.  Here’s a sketch I did the other day while out on the Ohio River at Manchester Islands.  Instead of swimming, I sat and drew.

Drawing is the other thing that has me busy in the studio right now.  Funny thing is, it’s not so much the act of drawing, but rather research and writing about drawing and its inherent value as a quintessential right brained activity.  For the past few months, a former student, now friend, Adam Siemiginowski and I have been developing a new course in drawing and visual communication in general which we intend to pilot locally to large scale businesses.  We call this project Drawing Down the Vision.  It all started when Adam, a systems analyst, data sort a guy from P&G took my class at the Art Academy.  He was looking for a way to synthesize disparate ideas into one concise place as a way to monitor trends in his own thinking and idea gathering.  By the end of the course, it was clear to both of us that my relatively simple process of keeping a visual diary (i.e. sketchbook) could potentially be a powerful tool in knowledge management in the corporate sphere.

So we began working together.  I have a fairly steep learning curve when it comes to business lingo and navigating the corporate way of doing things.  But I am learning.  The more we research what boils down to a discussion of creativity in the work place, the more there is to discover.  Everyday there is more and more evidence that the old models of generating creative solutions to problems (be they business-esque “bottom line” solutions, or an outside of the box new medical breakthrough) are outdated.  Dan Pink’s recent TED talk speaks to the power of this changing landscape of problem solving.  He is one of many who believe that inspiring creativity in the work place may involve a new approach involving mixing the boundaries between professions such as business, art and science.

All of this is tremendously exciting, and scary, and I write about it here because writing helps me organize my thoughts in a way that simply thinking or list-making can’t.  In the end that is why I blog.  I sometimes discover a way of viewing my own work or thought process that I hadn’t considered.  So I’ll certainly be writing more about DDtV and its progress, as well as keeping you posted on the more day to day simple things that keep me not only occupied but in awe.  Thanks for reading.

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…