Sundays

Z. and I went out for an adventure today. 

Spring around the studio

Just a glimpse of  the workspace and daily sights here.

The pomegranate tree out back seems to have sprouted lush greenery overnight.

note the new drafting table. I have been dreaming of one for the last year and found this one at the thrift store up the street with Aurora.  That's called an investment in your  skills or a gift for the genius who  lives in the shadows of the studio. I made the coat rack behind the door from old metal hooks and a drawer front. I'm a big fan of flags and banners  in windows. I love the ease of pinning polaroids, fabric scraps and other found bits.

I really am enjoying the importance of having designated activity spaces. The desk gets all kinds  of action, as you can tell and it is a boat of a desk. The drafting table is great because it doesn't ever serve as a ketch-all and demands your concentration on the task at hand. I try to organize the desk top weekly, just to clear the random bills and notes and to take stock of the projects and ideas that live there. I do have a designated coaster for my teapot to sit when I'm working or catching up on blog reading, and of course the typer sits at my right hand side. Ever faithful.

Nothing scream springtime better than a kitten in the front of your jumper. Scouty has the sweetest  tabby stripes. She's like a tiger in disguise.

the temperature of time.

Here. Grab a scrap, any scrap, and go from there with pencil and blade, typer and colors.

You said lets jump and I said no, stay,
 and sit and feel the dust collect on your skin.

Sit long enough and still enough the let the particles of the ocean and the farms and the planes and the cars and every exhale of every person in the city settle on you.

The moisture in the air, the vibration of a glass in the basin sink as it is being washed. It slowly disappears and reappears and you are magic.

He said don't cling,
it will all tilt away from you eventually
and I don't want to see you get hurt from my tilting.

You said let's walk under the trees and feel the cool air of their life in the air, and breathe the deepness into ourselves. But I did take the axe,
and chopped it down and felled it.

One year has passed slowly;
tattoos of clocks, birds, lace, a compass on one arm and a clock on the other and an anchor  on the tip of your hip bone that gracefully rises to the surface of your skin.

On Making

For every great piece that feels like it just floats from your brain to the paper, there are a ton of things made that got scrapped. Or things made for completely different reasons.

always collecting

I sanded and stained this table

Odds and ends, fits and starts, tips of tails or edges of claws just barely coming into view.  Pieces you shrug off and easily discard or slice up and glue into your sketchbook.

I forget about this and I'll be playing, noodling, fiddling for weeks, and then like magic, something beautiful arrives. A half-awake vision, the texture of a fabric, the repetition of stitches, an old photocopy you've been hauling in one of your millions of sketchbooks; it comes together in what feels like the most serendipitous way.

I forget that all the noodling was the exercising for this one; the work that needed to happen to bring me to this moment when the golden spark idea settles into the curves of my brain. And now I am contemplating not just the creative noodling I do everyday, working with my hands, that comes to bring that beautiful one idea, but it's the things I've experienced in my daily life.

There is a great conversation with  Elizabeth Gildert (of Eat Pray Love fame) on Radiolab.

drumroll please

I would like to introduce you to our newest family member. Scout. We found her near the art museum. well, technically Zach found her. She is about 4 weeks old, and Meg and her have become fast friends.