I finished this tiny drawing last night at work, but gosh if I'm not more enamored by a page torn out of my notebook... roughly sketched with the section front I was laying out and a few story names and scribbles. It says so much to me about living and working in the physical world. It's both a bit mysterious and purposeful.

Wolfgang Laib and purpose in no purpose

More getting down to the smallest particles of living.
Tonight I read a story in Utne Reader about Wolfgang Laib, not a stranger, I wrote an essay on his work in my dissertation.
What he has that I want: patience; serenity; purpose in no purpose. Awareness; belief in the beauty of his physical world. And, most pointedly for me just now –"A person who refuses to make efficient use of time, who does not actively pursue some concrete goal" and this "is somehow disturbing to the modern psyche."

Check him out. Be sure to click on POLLEN. http://cms.ifa.de/en/exhibitions/exhibitions-abroad/bk/laib/

Saw grass takes size 15 needles

Sitting outside this morning drawing. Very hot and humid; saw grass rustling in the breeze off the water. Not stiff and arthritic like this. Graceful and gentle. Dappled sunlight on the sidewalk.
I wonder where all this is headed... simple and small drawings that seem to take forever to make. The thought of going really large with them is way too big a thought.
But I'm contemplating making some big pictures with oil sticks in a similar way. Maybe even color... Yikes.
Right after I finish knitting some of that sawgrass into a shroud. ('Real live bleeding fingers,' as Lucinda Williams would say.)
I can feel myself becoming terse and cynical lately. Because the work doesn't come easily. Because I don't know what I'm doing...

Node

Or black hole or outer space or my soul? Recorder of deeds and misdeeds. Collector and keeper of toxins. Maybe filtering out the bad stuff... hmmm

Plastic from chicken feathers

Yes. Really. A professor at Tech has figured out how to make plastic from Virginia's surplus of chicken feathers... apparently we have a lot of them left over after the slaughter. I also learned that the life of a chicken processed for food lasts about 49 days. Ow.
So, here's my drawing of "a small cup molded from the feather plastic."

Next post: Tuesday, June 26. On the road again.

Down and dirty

It's been damp, really humid and I've been tilling a strip of lawn, readying it for a wildflower garden: digging out grasses and weeds, breaking up the top layer of soil and really looking at what's in there. At the same time I'm trying to think about drawing while drawing and hearing that whisper in my head, "stop drawing things."
So many living things.

Mystery

I've been thinking about and working on the negative shapes made – deliberately or randomly – by drawing around white space.
Mystery.

Beginning but no end

Here again, it's what isn't there, isn't drawn, that seems to exist. I like the idea of a line, or hair or string that can go on wrapping around itself indefinitely. A beginning but no end.

Collection of no-mind drawings

Here's a work in progress. I'm taking it on the road with me to Charlottesville for a concert: Lyle Lovett and k.d. lang.
It's a hot hot Sunday in Virginia.
More so than the previous 2 drawings, this one is like a collection of no-mind drawings, broken down into random areas and worked individually. Probably no one cares. But for me it's interesting to watch the whole unfold in stages, some instinctively darker or lighter than others, pushing to the front or receding into the fog, some carrying the visual germ of an idea or treasure within them. It feels erotic to me too, something I don't often notice.

Do-nothing

Here's another piece that tells of time spent, and lots of it. I'm thinking it's not finished, or is that just the OC in me responding to the horror vacui? I'm digging the ethereal, 'rising up' feeling it evokes.
Even this sort of no-mind drawing, this drawing meditation, in the end presents problems for thinking and decision-making.
Do-nothing.

Prodigal daughter returns

That would be the "exceedingly reckless or wasteful" (according to New World Dictionary) daughter...
I've been away, from home and from any computer for some days.
I remembered to bring my sketchbook though, so have a few offerings to post in the next few days.
This one is about time spent drawing. And about thinking about drawing while drawing. I was trapped in the Charlotte airport for hours on Saturday and, in self defense, immersed myself in filling up a page with marks.
I love how the most striking pieces are the ones where there are no marks. Starry night, knotted quilt, shroud, control-panel for my universe...

Instead of the bird

I was saddened to find this morning that an animal had made 0ff with my sweet dead baby bird. Late last night I'd wrapped him in plastic and hung him from the live oak outside my studio. It's always worked before... but here I am late on Thursday night with no bird drawing and watching a Jeff Tweedy concert DVD...
I've just had a good idea for a series of drawings... spent the morning looking at cerebral Web Sites that remind me of drawing issues like repetitive mark making and ritual and meditation and found drawing and random line and all that stuff that used to rock my world... I know that I draw every day, but I don't draw enough.
So, here's to drawing as a big part of one's day and drawing as a way to spend good life.

Last night there was a huge thunderstorm. Lots of lightening and wind. Not cold, this morning lots of leaves and branches on the ground.
Hal found this baby bird in the surf on his morning walk and brought him home for me. So perfect and so close to the day when he could have flown from his nest into the rain. Pale golden touches to his otherwise gray/brown feathers. And still a light in his eye.
So many things lately point to the fine line between living and dying.

Drawing on the beach

This morning I went down to the beach to draw. The sand was pristine, unusually so, and there was nothing stinky or odd or dead for me to draw from. So, I had to make it up.

Stress remedy

Wow I was suffering a bit today (worry etc. pointless I know) and here's how I got rid of it... I think it started out as skin and morphed into something else. I like the small points of light in the darkness. Anyway, I'm feeling much better now.
Have sketchbook, will work it out.

Yee Hah

Have a look at the high point (click here) of my weekend in West Virginia... and a drawing of the rope bag and what I thought might be lurking around under the surface of that water. I spent a lot of time in it on Saturday. What a blast.