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.