A charmer

Jean Tuttle is a charmer, an inspiration. She is a lovely person inside and out and an illustrator—and her grace and wit spills into the work happily. I love her professional work. Hope Katz Gibbs writes about her on her “Truly Amazing Women who are changing the world and how you can, too!” site, here> but just getting to know her and see how she brings her sense of fun, imagination and thinking of others into her life with images —weaving them into her day to day. Jean has done the most thoughtful thing and is sharing it with all  of her fans (moi included)—which is that she leaves her dad a picture at the breakfast table every morning featuring their three cats engaged in some cute thing having to do with current family life. The cats raising an alarm that there wasn’t much to eat in the kitchen and that Jean should get to the store is here>> The cats and mice going on vacation>>  Every detail is smart and fun—from the personalities of the individual cats (Charlotte in her Ralph Lauren coat—all fashion forward) to Blackie taking charge), to the little greek chorus of mice who fill in the story, add flourishes to the story (the way Jean does visually) and little cute quips and sidebars. Such loving, sweet images that just make my day (and I am sure Jean’s dad)—that burst with cleverness. It would be great if this impromptu work could suggest a book (which I would be first in line for). I thought you would enjoy Jean, her imagination and how she shares her talent with all of us.

Fatline Experiments, Q .Cassetti, 2011 pen and inkI am still on the fatline project. The notebooks are too small for the line width, so the sketchbook is going up in size to see how this evolves. I spent some time this weekend reading one of my great Fraktur books, Bucks County Fraktur from the Pennsylvania German Society, edited by Cory M. Amsler (1999). I love how the neighborhood, the itinerant schoolmasters, the religious and musical culture were so prescribed, and yet drove this remarkable body of original work. Many of the bookplates and hymnbook covers were done essentially as Pennsylvania German “atta boys” for students that performed or who helped tutor the less strong students. The Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates were a way for these artist teachers to make a little extra money on the side— Many of these itinerant artists were first or second generation German (with German being their main language), bringing over German/Bavarian inspiration and visual language, combined with visual reference being woodcuts (many very primitive). Throw all of that in an active mind in the countryside…churn and see what evolves. Many of these works on paper were created with blank spaces designed into the piece so they could be filled out on the fly as they were peddled from door to door.

Am busy with interesting work on my desktop.  The art folks have their deck. I need to get on the Museum for their projects. There were some nice name progression projects. I am close on a few…the horizon is something I can see.

There is some nice traction around the Library poster (to the right)  and the nice event planned for this Saturday. Heather H. has worked her magic and pulled her props (candy store, lemonade stand), ordered cakes, called musicians. There was talk of theatricals (which I think didn’t make it) but perhaps an impromptu tableau vivant? Two hundred years of books is quite an accomplishment for our little village. There is a lot to toast!

It is dreary and raining though the trees are gold. Gold and grey. The trees are beginning to dump their leaves a bit so that wonderful fall light can dapple and change our environment as the season begins to move into full fledged autumn.