Kitty delivered. Hotter than blazes here…no breeze and a nice 97 degrees with a bit of humidity. Makes Miami seem like Maine. Cute little room. Great acoutrements…and cozy. She packed just the perfect amount of stuff…with very cute little details. We are cooling our jets prior to going back to Hampshire for a parental thing and kick off.
More later
This new graphic approach is more about drawing, and lots of working over shapes to get the forms and curves right along with making them fit with more detail, flowers, fauna, bunnies and birds. I am back to pencils and eraser— working from light blue to indigo. None of this body of work is final but more the blueprints (scanned in as low res, rgb, PDFs )— not the black and white, min 600 dpi scans. Feels more loose and fast.
I started the illustrator symbols library yesterday. Colorforms for Q. More parts, more to play with. It somehow seems odd that I liken my “art” to play, my “art” to toys and not to big ideas and deep thoughts. However, that is play is intrinsic for now…an investigation of taking this apart and then putting it back together and having things that are recognizable and interesting. The next step will be to find a concept around which to test this idea, approach. I am thinking either old Noye’s Fludde, or taking a clue from Edward Hick’s peaceable kingdom…perhaps doing one for this neighborhood in North America, but then a tropical one, a frosty one, a deep sea one? More to ponder.
Holiday illo, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalThe wheels are in motion. Granola is baking for Kitty to take to school. Kittyn gets dried cherry, Robbie gets golden raisin. The totes are lined up in the hallway. The new bedding is in it’s packaging ready to be carried off to Amherst. Kitty has finally completed the reading required for Orientation (I have been on her all summer…and need to learn that she operates at the last minute to my frustration….all the haranguing just does not work). All the bathroom stuff is jammed into a waste paper basket. Shady Grove has been planned, walking scheduled, food figured out. The cats have moved back to chez Camp and are now snarling and fighting in the backyard over who is the King of the Cat Empire.
Now, I am wrangling the printer to get our hot wire reservations off it, print the schedules and parking stuff for our tour for Alex of U Mass Amherst in preparation of round two, college visits with Boy Wonder. Rolling from getting one settled to the next in the waiting line to launch off to the next iteration of education. It should be a new adventure not of biology and art, bad haircuts, and cute guys to music theory, club scene, bromance, cross country and team sports. We hear there are a bunch of unclaimed golf scholarships out there. I think, as I am sure you do to, that Alex C. may be on the golf team next spring. Running and Golf, drama and music theory. Large School feeling, small school intimacy. Oy.
The destruction back of the house has been completed. Bathroom with all water and electricity gone. Rob and Nigel emptied the closets yesterday along with the tool and household fixings gone— either organized or bagged for Salvation Army. Team David Burke will be here soon to begin to get it back in order, take the sheetrock off the ceiling to the studs, so that a brand new metal roof, all nice and clean and grey, to be put in place on the new/old roof.
Love Birds, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalYesterday was the posterchild for summer. Perfect day. Cloudless, warm but not overly so. We got into the brisk water twice. We did little things ( laundry for me, lawn for Rob) and then relaxed on the porch until it was time to visit neighbors at the blow out party next door. We took Shady on a leash (as having her stay at home has her howling and crying with sadness that we have left her). And, as you know, having a dog at a picnic makes you a dog magnet. Having the magnetic dog attracts dog lovers, little chldren who want to poke your dog in the eye (which Shady is good with), and others. We were approached by a nice lady from New Jersey who was staying at the Bed and Breakfast the party was thrown at…and it turns out after talking about her dogs, the West Highland Terrier breed, and her kids, that her husband works for Estee Lauder and we then got in the way back machine to find out that he works still with people I had worked with prior to moving up here. It was really fun…and kind of blew Kitty and Alex’s mind to see how we got from here to there.
Must go as I have a drive in front of me for a doctor’s appointment. More, hopefully later.
Fireman’s Parade, Q. Cassetti, 2010
Home Again, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalMore thinking about this graphic illustration approach. I have been digging in with this style and approach. I have broken my own illustration rule of “no tricks” and am using gradients with this style when it’s appropriate or a need a little boost or delineation that I would have drawn in during my “I’m not an illustrator” prismacolor past. My palette and these little short gradients (sometimes just tonal, other times quite colorful) are peeking out of this work which is affirmative as I feared this approach as it was easy…but I didn’t see how the tools that I have been working with ( blue pencils, black pens) are helping me to better really design these forms allowing me more room for refinement when they get popped into illustrator and formed, redesigned and finalized. I am enjoying the purity of the forms and see that having this sort of tool in my toolbox gives me another place to land when confounded. Just need to work on a body of work to click the “triangle of learning” into gear (design>technique>form) for a range of content to test my metal.
Suburbia. Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalWow. Wow. Wow. The quiet afternoon yesterday stopped the minute we went to the Parade! (I will have pictures, but first I need to charge the batteries and find the connection cord before I can get them to you). First off, the Fireman’s Parade is the Trumansburg Parade. It’s the one! We have always gone to the Memorial Day event, and it is much quieter and respectful than the blow-out we saw yesterday. There was our high school band (very good this year). There was a Dairy Princess and her court float (along with a large tipping carton of milk spilling between the ladies). There were the singers and military tableau vivant from Freedom Village. Grassroots was represented by the adorable green and yellow caboose being pulled by a large John Deere tractor. Speaking of tractors, there were antique tractors and antique fire equipment, pumpers and the like. Speaking of fire equipment and companies, the whole of central New York: Odessa, Waverly, Endfield, Tburg (of course), Romulus, Ovid, Mecklenburg, Interlaken and more. The pride of Central New York, proudly walking in front of us. The Fire Commissioner couldn’t stop smlling. It was amazing and delightful. Ambulances, baton twirlers, little children and convoys of tow trucks for cars to trucks. There were teams of horses pulling carts and carriages, and civil war historic reenactment folks in costume sitting on the back of trucks.
The whole procession took us from 228 to the Fair Grounds where there was food galore, a fireman’s picnic, rides and fun…with the foremost fun being the minivan demolition derby, the roll car event and the “Krazy Train” monster truck that jumps over trashed cars (with teeth painted on the front!). Kitty and I left the Commisioner to pay our $6. a head to watch the Krazy Train and all the colorful people and things around us. When that big wheeled monster truck came speeding up to the three demo cars and flew into the air, bouncing like a big ball with Kitty screaming with laughter, face pink with hilarity. I took a ton of pictures of the rides, the prime examples of folk painting and lettering and throughly enjoyed the evening of smoke and flames, flipping cars, and people eating gigantic bowls of greasy chili fries, blinking lights, color and laughter of the fairgoers.
More later. Peter D. just came off his beautiful boat and bacon is begging to be cooked.
Support Hydrofracking?
Variation on Daisyhead, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalI don’t think that this image is cooked yet. But, good enough to show the progression. Not enough to figure into a portfolio piece as the Girard inspired chops are still in the making. The sky is not working…and some of the sort gradients are not necessary. But, as I was thinking this morning, sometimes you need to look at the work a day later, a different size and format to really see where the work needs to go. Interestingly, unlike the pen and ink work, I am taking more out than adding in. A shift to plainer, simpler. Less is more.
Case in point yesterday. I was working on a picture with a house, rooster, flying birds, a sun…and it was all too much despite the fact it was one of the gridded designs. I needed fewer topical opjects…more birds, no sun. This approach, which I see as very interesting for jobs like “I need something having to do with CATS” or I need a picture to capture this emphemeral thing or the other…when a grouping of different objects drawn in a bunch of different viewpoints could do that. Or the old chestnut which many illustrators have done …the face or porfile made up of objects (thinking there might be something here for the Hangar). So, I trudge on. Poking at this, trying that…sampling things online iwth you…and seeing what works, what doesnt and what resonates. It is surprisingly harder than it seems because the shapes have to be good if they are so so simple…and I find things I need to rework all the time. Getting my eye “in the game”, sharpened to see the curvers, the conters and positives will be better as I continue along this path.
Girard Electra Bicycle BellGirard handled butterflies in a nice way as a form but also a form within a polka dot. Unoriginal me plans on doing this with my creature, Ms Bee— and then, we will see. Am stoked about that too.
Today is a beautiful day. We had a nice chat with Lucia about college for Alex this morning and then came towards Tburg for Rob to take the sick lawn tractor to Chet the Lawnmower Man’s relative to repair. Kitty and I shopped for more toiletries as it is less than a week away…and god forbid whe might have to buy something the first week of school.
The Fireman’s parade is today. We will be there on time with cameras ready to clap and catch candy if they throw it our way. There ae presents to wrap in advance of Alex’s birthdayt…and then there is the glorious day.
Home, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalLove has power that dispels Death; charm that conquers the enemy.
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)
“Peace,” Tears and Laughter, trans. Anthony R. Ferris, p. 30 (1949).
A Moment of Peace, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalAnother day predicted to be early Fall. Cool days and nights, though there is talk that the weekend will be summery and warm enough to swim. That would be excellent. Never enough swimming this summer.
I had a nice lunch with the artistic director of the Hangar Theatre, Peter Flynn. We talked about the outstanding things that kept people from their expertise this summer and then settled down to talking about next summer’s Mainstage performances. As we ate lunch, I was delighted and thrilled as Peter told me the stories of these performances so we could suss out what the imagery might be for each piece. The plays are: Rounding Third, Ragtime, another August Wilson: Gem of the Ocean, Tim Pinckney’s Ever So Humble, and the stage version of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Peter took me through each one, entertaining me, underlining important stuff…so I feel like the pen can hit the paper and start going. I am most puzzled with what to do for the Rocky Horror as it is so well known ..from the movie, that breaking from the iconography of the lips and the dripping type will be hard (and maybe not recognizable. So onward. I am aiming to have the graphics completed by November to get a jump start for the next season well in advance of 2011. It would be so great to be able to get the Hangar on a schedule that is more like a retail one (all the holiday stuff done and printed by August 1)…or in the case of Mainstage, all the stuff ready to roll by January 1. I can hope for that.
I am surprisingly liking all this graphic illustration work. I have gotten my head out of “its a logo” to its a picture…enjoying working the curves in illustrator (with a fineness that even my hands could not render and a knowledge of french curves beyond my elementary understanding). Making lovely shapes, reversing shapes out of them As I was coming back from dropping Alex off at the park this morning, driving through all the greenery, the lake views and the summer fields, I thought about this emerging approach, and would like to do some more pattern studies in a grid/or in a grid with some obvious overlaps per yesterday’s Bird Collection. I have broken my own rules by adding gradients to this style (one of my personal rules has, until now, been no obvious Adobe Illustrator tomfoolery with filters and the “cheats”). But this work occasionally wants a bit of gradient and I do not think the tiger tooth approach is as nice in this approach. If I were working with cut paper or screenprints, a gradient or screen blend is not out of the palette of options available. So, you will see a bit of tentative gradients plunked into this work.
Gotta go. I have to dial into a call.
Bird Collection, Q. Cassetti,2010, digitalCoffee brewing. Sauce on the stove too. Broccoli soup simmering—getting ready for the big whizzzz before serving to the crew today. I finally went to the store to stock up, so the lack of bread, bananas and other basics is no longer. I cooked and chopped and cooked some more last night so today I can work and not get itchy around 11:45 trying to figure out what I am going to scratch together for the team. I am on it.
The back of the house is totally open. It is impressive what the light is doing to the rooms—and the intimacy the space has when returned to the slimmer hallway. Feels more personal and less like the back space (which when we bought this house was covered in avocado carpet squares saturated with cat urine) was storage or the promise of another room. Again, thankfully, this work was topical, so cheap in/easy out. And the dumpster continues to fill. More noise, but happy noise as the change is great and will really take the downstairs of this big barn to another place.
Alex is running at Taughannock State Park. I hope, for his sake, the really cranked up workout is not on the roster for today. That little gem is running to the top of the waterfall, around the rim trail and back down several times. This little process has a -zilla on the end of the name…and I cannot remember it. I do not think its pukezilla…but for me it is… or trashedzilla? Poor devil. But, he signed up for it.
The Demo Derby was very successful. The boys loved it and took great pictures. Bruce cozied up to a few of the drivers and made a deeper connection than I am want to do. More from the fair today (Horse Pulls). I hope the weather clears a bit this week. Overcast for a few days…and frankly, I would like the end of summer to be a bit more brilliant.
NPR had a good critique of the book, The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age
In The Great Silence, Nicolson uses anecdotes, diaries and letters to create portraits of 35 people living in England after the armistice. Her characters range from “under-chauffeurs and below-stairs people” to “royalty, as well as famous writers and artists,” Brown says. And in Brown’s eyes, Nicolson’s bottom-up approach to history is what makes her book so affecting.
“What we don’t think about is the devastating trauma of what it was like when one in seven young men in England had died,” she says. And certainly the incidents from Nicolson’s book that Brown recounts are harrowing.
“She describes scenes like, for instance, riding the bus, and suddenly some woman would just break into wild tears as something had reminded her of her son, or her brother or somebody in her family,” the editor says. “Or she would talk about men walking the streets of London wearing these strange, eerie tin masks because their faces had been shot away.”
One surgeon, Howard Gillies — himself a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps during the Great War — was so affected by the tin-masked men that he worked to develop a revolutionary plastic surgery technique. Nicolson devotes a chapter of her book to describing his work.
All of Brown’s “survival” picks are about displaying character in the face of stress. Howard Schultz, for example, succeeded because of his uncommon audacity and vision. America’s 20-somethings may be foundering because most of them “haven’t really faced up to the stresses [that] people like Schultz are writing about yet,” Brown says.
And the survivors of the conflict once called the War to End All Wars faced the ultimate test: trying to readjust after a horrific, unimaginable trauma. As Brown puts it: “You do have to admire these people who returned under such terrifying circumstances and simply had to pick up and carry on.”
Imagine. Imagine the tin masks, the tears, the losses of families, of communities, of life. This is beyond my understanding. And to that, this book has been added to my list of things to read. It’s on my kindle now.
More later.
Flower Girl, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalIt was another full pot of soup today. David B. and team took the walls down and trashed the 1970s era bathroom after fueled by the soup…and sorry excuses for having no bread in the house. It really is looking like its the day to go to the store as I am scrounging for the basics, no bread, no eggs. Not many options. I used up all sorts of cornmeal with bread I made to go with yesterday’s soup. What will tomorrow’s potage be?
There is this remarkable moment of Natural History that was found in the roof area above this 1970s bathroom. Rob was pointing a beam into the rafters and saw a gigantic wasp’s nest nestled in the space which was extracted and given to Kitty (as she loves them so much). Goodness knows where this magnificent papery nest will go among all of Kitty’s collection. It is interesting to see the back walkway opened up to give us light to the back of this big house. It may change the dynamic of every room on the first floor.
The Ulysses Fair (the 160th year)has opened today with the first of three Demo Derbys being held. Lots of excitement around that…and I wish to goodness the sun would come out as the photographic opportunities are huge. And Wednesday holds multiple classes of horse pulls (love). I gotta be able to scootch out of here to take it in.
Must go to drop off the boys at the Dem…and pick up food for tonight/ tomorrow.
Bird Bundle (sketch), Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalRaining like crazy yesterday. Tree debris everywhere from the big blows we had last night. It was remarkable. Alex was busy with music and friends. Kitty packed. Rob was busy planning rennovations, demolition and the finalizing the woodstove wall in the kitchen. The team is demoing the downstairs old bathroom and the back walkway. So the ping ping ping of hammers and the great heaving into dumpsters is the topline sound today.
Its cold out. Wool undershirts are being worn happily by yours truly. Scarves are appealing again.
Seems the the man from Countywide Appliances needs to be chez Luckystone this afternoon to install the new compressor for the fridge. Finally. Its been a summer of planning around the status of the bags of ice in the ice chest at the lake…with our planning, more often than not, not being highly successful. Will take my sketchbook and see what comes off the pencils. I am enjoying these graphic illustrations and the pencil drawings in advance make the vector work so quick and clean…and gives me the time to work on the curves being better and honestly, with pencil on paper, allows me to plan the work to make it go more smoothly. Liking the process. Liking the results. Like the fluidity. Now, I need to continue to work like Mr. Girard in strips. And, I need to work on some more figures like him. Maybe work on the hands too.
Publications and illustrations await for this week. We will see what happens.
Sheep study, Q. Cassetti. 2010, digital.Luckystone is being swamped with rain. The cats are circling, looking for a warm spot to twist themselves into to ride out this Noah inspired deluge.There are branches on the roads, willows bent over and the water, coming down in sheets, also is rough and tumble—and high, in the lake. Chet, the Lawnmower man would refer to this sort of rain as a “soaker” which, to someone who loves and works with grass is imperative to the greening of the ground…and keeping it green versus the tan straw that often happens by August.
The temperatures, as they often do mid August onward, keep getting incrementally cooler that multiple layers are not out of the question, and the anticipation of thick sweaters and heavy socks do not seem too much of a stretch. But cool and wet are Chet’s friends, so the grass will be green as we roll into September, the change of seasons, the start of schools and the shoulder to winter. In this spirit of autumn, I made up a big pot of Restoration Soup, otherwise known as Recycled Soup (comprising of left over corn, tomatoes, sausage, noodles, beans with seasonings) to prepare for the hoards that are going to descend on us this week with the deconstruction of the back walkway and the finalizing of the backwall behind our woodfired range. From no action to action immediately. So my group of 6 for lunch is now jumping to 9-10 and I need to recalibrate to accomodate.
We spent the morning talking with a friend and making plans for an interesting and very important project on the horizon. Soon, you will hear about the content, but not until I have it better in my sights and understanding…and how to grapple with it creatively to package it beautifully, compellingly and memorably to galvanize support, awareness and better understanding among all of us who now (moi aussi) are naively waiting for “it” to happen…and it already has. So, get ready to buckle down with me… More on that front later.
I was the shuttle bus yesterday for Alex…picking up and delivering. I got the raspberries in the freeze and did a quick shot at the Shur Save (Savior) and loaded up a cooler with the goods. Kitty and Rob and I went to Target and did some college shopping (with the rest of the world) and was stunned by the stacks of $29. microwaves, bookshelves, towering stacks of plastic totes. All the cheap stuff was wiped out with all the new apartments and dorm rooms being furnished that I was really glad we had done a bit of this earlier—and only had the health and beauty stuff to buy. Absolute insanity. The televisions were amazingly priced ( I guess one needs a personal tv to go with your microwave for college…note to self: you should pay extra to go to Hampshire as in room tvs are forbidden). And the shelves to the tvs were scoured as well. New world for this mom. Jeez.
I am reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel
Amazon Best Books of the Month, July 2010: David Mitchell reinvents himself with each book, and it’s thrilling to watch. His novels like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas spill over with narrators and language, collecting storylines connected more in spirit than in fact. In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, he harnesses that plenitude into a more traditional form, a historical novel set in Japan at the turn into the 19th century, when the island nation was almost entirely cut off from the West except for a tiny, quarantined Dutch outpost. Jacob is a pious but not unappealing prig from Zeeland, whose self-driven duty to blurt the truth in a corrupt and deceitful trading culture, along with his headlong love for a local midwife, provides the early engine for the story, which is confined at first to the Dutch enclave but crosses before long to the mainland. Every page is overfull with language, events, and characters, exuberantly saturated in the details of the time and the place but told from a knowing and undeniably modern perspective. It’s a story that seems to contain a thousand worlds in one. —Tom Nissley
I agree with Mr. Nissley. Its a gem. Maybe its an Audible book too. Could be good as a listen to.
Pattern, Alexander GirardThis is Alexander Girard. Love this pattern. Feels Matisse-y, but cut papery, and also the sixties/ pop/ Herman Miller rules the universe as well. Love the way the counters work with the forms, where the pattern of one is overlaid on the other and vice versa. The palette is not totally corporate crayon box, but the greyed out greens, blues and warm greys really make it along with the ballet pink which sort of quiets the magenta down. Hot and brights against greyed and quiet. Really works in a nice way. I need to learn about this. And, it is not blocked out in squares, but more free range/ organic grid versus the crap I have been doing that is all gridded out. Forget that. Need to work on this…maybe in the tradition of CF Payne, just see what they are doing by beginning to copy this to really understand what is going on.
I got up early this morning to take Alexander to his running practice. We all had an early night of it at the Luckystone after a late dinner thanks to you know who not getting her stuff in gear. Albeit, I made a really great tomato tart (from M Stewarts little pocket cooking magazine) and we had corn from the stand which was extrordinary. The produce, as an aside has been amazing this summer. Plump, sweet and robust. And with this thinking, I took myself to SilverQueen (you pick) after dropping A. off in the middle of the Hector National Forest to pick something (I was hoping peaches). Instead, I picked raspberries. Yellow gold ones and red ones. They were as big as wild strawberries…and in the cool morning with the bumblebees working diligently at their tasks, the quiet drone of the work and getting lost in my thoughts really was quite meditative and wonderful along with picking a big bucket of berries to mascerate and freeze for colder times. What a gift. And what a time to think and collect my thoughts. There is so much going on, it was good to let the ideas mascerate themselves, and see what could bubble up that was interesting and actionable from not focusing but randomly letting the ideas float and flitter like the buzzing bees.
Was back on the Fraktur and Conrad Beissel reading last night. Was re-reading about the identification of David Kulp, the Brown Leaf Artist, a known (and newly identified Fratktur artist and itinerant schoolteacher and scribe). I adore Kulp as I love his use of color, his calligraphic vines and florals, his confident use of the brush/pen, and his naive angels and figures that charm me to no end. Kulp was finally identified by a book he penned that was found in the bottom of some ordinary German texts. This book Kulp wrote/illustrated has his teaching book, his tools to illustrate concepts to his students, along with tables, notes, lists all in his handwriting which matched the script of the Brown Leaf Artist. The Mennonite Heritage Center speaks about this type of teacher/scrivener this way:
Bookplate (Bücherzeichen) for Barbara Meyer, David Kulp, 1805, Philadelphia Free LibraryThe colonial schoolmaster, Christopher Dock, introduced to the Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonite community a folk art form known today as fraktur. Earlier known as fraktur schriften (literally broken, or fractured writing), this was a type of decorated or illuminated religious writing which has origins in the monasteries of medieval Europe. Dock taught at the meetinghouse schools of the Skippack and Salford Mennonites during the 18th century.
Other schoolmasters who followed Christopher Dock and continued the fraktur tradition in Mennonite schools in Montgomery County include Huppert and Christian Cassel, Henrich Brachtheiser, Andreas Kolb, Jacob Gottschall, Jacob Hummel, Isaac Z. Hunsicker, Martin & Samuel Gottschall, and Henry G. Johnson. Bucks County schoolmasters whose work has been identified include Johannes Meyer, John Adam Eyer, Samuel Meyer, David Kulp, Rudolph Landes, Jacob Oberholtzer, and Jacob Gross.
The use of fraktur schriften played a significant role in the educational process. A writing example, called a vorschrift, was used to teach the students to write the alphabet and numbers, and to learn hymns and scriptures. The texts on the vorschriften encouraged and admonished the children to fear God, lead pious and obedient lives.
The schoolmaster also drew colorful birds and exquisite flowers on small slips of paper, which he gave to industrious children. He decorated bookplates for handmade hymn-tune notebooks. Later, in the first half of the nineteenth century, schoolmasters created many delicate bookplates for printed hymnals, Testaments and other devotional books.
Fraktur writing flourished in this community from approximately 1750 to 1845. The reluctant acceptance by the German-speaking Townships of the state sponsored public school system in the 1840s brought the decline of fraktur writing in the schools. These vibrant treasures were cherished by the children, safeguarded in family Bibles, and passed from one generation to the next.
Isn’t it remarkable that futher I get away from Fraktur and Folk art, the closer I am to getting back to it again? I marvel at the work of Alexander Girard and David Kulp. Same sensibility, same vision just different eras, different times. Am I throwback too? or a continuation of the same song, just a different place and time. Or, is this somehow a creative wormhole? Love that idea. A creative wormhole where something that happens in one place can be happening in another place in another time.
The Internet Encylopedia of Science tells us (dumbed down for artists!):
A hypothetical “tunnel” connecting two different points in spacetime in such a way that a trip through the wormhole could take much less time than a journey between the same starting and ending points in normal space. The ends of a wormhole could, in theory, be intra-universe (i.e. both exist in the same universe) or inter-universe (exist in different universes, and thus serve as a connecting passage between the two).
Must go. Hometeam is here.
Atmosphere of Peace, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digital
Love Dove, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalJust had a great meeting with a knitter, designer and amazing woman, Laura Nelkin. Laura lives in a greek revival house (with a mini version of our handrail that she exclaimed over!) here in scenic Tburg and runs a very cool business with knitting patterns and an amazing knitting network and engaging in the national/international knitting scene. She is a real shot in the arm. Laura was full of all sorts of cool information along with referencing Knitty (an old favorite of mine) and now Ravelry (an amazing new website filled with tools, patterns, and community). I hope we will have a chance to work together. She is someone I can learn from and help. I am enchanted.
Last night was filled with music after a bit of driving around to take Bruce to drop off his car at Shadetree and pick up AllieBob at a friends place. Then it was Jim Reidy/Dee Specker/ Silas Reidy at the Rongo and then the Grady Girls at the Pourhouse. We had a wonderful dinner (!) with a chance to visit with all sorts of people. It was a fun night out. Kitty met us at the Pourhouse after an afternoon with friends and swimming along with new clothes (cast offs from a friend) and a sparkle in her eye. She settled in for the last part of our visit along with Alex showing up after expiditing at the Rongo. Alex is working like a nut these days along with playing the base, reading books and trying to do a little training too.
As an aside, I ran into Alex’s music teacher who was so positive about Alex’s work and involvement in his music composition class he took last year. She was talking about his skills, his music, and his ability. She also spoke about his quiet leadership and how he is there for his peers and they look ahead to him. It was wonderful to see him through her eyes. Confirms my thinking…which is always tentative, but having it repeated to me was illuminating and comforting.
As you can see, I am still fiddling with Girard inspired work. I am working in hardline in my notebook and am scanning them into my computer and using them as an underlay on illustrator. Simple is elegant…and I am striving to strip stuff out to work within the solids and shapes that Girard worked in. Who knows if its a look/ or approach, but with a body of work,we will see. Need to continue with critters with wing— which includes bees!
Goodness knows where this will go
Angel 2, Q. Cassetti, 2010, digitalIt’s soft pencil city here. Normally, you can see me with a pen in my hand. No questions, no changes…that is, after I work the original idea in blue pencil. Today, its Caran D’ache Pablo pencil in black. Sharpened within an inch of its life…to make hard line drawings to make my “red headed stepchild” pictures…trying to the exemplary Alexander Girard. Interestingly, looking at the Girard work, I have been surprised that his body of illustration work is not too deep/broad so it leaves a lot of space for me to continue with his spirit and fuse it with Q.
I did just find a bunch of stuff that Girard did..applied to bicycles. He did a fun butterfly/butterfly pattern that maybe could be applied to bees…Also, he did a tree of life that was on a bicycle here>So, I am not really too off point with content. Maybe I need to do a tree of life in this spirit. The folk spirit, the whimsey are in these pieces. I am going to go with this for a while and see where it goes. I am finding my advent calendar work to be a good starting place for this new Girard inspired grouping of work.
I am planning to drive down to Ithaca this a.m to get my new specs. Just slightly blinder…but looking forward to a bit more sharpness in my life. I will keep my short glasses for the computer, but migrate to split lenses for the long vision. I also have my new toy glasses on order and coming this way (striped frames and a pair of metal frames). Argyle frames in the sights (zennioptical.com).
Holiday cards await as does a publication. Worked on some work for a very politically inspired friend yesterday. I am liking where it is going…and hope that I can be of help to him, his message and agenda.
more later.