What did Winslow Homer doodle when talking to a dullard? When did Stuart Davis decide to paint rythym instead of draw revolution? Why all the itinterant painters (the Johann Mengels Culverhouses that wandered from Holland to Albany to Utica to Syracuse and presulably back again)? The Terra has just announced a big gift to the Archives of American art and soon, my friends, we might get answers to some of those questions...
American Art News

The Terra Foundation for American Art is pleased to announce a $3.6 million grant to enable the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art to increase access to its collections worldwide.

The grant, the foundation’s largest to date, will fund a comprehensive, five-year program to digitize a substantial cross-section of the Archives’ most important holdings, including the papers of a highly diverse range of artists and arts-related figures from the eighteenth century to the present.

At the end of the program, nearly 1.6 million digital files will be available free of charge on a newly designed Website of the Archives of American Art , with select files available annually.

I find it pretty exciting whenever, wherever information central to the study of culture and ideas becomes more accessible.

Alright then, off to work,
take care,
Rachael

"What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous hard work in the right way."- Winslow Homer

Started to read an excellent little book by Elaine Scarry and started to think. More soon but do take care.


take care,
Rachael

More on and by Prof. Scarry is here and here and here...

A friend of mine from a residency I took a few years back is having an open studio in Raleigh, NC. I share because Anthony's encaustics are deceptively simple, smart in color, and full of life. So, if you can, try getting to Anthony Ulinski's Open Studio .

And since I think open studios are important, I'm happy to share news of yours, but mind you I won't promise for everyone, just give me plenty of heads up time and if I can, I will.


take care,
Rachael

I can't really describe the moment when in a cold vermont night I set out two packs of those grocery store cut daffodils in waterbottles. A few hours later I stepped into my studio to see an amazing blast of yellow. Pure Wordsworth. I will tell you if the clusters of daffodils I bought tonight (yes, I could have spent those couple of bucks on more vegetables, but I think flowers might nourish me more) bloom that wonderfully.

I have been absorbed this week with drawing, reading (about Lily Dale , NY), and being mundane. I made some small trouble, but more is brewing. I'm looking forward to a few days off to really draw (maybe daffodils, definitely some of these blue-ish shadows cast by trees in the snow, probably a few passes at the stained glass windows in the church around the corner). I've been putting some of those drawings off, but my pencils are sharp and tomorrow is not a promise. Just a hope.

Hope that you are staying warm in the cold, being kind to strangers, and looking closely at the images you are drawn to (for me tonight it's Texas watercolorist, Jan Heaton).

Goodnight,
Rachael

Mondays are days when nothing can stop me from painting. I don't have to go to work. I don't have to be at a computer. I don't really have to do all that laundry or call old friends or take walks or make bread or eavesdrop at the coffee shop. Only, that's what I tend to do. I do know that the 'not quite rightness' of my studio is a crutch for avoiding the hard work of painting, and I do know that it won't change by itself, and I do know that my work grows from drawing and observing anywhere and anything.

Weather's nice and nothing was getting done at home so I got gone and my wandering has led me to a university campus where the eavesdropping is rich (so many romances, so many awful roommates, so many looming tests) and there are enough standing and sitting figures to fill any respectable figure painters gesture sketchbook (and a few pages of my messbook/sketchbook). There's a lot of coffee and ideas here and I've got a library card so I'm off to:

• look for elephants in the Index of Christian Art
• browse and possibly even (if I can remember how) read some journals of popular culture, like Americana
• find out more about contemporary art in Lithuania and Slovakia

But with all of this important wandering to do, I wonder why I'm still typing this in? If only to reveal a working process I've noticed in a good many artists/creative troublemakers...that of the open questioning, the blind research into a bunch of seemingly random things ( you know I'd have to research it, but I'm pretty sure that's how Dennis Oppenheim comes up with stuff like this , and the need to share.

I've noticed that a lot of my blog-energy has of late taken the space that used to be filled by painting and being social, working, etc. If you notice a slip of entries, it may simply mean that I've made another friend. Or, that I'm sitting in a small room making messes, some of which may be as exciting as the stuff the elephants make . A girl can dream...

see ya,
Rachael