All the famous people keep parading around my neighborhood but they are not rubbing it in. They are sharing their ideas. It's cool.

Yesterday I had to work (it's OK I like to work on Saturdays, that's when the kids come and get creative) but Alison Saar was going to give a lecture in the afternoon and so magic Amy held down the fort and I spent an hour listening to the sculptor talk and show slides. It was really dark in the auditorium, so I didn't get the drawings and notes I usually get because I couldn't see the page. I still noted a number of things and drew a couple others. Her bio is well-known enough (and on her gallery's website here) but what was strongly felt from my corner of the room, was a consistent interest in hanging figures, making surfaces richly marked with roof tins, and considering dualities. There's a show at ROCO right now, she is not a hard artist to find with the frequency she shows in bigger cities but it is good that a small army of supporters have brought her work to town. She sometimes told us the dimensions, sometimes shared the backstory, often referred to her own family as a source for the sculptures (I thought her brief emotional moment as she talked about her daughter growing up was particularly poignant).
And now, there's Maryls' mama coming around...
I'm about as geeked out excited as a girl can be to go to the Writing the Unthinkable or (thinking the unwritable?)workshop tomorrow with Lynda Barry and then to see her talk. I promise to try to share the take-a-way from that.

And then, after that, I tell ya, I'm done with the big names and back to taking more walks around my very humble block and enjoying my generally anonymous life. There is some mulching to be done and more story-telling to spill out and I have been a very poor correspondant. Plus, I used to paint pictures.
See ya,
Rachael

Thursday night I had a chance to see a wonderful talk by here in Rochester, moderated by Joanna Scott and with very talented interpreters. While my notes are traditionally messy and scattered, I captured some ideas that continue to reverberate in my head.












A little inspiration goes a long way...
Rachael

see also Chad Post's blog on it here

I looked at my calendar and realized that in the next few weeks, Alison Saar, Umberto Eco, and Lynda Barry are coming to my town. I looked in my yard and realized my tulips had big heads of yellow. Nice.

Even though, I skipped a couple of lectures I was planning on attending this week because I couldn't stand to sit in the dark listening to strangers when it was sunny outside, I am looking forward to absorbing and sorting through Saar and Rushdie and Eco and Barry and the tulips and the weeds and the bugs and the people on my bus.

My sketchbook is filling and I'll share some pictures soon, but I'm racing to finish the last of my three short stories (sure it doesn't sound like much) for the fiction seminar I've been taking this semester. I've been impressed with the ideas shared around this workshop table and I think it's made me a better writer (if a less frequent blogger)...oh well.

Take care, troublemakers...
Rachael

Joseph Solman died a few days ago at the age of 99 and as I saw the newspaper photo of a regal man standing in front of a city street with graffiti scribbles, looking forthright at the camera, I wanted to know more. There is some Solman in the indexes of the books piled on my windowsill, mostly mentions in the WPA stuff, and I had the artist connected in the loose web of my head, with Mark Rothko, but as with any artist who makes a strong body of work over a long period of time, there's a rich resource of images and ideas about Solman.
On the web:
Mercury Gallery has a number of his paintings, monoprints and drawings on their site.
His son, Paul Solman, interviewed him and Dore Ashton about Rothko.

More of Mr. Solman's story is here in his Archives of American Art interview.

Paintings don't live for ever, for sure, but sometimes some of our best paintings tell stories, speak truth even we we can't say a word anymore.
I'm appreciative of the chance to look and listen.

Rachael

Painting, drawing, weeding and writing when not working has me busy but I saw some opportunities to show work and I wanted to share them. Why bother making stuff if you don't get it out there, and how do we grow as artists if we don't put our stuff on walls and let the world tell us how to make it better?

I oughta get better at practicing than preaching but here are some opps (painting and drawing mostly, mostly from NYFA and random pieces of information)

New England/New York/New Talent 2008
Hampden Gallery (Amherst MA)
4th Bi-annual juried exhibition of new talent from New England and New York. Open to all media. No Fee.
submit 6 slides or jpegs.
by May 31, 2008
for prospectus:
www.umass.edu/fac/hampden

Prismacolor is having a contest and you don't have to just use prismacolor. Also, it's free.

I'm sure there are more, but I have to get back to painting, drawing, weeding and writing, sleeping and then working.

Thinking, plotting, planning and pretending. Bonus, tomorrow is a half-a-day off and supposed to be sunny and 70. That's big in my zipcode, we are grateful for spring when it comes...see ya...

Rachael