Funny how language, how poetry can sink into my brain and how magic coincidences can color a day, a week or an hour. This is an orange day, as I sit in the public library, at a big wooden table all to myself with light streaming in from every corner. I got my library card today, just about 20 minutes ago. I’m still glowing in the girft of a card that lets me access books (like My Perfect Life by Lynda Barry and Saul Steinberg’s Reflections and Shadows ), and magazines (like School Arts and American Craft ) and a ton of other resources. Libraries and the abiility to vote and the existence of free pre-kindergarten programs and school lunches are among some of the things I love about America.

You haven’t heard much from me this week because along with the turning of leaves (amazing how long it takes me to walk home when I am stopping and stopping to look), and the avoiding of radio speeches (we haven’t had a tv for years but the hate of the campaigns still sneaks into my house), I’ve been wrapped up tight in the book The God of Small Things by Arundahati Roy. I borrowed the book from my mother’s house and found myself enchanted by the language, fascinated by the details, passionate for Estha and Rahel, Ammu and Velutha, worried about Sophie Mol…I finished the book last night and wiped tears aside, went to bed, woke up and put on my orange pants to match the sun.

As I rode my bike downtown this morning I noticed a sign on a local bookstore, Buffalo is reading The God of Small Things. And next week Arundhati Roy will be in Buffalo speaking and listening and reading and encouraging peace. And it is so encouraging!

It also thrilled me to see and read about these lush food still lives at the Met. Thrilled me to be able to go paint outside today, that's what I'm up to.

take good care and more soon...
Rachael

(Southern politics, guys who play chess and surf the web, notes on the imagery in taxi driver, Harvey Ellis, Buffingtons and lots of coffee)
Among the stuff in my head today is this article my friend Lisa sent around the Atlanta art news listserve. John Sims is planning to lynch a confederate flag and while that is a powerful gesture I wonder how much the exhibit, the hoopla, the media, and the us vs. them point of the debate can help. It is reassuring to know that there are artists tackling tough symbols and loaded imagery, but is the art ready to move the dialogue forward towards solution or does it just inflame the anger? More thoughts deeply brewed are here at this Gwendolyn Shaw review on Africana and then the angry (smells racist to me) other side here. I dunno, I want to avoid judging a show miles away. I'm in a different world now. Not in Atlanta anymore and instead I'm in this coffee shop...


I don't know these guys but that doesn't matter. It's a comfy, often crowed hub of talkers and folks on thier mac-tops...


In fact the more I look around this town, the more I learn about the fertile present and rich history of thinkers and creators. It wasn't just George Eastman, but also guys like Harvey Ellis whose Night Study is a striking little painting (in the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery. I'm taken in by the work and history of this painter and designer who used to live in Rochester. As I read his story I found myself amazed to find a Buffington. That's my maiden name and the name of my father's family from around Montana and I really doubt there is any connection to Leroy S. but it is always a kick to encounter a Buffington...

This chatty, we're all in here together out of the rain atmosphere is so strikingly different from the isolation/ crazy-as-norm world of Travis Bickle (we saw Taxi Driver) last night that I am encouraged to brave the rain and head home to finish a little watercolor I've been playing with to sort out clarity and crazy intersect. Oh, I'll just go and paint it. The sun is out and I'm a little over-coffee-shopped...

see ya,
Rachael

Well, I was kind of a dork the other day to fish for comments but it has been swell to hear from Chip, and J, and J, and Katie, and Jeremy, and everyone who made a comment or sent an email. I have been swamped with work and adjusting to this new place and have had no time to blog this week. Excuses, excuses...it's more useful to respond to some direct comments...

yda wrote me about drawing and while it was/is always great to hear that folks like my drawing, I find it really important to stress that I practice a lot. I've drawn pretty obsessively since I was about 14. She/he wrote that "i can't really draw even a simple thing...i tried to improve my drawing...and seems there's nothing much different...".
I want to help. Here's what I strongly suggest. Get a good, big sketchbook and a set of pencils or pens you like the feel of. Give yourself a quiet hour alone everyday to draw. Write on the cover of your sketchbook that mistakes are part of growth, that learning takes time, that drawing is a learnable skill, that you will draw better. Draw only from live (or dead) natural things. Draw slowly and try to look more at the object you are drawing than at your drawings. try notto worry too much as you draw about the things you've done before or the speed at which you are progressing. Try to capture something about the size, scale, form, shape, feel, color, etc. etc. of the thing you are drawing. When the sketchbook is done (completely filled) take it to the nearest well respected art center and enroll in a drawing class. Show the registrar of manager your drawings and ask for the instructor who can help you build on the skills you already have. Keep drawing.

It's late and I'm tired so I'll step off my soapbox, put down my bullhorn, stop the sermon and get myself to bed. But I wanted everyone to know that I am listening, I am here, and I am still drawing!
take care,
Rachael

And I'm thinking Peter Steinhart has something against abstract artists (thinking perhaps that drawing in an abstract manner is somehow less complex, less important, less tied to reality than a representational drawing style.) I don't know if I'm jumping to a conclusion I shouldn't but he's basically talking about drawing from a standard realist perspective, he's talking to scientific illustrators and hanging around figure drawing clubs. I am still reading because it's pretty well written and I'm finding that the more I read about drawing, the more I am egged on to draw.

That's what I'll do tommorrow. Draw, work, enjoy the green walk to and fro work and maybe even blog some. What are you up to, troublemaker? How come you never call? You're not visiting like you said you would and there isn't even "RESIDENT" mail in our mailbox...

oh my, I'm as pushy as I am sleepy but I wonder why my readers don't comment so much. Why is that?

take care,
Rachael

In the middle of this just-passed-in-a-blur-of-a-busy-week I started beginning my day by drawing the rotting red pepper in the middle of my kitchen. I didn't try big drawings or overly ambitious efforts to capture the pepper. I just drew the strange thing to see the red, to do something calming for 20 minutes in the morning and because I knew I needed to draw.


I've started reading The Undressed Art by Peter Steinhart but I don't know how much longer I am going to be reading these books about art. Both Elkins and Steinhart spill a lot of ink about the drawing of models by those who want to make art, about the situations in which people make art, and about what's odd and what's normal about drawing and art making. I'm finding myself with my nose in a book more often than my nose in a sketchbook.
That's just gotta change, I tell ya.
So, well, it's a forward march into this next week. A new flavor of busy. Another week of learning our new place, our new lives, and probably, very likely, a new week fo drawing rotting and otherwise interesting vegetables.
take care,
Rachael