Nothing like reading smart books under big trees in September. Thinking. Listening to other people's projects. I've even been reading scholarly essays with all their footnotes and fine points (some, not so fine). My couple of grad classes started the other day and gave me a burst of energy I needed to start to put some ideas together... Somewhere in the bottom of my backpack or under my painting table or misplaced in the cabinet with the plates are a few good ideas about the what, where, when and why of art. The questions are swimming around my head like so many tadpools in a murky swamp:What sticks so much about drawing and painting for some? Where do all the people who start art schools go to when they drop out? Where are all of these art communities and why don't they intersect more? Why can't there be truly documented and described stories of art outside cities like New York and Paris and London? When did artists start sketching in city streets and could anyone sketch? When am I going to have time to answer these questions? Why do we have to keep going back to the same small pool of dead French thinkers for truth? Why draw? Why so many divergent questions?
This is just the beginning again of what will probably be another long course of study but one in which I will also continue to do the good practical work in the footservice of arts education and in the making of my own art...which this week consisted of endless swirls of lines of every color, not unlike the stuff in my head...

take care,
Rachael

On the Buffalo Rising site right now there are a series of video based studio visits including this charming Buffalo little Ani Hoover and A J Fries visit . Ani Hoover's work is some powerful, joyful, bold and beautiful stuff.

Rachael

I am in this show in September. Wish I could get to Washington to see it but doesn't seem possible.
School starts soon.I'll be taking some Visual Studies classes and making sure many other art courses run well, but teaching nothing this year. It's an almost learning moment for me as I sharpen my pencil, sharpen my ideas and get excited about studying images.
goodnight,
Rachael

My day job is still spinning like a top, keeping me busy and happy and overwhelmed with details but since it also includes watching a ton of kids make a ton of art, I can't say I mind. I'm just losing track of what day it is and which way is up. The teachers and teachers assistants and volunteers are all amazingly good with the kids, creative, and able to solve problems quickly but somehow the last week of summer is always, always the LOUDEST, the boldest, quite possibly the funnest...not only because we have a 9 and 5 quarters year old visitor.
In the art camp this week and in her pajamas in my studio right now is our talented red-headed neice, Nora. Who says, "well, my week has been wonderful and I'm looking forward for the rest of the week and next time I come." (and we didn't pay her to say that - and now she's giggling!) She is visiting for a week and so we are constantly learning new things, playing, laughing, enjoying kid-hood vicariously through her.


Above is one of the two of my designs which were just approved for the Stop! Look! Art! project in my neighborhood in Rochester. That means I will be painting two traffic signal boxes, both of which are on my route to work and both of which are currently covered with wheatpasted ads and graffiti. More about that as it unfolds, I tell ya. I'm excited.
take care,
Rachael

It is near impossible not to be constantly distracted at the public market on a beautiful sunny day and my sketchcrawl drawings (unedited and below) show that I had some trouble concentrating. I had some good friends join and draw and I think the next time a sketchcrawl comes around, I will advertise it a bit more to see if we can gather some new people. But, regardless, it rocked to draw in public with a couple of others and celebrate International Sketchcrawl day...













And then everyone who was sitting with me left, I finished my coffee, sat alone and took a short break. Picked up my pen and did my favorite drawings with more confidence, calm and concentration.

take care,
Rachael