Today was sketchcrawl day but I didn't sketch. I sat in a library reading a book about the art theory of dialogical practice. I was itching to dialogue, to talk, to wander, to connect with people but instead I read.

For about four hours I said nothing but read and since this was a public library, I listened in to the world happening around me. The swirl of a flirting couple talking about crackheads, the woman looking for Spanish language magazines, the kid whose ipod was too loud. I liked them more than the book. The book tried too hard maybe. So many footnotes, so many citations and in the end I thought maybe the writer missed the real passion of what he was writing about. The art he chose to consider is art that strives to connect with non-art audiences, yet he wrote in such a specialized way, I wanted to engage with the non-art audiences around me instead of working through the book. I found less than what I was hoping for, but I'm not so sure I am the author's ideal reader since I am still pretty put-off by big art arguments, by the closed world of the contemporary art club, by the relentless emphasis on the ideas of a small circle of theory thinkers... Oh I am trying to give up the grump...

Luckily, I break easily and often and my library has a large collection of magazines from October 1935 and I had a reason to pour over them. Nestled in a New Yorker was a delightful poem by a woman named Mildred about an escalator. I found in those couple of magazines, with their color car ads and worrisome headlines and cartoons, more than I was looking for.

Nothing is wasted and I did learn something; next time I'll draw.

take care,
Rachael

I've been meaning to post these two small watercolors I made at Plum Orchard on Cumberland Island Georgia about a month ago. After a long hike on a hot day, I was hungry and tired but arguably more receptive to color, light, pattern and rest.





I've been reading and painting up in my attic studio more than I've been writing here but there are some stories and images brewing, I just don't know when I'll be ready to tell them. Maybe that's always part of the creative process...

Regardless, here are a few more from the Cumberland trip, this time from the plane down.





more soon,
Rachael

Working a full-time job, taking a few graduate classes, and intending to keep painting and doing all the other things I do, I have been busy busy busy lately. The pace doesn't lighten for a few days but I am inspired by/encouraged by the following random things:

I saw Alfredo Jaar speak the other night. He took a commission to make a monument to a Chilean politician in Barcelona and instead of making a portrait out of copper, he put up a bunch of bright easels right next to a school.

As I continue to research a relatively unknown American printmaker, I'm excited by the care that the Archives of American Art has been putting into making information available online, such as these amazing bits of artist's sketchbooks.

"It's OK to skim." One of my professors shared this and truly, while I have not yet taken the bait, to know it's possible to pull the most meaning I can from a couple of once-overs instead of a fully thorough read...well, it's encouraging. As much as the phrase, "it's not the best you can do, but the best you can do in the time alloted" did for me the first time I was in grad school...

There's another sketchcrawl coming up soon and I've already called one for Rochester, NY. Wanna come out to draw?

Below is a drawing I made in the museum where I work when I had a delightful moment to slow down and draw.

I'm hopeful those moments will come again.
take care,
Rachael

Amos Lee

Elvis Costello

Bob Dylan


want more?
Let me know and I'll put 'em up...
Busily thinking, drawing and living,
Rachael

I've been awarded another opportunity to paint a traffic signal box, only I have to do that before the weather gets too cold. The paint won't adhere to the metal boxes unless it is over 55 degrees out. I'll be crossing my fingers for sun and warmth beacuse it's a pretty wild and wonderful thing to paint on the street in my neighborhood.

Somehow (well I know how) my life has become a mad-scramble of busy as I work full time, take graduate classes, try to draw and paint some and still maintain a relatively regular schedule of eating and sleeping. But this week I managed to get to a rock and roll show to see Amos Lee and Elvis Costello (aparently there is an orthodontist in Michigan with an Elvis Costello room...) and Bob Dylan. I brought along my sketchbook and will try to upload a couple of the images (only a few drawings managed to have some of the energy of the show).

I'll share more stories and images as I get a better handle on the pace of my life, all I know is that I am drawing, thinking, reading and writing with a more directed energy than I have had in a while, even if there's less time to do all that I want to do.

take care,
Rachael