Thursday, December 31, 2015

Day 365 #MakeArt365


Transition State (I Saw a Bird), Mixed Media, 2015
Need to end the year with an ent of course, and a balance of hope and loss. I thank everyone who’s followed and supported these drawings, and me, over the course of this year. More of you than I could list have had a part in inspiring them. Many have done more than they know. I’m thinking a lot about both how I’ll keep at drawing without this rather rigorous discipline to steer me, and what I’ll do with this body of varied, and somewhat fraught work.  I guess we’ll all find out. Best wish for peace and kindness in the year ahead.

“We drew our arms around the bastard sons
We never would drink to the chosen ones
Well you know the way I went was not the way I planned
But I thought the world needed love and a steady hand
So I'm steady now”

-Dar Williams, If I Wrote You

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Day 363 #MakeArt365


I See Men as Trees, Walking, Ink, 2015
I return to my sometimes forgotten theme for this year of drawings with true seeing still on my mind.
Rest in peace old friend and mentor Sr. Thomasmari Gore, MSBT. I learned while making this drawing that we lost you at the end of this year of accepting loss. You'd have objected to that gender specific noun, but the other translations sound so terrible, I checked...

Monday, December 28, 2015

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Friday, December 18, 2015

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Day 351 #MakeArt365


 
 
There Is Always a Choice, ink, 2015

Stepping rarely from the deniability of speaking in quotes, I think that choice is sharpest when we are tempted to justify our indifference to another's suffering by blaming them for it.


 

Monday, December 14, 2015

Day 348 #MakeArt365


Micro-evolution Observed: Only for Normal are Independent and Uncorrelated Equivalent, ink, 2015

Friday, December 11, 2015

345 #MakeArt365

The Ocean, ink, 2015

"Oh, the ocean said, "What are you trying to find
I don't care, I'm not kind
I've bludgeoned your sailors
I've spat out their keepsakes
Oh, it's ashes to ashes, but always the ocean"
-Dar Williams,The Ocean

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Day 343 #MakeArt365

Felt, ink, 2015
"And it felt like
A winter machine that you go through and then
You catch your breath and winter starts again
And everyone else is spring bound"
-Dar Williams, After All

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Cedar Lane Tree Monument WIP

All the joints done on one stand element for the Cedar lane tree monument. Just 3 more and the cross braces to go... and moving a two ~500 lb pieces of wood, and building a roof... hmm.

Strangely for someone who owns all those chisels, I must admit I've never cut a mortise and tenon joint in my life before now. I imagine it must get easier with practice...


Day 342 #MakeArt365

Memory, mixed media, 2015


Cedar Lane Tree in the News


In non random drawing news: A nice piece in the Suburbanite on the installation of the Cedar Lane tree cross section in the library. Plus, it refers to me as driving a truck, though inaccurate, this somehow leaves me feeling more manly...

The Teaneck Public Library installed a slab of the historic red oak tree that graced the corner of Cedar Lane and Palisade Avenue for some 250 years. The section of the tree now sits on the main floor of the library courtyard on a stand constructed by local artist Anthony Santella.

http://www.northjersey.com/community-news/at-the-library/historic-collection-grows-with-tree-slab-1.1466633

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Day 340 #MakeArt365


"He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. "Where is it? What death?" There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.
"So that's what it is!" he suddenly exclaimed aloud. "What joy!"
To him all this happened in a single instant, and the meaning of that instant did not change. For those present his agony continued for another two hours. Something rattled in his throat, his emaciated body twitched, then the gasping and rattle became less and less frequent.
"It is finished!" said someone near him.
He heard these words and repeated them in his soul.
"Death is finished," he said to himself. "It is no more!"
He drew in a breath, stopped in the midst of a sigh, stretched out, and died."
- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Day 339 #MakeArt365


It Occurred, ink, 2015


No, really.

"It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. ...

"But if that is so," he said to himself, "and I am leaving this life with the consciousness that I have lost all that was given me and it is impossible to rectify it -- what then?"
-Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych

Friday, December 4, 2015

Day 338 #MakeArt365

Ivan Turns His Face to the Wall, ink, 2015

Nothing like some Russian literature to cheer you up.

"And he ceased crying, but turning his face to the wall continued to ponder on the same question: Why, and for what purpose, is there all this horror? But however much he pondered he found no answer. And whenever the thought occurred to him, as it often did, that it all resulted from his not having lived as he ought to have done, he at once recalled the correctness of his whole life and dismissed so strange an idea."
-Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych