Waterways Project: July Sketchbook

A piece of Chicago's front yard.

Art Institute Prints And Drawings Gallery

William Kiterigee
Zeno Writing
charcoal


The Art Institute of Chicago has finally opened up the Goldman Prints and Drawing Gallery after a wait of 10 years. It is an amazing collection of drawings and I highly recommend you visit. The soothing mid-tone gray walls and polished wood floors lent the perfect back drop to and eclectic collection of drawings. The staff explained that they will be hanging many more pieces of the collection as time goes on. Here are a few of my favorite's from the show:

Ed Rush's playful Mint is much more wonderful in person than it appears here on line.

Wm Johnson

Martin Rameriz

Terry Winters

Jacob Lawrence

William Keterigee

Waterways Project:July Sketchbook from Frankford Michigan

I'm kicking back for a bit and will be posting only sporadically. The light, warm weather and water are all calling me! Hope everyone is enjoying the summer.

Lemonaid from Lemons

I had the bright idea to distress my fabric to fit a retro project I had in mind but when I bleached this fabric, I lost almost all the blue dye from it. It also spotted (despite my using the bleach cup!) So taking a page from Scarlet O'Hara, I chopped up all that yardage to make some hostess gifts.


I've also been very inspired by Hashi's use of Textiles. She does the most amazing things with bits of related fabric.

Flying Picture Project: Vivien's Cover

This is the cover of Vivien's book for our Flying Picture Project. My addition is the stripe of color on the right hand side. If you look at Vivien's Blurb book, she has several of these strip paintings on the back cover. I wanted to have a little visual talk back from her inspiration!.

Moleskine Exchange International

My pages in Casey's "Freedom" sketchbook

Well the journals are jumping around the globe and I can finally post my addition to Casey's journal.

Brian has posted my addition to Casey's book recently in our Moleskine Exchange International Blog. Doesn't he write well? Thanks very much Brian for such a lovely write up!!


Being in two sketchbook exchanges this summer is a real gift to my creativity. Seeing what other people do in real life expands my ideas about image making. Thanks everyone for such a great, inspiring group!

Creative Energy

Due to a shift in creative energy, I've been painting less and working on other projects.

We just finished loading up our 3rd small (restaurant sized) dumpster with demolition debris (have I said how much I H*A*T*E demolition) from the basement project. We (well, mostly Craig) are building a new family room which will be great when finished but.....

I'm also making a new quilt and this one has a machine pieced top as shown in the above photo.

Our friend Cliff has asked me to help design the t-shirt for next year's Des Plains River Marathon and I'm having loads of fun thinking of ideas for this.

Every once in awhile, it's good for me to take a painting break. Creating an artificial sort of longing will ultimately make for some good future work.

Waterway's Project: Last of the June sketches

Skokie Lagoons, minutes before a huge storm June 08

The Skokie Lagoons, created from swamp land north of the city of Chicago, are a sleepy set of linked waterways perfect for canoing. This sketch was made from a photo snapped moments before Kelsey urgently requested her mad parents paddle quickly back to the launch site. (A metal canoe and storms are not really a great mix.)

View Larger Map
Craig has rechristened out canoe, temporarily the " Leaky Cauldron". Guess in what end the water collects?




Bussie Woods

Glen Heath's Blurb Book Bradgate Park

This week, Glen Heath's Bradgate Park book (published through Blurb Books) arrived. I now am adding her book to my growing list of Blurb's (Vivien and Tina Mammoser have beautiful books as well!)

Glen's soulful drawings and paintings of the trees of Bradgate Park reminded me very much of a forest out of one of Tolkien's novels. She captured the mystery and the struggle these trees express over their long life. When life gets too hard, these works are food for my soul.

She also has added a book about her Guernsey work the I previewed this morning. Glen,you have to stop publishing these gorgeous books! My budget is groaning.


Glen's Blurb books
See all of Glen's work here
Google Map of Bradgate Park

The Bradgate Park site
Be sure to check out the virtual tours at the bottom of the page. I just love the canal photos too.
I'm thinking of publishing my own Blurb book on the Waterways Project. I'm trying to decide if I should wait and do one book for all four seasons or publish 4 books, one for each season.

Waterways Porject: Framing Issues

One thing that has been standing in the way of showing my work has been framing. Last week,I finally got out the mat cutter and frames I've had for (mumble mumble) years and framed 6 of my Waterways paintings. Matting and framing make a huge difference and it was not as much work as I initially thougth. So, little by little, I'm preparing for a future show of some sort.


Canoe update: We have finally named our new baby "Tin Lizzie" which is very appropriate because the poor old girl has really been pretty banged up. Craig caulked two leaks with aquarium goop. Two ribs are cracked and again, the Chief Improvisor in our family has figured out something that will work in place of an $800.00 repair. Our third seat kit will arrive shortly and the adventure continues.