OUT OUR WINDOWS

Cherry Blossom Season in the Bay Area

We can hear the crowds cheer, which makes us look up from our work to see the replay on the gigantic screen at one end of Oracle Park, two blocks away. We watch the seagulls sailing around like fireflies at night as the people exit and leave behind an enormous heap of discarded food for the seagulls to feast on. We can't see the actual game nor the score, but we get excited when we hear the recording of Tony Bennett singing, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," because we know then that the Giants won their game.

We walk often towards the ballpark to reach the N Judah line that runs on King Street. We frequent a grocery store, pharmacy, or post office nearby. Across from the Giants are brick buildings still showing old retail signs from long ago. One building has bas-relief sculptures attached to walls above the second floor. They remind me of the friezes in ancient Rome and Greece. I look closely at the figures and laugh. Each figure combines human forms with eagles, mermaids, or goats, but they all have catcher's mitts or baseball bats in their hands. Early Giants fans!

Gods and Goddesses of Baseball bas-relief sculptures by Alexei Kazantsev

Since our move to Mission Bay, sporting games have become our latest distraction. We live between the Giants ballpark and Chase Center, where the Warriors play. We've walked to several games at both sites. We cheer with the rest of the crowd as a ball flies into a basket from a great distance or sails through the air over the grandstands into McCovey Cove below.

Across from the ballpark, the newest SF park has opened with a Willie McCoy statue powering a homer toward the grandstands, reminding us of his achievements. The park winds around the Chase Center past Crane Cove, a tribute to the shipyards built after Mission Creek was filled in. The walkway connects one more part of the Bay Trail that continues its huge circle down around the edges of the Peninsula to the East Bay, where it separates to wander to Benicia as well as to cross over to Marin, finally to come back into the City across the Golden Gate Bridge.

We hear the bridge siren sounding again. We shuffle to the window because we know that one of the two drawbridges that connects Mission Bay to the rest of the City will rise soon. We look for a boat on the waterway. There are a dozen houseboats nestled together on our side of the creek. Almost all of them have a boat tied to their docks. They are the only boats that navigate the channel and need the bridges to rise. 

In earlier centuries, the creek was an active participant in the industrial side of San Francisco, and the bridges must have been much more active than they are today. Barges crept up and down the creek to lumberyards, shipyards, and manufacturing facilities, then back out under the bridges to the Bay. Now, the creek flows from the Bay just to Berry Street and to the train tracks that hold the trains coming from the south part of the Bay. Where the creek meets Berry Street, there is a water reclamation yard with effluent discharged from its pumps into the creek. On the city side of the creek, a park fills with walkers and runners, basketball and volleyball players. There is a storage shed filled with kayaks that can be taken out to McCovey Cove during ballgames. No need to raise the bridges for them as they slip beneath the steel bridge girders. The two bridges remind us of what Mission Bay used to be before the ballparks and UCSF arrived. We can see and hear all of the activity of this part of San Francisco from our windows. Looking out our windows, we continue to be surprised at how much we like the energy of a city.

CELEBRATE EARTH

CROW painted using acrylic paint

Last spring at our old house, a pair of doves built a nest in the same place as the year before right at the roofline on top of the gutters. Within an afternoon, the two birds laid down a few twigs and leaves -- not much of a nest by other birds' standards -- that had just enough shape to fit around the female. The waiting began.

We witnessed the female laying eggs. For a few days, the male and female alternated sitting on the nest. Like stepparents, we watched, drew, photographed, and waited.

One morning a crow landed on the roof. The female dove lifted off the nest to distract the crow, but the crow, menacing and cawing, swooped down on the nest, cracked open the eggs, and devoured them. Once again the doves didn't succeed; but year after year, they also didn't stop trying.

I think of the doves and how they and other birds struggle against huge odds to survive. Not only do they have natural predators, but so much of what human beings use and discard creates havoc in the world we share.

 An eco-printing which imprints the shapes of leaves onto paper or fabric

As I bag this week's collection of plastic bags, I cringe at my lackluster attempts to keep from polluting the environment. After all, I have marched on Earch Day in celebration of scientists and environmental movements that have made our planet a better place to live. I remember rivers that caught on fire from pollution but also I still see photos of beaches covered with plastic. At the march, I loved the clever signs people displayed on Earth Day: "I'm with PI," "Science is in our DNA," "Got Polio? No? Thank Science," "We are with HER (above a drawing of the Earth)."

I get overwhelmed with ideas on how to use or recycle every piece of paper, every piece of plastic. I try to do the best I can knowing there is still a lot more that I could do. I think many of us feel the way I do and want to be sure that we continue to lessen our environmental impact. I've never met an artist who doesn't pick up something and say, "I could use this somewhere someday." I make collages with scrap paper and other bits of ephemera. I often incorporate recycled materials in artwork, but I know that artists have contaminated our environment for a long time with toxic chemicals (think aerosol sprays and permanent non-refillable marking pens). A new generation of artists has become more aware of the footprint they leave as artists and choose to reuse and repurpose as much as possible.

HOLD TIGHT, LET GO,
Mixed Media piece using scrap paper,
corrugated cardboard, leftover Air-Dry Clay,
jewelry pieces

Until the 20th century, many artists -- perhaps our first scientists -- made their own materials using natural ingredients. Some, like milk and ochres, aren't toxic, but cadmium, arsenic, and lead, are not harmless. The lime green covers of books from the 19th century are now kept in special wraps in libraries because the green dye contains arsenic. I gave up oil paints a long time ago because of the solvents needed to clean brushes, hands, and canvases of spilled paint. Modern materials can also cause havoc. At the Art and Soul Art Retreat in Portland, each classroom and restroom had a dirty water bucket so that classes wouldn't overwhelm the hotel pipes with acrylic residue. Acrylic paint, an alternative to oils, is often formulated with small amounts of formaldehyde and ammonia. I can only use them in a well-ventilated room.

LIGHT, an Eco-print

With the advent of Earth Day in 1970, many people, including artists, became more aware of the need to be environmentally friendly in whatever work we do. We depend on the research of scientists and artists to develop better formulas for products that aren't as polluting as previous ones. Artists have returned to old ways of working such as experimenting with eco-printing, which uses the dyes that come from plants and fungi after soaking them in a vinegar and water bath. The results of the printing are a good reminder to tend to Mother Earth. As one Earth Day sign stated, "There is no Planet B."

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Check out:

https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/

https://naturalearthpaint.com 

 

FAVORITE NEW TOOLS

A while ago, I promised not to buy any more new art tools. That promise did make me stop and think when I was in an art store, but I didn't always succeed in getting out of the door without making a purchase. I already have a tray full of marking pens that I bought to determine which brand would be my favorite to use in my sketchbooks. Some, like Micron pens, are waterproof, while others, such as Staedtler and Pilot are not. Sometimes I like a pen that isn't waterproof because I like how it bleeds when it touches water. Sometimes waterproof pens are the right answer.

With a Staedtler pen

With a Micron pen

Eventually, the pens dry up and they become the next disposable waste product. That's why I am so intrigued with the refillable markers from Tom's Studio.

Tom has devised a refillable marking pen that can be taken apart to replace worn-out nibs and ink reservoirs. If you use Micron pens, they may be your favorite, but you know that they don't last long and are not refillable or recyclable. Tom's solution is elegant, with waterproof ink, and well worth the short time for delivery from England. All of the packaging is recyclable. If an item is fragile, Tom's Studio uses packing chips that can be dissolved in water. Clever.

I keep my dip pens in a cup at my drawing table to remind me to use them. The other day I reached over the cup for a spray bottle and stuck myself with the tips of the nibs. The nibs are sharp and sting. I moved them to another spot on my table, but I also turned to another ingenious tool from Japan, Hocoro's Sailing Compass dip pens. When we lived in Tokyo, we grew to appreciate the Japanese careful design of products and packaging that encourage the use of the product. 

Hocoro Sailing Compass pen set

The set from Hocoro comes with four different pen points. Three of the nibs have a flat edge of varying thicknesses and one has a bent tip that makes wonderful thick and thin lines. Each nib can be pulled out of the holder for cleaning and then turned around to be inserted back inside the holder out of sight. No more getting stuck accidentally by a very sharp pen point. Clever.

The nib fits right into the holder

Two tools that I use already:

The Japanese also make watercolors that are thick and creamy. Kuretake watercolors are sold in pans but they don't have the problems of other pan watercolors, which tend to get dry and become hard to mix to a good consistency. Kuretake paints somehow keep that creamy texture. Beautiful, dense colors too.

Viva towels are not a new tool for me. I learned about using them from Leslie Wilson, my watercolor instructor. I use the original Viva towel, not the ones with a pattern embossed into them. They provide me with a way to correct mistakes or to lift watercolor paint from areas that are not working well. And I always have places that are not working well. A really important tool for me. Mr. Clean sponge sheets work in the same way.

Practice painting of clouds

We have had a week or two of thunderheads in the sky. They gave me inspiration to practice painting clouds. I painted a lifeguard's station to start. The building was the center of the piece, but painting the clouds and varying the landscape was what I was practicing. I laid down a wash of cerulean blue in the sky area and then used a Viva towel to sponge up some of the blue paint that was still wet to the touch. That gave me some whiter areas. Then I reminded myself about negative painting and painted around the edges of the white areas using a mix of cerulean, violet, and Payne's grey. The clouds looked like the ones outside my window. I didn't have as much success with the landscape, but the towel gave me a chance to change mistakes in the sky and to keep practicing.

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Check out Jet Pens for Hocoro pens:

https://www.jetpens.com/Sailor-Compass-Hocoro-Dip-Pen-Gray-Fude-Nib/pd/40402 

and Tom's Studio for his Lumos pens:

https://tomsstudio.com

FUNNY PAGES

Yesterday a news article revealed that two Caltrain employees used $42,000 of taxpayers' money to construct a house inside the station where they worked. As I read the article, my questions spilled through a couple of options, "Are they taking advantage of the rest of us, or were they extremely dedicated to their jobs and routinely slept at the station anyway?" Both workers have been fired and charged with fraud. The money they spent didn't seep into my thoughts until I read a letter to the SF Chronicle. The writer posted the idea that the City ought to hire them and ask them, "How in the world did you build a living unit with a kitchen and bathroom for only $42,000? Maybe you could show the City how to repurpose all the empty office space in town into low- and middle-income housing." Now, why didn't I think of that?

I flew down to Upland recently. On the airplane seat pocket in front of me, I read the small sign: For Literature Only. I looked for some Shakespeare, but no luck. Instead, stuffed into the slim pocket were precise instructions in a dozen different languages to escape in an emergency. Between Sully's landing in the NYC river years ago and the door blowing off the latest Boeing model, I've decided to pay more attention to the instructions after all.

I bought my sister The Book Lover's Joke Book by Alex Johnson recently. My sister and I share a love of witty comments and puns. I am not so fond of the kind of comedy on shows such as SNL which seems to me to be trying too hard to be funny. I do like subtle humor and humor that makes me groan. My favorite joke is one for English teachers (and the only one I can remember):

What is another name for thesaurus?

I opened the joke book to page 57 and laughed out loud. Here is the first joke I read:

"An Oxford English Dictionary and a Roget's Thesaurus are put in the recycle bin by a school custodian. The thesaurus says to the dictionary, "I can see you're distressed by this." The dictionary replied, "You don't know the meaning of the word." The thesaurus said, "But I know what it is like." Pure groaner of a joke.

Johnson, the author-bibliophile, starts his first paragraph this way:

"When I asked the British Library if they'd like to publish a collection of book jokes, they actually suggested that I write a book on librarians. But I said no, because writing on paper is much easier!" Argggh, a jokester after my own heart.

The book is full of these kinds of good and the worst jokes you've ever heard about libraries and books. At the same time, the jokes give us a view of the construction of a book. Johnson has collected jokes about writers' first drafts, editing, proofreading, setting typefaces, and selecting the cover. Johnson even includes jokes he's unearthed from antiquity. I enjoy the ironies and subtle comparisons that leave me hanging in the air for a moment while I 'get' the joke. Johnson has given me a chance to laugh out loud at a time when we all need a good laugh to lift us up from the news of the day.

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Alex Johnson, The Book Lover's Joke Book, is available at:

https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=alex+johnson

and yes, it is available at Amazon too, but the Bookshop.org website donates to independent bookstores with each sale.

Check out three other books by Johnson:

Book Towns: Forty-Five Paradises of the Printed Word

Improbable Libraries: A Visual Journey to the World's Most Unusual Libraries

Rooms of Their Own: Where Writers Write

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This week's weather view from our San Francisco apartment

THE EIGHTH FLOOR

My small studio  Photos by Bill Slavin

The wind has been whistling around our building this past week. There are no trees tall enough to reach the eighth floor to shield us from the howling. The wind can be just as strong on the sidewalk and I have to catch myself from being knocked over when I stop at a corner,  I don't hear the wind like we do from our apartment. Weather is different up high. We cannot see rain slashing down from the sky when we've had rain. We can only tell that it is raining by looking at a dark building across the way to see the lines of rain or by watching the puddle splashes on the rooftops or the street. We can't tell whether it is hot or cold at ground level from our view. We check the weather report and find the temperature is almost always a moderate 50 to 60 degrees. Our concrete building holds the cold so we prepare for chilly weather below. Most of the time we are glad for the extra scarf or jacket, but sometimes we are fooled and find the warm sun outside the building's door. Since we've been in San Francisco, seasons have whispered by with little change in the landscape. Most of the street trees are perennials, and there are few flower beds to give away spring's secret arrival. It is different living up high.

Photo by Bill Slavin

We look down on roadways, see the streetcars turn at the next corner, and look towards the Giants ballpark in the distance whose lights flash on during the night even when it isn't baseball season. We hear music from a nearby outdoor hotel bar and sirens racing down the street. We can watch the full moon rise above the clouds at the horizon, something we couldn't see when we lived in Danville. The moon there would only appear above the hills and treetops. During rainy weather, we have gasped at the half-circle rainbows that appeared as the clouds drifted away.

Photo by Bill Slavin

When a fire alarm sounded in the building next to us, we realized that if we had to evacuate the building, we would have a long, slow trek down eight flights of stairs. Something we hadn't considered until the sirens called next door.

After a year spent selling our house and moving five times, we've purchased a condo in a nearby neighborhood in San Francisco. Our condo is on the fourth floor and a little easier to exit in an emergency. The stairs right next to us lead down to the second floor's broad expanse of common area and then another flight of stairs to ground level -- the kind of safe exits we didn't have to consider in a two-story home. 

The view from our window will be different from where we are now. We will miss the seagulls, the small park, and the channel that separates Mission Bay from the rest of the city.  We will have on one side a full view of the city's skyscrapers, and down below us, a quiet tree-lined street tucked close to the Bay Bridge. Instead of rooftops and the East Bay hills that we can see now, we will have a closer view to the left and right of us of other apartments and their residents than we have had in any other place we have lived. We have always liked to live without pulling window coverings down wherever we have been. With our coming move, we will need to adjust our ideas about privacy. 

Living up high in the City is different.

Photo by Bill Slavin

As the writer of this blog, I am lucky to have a creative partner who provides wonderful photos sometimes. Thank you, Bill.

IMAGINATION FACTORY

I walked into the Department of Make-Believe and wished I was a kid again. Large, colorful shapes covered every surface within the main rooms. Moss hung from the ceiling and bright pillows covered a small stage. Along one wall a bookcase displayed the published works of the kids who spent time after school within the home of Chapter 510, a non-profit group that provides outreach to school-aged youth in Oakland to encourage their imagination and writing skills. The Department of Make-Believe: a magical and creative place to enter.

In Oakland's Old Town, Chapter 510 flourishes right under the tall street trees and next to the well-preserved Victorian row houses. Swann's Market, a market hall where one can find food from all over the world, and Ratto's Deli are nearby.  Founded by two energetic women, Janet Heller and Tavia Stewart, Chapter 510 has provided a creative space for young people, especially brown, black, and queer, to learn writing skills, bookmaking, and publishing. In this space, they learn how to create stories as well as podcasts and present their work to live audiences.

As Chapter 510 states: "We believe that writing is an act of liberation. When young people write and get published, they transform themselves and their communities, succeeding in school, work, and life."

As a child, I was encouraged by my parents and teachers to develop my creative side, but I was lucky. Not every child has that support. Back then, I never found a place specifically geared to nurture creative writing and to connect with other young people with the same interests. In school, I was steeped in academic/business writing styles, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I started writing in a personal journal. My journal not only helped me develop my thinking about concerns and issues but opened up my creative writing practices too. I experimented with poetry and personal essays. In the process, I paid more attention to sentence structure, grammar, and the flow of an idea within a sentence, paragraph, or essay. As always, practice made a difference. I came out of my quiet shell through writing and found myself often in front of large groups as a leader.

I am delighted that Chapter 510 is extending the same kind of encouragement to young people as they say, "that every young person in Oakland can write with confidence and joy."

Here's the cover of I Have Wings/Yo Tengo Alas, a book by Chapter 510 fifth graders, inspired by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Like all non-profits, Chapter 510 could use our help. They need volunteers, mentors, donations, or the purchase of one of the books written by the youth who gather in Oakland Old Town every week.

Check out Chapter 510 here:

https://www.chapter510.org/our-story

 

PRIMARY BLUES

While waiting for Bill to get a shave at a barber shop, I wandered into the Cotton Patch, a fabric store nearby. The store, in an old bungalow, is filled with quilting fabric, sewing machines designed for quilters, and all the other accessories for that craft. When I did quilting, I frequently roamed through their huge collection of cotton fabrics ready to inspire.

A row of batik fabrics caught my eye. I couldn't resist the blues and purchased three 1/2 yards of beautiful fabric. The batiks took me back to Japan again where blue and white is a favorite color scheme. We arrived in Tokyo during the year of the rabbit, and rabbits proliferated in the blue and white designs of home furnishings.

At first, the abundance of rabbits and the blue and white pottery was overwhelming and I vowed to avoid their purchase. But eventually, I learned to appreciate the patterns. I frequented a shop in the Azabu Juban in Tokyo that sold items in that familiar color scheme. I also visited an indigo dye producer, bought an indigo jacket covered in embroidery, acquired pieces of blue and white china, and collected small samplings of blue and white fabric intending to make them into a quilt. At my Sayonara party at an onsen, we all wore blue and white yukata to commemorate our friendship.

Sayonara party at an onsen in Japan.  
We all wore blue and white yukata

Instead of a quilt, I am playing with small pieces of the batik fabric and paper that I've held onto while waiting for the right idea to come along. The pieces include several photos of textures that I've captured on my walks, ribbon from a gift, seeds from a tree at the Cal Poly Pomona campus, paper bags, a sheet from an old Japanese book, and a strip of orange, hand-made paper. Blue is the dominant color of most of the pieces, but I plan to insert orange, its complement on the color wheel, as a highlight. Collages, like quilts, give me a way to use personal items in a piece of art to bring back memories of places and people.

What works and what doesn't?

All the Worlds in One Place by Martha Slavin

Feathers & Brick by Martha Slavin

Though I haven't glued down anything yet on these two pieces,

 I think these two designs will be keepers.

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 So often when I write a post, I find other writers using the same topic during the same week or after I publish mine. This week Kevin Fisher Paulson wrote about language and grammar and the New Yorker published a wonderful cartoon about color theory:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/fisher-paulson/article/column-languages-english-europe-18716070.php

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/shouts-murmurs/color-theory-explained

Take a look at the offerings at the Blue and White store in Tokyo:

https://www.blueandwhitejapan.com

SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS TIME

We take time for granted, don't we? Except when we realize how quickly a year is going by. It's already March (IT'S ALREADY MARCH) and we are in a Leap Year, which makes me wonder again why we have a Leap Year.

Last year I noticed that the dates in February matched up with the dates in March. In other words, usually March 25 is on a Saturday just like February 25. April and July had a similar pattern. I flipped through calendars for previous years and found the same peculiar alignment except during Leap Years. A simple thing you would notice only if you were looking at a yearly calendar, not your normal weekly planner or monthly calendar.

In the West, we officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582 CE to correct the date for Easter, which had moved because the Julian calendar being used at the time did not account for the loss of portions of a day in a year. (You have to be a mathematician to figure this all out.) All of the calendars adopted by various cultures have to account for the need for extra days to continue to be accurate. We add a day in our Leap Years, in India and with the Chinese lunar calendar, months are added or subtracted.

The Hindu calendar, a much more complex system of time, revolves around changes in the sun, moon, and constellations and is much more 3-dimensional than the Western calendar. If we lived in Japan, we would be using the Gregorian calendar, but also we would understand that we lived in era Reiwa 6, because each new emperor selects the name for the era of his rule. During the 6th century, the Japanese borrowed their original calendar from China and Korea, long before the Gregorian calendar arrived. In most Asian countries, 2024 CE is also the year of the Dragon.

When we lived in Japan, we realized another change to our calendars. Flying to and from California to Asia Pacific countries, we lost or gained a day. I didn't mind adding a day on our return home, but even losing one day the other way seemed unfair.

 And now we are approaching another time adjustment. Most of the U.S. changes to Daylight Saving Time on the second Sunday in March. This year on March 10. Benjamin Franklin originally suggested the idea, but the U.S. didn't implement DST until WWI. Farmers objected to its implementation after the war (farm animals don't change their time to fit our schedules), and DST was dropped until later in the century when we were no longer a majority agrarian society. There are now efforts to keep DST year-round. If you are like, me the adjustment to the time change in the Spring takes time.

A TOUCH OF WHIMSY

High-rise apartments and office buildings line most of the streets in our neighborhood. We are also close to two professional sports complexes, which means some days the streets are filled with cars and people. A couple of blocks away from our apartment is an empty block-long parking lot used by people attending events at the sporting venues. One day, we turned the corner and found that the entire parking lot was filled with circus tents. Cirque de Soleil had come to town and overnight, like magic, had erected tents all over the lot. We hadn't been to one of their performances in a long time, so we bought tickets, walked into the largest tent, and watched with awe the acrobatic performers. Behind us sat a family with an eight or nine-year-old boy who had never seen acrobats in person. We heard his rapturous "Oohs and Ahs" as his eyes followed the acrobats through the air. What a delight to hear him captivated by their magic.

I thought of that performance when Carol DuBosch, a calligraphy teacher, posted a challenge to create a pangram, a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet. I like challenges and I like whimsy, so I decided to try. First, I asked myself, is it even possible to design a sentence that uses each letter only once and still makes sense? Of course, after a few tries I discovered pangrams are more challenging than I anticipated. I remembered the grace of the acrobats who did amazing feats, but only after years of practice and perseverance. 

What makes a word work are the vowels. They have all kinds of uses, don't they? They are handy to finish words and to separate words into syllables. How do I find enough short words that don't rely on too many vowels?

I looked at examples from a list of pangrams, of which the most famous, "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," still uses two "e's". I did find a pangram that is only 26 letters long: "Mr. Jock, TV Quiz Ph.D., bags few lynx." My favorite of the pangrams came from Carol DuBosch: "I vow that poetry, quilts, and ink can fix and jazz up a boring home."

My own attempts didn't succeed very well. (Not that I spent too much time on this activity.) I couldn't make a sentence with only 26 letters that made sense, which is common with pangrams (who bags lynx?). My sentence was too long with too many double letters: "Quickly wax over my dainty, lazy judges from the pub."

A little laughter for the day and puzzlement too.  Maybe this week I captured some of the whimsy and challenge we felt while watching acrobats in the air.

One last piece of whimsy. A good friend gave me these two paper ornaments called Triskele paper globes. They are beautiful and will be a welcome addition to hang near me. (Thank you, Janet)

If you would like to try to make one, check Hattifant's website. You will be surprised at how simple these are to make:

https://hattifant.com/triskele-paper-globes-flower-edition/

Cirque de Soleil performs in San Francisco till March 17:

https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/usa/san-francisco/shows

Find Carol Dubosch's calligraphy:

https://www.caroldubosch.com

Check out these fun facts about the English alphabet:

https://www.rd.com/list/facts-english-alphabet/ 

CIRCLES AND SQUARES: BASIC ELEMENTS

An unfinished Neurographic design  

What would you put in the square?

Instead of snow, much of California in February is covered with green. The hills sprout new lime-green grass as we receive more and more rain. The green surprises visitors from colder climates, especially if they have visited California during the summer, our dry season when the hills are brown.

This past weekend I attended Letters: California Style, a calligraphy conference organized by the Society of Calligraphers, held at Cal Poly Pomona, an oasis nestled in the hills in the LA Basin. I've gone to the conference since 2014 except for pandemic years and always come away flush with new ideas. Like I am, most of the attendees are older, nerdy women who enjoy expressing themselves through lettering and art. Cal Poly Pomona provides a perfect venue where we can sit in a classroom with floor-to-ceiling windows that give us a glimpse of the green hills and the budding fruit trees while we toil away like Medieval monks on a craft that takes concentration and precision.

This year I chose Cherryl Moote's class for creating art books. In other classes, attendees worked on improving their calligraphic and hand lettering skills with a choice of several other well-known calligraphy instructors, who also showcased their own work at our lunchtime gatherings. One of the teachers, Viktor Kams, began as a graffiti artist in Spain, then studied calligraphy, and is now a professional calligrapher and tattoo artist. He designs logos for businesses and anything that can contain his exquisite calligraphy including tattoos. He showed photos of some of his freshly made tattoos on the arms of clients. The designs were beautiful, but the clients' arms were still red from the procedure. You could feel the collective silent gasp of his audience, not a visible tattoo among them. Calligraphers have been around for a long time creating all kinds of lettering. Now, Kams represents the next generation of calligraphers who are interested in experimenting with their craft.

In Cherryl's class, we concentrated on creating unexpected art books. Unexpected, because we couldn't plan each page of our book. Instead, we started with a large sheet of paper, made designs all over the surface, and then folded and cut the paper into smaller book forms. We never knew what would happen once we folded the original design into smaller segments. The results were unexpected, amusing sometimes, and wonderful to view. Some people used colored inks, marking pens, and stamps to create images while others used paste papers, water-soluble crayons, and lettering to enhance their designs. Though we all used similar materials, no two books looked alike. In three days, we also made mock-ups of different ways of making a book including using a Lark's Head binding for heavy-weight paper, three versions of a two-minute book, accordion books, and a flat-style Australian reverse piano hinge binding, which takes longer to say than to make. Cherryl has written several easy-to-use books about various bookbinding techniques that can be found at John Neal Books online.

Designs on a large piece of paper using ink, scraps of paper,
tea splatters, and Cretacolor AquaGraph pencils

Two-Minute Book folded from the original large piece of paper

I came away from the conference with renewed enthusiasm for bookmaking, joy for having seen friends I hadn't seen in a long time, inspiration from the many works done by other attendees, and glad that my accidental choice for my Word for the Year is Unfinished. I brought home books that I will continue to work on and know that I have new ideas to try.

 Two Two-Minute signatures with Two-into-One Cover

Accordion book with doodles on a cover with neurographic lines

Accordion book with no lettering or cover yet

Mock-up for Lark's Head Binding

Check out Cherryl Moote's website:

https://www.mootepoints.com/index.html

Books available at John Neal Books:

https://www.johnnealbooks.com/search.php?search_query=Cheryl+moote&section=product

Be amazed at the work of these calligraphers:

Viktor Kams:

https://misterkams.com

Cora Pearl:

http://www.corapearlcalligraphy.com/work

Randall Hasson:

https://randallmhasson.com/caligraphic-works/ 

Barbara Close:    

https://barbclose.com/barbaras-work   

Suzie Beringer:

https://rainwriters.com/suzie-beringer/ 

Carol DuBosch:

https://www.caroldubosch.com/artwork/artist-books/

Harvest Crittenden:

https://www.acornartsclassroom.org/harvestcrittenden

RANDOM PATHWAYS

The opening page from Postcards in the Air 2023 book

Pens run dry

just like a river in a drought

sometimes the pen fails:

words don't tumble out,

don't scratch across the surface.

Other times

a pen pushes ideas

across a page

swirling around rocks and boulders

of the mind,

creating small pools,

leading to new pathways

washing away dirt

to find what is hidden beneath.

I can't say I've ever experienced writer's block or artist's block. Early on, I learned that I needed to push through hesitation, think of everything as practice or an experiment, or pick up some other piece to try. Some days when I start and stop with ideas that don't pan out, I slip another page up onto my computer, start writing about something else, and keep doing that until I reach the kernel that had been waiting there in the shadows of my mind. I have heard of writers who get so stymied that nothing comes out. After ten years of writing this Friday blog, I am confident that some idea will percolate up out of the dregs. With a computer, I don't scrunch up a piece of paper and throw it into the wind. I can save those unfinished ideas in another file and maybe take them out to work them over again.

I'm more picky with myself with art. Coming from a family of artists, I have much to compare my work against. I have managed to rise above the self-doubt that creeps into creative work. I think of what I am doing as play, as practice, and that eases the doubt. I am lucky I do not earn my living with my work. I am always surprised and pleased when someone offers to buy one of my pieces, but that is not my goal. My art is my way to express my thoughts and feelings, and to develop more skills.

Sometimes simple ideas become the groundwork for something bigger. Since we moved to our new apartment in January, I have taken a photo every morning from the same spot looking out the window over Mission Creek and the buildings on the other side. The sun hits the windows of the buildings, creating brilliant jewels of light. The shadows of the morning slide down into the creek, and the birds begin to circle the water below. Some mornings grey clouds fill the sky, other times the sky is bright blue. The window spot has become a good place to start the day.

 

A friend invited us to a local ballet production. The company created a ballet in honor of Mary, her wife, who passed away a couple of years ago. Mary had been a big supporter of the ballet, and, among other things, was a certified clown. The ballet called Dr. Magic was a delight and focused on all the movements that clowns use at the same time presenting the love that people felt for Mary. The ballet was a wonderful way to pay tribute to someone who brought joy to others.

I started writing posts for this blog in 2012. The anniversary of my blog is in March. I only wrote nine posts in 2012 and 2013 so I consider 2014 to be the official start date since I wrote almost every week during that year.  Recently I found a blog publishing website that allows me to have a printed version of all my posts. The books look terrific. They are well-designed and formatted so that each post is easy to read. At the beginning of the book, the publishers have pulled a collage of the photos I've used within the year. You can see the pages at the top of this post. I am pleased with the result and so glad that people continue to read my blog posts. Thank you!

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An important documentary, 20 Days in Mariupol, is well worth watching. A good reminder of what is at stake in Ukraine.