Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

 Last week we said good-bye to Claus Oldenburg, and artist whose work fills me with delight-- an interesting combination of serious and silly.  Spoonbridge and Cherry  The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.   To think of a giant spoon with a cherry is one thing, to draw that image is another thing. To convince the world that it's serious art and then to carry it into reality takes a lot of conviction, plus serious engineering, not to mention money.  This piece with the graceful curves of the spoon, the birght red of the cherry on top is perfect. It speaks to me of pleasure-- anticipation or satisfaction?  Do you eat the cherry on top of the sundae first or do you save it for last? Shuttlecocks The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City I love the birght white diagonals against the sober  beige horiaontals and verticals of the building.  Badminton speaks to me of summer afternoons and tea on the lawn. Oldenburg's wife, Coosje van Bruggen was his part

  Happy Birthday to all born under the sigh of Leo. Does it look like the lions are quarreling?  I did this drawing thinking that I would illustrate A.A. Milne's wonderful poem, The King's Breakfast,  (Nobody, my Dear, could call me a fussy man, I only want a little bit of butter for my bread!") with lions as the King and Queen. I lost interest when I realized that there would be copyright issues, but I still love this. Before I go on I need to say that the majority of my family members were born under the sign of Taurus, and I'm thinking of them this week partly because I didn't greet all of them on their days, and partly because of a post this morning in Marginalian, the blog formerly known as Brain Pickings by Maria Popova.  She wrote about Ferdinand, who I wrote about a few years ago in a Happy Birthday, Taurus blog post. Remember Ferdinand was raised to fight in the bull ring but he was a peaceful bull and all he wanted to do was to sit and smell the flowers.

 I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird years ago and I still go back to it for comfort and fun.  It's a memoir, a faith journey, and a very practical and hilarious manual for beginning writers. I can't recommend it enough. I just took it down from the shelf to take this picture and I got pulled in again by Anne's friendly voice.  But, I have to get to work. On Monday Anne Lamott wrote on The NY Times OpEd page about prayer.  Here's the link https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/prayer-supreme-court-football.html Read what she says and get back to me--I'd love to hear what you think. I wrote about  prayer a few weeks ago, March 31st to be exact, inspired by my friend Barbara Lubliner's  beautiful prayer flags . She said,  As I made the flags, I imbued them with positive feelings, meditating on loving kindness and wishing good will out into the world. They are meant to spread peace, happiness, and good fortune to all.  I think making art is a form of prayer;

 In the past year I've participated in several art shows, and I want to thank my friends who organized and curated them, and either invited me or accepted my submission. Beth Barry, Roni Sherman Ramos, Yvonne Lamar-Rogers--do you hear me? There was a problem--all these show's had size limitations and I'd been working exclusively in a 24x18 inch format like this; and some even bigger like this; The large expanse lets me get in a lot of detail. But I really wanted to be in those shows, so I opened my folder of rejected works and pieces that I liked but didn't know what to do with. And I came up with this, and these.   I was really happy and I wanted to do more pieces like that but oh, no.  I'm all out of that starry sky and the billowing waves. And that's why I've gone back to my beloved Art Students League to make raw material for my work. Here are my new copper plates, covered with acid resistant ground, although we don't use acid any longer-the solvent