Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

  Happy New Year!   Now that we're done with the recent forty days and nights of rain we can enjoy one of life's treats--Autumn in New York. Julia Glass, in her novel Vigil Harbor said,  "October in New York reminds people to renew their vows to stay forever." So let's be sure to take some long walks.  You may remember the architectural tour I posted in 2019,  An Architectural Tour of NYC Here are two great buildings I left out.  If you stumble upon either of these you might think you're not in New York City but somewhere in Europe.   Here's the Old Police Building at 240 Centre Street between Grand and Broome Streets And First Baptist Church, at Broadway and 79th Street. As another way to celebrate Autumn I'm moved to write about my favorite calligraphy ink. It's been my go-to material ever since I branched out from Black and White. People would ask if I ever filled in my black and white drawings with color and no, that really doesn't work; it...

 One of my most favorite projects with my second graders was an art history book. A class mother, who was also my friend, asked why I didn't teach Art Appreciation and I said, "You're right!  I should do that." So I gave my students postcards of famous works of art from the Met and  assigned them to draw the image and write an essay about it.  Some writing prompts were, What do you think of this picture?  How would you describe it? What do you think the artist was thinking?  "How would you like to be inside this picture?" Here are a few samples. They had to pick the cards sight unseen and I was glad that a little girl chose this one.  When she turned it over her eyes popped! Here's what she did with it. The handwriting is excellent but I'll print the text.  She wrote; Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres French, 1780-1867 Portrait of the Princess de Broglie If I was Princess de Broglie I would be happy.  I would think I would live a long life. Every...

Have you seen my spiffy big cats?  A nice look for Fall the King of the Jungle in Ralph Lauren  I had just decided to write this week's blog about my Big Cat collages when I heard on NPR a story about Bertie Gregory, nature photographer and filmmaker, talking about what it takes to film wild animals--that would be passion and persistence. He followed a pride of lions for months, working with conservationists to attach tracking devices on them. He got to hold a Lioness's head while she got pinned and said he'd never realized how really big a lion's head is.   He learned that among the greatest threats to the lions is snares; they get entangled in the traps set for smaller animals and then they're in real trouble.  My first thought was, "Call the mice!" Remember Aesop's fable of the Lion and the Mouse? Where the Lion caught a mouse but didn't eat him and later he got ensnared in a trap and the mouse gnawed away the ropes and the Lion was free.  Aesop...

 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 ...

 I'm a month late for his birthday but today I celebrate Maurice Sendak, one of my early idols, author of some of my favorite books, provider of countless happy hours.  Where the Wild Things Are  has been called  " The most suspenseful and satisfying nursery tale of our time."     How many of you can recite the opening lines illustrated here? "The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "WILD THING!"  and Max said, "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" You know what comes next--Max is sent to bed without his supper and that night he sails off into a great adventure. What song did you and your kids sing for the wild rumpus? After Max has tamed the Wild Things, after the wild rumpus, he feels tired and longs to be "where someone loves him best of all" and so gets up to leave. The Wild Things say to him, "Oh, please don't go, we'll eat you up we love you so." Sendak said he modeled so...