Seeking the Sublime in the Everyday

 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 ...

Last week I said I would try something in blue and here it is, as a work in progress. It's a blue house,  based on a picture of an antique doll house I've kept in my collage notebook for years. As I sit making all those little dots I think about what comes next. I have to put something in the windows.  One of my guilty pleasures is peeking into windows--Arthur thinks I'm going to get arrested but it's too tempting to see how strangers live. So I should offer something in these windows for my fellow peekers. What to put in the windows of this house?  Maybe some of my own work, like a tiny version of the Bear and the Bison. I thought about some of the gorgeous mosaics at the 81st street station of the C train, right by the Museum of Natural History. Sometimes I get out there even if it's not my destination, just to look. ere's another whale. The Hall of Ocean Life is one of the most amazing spaces in the city--a full sized blue whale hanging from the ceiling.  Tha...