Weekend Work 8/16/2021

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I had a few of these going, not necessarily finished. I just thought I’d show you. Work has been on an upswing due to the Delta variant. More patients calling wanting testing because of exposure.

Here are two that happened to look good together. Makes sense as I mix a color and use it in multiple paintings.

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I am still fixated in the gouache on black paper. My goal is to make the viewer’s eye move around the whole thing.

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My Vanguard co-workers

We went to our first gender reveal on Saturday-my cute manager at the office who is having her second kid. Working with young people makes me feel gratitude that I’m still relevant. My folks are in the front and me (ochre t shirt and husband Dr Wilson next to me). It’s a girl!

Have a great week.

draw a bird day: chicken music

cock-
a doo-
dle-
do cluck
cluck buk buk
kuh-kuh-
kack
ba-gawk
tuk buk tuk-
king rrrrrrr chirp peep-
ing chirp
trill errrr
cack-
le chir-
rup squawk crow
caaaaaw cock-
a-
doodle-
do

The last Kick-About prompt was a video of a dancing chicken from Herzog’s film Stroszek. I first decided to draw while watching the video on a roll of rice paper that I had. My photos did not show up that well, but Phil Gomm kindly inverted color and ground and made the lovely images above.

I really like drawing chickens, and so I did a neocolor image. Then I decided to do some monoprint outlines based on my original drawings.

The outlines were fine, but my attempts to print colors on top were not as successful, so I ended up painting over them. One thing I really like about the Kick-About prompts is that it challenges me to try lots of different things.

For the poem, inspired by David’s Waltz Wave sound poem at the skeptic’s kaddish, I did some research on chicken sounds. It turns out there are many online threads about this subject, as so many people are now raising their own chickens and are delighted by their vocalizations.

And so many beautiful and varied breeds! I’ve done chickens several times before, and I’m sure there will be more for some future Draw a Bird Day as well.

I’m taking a break for a few weeks…enjoy the rest of your summer!

Thursday Doors: Oasis

Just a piece of earth surrounded by walkways, tables with chairs and benches, buildings.  A dorm, a student center under renovation, classrooms, a hedge.

Always there are birds.  Hopeful begging sparrows, robins searching the grass even in snow, starlings flashing yellow beaks, the red of cardinals and the screech of blue jays.  A mockingbird that serenades for nearly half an hour one morning.  A nuthatch on the trunk of the tree.  A flicker, often heard but never seen.  A hawk overhead, and Crow, always loudly demanding attention.  New birds we can’t get close enough to identify clearly.  We look at photos online and argue about what is closest to what we thought we saw.

Students wander past, occasionally sit for awhile.  Children and dogs play on the lawn.  But often it’s just the three of us—two coffees, one tea.  We walk from uptown and downtown to meet for a few hours together on a sleepy college campus, with the sky above and the sounds of the city fading far away.

ambient green—re
turning voices gather un
der branches soon bare

The top photo is of the doors of a Columbia University dorm that sits on one side of the place my daughters and I often meet. Obviously not built recently…

Also written for Brendan at earthweal who asked us to consider how nature and humans can adapt to each other to provide places for both to thrive.

You can join in Thursday doors here.

The Kick-About #33 ‘Herzog’s Dancing Chicken’

Dancing chickens!

Red's Kingdom

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After the epic, panoramic, and impressionist works riffing on Rutenberg’s Low Dense, I’m delighted to present an all-new showcase of work inspired by the improbable, homespun spectacle of Werner Herzog’s dancing chicken. (That’s not a sentence a person gets to write every day!). I’m delighted too to welcome some new kick-abouters into our midst, creative power-couple Chris Rutter and Evelyn Bennett. Welcome both, have fun!

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Chris Rutter & Evelyn Bennett

“We have made a cut up poem from the words of the last scenes in the film. Dance, fuckers, dance!”

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rutterandbennett.com / instagram.com/rutterandbennett

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Emily Clarkson

“I was a bit bamboozled by the dancing chicken clip from ‘Stroszek’ having never watched the film. So I opted for some zany, silly visuals, featuring the chicken, duck and rabbit! I call it ‘Head Banger Stroszek.’“

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instagram.com/eclarkson2012/twitter.com/eclarkson2012/linkedin.com/in/emily-clarkson

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Jan Blake

“I’m still wallowing in bright colours this…

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Weekend Work August 2, 2021

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This was one I was ready to cut up and although weird, I like it better now.

Here is how it was before:

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The little figure is cut out and sitting on my windowsill:

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My daughter took a picture of me taking a picture. Funny!

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It is a lovely day here in Northern NJ. It promises to be a good week! Nina

August 2021

the wheel turns–
we follow our tides
balancing

between waves
ebbing and flowing
together

Instead of a grid or circle collage this month, I decided to use this embroidery that I just finished. I signed up for a series of video embroidery instruction courses–every two weeks there’s a new one, with new ideas and techniques to learn. That was 2 months ago, and I’ve only just finished the first one…

This was a course on Indian embroidery motifs and techniques given by Saima Kaur. We were to choose a few bright colors and a bright background fabric, with perhaps the addition of black and/or white. My satin stitch has always been sloppy and I thought this would give me plenty of practice for improvement. I can’t say it improved much, though, and I also now know for sure that I don’t enjoy doing satin stitch that much. I did like the long and short stitches I used on the shells, and will use that again.

I love traditional art and the motifs of Indian folk art are rich and full of symbolism. This design is a distilled variation of common figures and themes seen both in Indian art and in traditional and religious art all over the world.