Sign of the Times

This one’s for Jack Davis.   Seen in Soho walking from the subway to Chinatown.

My reader (or my computer maybe?) is totally wonky this morning…will try to catch up with everyone’s posts later.

Old (found in the garage)

I love finding old stuff of mine. These are three watercolors done in 1965. It’s amazing how my style has stayed the same.

Close up: I guess I liked bridges then too. And cities and water.

And little trees standing by themselves on a city street.

I used to use a lot of pen and ink. Can you believe that there were no markers back then? I believe that is the case. I haven’t used pen and ink in years!

Bridge over Passaic River

A small bridge in Paterson. The river runs all through Paterson and culminates at the Great Falls. This was a rush job as I didn’t want to break my run of posts.#World Watercolor Month

Matisse’s Chair

The Boston Museum of Art has an exhibit of the works of Matisse along with many of the objects he used in his drawings and paintings.  He found this chair in an antique store and had to have it.  What a find…the arms are eels!

I went to Boston this weekend to visit my daughter and see the show.  You can never get too much Matisse in my opinion (having this year also been to see him in Baltimore and Montclair).  And there are always works I haven’t seen before, like one of his first collages, above.  I like how he drew/painted the objects and then cut them out and arranged them.

There were some beautiful textiles, like this North African cut screen.

And of course he drew from his textile collection to drape the models for his portraits.

I love the vibrant colors in the still life above.

And I had never seen this paper cut out before.

The museum is good for wandering.  Suddenly you’re in a room with this burial urn from Mesoamerica.  That’s a bat on top.

Botticelli…luminous.

John Wilson’s Martin Luther King Jr. prints were a highlight.

Eldzier Cortor, another African American artist in the museum’s collection, shaped many of his print plates.  This one is full of visions.

There was a small show of the prints of Terry Winters, another favorite of mine.  I always want to recreate his organic visions in stitch.

And we didn’t even get to the Monets!  Next visit…

 

Great Falls, Paterson NJ

After a crappy Mexican dinner I took my husband and some friends up to the Great Falls in my hometown of Paterson. This location was recently made a national park which makes me proud. It is spectacular up there. ​

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Feeling the energy of the water put me in a really good mood. I also had consumed a few margaritas so there was that. Here’s a couple of other pictures of what are really the pre-falls–before it goes all the way down the rocks. 

(What I did my painting from.)

 

Today NYC

 

“This is what Democracy looks like.”

 

Hope/#PoetsForPeace

“Where flowers bloom, so does hope.”
–Lady Bird Johnson

“If you could
have three wishes, what?”
Number one–
always “peace.”
I’ve been repeating that word
since I was a child.

What is peace?
Easy to say what
it is not–
not guns, not
bombs, not hate or violence.
Not this destruction.

There are seeds
but they need sunlight–
fertile soil
to nourish
growth, to send roots; open space
to reach for the sky.

This is not
complicated.  This
happens if
we let it–
the Earth can teach us if we
can’t find our way home.

Despite the way we mistreat it, the Earth still shares with us its bounty.  As it does each summer, the Rose of Sharon tree is blooming, surrounded by concrete and the sorrows of our world.

Writer’s Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge Theme-“Hope” #WQWWC

Join in with your poem here.

Even the Statues are Texting…

…or at least that’s the way it looked when we entered this room at the Met.

I don’t know, even when I know what she’s actually got in her hand,

it still looks like she’s checking out the screen to me.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, June 2016

Church, Bloomfield NJ

I’ve been in this church years ago for a funeral mass. I rode by today and snapped a shot out the window. I’ve been wanting to draw a building and this one struck me as quite lovely. 

Here’s the photo. A beautiful day today in NJ. 

Arbor Day

as lovely as a tree, rooted in the earth, reaching towards the heavens

as enchanting as an ash, central column of life, cosmic axis

as captivating as cherry, awakening the magic of spring

as handsome as the beech, guardian of knowledge, wisdom writing words

as magical as an elder, conjuring, healing, restoring life

as stately as oak, enduring portal, shelter, protection and door

as graceful as a willow, mirroring the moon, fulfilling wishes

as dazzling as holly, solstice companion, glow piercing winter’s grey

as simple as the arbor, center and pivot, beginning and end

The last Friday is April is Arbor Day, a day to celebrate trees.  From cosmic axis to shelter for fairies, trees have always been honored by humans in stories and myth, symbols of life and rebirth, connecting, protecting and healing.

The photos were taken when I visited the Jewish Museum in March; the colorful geometry of the window decorations caught my eye first, but then the reflections of the trees across the street in Central Park worked their own magic.

The poem combines two NaPoWriMo prompts:  long 17-syllable lines from day 27, and using a line or phrase from another poem to begin your own from day 25.  Raise your hand if you had to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” in elementary school!  Permanently embedded in my brain, “lovely as a tree” seemed perfect for Arbor Day.

When you go out today, instead of keeping your eyes on your device, look around and take in the beauty and majesty of trees.