Back To Art

I enrolled in a life drawing class this semester. It's been a while since I've drawn a living person and I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until I sat down at the easel with my pencil case, measuring, drawing and erasing and drawing again. I hadn't taken an art class since early last year.

Robert moved LIAFA to a new location down the road (in Riverhead) and it's charming. It's in an old office building above a pizzeria and a few other businesses. The new space has tall ceilings, oak floors, is clean and well maintained, and actually has running hot water and a radiator that works. In the old building, we suffered all winter without adequate heat and had to wash our paint brushes in ice cold water, turning my hands numb and white. When I drove in to paint on a Sunday afternoon, I often chattered with the cold as I sat mixing my colors on my palette.

There's much to love about drawing - the feel of the pencil between your fingers, the smooth, creamy surface of the paper, the meditative solace it brings as you strive to capture the curve of the model's back, the gesture of the hands, the turn of the head. I love the comforting quiet of the studio and the mingling odors of paint, charcoal pencils and mineral spirits. Sometimes drawing from life is incredibly frustrating. After a break, it's hard to get the model positioned in exactly the same pose. Sometimes I get a stiff neck or I can't quite capture the pose or work out the proportions. Still, I keep on.

Drawing helps to train the writer's eye. It helps the writer to cultivate patience with himself and his craft. Most artists, like most writers, work hard at what they do. Success often comes slowly after many years of hard work.

Really, isn't that true of anything that requires skill, whether it's wrestling, running, building a piece of furniture, cultivating a garden or composing a poem? Few of us get it right the first time. And that, after all, is makes makes success so sweet when we finally hold it, plump, ripe and juicy, in our own two hands.

Happy 2009

Instead of making a list of resolutions that I know I'll never keep, I thought I'd make a list of things I like. This comes after feeling just a wee bit sorry for myself because I can't eat deserts or sugary things anymore. So, here are just a few of the things that bring me comfort and even joy.

Here's to...

Old china cups with tealeaves clinging to the sides.

My bedroom slippers with the worn down heels and the hole in one toe.

The humble, low-tech book with four straight sides and no gigabytes of RAM but acres and acres of stories.

The creaky wooden floors of the S.S. Kresge Store in downtown Wayne with its soda fountain, ceiling fans and counters full of useless, fascinating junk.

The sweat on my forehead and the black dirt beneath my fingernails after an afternoon working in the garden.

The tufts of green grass poking through the cracks in the sidewalks and the fissures in asphalt parking lots.

Strands of Christmas lights and the multi-colored joy they bring to the gray winter streets.

The wink of fireflies on soft summer nights.

Vanilla ice cream that’s a little soft and creamy around the edges.

Chocolate dipped ice cream cones.

Heaps of gold and crimson leaves.

French fries a little burnt along the edges.

Pizza with bubbling hot cheese.

The purr of a cat curled contentedly in my lap.

The comforting creak and bang of a screen door in the wind.

A neatly mowed lawn sloping down to a gurgling stream.

The thud of a basketball on a cement driveway.

The rumble of distant thunder.

The lazy drone of a bumblebee wandering from one hollyhock to the next.

Silver rimmed autumn morns.

The button well sewn, the shoelace well-knotted, the dishes well scrubbed.

Clean, fluffy towels fresh from the drier.

Guppies spawning in neighborhood creeks.

The kingfisher waiting with infinite patience for the flash of fin and scales in the water below.

The smell of oatmeal cookies baking in the oven.

Bali Hai.

Beep Beep the Roadrunner. Long may he outwit and outrun Wile Coyote.

Sleeping in ‘til 8 am.

Glass elevators.

Crabs swimming sideways through the bay.

Clear, starry nights.

The challenge of the empty canvas, the blank page of a drawing tablet.

Bright veined lightning on a black, storm swept night.

A yard full of snow sparkling in the sun.

Radiators that alternately clank, hiss and purr all winter long.

The soulful song of the cello.

The dappled light of a forest floor.

Singing in the shower.

Elmer's Glue.


Happy New Year, everybody!

Favorite Christmas Gifts

So, the shelves are all finished and the bookcases are done! I'm thrilled. It was a little hard trying to get this picture because today was an overcast, snowy day and the room is small so I had to stand in the closet to get back far enough to take the picture. The shelves are only half full at this point. I spent much of the rest of the day lugging books from the attic and organizing them. It's so nice to have everything in one place, though.

I have learned something today. Our next clean up project will be the attic. How did we ever accumulate so much junk?

Favorite Christmas Gifts

My youngest moved into his own place in September, leaving his bedroom vacant at last - the bedroom where he'd kept goldfish, played with Matchbox cars, built castles out of Legos and fashioned rockets from cardboard gift wrap tubes. It was both a sad and a happy time for me - sad because my youngest child had flown the coop and I knew I would miss him sorely but it was also a happy time because he'd found a good job and moved into his own place that he was paying for himself. After all, as parents that's what we strive for - to raise autonomous, responsible adults who will make a contribution to the world. My husband and I both knew it signaled the beginning of true adulthood and for that we are both proud and happy of both of our sons.

And so, we cleaned out Sean's room, painted it and my husband refinished the scuffed oak floors. I had plans for this space. I realized what I wanted more than anything was to have my books all in one place. Half of them are up in the attic in boxes or scattered among a variety of bookcases. I wanted them here in my office where I could at last organize them and have them within easy grasp. But, I had a problem. I only had one little wooden barrister's bookcase my mom had given me and it was already full. I needed bookshelves. In case you hadn't priced them lately, good bookshelves are pretty expensive and I sort of felt I was beyond the boards and bricks bookcases of my college years.

My husband, Dennis, is an artist with wood. He claims he's not but he really is. Last year he made us a bedroom set consisting of two dressers, a blanket chest and two night tables and now, these beautiful cherry bookcases with curly maple inlay. It took him a couple of months but they were certainly worth waiting for. And they are beautiful. It's one of the best presents anybody has ever given me. And I don't care what anybody says; homemade is the best!

Just as soon as the second case gets its second coat of varnish and the shelves are all in place, I will post a picture.

Steven Assael Documentary

I've been studying classical realism part time now for about 8 years. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing people say that realism is boring or doesn't take any imagination. Realism, for me at least, is about trying to capture the soul of your subject. It's about trying to capture the beauty of even the most simple and mundane things.

The human form is the most challenging of all. I've taken this past fall off but am going back to figure drawing again in January at LIAFA.

Recently artist Steven Assael came to LIAFA to do a portrait workshop. I wish I could have been there. I guess this video clip from CBS Sunday Morning is the next best thing. Anybody who thinks realism is boring should check this out. Even if you don't think it's boring, check it out. He's fantastic!

Good News!

I have some good news that I'm just dying to share but can't...not yet. Aaargh! Patience has never been one of my strengths so I've been trying to avoid blogging so I don't spill it. Have to wait until we get some confirmation. So, until then, I keep writing. Always prepare for the worst, I say.

Keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

Writing Conferences

I never used to believe that there was much to be gained from a writing conference that I couldn't learn by myself. But then I never believed in critique groups either. Now, of course, I know differently. A critique group in invaluable. I don't know how I ever wrote poetry without my poetry group and I lean heavily on my fiction writing group to point out my WIP's shortcomings.

I've learned that writing conferences are invaluable if for no other reason than to find fresh inspiration and new input into work you've stared at for hours on end and can no longer find anything wrong with or know what to do with. So, after swearing off any more writing conferences until I finish my WIP, I've been drooling over this one -- The Bear River Writers' Conference in northern Michigan. How I'd love to go! It's not a writing workshop for children's writers, although I suppose a YA novel might be perfectly acceptable.

For one, it's situated in a beautiful part of northern Michigan and secondly, they've assembled a great staff of workshop leaders. I know Keith Taylor from college. I took several fiction writing courses with him, taught by the late George Zorn (how I loved that man!). It was the only college course I ever took where people smoked in class (including me at the time). We used to pass the butt can around. Keith is now the director of the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan. He writes pretty amazing poetry, for you poetry lovers out there (but not poetry for kids).

My biggest problem is that the conference is so far away. I'd have to fly there, doubling my expenses. So, maybe. It's something to think about. Anybody attend any recent conferences that you found outstanding? If so, please share!