I got my latest paper cuttings framed and ready to go. I’ve been invited to hang my work up on Feb. 1 at the Douglas County Law Library and Judicial and Law Enforcement Center here in Lawrence. They’ll be there through the end of March. I also got my “Night Birds a’Cryin'” (the one in the middle) paper cutting back from the International Bluegrass Museum in Owensboro, KY, and it’s now available for sale. It was hanging since 2010 as part of the celebration of bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe’s 100th birthday. It’s based on his song “The First Whippoorwill”.
I also sat in my car for an hour today and wrote out what *I think* will be the story line to the first animation I’m going to work on this year. Sometimes I need a change of scenery to really focus (it worked), plus, it’s proven difficult to think of images in motion with real stories to go along with them when I’m so used to thinking in still images based around a loose idea, but I like the challenge of it. I’ll spend this evening revising it and begin story-boarding tomorrow. I’m excited to get started on something. I spent a bit of time messing around with my new motion software today and I can tell it’s gonna take me some time to get the hang of it. Now is when my time management skills are going to need to come into existence… til next time.
Now has come, an easy time. I let it
roll. There is a lake somewhere
so blue and far nobody owns it.
A wind comes by and a willow listens
gracefully.
I hear all this, every summer. I laugh
and cry for every turn of the world,
its terribly cold, innocent spin.
That lake stays blue and free; it goes
on and on.
And I know where it is.
“Antonio Frasconi has always believed that art should come from a place deep within one’s self.” (North Dakota Museum of Art website)
(c) Antonio Frasconi
One of my favorite woodcut artists is Antonio Frasconi, whose work I learned about just within the last couple years. This morning as I was wandering about in my usual morning routine, a book I have about his work published by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, jumped out at me and I sat down and looked through it for the thousandth time. I decided to look him up online to see if any other works that I had not seen before would show up in an image search (since the internet is a constantly shifting landscape), and I was sad to read a New York Times article, just published yesterday, that he had died on Jan. 8. Read it here: Antonio Frasconi, Woodcut Master, Dies at 93
(c) Antonio Frasconi
“”The tide is coming in,” he said, before turning back. “And it is bringing all kinds of things. You just have to look and something will show up.”
I spent a small portion of the day walking around the rocky shore of a very low Lake Perry (NE Kansas) near the mouth of Slough Creek looking for neat rocks and fossils and artifacts that in non-drought times would normally be covered with water.. It was frigid with no sun in sight, and my hands and feet were frozen despite many layers, so this little adventure got cut short. This was the only photo I took from the car since it was too cold to handle the camera outside. It was a good time nonetheless. I followed lots of tracks in the frozen mud – including deer, raccoons, geese, and either a dog or coyote. There were also several bald eagles flying nearby, lots of puffed up juncos making their way around low limbs, and a couple deer running along the road as I was driving away. It was great to be outdoors breathing fresh air for a short while. It’s even greater to be typing this from my well-heated home.
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
Happy Monday. I’ll be spending the better part of my day with my hiking boots & camera tromping around the dried up rocky area of Slough Creek looking for birds and artifacts. Surely some photos to come.
Today was my lucky day to find an owl on the roadside while I was out for a little country drive. I made sure to thank him (or her?) for the photos as it flew off…
