I've been pulling out my tiny purse sketchbook a lot lately and doing quick line drawings with my new pen and new inks from my St. Louis trip to Papillon Press. They don't make the bold visual impact of a full on watercolor, but they make my daily life happier. The first couple are from recent dog walks in the Old Forest in Overton Park. Side note – it's finally cooled off enough that I can perch in the forest and sketch again without risking chiggers. Happiness.

I sketched at a (somewhat) recent lecture at Dixon, and then again coming home from a reception there when I got caught by a train. I was happier sketching and using that time than sitting there impatiently. I hope I can keep remembering to do that in odd moments. Sometimes I remember, and sometimes I just look at my phone. Sketching is better though.

And finally I did a couple of quick sketches out at Shelby Farms when I was at the other end of the city for an appointment, and I took my walk around a couple of small lakes there that I used to bicycle out to. It was good to be back, and I saw two herons. The second one stayed put and let me draw him. Such a good day.

My third Sunday at church this month (see previous blog post for the first two) was attending Evensong at Grace St. Luke's church in Memphis. My sister is a longtime member of the choir there, and choral music is always a treat for me. I sang in my own church choir for years in my teens and twenties. My older nephew was making his Evensong debut, and Erin asked if I could do a watercolor for her of the occasion. She's a music teacher, so this was an emotional moment for her, and she knows I like to memorialize concerts and services (along with plenty of other moments) in my sketchbook anyway. Since this was for her, I grabbed a 12x12” watercolor block and did it on freestanding paper, but I tried to keep the looseness of a sketchbook. It's a complicated church, and I got there about half an hour early to lay in the surroundings before the service got going, and then I filled in the choir. It was a lovely service, and so good to see friends there as well as enjoying the music. We had a small crew that took over the balcony rooting Carter on (silently, of course) in his debut.

I've been to church three different ways the last three Sundays, only one of them for 11:00 worship. It did feel good to get back to “big church” early this month on World Communion Sunday. I've been pacing myself all year, and if I do too much on a Saturday I don't have extra left for church, but I've been missing seeing people. I sat in the far transept instead of my longtime spot in the balcony. The new sound system is a bit alarmingly loud, but I enjoyed the view and did a few small line drawings with my new Twisbi pen (the green ink) and a Lamy one (brown) to mark the occasion. These are the things I always have with my when I leave the house in my tiny purse. The watercolor kit is more when I know I'm going to paint somewhere, but I try to have a tiny sketchbook and a variety of pens at all times. You just never know.

The next week there was a concert in the afternoon, so I went to that instead and painted in the morning (more sitting and less standing than getting out). It was a neat concert by Dr. Kyle Blake Jones, a soprano sax player I'd heard in worship the week before, and pianist Dr. Mattieu Cognet from Julliard, and I was so glad I went. My two favorite pieces were by composers who were born when I was in college. It was a great range of music, and once again I sketched. Of course. I'll put this past Sunday in my next blog post when I get it scanned in.

A friend invited me to the Bread and Puppets touring show as it passed through Memphis (and offered me a ride to make it easy), and I'm so glad. It was the surrealistic, visionary, joyful, touching, challenging about the state of the world carnival. They called it the Upside Down World Circus, and that was pretty exactly right. They referenced Medieval plays and mummery on the website, and that also felt right with performers on stilts, live music (brass plus accordion and drums), and huge papermache heads and creatures. A dozen or so performers, an old school bus, an absolute ton of props and banners, all out in a field in an underdeveloped part of old Memphis. Unexpected and delightful. They had their own lights, no sound, and a well-practiced but off the cuff set up. I started sketching (the larger watercolor piece) before they started, mostly at dusk, and it soon descended into almost complete darkness. I enjoyed trying to catch bits and pieces of the performance as it danced, trotted, and cavorted past, but nothing can truly capture something like that.

There is also a strong printmaking component, since the beginning  of the troop almost 50 years ago. They believe in art that everyone can afford. They company sells hand printed posters, banners, cards, and zines, and then there's a table for the individual performers to sell their handmade prints as well. I mean, puppts, printmaking, and bread. So many good things packed into one evening.

I switched to just a pen (my new stub nibbed Twisbi with Wearingeul Inferno ink) in my smallest sketchbook for all the subsequent sketches. Just impressions to help me remember and mark an unusual and delightful evening.

I've been working on my website and on archiving lately. I had a site for a long time that I could manage myself, but Square bought out the company and basically destroyed it. I've switched over to Articulation (drag and drop, excellent customer service), and I'm rejuvenated about my site. I'm also grateful not to lose 16 years' worth of blog archives. That all came over seamlessly, which had been my biggest worry about trying to find a new host. It's a huge weight off me. 

I've been dealing with a lot of family papers as my dad declines, and it's got me thinking about my own papers, especially my art ones. I'd really like to be able to archive my work for the future. Now that my website feels secure I'm beginning to work on preserving my sketchbooks one by one. I've scanned lots of individual pages and have them saved by location (home, neighborhood, other places I've visited), but I don't have them as full books anywhere. I'm just beginning to flip through book by book, save each page in order in a separate folder, and archive them on my website so people can see them splotchy colors, bad pages, and all. So far I have my September to December 2025 sketchbook and my May to October 2026 one. I'll have to do more scanning for my dedicated travel ones – I'd usually get home and just scan the best pages – but my daily sketchbooks have almost all the pages scanned already, so it's more organization than anything. 

Ultimately I'd like to find an archive outside my own site to keep them all permanently. An archivist friend of mine said that digital is an easier sell to institutions than having to maintain and store physical items, which makes sense. I'm going to try to do it a bit at a time and get my files in order. 

The national Metal Museum has expanded in Memphis into the old Memphis College of Art building, which is right in the middle of my favorite park, four blocks away. If we had to lose MCA, this is the best possible outcome. They've done beautiful renovations. The building looks spectacular, and the new museum across several floors has space to show their collection in a way their old museum building didn't. I love that they will be so much more available to people. Their original space, still occupied by apprentices, is a gorgeous bluff right over the river, but it's out of the way and confusing to find even before TDOT took away their expressway exit. And having communal art making back in Rust Hall (ironically the name even before the Metal Museum moved in) is a great joy. They also have the best damn gift shop in the city.

Very kindly they welcomed our Memphis Urban Sketchers group an hour before they open to the public so we could keep our traditional 10-12 window. The opening, which we sketched from the outside last month, was so crowded and so hot that I didn't even make it into the building. It was so great to wander around where I've taken classes off and on throughout my life, see the care they've taken with it, and get to sketch again.

I often start with something complex and get way too tight on it. I was super drawn to the intricate lobby, but I spotted a spare hallway with a couple of head statues at the end and decided it would be a good exercise to start simple and work my way up to the lobby. It ended up working great. I used a dip pen with a new purple-ish grey ink from my recent St. Louis trip. It's Wearinguel Therese Raquin. I'm looking for a replacement for my favorite limited edition Diamine Chopin, which is a little cooler and a little darker than this one. It's not quite as nice, but I liked the way it interacted with the paint.

Then I made my way upstairs and took on the funky architecture. My lines got off almost immediately, but in my biggest sketchbook with the looseness of the dip pen, I just went with it and ended up really happy with the sketch. It's dip pen with my other new Wearingueul ink Inferno. This is my new favorite. It's not quite black and has a little variation on the page. It also does ok with paint. Full on black just makes a total puddle, but I've been happy how this one accepts watercolor.

It was a great day with friends, and then I did a little Christmas shopping in the gift shop on the way out and also found a gorgeous copper moon necklace for myself. A really happy day.

  I've always loved book plates. I love finding old ones in second hand books. I bought a ton of them in middle and high school for my most treasured books, including an Arthur Rackham drawing. When I got my first press I thought I'd do some, and I went looking for that lick on the back paper and couldn't find any, and then I just got distracted. But recently I was looking at my small blocks I've done for cards, and I've been sorting my type, and it just seemed like a great thing to circle back around to. I've laid out three different ones so far and printed a smattering of each. I think I'll keep playing. Maybe even make myself an owl. Owls more and more feel like a sacred presence in my life. There was one just now calling from a tree in my front yard as Henry and I walked home from an evening stroll and a porch visit with neighbors.

It's also been nice to have some small scale projects I can do in the print shop – ease my way back into more standing work. So my first batch of bookplates is already in some of my books. I'm using thin Stonehenge printing paper and acrylic medium to paste them down with a paint brush. It's super satisfying. And I like that someday someone will buy my art books second hand and find a small bit of history and a little extra art in them.

Some combination of using a dip pen with an open ink pot and sketching out in the field with wind and/or uncertain conditions means that my sketchbook usually has more blots and smudges than I had originally hoped. That's the case for both of these.

I went back to sketch my tree the next day, with the destruction work still ongoing, and I chose a spot at a different angle with the Higbee memorial in the foreground instead of the back. This is still the Inferno ink, that felt right for the moment, and a snub nosed dip pen. I definitely dropped one enormous blob of ink toward the bottom right, but otherwise I managed to control things pretty well. It felt important to sit with her through that process.

Then the heat dome finally broke (50 straight days over 90 degrees for Memphis, second only to the crazy summer of 1980), and the air pollution mercifully cleared out, and for the first time in weeks I felt I could sit out on a patio without risking all the health conditions that pollution brings on. I celebrated with a last minute stop at one of my favorite local restaurants on the way home from picking Henry up at daycare. He's a lovely plus one. And fortunately I had my sketching gear in the car, not just my tiny purse sketchbook, since I hadn't thought to bring a book for company. It felt better to sketch anyway. I didn't dive into watercolor, and since I was thinking just line I went ahead with the Diamine Ancient Copper ink that I'm always drawn to but that turns into a hot mess very quickly with paint on top. I really do love it, but I have to pick my places. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening all the way around.

Trees have always been where my art begins and circles back to and surely finally ends. There are certain ones I revisit season after season and year after year in my work. My first muse was a tree on my grandparents' farm, but there is a gorgeous, bulbous, curvy tree in Overton Park that has become my most drawn/painted/carved tree of all time. She's been failing for some time. In England they would have lowered her crown and built some props around her and let her age, but the city department, or even the park conservancy, do not have that level of resource or skill, so today they began to cut her down. The process will last into tomorrow. The whole trunk is still standing, and I'm so glad I was able to get over, bear witness, and sit with her a bit.

The conservancy nicely let me know it was happening today and posted about “Martha's tree” with one of my prints as well as their own photos. That all meant a lot. And the city workers were great. They saw me sketching and wanted to see. When they broke for lunch I asked if I could look for a few pieces, knowing several woodworkers and hoping for mementos. They went above and beyond, cut me a bowl blank, and even carried it to my car. People are kind.

I went back later in the day and did a second and third sketch. If I can I'll make it back tomorrow too. The dip pen with Inferno ink (almost black but with a little purple and some variation) was really perfect, though I tried a watercolor too. I'm going to miss her inspiration, beauty, shade, and sanctuary.

I've been in the print shop a lot this week, which is such joy after a long layoff. I'm working to get back into more serious landscapes, but the first one I carved lately was this fun one. My friend Chrissie uses the phrase “On the struggle bus,” and it always makes me smile even when the road is rough. I decided more people might like to have that in their mental vocabulary as well. I conceived of it in three colors. It's two blocks (yellow and black) printed separately with a small red stamp for the stop sign. I added in the red lights with just a brush. Then I wondered if I like the white of the paper highlighing those spaces better than I like the darker red in those holes.

But while I was proofing I pulled just a black and white image, and I liked that too. I've tried it with the red sign and with and without red lights. I've got one drying that has a black stop sign instead of red. I figure there are no real wrong answers here, and people may like different versions, so this one will be a varied edition, which means there will be a total set number of prints, but the prints won't be identical. I also use that method when I'm trying different colors of paper for the same print or different shades of color. Really this is just for fun, so coming up with one identical edition didn't seem to be the main priority.