Y’all. I got this email from WAMA, and seeing my work side by side with Anderson’s made me tear up. I finished putting hardware on the very last framed piece today, and it’s all feeling very real and a little bit overwhelming in the best possible way.

I ran the press yesterday to print cards for WAMA, and I decided to do a short video to introduce myself to their folks who haven’t followed my work before. It’s always fun to show off the press. It’s such a superstar. And beautifully, the set up yesterday (getting a solidly good print across the whole frame) was easier than usual, so printing was a lot of fun. I was tired last night (I ended up doing almost 700 cards, since I’ll need a lot for a six month show run), but it went really well.

I took a whole day off today and spent the whole day outside. It was glorious. Mid 50's, but sunny and calm, so it was really delightful to be outdoors. I walked Gideon, shopped at the farmers market, walked Gideon, went to Dixon, and walked Gideon again, taking a nice long, poking-around-in-the-forest kind of walk at the end of the day.

Dixon was great. I met up with two of my favorite sketcher friends. We drew for ages and talked in the sunshine, ran into the cafe to get lunch to go, and sat at an outside table, drinking in the sunshine, talking art, cats, dogs, more art, balancing jobs and life, travel, cats again, art again. It was so deeply good. I've really had my head down working to frame and get final prints for the show ever since new year's. It was wonderful to sit in the sun with friends for a long, unhurried time.

Y'all, WAMA has made a gorgeous website for my exhibition! I couldn't be more pleased. Above is a screenshot of the top of it, but to navigate the images and read all the text about the show and see photos of me working, click here. They are doing a beautiful job on every aspect of this show, and I can't wait to see it hanging in their space. I deliver art on Feb. 28th, and I have 20 of 21 prints framed.

I'm partway through mounting all the pieces (20 watercolors plus text bits) for the separate graphic essay about Mr. Darcy that will hang in a separate space. It's their first time hanging just mounted art instead of framed, their first graphic essay, and their first time hanging in a salon style (a more informal, collage style grouping). I'm so grateful they're trusting me to do this new thing for them. Mattie Codling, the curator, had asked me if I wanted to write a bit of story about Mr. Darcy to go with his print in the show, knowing what a large part of my art making he had been to me. I told her I would love to and that I also had this graphic essay about his last couple of months called Daffodil Season. It doesn't go with the formal print exhibition, but she found a separate space for it in the museum and is diving into this new thing. I have so appreciated her enthusiasm and support in the two years preparing for this show. It will be special to honor Mr. Darcy in this way, and I think anyone who loves and loses a beloved companion will resonate with it. Anderson had a number of animals he spent time with and painted and called familiars, so it's appropriate for his museum to honor these muses.

I've been enjoying warm days again lately. A couple of times I've worked in the morning (good light on my work table for framing) and then taken off for the afternoon to go to the farm. The daffodils have started blooming, and I love bringing home a big bunch of sunshine. It's a little bittersweet this year to be without Mr. Darcy. We came so much last year for his last season, taking the time to enjoy ourselves together in his favorite place. Gideon is a doll and hilarious, but he and I don't have the history and emotional depth that I had with Mr. Darcy.

On the up side, we're making progress at the farm growing Gideon into an art dog. He usually just swarms me if I sit on the ground, so I've had to tether him to a picnic table at the park and then sit on top of it to sketch. At the farm, there is SO MUCH to smell and explore and get into that he's managed to poke around and let me sit on the ground to draw two times now. Both times he's come eventually to lie beside me but has let me finish the sketch. I hope that familiarity with this routine will add up and eventually transfer into city drawing too. Although the other big wild card will be people and dogs. He gets frenetically excited to see anyone, which will be a challenge if I have all my drawing stuff out. But it's been a nice start.

I haven't sketched outside the last week since Memphis has been living through an ice storm and some pretty cold weather, but here are the last couple of park sketches I did last week before the weather moved in. Hopefully we'll have some nice sketching weather again soon. I know others are more hardcore than I am about sketching outdoors in the cold, but I love summer and the South and have been enjoying my indoor work on my upcoming show while it's been frigid out. Plus we had limbs falling for a couple of days followed by ice raining down from the trees once it started to melt. I'm ok giving myself a pass on all of that.

The weather has been glorious this week -- 60's and sunny in midwinter. I'm framing each morning, as the sun hits my east facing work table. With full sunlight I can see each small speck and dog hair (!) trying to sneak into the frame. It's time consuming and exacting work, and I'm doing two or three a day. But then I'm doing my best to get outside, revel in the sunshine with my joyful dog, and get my hand back in at sketching from life. It feels great. Gideon and I are walking over to the park (four blocks away) several times each day, and I'm taking the sketching bag on most of those trips just now. He's still a puppy and swarms me if I sit on the ground to sketch, but if I can snag a picnic table to tether his leash to, I can paint on top out of his reach. He can then poke around and amuse himself for a while. It's not ideal, but it's a workable compromise, and we've both really enjoyed our park time this week.

I’ve been working to get my catalog for the WAMA show in to the printer, and yesterday I picked up the hard copy proof. The reproductions look great, so I’m really excited. I’ve got a few small things to fix over the weekend — it’s always easier for me to see mistakes on paper than on multiple pages on a screen, but I’m really pleased and so glad I decided to put the time in to do this. It’s 32 pages, so the length of a children’s picture book. It won’t be a hefty art book, but it’s a nice size at 10” square, and the plates of the art printed beautifully. It will mean a lot to have a book to remember this show.

I took advantage of another medium nice day and sketched again in the forest. Just a quick one with walnut ink and the dip pen plus watercolor. I enjoyed the dancing shape of this log. Mostly I'm framing just now, but I'm trying to seize the decent days in the cold part of winter to draw a little outside on my walk.

My summer project for fun was to do several prints of my art heroes, kind of a household gods series. One of them, of course, was Walter Anderson. The tricky bit, though, was that I was away from my home library, so I googled images of him instead of looking in my books the way I would have done at home. He looked, at least when they were young, strongly like his brother Mac, and Google lied to me and told me a photo of Mac was actually Walter. I did the print on the left, using images from his community center murals to surround the figure, and I was really pleased with the print. Sadly, later the very kind curator at WAMA told me regretfully that I had used the wrong photo from that day. Walter was wearing a pullover instead of a cardigan, and his hair was a little different. Since the family will see the show at the museum, I needed to be more historically accurate. So I carved away the buttons and managed to add some ribbing at the bottom of the sweater in places where the shadows were reaching up. The thing about printmaking is that you can keep taking things away all day. You cut away for the white in the print, and you leave the dark bits. Once you’ve cut away the dark bits, though, you really can’t put them back. I would have handled the throat and neckline differently if I had been starting from scratch. It’s a smallish issue, and likely no one but me will really look at it, but I’m left with a print that is less satisfying to me than the original.

So I’ve done two editions. Once you make noticeable changes to a block you can re-edition it and call it a new print. I printed what turned out to bee 44 good ones of the one on the left with the buttons and wavier hair before I cut more away. The pelican eyes fill up with ink easily (I try to clear them out between each printing), so I threw a few out (which happens with most prints). I’ve set an edition of 100 of the newer one, because it will be for sale in the museum store, and I’ve printed a first good batch of them. But I still think of the first one as Walter too, and if I have one out at home, that’s the one I’ll choose for myself.

I’ve been trimming, signing, and numbering the final prints for the show. I have a first batch of everything even if I haven’t printed the whole number of ones allowed. And I’m starting the long framing process. I’ve never done 21 for a show before, and I’m having to be way more organized than if I’m only doing a few. It would be easy to get confused and cut too many of one board size and not enough of another. So I’ve made myself a checklist. The categories are having the finished print signed and ready (almost all there), having the mat board cut (today’s project, and mostly there), the prints mounted on the mat board, having the Foam core backing cut, having the glass and frame assembled together (held together with a glued in spacer), and having the final framing finished for each piece. It’s going to be a marathon, and my intention is to chip away at it methodically while still holding some time for me to do creative work as well. I don’t turn the show in till late February, so hopefully that will go well. Next I have to clean out some storage racks to hold safely the pieces I’ve framed, because I have an occasionally hyper golden retriever teenager in the house, so my usual method of lining them all up leaning against cabinets in my butler’s pantry is out.