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Weebly, which hosts my website, has apparently stopped supporting the app on my phone that lets me upload photos onto this blog. Apologies first to the people who have subscribed and gotten several emails saying there's a new blog post that I immediately deleted because it wasn't working.
Today I spent my morning finding an Internet cafe and making the changes tech support told me to make. It's still not working. They have other suggestions that involve hunting down other tech support in a foreign language, but I don't want to spend all my time in Paris trouble shooting my website that they've stopped supporting.
So please check out my Facebook page for Martha Kelly Art instead. You should be able to search for and access it even though you're not on fb. (Again the limitations of having just a phone -- I can't seem to pull up the web address to link to without a desktop.)
One kind friend is offering to update my blog for me if I email photos, but he is off having a well deserved dance weekend at the moment, so it will be a few days. I'll have things here sporadically, but not as often as I would like. Thank you, Weebly. They've been busy making the interface less easy to use over the last few years instead of keeping it working. I'm going to go drown my frustrations in chocolate mousse now. Thank you all for reading my blog. I'm sorry I can't get it to work as I would like.
Addendum: fueled by some chocolate mousse, I managed to make the browser version in my phone work after a fashion. It's not great, and it's very slow, but I may be able to get some work up.
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I sat at an outdoor cafe today during sun, rain, and, and sun again while I did this sketch. I'm trying to do at least one full watercolor a day and hopefully come home with a show. If I get enough sun, I should be able to do more than that and still have some time to enjoy Paris.
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I got to Paris yesterday feeling good enough to take a walk and do some light sketching. I headed to Abbesses, not too far and one of my favorite spots, and wandered over to Sacre Coeur. I emphatically did not climb up the whole hill. Instead I sat in the sun and sketched a bit.
On the way home I sketched the public water fountain in Abbesses. You see these all over Paris, and they are not only gorgeous but sometimes very welcome for refilling one's water bottle.
On the way home I sketched the public water fountain in Abbesses. You see these all over Paris, and they are not only gorgeous but sometimes very welcome for refilling one's water bottle.
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I got to go do an illustration of the Redbirds game for the Memphis News, which won't be published till next week, so I can't show it. My editor gave me the press pass, though, and said I could also go up to the press level and sketch from there. So after I did my main illustration, I decided to enjoy myself by doing a little sketchbook work from the press box. So exciting to be up there watching the announcer work. Plus they had cookies. And a great view.
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I had a bit of time a couple of weeks ago where my scanner wasn't talking to my computer, so I'm still catching up on those sketches. Here are a few wildflower sketching days. I'm under the weather this weekend, so I'm going back to post these now, since my walking is curtailed at the moment.
That was my warmup on the phlox. I went back to do a fuller landscape a few days later. I'm drawing out a print for this one now.
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I have finally finished my Creation triptych, right up against the deadline of hanging my show at Memphis Theological Seminary yesterday. It feels good to see it up on the wall and hanging together as intended. The titles for the pieces are "Firmament," "Every Living Creature," and "And It was Good."
Unlike the vast majority of Adam and Eve paintings, where they are separated by the tree, already in the process of reaching for the apple, or being expelled from the garden in shame, I wanted to include their embrace as part of good creation, part of the full range of wholeness and celebration that God intended for us. As a church we have tended to shy away from Song of Songs and not talk about the bit of Ruth where she is sent in to the harvest floor to seduce Boaz. There is body positive, celebratory sexual space in the Bible, and I see that as one of the gifts of creation when used in loving ways that don't harm other people.
I appreciate working at a seminary that is willing to have these discussions and hang such art.
Unlike the vast majority of Adam and Eve paintings, where they are separated by the tree, already in the process of reaching for the apple, or being expelled from the garden in shame, I wanted to include their embrace as part of good creation, part of the full range of wholeness and celebration that God intended for us. As a church we have tended to shy away from Song of Songs and not talk about the bit of Ruth where she is sent in to the harvest floor to seduce Boaz. There is body positive, celebratory sexual space in the Bible, and I see that as one of the gifts of creation when used in loving ways that don't harm other people.
I appreciate working at a seminary that is willing to have these discussions and hang such art.
The show also includes watercolors and pen and ink drawings I did for chapel bulletins through my year at MTS. Above is the Creation series from back in September that the print triptych is based on, and below is Exodus.
One other body of work I included is my letterpress posters. I acquired a printing press and some type about the same time as I started making liturgical work from the Biblical text. I had always been a pure landscapist before, and I have so enjoyed playing with letters and words and images together. There's also a great power in putting words into print, one reason printing presses are so often attacked during revolutions of various kinds. It's meant a lot to be able to typeset and print phrases that catch my heart and my imagination at various places in my life. This work is different from the liturgical pieces, but I feel they are in conversation with each other artistically, and they come together to celebrate a new phase of my art making.
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These have been published now (see the feature on the Memphis Daily News site here), so I can post the watercolors. My monthly sketch feature for the Daily News was the Calvary Waffle Shop. I got to eat peppermint ice cream and call it work. So utterly delightful.
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I spent the week at NaCoMe church conference center outside of Nashville with a group of marvelous women. It's a beloved place of my childhood. My sister and I went twice a year with our own church and once a year with our grandmother's church, to maximize our time there. One glorious year I also managed a week-long canoe camp. It continued to be special to me well into adulthood and is where I first learned to play music, though due to changes in my life (and changes in the camp, which stopped having single rooms for singles) I hadn't been back in some years.
My college roommate talked her church into getting me to lead an art journal workshop at her women's retreat. She also very kindly snagged the back bed around the corner to save for me. I've mostly stopped going with my church because now solo adults have to be in a bunk room of four or five, and that's just not an appealing option to me. I work and live alone and prefer one tiny, poky hole of my own to shut the door when I'm ready to sleep than a fancier cabin where I have to share. Sadly the camp has let their lodge with the smaller rooms fall into disrepair, so it has been a less attractive option to me lately.
Kathy's church took me in so very warmly, though, and made me very glad to be there. I had a ball making new friends and also exploring again the familiar and long loved terrain. Kathy and I walked over to the lake before dinner on Friday and did a little sketching.
My college roommate talked her church into getting me to lead an art journal workshop at her women's retreat. She also very kindly snagged the back bed around the corner to save for me. I've mostly stopped going with my church because now solo adults have to be in a bunk room of four or five, and that's just not an appealing option to me. I work and live alone and prefer one tiny, poky hole of my own to shut the door when I'm ready to sleep than a fancier cabin where I have to share. Sadly the camp has let their lodge with the smaller rooms fall into disrepair, so it has been a less attractive option to me lately.
Kathy's church took me in so very warmly, though, and made me very glad to be there. I had a ball making new friends and also exploring again the familiar and long loved terrain. Kathy and I walked over to the lake before dinner on Friday and did a little sketching.
The tiny Merle chapel was renovated in honor of a longtime friend's mother, Merle Oxendine, who always used to join us at camp. Idlewild (my church) built pews and created stained glass windows of wildflowers for the chapel. We had an active stained glass group at the church for a good many years. It's always been one of my favorite spots at camp.
I also revisited the cabin built for my mom at the end of the weekend. After a disheartening spring with so many of the trees we gave in her memory being torn out
of our park by the Memphis Zoo to make room for their overflow parking, it was good to see her cabin well cared for and used in a way that brings people joy.
One of my favorite places is the wildflower walk down the road a ways. There are a series of limestone cliffs with Dutchman's breeches and trillium growing on top and columbine dangling gracefully off the sides. I climbed up to check on the wildflowers and do a little sketching. The trillium were ENORMOUS.
The parts of the weekend you can't see from my sketchbook were the meals and discussions with fascinating women, sitting around and singing gospel songs on the porch in the afternoon (they actually wanted me to play banjo for them, which was great fun -- usually I just sit home and sing with it on my own), and a late night campfire out under a dome of stars.
On the art front, I enjoyed spreading the good news of the water brush, a nifty, self contained, easy to use tool that has changed my life. I can always have a tiny watercolor kit and brush ready to go in my purse, and I sketch so much more than I did before. Everyone dived in gamely and sketched with me (which can be an intimidating thing to do, since as a society we don't encourage people to draw after middle school). I think a few people may continue, which delights me. A lovely weekend.
On the art front, I enjoyed spreading the good news of the water brush, a nifty, self contained, easy to use tool that has changed my life. I can always have a tiny watercolor kit and brush ready to go in my purse, and I sketch so much more than I did before. Everyone dived in gamely and sketched with me (which can be an intimidating thing to do, since as a society we don't encourage people to draw after middle school). I think a few people may continue, which delights me. A lovely weekend.
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I've been continuing to work on my creation triptych lately. It's taking me a lot more than six days for sure. I've got the sky piece done (that's first proof above, but it's quite close -- I just took more yellow out of the moon).
I've been printing a lot of blue skies lately.
I've been printing a lot of blue skies lately.
Below is the final of the animal panel and a later draft of Adam and Eve for the third panel. I'm still edging blue back out of the figures. You never want to cut too much at once, since you can't put it back, and I'm hoping I didn't get too extreme last night. I printed blue today and will do the top layer to find out once that dries. This is definitely the slowest one, because the blue is the middle layer instead of the top one. With the other two panels, the only other layer is a light yellow/brown, so it's less of a crisis what happens in the figures with that. The blue is the top pattern layer. With Adam and Eve, the blue can bleed into the figures, so I'm having to really proof it, check it, carve some more, proof it again. Hopefully this last round will work, because I'm hanging the show at the seminary next week, and this is my centerpiece. I'll also hang the watercolor sketches of creation (five total, the number of Wednesday chapels back in September, not the days of creation...) that inspired this print series. It will be fun to have them shown together.
I'm not posting as much as I like to right now. Between the printmaking and some deadlines and seminary work and switching to a new (to me) computer which wasn't talking to the scanner well, I haven't been either sketching or scanning in what I do nearly as much as I like to. An ongoing crisis in my park, where so much of my painting happens, has also taken a ton of time lately. It's lovely to be able to schedule my own time instead of punch a clock. When something that important surfaces, I can take a lot of time to help. But it's all piled up to make me feel pretty frantic lately and to have less art creation time than I like.
I'm strongly looking forward to a return to Paris in a couple of weeks. It will be marvelous to have three weeks solo just to walk, paint (hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can bring home enough work for a show this fall), and look at art. I do love getting away. I always work intensively when I travel, but it's the best part of the work. The book keeping, matting, schlepping work around, and anything else is eliminated, and I just get to paint. So lovely.
I'm strongly looking forward to a return to Paris in a couple of weeks. It will be marvelous to have three weeks solo just to walk, paint (hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can bring home enough work for a show this fall), and look at art. I do love getting away. I always work intensively when I travel, but it's the best part of the work. The book keeping, matting, schlepping work around, and anything else is eliminated, and I just get to paint. So lovely.
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Here's the first proof of a print based on the creation of the animals. I'm working on a triptych, if they look right together, or perhaps just a series of three, for my upcoming show at Memphis Theological Seminary. They're based on a series of watercolors I did for MTS worship back last fall.
The sky needs to be lighter and bluer and more gradated, but I'm overall happy with the carving. I started a second proofing round last night. Below you can see the carving underway and also the bottom block proof, with one main gold color but pink rolled in spots for the pig and cow udder. I've also got an Adam and Eve underway, with a moon and sun drawn out but not yet started.
The sky needs to be lighter and bluer and more gradated, but I'm overall happy with the carving. I started a second proofing round last night. Below you can see the carving underway and also the bottom block proof, with one main gold color but pink rolled in spots for the pig and cow udder. I've also got an Adam and Eve underway, with a moon and sun drawn out but not yet started.
