Martha Kelly Art

I've been trapped indoors for a solid week now, and we're hoping for relief tomorrow. I took a quick walk with a mask on and snapped a photo of the orange sun, but it was too awful to stay outside and sketch. The bottom smokey view is from my indoor work table window, though, and the blueberries are from life, done sitting at the kitchen table. I really love the berry stands out here. Such joy. 

I've mostly been ignoring my smaller sketchbook lately and working in the "Quarantine Journal" sized one instead, but here are a couple of recent(ish) sketches from my daily walking path. I'm catching up on my scanning this week as I also finish the images for the book. 

In big news yesterday, I bought a batch of ISBN numbers and registered the first one for P is for Possum. When I was working on the Mr. Darcy book(s), I really wanted the legitimacy and reach of a professional publisher, but my writing chops weren't strong enough, and that's a hard world to break into. For this book, which is so very local in scope, very specific to Memphis's Old Forest, it made sense to me to do this like my calendar and have it printed to sell locally. I also have no shows at all this year (though some lovely folks have sent commissions my way), thanks to the pandemic, and I really wanted something ready for the holiday season.

The other upside is being able to control the printings as I need or want, instead of that decision being in the hands of someone else. It's a lot like the legitimacy of a gallery giving you extra exposure, but you also lose control and autonomy by buying into that system. I may try for both publishing and commercial galleries again at some point when they make sense for my career, but I have to say that registering my own book yesterday felt both exciting and powerful. It's fun to give birth to something you've created purely on your own terms. I'll be registering with the Library of Congress as well, which will allow it to be bought by libraries, and I'm considering other platforms after the print version comes out in November. There's a big learning curve, but it's also exciting for a lifelong book nerd like me to be a small part of all this. 

I've been doing a lot of book work lately, as I wrote in my last post. It's satisfying to get it to a finished place, but I haven't been MAKING art lately nearly as much. I'm also taking much more time taking care of my muse and studio helper Mr. Darcy. He's doing well, but it's been a little up and down. So there have been days off and naps and things like that. But we had a lovely outdoor visit with friends over the holiday weekend, and the friends brought flowers. I try to always draw flowers that are gifts since then they give me joy for much longer. I love flipping a sketchbook open and seeing a small birthday bouquet or vase of tulips from art visitors. So today I just made time to draw these gorgeous dahlias. What a thoughtful gift. 

I’m doing some proofing today, away from my regular set up. I wanted to see how the rv and lettering were going on the Explore print, so I just proofed the bottom half or so. It’s a tall skinny print, and I haven’t gotten to the top part yet. There will also be a color block behind it, but my lining-things-up-and-keeping-them-straight stuff (“registration” is the technical printmaking term) is all back in Memphis, so I may just wait on that part till I get home. This one is also quite tall, 24”, so the press would be helpful as well.

I did try a double layer for this second print, much smaller, so it felt less hard to manage, but the make-shift set up I tried moved on me. You can see that the one on the left especially moved as I printed. It gave me some helpful information anyway, but I may wait till home to do much more work on this one. I’m trying to decide if I need two blocks for the two blues (and you can see that if I do, they need to be curved a bit at the join), or if one block rolled carefully will be just as easy. I want the round light to be larger in the final version, but it’s always easy to take more away, and you can’t put it back, so I started conservatively. It’s the dock light across the lake from me at my first camping stop in Missouri. It’s nice to take your muse on the road once in a while and get some new views. The RV print is our campsite in Idaho a few days later.