Martha Kelly Art

I spent a couple more days doing intricate and steady work on my current prints, but tonight I was missing my sketchbook. The Memphis Urban Sketchers had a "virtual sketch crawl" today (Saturdays are our normal days), so I wanted to join in. I sit on the sofa a lot in the evenings, but this is my other favorite spot. I'm grateful, so grateful, that I had spent the last year working to make my house a warmer, more pleasant place to be. This corner is one of my new happy places.

I just framed the poster last month to remember a really pivotal show for me. It was a solo exhibition of Berthe Morisot, and she's my new art hero. She just flat out went for it. She was showing in the salon in her 20's and then showed at every Impressionist exhibition that they put together themselves. Frustratingly, fully half of the show was from private collections. Museums just weren't collecting her when they were sucking up every available male impressionist canvas. And her work is amazing. One critic called her "the angel of the incomplete" because of her confident, calligraphic style.

After I saw her show, plus another current woman artist show, also at the Musee d'Orsay, two different friends challenged me to go for it if what I wanted was another museum show. My first, at Dixon, was a career moment, but I'd been having this "what now?" feeling ever since. I don't see ever landing in the Orsay, but Morisot's gumption and drive made me redouble my efforts, and I was awarded a show at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art for 2022. Which, given the current world situation, is perfect. And I'm so glad for something really exciting to work towards just now. It's been a huge bright spot for me lately.

I’ve never known that much about abstract painting, and I’m generally drawn to more figurative work, but I’ve been looking forward to getting enough space from show season and crazy family stuff to get over to Dixon to see this exhibition. It’s a stunning one. I’ve been twice this week and could even be tempted to go back another time before it closes on Sunday. Rothko is my absolute favorite of the abstract painters, but I had fallen deeply for a Helen Frankenthaler painting in Omaha a few months ago, and there’s a less totally stunning but still lovely one in this show. There’s also a gorgeous de Kooning, and I loved the second show of just Dzubas paintings (an artist I wasn’t previously familiar with) collected by a local businessman. It was a stunning retrospective of four decades of his work, and a number of them sang to me. I loved seeing the progression too. My only quibble with the main abstract show was that it was only one painting per artist. I really like being able to see two or three of the same artist, compare them together, get more of a feel for the body of work. Their survey of women artists earlier this year (with many less famous names — I was already somewhat familiar with a number of the abstract painters) was even more disorienting that way. I wanted to see more than just one. It’s almost jarring to move artists with every painting and have no compare and contrast ability. But that’s a small complaint about a stellar show overall.

I went back the second time with every colored pencil I own to try to capture a little of the texture of the Rothko, and the Stamos had also been calling my name. I did one small sketch of each. The de Kooning was too intricate for me to take on that day, and I didn’t have any of the right colors for the Dzubas pieces I liked best. With watercolors I can mix anything, but pencils just are what you have. The last two pieces are both by Dzubas.

My partner was digging around on YouTube and found this video of me talking about My Own Places, the landscape exhibition I had at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in 2015. They invited me as a current landscape artist to do a solo show as a complement to their Southern Impressionism exhibit. It was the highlight of my career so far, and it was fun to revisit talking about the way I paint and carve prints and how those two media differ from each other. And how keeping a sketchbook has radically broadened the work that I do.

I've been painting like crazy since I got home, and I don't tend to push myself to sketch if I'm making art exhaustively in another direction, but I did finally get my sketchbook back out Sunday, and it felt good. I had biked to church and found myself with extra time, since I usually walk instead. I wanted to do a quick sketch of the chapel with the paraments I had sewn a few years ago. It turned into a muddy mess, though. So after church I cycled over to the park to spend a little time before meeting friends for brunch, and I decided to add trees. Trees make everything better. It was fun to sit on the other side of the park than I usually do -- faster to get there on my bicycle.

Then I continued on to Overton Square for jazz brunch at Lafayette's. All three of Di Anne Price's "boyfriends" now play with a guitarist there every Sunday. I so miss Di Anne on piano and singing her songs, but it's good to still have Sunday music with the guys.

After doing two in gouache, there wasn't much time, so I did one fast, small watercolor just to have the day in my journal as well. I was missing line and wanted to play with my green ink a little too. The two gouaches are on freestanding Kraft brown paper. It's always fun to sketch Elizabeth in her nifty sketching hat.

The weather has been delicious for getting out and sketching lately. Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Elmwood, the historic cemetery in Memphis, which is one of my favorite places to go. I love the enormous magnolias paired with the angels and upright monuments. And then the Memphis Urban Sketchers exhibition started at Dixon, so for a third time, I have art in that beautiful museum. I went to check it out and see the large show of the usually in storage permanent collection there (they have much more than they can show regularly and still have traveling exhibit space). Of course I had to sketch While I was there. I’m always drawn to Ceres. I just can’t resist her graceful curves. And the tulips are fabulous right now.

I've been mostly DOING Inktober even though I've been bad about posting here lately. Most days I've managed one ink sketch, but the majority of my work this past week has been tons of computer work (taking my attention from scanning for other purposes) to get the Mr. Darcy Goes Home book and the related counting book ready to send out. I've got a mid November deadline to be able to submit to my dream publisher without needing an agent first, so I'm working flat out to get it ready. I'll show a couple of reject sketches from that process here, but for now, a few more Inktober sketches to show what I've been up to around the edges.

Above is the Side Street Steppers. Below is one sketch as I was stopped at a train on my way to a printmaking demonstration at Dixon (I'll be doing several more of those) plus a quick sketch waiting in line at Home Depot, buying materials to shore up my floor to receive the type cabinet (see the last blog post).

Plus I always enjoy drawing treats, as a way to keep enjoying them, and also remember nice days I've spent with other people. Here is one of those, just to round things out.

I ran some new business cards today, using my small cut of the Ceres statue at Dixon Gallery and Gardens, since I'll have a piece in their group show there from now till April. Jude Dippold is visiting and took some video of me running my lovely old Chandler and Price Old Style. You can see the treadle action in the video (and, very authentically, hear the baseball podcast I'm listening to as I work -- I thought he was taking still instead of a video). He nicely waited out a batch of swearing to get a clean one. I was having trouble with lighter than usual paper sticking to the ink and gumming up inside my rollers. My paper supply place went out of business last year, and I haven't found a good replacement yet. So I still look a bit tentative in this clip. I finally got a rhythm going later, but it took me longer than usual to settle in for this run.

Jude also got a couple of photos of me working the day before, typesetting the card and laying out the paper placement in the press. You can see more of his photos (usually landscapes, and quite stunning ones at that) on his tumblr blog. He's got some fun Memphis shots up at the moment from his time here.

I dropped my phlox print off yesterday for an exhibition at Dixon Gallery and Gardens. They're having a retrospective show for artists who have exhibited in the Mallory/Wurtzburger gallery there. I am delighted to have work hanging in that museum again. The opening is this Thursday, January 19, from 6-8pm with music and food. The show will be up through April 9 to complement a show of current American art by the Crystal Bridges museum.

I'm still scrambling around with my show a bit, since the opening is tomorrow night (Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, 5-6:30pm), but I did manage a bit of sketching. The weather is fixing to change, so I took yesterday afternoon to go hang out in the forest with my sketchbook and drink in the last of the gorgeous weather. It's good to have the flexibility to do that and reorder my priorities as bit as the weather calls to me. And it was fruitful. I might try an oil from this first one. We'll see.

Then tonight I went to Dixon to see Wayne Edge's new show and hear some of my favorite jazz guys play at the reception. I couldn't resist sketching them too.