Martha Kelly Art

It’s been raining some here, keeping the weather thankfully cool and giving me a chance to do some painting indoors. I went to two big flea markets I love over the weekend, but I also came home after each one and did a small painting or two. Here are the still life ones. I’m very happy with the Mille feulle one, and pretty happy with the peach. At the bottom is the Cherokee purple tomato. My oil at home of several of those is my favorite of all the still lifes I’ve done so far, but this gouache totally bombed. I got it way overworked, and I don’t think the composition was that strong to begin with. I also struggled with the teapot one and walked away, but I may go back into that one again and see if I can spruce it up just a bit. A couple of artists I really admire on fb sent me encouraging words about that one.

Here are several sketches I did at the time in my sketchbook that I’ve pulled back out as reference material. Watch this space for more to come. If I can’t find it a home, I’ll put it on my own website.

I’ve been working more slowly this week, struggling a little with a cold, so stand up painting has been out, but prints lend themselves to sitting quietly. I’ve carved this one pretty fully at this point. It’s based on one of my larger waterscapes, but I liked the image enough to want to play with it in carving as well. I’ve tested it in black and white and in color, and now all the options are hanging in my work room while I ponder them and decide what I want the final edition to be. I like several options, so I think it will end up a “varied edition” where there are a total number of final prints, but they don’t all look the same. That way people can choose which they prefer.

I also pulled out an older block I had abandoned several years ago and did some more work carving it. I like the moon, but it needs something to go with it. I’m pondering using it with two different other blocks I already have that I would like to revisit and use in different ways. I tend to think about one single image at a time, and collaging prints like this is good mental stretch for me.

So lots of smaller things are happening at once around here, which is great for prints, because you can let one project dry while you work on a different one for a bit.

I got my Chandler and Price printing press (see previous post for a video of it in action) in 2010 just before Valentines Day, and the first block I carved for this new love of my life was a valentine. I try to do one every year to celebrate this magnificent beast. This year I did two, one more traditional, and one for Mr. Darcy, my love and muse.

I'll be having a Valentine Open Studio Sale this Tuesday evening. It's a happy hour affair, 5-8 pm at 1780 Autumn Avenue, Memphis, so come have a glass of wine, see my new prints (the Memphis bicentennial pair should be ready by then), see Melissa Bridgman's new pottery, and meet Katrina Perdue. She's a knitter and has collaborated with Melissa on knitted cosies for coffee cups. She'll also have a selection of great hats.

I can safely post holiday commissions now. It’s fun to get to participate in people’s special occasions and help with preserveing memories. I did three versions of this house, one with its current paint color and two with the color the kids grew up with. I also got to paint one adorable dog.

The Memphis Symphony did an unusual concert last night. Our new conductor Robert Moody noticed striking parallels in the devil at the crossroads stories of Stravinsky and Robert Johnson and decided to do a mashup. He used a chamber group and brought in bluesman Vashti Jackson to both be narrator and to play Johnson's blues interspersed with the Stravinsky pieces. There was also dancing and and an actor and film bits shown as well. It sounded a bit bizarre, but it really worked. My companion noted that both musical forms have a strong percussiveness.

I had hoped to mix some ink that would be a lighter flesh tone in a brush pen (those are hard to mix in the dark of a theater), and I tested it at the top right before going. It was a sad failure and ended up both grainy and with the turkey basting quality of old TCM colorized films. I ended up just doing a series of line drawings in various pens, though I did add in the red suede shoes and matching tie of Mr. Jackson. It was a fun night.

I took the whole weekend off and went dancing, which was flat out marvelous. I’ve also been doing some work on my house, so actual art work has been thin on the ground lately. I have done breakfast sketches the last two mornings, though, and I’m easing back in. I’m both using and drawing a new-to-me teacup I found brocanting over the weekend. It’s Prussian and hand painted and the most delicious blue. It feels nice to be beginning days by drawing again.

After the SCBWI (kidlit group) conference in Nashville back in September, I got seriously back to work on the Mr. Darcy picture book. I've changed it a lot. It's no longer his Odyssey across the country but the story of his getting a home as a rescue dog. I also got excited about board books and created a counting book based on a walk we had this past summer where we saw one deer, two snails, etc.

The protocol for submitting a children's book is to make dummy books (handsewn with many rough sketches and a few color pieces to show what finished art would look like) and send them off in the mail. Art editors don't want a fully finished book because they'd like to collaborate a little and feel as though there is space to make changes. I took a moonshot today and submitted both dummies to Candlewick, my dream press. They were at the conference, so I was allowed to do that (as an attendee) without first finding an agent.

Above is an out take, one of the rough sketches in pencil and water soluble graphite. Below are the two dummy books about to get packed up to go. Fingers crossed. This is a whole new, highly competitive world, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I got to go to a great house concert over the weekend. My banjo mentor had seen a group from Johnson City called Bill and the Belles and liked them enough that he arranged for them to play in Memphis when they were passing through on the road. They were marvelous. Old time swing, lots of songs from the teens and twenties, a good dose of Jimmie Rodgers, and a bunch of new songs that sound delightfully old. As usual, I sketched as well as listening. This group is used to artwork too. They're the only band I know that has an original linocut of the group for sale along with the usual cds and stickers. It was as old timey as they are, so of course I came home with it, along with my own sketches.