Martha Kelly Art

This past weekend was the Pink Palace Crafts Fair, a longtime fair in Memphis, and I was the demonstrator for printmaking. It’s special for me to be out there. I started going to the fair with my parents as a kid, I remember getting to choose my special Christmas present just as I got old enough to fall in love with the silver handmade jewelry, and now I get to be a part of it. I don’t generally do outdoor fairs, and I don’t own a 10x10 tent, nor do I want to, but this fair puts me safely inside an enormous tent (which was key this past weekend) and lets me sit out and see all my friends and neighbors passing through the show.

It’s fun to sit and carve in my lap and let people see the laborious process (though deeply satisfying) that goes into each carved print. I like talking to the kids who love art, the teens who have done a block or two in school art class, and adults of all stripes who make art or appreciate it. I even get a little work done! This past weekend I worked on five different blocks. I had one large one going already and did a bit more on it, though you hit a point where damage can happen to something intricate if you’re in and out of concentration all day. I started a new large block for most of Saturday, but again, I felt like I needed more concentration to finish that one out. So later in the weekend I jumped to a smaller block based on a recent gouache painting of cherries. That gouache and all its friends are still up in my still life show Daily Pleasures at Playhouse on the Square in Memphis through November 3rd. I’d been thinking for a while of trying this one in a print as well, and I grabbed a scrap piece of Lino and drew it out Sunday morning to give me something new to work on. Above are yesterday’s color tests. I’m hand rolling several colors at once and printing it all in one go, a simpler form of color work than carving an individual block for each separate color.

One last tiny block I did was a snail, based on a sketch I did out west this summer. I had my sketchbook out with me, as I always do, and happened across that sketch. I always need new note card designs, so I’ll get this one printed for the later fall shows.

Here is one of the larger blocks I was also working on. The other hasn’t progressed far enough to really show yet. I’ve only got a small percentage done, even though it took a while to get there. Both are continuing my series about water that is mostly oils, but I’m working on getting some prints to go with the larger paintings. This one still needs a bit of work in the water, where light meets dark, but it’s mostly done now.

Alongside the gouache studies, I’ve been doing some more standard (for me) journal sketches along the way. Here are some from the last several days. Two of them were bicycle trips to the bakery to have a treat. I’m a late bloomer on a number of fronts, and I got my first bike out here. I never learned to cycle as a kid, and Concrete is a perfect place to catch up. There is almost no traffic in town along with quite wide streets, and best of all, there’s a green line that runs through the center of town (to within a couple of blocks of anywhere I want to go) and also goes out of town and as far as I could care to go. I can pack up art gear and take off on my new bike, a second hand cruiser. The next image has my bike in the background and bakery tea in the foreground. I wanted to record this moment in my journal.

Here is the view a few miles out the trail from town. It’s been my regular walk here, but I can go a bit further on the bike and paint new places.

Plus another blueberry pancake sketch from Perks diner here. A totally awesome place. Flower at the grill collects heart shaped rocks like I do and has begun to make me heart shaped pancakes when I come in. <3

I arrived out west on Tuesday evening, and I’ve done a few sketches, but largely I’ve been taking some time off work. I’ve been sleeping a lot, catching up with friends, and taking care of emotional business instead of career business. That’s always a bit hard for me, so I was happy to read this opinion article (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/21/opinion/summer-lying-fallow.html) in the New York Times on the importance of rest and renewal to the creative process, as well as life in general. So in that spirit, here are a few scenes from my usual daily walk out here in Concrete, Washington. The trail is an old railroad bed, up above the highway. It’s an easy way to walk out of town, wide and flat and almost unpopulated. I sometimes see another person or two, but not often.

I made it through three shows and two sets of houseguests (all delightful to see) in a week and a half period, and I was due for some serious vacation. I’m out in Washington state, sleeping late, reading lots of baseball news, hitting some truly great thrift stores, and revisiting some favorite places in an unexpected streak of sunshine. I’ve managed exactly one sketch so far, and I’m trying not to put too much pressure on myself. It’s sometimes good to take breaks.

I have been taking photos as I walk though. The frost is amazing, especially since I stay right along the Skagit River. I’d always heard the term “hoar frost” in the British novels I read, but I hadn’t been sure what exactly it was. It turns out that mist and fog rising off rivers in cold conditions can freeze in almost sculptural ways. I’ve had fun taking some photos.

The frost in the great meadow at Rasar State Park (one of my magic places) extends only into about a third of the meadow and burns off as it gets further away from the river. Part of that is the deep valley that keeps out most of the sun. The bottom right photo above is just about noon. I can see why fairy tales so often came from the northern regions. It’s not a little uncanny to walk out of strong sunshine and into blue dimness in the middle of the day. It feels like entering Narnia and the land of perpetual winter, where you walk over an invisble boundary into fairyland. My dad brought me a book of Scandinavian fairy tales when I was little that was one of my favorites for years. I’m feeling its echoes on this trip.

I also went down to the pebble beach at the end of the park, which is one of my favorite places. It’s stunning in winter in a completely different way. It was a gorgeous way to spend a morning, and then I headed back to the land of heating and good, local pizza after being out in the cold for a couple of hours.

I got behind on my scanning coming back across the country. Here are some of my last week sketches. I went to the Cascadian Farms roadside stand for my favorite ice cream on my last day. I also realized I hadn't scanned a previous sketch of that place. I've been enjoying the direct watercolor, but I also am still in love with this green ink and pulled it back out for the garden. It's a lovely place to go and sit.

I did more driving and less front seat sketching than I had going across in the spring, but I did stop at a couple of the parks and sketch. Here is Pompey's Pillar, a place with Lewis and Clark history and also a beautiful spot in Montana along the Yellowstone River. I met a neat couple there. It's fun traveling with a dog and a sketchbook -- both are introductions to people you wouldn't otherwise meet.

My other stop with my sketchbook was at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, a beautiful place to spend the morning of the 4th of July. We had 9 hours yet to drive after leaving the park, so I only did one sketch, but it was fun to see the moon setting over the rock formations and have a bit of memory of that in my journal.

I've really enjoyed having this month challenge of doing direct watercolors. It's expanding my watercolor skills and making me think about using the paint differently. I've also learned some other techniques from the book Direct Watercolor by Marc Taro Holmes. I did several more over the weekend, and the one just above is my favorite so far. It's a view I'd been looking at and meaning to paint for a year now, so I also had it firmly in my mind. It was great to get to finally have a go at it. 

Below is a front porch sketch. I love sitting and sketching from a front porch. These are alder trees at the place I was house sitting over the weekend. 

I had people waiting on me for the next two. They were nicely patient, but that's always a distracting force fighting inside my mind with the work I'm trying to do. I end up self editing, even if it's not being asked of me. So these were quicker (and also a simpler subject matter). Two views of the same bay from the same pebble beach. The first one is Chuckanut Mountain, whose shape I had also been looking at as I drive around the region and wanting to paint. I'm hoping to get downriver and take another swing at it at some point.