I’ve been choosing a word of the year and making annual art goals ever since beginning to listen to the #AmWriting podcast. They talk about goals you control (finishing a book, submitting to an art residency) instead of goals you don’t (getting a book published, receiving an art residency). Usually I have a pretty strong list for myself, but this year I am in month two of an eight month physical therapy program for POTS, which seems to be more and more associated with long covid. I am gradually feeling better, but my biggest goal for the year is to stick with the PT, the morning POTS routine (very slow starts), and other modifications that are making me feel better. The image in my mind is kintsugi, the Japanese form of mending pottery with visible cracks enhanced by gold or silver. The idea is that “whole” does not mean the same as “just like you were before.” You wear the cracks while becoming functional again in spite of them and with a different beauty. I don’t expect to get back to my pre-long covid self at this point three years later, but I am hoping for better functionality and ultimately more hours to use for my art again as I become better able to tolerate being upright again.

So “mend” is to remind me of that goal, to remind me that it’s ok to take the time I need to reach it, and that even reaching it will not mean I’m back to normal necessarily (though, man, that would be welcome). But it also has wider implications. I love to buy clothes at the thrift store and mend them to make them functional again. I love the visible mending trend that makes those mends a thing of beauty instead of invisibility. And I love the wholesale rejection of fast fashion in favor of reuse and environmental sustainability. Even larger, I hope we can begin to mend our country by reaching out with kindness to other people and beginning to knit those cracks together, but also by mending the places where the ideals it was founded on have gone astray. That’s a lot of work for one small word to do, but I am starting the year in hope for all of these things.

As always, I process things primarily through art, so I took this snow day to use one of my more recent wood font acquisitions (another second-hand passion) to do a small print on studio scraps to remind myself.

Memphis got insanely lucky this weekend, missing a dire ice storm by a matter of miles. We're still pretty sleeted and iced in at home, but the city kept power, and I am grateful. I took advantage of a quiet morning to print this new cat block that I carved a little while ago. I'm very dog focused, and Henry is my main muse, but I decided it was time to reach out to the cat folks a little. This is Gracie, my partner's cat, from a photo he sent me that felt utterly charming. Once these are dry I'll sign them and maybe add my small red chop with my carved initials, but I'll play with it on newsprint and make sure I like the placement before making a final decision.

In dog news, Henry and I clumped across the road to an open lot/informal neighborhood park and let him run around a little.

2025 was a super hard year for me personally as well as for a lot of folks in the broader world sense. Six is my favorite number, and I'm more than usually happy to turn the page. I felt good this week and did a little stand up printshop work for the first time in a while and just made myself a small marker for the new year. It's so fun to have wood type to play with when I get an idea. I'm glad I downsized my print shop this past year, but I'm equally grateful for all the beautiful type that has come my way over the years, especially from my mentor Cheryl, who gave me both of these fonts. I've got another small letterpress project lined up for when I feel good standing again, and I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime, I'm taking sketching walks in the forest and working on a new commission for Memphis Magazine, which thrills me.

I did this sketch back in January and have been wanting to make a print of it, so this is my current project. It's the grave of Rev. Washington just north of Earle, Arkansas, which is Carroll Cloar country for those of you who like Southern art. Rev. Washington was one of the first Black landowners who owned extensive cotton fields in that part of the world. His church is just up the road with its own lovely cemetery, but he constructed his own funeral mound out in the middle of one of his cotton fields, and the sight has stayed with me in my mind.

It's nice to have an intricate block to dive into -- once it's drawn to size and transferred to the block with carbon paper I can just dip in and out of it as time and energy serve. It's been a crazy year on a number of fronts, so time and energy are both in short supply just now, but I love having a project I can pick up and put down as needed. And something meaningful that I look forward to doing.

Here's the first proof, just in black to see how the carving is going.

After a bit more work I did the first color proof. I'm rolling several colors onto the block at once and blending with the rollers. This technique cuts down the number of blocks and number of printings that each finished piece requires. It works well if the colors are harmonious when blended instead of fighting with each other. I'll do some more combinations and gradations and see what I like best for the finished print, though each one will be a little different from the last due to the inexact nature of rolling multiple colors at once. I can generally keep them in the same ballpark though.

I finally finished the second snow tree from my January photos. They're crazy slow to carve, and I took a long break, but it felt good to get back to it in time for the holiday markets. This one is a companion piece for the first one I carved, both of them on 14x11" paper. Modest sized but intricate. (I would still be carving an 18x24" block this time next year if I'd tried something this detailed.) It was nice to pull back to a basic black and white design instead of trying to line up multiple blocks. I'm thinking about some more trees to keep them company, but in the meantime, I'm working on my delta angel, which is a bit bigger but less complex.

Here's the first of the snow trees.

Gill Books in Ireland found me and wanted to use one of my prints on a book cover, which is delightful. I love how they've laid it out from front to back, and I love Ireland, and I love that my art is on bookshelves over there right now. What a lovely lift for my art year.

Here is the original print (one block with four colors hand mixed with rollers in one go) and the original watercolor I did sitting out on Levisham moor in Yorkshire.

I've been working to update my website lately, and I've added several book covers to my illustration page. A Troubling of Goldfish is new this summer, my second for Corey Mesler who also owns (with his wife Cheryl) Burke's Book Store which turns 150 this year (!) and has supported my own books since I started. I'm delighted his publishers wanted to use my work. The tree on the grey textured cover is from the Book of Common Worship for the Presbyterian Church, USA. That's my biggest illustration job to date, finished several years ago.

The newest cover is one I designed for my Dad's book, Poems of a Green and Pleasant Land. Dad wrote his way through most of British and Irish history back in the 70's to 90's, before self publishing was easily available. It's felt great to circle back to this project and be able to put it together for him and have a physical book in his hands. The hard copy proof came today, and I'll put the order in as soon as the Ingram website finishes its maintenance this week. Burke's is going to stock a few for the history nerds out there, and I'm so grateful to them for keeping all our family books.

I'm continuing to play with small prints and varied backgrounds. The very back layer of both of these is the same simple, uncarved shape, yellow in the top and orange below. Then I put a second sky layer on each before adding the black figure block. It's Glastonbury Abbey on top and Stonehenge below. I've missed ancient places lately (though a visit to The Cloisters helped a lot!), and doing these prints was a way to revisit them mentally.

I like to do one small sized, mostly for me project in the summer. It's a good time to play before the fall shows ramp up. These are small and achievable sizes, and people may or may not follow me into my ancient stones preoccupation. I might or might not do full editions of any of them, but at the least I'll have a selection of small, achievably priced prints once the fall shows do roll around.

I got on a wild hare last week and started a whole series of small prints and interchangeable backgrounds. It all started with the small black and white print of Glastonbury Abbey that I did as an illustration for my dad's poetry book I've been putting together for him. I enjoyed doing a small, achievable project. It also was lovely to revisit a place from my past while I am stuck at home this spring and summer. I miss traveling, and it feels good to mentally revisit places I've loved in the past. I've long felt that I could extend a trip by making art from it on my return, keeping it present and lively in my mind, and I'm now tapping back into that energy by revisiting places from further ago. Glastonbury made me think of both the Tor nearby and also Stonehenge. I've been drawing out and carving simple backgrounds. I'm still working on a couple more, and I'm going to try some different colors with them (see the solid moon, versus the one with the grey spots, versus the one with orange added behind it, though I'll probably tone that color down a bit for the final version). I've only got single tests of the more recent backgrounds, but I printed a new batch of backgrounds today to start the process over again.

The first abbey I carved was intended as only a black and white piece, so it had a good bit of lacework carved out of the structure. I've carved a mirror image of it, more solid with see through windows, to test out as well. These are all just snapshots, not finished sketches since none of the prints are finished either, but I have enough to share the project taking shape. It's fun to see it beginning to make its way from a few color sketches into carved prints. Eventually I may add another place or two as well. The Acropolis means a lot to me after my summer in Athens, or perhaps the temple at Sounio.

I almost always start a small, experimental project in summertime. After doing all the very large Rowan Oak pieces last year, doing something small (and prints that don't have to line up exactly perfectly) feels light and easy. Just right for summer.

I've gotten a little bogged down in my current three block print, so it was fun to do this small fast one over the last couple of days. I'm still working on laying out that book of my Dad's poems, and there was one lone poem near the middle, bracketed by two really good pairs before and after, and instead of disrupting one of the pairs, I decided to just do a small illustration. We're keeping the book of history poems in chronological order, so I couldn't just shuffle things around too much. This is Glastonbury Abbey, which I've visited twice over the years, and it will accompany a poem about the dissolution of the monasteries. I'm really happy with how it turned out, which feels especially nice as I struggle with the other print.