The High Museum in Atlanta has an exhibition of Georgia O’Keefe’s New York era paintings, a broad selection of her work, but clearly (above) I was drawn to the skyscrapers. I highly recommend the show to anyone who can get there. I had a whirlwind trip. I’d pondered going before the snow, and clearly that was a bad idea. Then I thought about going next week, but the forecast when I checked looked ominous again, so Monday morning over breakfast I decided that that was the day. I had scouted out a garage apartment in walking distance of the High that was only available until Thursday, so I made the reservation at 7:30, threw some things in the car, and was out by 9:00.

I’ve been feeling for a while that I was stuck in a long covid rut, partly from fatigue, partly because of a fear of reinfection, and partly because it became very easy and comfortable to stay home. Having learned covid strongly disagrees with my particular biology, I’m still masking in public and miss the dancing I used to do. But I chose Explore as my word of the year and set myself a task to go somewhere new each month, even if it’s close to home. Museums are great because they’re not too crowded, and there isn’t that focus on food and drink, plus they feed my soul. I loved my Crystal Bridges/Nelson Atkinson trip last fall, and I’d like to do some more museum visits. I been once to the High around college age, but it’s been so long that I counted it as a new place. Piedmont Park certainly was. As with my fall trip, I brought along food, stayed within walking distance of the museum, and never moved the car (more key in Atlanta than some places). I went to the museum both mornings but walked in the park afterwards (and even the first night I got in). That rhythm of walking and looking at art and sketching really feeds my creativity. I also saw two old friends I hadn’t seen since before covid, which feeds my soul.

I did three museum sketches, two park sketches, and one early morning full moon sketch off my tiny balcony. There was a lovely large table and good light in the apartment too, and I did a bunch of Henry in the snow sketches while I was there too. Trips often get my sketching into overdrive. I’m working on a new graphic essay, maybe even a book, from my photos of him in the snow. It was an excellent three night getaway, and I’m so grateful I could just go.

After years of using a square format sketchbook that opens up to a strong horizontal, I fell in love last year with a more upright version, slightly larger than my small square sketchbook but smaller than the larger watercolor version I had been using. It didn't feel as time consuming to open and just do something in, so it became my easy go-to for almost all situations. The smaller square book (5.5x5.5"), though, fits beautifully in my small purse, though, and I enjoy switching up formats sometimes. I'm trying to remember to reach for it and use it as well. Here are a few recent(ish) sketches in that book.

I've slowed down on the sketching as we've hit both some rain and some busy days, but I did get in this across-the-fields view of a farm down in the Skagit River delta. I love that area. The walk-in scale of the farms and the rows of poplars with large mountains and even bigger skies rising up as background. There aren't a ton of good places to pull over and park, and I rarely get a chance to sketch down that way, but this was from the nursery that we'd visited the previous week. We made a second stop to revisit their gift shop and let me do this sketch of a view I'd been thinking about ever since I was there. The linework is in Kaweko Paradise Blue ink that was my find of the summer. I like the way it melts a bit with the paint I put on top. 

We also went on into Anacortes and got the last Sunday New York Times paper from the bookstore there, which is the only place in the region I've found that carries them. I'm happily reading on it this week, spreading it out till I get home to my regular subscription. I do love a real newspaper with breakfast.

We've been making the rounds in Washington, visiting favorite restaurants and bookstores while I'm here. We took the girls to lunch at Slough Foods, a charming spot on a slough with outdoor seating and fantastic grilled cheese sandwiches. A few days later we visited the LaConner Brewing Co., which has a great rotating selection of hard ciders, and I tried their pizza for the first time, which was excellent. I've eaten more cheese in the last week than I have in the last month, but that's what vacation is for, I guess. 

We also stopped at a fun nursery with extensive grounds, an antique schoolhouse building, and a decidedly UK feeling gift shop. I'm still thinking about the Aran sweaters there, but I confined myself to sketching. Yesterday was two rainy soccer games, cheering on the girls, and hanging out with family. It was lovely. I'm feeling rested and ready to dive back into shows when I get home. 

Rasar State Park is one of my favorite spots in Washington. It has forest, beach, river, and meadow with mountain views. On an unusually sunny afternoon for late October in the PNW I headed there to walk and sketch and drink in a bit of sunshine. There's a perfectly positioned picnic table, lovely for perching and sketching, that I drew the overall mountain and cloud view from. I did a couple of trees on a smaller path.

The tree watercolor uses Diamine Ancient Copper ink to its best advantage. I forget occasionally and try to use it with buildings, and it bleeds all over beejeezus, but it's perfect for the organic nature of trees. The day had a ton of moisture in the air, and the paint took forever to dry, which meant it would often bleed into the color next door. That totally worked on the tree sketch, a little less so on the landscapes, but it was an interesting challenge. The odd one out is a walnut ink sketch with a dip pen of a nurse stump. The stumps of fallen trees will often "nurse" a new tree growing up and out of them, and the visual effect is dramatic. I also love the symbolism of new life, or new opportunities springing forth out of destruction, as has happened more than once in my life. 

​I walked three miles and did four sketches, and it was a total win of an afternoon. 

I'm taking a second quick trip before the holiday sales start in earnest. Washington state is a little drizzly some days, but yesterday I caught a lovely sky walking across the boardwalk into Anacortes. It ended up being a perfect four mile walk that ended at Pelican Bay bookstore. I hit the Watermark bookstore too, for a New York Times, which I have to drive an hour for up here, so it was a pleasure to get the Sunday one for several days' worth of reading. I also hit an antique store on the way home and found a really beautiful set of bird china, cup and saucer, cream pitcher, and a sugar bowl with no lid, but it's perfect for setting the tea bags in after pulling them out of the pot, and I hated to strand it by itself. I've never seen china like this before, and it was just too lovely to leave. I did a celebratory sketch last night that got a little muddy (it's been good to get back to sketching after several turnaround days at home with lots of business to take care of), mostly because I chose a very bleed-y blue ink to start with, but it was still fun. 

Day Four of my museum trip was back in the Nelson Atkins. I went through the remarkable Hokusai exhibition, which included his teachers, peers, and modern artists influenced by him as well as reams of his own work. It was stunning. I drank it in without sketching, moving back and forth and revisiting favorites before I exited.

The museum cafe was much more crowded on a Saturday, so I bought a drink and another excellent scone to supplement the apple I had brought and took it out to a front patio shaded by cherry trees. I love the shuttlecock sculptures and took some lunch break drawing time before diving back in. I revisited favorites this last day. The stunning, dark Caravaggio of John the Baptist had been calling me since I arrived, so I took the time to settle on a handy bench and sketch it. Later I was wandering through the Egyptian section and drawn by this life sized relief from Nimrud. I sketched one of the museum goers with it. I had meant to include more, but people were so kind about not blocking my view that I really didn't get the chance. The black stone sculpture of Horace also enchanted me. I could spend a week in this museum without sketching everything I want to. I've made a commitment to myself to do more art trips within a day's drive of Memphis. It's so renewing for me to take time to sit with great art. I've been missing my European trips through covid, and I hope to get back sooner rather than later, but I should absolutely take advantage of the things closer to home as well.

It was an early closing day at 5pm, and the light and evening were lovely. I sat out on the lawn and drew the shuttlecocks with more of the museum facade. I was tired, and it wasn't very good, but it felt nice to respond to all the art I'd seen by doing a little more sketching before driving home the next morning. What a treat of a trip. I met some lovely people that I wouldn't have talked to if I'd had a companion with me. People in groups are their own small bubbles moving through space. When you're alone, and often when I'm sketching, people feel much more comfortable having a conversation, and I had a great couple of conversations that started with my asking a museum guard a question as well. It's an unhurried, wide open way to walk into the world. I love trips I take with various friends and family, but I always love a solo trip too. Such a luxury to do exactly what is calling my name in any given moment.

Friday morning I got up early and drove the three hours from Bentonville to Kansas City. The Nelson Atkins is a spectacular museum, and I'd been wanting to get back the last couple of years. It feels like one of those grand European museums with a spectacular collection housed in a palace built expressly for art. Kansas City was lucky enough to get two enormous bequests, and the trustees agreed to work together, right as the rest of the world was selling off art to try to survive the Great Depression. I had no idea such a museum existed within a day's drive of me until I stumbled into it a few years ago on an unrelated road trip. Magnificent is not too grand a word to describe it. It's the kind of place that feeds my soul.

It also happens to be nestled in a lovely parkway system in an old neighborhood that reminds me of Memphis. I found a place to stay where again I could park the car and just navigate by foot around the area, my favorite way to travel. I spent a lot of the day moving slowly through the collection, but I had

I went back to the Momentary for Kristine Potter's Dark Waters show the second morning in Bentonville. I really just wanted to sit and absorb it. Sketches from photos are never going to be fantastic, but looking at something in a detailed enough way to draw it helps me see it and remember it better. The most successful sketch is the one of The Balladeer where I backed up and got the setting as well, with those shadows slanting along the wall beside him. It was fun to do. I also did a sketch of the pair of photos of Naomi Wise's two gravestones (she was "Omi Wise" in the ballad). Amazing that you can visit that spot centuries later.

I had a whole plan to eat lunch at a fancy pizza food truck halfway along the walk up to Crystal Bridges, but they weren't open, sadly, during their posted hours. So I ended up with a wrap from a market and an outdoor table, which wasn't bad. There's a TON of construction everywhere in Bentonville, and you do get the feeling that the corporations behind the town are pushing development big time, but they are including a bike trail up the middle of town, lots of mountain bike trails, and lots of pedestrian amenities, which make it a pleasant town to be on foot.

In the same spirit as sketching the photos, I did a sketch of the Mark Rothko at Crystal Bridges. I couldn't get the colors just right in the pencils I had (they want you to sketch in pencil instead of paint), but I've enjoyed sketching him in the past as well. There are such subtle edges and textures and overlaps that it's easy to skim over unless I really slow down. Truthfully I might have sketched the gorgeous Hopper skyline across water, but there was nowhere to sit, and it's a crazy busy museum. One of their best features is lots of truly comfortable benches and even sofas, and there was a sofa in front of the Rothko, so that won out.

After revisiting all my favorites from the day before to spend more time, I toured the Frank Lloyd Wright house that's been moved to the property. It's a small family home, so I'm not sure it's really typical of his work, but it was fun to see one in person. I loved the huge high windows of the main room, but he seemed intent on making an extra large contrast with that space and had dark, low, heavy ceilings and very narrow passages everywhere else. The rest of the downstairs (upstairs is off limits with too delicate a staircase for all the traffic) felt like a below decks in a boat. It's not a house I would want to live in, but it was fun to see. It was a gorgeous day that I had spent largely indoors, so I sat out along the forested art trail after and sketched the house from a bench below it. Such a lovely day.

I took myself on a museum trip last week that I'd been trying to work in all spring and summer. I finally made it the last week of Kristine Potter's show Dark Waters. Good to have a deadline. I spent two days in Bentonville and two days on up the road in Kansas City, since I was that close already. The Momentary in Bentonville was the primary destination for this photography exhibition based on murder ballads. I had seen a single image in Oxford American last year and immediately ordered her book, but I wanted to see it on the walls, and I'm SO glad I made that effort. It was a remarkable installation. A cafe table set up with a video screen of an open mic ballad singing greeted you as you walked in, and the murder ballads themselves followed you through the exhibition. I'm usually not a fan of video installations in museums, but this was exactly right.

A luthier (guitar builder) was, perfectly, one of the museum guards for the show, and we had a great conversation the second day I was there sketching. He said a lot, really a lot, of people just didn't get the show at all. But I was raised on murder ballads and play clawhammer banjo, and it was a perfect fit. A glorious display of Southern Gothic but with an incredibly timely (sadly always true) commentary on the danger of being a woman in a world of men. With the Olympic runner just murdered by her boyfriend (set on fire) and the Avingnon woman raped by 80 men while her husband drugged her for their and his pleasure and invited them in to do violence, this show about the dangers of trusting men is all too current. One old time singer I heard do a concert said what she has learned from ballads is never to go down to the river with anyone named Willie.

There was deep and great beauty amid the menace though, as there is everywhere. Anyway, I loved the show and visited it two mornings in a row to sketch. After lunch both days I went to Crystal Bridges and toured their collection, and then I walked home. I loved being able to park my car for the two days and walk everywhere. Such pleasure. It felt a little like Paris again -- walking, looking at art, sketching, and walking some more. I think and digest art while I'm walking, and I see things I want to draw.

The first evening I celebrated all the art I saw by sketching the wonky old tree out the window at sunset. I had a lovely bank of windows with a small breakfast table that was perfect for perching and sketching and tea. What more could I want really?

Here are some images from Dark Waters, photos first, and then a short video to give you a sense of the ballads playing behind. I can't say enough how powerful the exhibition is, and I hope it gets another showing I can visit down the line.