I’m doing some sketching in Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. My favorite park away from home, and it’s such a pleasure to walk and sketch here.

I've been working hard on the show the last few weeks, but I have taken the time to meet some friends for sketching several times recently. It's good to get back to the immediacy of watercolor after prolonged time doing prints. These sketches are from Crosstown (above) and the shady back deck of Memphis Pizza Cafe.

WKNO fm kindly hosted me again today (thanks, Darel!) on their daily Checking on the Arts show to talk about the Faulkner's Trees exhibition at Rowan Oak and a little bit about my newest book, a small paperback called Portal. You can click below to listen. It's always fun to get out and talk to Darel about my mostly solitary work.

I will get it in a frame and have it ready to hang with the rest of the show on Monday. I've also carved and printed a small gallery card for folks coming through the museum to pick up and have my information available. This is one of the handful that print two tone when I add a second color once the first is established. I love the variegated effect. I usually get three or four of these before the inks blend to a solid color again, so most of the cards will be a little less wild, but I always love these the best.

I had SUCH a good time staying at this tiny cabin right by a small river. I sketched and read and sketched some more. It was perfect. Here's the second half of the sketches from my two night retreat.

I've given myself two small vacations/exhales in the past month instead of the longer trip I had hoped to be taking by now. I've mostly been nose to the grindstone on the Rowan Oak show that hangs this month, but I did take two smaller trips recently to relax and exhale. The first trip was to a cabin just outside Mountain View on the site of the Herpel P.O., right along a small bayou with large stones sitting right down by the water. I sat out there with my sketchbook, journal, and book. I had every meal sitting by the water and watching the birds. And I walked up the quiet road with my sketchbook to visit more wonderful trees. It was heaven. This is the first batch of those sketches. I was there two nights and part of a third day, and I sketched a lot after doing so much print work and missing my sketchbook.

I am late with everything right now, so here are the sketches I finally got scanned in from Hamlet a few weeks ago. It was utterly remarkable. Eliza Pagelle played Hamlet, and she was not only the finest Hamlet I've seen, but she also went to Juillard and played sections of Chopin at the grand piano on the stage throughout, which perfectly fitted Hamlet's self examination. Stephanie Shine directed with such warmth and humanity, bringing Ophelia in silently early on to establish the relationship before we see it distentegrate. The Ophelia/Laertes/Polonius family was deeper than I've ever seen, as was the Hamlet and Horatio bond. The early 20th Century costumes by Austin Blake Conlee were remarkable. I loved Nic Picou paired as Claudius and the Ghost, back and forth between his self important military outfit and a ghostly gas-masked Great War apparition, and his wonderful queen could have stepped out of a Fred and Ginger movie. Truly the whole cast was marvelous. I can't say enough about what this wonderful company is doing in Memphis.

My main work lately has been my upcoming Faulkner's Trees exhibition. I'm trying to get final prints of everything, get started on the framing, and finish carving the last two prints. I'm working slowly with my fatigue making an unwelcome return, but I'm chipping steadily away at it. We haven't set a hang date yet, and I'm grateful for Rowan Oak being flexible. It will go up some Monday in June so it's in time for the Faulkner scholarly conference that meets there in July. I'm so grateful to them for wanting my work for that.

So carving and printing every morning while I'm fresh. There has been lots of tea involved.

I've got the first couple in frames already. It's nice not to leave all of that till last, since it's my least favorite part of the process.

This is the last piece I'm working on. It's three colors, and  I'm carving on the last block now.

I've been a lot at home lately working slowly on the last couple of Rowan Oak prints and fighting a bit more long Covid fatigue. But this week I got out a couple of lovely times and hopefully am on the upswing again. Sunday Christina and I went sketching in the neighborhood, an old Masonic temple building that now houses a restaurant. The weather has been perfect, so that night I took myself out for a patio dinner of fish tacos and sweet potato fries with Henry and my book and sketchbook. My friend Chrissie says to always get the pink drink -- just have a celebration. So I did.

Then today after doing some errands with my Dad I still had energy to go see the new shows at Dixon. They're great. As I was heading to leave it started raining, and then it just poured. It was gorgeous, and there was a handy bench on the covered porch, so I settled in to draw and wait it out. I'm grateful to my friend Elizabeth, who started the Memphis Urban Sketchers, for training me to carry a sketchbook. I sometimes get caught without one, but I'm almost always glad when I have it along.

I've been trying to do at least slightly more restrained sketches lately, but I was ALL over the page with paint and pattern this weekend. But I had a good time with both, even as I watched them spin slightly out of control. Saturday was the East Buntyn Art Walk. I visited a few friends who were exhibiting, had lunch at the fantastic Flipside Asia food truck, and settled in to sketch with Christina. We sat on the curb with our feet in the gutter as per usual, both fascinated by the lovely little field stone church in the middle of Memphis. I had forgotten my black waterproof pen I've been using a lot, and I didn't have a brown one, so I dove in again with the Diamine Ancient Copper. I forgot that I'd intended to use it for natural scenes but NOT architecture because it bleeds so badly into the woodwork I'm trying to leave white. But there we are. I'd like to go back and try again sometime. It truly is a lovely church.

Today I did mostly printmaking, but I did take my sketchbook along for my walk in the forest. There were some great clouds out in the park, but it was also super windy, so I kept going on into the forest where there would be much more shelter. Again I covered the whole page, but it was nice to be outside in the sunshine doing some sketching. I've been working so hard on prints that I've barely sketched since the Eclipse. It felt good to get back to it.