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A friend invited me to the Bread and Puppets touring show as it passed through Memphis (and offered me a ride to make it easy), and I'm so glad. It was the surrealistic, visionary, joyful, touching, challenging about the state of the world carnival. They called it the Upside Down World Circus, and that was pretty exactly right. They referenced Medieval plays and mummery on the website, and that also felt right with performers on stilts, live music (brass plus accordion and drums), and huge papermache heads and creatures. A dozen or so performers, an old school bus, an absolute ton of props and banners, all out in a field in an underdeveloped part of old Memphis. Unexpected and delightful. They had their own lights, no sound, and a well-practiced but off the cuff set up. I started sketching (the larger watercolor piece) before they started, mostly at dusk, and it soon descended into almost complete darkness. I enjoyed trying to catch bits and pieces of the performance as it danced, trotted, and cavorted past, but nothing can truly capture something like that.
There is also a strong printmaking component, since the beginning of the troop almost 50 years ago. They believe in art that everyone can afford. They company sells hand printed posters, banners, cards, and zines, and then there's a table for the individual performers to sell their handmade prints as well. I mean, puppts, printmaking, and bread. So many good things packed into one evening.
I switched to just a pen (my new stub nibbed Twisbi with Wearingeul Inferno ink) in my smallest sketchbook for all the subsequent sketches. Just impressions to help me remember and mark an unusual and delightful evening.
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I've been working on my website and on archiving lately. I had a site for a long time that I could manage myself, but Square bought out the company and basically destroyed it. I've switched over to Articulation (drag and drop, excellent customer service), and I'm rejuvenated about my site. I'm also grateful not to lose 16 years' worth of blog archives. That all came over seamlessly, which had been my biggest worry about trying to find a new host. It's a huge weight off me.
I've been dealing with a lot of family papers as my dad declines, and it's got me thinking about my own papers, especially my art ones. I'd really like to be able to archive my work for the future. Now that my website feels secure I'm beginning to work on preserving my sketchbooks one by one. I've scanned lots of individual pages and have them saved by location (home, neighborhood, other places I've visited), but I don't have them as full books anywhere. I'm just beginning to flip through book by book, save each page in order in a separate folder, and archive them on my website so people can see them splotchy colors, bad pages, and all. So far I have my September to December 2025 sketchbook and my May to October 2026 one. I'll have to do more scanning for my dedicated travel ones – I'd usually get home and just scan the best pages – but my daily sketchbooks have almost all the pages scanned already, so it's more organization than anything.
Ultimately I'd like to find an archive outside my own site to keep them all permanently. An archivist friend of mine said that digital is an easier sell to institutions than having to maintain and store physical items, which makes sense. I'm going to try to do it a bit at a time and get my files in order.
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I have a new favorite spot to visit in St. Louis – Papillon Press, a letterpress/stationery/pen lovers paradise. I often get myself some new art supplies in the summer to play with, usually on trips, but I haven't been anywhere, so this year it was September instead. Papillon has a whole wall of bottled inks (I love fountain pens with converters or piston filling wells so I'm not limited to cartridge colors), and they have a book of swatches of all those inks on real paper so you're not dependent on a printed label. It's a delight. They also had a Twisbi pen, which a friend of mine had highly recommended, with a stub nib, not great for fine writing but tons of fun for sketching. So I ended up with one pen plus three new bottles of ink. Plus a delightful small linocut by one of the owners.
They also had a Chandler and Price letterpress in the window, similar to the one I used to have, so I could chat pens and presses both. It was a perfect stop.
So of course I headed out to Tower Grove Park to try my new inks. The first one, with the watercolor, is Inferno ink by Wearingeul, dark but not black, and I tried it with paint to see if it would be as overwhelming to watercolor as straight black is, and nicely it's not. I used a dip pen since I had already put green in my new pen, and I liked the outcome. I may find a pen to put this into for regular use. I also use waterproof ink with watercolors, especially in more controlled illustrations, but it's fun to have more spontaneity when the ink mixes with paint in my sketchbook.
Next I tried my new Twisbi pen with the Sailor Shikiori green. It's hard to find greens that aren't acid and unnatural feeling. I love Diamine's spring green, but I was drawn to this darker tone. I tried using water to wash over it, and I wasn't in love with that, but I think it would work well with paint on top and move a little but still hold its line. That last one I planned to paint over, but I ended up liking the line drawing and left it as it is. A rare moment of restraint for me. I'm looking forward to using all of these supplies more now that I'm home again.
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I went to Dixon today to spend time with the Cleveland Vuillard before it leaves this weekend. It's fun to go to a show enough to just hang out with your favorite paintings instead of feeling you have to give everyone equal weight the way I do the first time through. I called on Steinlen, Forain, Manet, Renoir, and Whistler. I'm almost as sad about losing the cool Parisian cafe menu they created specifically to go with this show. I'm still masking in public for my health, so a crowded cafe isn't good for me, and the air is also bad outside this week, but the auditorium where they have their lunchtime lectures was unused. I ordered the salad Nicoise I've really enjoyed there as well as some lovely hot tea and had lunch by a Carroll Cloar painting I really like. Afterwards I ran into one art friend and then made a new one as well as seeing various friends who work there. It was a lovely art day out.
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Memphis Urban Sketchers met at Crosstown a few months ago, and here's a bigger, longer sketch I did inside the listening lab then with the same marker for one pop of color and a fountain pen/brush pen combo.
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While I had the sketchbook out I leafed back through it. I've been using a big one more than ever before this year, lately with the dip pen. I came on this sketch of poppies using Neo-color watercolor crayons plus some paint (more farmers market flowers from back in the spring). It has felt too careful and anemic every time I flip through this book, so while I was sitting there with the dip pen and case of colored inks, I pulled out the Diamine Ancient copper that I love but that can sometimes be too much. It was perfect for this job, since I already had the paint down, and it wouldn't be washing everywhere while I painted.
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In my late 20's my dad was newly single and going on a ski trip/legal conference but didn't want to go alone. All of us in my family knew that I was never going to be a candidate for downhill, with its speed and athleticism, but Dad talked me into trying cross country. I knew I was going to be terrible at that, but I didn't want to also be embarrassed by my total lack of wind and stamina, so Dad and I started walking daily to get ready for the trip. As it turned out, I never could stay upright long enough for wind or stamina to be an issue. I did, however, find myself a happy winter occupation of going out snowshoeing with a sketchbook in my pocket.
By the time the trip had rolled around, I was already losing weight (slowly) and feeling physically better, so I kept up the walking and didn't actually diet (I hate going hungry), but I made some substitutions in my eating habits that felt sustainable long term. I lost the 50 pounds over a year and a half or so and managed to keep them off, finding a balance between eating what I enjoy and moving enough to offset it.
Then menopause hit, followed by long covid, which has meant an interruption to the daily 3 mile walks I did for decades, and it's been more of a struggle. I work at home right next to the kitchen and I'm a stress eater, so periodically I fall into putting more things into my mouth than I'm physically hungry for. When that happens, I do a day or two at a time of a food journal. The rule is that before I eat something, I have to draw it, so it makes me more mindful. It's also positive and satisfying activity, rather than a punitive measure.
I don't hold myself strictly to these food journal days. It's meant to be mindful rather than punitive. Sometimes unexpected things happen during the day, and I fizzle.
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It was a perfect start to the day. I followed up with second tea on the back porch reading the paper and then getting back into the graphic memoir, which I'd stalled out on for a few days. I'm at almost 50 pages, and I'm still so much enjoying that project. I've been doing much more of that than sketching from life lately, so it's nice to have something exciting to share here. I have some hope of getting the memoir published, so I haven't wanted to pt much
I was glad I had taken a couple of photos before I started sketching since she got startled halfway through. Usually my owl pics with my lame, old iphone are super grainy, but she was close enough I actually got a good one. What a treat.
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Beautifully, the museum cafe has designed a special menu just for this show. I treated myself to a salad Nicoise outside with the trimmed trees that also feel like Paris and the Rodin sculpture in the background. It was good to see art and take time to sketch again, and I did a big, loose piece in my biggest sketchbook with a dip pen, some green ink, and a bunch of watercolor on top.
That evening was a bonus urban sketchers outing to Shapeshifter Art School. They have two new shows up in their galleries, and it was such pleasure to just relax and sketch and talk with friends. I ended up sketching our founder Elizabeth Alley, who is also a founder of the school. She has been such a light to the art community here in Memphis.
