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.

I printed and scanned in a batch of my antique letterpress ornaments this week. I'm working on a book of my dad's British and Irish history poems. He started writing them in the 80's, and it's much easier to publish something like that now than it was then. I want to be able to put the book in his hands. I'm considering using a few of these to fill in some empty spaces.

I've always kept printing for real, tactile projects and done my illustration work in watercolor and sketching. It has more recently occurred to me that I could use scanned in type or ornaments in certain projects as well. That Celtic alphabet I have that has almost all the letters, but only one of each, is barely usable as is for anything printed, but it's much more flexible digitally. Mostly I like making my own art, but the style and antique qualities of these might suit the current project. We'll see. It's fun to play, anyway, and now I'll have them ready if anything comes up to use them. I printed them in a reddish purple (my black letterpress ink has dried up at the bottom of its antique can), so I converted them to black and white after also saving the reddish version. Options.

I'm working on a companion piece to my first snow tree, but it's really slow carving with all those tiny branches. I can work on it for a couple of hours in the morning when the light is best on my print table and I'm fresh. Then I do some other work later in the day. I won't be able to proof it for several more days yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I'm drawing out a spring tree print with leaves on all those branches, which won't be fast (I mean, what carving is?), but which should move at a much better pace than this current one.

You can also see my muse watching me hopefully and waiting for a trip to the dog park.

I've been carving this one for weeks. With lots of interruptions, but it's still the most painstaking, intricate print I've worked on since the seagull murmuration for my show at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art. Fortunately for me, this one is 9x12" instead of 18x24". I've enjoying having something to dive into for an hour at a time while I juggle a ton of other responsibilities this month, and I finally have gotten it to the place where I could pull a print and see what it looks like. I had to get the entire carving roughed in so I wouldn't lose the delicate drawing on the block into a big smear of ink. I'm cleaning up and thinning out very slowly so I don't overshoot, so there's not any dramatic difference to see the biggest clean up will show in the path, but I'm still working on that bit. 

This is from a photo I took during Memphis's unusual, actual snow this past winter. Usually we're right on the ice line, but for once we got a fluffy, photogenic kind of snow. This must be the fourth print I've done of my favorite tree over the years, alongside who knows how many sketches, and I just couldn't resist her beauty all dressed up for winter. I should be done in a few more proofs with smaller and smaller changes as I go along. Soon...

We had a very short lived morning at the Pink Palace Crafts Fair today. About 10 people showed up to tour it. I hadn’t finished my tea before they wisely called in for the day. But it won’t be raining tomorrow, so we’ll be there Saturday/Sunday. Memphis, dig out your favorite Music Fest mud boots and come see us!

I have always loved those golden age British mysteries with a map at the front. Probably because my dad collects maps and often hand drew ones for us to follow along with from the back seat on family vacations. Since all the trees in the exhibition at Rowan Oak are actually on the grounds of Faulkner’s home, I thought it would be fun to give people the opportunity for a self guided scavenger hunt to compare the prints with the originals.

There are no prizes, but if there were, there would definitely be extra credit for Portrait III, which is by far the trickiest to spot.

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.