I had an honestly, really good day yesterday. I just finished the other half of that avocado, and I'll miss them for a while, but lots of happy things are happening. I'm feeling more locked in for my work. I got to take part in a Zoom Bible study class with my favorite teacher who had moved away years ago. Purely due to everyone being trapped at home, he's teaching a class online that I can access now. AND baseball! Sort of. KMOX in St. Louis (I'm a total Cardinals fan) had the brilliant idea of replaying the last 7 weeks of the 2011 season, day by day, game by game. An occasional highlight rerun is one thing, but having the announcers for company each evening is going to make my world a lot more familiar and comforting. Plus Mike Shannon has the most infectious laugh I know. I'm so grateful for them doing that. I'm also grateful to be cosied up in my quiet house with work I love, enough food, and a snuggly dog. I'm ridiculously lucky.

I'm still really enjoying doing some colorful, quick sketches as I adjust to the new world normal. I also turned off the news today and caught up on my favorite writers podcast #AmWriting. It's three friends talking about the self directed creative life (including lots of nuts and bolts advice that transfers over to lots of creatives, not just writers), and it's warm, funny, and super informative. I've learned a ton over the last few years. Last week's episode was on websites, and it made me consider how mine looks on a mobile phone. Fortunately my Weebly platform converts itself to mobile. I love having a site I can control, update, and expand without knowing coding. But I hadn't considered the question of which information rises to the top as my two columns on the main site merge into one. Now I've got that fixed for better information sooner.

In the process, I scanned in my recent sketches. I've been mostly just snapping iphone photos and throwing them up lately, but boy howdy, are they nicer when I take the time to scan them in. So here are the next installments of the Quarantine Journal, and I decided to give it its own page as well. They'll pop up here first, but there will be an in order narrative on the QJ page.

One of my important preparations for staying home a while was to stock up on sketchbooks. I was out of two different kinds of bigger ones, and I also wanted to support The Art Center, a fantastic local art supply store that is central to my life. I’m still really excited about my WAMA exhibition (and very grateful it’s scheduled for two years out with the way the world is going!), but I’m also having trouble focusing on that work. I’ve been working on my first large sized print (18x24”, my biggest ever), and it’s incredibly complex. My brain hurts, and I have been reluctant, in a way that is not at all normal for me, to sit down and carve. Art is usually a haven for me, and I’m remarkably lucky that my daily life is largely intact — I work at home and live with a great dog in a stable, welcoming space. I can still take walks and bike rides in the park and holler at friends from a safe distance. I’m remarkably lucky, but even so I’m struggling to digest the way the world has turned on a dime in the period of a week or two.

So yesterday, after a little work on the block, I decided to pull back and make cheerful art. My sister started the semester in a drawing class, which we’ve had fun talking about over the last few months. I haven’t sketched with waterproof ink in a long time, but I was recommending she try some pen sketches with washes of color. This is how I started in watercolor, but then I got more serious about the paint and minimized my lines to either more subtle fountain pen ink, that melds with the paint, or pencil. I decided it was time to play a little more and do some colorful, cheerful sketches of my daily life during these times.

Urban sketchers, known for sitting out on the sidewalk and doing “reportage drawing” from life, has a new hashtag. #uskathome. Sketchers around the world are shut in their homes and having to find new subjects, drawn from their daily lives. It’s been fascinating to watch these glimpses of quarantine around the world. I should still be able to sketch in the park some, though I’ll definitely be moving further off the trails before settling down. Not everyone is keeping the distance that I feel is safe, and when you’re sitting down with your art supplies spread out, you’re a bit of a sitting duck for what the world sends. I’ve known that for years. It’s usually wonderful to have unexpected conversations, but there are also predatory men who take advantage of the situation. This is a whole different level of threat, so I’ll be careful. But I also want to just document my days and how I’m spending them. Here are the first three drawings in my new journal. They helped. I felt tremendously better going to bed after sketching in the evening.

Boy howdy, y’all. The world changed fast. So I’m hunkering down to make art and am feeling continually grateful for my WAMA show to work towards. It gives me something positive and productive to focus on and it also means that I’m in a hunker down and make art period anyway instead of a cancelling shows period. I’m deeply lucky to be in the haven of a family house with a fantastic dog and a beautiful forest nearby to walk in. There’s enough space there for people to spread out. Watching my friends in the denser cities in Europe I feel very lucky indeed.

I’m also grateful that I’ve spent time over recent months trying to make my home the place I really want it to be. I had my birthday in mind as a deadline. I’ve lived in this house 25 years and have just lived with many inherited, not ideal things. Like the wallpaper in my bedroom. I decided I wanted to change it now so I can enjoy the next 25 years instead of waiting until I have to move. There are a couple of things on the list that I haven’t gotten to yet, but I have painted my bedroom, cleaned various spaces, framed and hung artwork that has been sitting around waiting for me to get to it, and bought a few things that make me really happy, like a stained glass panel for my landing window. My house feels really good to be in now, and I’m grateful to my friends who are wizards at creating warm, welcoming spaces for inspiring me to finally move in this direction.

Yesterday before dinner I sketched my birthday flowers from my dear friend Melissa Bridgman (bridgmanpottery.com). She so kindly left them by my side door, and I love being able to capture them to keep them forever in my sketchbook. Looking back through the years there are other birthday bouquets from her as well. Such kindness.

I enjoyed yesterday’s dawn sketch so much that painted my new-to-me Frankoma teapot over breakfast today. I’d been collecting the teacups and other bits at antique malls. They feel so good cupped in your hands. But I hadn’t found a teapot (these pieces were made mid century at a factory in Oklahoma), so I treated myself and ordered a small one, just right for one person, online. It’s fun to sketch new tea things, and I love the colors and lines of these.

This was extra important today because I’m in day two of painting my bedroom, so very long overdue, and it’s a big project solo. I knew I’d be working on that with all the rest of the daylight and wanted to make a little art first. The #AmWriting podcast and Facebook community is big on “morning pages” for writers — something that’s purely yours, to loosen up for the day. I don’t mind having the energy to dive straight into good work, the way I did right after breakfast on that print yesterday (before starting the painting marathon), but I do really enjoy the looseness of an early sketch. I love that podcast for how they think about living a creative life but also handling all the business and marketing necessities that go with that. I’ve learned a lot from them and enjoyed their company in the process.

Ok, back to work. Here’s where I slept last night. The gray is primer. Color today and trim tomorrow is the plan. I hope to be done for the weekend and back to painting I enjoy more, but it’s also satisfying to be making my space somewhere I’ll really enjoy being. And doing it myself.

It's been a little crazy around here. I'm working on a series of prints, helping my sister plan her wedding, and trying to get some long needed things done around my house. (I'd ALWAYS rather make art than do house repairs/chores.) So I'm behind on scanning in sketches and getting them up here. Here are three from over the holiday season, done while running around with friends and family, plus, of course, sitting with Mr. Darcy in the evening. I'll try to get some more sketches ready to go soon. I've done some that I really enjoyed recently, but I'm not going to let the perfect be the enemy of the good today. Here's what I can manage, and I won't save them until later for more...

I just hung all these for this weekend’s Open Studio, but it occurs to me that some of you might be too far away (or too busy) to make it to midtown Memphis just now. Here is the batch of small edible still lifes that are available this holiday season. The two oils have deep gallery sides and are ready to hang, and all the watercolors and gouaches are framed and ready to go. The oils are 8” square, and the others are in the 10-12” range. $225 each. It’s fun to see them hanging up all in a group in my hallway, but I’d be happy for anyone who wants to give the present of an eternal eclair or perfect avocado to take one home.

It’s been show season, and this weekend is the final one for me for the holidays, and always my favorite. If you’re around Memphis, please come out on Saturday or Sunday (the 14th & 15th) from 12-5 both days at 1780 Autumn in Midtown. As always, I’ll be joined by Melissa Bridgman and her gorgeous pottery. I recently hung up all my finished oils from the last year or so to look at and invite folks in to see. It’s fun to see them all together, dressed up and ready so to speak. I’m hoping to find an out of the house showing for them at some point, but Open Studio visitors will get a sneak peek.

I also have several recent prints and one set of brand new ones for this show. After my Daily Pleasures still life show this fall, I took the cherries image on the “choose joy” plate (one of Melissa’s!) and made a print. The show had been all paintings, but I really liked the image and wanted to play with it graphically as well. It’s a single plate, but I’ve been hand rolling different color combinations on it. Each one is a little bit different, and it’s been fun to play with them. Come see us if you’re able, and if you’re not, I’ve also been shipping prints off in a good quantity, and there’s plenty of time to get them before Christmas if you’d like to give some original artwork. My online store is at https://squareup.com/market/martha-kelly-art. I’m selling what’s left of the still life gouaches and oils too. I haven’t added them all individually, but if you’re interested, I’ll be happy to put up any that are in demand as needed. See the bottom photo for a sample of them. Give an eternal eclair or macarons with no calories!

I pretty much spent the day on Broad Avenue on Saturday. It’s one of Memphis’s newer art districts, and they were having an art walk/festival. The Memphis Urban Sketchers met up at 10 at City and State, the coffee shop at the far end, and beautifully, my visiting sister went with me. One of her college friends is one of my sketching friends, and we had a ball. It was coldish to start, so we hung out at City and State a good bit. Above is a sketch I had done there a couple of weeks ago but not posted. Below are the people studies I did while we were all hanging out talking.

I was working in gray fountain pen and watercolor. I enthusiastically put down a bunch of wet paint in my regular art journal (5x5”), so I switched over to the 8” square one after and did a larger more connected spread. Elizabeth was wearing stripes, which are always such fun to draw. Vicki and Nancy were sitting with her, and I caught Nancy with a brush in her mouth as she worked.

All of this was accompanied by chai. Very civilized sketching. Afterwards a group of us walked all up and down the street, checking out the shops and art shows. The last three bought fantastic bowls of paella and sat out in the sunshine eating and visiting. It was an excellent day.