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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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One of my favorite spots to stop by in St. Louis is the Hill Antique Mall. I've found some great prints there, a silk nightgown, and a set of 8 McCarty bowls for a ridiculously low price since they were out of the geographic range where people know what they are and how much they're worth. This time I found some Payne's grey cowboy boots just my size. And for the first time I stayed for lunch. Oliva is the restaurant sharing a building that has a truly enticing patio with an old school arbor that makes me think of Greece (though clearly they're thinking of Italy). So many happy flashbacks, especially since I'm in the midst of revisiting my summer in Greece for my ongoing memoir.
It had been raining off and on, so I had most of the patio to myself, but I was lucky to get to sit and paint the arbor with only a drop or two landing on my page. The clouds protected me enough that I could sit across from it and get the view instead of engulfed underneath it. It was a crazy busy scene with a ton going on, but it was fun to dive in and do my best. I used Diamine spring green ink with a dip pen and watercolor on top in my biggest sketchbook. The staff were so hospitable and excited on a slowish day to see what I was doing. One kind woman took my photo once I was finished and sent it along. The meatball sandwich was as fantastic as the ambiance, so I will definitely be repeating this experience next time I'm in town.
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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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My favorite Airbnb in St. Louis is the Rabbit Hole, right across the street from Tower Grove Park, my favorite place to walk and paint. It's a converted 1918 garage and run by the hosts in the main house who have also turned into friends. I've sketched it several times over the years from different angles, and this trip I sketched it again.
The first one, in my biggest sketchbook, is a dip pen in Diamine golden brown ink. I had meant to do watercolor on top, but a friend dropped by just as I was laying out the main sketch. By the time the visit was over, it was darker than I had hoped, and by the next day, I decided I really liked the loose line drawing as it is, with its big white open bed at the center, so I left it.
I did do a second version, smaller and in gouache. I keep seeing artists I admire so much do amazing things with gouache, and I've been wanting to try it again. A trip felt like a good time to dive into an experiment, and I had a good time. Last time I tried, my papers all curved and cracked, but I've learned in the meantime to let it dry either taped down or on the watercolor block I used (as in this case – a 6x8” block, and I just travelled home with it still tight and flat). That seemed to work, so I'll look forward to doing some more when I come up for air from my memoir, which is still taking up most of my creative space at the moment.
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I love this neo-gothic style of architecture. My lifelong church Idlewild Pres is in this same vein and shares a quarry with Rhodes. This place apparently shared an architect with Rhodes and had slightly blonder stone, but it felt like a mini-me of a familiar place. The arches and slate roofs and the glow of the stone all called me. In spite of my familiarity, it took me a few sketches to get my sea legs with this place. The first two were in Inktense pencils, which I've been enjoying lately. I think there just wasn't enough definition in that first one, with the wide view of so many different elements. The pencils felt better in the more limited sketch of a pair of arches.
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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.
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In my more restricted last few years I have been missing Europe badly. I love traveling places where the history is old. I love being surrounded by Medieval buildings and carvings. The Cloisters was such a balm for me. It's a crazy mish-mash, but it is so beautifully done that it utterly works. Barnard, a sculptor, lived and worked on the continent in the early 20th C and became a compulsive collector of Medieval carved stone. He bought a whole chapter house in France that had been reduced to usage as a barn. He bought three cloisters, none of them complete but with enough original pieces to put together evocative and beautiful spaces. Every door and doorway in the place is historical and different, but the stone structure that houses all of these disparate pieces is so simple and sensitive that it all feels almost inevitable. Rockefeller saw Barnard's collection and donated this museum that brought all those pieces into one living building. I miss the time when billionaires built museums and schools and libraries, but we continue to be richer as a society because of the ones who did.
Another thing that feels European is the way the indoor and outdoor spaces flow together. I am still masking in public, and it was such joy to have so much of the museum open air. There are some lovely galleries too, plus one stunning Robert Campin altarpiece that I had studied in college and was surprised to meet face to face. The windows, like the doorways, set panels of Medieval glass into simple, diamond shaped glass panes with glimpses of the Hudson through the gaps. The stained glass is alive and vital in a way that it never is that funeral home way of artificial lighting from behind. It doesn't all match, but it harmonizes. I truly fell in love with the whole place. My dad had been telling me for years that I needed to go, but I was never in the city for more than a day or two. I'm so glad I made it, and I will definitely be back.
The collection of artwork is gorgeous too. I fell in love with this small English saint and sketched him in my smaller purse sketchbook. I also had a lovely long conversation with a summer intern at the Met (what a dream job!) in the unicorn tapestries room. She's an artist as well, and it was so fun to hear about her big adventure of a summer and share our work a bit. I love traveling solo because it leaves space for me to meet and spend time with people instead of being more walled in a bubble of companions.
I spent all day there and just missed the bus as I walked out. There was a lot of traffic, so a group of us waited a bit for the next one, and I did a much quicker sketch of the outside, using ink and a red watercolor marker since I was fully outside the museum. To end the day I pulled out my smaller sketchbook again and sketched a couple of the fellow would-be passengers. It was a congenial group and a marvelous day.
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The three Vermeers gathered for the show all centered around letters. There was the Frick's own epistolary piece, one from the Rijksmuseum, and one I had never seen in person from Dublin. It was funny. There was a line down the block and sometimes around the corner to get in, but once you were inside the museum you could flow into the Vermeer room at will. It would sometimes get a little crowded, but most people looked at each piece about a minute and cleared out, and there were plenty of quiet times in between. I got to stand with each piece as long as I wanted to. Vermeers are a rare treat and worth savoring. Oddly the other two Vermeers were almost ignored in the main museum. And when I got back to the Met, they had five in a room that was also mostly empty. People are funny. But I'm glad I went to see the ones that live further away. It was such a good day, made better by a lovely chat with a bookmaker who now lives in Colorado. I had my lunch outside and was working on my sketch a little in the better light. I love that art is so often an introduction to people when I'm traveling alone. (Hi, Rosemary!)
Here's the sketch I did waiting for the museum to open that morning. The Met had opened at 10, so I had (foolishly) assumed the Frick was on the same schedule. Turns out it was 10:30, but I had a sketchbook to entertain me.
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The Sargent show was great, a wide selection of work from the earlier part of his career, the part where he was based in Paris. He was ridiculously prolific, and there were many I'd never even seen reproductions of. There were a bunch in private collections but also old friends I've seen in other places in other years.
I found benches and sat and sketched a good bit, also just sat and looked deeply. The gallery sketches are all Derwent Inktense pencils. The NY museums have a pencil only policy, and I love the Inktense ones because they have more depth and saturation than most pencils. They're made with ink instead of watercolor, and when you put a little water on them (I usually use a water brush for a blender), they really pop. I tend to get in the habit of drawing with fountain pens at home, so it's fun to mix up texture and use the pencils sometime.
I enjoyed drawing people with the art a few times, including that first full length portrait of the doctor in the super saturated red. After lunch I went back in and drew the Daughters of Edward Droit, one of my favorite Sargent portraits anywhere (aside from Lady Agnew in the Scottish National Gallery). I had seen it in Boston a decade ago and been completely blown away by the composition as well as the beauty of the brushstrokes. I drew it straight up, just looking deeply and enjoying the painting.
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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.
