As a follow up to the post about Saturday, I ran into Matt Matthews, my photographer and theologian friend, at the Farmers Market. He was down taking pictures while I was painting, and he snapped one of me, just for fun. He also shot the "Eat More Veggies" Whitton Farms truck that I was painting at the time. You can see that photo and his Flickr stream here.

And, just for fun, I pulled up this 2003 photo of me for Throwback Thursday on Facebook. I'm painting in Athens on the Areopagus, looking over to the edge of the Acropolis. It was darn cold and windy up there. I'm grateful that watercolor, unlike the pastel I did for so long, does not require me to haul an easel everywhere. Lap work is also lower profile in high winds. You'll notice I have my backpack hanging from the back of the easel to try to keep it anchored. I think it blew over at least once in the course of this piece. I remember my boyfriend of the time, who was over working in Athens, very kindly blocking the wind so I could finish my drawing. A good man.

Tower Grove Park is one of those places that immediately grabbed me as a landscape painter the minute I set foot in it. Very occasionally a place will reach out and say, "You belong to me." This happened to me as a college student on the North Yorkshire moors, it happened around that same time in Pleasant Hill Shaker Village in Kentucky, and it happened more recently in Bergama, Turkey and Tower Grove Park. It's been some months since I've had a chance to paint in Tower Grove, and it was lovely to be back after the winter. I passed through on my way to and from Chicago and did four watercolors last week.

I started with the griffin I've always admired. There's a pair of them at the Grand Avenue gates.

I often find myself painting the same tree or structure repeatedly. The Old Playground Pavilion (below) and the bandstand (top picture) are both favorites of mine that I keep revisiting.

There are several groves of red buds I love, and they were in full bloom this time. I took advantage of the perfect timing to paint this one.

Tower Grove Park is having a one day art show on June 1st that I will take part in. It's fun to get to do a little more painting ahead of that anniversary event. I'm delighted to get to show my work in a park I love so much.

In previous years, I've done a series of prints to mark the season of Lent, but last year I read a quote from N.T. Wright talking about how we observe Lent for 40 days but only celebrate Easter for one. This year I decided to do a series for the season of Easter instead.

I carved the trumpet for the first print on my recent road trip, and, knowing I had a pretty quick turnaround after coming home, I also took my travel printing kit to be able to proof it and really have it ready to print when I got back. I found a train style make up case at the second hand mecca of Unclaimed Baggage in Alabama a few years ago, and it's the perfect size for my basic printing equipment.

When I got home I was ready to print the final image on the good paper in colored ink.

Then I set the wood type, using a metal frame called a chase. This means I can pick it up and move it around instead of having be stuck in my proof press, making me unable to print anything else until I disassemble the type. For smaller projects I can use a chase. For the bigger ones, I put larger type right in the bed of the press. This project is about 10x11", using my smallest wood type, so a chase is just right.

Finally I printed the type on top of the trumpet image.

And here's a sneak peek at week two of Easter. I couldn't resist a banjo, of course.

Almost every year at the end of March I go to a dance weekend in Cincinnati and get there early for a pilgrimage to the Ohio Book Store. It's a five story second hand bookstore with a bindery in the basement. Amazingly cool.

This year I went up to spend my birthday there, so I managed a whole, deliciously slow afternoon crawling through Ohio Books, and I ended up with a lovely stack of books as my birthday present to myself. I didn't manage a tour of the bindery, though, so maybe I can take some photos there in a couple of weeks, when I'll be back for the dance. They have a bunch of machines that are cousins to my beautiful Chandler and Price 1909 press.

For my actual birthday, I had chicken and waffles for lunch at a Belgian place (surprisingly delicious) and visited the Cincinnati Art Museum. I had never been, and they have a marvelous collection -- a gorgeous late Van Gogh, a Georgia O'Keefe, a couple of lovely George Inneses, a delightful Rubens preparatory oil sketch (I love his sketches best of all), an El Greco, several Corots and Courbets, a Manet, and four lovely Tiffany windows. Among many other beautiful things. I was really impressed.

The Urban Sketchers have been a good influence on me about keeping a sketch pad with me at all times. I'm not 100%, but a little 3x5" one lives in my purse, so I did a couple of fountain pen wash sketches as I went through the museum. It always helps me remember something if I look at it long enough to draw it. I loved the Medieval painted statue of St. Anthony Abbot clutching his fat book.

My day ended with Parisian-like patisseries from the Findlay Market, which brought back happy memories of my travels last year.

The downside of printmaking for me is the added technicality. I love making images, but prints are more complicated than just brushing paint on canvas. I still struggle some with registration issues and occasional press maintenance, but sharpening my gouges is the hardest ongoing issue for me.

I'm incredibly lucky to be friends with John Kraus, a toolmaker, fiddler, and all around great guy. John teaches tool making at Country Workshops and John C. Campbell Folk School, among others. Once a year or so he's kind enough to put a fresh edge on my gouges that I then gradually fail to maintain until I need help again the next year.

This year he not only sharpened everything for me (photo above), but he tempered a couple of the blades that were too hard to sharpen well (below).

John's partner is Nancy Darrell, a fellow printmaker with a background in pottery. I got my Line-O-Scribe proof press from her a couple of years ago (which has changed my life), and we have a great time comparing work and talking shop.

This trip we also went out and sketched together, painting by the pond on the Countey Workshops campus next door. I did a couple of quick watercolors and enjoyed just sitting in the sunshine a while.

Afterwards I got to play music with John, and Nancy had been kind enough to invite Drew and Louise Langsner over from next door at CW, so we had a lovely dinner with all my friends up there at once. That pair of farms is a real haven for me, thanks to kind friends and a beautiful landscape. I feel lucky to be a regular visitor.

We currently have an ice storm in Memphis, so I'm still dreaming about being in Florida last week.

My sister and I visited our friend Heidi, who has moved to Tampa to be the animal nutritionist at Busch Gardens. (I'm pretty sure that's not her real title.) Heidi has bought an utterly charming house just across the road from this small park and river. It was peaceful hanging out at her place for a couple of days, and I loved lounging around in a tank top and bare feet.

I walked over to the park to do Heidi a watercolor of her river as a hostess present. (It was pretty cloudy for picture taking, so there's a bigger discrepancy than usual between the photo and the watercolor.)

I got in some great sister time with Marian, both at Heidi's, with her people climbing cat, and at the dance up in Gainesville. The blue lights were for the Saturday night black and white ball. We also saw our "Florida tribe", some of our extra sisters, and had great playtime with them.

I even got to hang out with my very favorite band, the Latter Day Lizards. We ate BBQ for lunch....

.....then Stuart Kinney, the bass and banjo player I want to be when I grow up, took me thrifting in his host's convertible. I'd never ridden in a convertible before. It was the perfect Florida weekend. BBQ and thrift stores are the normal activities with these guys, but the gorgeous weather made it especially sweet this time. Not to mention the black and white dress I found just in time for the dance. A great weekend away.

I did this sketch just before dinner on my last evening in Cape May. It seems a good Christmas Eve one to share. I hope everyone has a marvelous Winter Wonderland kind of holiday with loved ones, wherever you are.

Our Memphis npr station WKNO fm has a wonderful twice daily interview show called Checking on the Arts. I listen to npr wherever I travel, and some of the stations occasionally have live bands in the studio or something, but I have never encountered such a frequent and broadly arts supportive show as we have here. I'm so grateful to Darel Snodgrass and Kacky Walton for their dedication to it, the research they do, the kindness to all of us trying to make a living at the arts, and the great questions they invariably ask.

I love listening and hearing friends, artists, musicians, theater directors, and a whole host of other people each day talking about the things that make Memphis so wonderful to live in.

Darel kindly had Elizabeth Alley and me on the first of this week to talk about our show of travel paintings at Memphis Botanic Garden (up till January 2). I was in Cape May at the time (we had prerecorded it) and completely forgot it was airing, so Darel was also kind enough to share the file with me.

Making art is a solitary and non-verbal process much of the time, and I find that I really learn things about what I do and why I'm doing it every time I go in and sit with Darel and have to think about the probing questions he asks. I also just love the whole crew down at WKNO, so it's fun to have an excuse to drop in the office and hug everyone. Anyway, we had a blast, and here it is if you'd like to hear about our travel paintings and what that process is like for each of us.

Here's an old sketch of Justin Willingham, the afternoon WKNO host, in their studios.

I met professional photographer Jackie Kane while I was up in Cape May. Since I'm working up there on my own largely (though the staff there always make me very welcome), it's fun to get to meet and talk to fun and interesting people. I met a couple of artists this time (I'm talking about you, Doug!), and it's always neat to talk shop. An added bonus was Jackie turning her talents to take shots of me while I was working. (The full set of them is on her site here.)

She found me on the coldest day I actually did work outside (middle 30's), so I'm embarrassed about the hat situation. I need my broad floppy hat instead of my cuter winter hat to give me shade while I work, so I had a stocking wool hat on underneath it. Sigh. A fashion plate I am not.

But it's kind of fun to get to see my set up through someone else's eyes.

Here's my favorite one. It really embodies the act of creation to me.

You can see lots more of Jackie's work here. She's got a great eye and gets that beautiful light I never manage to achieve in my photographs. Her Ferris wheel at night series is super cool.

 Cape Resorts, the hotel group I do illustrations for in Cape May, NJ, has a holiday slide show of my watercolors going across the top of their website. It is such fun to see my work being used.

I'm just about to head back up there, too, and paint their Christmas festivities for a second year in a row. It's a busy week, with the MBG Paris show a week ago (and still up till New Year's), my home show this past Sunday, and my upcoming departure Thursday morning.

The home show was great fun. I loved having so many friends come through, and I made some new ones as well, which is always lovely. The show wound down the last half hour when my friend and touring musician Andy Cohen showed up with his guitar. I got out my bass, and we played a little music before our respective evening engagements. A perfect way to end a fun day.

And now I'm gearing up to go back to a place I've really come to love. I just hope the snow is all gone by Thursday....

More screen shots from the Cape Resorts website: