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Reflecting on the American Chinese Restaurant Road Trip: Interview with...
Since I’ve been reading on-the-road travel books, I have been wondering about alternate points of view to man-in-truck-takes-the-backroads. I did find the 2020 book, Overground Railroad by Candacy...
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Venturing Out with Black Like Me
"Black like me" is the last line of the poem, "Dream Variations," by Langston Hughes; the narrator dreams to dance "till the white day is done" and then "rest at cool evening" with "Night coming...
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Admission: a New Quiltlet
"Sit and sew, sit and sew, all she do is just sit and sew." That's from the song "Wedding Dress" by Pentangle on the album Reflection, and I admit that it feels like sewing is all I do, even though I...
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Books that Wander Landscapes and Wordscapes
In one of my afternoon sessions of artmaking and listening in my studio, I heard an author interview with Robert Macfarlane, speaking about his 2016 book, Landmarks. So enraptured, I put the physical...
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American Dream? A Journey on Route 66
My wanderer recommended this title by Shing Yin Khor, The American Dream?: A Journey on Route 66, to add another point of view to the road trips across the United States books I've been searching out...
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Star 82 Review Issue 8.3 Now Available!
In the thirty-first issue of the art and literary, online and print magazine that I founded and produce, we have some lovely art along with a wonderful variety of stories and poems that aim to bring...
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Rough Patch: a New Quiltlet
I had no ideas. Not blocked, just empty. I cleared the working surfaces in the studio and pulled out a piece of scrap batting to start. After pawing through my ziploc-ed scrap baggies (they are sorted...
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The Lost Words: A Spell Book by Macfarlane & Morris
Already primed to love The Lost Words after recently reading Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks (blog post here), I was pleased to find that it lived up to my expectations. It's a book to get lost in, being...
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Big Fires Start Small: a Quiltlet
The working title for this quiltlet was "Fire in the Trees," but the concept grew to something larger, something that could be a metaphor. The design finds itself close on the heels of its sibling,...
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Burn Zone: New Art Quilt
Through all the dyeing, begun nearly a year ago and continued intermittently over the summer, I seem to have built up a nice color library. To it I turned for inspiration for the next quilt. I had a...
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Wishing Stars: an Art Quilt
Hot on the heels of the burning quilts was this one, a cooler, icier, calmer quilt. Raven black is my dye of choice, which yields a beautiful (in my opinion) midnight blue. The sky was coming back to...
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Never Mind the Book Art Videos
I've been making books for nearly forty years, and ways of exhibiting the books to the public have been limited: leaving them on consignment with dealers; placing them in physical exhibit locations;...
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Breaking Day: Art Quilt
On September 9, 2020, the San Francisco Bay area woke to an orange sky; it was dark all day. We had our lights on as if it were evening. A photo I took became the inspiration for the quilt, another...
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Large and Small, After the Rain
We had a very light rain recently, which made the air clear and added fresh views to a daily walk. A writer/photographer that I know sent me a link to an article he had written about his current...
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Drawing and Nature Journals
The first "nature journals" I believe I ever saw were made by Andie Thrams, in the context of book art. Thrams seems to live outdoors: she has led expeditions in the Sierras, Alaska, Hawaii, and...
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Drawing and Painting Tools, an Inventory
With all this time at home, it seems a good idea to take stock, see what's at hand. Inspired by the nature journaling book in the previous post, I decided to take inventory, to see what constitutes "My...
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The Plague. The Fire. The Fall.: New Art Quilt
It seems the quilts I'm making recently are expressions of the moment, things I cannot verbally express as well as I'd like, or things I'm trying not to think about. So it goes. I had a vision of...
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Matches Are Made of Trees: a Quiltlet
I use matches once a week so it takes quite a bit of time before I use up a little box. This past Friday was the start of a new box, and the matches surprised me with their green tips instead of the...
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Bit by Bit, the Process of the Owls
I had drawn a pair of Great-horned Owls for a card, and the image haunted me, so I decided to make a linoleum print of the owls. First step was tracing the image, then transferring it to the block...
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