Full moon soon
Calling all lunatics! This Sunday will be the last full moon of 2017. I know this because of my handy dandy Lunar Calendar, to which I have contributed since 1983 at the invitation of Nancy. F. W. Passmore, editor of the Luna Press. I worked on the cover of the 2018 edition during my trip to Ireland in May. Well, I did a quick sketch anyway. From the cottage where we stayed in Dunquin, I saw a distant island. Everywhere we went, it was there, like a body floating. It’s called Inis Tuaisceart and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Plus, there are goddess faces in unlikely places....
Read MoreGiving thanks
Don’t ask me how a flock of wild turkeys has been roaming our end of the island for many weeks. Leading up to Thanksgiving Day, there were plenty of jokes about them. Peaks Island is part of the City of Portland, where no hunting is permitted, so these birds were just free range. When our daughter returned for college break, our first stop was at the delightful Dahlov Ipcar exhibit at the Portland Public Library. You can’t miss the fantastic reading nook with a mural of lively fowl! This First Friday is the closing reception, so hurry up. Besides Ipcar’s original picture...
Read MoreIllustration MECA field trip
A week ago I traveled west with senior Illustration MECA majors, co-chaperoning another field trip led by our intrepid Department Chair Mary Anne Lloyd. This time we ventured in a wagon train of cars, landing at the venerable Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. While awaiting everyone’s arrival, we ate our bag lunches in the classroom, appropriately surrounded by the drawings of young artists. Our tour guide, Patrick O’Donnell, led us through early works by Rockwell, with the eye of a professional illustrator. We saw Rockwell’s detailed studies in charcoal...
Read MoreComplications From A Fall
Kate Hawley’s script Complications From A Fall, triggered some heartache for me. Having walked that final episode of eldercare with my mother years ago, it touched a few nerves. I went looking for the walker that is still in the basement, don’t ask me why. That thing was a metaphor for my mother’s decline. I made it an element in all of my ideas for the poster for Portland Stage’s recent production. In one scene, Elizabeth, the aging mother, sets fire to some old letters. It seemed very direct to visualize the walker falling in flames. Maybe too direct. So I tried...
Read MorePub Day for Ana and the Sea Star!
Finally, today is THE DAY!!! My twelfth book is real. Ana and the Sea Star by R. Lynne Roelfs is published! It is a small miracle when ideas manifest into a real book. When I first read the manuscript in July of 2016, it felt authentic, the story of finding a starfish. My photo below is evidence of that time a sea star washed into a Peaks Island tide pool a summer ago, and was gently placed back in the ocean. First I sketched out a rough storyboard, deciding what to show, the flow of the visuals, and varying points of view. I contacted some island neighbors to model for me. The lovely Schuit...
Read MoreLady Day in moonlight
These are just a few of the records I grew up with. My parents were into jazz. I heard Billie Holiday long before I knew her name. Sarah, Billie, and Ella were my mother’s favorites; Duke, Satchmo, and Coltrane were my dad’s. These were the faces on the records, but in fact I went all through elementary grades and high school without having a single person of color in my classes, or in my small world in rural New Hampshire. That changed in art school and beyond, but those soulful voices remain somehow elemental for me. The script for Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill by...
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