tbt: RISD redux

That crisp feel in the air? It’s the smell of back-to-school. I personally love autumn the best. It brings new rhythms and sometimes uncanny flashbacks. As the semester’s about to begin again at Maine College of Art while my own daughter faces her senior year and college applications, I went back a few decades to find my application slides for RISD. They still ask for a drawing of a bicycle. Back then, a drawing of boots was also required.

I’d taken a life drawing class at Plymouth State College, so included this, done in 1975.

Today I attended a life drawing session on Peaks, so some habits have stuck. Drawing from life never gets old. I believe more than ever in drawing all the time. Recently, we’ve been watching Twin Peaks, so I drew the Log Lady while she was on screen.

Back in 1990, Marty and I were so hooked on that show, we spent our 2nd anniversary at Snoqualamie Falls. I went hunting for the photos to make Marty this card for anniversary #26.

Our daughter didn’t believe we met the Log Lady. Here’s proof: June 1991, Los Angeles, while visiting my long-time RISD pal, Ged Kenslea, current PR mastermind at AHF.

He was in town recently and I shared the photo album. Back in the day with Ged:

It calls to mind a truth from the Apocrypha:Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.

Last week with Ged: we’ve grown up on the outside, but not on the inside.

It was my double good fortune to meet up a few days later with another RISD friend of the first order: Madeline Sorel. I still have this sketch she mailed me, decades ago. Wonder if the number still works for Don Juan Rum..

We rendezvoused at Book & Bar in Portsmouth, where she and her lovely kin, actress Lee Bryant, found this vintage Ed Sorel book. Yes, her father!

We chatted over lunch about what we’ve been doing, reading, watching. When the topic turned to Twin Peaks, here’s a thing: Lee’s son’s godfather played Horne’s Department Store manager of the infamous perfume counter, Emory Battis.

Wait, as she told me this, I saw these flyers all over Portsmouth.

Holy Log Lady, they’re having a Twin Peaks movie screening soon! Circle back to my freshman RISD  drawing:

The owls are not what they seem.

Here’s to old friends, and imbibing all the good times. Salut, Ged and Madeline!