On Saturday I’ll be a participant in the Chevy Chase Art and Craft Fair, showing some of my small paintings and (for smaller budgets) notecards that have been made from them. At the fair will be over 30 local artists and craftspeople with their paintings and prints, jewelry, glassware, clothing, and painted furniture. I hope I will have a chance to leave my own table and look around at the others!
When part of our back yard tree fell during Hurricane Sandy, while cutting it up my husband called me to look at the abandoned nest within, which I saved to sketch. It seems appropriate to post it, along with his verse, on the birthday of Victor Hugo (1802-1885).
Soyez comme l’oiseau
Posé pour un instant
Sur des rameaux trop frêles
Qui sent plier la branche
Et qui chante pourtant
Sachant qu’il a des ailes.
—Victor Hugo
Be like the bird, who
Halting in his flight
On limb too slight
Feels it give way beneath him
Yet sings
Knowing he hath wings.
Julia
Shota
My son with two of his life-long (though not exclusive) interests.
Devin
For today, a painting and a poem. Happy Valentines Day, everyone.
Good-Night
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood—
Then it will be—good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Jack
Sara
Before Christmas my daughter had a group of girls over to decorate gingerbread houses, and using the same materials (candy, frosting, marshmallows, nuts, cereal, and pretzels) they created an amazing variety of architectural ornamentation. The guests took their houses home, and my son and daughter nibbled periodically on theirs, but mine finally made its way, uneaten, to the garden on a sunny day for a winter squirrel/bird fest. Unless a tiny Norman elf moves into it first.
(the other sketches are doodles from the Christmas Revels)
Jan & Al
The first three days of February bring Candlemas, Groundhog Day, and Setsubun: you will be kept busy making candles for 2013, following groundhog activities, and expelling your household demons with a handful of beans.
