So It's July

One of the things I look forward to the most each summer are daily walks with my faith canine companion.  Meet Sasha.  Sasha helps me really see the natural world around me with her keen eye sight and hearing, she alerts me to the presence of small creatures and even plants and flowers that I might other wise have missed.  She also never fails to make me smile and often laugh out loud.  I have learned that dogs really know how to live life to the fullest.  They also are very grounded beings.  They know what's really important: good company, good fun, and good food.  And Sasha never does anything half way, she's all in. And I think because of that she experiences more of the beauty and wonder of the world. I'm so glad she is my guide to all that and more!

After a recent close encounter with a LFF, low flying fox, Sasha reminded me of my unfinished series of fox prints.  I've completed two new fox sketches and begun two new woodblocks for carving.
I've started a Japanese album dedicated to the pileated woodpeckers we hear laughing in the forest during our early morning walks.  Now that the sketches are complete, I've decided to create wood block backgrounds: forest, sky, sky with clouds.  I'm hoping to get to printing these this week.  If all goes well, I'l then paint in the birds in water soluble graphite and watercolor.
I completed a drawing of daffodils I started during the spring semester for my niece, hoping to get that in the mail this week as well. I'll be sure to post the work on my portfolio page after I'm sure she has received it.
This week my focus was on teaching myself Japanese book binding.  I made four small books, each with a different binding.  It's been a fascinating adventure and the various bindings and book forms have me thinking not only about new ways to design and present my work, but as book structures as a kind of architecture. I'm not sure what I mean by that quite yet, need to think about it all more. I'll have time as I need to make one more small book and then I will have samples that I hope to use in book binding workshops in conjunction with our school librarians in the upcoming school year. The book that inspired all this can be seen in the picture with the books I made. 

Lastly and as always, the little tree project goes on.  I'm happy to say that in the past two weeks I was able to get to the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum twice for two really productive sessions. Please forgive that the pictures of these works are not very clear and complete, that's intentional.  I'm creating a series of works and not ready for the "big reveal" yet!

​Still finished up reading the Natural History of Seashells which is inspiring me to draw shells.  I'm also taking an online course in Basic Buddhism.  In that course, we just read the Kalama Sutta. A simply magical descriptive work that reminded me very much of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and I have to believe it was some inspiration to J.R.R. Tolkien, but more about that next week.
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Hope the summer finds you relaxing, making art and reading inspiring works as well!