Roz Chast's Bird Marco

When I was at the Contemporary Jewish Museum the other week, I also saw the Ros Chast show. It was great, and there was so much to read! Literally hundreds of cartoons hanging on the walls, many of them quite text-heavy. You could stay there for hours reading the equivalent of several whole books. Instead, I wandered about, dipping in and out of this and that. My favorite discovery were a series of drawings I'd never seen before -- most of them, I believe, from several children's picture books written and illustrated by Chast -- featuring a bird named Marco. He is young, like a school-age child, and is befuddled and determined in equal measure. Like the Sesame Street characters or Peanuts gang he clearly has a complex and fully-realized emotional life. I loved him immediately. Here are a few of my favorite Marco images:

Color Poem #13

black
coffee
we know
isn’t black
not the color
of a midnight sky
over a midnight ocean
neither the hue of chess
pieces nor tuxedo jackets

a very dark brown darker
than all except the very
darkest dark chocolate
deeper than nearly
all earth or dirt or
soil richer even
than its beans
or ground
coffee

there might be
one moment in
the timeline of
burnt toast that
matches it but
you don’t see it

the toast seems to go straight
from a rich toasty walnut to a
charred true black not stopping
at black coffee color in between

image source is here

O Glorious City at City Hall

Has there ever been a prettier more majestic place for a book launch? Last night more than a hundred people lined up at City Hall to have their books signed by author and artist Jeremy Fish. Jeremy's new book O Glorious City is a love letter to San Francisco, created in his own inimitable style while he was the first-ever artist in residence at city hall. He created a hundred drawings in a hundred days for the building's hundredth birthday -- many about the history and architecture of this amazing civic space in which he was working. So it was fitting that last night he -- and his many many fans -- came back to celebrate the book's release. It was an excellent time.

Recent Mabels

As predicted yesterday, here is a group of recent photos of the Mabel who so graciously shares her magic with us each day. If ever there was an inspiration to do exactly as you please, to believe with your whole heart in your own vision, to be entirely your own incredible self and no one else for even a moment, this kid is it.

Adichie and Rowell

I've decided to try a new thing. While I still love and adore taking instant photos of my girl, and plan to keep that practice up indefinitely, I must admit that--much as I adore my cute Fuji camera--the Fuji film has never captured my heart the way real old Polaroid film did. And then again, the photo project, while still fun, has long since ceased to be the key creative outlet for me that it was when the child was a newborn and I was a new mother trying to find my art-making outlet in the world. In recent years that role has been filled by a combination of drawing and painting that I do on colored card stock with children's paint, sharpies, and gel pens. This is a big part of what I do, these days, and it's come to feel weird that I don't show it in any way on this blog. That said--I love my header (drawn years ago by the infinitely talented Julia Rothman) with it's hand-lettered mention of "Polaroids" and I love the little label system at right which shows me how many of each of my five type of posts (one for each weekday, including Polaroids on Mondays) I have created since I started this site in 2011. So I've come up with an odd compromise with myself. I'm going to try out showing you my drawings on Monday, presented inside a (let's be clear and honest here: fake) Polaroid border. This may make no sense to anyone but me. But then again, I have no one to please here in my little digital world but myself! This may also mean I deploy the option to load up Inspiration Tuesdays with photos of the Mabel a bit more frequently than hitherto-fore. Time will tell.  Let's see how it goes!

This particular drawing is of two very short books, both of which I read on Mother's Day and both of which were excellent. It was the first time I've used opaque pastel colored gel pens (previously I'd only used white), which were fun to use.

Cary Leibowitz at CJM

I cannot stop thinking about the Cary Leibowitz show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. All the dark feelings -- and some of the light ones too -- presented in such gleeful, audacious, exuberant style. So much art, so much emotion, so much wit, so much color, so many words. I adored it.

Color Poem #12

I’ve a
blue notebook
and a
pink notebook

the blue one
tall    narrow
the color of the ocean
on an almost cloudless day
contains various
creative projects

the pink one
long      wide
the color of sweet peas
on a rotting backyard fence
holds attempts
at social justice