Tomato Plant on the Dock

Once, years ago, I saw a scraggly tomato plant growing off the side of a dock, dangling above the water. It was near the farmers market, so it kind of made sense, but still the sheer unlikeliness of it has always stayed with me as a marvel. I tried to draw it once before, about four years ago, but was never happy with it, so recently I tried again. I like this version.

Ed Clark at Hauser & Wirth

I was, as I no doubt made clear last week, at Hauser & Wirth in New York entirely to see the Amy Sherald show. However, it turned out that what was on the first floor, while Sherald was on the second, was very much worth my time as well. Indeed, Ed Clark's abstract paintings fit just about as perfectly as anything into the abstract-painting pleasure receptors in my brain. I know no other way to describe it, honestly. When I see paintings that do it for me (most of Rothko, practically all of Frankenthaler, a great deal of Motherwell, a select few de Koonings, about half of Mitchell, a big chunk of Richter, and on and on) things just click into place in some essential way inside me. And everything glows. See if by chance these might do the same for you?

Color Poem #99

an artist named ali bird made
a giant bread tie out of shiny
yellow plastic
you don’t realize
how well you know the
contours of a thing until
you see it blown up one hundred fold
in the color of lemons and daffodils

Philadelphia Shopping Guide

Here is my highly subjective shopping guide to Philadelphia, based on a small-to-medium amount of research, limited time on the ground, and my own strong personal tastes and inclinations.

Above: Shakespeare and Company bookstore and cafe. An utter delight.

Omoi Zakka Shop: one of the best curated arty-things-and-office-supplies-and-gift-items shops I've ever been in, in any city, period.

Yowie: spare, minimalist yet colorful, and super chic -- clearly assembled by someone with a great eye for art and objects.

Brickbat Books: used bookstore with an emphasis on art and culture -- the creaky-floored, tin-ceiling-ed, jam-packed stuff bookstore dreams are made of. 

Craftcation

I'm excited to be speaking at the Craftcation conference next year! Craftcation combines the speakers and panels of a creative business conference with loads of hands-on arts and crafts workshops -- a mixture I personally am very much looking forward to. It happens April 15-19, 2020, right on the beach in Ventura, California -- and tickets go on sale today! Loads of info about the conference is here, and if you want to join us you can buy tickets right here (the first 50 people to register for the conference get $50 of the ticket price).

Box

I drew this cardboard box for my upcoming Creative Mornings talk. It has a deep significance but I think I will wait to talk about that till I do so in the talk itself.

Amy Sherald at Hauser & Wirth

One art show I knew I had to see while I was in New York last week was Amy Sherald the heart of the matter at Hauser & Wirth. And it did not disappoint. However beautiful, however luminous, however striking Sherald's people have been when you've seen them in the past, they are even more so when you encounter new ones in person. Normally, when I see a gallery show, I photograph the pieces I really like -- to help me remember them later -- at this show I took pictures of every single painting there, because I really really liked all of them.