Hello my friends! I hope you have had a happy June so far. On the farm we’ve made it through a couple 90 degree days already, garlic scape season has come and gone, and the berries on the blueberry bushes are finally turning from green to deep purple-blue. And the days continuously feel too short to do everything I want to do; there’s friends to visit and lakes to swim in and meals to cook and plants in our slap-dash garden at home to remember to water… plus a thousand other things. I have so much planned in the next few months that in some ways the summer already feels over.
I took a trip to Philly one weekend to see my Penland friends; this was the first time I’ve seen most of them in a significant way since our fellowship ended, and it was so special to be around them all again. Since I am living in the same place and working the same job as I was before Core, sometimes the past two years feel very far away, with nothing to tether me to them. Sometimes this is a good feeling, and sometimes not, but in any case something as simple as seeing a friend’s familiar bag on the floor of an apartment is incredibly comforting to me. (Also, they told me that they read this newsletter, so I will stop myself here before I get too sentimental.)
We took a trip to the art museum while I was there, so here’s a small collection of some of my favorite works. The top row was from the exhibit Boom: Art and Design in the 1940’s (Thomas Hart Benson is one of my favorite printmakers and painters—I love his stylization and subject matters—so it was a treat to see another one of his works in person) and the bottom was an exhibit on the drawings of Wanda Gág.
I’m teaching my first (!!) workshop next month at a local art center: introduction to printmaking for teens. I’ve been working in the lab this month to prepare—it feels good to be in a print shop again! I’m planning on doing a collaborative print with the kids, where they carve and print a creature alongside my print of Box Boy:
I also experimented with monotype and collagraph printing for the first time, since I’m planning on starting with those techniques before introducing relief carving. I have never liked monotypes for my own work (too painterly) and I wasn’t feeling too excited about collagraphs either, so I was sort of dragging my feet on these. For my collagraph matrix, I just cut a bunch of squares and stars out of a spaghetti box and glued them to a piece of matte board. I wasn’t expecting much when proofing, but I actually love how the prints turned out! It feels good to have found something I am genuinely excited to teach, and incorporate into my own work in the future. I still hate monotyping though
June media round-up:
I went to NYC with a friend to see Orville Peck in Cabaret! The production was breathtaking; it was performed in the round and the stage had all these moving parts, so performers would rise above or sink below the stage, the costuming and lighting was incredible, and in general I just appreciate the creativity that comes with storytelling in a live performance. I watched some interviews before we went with Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada, and they talked about how disturbing it felt to be rehearsing the show while seeing on the news these things that paralleled the contents of the play.
The theme for my book selection this month ended up being “books I’m reading for the first time that everyone else already read ages ago” — I read the graphic novel adaptations of Animal Farm and 1984 as well as The Handmaid’s Tale. Like Cabaret, they are all resonating particularly hard right now. Actually, the copy of The Handmaid’s Tale I checked out has an introduction by Atwood written in 2017, where she writes, “Back in 1984, the main premise seemed—even to me—fairly outrageous,” which feels wild to read now when I can see so many attitudes from the book reflected in American society today. I’m planning to continue reading dystopian (and utopian) novels, so if you have any favorites, feel free to send them my way.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the last bit of June :-)