Loving the Water

The past few nights I have been walking Lily to the pond to swim. After a few rounds of her fetching the stick I take off my sandals and stand in the water and dip my head in and then I end up jumping in wearing my shirt and shorts. The water is so refreshing and cooling that when I get out I have goosebumps. Lily and I walk the mile and a half home dripping wet. Along the way Lily rubs her snout and flops on her back on a few lawns which serve as her bath towels. When we get home I dry out her ears.

Denmark Commuters Pedal to Work

read

Walking and Thinking

The more trouble people have walking, the more trouble they have thinking. Read.

Rebecca Solnit

Read

The SAIL Teaching Framework

The SAIL Teaching Framework created by Bill Calhoun.
Have a look!

Woonsocket and the Arts

WOONSOCKET, R.I. (AP) - The city of Woonsocket is getting a $50,000 federal grant designed to help the municipality employ the arts as an economic engine.

Woonsocket is one of 80 winners of the National Endowment for the Arts' "Our Town" grants being officially announced . . . Read more.

Richard Diebenkorn

I found this on Trevor Young's blog and loved it.
Check out Trevor's paintings.

Notes to myself on beginning a painting:

1. Attempt what isn't certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued - except as stimulus for further moves.

3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.

4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

5. Don't 'discover' a subject of any kind.

6. Somehow don't be bored - but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

7. Mistakes can't be erased but they move you from your present position.

8. Keep thinking about Pollyanna.

9. Tolerate chaos.

10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

-Richard Diebenkorn, from The Art of Richard Diebenkorn by Jan Livingston

Brian G Fay

I ran away to the circus, but only to see the show. I was too afraid to join the people down in the rings. The tamers of lions. The fliers on the trapeze. The painted faces of death. Sitting in the two chairs beside me was an enormous man. He gave me popcorn and cotton candy. He licked my fingers clean. In his pocket he carried the book of psalms torn from a bible. He read them to me in between acts. Told me I was beautiful. You can imagine the look in his eyes. But you can't hear his voice. I keep that to myself. But when the elephant rider appeared, he began to cry. Silently. Just tears and the image of breath catching in his chest. He stared at her. Hard. As she stood on the elephant's back, he patted mine. Go home, son, he said. Go. You must go home. And so I did, riding an imaginary elephant, imagining the man's voice, wondering how I would ever escape the world.
-Brian G Fay

From a comment posted on Nin Andrews' blog.

Happy Fourth of July!

Photos of me and Bill with our Munroe Dairy Band in the Bristol Fourth of July Parade.
Providence Journal links:
Emily
Bill

Frederick Douglass

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
―Frederick Douglass

Meryl Streep

I come to every project thinking I don't know anything ... It serves me to begin blank and to try to forget the 900 other movies, and my reputation, and the training, or whatever horrible obstruction there is to creating a new character. I put myself in a state of anxiety - to become blank and to start by starting.
-Meryl Streep

Moose Antlers

. . . help them hear.

Nature

Lily, Bill and I were walking along the pond on Monday when we saw four baby wood-ducklings drop out of a huge tree and land smack in the middle of the road. They waddled around, stunned. Bill guided them across the street, and mama duck, responding to the peeping, appeared from behind a house. They all made it safely to the pond.

Then on Wednesday we were walking Lily along the pond upstream of the causeway, and we saw a painted turtle on the path. Lily was very intrigued, and we had to hold her back. Bill picked the turtle up, and we saw that she had been laying eggs. They were like large white jellybeans in a hole she had dug in the sandy soil with her back legs. So we put her back so she could finish her work.

William Blake

Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
―William Blake

Modern Times

A painting of mine called Modern Times has been accepted into a juried show called Statewide: Works From RISD Rhode Island Alumni. The show runs from Thursday, June 14, through Sunday, July 1st, at the Jamestown (RI) Art Center. There will be a reception Thursday evening, June 14th, from 6:30 until 9 PM. Come and celebrate!

You can see the painting here.

By the way, check out the work of poet Nin Andrews. She has been creating a series of writings inspired by my paintings, including Modern Times.

John Muir

I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
-John Muir

I Dreamed

I dreamed I was visiting a sculptor friend. I was wearing a long brown skirt and I was standing outside. I noticed the bottom of my skirt was burning. It had caught fire from a nearby candle. I was alarmed but managed to stop the burning by dipping my flaming hem into a pail of water. My friend asked me if I would like to meet his friends from the Dominican Republic. Three people with exquisitely black skin showed up and sat in aluminum beach chairs. They were each wearing a small live alligator on top of their heads. Then it was a party and I saw a friend of mine lift her four-year-old daughter up by her two long braids. I thought, oh no! She's living through her daughter!

Thomas Moore

Simplifying the externals allows us to create a rich inner and outer life. A cluttered existence may keep us busy, but busyness doesn't mean that we are fully engaged in what we are doing.
-Thomas Moore, Original Self

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Under every deep a lower deep opens.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wendy Wasserstein

Maybe producers as well as audiences need to be reminded that attending the theater is an inimitably life-affirming experience, especially during difficult times. In England, for instance, most of the theaters famously remained open during the Blitz. In 1941, Noël Coward wrote ''Blithe Spirit'' in a week, and it ran longer than any of his previous plays. There is nothing like a catharsis in times of high anxiety. There is also nothing as humane as sharing a laugh with strangers in the dark.
-Wendy Wasserstein, Where You and I Become Us, NYT Spring Theater