Lily S. May–Life with Art
I've edited and ordered more printed copies of the drawings I showed in my last post. Meanwhile, I've returned to something I haven't done for several years. That is, I've been folding old prints into small booklets which are sometimes called origami booklets. Here's a link to one of those first pieces. And here's some… Continue reading Altered Prints
This week, I happily received the copy of Clive Hicks-Jenkins' book, Hansel and Gretel. In it, he has brilliantly reimagined the fairy tale. I ordered it last week from the U.K. and it arrived faster than some packages from other parts of Canada! Clive Hicks-Jenkins is one of my favourite artists. He shows a wide array… Continue reading Hansel and Gretel
I've completed an accordion booklet with my writing about Milne's Black Waterfall painting. You can see the initial idea in Poem for an Old Woodcut. There's other related posts following that one. I decided to print my writing on thin Japanese paper and adhere it to the booklet. Here's some photos of it from different angles. I like seeing different parts… Continue reading Black Waterfall Poem Booklet
As I continue turning some of my early prints into booklets, I'm playing around with words I might include with the prints. This last print I've been working with (the one that's also in my previous post) has a lot of black ink in it. And that got me thinking about some writing I did a… Continue reading A Poem for An Old Woodcut
The most recent origami booklet I've made is from a woodcut I carved and printed in 1973. It's called Forth Form Variation and is from a series I did playing around with several shapes. I used two pine boards that I lined up to make the whole image. I have loved trees since childhood and… Continue reading Reading Old Prints, 3
I continue turning some of my old prints into origami booklets. And, as so often happens, I've been changing the work in ways I didn't first set out to do. I tried a few booklets with simple collages of some poetry I've written. Then, this morphed into bits of writing about the weather or a… Continue reading Reading Old Prints, 2
The great poet, Mahmoud Darwish, was born on March 13 in Palestine. Different sources have dated his birth to both 1941 and '42. He died in August 2008. At any rate, today I am celebrating his birth. His words have added more beauty to my life than I can adequately describe. From the book The Butterfly's… Continue reading March 13: Mahmoud Darwish
A few years ago, I came upon This Body is to Ask in a used book store and bought it. It is terrifically inspiring, leading me to recently reread it. The book was compiled by Marsha Connell and Maureen Hurley, who were Artists in Residence in schools in Sonoma County, California. This book, from 1993, contains… Continue reading This Body is to Ask
I'm reading and rereading the books of two great poets, Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Zaqtan. These were translated from Arabic into English by Fady Joudah. I mentioned that his translation of Zaqtan's Like a Straw Bird It Follows Me won him and Zaqtan the Griffin Poetry Prize this year. Reading Straw Bird has led me… Continue reading The Excellent Poetry I’m Reading
I've kept a few of my old sketchbooks. Here's an ink drawing I did in '87 that's in one of those books. I made it close to the same time as the paintings and drawings in my last post. A sketchbook can serve as a visual journal. This drawing of my then bedroom brings… Continue reading Open Sketchbook
Arts of May 