Lily S. May–Life with Art
I've been working on another piece that combines part of an old linocut with gouache paint. It's been a tough one in terms of design. I'll post it here once I finish it. Yesterday I said aloud while working: "I should just throw this against the wall." After that I made some progress! Here's a… Continue reading Slow Going Plus Writing
I have kept journals--diaries--on and off for the past 40 or more years. In the 1990s and early 00s, I hand wrote a huge amount in dozens and dozens of lined notebooks--mostly recording my dreams and feelings but also world events and my activities. I've been working on a big project, going through my journals… Continue reading The Nature of Making Art
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
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
Here's what I originally wrote in this post: Several years ago, I had a dream that made a great impression on me. In it, I was at a retreat in the countryside on a grassy lawn with a forest at its edge. There I heard about a course being offered called The Care of Latent Kittens. I… Continue reading The Change in Our Fortunes–Massively Edited
I've been enjoying working on a series of scratchboard drawings to go with writing I did a few years ago. I hit upon scratchboard drawings because they can bear some resemblance to lino and woodcuts which I love but gave up making because of repetitive strain from carving. I made the three papier mache masks… Continue reading Scratchboard and Masks
We are walking in a garden we are blind to though it bears our names. And the suffering, the suffering is great, but the unveiling of the heart is greater. © 2015 Lily S. May
Program from The Al Purdy Show, Feb. 6, 2013, TorontoOn Wednesday night, I attended a fundraiser at beautiful Koerner Hall in Toronto. It was in honour of an excellent Canadian poet, Al Purdy (1918 – 2000). Al’s work was being honoured through readings by Canadian poets and actors and through performances by musicians. The funds… Continue reading Poetry Out Loud & in a Linocut
Arts of May 