After getting through the news each morning, I read the Credo taped to my studio wall. This is the America I want my children to have. This is why I protest…why I write letters…
“In a time when labels are weaponized and dissent is recast as danger, I choose to define myself—before others try to do it for me.” —James B. Greenberg James B. Greenberg’s Credo (James Substack entry, August 5, 2025)
How I’d love others to share Mr. Greenberg’s Credo – to keep us going – to keep us fighting back – to keep us AMERICAN
We express ourselves in different ways. One’s wild garden tending is another’s storytelling of memories, across the bridge someone walks along the river in deep introspection, another dreams as she looks at the sky, he hopes as he sprints down the road, they smile at passersby…this is art…the living choices we paint our lives with…the colors spilling over onto another’s path…some mixes go muddy…others create spectral arcs that seemingly touch the sky…if you think you can’t create art…you’re not looking deeply enough…we are all artists…each one of us the embodiment of art itself…
My character, Hank Olin, began as a drawing many years ago. He was then slid into a plastic sleeve and clipped into a binder to join other characters who’d grown silent between black vinyl covers. One day he escaped to become an acrylic painting. His accomplice told him metallic paint would wake his spacesuit up too so he could fly. Hank Olin was happy – he no longer had to live in the binder. He was free.
Being the benevolent ele-space-ien he was, he asked for the immediate release of all those trapped between the heavy covers of that wicked black vinyl binder.
His request was soon granted by an accomplice on the outside, who looked at the sky that very day, appreciating their singular freedom to gaze upon such beauty in a world of madness. Hank Olin was lifted from his two-dimensional prison. Today Hank is free to stargaze, to whisper musings in the ear of anyone nearby, he’s dreamed below the afternoon sky and sparkled, he travels to regions real and imagined, he lives his best life while watching his friends grow into the free characters they were meant to be.
Facebook asks, “What’s on your mind?” An inane query meant to incentivize us to keep posting as if we need reminding that our brains function with thoughts…
This morning I answered “What’s on my mind?” with this- Flying Squirrels
The beauty of swirling dying color against the relentless blue of earth makes furry little animals magical
I created this flying squirrel with Tombow watercolor markers (quite wonderful) and a touch of Prisma pencil (buttery color pencils) for details. The photo background was added using the Canva program (the poor artist’s Adobe)
You began working in a glass studio at fifteen. You were an artist. A talented woman, a kind-hearted creator, a towering beauty, an authentic environmentalist.
Decades later, I’d meet you as my future-mother-in-law, and we’d become the dearest of friends.
This post is dedicated to the working woman…
(I sketched Karole from an old photo – one I adore to this day. The 2 faded photo images are from Karole’s modeling days)
Despair is a fast trade commodity these days. I post these words-because I do despair-but I’m not giving up. Writing like this helps me face my fears-and once you face the monster-you see the best ways to defeat it…
A pencil sketch I made of my dear friend, DS Levy, when she was a child. (Inspired by a childhood photo DS shared with me taken by a childhood friend)
The ‘poem’ above was written this morning after feeling overwhelmed by the news. I wrote it to remind myself that we can’t give up the fight for our country – a country where empathy, kindness, compassion, fairness, equity, science… – you know – the good stuff that makes us human – once prevailed
We are better than the sum of this current government We are much better
Jess’s story appeared in the local newspaper when I was a young teen. She’d been badly burned in a house fire. The front page image had been black & white. Try as I might, I couldn’t purge Jess’s pain or her image from my head.
I honored her in my way. The painting I did remains with me, as she always has, hanging on a wall in my studio, where I tell Jess how beautiful she is.
It was this painting that taught me the meaning of art.
anntogether 