art is not something you take it is something you give
I can only draw stick figures
fire begins with simple sticks
none of my sculptures look right
you’re in good company now-put all your wrongs together
and make art
The words are a riff from a piece I wrote back in 2014. The unfinished sculpture images shown above – my latest work His name is Abraham GS Bardo (name inspired after the prolific author George Saunders) When finished, Abraham will inhabit a cemetery with his dearest friend the raven.
A piece from 2014 published in the Avocet…was it so long ago…
5 am peaceful
wishing it were contented spirits dusting the cement grass with glitter not winter’s freeze
my dachshund’s paw prints sweet as a postcard one might send a faraway lover
I linger in the numbing quiet let the moment warm this blanketed silence hushed low like swimming beneath water where despair drowns then floats away in bubbles and dancing reflections
don’t want to twist the frozen doorknob and go back inside I’d love to remain out here 5 am with the sparkling dust and all that glitters in the beauty of this silence when the world is so peaceful
the original marker art that posted along with the poem in 2014
A spread from the book that supported me through childhood.
….Red Sweater Boy in his red jacket astride Big Red (red – the primary look-at-my-power color) gallop away from the farm. In a sheer moment of panic at the loss of his friend, Little Black charges after the couple.
But, the little pony can’t keep pace with the powerful stallion…
Will Red Sweater Boy realize the depth of his friend’s heartbreak before something tragic unfolds?
Is Big Red capable of caring about a less-powerful animal?
Will Little Black tire out, lose heart, end all protest and lose his friend?
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.
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
anntogether 