Author: Sandy Webster

An evening sky.

The walk to tai chi yesterday.

And this morning coming home from coffee.

And now for getting back to illustrating.

What follows are all the little works that finally finished one-sixth of the six-way opening book. All wildflowers.

There are seventy pages, counting both sides, in each of the four smaller books on front and back of the larger book that holds two more.

So I turned the book 180 degrees to open the opposite side (left to right) and began a series of butterflies and moths.

I love the sound of turning these pages of thin paper I used to spin into paper threads for earlier works and workshops. The brushed on gesso in the middle sections gives me a place to draw and use watercolors.  The lack of a quality page to work on gives me a built-in excuse for poor drawings.

Here is another image of ways the books open….

I realized since I moved here, just how much I enjoy my own company. Morning coffee with the guys, three early mornings at the gym, weekly tai chi and chair yoga classes, monthly poetry critiques, and an occasional lunch out or wine with a neighbor are the only times I see people. Days can go by with no conversations and I find my voice is gone when I try to use it again. It is all gravely until it gets worked for a bit. And I like all this time alone. Now, thanks to the library setting up an audio book system on my Iphone after recommended by Ben (Amy’s partner),  I can listen to writer’s stories. It is such a good idea since I don’t like sitting still and turning pages. With these audio books on my Iphone I can get my steps in and listen while at the gym, working in the studio or walking through the house.

Someone asked who I walked with. No one. I prefer to be alone when walking so I can put my mind to something and work it out. Same way at the gym. I do my  workouts by myself keeping to my own time schedule. When I do go out to lunch, I am doing less talking. Just listening is enough any more. We all have our own stories and people have a need to tell them. The only time I get “talky” is here on the blog. And aren’t you lucky to be able to just shut me off anytime?

I can get 250 steps by starting at my front door and returning there after walking into every room, bathrooms and closets included. I liked figuring that out by circling the dining room table twice. Isn’t it odd what pleases us when we get older. So, if the goal is getting 8,000 steps per day, walking around the neighborhood is a nice 1,500 each time I make the loop. It is Friday so I have to do more laps around the house. Better get to it. Then a glass of wine.

Sounds like a good plan.

 

A beautiful morning coming back home from coffee at the corner.

I walked around the subdivision this morning and met a new neighbor. She was quite convinced that she was going to fit a garage full of books into her house. Her daughter was not. A pleasant lady with an interesting story. When she said we should get together for coffee, I asked if she drank alcohol. The answer was no, so I suggested I could have her glass as well when I poured her coffee, She asked which house I lived in, I said, the one with the Harris sign. A moment of dead silence before she continued on with whatever she was saying. I lost track.

But I did feel compelled to add my thoughts to the Philosophical Considerations Book.

Some are religious, some have flamingoes in their yards, and of course, Trump.  All before I find the place with an open bottle of wine and a comfortable chair.

The local grocery store is very low on food because the main warehouse east of Asheville was lost to hurricane Helene. It is the only thing we are missing compared to the immense losses of those near Asheville.

On another note….

I was thinking that The Fairy Book should be the smaller size so ordered two proofs to have a good look. Today they came and I have changed my mind. The book will now be the larger size…6″ x 8″. It feels nicer in the hand and the drawings show up better. So now I have ordered a proof of that size after making text corrections.

I will take one to the poetry meeting next week for when I read this:

The Woods Out Back

 

When I was young and alone

in the woods out back,

I’d find a moss-covered mound

and put down my sack.

 

Inside was my lunch, notebook

and pencil to draw

whatever magical things

I thought I saw.

 

Now all these years later

I sit in my chair

and draw from old memories

what I know was there.

S. Webster

Yesterday at the other poetry meeting, I took in this essay to see if it qualified as a prose poem. The answer was only if I reworked the paragraphs into stanzas, eliminated several words, etc. All agreed it reads like poetry but would remain an essay unless I made drastic changes.

I will put it here because it made me smile and remember…it will stay an essay.

Travel Journals – S. Webster

It is the journal that is indispensable when traveling. Not the camera or even the companions. The camera gives too much information, and the companions will not see nor remember it the way I do. But the journal with quick marks of local color, wines, foods, and notes, brings the entire trip back each time I refer to it. I see the place and smell the food. I taste the wine again and hear those sounds of being in the country, in the hotel, at an art opening, alone in an unfinished building with the soft sound of cane toad feet dragging across the floor toward my bed.  My journals are filled with a shorthand and economy of marks that preserve it all, and I can return anytime I want to.

Young Patrick is waiting in the pub somewhere in New South Wales to shout me another beer while I wait to be found. The Poets in Pubs group that meets monthly in Broken Hill are still seated around the table in the back room listening to me read their favorite American poet in an appropriate accent. I can smell the worn leather case belonging to an elderly former boxer as he removes an old black and white photo of himself “in the day” and the poem he wrote earlier that week.

There are travel journals from Japan, China, Bali, New Zealand, France and Italy but the outback towns of Australia are where I prefer to spend most of my return voyages. Our shoulders touch, our eyes meet, and we raise our Toohey’s Old and Stone’s Ginger Wine in remembrance.

Til later….

 

Most of the damage from hurricane Helene is east of where I live. The town of Asheville seems devastated in areas near the rivers that run close to town. So much damage. Here the wind brought down leaves that were still green. I saw no trees down from those winds.

Earlier this week I invited two women from the neighborhood to come here and have some wine and snacks. It was a lovely visit. They wanted to know about the artworks in the house, so I talked about the stories behind the pieces. It was so nice to have such an interest in what I live with.

I loaned them copies of all the books now available on Amazon under the name, Sandy Webster and S. Webster. I am not into selling the books so much as having them available to those interested. I look forward to hearing what they think.

And this week I have been working on getting The Fairy Book in print. At first I thought a size a bit bigger than the original would work. But when the artist proof arrived, it was too large. I went back to a 5″ x 7″ book and it seems just right.

But looking closely at the images, I decided to make some color adjustments on some of them. Now the next artist proof arrives this coming Wednesday. If all looks okay, I will approve it for publication and it should be available in a couple of weeks.

This book was so much fun to illustrate. I used the generous gift from Lorraine O’Brien of books she printed with Eucalyptus leaves to contact print pages of concertina books. She is an Australian who has been in several of my classes there over the years. In these books she had a way of folding up cut corners to create pockets on each page. So when I photographed each page, the folded up triangle shows. It makes more sense in the original because you can reach inside or fold the pocket down. In the photographing to get the picture of each page, there is this odd diagonal line.

Also the issue was how to space the illustrations on pages that turn separately so that illustrations that connect could still appear to be connected.  A border of one half inch solved the issue because the inside (gutter margin) sandwiches the images next to each other. I like how it looks now and especially how it feels in the hand.

It is the same size as Burke and Wills and Scrabble. 

This is a short blog because not much is going on. So just a catch up. Hopefully more next week.

Til then….

I was reminded that I was off by one week for joining my friends in Tasmania for their gathering. So had to get busy doing some more pages in The Gathering Book so as to keep in touch. They should all be ready to pack up and head home by the time they see this post. Anyway, I was looking for more images where I have used stitch and drawing and got caught up in my own history of artworks using cloth, thread, and pencil.

Here are some:

This one I put in because the small wooden tools were bought at WafuWorks just outside of Hobart, Tasmania.

Both of these are from a book I made to get through the hard times of three years ago.

Then this from 2003-4 of remembering our artist retreat gatherings in different parts of the country. We started with the original site of Black Mountain College and rented a large old house that could hold us all with our own rooms. Each day we met after breakfast, talked about what we would be doing for the day about our art practice, and then at five o’clock, stop, have wine, show our progress and get feedback. It wasn’t a retreat practice that all could keep up with over the next few years but was invaluable to some of us who stuck with it. Next we went off to the northwest followed by a retreat at Ghost Ranch.

I made this book about those times that still inspires me with its sketches, collected bits, and writings.

What I liked (and still do) about this book is the sound it makes. The yellowish pages were a yellow tracing paper that came in a roll.  After I cut several sheets, they were stitched to some odd synthetic mesh fabric I had. The pages were smeared with paint and shellac before I added gessoed sections to draw on. Some scraps of my pajamas that I wore at the retreats were added to pages with fused photos on them of special places.

To hold this book and hear it talk to me is such a wonderful experience. Then, when I thumb through it and am reminded of the passion I had for making art that mattered….well, there is nothing quite like it. I miss being in the company of those who know what I am feeling.

Over the years I have made more work. Not for the market. But work that needed to be seen, exhibited and then mostly buried when the time came. That work not put to rest, I live with here or have given to those who understand how much it meant to me.

Anyway, I enjoyed the look back this morning and will find more to show and talk about in other blogs.

Also this week…baking a quiche. Delicious!

I am trying to get the Fairy book illustrations into a small book form. I asked for an artist proof to see how it looked with slightly larger images. It simply does not work. So back to the drawing board for resizing and color corrections. It is so hard to tell by computer images. I need to touch it and look close at each page.

Better get on with it. Maybe a glass of wine….

Til later…