Jungle Boogie

This is about my favorite printmaking piece. It is a linoleum piece I did which originated with the concept of the courting baboons in the center of the piece flanking the rhino. I made a valentine etching of the baboons and liked it so much I was inspired to do an african piece. I overdyed some silk in a hot orange and pink and inked the piece in black and printed it on the cloth. I tried to incorporate as many animals as I could - the lions of course, the zebra, the baboons, croc, rhino, hippo, wild dogs, leopards, giraffe, cranes and the native masks and hunters - oh yes a gazelle. i was inspired and made up most of the animals - I just started carving and there they all were so to speak.

Softly, softly , catchee monkey

This piece was so hard for me to do my whole brain fell out of my head. the umbrella could use a little depth but just getting lines and flowers was more than a poor body could stand. Anyway, the struggle is the victory not the finished project.

I have always loved this little phrase and I have done a couple of pieces in intaglio on the theme. But i used squirrel monkeys. Then i would have had to make the cat sinister, a jaguar. Nevermind the fact that chimps and tigers don't mix. Maybe they are at Michael jackson's Neverland.

How to catch a polar bear

it has been a mixed time for me. Before I unload my wittle cares and woes, I shall pass on this little joke I illustrated. I heard it in the 4th grade and it has stayed with me for 50 years. The 4th grade embodies trembling on the brink - too young to know about sex , yet vaguely aware something untoward is hovering out there. Something dark and mortifying. You've put to rest the wonderful fiction of Santa Claus and begun the deep distrust of adults. By then you have met many types of kids - some to emulate, some to despise and some that shock your socks off with the depravity of these little jokes you don't quite get. The rabbit, the turtle and the lizard are another such and of course confucious say: Anyway, on to my present world - saved a baby parakeet by feeding it every two hours for 3 weeks (including two times at night) but had the misfortune to receive a rejection letter from a fabric design concern who was concerned i was not famous enough for them. A pox upon their house.

The queen of Hearts

This is one of the earliest attempts at photoshop. I did this series as a black and white linoleum cut. But I really wanted the color - the registration would have been a nightmare - not to mention the amount of plates needed to get all the nuance. Its got its problems here and there - but I was thrilled and this little piece turned me on like nothing i had created in years.

Sometimes, in art, and i'm sure at any creative thing done, there is a moment when you realize you haven't breathed in a while. You are lost in some zen suspension of reality. i've only experienced it once in a while, now and then, when I'm cooking on all burners. It keeps you going for a bit - then you hit another plataeu. usually i am sitting on a mesa.

Indigo

I am working on this image for a show in Savannah - trying to be a little creative with the regional persona. I think really working with indigo, turned your skin blue. It was heavily produced in the coastal islands around Georgia and South Carolina and the slaves on those islands had their own language - a pigin English known as Gulla. The people who spoke it and still do are called Geechi's.

news from the pearl of the south

I am making cloth postcards for sale. Please contact me if you would like to purchase a cloth front and postcard back - you sew them together and voila. Of course in this very specific case you have got to be passing through Savannah - but i have others and soon will be on Etsy. I used this image for a show i had in Wichita - my swan song there - It was at Newman University.