Lenten Rose and Wren

Happy Birthday John James Audubon!

Mama Crow

Something for national poetry month...


Mama Crow

Oh Mama Crow
atop your nest
this stormy April day,
your small dark head peeps through the boughs
that bend and twist and sway.

You seem to ride each wave of wind
with calm determination.
No little gust will keep you from
your task of incubation.

So hang on tight,
the skies will soon
be blue, and nests will dry.
Just in time for baby crows to
hatch and grow and fly.

Agape Cafe in Color

Finished the art to a project I shared about back in January. I enjoyed working on this visual tribute to a most wonderful service.

The Colors of Paris

To celebrate a recent significant birthday, my family and I visted Paris for a week. So many colors, so many textures...here is a sampling.

Tea, the Artist's best friend

Dan gave me a BIG new book for Christmas called "Audubon's Aviary".  It was published to celebrate the acquisition of some Audubon originals by the New York Historical Society. I've just learned there is to be a three part exhibit on these grand pieces. Of course I want to see them in person. Meanwhile, I will be content pouring over my oversized coffee table book, full of great anecdotes and insights relating to each reproduction.

One plate had an intriguing explanation of a stain visible in the upper right hand corner of "Northern Mockingbird".  Many stains apparently are found on JJA's works, and some confirm that he was indeed a tea drinker! I had to laugh at this as I know that Dan has sometimes come down while I'm at my drawing board and is appalled that my full cup of tea is perched precariously close by my work-in-progress! I hardly ever have spills and drinking tea such an intergral part of working, I don't consciously think about the possible dire consequences. One assumes, this is how Audubon worked, too. I felt a special kinship to the fellow bird artist when I read this.

Cheers! And here's the link to the exhibit:
http://www.nyhistory.org/exhibitions/audubons-aviary

"Northern Mockingbird"- see the stain in the upper right corner?

Many on JJA's work have been identified as tea stains.

Yikes! Put your tea cup on a coaster!

Asia and Whinny

Our Macbride Raptor Center has two eastern screech owls, one red morph and one gray. Of course we always view them during the day, and they sit glued together, dozing and winking. I wish they were able to enjoy the winter skies.

Layers of Time

On the shirt tails of a hefty winter snow storm, I recently traveled to Manhattan, Kansas to present a Keynote at a regional workshop for the National Association of Interpretators (think professionals who work in education and interpretation in zoos, museums, nature centers, national and state parks...). Our like-minded missions, to connect people emotionally and intellectually to the resources we write, teach or talk about, made my experience at the conference rich and inspired. It was a delight to meet a group from a completely different discipline I had so much in common with. Old vocational identifications, ancient and archaeological, came to the surface and played along side with my newer author-illustrator self.

One fellow presenter talked about the challenge of communicating the concept of time to children. We're not talking "This happened last Tuesday" kind of stuff. We're talking "This happened 11,000 years ago"! She had come up with an inventive portable visual and tactile stratigraphy display, presenting objects from the various time components of her state park, where she interprets. It got me thinking about our own lives stratigraphically, how one layer of experiences builds on the next. It is rich and complex alright, not just one story, but many. And I do still have fun digging around occasionally!