Drawing and Painting with ME Carsley

We have all heard that phrase before.  Just ten minutes of exercise, meditation, reading, or the latest health product can change your life.  I can't promise to change your life, but in this short blog post, I can promise to share two resources that have certainly brightened my day, inspired me, reinvigorated my flow, sparked my curiosity, and provided a respite and recharge in the middle of a busy day. Of course, there are always TED Talks, and Google Arts and Culture as well. However, I like rabbit holes, and these two current favorites have taken me into unexpected and delightful territory. 

If you have a resource you would like to share, please do so in the comments section below. Enjoy!

I was amazed when I discovered there are 320 online exhibits spanning the content areas of all the different Smithsonian museums. Be sure to share this amazing free resource with the educators in your life.

The most current exhibit I've enjoyed was Little Beasts at Washington DC's National Gallery of Art.
You can enjoy a preview here:

This past year I had the good fortune to attend three wonderful art shows in New York City.  Although all three are now closed I highly recommend taking the time to review their websites.

Orchid and Rock, undated (Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368), Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng.

Just one of a many, many beautiful works in this show.  I simply love the gestural line work.  Even more intriguing they were a married couple, both accomplished calligraphers and painters who could impersonate each other's style without detection.

The best part of this gem of a show was the great diversity of Beatrix Potter's work displayed.  Everything from early childhood sketches, to academic still life, to nature study sketches that were her inspirations for popular characters.  I've always treasured the opportunities to see master sketches, somehow they seem to reveal the creative mind at work to me.  This show also had a beautiful catalog that was complete and offered more in-depth information.

The Walters Art Gallery's annual Ford Lecture last month was on the life and work of an 18th century Japanese Buddhist nun, Otagaki Rengetsu.  A fascinating artist who brought together painting, poetry and pottery.  Thankfully, you can watch the lecture here:​

A few days ago, I went on an early morning walk with our dog up the local trail that I wrote about last Spring.  Once again, our quarry was the delicate and elusive wild orchid. It was then I remembered that it had been a long time since I have made a submission to my blog.

So much has happened in the past months since my first successful local orchid hunt!  New artistic exploration (see my Works in Progress page for just a sampling of what I've been up to!) and new faces and new places.  My new world offers me many opportunities to draw and be creative but, since those works are for my employer, I'm not able to share everything here. There have been many books, and exhibits as well.

So this short post on my blog is less a post of what's new or coming up and more a promise that I will fill you in soon!  I'll leave you for now with a picture of one of the tiny treasures of Spring I discovered on my recent walk: the Showy Orchid.

If you have ever gone "hunting" for something that you have only seen in photographs then you know the difficulty of locating your quarry.  Nature has so many subtleties and quietly consistent habits that looking for something, like a rare wild orchid, is a bit like feeling your way through a dark room that you've only seen in the light once. So we met up and she showed me where they were. 
The conditions seemed auspicious: it had rain heavily a few days before so the forest was lush, but the trail dry.  It was a cool, cloudy afternoon, perfect for sketching and taking pictures. 
We were rewarded quickly with the side of the heavily wooded path early on our walk being dotted here and there with Showy Orchis in various stages of development and bloom.  These shy little flowers are fond of hiding under the undergrowth.  However, once my eye was train to look for the tiny flash of soft violet with bright white amid smooth fresh green broad leaves, they were fairly easy to spot. 

The lady slipper was another matter.  It turned out this little treasure enjoys a different environment, drier and higher in elevation than the Showy Orchis and among pine tree clearings and poking up from the pine needle bed.  You would think that a lavender slipper shaped flower in a clearing would be easy to spot.  But, these flowers on this trail are loners for the most part.  We found two but they were about ten feet apart.

​If you have been following my blog and works in progress, then you know I am find of working in series. So despite that fact that I currently have three other series in the works, I'm hoping to start a local orchid or at least wildflower series as well.  Too many things to draw and paint and too little time!

I didn't plan to start the new year with a new sketchbook. In fact, I've been struggling a bit with sketchbooks this past year, making things perfect has always been a stumbling block for me, so sketchbook practice is just what I need, right?  But, there was also the fact that I just wasn't getting excited about any particular book that I saw. And I was having difficulty keeping the one I have going because although I altered it to be more to my liking, I am just not in love with it.  Since our local independent art supply store closed its doors three years ago, gone are the days of that wonderful serendipity of wandering the aisles to find something unexpected and wonderful. And order on line just isn't quite the same as holding something in your hand and enjoying the smell of the paper and the subtle color and texture of the pages.

​​However, I happy to report that art supply serendipity isn't dead! Recently, and on a whim while ordering other supplies from John Neal, I ran across the Mahara watercolor journal.  I wasn't really paying attention except that it was watercolor paper. It's delightfully larger than I expected, and I didn't expect to like that, but I do! Haven't been quite this excited about a sketchbook in a while, but it would be difficult for any artist, I think not to get excited about this sketchbook filled with handmade watercolor paper from India.  Just yummy! 

​It turns out the book is divided into poems where the poet thinks the song of the nightingale is happy and those who find it sad. Hmmm... So I was hooked. I read each poem and decided at the end I would then look up the song of the nightingale (easy thanks to You Tube, despite not living on the continent where they reside) and make up my own mind.  Now the poetry was a solid 50/50 split.  I loved as many happy nightingale poems as I did sad ones, so I was left with a blissfully uninfluenced mind as I listened to the song of the nightingale for the first time in my life.

Alas, I must disagree with Dear Mr. Keats, I find the nightingale's song quite happy and would be more than pleased should I find one making a home in my garden and serenading me each evening.  And Rumi agrees, thus my work here. But decide for yourself!

​Once the drawings were complete and the designs approved, Perry quickly set to work to transform their lines into raised surfaces (about 1/8" high) against a flat background. This "modeling" work was done on the computer and he experimented extensively with 3-D prints to get just the right effects of light and texture while preserving the clarity of the overall image.  He even cast some of these 3-D prints in wax.  But, the amazing thing is with the new digital technologies available, it was possible to go directly from the finalized 3-D computer files directly to bronze with the images being cut into the plaques instead of cast.  Note too that the green background to help harmonize with the natural surroundings is in contrast to the raised polished lines.  This was an intentional part of the design so that even if you chose not to create a rubbing of the images you could still  enjoy seeing them.

Once the plaques were made then it was time to design their stands and labels, this was all Perry's expertise as a professional sculptor.  Working with a local stone cutter, Perry worked with our client to select the stone and finalize the design to insure that the plaques would be easily accessible to all and withstand the weather since they would be installed along a nature trail. Thanks to Perry and our good friend and Perry's assistant, Melvin Johnson, the plaques were installed just in time for Ann Marie Gardens' big fall event: ArtFest.
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I hope you get the chance to see the plaques in person and I hope the joy of working with my husband and such good folks on a project designed to delight the child in all of us shines through!

After so many years researching the life of William Hamilton Gibson, it was such a special privilege to have dinner in his home after the lecture.  Designed by the New York City architect Ehrick Rossiter, the home was considered a true showplace in its time so much so that it was featured in an extensive New York Times article.  An amazing experience to actually be able to be in his family home!