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Never surrender!
“Never give up! Never surrender!” This is my favorite quote from the 1999 sci-fi parody film Galaxy Quest. As a fan of Star Trek, I love the heroics of the storylines and the movie’s devoted fans. What sets this spoof story apart is how an alien culture has modeled its entire identity on the “historical…
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Nativities Then and Now
Every Christmas, my family would put up a beautiful tree and decorate it to the nines. My dad would always tie this living sculpture to the nearest window frame so the tree wouldn’t topple over. He was well aware at least one of his three curious and rambunctious children would no doubt be crawling under…
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Rabbit! Rabbit! Welcome to November
My parents would often say, “Time flies when you’re having fun.” If this is so, I’ve had a one whale of a time in 2023. I don’t know where the time has gone, for I’d swear I just woke up in the bright new year of 2023, and now this year has grown a beard…
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The Persistence of Effort
I was reading an article in the New York Times the other day. In “How I Learned to Love Finishing Last,” the author wrote about her slow pace as a runner. As one who regularly finishes last in my age group in the annual Spa 5K Walk each November, I’m optimistic one day I might…
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Megiddo: Marks and Memories
My most recent studio work explores my memories of my pilgrimage to the ancient ruins of Tel Megiddo. Why am I interested enough to make an entire series of drawings and paintings of this site, which I visited over two decades ago? First, the city was continuously occupied from the 7th or 6th millennium BCE,…
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REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11th
Looking up at the night sky, I think of the Eskimo Proverb which says, “ Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.” The fatal September 2001 event at 7:14 am CDT…
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Pears and Apples
Aristotle said in his Poetics, “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance, and this, and not the external manner and detail, is true reality.” He spoke mainly about poetry, which was the highest art of his age, but his words also apply to the fine…
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Chaos and the Order of the Day
Morse Peckham, author of Man’s Rage for Chaos, believed “Order is humanity’s freedom; but the rage for order creates its own limits on that freedom.” Art, he maintained, enabled the artist to fight that rage, which destroys what it would create. Only the rage for chaos can balance the rage for order. As one who…
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Rabbit! Rabbit!
Welcome to December! While I was writing this blog, it was Black Friday in November, when many rabbit families were either shopping in person or online. I once did this with my dear rabbit mother, for she loved to shop. As a child of the Great Depression, the thrill of giving gifts, however small to…
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Writing a Holy Icon
In art class, I taught our group the time honored technique of using a cartoon to transfer an image to another surface. Of course, their first reaction was, “Are we watching Saturday morning cartoons today?” “No, it’s Friday. We’re going to make our own carbon paper,” I said, as I showed them how artists of…
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