How To Survive and Prosper As An Artist

The sixth edition of Caroll Michels's book, How to Survive and Prosper As an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul, has just been published. I was so impressed by her previous edition that I hired her to coach me to promote my Spirit Book exhibit in 2005. She was a great help both practically and emotionally. One thing I learned is that the first person you have to convince you are worthy of attention is yourself. When she was working on this revised edition, she requested information about using the internet and I am pleased to say there are five paragraphs in the book about my doings on the web. I'd give her book high recommendations even if I weren't mentioned. She is practical, knowledgeable, and has the artists' interests at heart.

Caroll was interviewed by Jari Chevalier as part of her Living Heroes series of podcasts. You can listen to it here.

And you can get career information based on the Appendix of Resources in her book at the Artist Help Network.

Annual Juried Issue of Letter Arts Review

I have a piece in the new issue of Letter Arts Review. It's exciting to be part of this beautiful issue. In reading Editor and Designer Christopher Calderhead's comments, I was surprised to learn that the placement of the images was in alphabetical order of the names of their creators. I couldn't picture my piece in a better pairing than with Cari Ferraro's books. The whole issue is full of wonderful work, all beautifully displayed.

After many years of using my lettering mostly in correspondence and around the house projects, it is finding its way back into my work. As always, a new piece of work comes from a period of simmering. I first got interested in the idea of superimposing my lettering on photographs as a kind of digital graffiti when I was walking around Lowell recording sounds as part of a Sound Workshop (this will be a long time simmering) with Walter Wright of 119 Gallery. When I saw this empty billboard here in Newburyport, I knew immediately that this was a perfect background. I'd like to make it a series but empty billboards are infrequent. The one in Newburyport was left blank for quite a while so I had the mistaken notion that if I spotted another one I didn't have to rush to take the photo. After a siting in Haverhill, I've learned that time is of the essence. Or better yet, be prepared with the camera in the car.

May Day 2009

May Day is the first day of summer in the Celtic calendar, hence the words in Hal-An-Tow, a traditional May Day song from Helston in Cornwall, "For summer is a comin' in, and winter's gone away-o."

You can hear the song in several videos:

May Day Celebration in the streets of Helston, Cornwall, 2007
You have to watch a bit to get to the song.


May Day Celebration, Cambridge, MA, 2005
This is where we spend our May Day mornings. A project for a video class, this video starts with Hal-An-Tow and mixes footage from three locations. The morning starts at dawn on the banks of the Charles, processes to a yard in Harvard, and ends at Holyoke Center in Harvard Square. There's singing, group dancing, and Maypole dancing to take part in and teams of Morris dancers to watch. The second song is the the May Morning Hymn which we sing in the yard at Harvard as the sun comes over the buildings. According to custom, it is sung by the choir at Magadalen College, Oxford at the top of the bell tower on the first of May at 6 AM.


The Waterstons
A slower version sung by the Waterstons in a pub in black and white video filmed in 1965.

The circular image is taken from And Just Revere, one of the Emily Dickinson Series. I will be showing the complete series next year in May at the Newton Free Library in Newton, MA.

Waterfall Opening at Nave Gallery

Waterfall is an international collaboration between three artists, Pirjo Heino from Finland, Karmela Berg from Israel, and Ellen Schön from the United States. The collaboration--an exhibit, installation, and performance--explores the theme of water as a metaphor for life and conveys both the idea of abundant water AND water at risk.

As part of the installation, local and international artists (including me) were invited to donate their interpretive snapshots of water which are being sold for $35 each. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to WaterAid.

The photos were taken at the opening reception. Top photo is of Karmela Berg from Israel (left) and Ellen Schön from the United States (right). My water photo (clouds reflected in a pond surrounded by small rocks taken in Woodstock, NY) is the second from the right in the bottom row.

The exhibition continues until April 26. The exhibtion images can be viewed at the Nave Gallery website.

The Elephant Rag

I was recently commissioned to create a logo for Terry Farish's wonderful blog/magazine about children's books with voices from around the world called The Elephant Rag. There you'll find links to book lists, interviews, talk about race, and stories about amazing people.

The logo was created in several stages. The background was built from images layered in photoshop: a photographed page from a book from Bhutan, plus scanned pages from a Mexican curandero book in Spanish from San Pablito and a book from Japan with the words to a Noh drama. All are muted so they blend together.


The elephant was drawn and the text lettered with my favorite pentel brush fountain pen. My first one was purchased from John Neal Bookseller but after a plane trip to Oregon this fall, I found that the ink flow was less controlled. I then began to use the pen I purchased while visiting Korea.

A light opacity of a scan of amate or amatyl bark paper from Mexico is laid over the entire image and an outer outline is from a scan of mashamba paper from Africa.

Word-A-Day Journal Report

Here's what I've been doing with my Word-A-Day Journal. Each day I write one word that is very specifically related to something I did that day. Sometimes I miss a few days but I do go back and fill in. After I skipped two pages by mistake, I now put the number of the day in the corner of each page at the beginning of the month. After the month ends, I go back and write a little bit on each page so I will remember the significance of the word and sometimes I add a very quick little drawing. I've posted some pictures on the Word-A-Day flickr group. You have to be a flickr member to join and the photos are available for viewing only to those who sign up for the Word-A-Day Journal group.

If you'd like to make your own, you can find my youtube tutorial here. I started at the beginning of the new year, but you can start at any time. Perhaps the first day of spring? Several correspondents have also mentioned giving them as birthday gifts.

Spring Begins

The first day of February is St. Brigid's Day; the second is Candlemas. Both mark the end of winter and the beginning of spring on the Celtic and Christian calendars. The days are longer and the growing light lets us know that the earth is coming alive beneath the snow.

The photograph of Spirit Book #2: Candlemas Cradled was taken on the magnolia tree from which I gathered the twigs used in the book. It is part of a series of photographs of the Spirit Books set in nature. They will eventually become a print-on-demand book with hand lettered quotes about nature. I expect it to be available next December.