I just rediscovered the work of Father Paul Plante on a website for a New York City gallery called Mixed Greens. I am excited to see his new work and that he is doing well. I love his philosophy as well as his art. I think I once read that he makes one of these small works every evening as a kind of meditiation. His is the first art that I ever collected and could afford. I have his Weedy Seadragon and one other pastel of a birdâs eye which I purchased at the Nielsen Gallery in Boston. These two little pastels are still my favorites. They are both hanging in the main room of our seaside cottage.
Category Archives: Inspirations
Tribal Nonsense
It’s well into spring and feels like early winter here. The ocean is rough and wild and loud. I find it comforting and invigorating. It worked out well for us on spring break. Most of the vacationers never showed up. We live right on the beach which means that our peaceful isolated life is transformed by weekenders and vacationers in the warm season. We have the place to ourselves the rest of the year and when it storms.
It seems to me that most people only love nature when she isn’t showing too much character. That’s when I love her best. On one of our walks against the wind, we saw the seals again. When the beach is empty and the sea is rough, they swim over from the rocky point and play in the surf. The wild ducks like to body surf. I saw a flock of young males playing that game in the smaller swells.
Chris and I have been building a garden from scratch. Besides working on art in the studio and watching animals surf, that’s how we spent most of our time for the past few weeks. Little Nemo is not happy about it at all. He does not understand why we are outside and he’s not. Poor little guy. The future garden is still just an empty lot so it’s a lot of work to get it started. It’s still painful when I think about the lush wild garden at the old place but there is something to be said for starting fresh. The best thing about starting over is that we are planning and building this garden together.
From A Book Pirate’s Booty
People tend to throw away the books and pages I like to collect. I call them “well rubbed” like in The Velveteen Rabbit. I don’t care if they are burned, torn, water logged, scribbled in, doodled on, used as a repository for stickers, or completely falling apart. It just makes them more interesting. I am especially interested in early readers and other books for children printed before 1944. Books in good shape are added to my collection of reference material. Those in ruins are either repaired or transformed into works of art and other treasures. I take donations.
A small complaint or “what a little glue could do”.
Bookbinding tape is ridiculously expensive. I know it’s archival but it is just tape. I am tempted to improvise with some wood glue and a roll of black ribbon. The good news is that I have my hands on an entire lot of early readers, spellers, and primers from the turn of the century that were really dirt cheap. It seems like there is an abundance of them in Pennsylvania. One of these days, I’ll have to go there with a truck.