Pleased to be included in 52 Weeks 52 Works, the Academy Graphic Communications calendar – for information on their range of design and print services visit visitag.com
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Yes, I’m named after that Mina!
Tags: Bram Stoker, Dracula, Halloween, Mina Murray
The Tally Birds made an appearance in Ohio Rural Electric Power’s Country Living magazine this month, accompanying Karen Kirsch’s article, As the Crow Flies. Opening with the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher quote, “If men had wings and bore black feathers, few of them would be clever enough to be crows,” Ms. Kirsch includes Corvid folklore, history and behavior in her succinct piece about the blackbirds that make their homes in both rural and urban settings.
You can follow Karen Kirsch’s blog at My Small Country Life.
Tags: blackbirds, crow, printmaking, raven
In September the BOX gallery exhibited Paranormal Paranoia: the other side of Tattoo Art(ists), an intriguing collection of fine art by tattoo artists. During the opening reception and artwalk there were local tattoo artists on hand, along with a raffle for a gift certificate generously donated by Kustom Culture Tattoo & Piercing in Tallmadge, Ohio. As luck (and enablers) would have it, I was the fortunate recipient!! Funny thing, as I started working on sketches, my initial design ideas completely changed – as did the placement. Wendy, owner of Kustom Culture, advised me to go with a larger image and take into consideration that the surface (in this case the forearm) is three-dimensional.
The final drawing depicts a branch from an Elder Tree, December’s tree in the Celtic lunar zodiac, with berries, leaves and feathers. Wendy’s inking is perfection! The photo below is from the same day – will update in a few weeks.
And, speaking of ink, here are three favorites from my bookshelf – tattoos, tattoo artists and unforgettable stories.
The Tattoo Artist by Jill Ciment
Until I Find You by John Irving
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Tags: elder tree, tattoo
Akron’s antiquarian and used book store, The Bookseller, is always a pleasant destination and, being less than ten minutes away, it’s easy to drop in at any time. On a recent visit, during their summer sale, I stopped in to browse the reduced price fiction offerings and left with several novels and a fun little compendium of games based on Edward Gorey‘s artwork. Gorey Games, published by Troubador Press in 1979, contains puzzles, mazes, mysteries and more, all designed by Larry Evans using Gorey’s familiar black and white illustrations.
It would be easy to lose yourself in some of the visual trickery. No pencils allowed, though – all deciphering must be done on a photocopy!
The Bookseller, located at 39 Westgate Circle in Akron, Ohio, is open Monday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 1 – 5 p.m.
There seems to be a pattern developing here. Like many readers, I have a shortlist of authors whose new writings are anticipated for months and purchased immediately following publication. Then I sometimes find myself reading all sorts of other material, while I engage in a bit of hoarding and delayed gratification. I suppose it’s simply a matter of postponing the inevitable final pages – after all, it’s impossible to finish a book that hasn’t been opened. Crazy, but I think that’s why MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood, took up residence here a year ago and remained unread until recently – after all, it wasn’t just a single book, but the conclusion of a trilogy that began over ten years ago.
Margaret Atwood’s tale started with Oryx and Crake in 2003 and continued with The Year of the Flood in 2009. She describes of her work as speculative, rather than science, fiction: the story and characters are futuristic, but they are, as described on the book jacket, grounded in a recognizable world.
Atwood chills us with her (clever) names: CorpSeCorps (security), HelthWyzer (health and wellness), Extinctathon (online game), OrganInc Farms, BlyssPluss pills (sexual ecstasy, birth control and prolonged youth, all in one), AnooYoo Spa, God’s Gardeners, ChickyNobs and SecretBurgers, then dazzles us with passages like this: “They set out the next morning just at sunrise. . . Crows are passing the rumours, one rough syllable at a time. The smaller birds are stirring, beginning to cheep and trill; pink cloud filaments float above the eastern horizon, brightening to gold at the lower edges. Some days the sky looks like old paintings of heaven: there should be a few angels floating around, their white robes deployed like the skirts of archaic debutantes, their pink toes daintily pointed, their wings aerodynamically impossible. Instead, there are gulls.”
As I shelved MaddAddam I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I should have read just a bit slower.
Akron’s new independent cinema, The Nightlight, opened to the public on Tuesday, July 1, with Only Lovers Left Alive, a film by Jim Jarmusch. I have been looking forward to viewing this film since reading about it last spring, so it was exciting news when The Nightlight announced it as their opening movie. Given the current popularity of all things undead, it was wonderful to see Jarmusch rescue the vampire narrative from the clutches of adolescent romance. The New Yorker review, After Darkness, by Anthony Lane, provides an excellent overview.
The Nightlight, created by Akron Film + Pixel, with generous support from the Knight Foundation and community funders, has a full schedule of upcoming films. Visit their website or, better yet, follow nightlightakron on Facebook for the latest schedule of movies and events.
While browsing the Akron-Summit County Public Library’s extensive collection of ebooks I happened upon a short story collection that seemed ideal for summer reading. Somehow I had missed A Study in Sherlock – Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon when it was published in 2011. Edited by Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger, the book features short takes on Sherlock Holmes by eighteen well-known authors, including Neal Gaiman, Lee Child, Dana Stabenow and Jan Burke. From Stabenow’s classroom assigned blog (complete with comments) to Thomas Perry’s release of John Watson’s manuscript of the events that transpired when Holmes was summoned to meet with President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, each piece is enthralling.
Rather than part ways when the library loan ended, I purchased a copy and learned that the graphic story by Colin Cotterill was not included in the library’s Kindle version. As his tale opens, Sticky Cotterill, writer of The Mysterious Case of the Unwritten Short Story, mistakes Laurie King for Larry King. Much silliness ensues amid delightful pen and ink drawings, rounding out a wonderful tribute to Sherlock Holmes.
Before reading the reviews or checking the bestseller lists, attracted only by the briefest of summaries and unaware of the length, I uploaded The Goldfinch on my ereader. The idea that a little known, diminutive painting would carry the narrative was intriguing. Now that Donna Tartt’s book is number one on the New York Times bestseller list it is hard to avoid the numerous reviews and volumes of commentary on the characters, their lives and interactions. The further removed I am from the final chapter, the more mixed are my opinions, with one exception: Carel Fabritius’ painting remains impressive. Whether viewed as a plot device, as the main character or as metaphor, the little goldfinch is memorable . . . “It exists; and it keeps on existing.”
The Goldfinch, painted by Carel Fabritius (1622 – 1654) shortly before his death, was included in the Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis exhibit from October 22, 2013 to January 19, 2014 at The Frick Collection in New York. This was the last American venue on the global tour of these paintings from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Netherlands and an opportunity for visitors to view The Goldfinch in person.
Coming across a bit of art in the storyline of a novel is always a bonus. It can be a piece of art, an artist, or a spy whose resume includes expert painting restoration as in Daniel Silva‘s Gabriel Allon series. A Georgia O’Keefe painting provides the motivation for the characters in the fun mystery, A Dangerous Talent, by Charlotte and Aaron Elkins, while the clues that lead to the perpetrator in Louise Penny‘s Still Life are hidden in a painting. The triptych in Tracy Guzeman‘s debut novel, The Gravity of Birds, holds the key to the lives and relationships of her characters.
The Gravity of Birds opens with a 1963 Mary Oliver poem, No Voyage, beginning with the line,
“I wake earlier, now that the birds have come
And sing in the unfailing trees.”
The book, too, begins in 1963, but focuses on present day as the search begins for the two pieces that will complete the triptych painted over forty years earlier, when the painter and the subjects, sisters on summer holiday, were young. An introductory synopsis can be read on the author’s website, along with reviews, including these words from Natalie Villacorta writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “. . . Much like the paintings that the book describes, it is the details that hold our attention: the secrets we learn about the characters that make us care about them…It is only at the end, when the puzzle is completed, that we see all the pieces Guzeman so cleverly layered into the story.”
And, of course, when the puzzle is complete, we can almost visualize the three paintings side by side.
