Back in the saddle

August has ended and with it my month-long foray into the land of home improvement.  I am happy to report that I finished all the projects on my list, and then some. But, as it is with most home projects, when one is complete, another two or three appear.  Surely every homeowner has had the following experience: with a fresh coat of paint on the walls, the woodwork suddenly looks more scuffed and scraped then ever. An afternoon of touching up the woodwork and  the carpeting reveals itself as the shabby, threadbare wall-to-wall covering it really is....and so on, and so on, and so on.  Therefore, while my month dedicated to improving my property has ended, my to-do list is longer than ever.  Sigh.
In spite of the many hours I devoted to painting and caulking and purging and organizing, August was not a month devoid of art.  Mid-month I traveled to the Bay Area to visit some of the people I love most in the world and in my short time there visited several galleries and museums.  One highlight was visiting Crown Point Press.  I roamed through their summer exhibition which included some lovely prints, but not one by Jockum Nordstrom, who currently is one of my favorite artists.  Seeing me peruse a book of his work, the bookstore clerk invited me to look at the prints JN and his wife, Karin Mama Andersson made during their recent residency at Crown Point Press.  I'm sure I gushed and drooled upon seeing their lovely collaborative pieces. Other interesting exhibits viewed in SF were an exhibit of traditional and contemporary Korean wrapping cloths, called Bojagi, at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art and at the Cartoon Art Museum, items from the movie HOWL and a collection of Archie comics, (as a kid I loved Archie comics perhaps more than I loved The Fantastic Four).
Having spent a month away from any serious art making I am equal parts excited to get back to work and fearful.  I worry...what if I've completely lost my momentum? ...what if I've forgotten how to draw, carve, print?  To ease myself back into my studio practice I spent today roaming through the Seattle Art Museum and various local galleries.  I saw many inspiring and interesting exhibits, including the  exquisite paper cuts by Qiao Xiaoguang  at The Cullom Gallery.

from The City Series, by Qiao Xiaoguang

Having spent the day looking at art and roaming the streets of Seattle, (on what was a beautiful day) I returned home and bravely picked up my sketchbook.  Tomorrow I will enter my clean and tidy studio, (another of my August chores) and get back to work, in earnest.