All of these are in ink pen in my 5×7″ sketchbook. Most are from life, some are from photos I took, and one is from a photo by someone else. I was walking through the lovely Warehouse District of Minneapolis after the march on January 23, wondering how I was going to hail a ride given how much the -20 F weather had drained my phone battery, but too high from the company of marchers to really fret. I looked up and saw a beautiful, pink, spiral fire escape, and (since I wasn’t going to stand there and draw) dug out my phone to snap it for later, but remembered that my phone wasn’t up for a text, much less a photo. I found a spot in the warm, my phone recovered, I got my ride, and once back in my friend’s home I looked up the fire escape. It was so noticeable that I was not surprised to find several photos. Gratitude to Kelly Schnell, who posted an excellent one in her Flickr account.
Black History Month, #5
I grew up with a lot of jazz in the house, mostly big band and bebop, yet I somehow did not become aware of Oscar Peterson until we saw his statue on a trip to Ottawa. His music plays in the square there as he sits on a piano bench that is pulled out as if he is just about to start playing, or just finished a piece and is turning to the audience. musicians.
This is his centennial, as he was born in Montreal in August of 1925. Peterson was an accomplished classical pianist at a young age. (His other instrument, trumpet, went by the wayside after a childhood bout of TB affected his wind for good.) He discovered boogie woogie thanks to the thriving jazz scene in his neighborhood, and went on to compose, perform, and teach for 70 years. Late to the party though I am, in the past few years he’s been one of my go-to jazz artists.
C Jam Blues, Oscar Peterson
Black History Month, #4
The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality. –James Baldwin, “Notes on the House of Bondage,” The Nation, November 1, 1980
I thought of Baldwin’s words earlier today, when I read a post from my colleague, the Rev. Ashley Horan, who is doing fierce, loving resistance day after day in Minneapolis and still finds time to write. To live into this wisdom from one of the greatest US American thinkers and writers, I urge you to read Ashley’s post, public on Facebook.
Black History Month, #3
Josephine Baker was a complete badass. A singer, dancer, and actor; the adoptive parent of 13 children; a fighter against racism at home; and a fighter against Nazism in France.
Siren of the Resistance: The Artistry and Espionage of Josephine Baker
(I did something wrong on the scheduling and this didn’t post yesterday as I’d intended it to.)
Black history month, #2
I discovered this poet thanks to The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, which has introduced me to many contemporary poets, many of them African-American. It is a testament to the power of using one’s platform to move beyond the narrow and the known. So many people are writing, have always written, great poetry, and only a tiny sliver of them are dead white men, so hooray for the Academy of American Poets for shining a light on so many others. I loved the poem linked below when it arrived in my inbox one day, and then I read others by him and felt a kinship there.
Please click on through to read How Can Black People Write About Flowers at a Time Like This, or to hear the poet read it. The page also has links to other poems of Abdurraqib’s.
I want to spend the month here exploring and celebrating African-American history –which is of course US American history. Today’s item is not reason for celebration, but lifting the burden of the lies we tell about why Black people tend to live in segregated and inferior neighborhoods?–that is. Check it out:
White-Only Suburbs: The History You Didn’t Learn
Given the impact housing has on generational wealth, access to education, vulnerability to crime, even access to groceries, our country’s racist housing policies have dug a hole out of which African-Americans are still trying to climb.
All ink pen on 5″ x 7″ or 17 x 17 cm sketchbook paper.
My practice: go outside and draw something I see every day. I’m not being purist; if it’s pouring, or I wait too long and it’s dark, I draw inside, and in a pinch, from a photo I’ve taken. It has been a very rainy start to the year, and once I sat in our enclosed entryway while the rain fell on the poppy leaves just outside.
After the first day, I have drawn with a gel ink pen. I might return to graphite pencil at some point, but right now, given my tendency to get fiddly, I’m enjoying the constraint of having only black to work with. These are all 5″×8″ or smaller, the size of my current sketchbook.
Several years ago, inspired by my friend Janet and her daily butterfly practice, I drew a leaf of a California tree every day for the entire year, mostly from photos. I really enjoyed it and stuck with it, which is rare for me for a daily practice. So I am doing something similar this year, combining two spiritual practices: I will go outside and draw something I see there.
I’m not going to be a purist about it; if it’s pouring rain, I’ll draw indoors (ideally, drawing something outside from indoors). I thought I might have to do that today, but the rain let up and I went out to our back garden and drew a fern there. I’ll post my drawings now and then with the tag, “Drawing outside every day.”
Getting outdoors and making art are also both good for my mental health, even if I only do them for a few minutes. I’m prone to anxiety, and various studies show that spending time outdoors and drawing both reduce anxiety–certainly for people like me, who enjoy them. I don’t need to go to a big natural expanse, though I am very much looking forward to pulling over now and then on my commute through Marin and Sonoma Counties and drawing some of the more scenic stretches. Even spending attentive time with a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk is an experience of awe and beauty.
Sermons in Stones 
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