Notes

Lines

Painting landscapes that shaped my childhood, most are already gone.

James Turrell

A rough sketch of my favorite artist, James Turrell. Working on a picture book proposal about this amazing human.

“Light itself is a revelation.”
-James Turrell

Sketch in magenta of James Turrell

Dense Ecology

This field is home to a hundred or so different species of plants, insects, and hidden animals. Soil structure, root systems, and symbiotic relationships. The Gulf Coast Prairie is a biologically highly dense environment that should be cherished.

 

Stalking The Wild Dewberry

A watercolor painting od a field, a dewberry is in the foreground.

My mother always kept her Stalking The Wild Asparagus book close by. When I was a child she sent me and my brother and sister out to pick dewberries for homemade wine, possibly inspired by this book. What if we stalked these wild ingredients but left them where they lay? What landscapes and moments of natural beauty might we see?

Collage Work and Newness

Medium, substrate, fugitive materials, and the ephemeral.

Collages made in an eye-awakening intensive today taught by the thoughtful Selina Alko.

Blue and white painted in newsprint, white lines indicate power lines with a white airplane in close proximity. Second image has blue paint over light pink paint indicating a sunset. There is a white cut out single-wide in the foreground and red dots indicating a radio tower.

Grand Parkway – SH 99

The Grand Parkway in Hockley, Texas.

“State Highway 99, also known as the Grand Parkway, is a highway in Texas, United States that opened its first section in 1994. When State Highway 99 is complete, it will be the longest beltway in the U.S.” — Wikipedia

This was one of the last sections of The Grand Parkway to be built. The proximity of this structure to my childhood home is unnervingly close. In Texas, because of the sheer size of the state, we measure distance not by miles, but by length of time to go from point A to point B. This was a five minute walk. The roar of progress is deafening.

Flyover Country

International jets searing the sky.
The longest loop in the nation.
Passersby.

Species-rich earth.
Over a bed of loam.
Long grasses shoot up through.

Soft.
Flexible.
Parting as you walk in.

The first of my love letters to a landscape that will be lost in my lifetime. Intense heat, drought, and a forever flood will take it away. I love you my Gulf Coast prairie.

My Parents with their Granddaughter

Grandfather and granddaughter in a yard feeding chickens Toddler looking at fresh-picked blueberries handed to her by her grandmother

My Father’s Hands

Close up photo of hard-working hands

Working sixty hour weeks in his sixties. Need a reliable man who can lift a ton? I’ve got one.