Bittersweet

 

Bittersweet
3.5 x 5.25"
swatch cut from a poster (not painted by me) to create a postcard

The opening lines of the message on the card above read as follows:

Sunday 11/1/2015

Hi Mack,

Bittersweet: I'd set up this postcard w/ stamp and address to take w/ me on vaca to VA/WV to send to Muth way back 100 years ago in early Oct. Then I forgot to pack it … and now I've updated the address label and I'm writing to you instead of Muth—sad not to be writing to Muth, glad to be writing to you.

---

For a year or two preceding my mom's death in October 2015, I wrote postcards to her regularly. The written word, in small doses, allowed for sweet and successful connection and communication as her dementia advanced. 

The postcard above became a transition postcard following her death, marking the turning point at which I began painting postcards for my dad so he'd receive personal mail—by post, at the end of his driveway, in his roadside mailbox—as he lived by himself 150 miles away from his nearest daughters in the home he and my mom had previously shared. I wrote several times a month, sending the cards between in-person visits with him in Maine.

He kept all the accumulating cards on the small table beside the love seat in the dining room niche that we referred to as Narcolepsy Nook. As the stack of cards grew higher, I once offered to give him a box I had as a container. "No," he replied. "Thank you, but I like them just the way they are, in a stack."

When he died this year, five and a half years after my mom, I took that stack of postcards into my own keeping. Now, as 2021 draws closer to its end, I am continuing my tradition of recent years of making a wall calendar of my art to give as presents and offer for sale—this time featuring a dozen of my Postcards to Mack, this time using phrases extracted verbatim from the postcards to title them, this time creating the calendar at my desk at home and not in front of the wood stove in Maine with my dad in the chair beside me. 

'Tis a bittersweet labor of love.

Bookmarking Moments

My days are robustly, resoundingly, generously, (sometimes) overwhelmingly, and unfailingly filled-to-the-brim of late.

I bookmark moments as I move through each day.

This morning:

• smoothing out blanket wrinkles together with Dave while we make our bed first thing;

• walking at 445a in a world filled with birdsong and sunrise and fresh air;

• searching high and low for—and then locating!—at Stop & Shop the sandwich 'slider' rolls requested by Caroline for her upcoming visit;

• writing up reminders for my tutorial schedule for next week;

• plucking a ripe ripe red red strawberry from our garden and popping its burst of juice in my mouth;

• restocking toilet paper in our bathrooms; and

• making a bookmark—an actual physical bookmark for marking a stopping/starting place in a book—from a postcard I painted earlier this year.

Not Following National News
1.75 x 5.75" bookmark; acrylic, ink,
pencil, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2021

Mark Making

The Bible is a collection of religious texts sacred to Christians, Jews, and others. It contains 66 books, one of which is the book of Psalms. 

The book of Psalms contains 150 Psalms, one of which is Psalm 23.

Psalm 23 consists of six verses, the last of which rose to the surface of my mind several days ago in reference to my writing about mondegreens.

Yesterday, words from Psalm 23, line 5—my cup runneth over—came to my attention in a text message from my daughter.

Psalm 23 is thought to have been written some three thousand years ago (three thousand!), in Hebrew, by King David of Israel, though most of what is known of David comes from biblical literature, the historical authenticity of which is uncertain. There is little detail about David that is concrete and undisputed by historians.

But someone felt called to create, to put into form, and to share this sacred song, without knowing if or how making the marks of it would 'make a mark,' so to speak.

And so it is with all of us; we are called to create, called to make marks. 

I Shall Not Want
4.5 x 5.25" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract floral
2021

I Pick Up This Little

Even though I wake 

feeling hemmed in 

and crowded by 

the schedule of tasks 

enumerated for the day, 

I choose to lengthen my spine

and open my heart.

I pick up this little 

rectangle of paper, 

with its mark-making 

and light washes of color, 

place a paint pen in my hand,

begin to make new marks,

add more color,

and step completely out of 

time into 

grand spaciousness.

Be Joyful Though You Have Considered All the Facts
4.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper
abstract floral
2021

All By

Today I'm mindful of my older granddaughter Caroline's former oft-used toddler assertion of independence, all by! 

In cahoots, I think, with the same part of me that wanted to assert its independence yesterday, All-By yammers at me this morning. I go to my studio again with the idea of creating a multi-layered intuitive organic piece on paper from which I'll cut found compositions to use as postcards. My thought is to start with random mark-making.

All-By gets her own idea and wrests the paper from me insisting, all by! What emerges is of course not at all what I'd planned but I put up no resistance. All-By wanders from spot to spot in the house adding snippets of blind contour drawing and patches of doodles. Ends up with this:

work in progress,
9 x 12"; blind contour and doodles on paper

All-By looks at me; I look at All-By. 

All-By keeps the reins. No way is she going to add layers that cover the blind contour mark-making. Cut this into six rectangles, she states. Then go outdoors for a walk. I've got this.

Pulling Out a Slim Volume of Poetry
4 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic and ink on paper,
mounted on card stock
abstract floral
2021

More Open to the Possibility

Earthworms

    by Lynn Ungar

Imagine. The only thing that
God requires of them
is a persistent, wriggling, moving forward,
passing the earth through
the crinkled tube of their bodies
in a motion less like chewing
than like song.

Everything they encounter
goes through them,
as if sunsets, drug store clerks,
diesel fumes and sidewalks
were to move through our very centers
and emerge subtly different
for having fed us — looser somehow,
more open to the possibility of life.

They say the job of angels
is to sing to God in serried choirs.
Perhaps. But most jobs
aren’t so glamorous.
Mostly the world depends upon
the silent chanting underneath our feet.
To every grain that enters: “Welcome.”
To every parting mote: “Be blessed.”

We Can All Use a Little Illumination
3.5 x 5" postcard; acrylic, ink, collage, and oil pastel on paper
abstract landscape
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 11

Now there were even more threads to gather up and spin onto bobbins.

This idiom, previously unknown to me, charms me as I hear it expressed in a lovely and distinct British accent in the audio recording of a novel set in post-WWI Depression-era London. 

Is that a delicious little sentence or what?

Even more threads to gather up.

And spin onto bobbins.

Yes! Gather up those threads! Spin them onto bobbins! Everything in order! Everything in its place!

I say it aloud more than once as I move through my day—it is such an eminently usable assertion.

…

Have you seen my bobbins anywhere?

Even More Threads to Gather Up
4 x 5.5" postcard, acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

(Parenthetical Project) 9

Each morning

a walking meditation

before dawn.

A mind-viewing

a moon-viewing

a sniffing of washed air.

A tasting of sharp wind-refreshment

a trickle of whisper in a storm drain

a stretching of calf muscles 

an aligning of spine

a striking of foot on street.

An attunement, 

an opening,

a flow.

Before the Agitations of the Day
4 x 5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage
abstract
2021

 

Coming to Life (1)

This is indeed the day

that the Lord hath made;

let us be glad 

and rejoice in it!

We have to start sometime.

Now!

We have to start somehow.

See!

We have to start somewhere.

Here!

Polly Berrien Berends, Coming to Life

Before:

After:

Holy Humdrum and Holy Hardship
3.5 x 5.5" postcard; acrylic, ink, and collage on cardstock
abstract
2020

Coming to Life: Prologue

Back in mid-August, I had an itch to generate another series of postcards. Truth to tell, it wasn't even fully an itch; it was more like a barely perceptible sensation that perhaps a stray hair had glanced across my skin and then blown away.

Nonetheless, I brought a hand to the sensation and gave it a quick light scratch.

You know how that goes!

Next thing I knew I was at my paper cutter with a painting exercise I'd done two summers ago.

Here's what had sat in a drawer for two years untouched:

August 2018 painting sketch
11 x 14"; acrylic and ink on card stock (calendar poster)

Here's what I have at hand now:

Scratch scratch scratch …