#uncoffeed...

My daughter was born the day before my 27-week prenatal check-up.  Her father noticed at 1:00 AM in a hotel room on Airline Highway in New Orleans that I was literally crawling to the bathroom every half hour because, I said, I had to pee. "No, you are not having that baby now," he muttered into his pillow. But I did. I went by ambulance to Charity Hospital , got stuck with a needle, and held the nurse's hand so she could tell me when to push because I was no longer feeling contractions. By 3:00 AM, Baby Yaya slid out and screamed at the world - not fearful, but annoyed. She was cold and wanted people to stop messing with her. She's still that way. I knew she would be okay despite being early; that she was a complete entity of her own, not a part of me. I was just the vessel. There's a moment like that in the creative process, if I'm lucky. Sometimes I'm focusing so hard on the details of my work that I am absolutely dumbfounded by the final p...

I've come to a crossroads in my creative spurt -  there's a skunk to be drawn on scratchboard.  I have a colored pencil project to finish first, and the ink on canvas will have to wait.  Scratchboard requires me to turn my head completely around. Here's the stuff .  A fine coat of clay is applied to thin cardboard, and then India ink is layered on top of that. The artist uses a stylus  to scrape away the ink and reveal the clay underneath, which is usually white.  I had a tiny artistic tantrum after I accidentally bought a sheaf of rainbow-coloured scratchboard, but I own my mistake.  I did it to myself by not reading carefully. I can use the rainbow to practice without wasting the good black and white board; it's been a while since I worked in this medium. When I took photographs at  The Academy of Advanced Imagery  I focused on light and shadows, the interplay between them.  I'm very figure/ground oriented - I see bot...

You remember my bestie, Abbey the Cockatiel. We're even better friends now - she  flies across the room, smacks into the blinds and falls to the leather ottoman, and then yells at me to help her down because she claims she can't get to the floor from eight inches up. "Go for it, Abbey," I tell her. "Just jump. Or fall. You'll be alright." It can't hurt worse than smacking into the blinds. But she holds on with her beak and inches her feet down until she's no longer comfortable with the grip. Then she creeps back up to safety and yells at me some more. Wait...is that my book? :) I let her get on my arm and she crabwalks up to my shoulder. If I look at her, she hisses, but if I chatter my teeth in response to her doing same with her beak, she inches over and kisses me.  And if I seem to be turning my head she bites me. This is love. Yesterday I went into the neighborhood without her; Abby took a nap.  I chatted with some artists wh...