Category Archives: media

2018 Collage

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2016 Collage

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Forty-five Tiny Works

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A series of collages on paper, all measuring 4.5 x 6″

2015 Collage

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2014 Collage

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2012 Drawings & Prints

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Songs of Wonder cd composed by Basya Schecter

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Songs of Wonder is a collection of yiddish poems written by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his youth. The poetry explores the philosophical, spiritual and mystical dimensions of love, nature and how to be of service to the world. Composed by Basya Schechter (from Pharaoh’s Daughter), arranged by Uri Sharlin (piano, accordion, glockenshpiel), and additionally performed and interpreted by Megan Weeder (violin) and Yoed Nir (cello).

To be released on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records in the fall.songsofwonder_basya_info_songsofwonder_detail_

Cover illustration- American Tensions: Literature of Identity and the Search for Social Justice

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The Lives We’re Given, The Lives We Make | That Which Holds Us Together, That Which Pulls Us Apart | Landscape With Figures: Human Experience in the Natural World

These are the three sections of American Tensions, an incredible collection of fiction, poetry, and essays edited by William Reichard. He writes: This Anthology is full of threads and knots. If you enjoy discovering what connects each of us, the threads of experience and insight that translate across time, place, and culture, then you’ll likely enjoy the work you encounter here.

Published by New Village Press.AmericanTensions

Featured in American Craft Magazine

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The April/May issue of American Craft Magazine pairs my illustration with the article Craftier Than Thou by Glenn Adamson.americancraft
Writing about the idea of corporations using the concept of craft to sell their wares, Adamson refers to a Jeep Cherokee commercial, which states: The Things We Make, Make Us.
I felt a sense of duty to represent some of the people and places the commercial forgot to mention, the casualties of the Auto-man Empire. One page was not enough room to fit the story of Manaus and the Rubber Boom, The Cherokee themselves, the various landscapes of industrial ruins, and all the individuals in dozens of countries whose jobs and land were turned to scrap in the name of corporate craftsmanship. We forge ahead embracing debris and obsolescence.jeep

2011 Collage

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Abigail Washburn’s City of Refuge cd

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Abigail Washburn’s amazingly beautiful City of Refuge cd has been released.

This album is quilted from scraps of Nashville, China, a cello banjo, Mongolian throat singing, a fiddle, a choir, some talk about plagues, the future of tradition, the drive for global collaboration, the wonder of human connection, and an homage to the folks who came before us.

She talks about some of those things in this great little video.

It is my honor and pleasure to have contributed the artwork for the cover, website and tour…abbyposter_abigailwashburn_

Cutting out some shelter and staining a mass of humanity for the poster…unpaintedrealestatepaintedhumanity

Adding my grandparents, a monk, anonymous mid-century people doing good work, a doily from a cookie box of Katherine Holman’s (cookies recreated from Aunt Violet’s original recipes) and a rabbit for good luck…grandparents_detail

And an ominous incident over a mantle woven from Crescent Lake, Broken Bow, Bikando, Yangchow, Soochow, Ogallala, North Platte, Kyoto, Chinan, Kumos, Wuch’ang, Alma-Ata, Fengyuan, Keriya, Baba Hatim, Bon Aqua, Abiff, Lyles, Graham, Vernon, Only, Hurricane Mills, Scobell Island, Lucy Point, Kodak, Knoxville, Melville, Cuba Landing, Sugar Tree, Holladay, Yuma, Juno, Alberton, Coxburg, Lexington, Kimball, Sterling, Brush, Big Springs, Wildersville, Springcreek, Beech Bluff, Jackson, Oakfield, Coalfield, Windrock, Oliver Springs, Byington, Wartburg, the bends of Clinch, Bemis, Kamakura, Gomdu, Ndele, Gamane, Beri, Bimba, Jaunde, Jengone, Dancyville, Keeling, Denmark, Laconia, Germantown, Daylight, Campaign, Rock Island, Noah, Kuerhlo, Kara Shahr, Turfan, Telli,  Bulun Tokh, Ulughchat, Kashgar, Zaysan, Crab Orchard, Guma, Kobdo, Ulaan Uul, White Earth, Marylebone Point, Frogue, Zula, Susie, Alpha, Gartok, Chandigarh, Meerut, Moradabad, Jaipur, Agra, kanpuro, Lucknow, Varanasi, Katmandu, Montezuma, Finger, Milledgeville, Selmer, Serles, Pocahontas, Chewalla, Swift, Gillises Mills, Olivehill, Martins Mills, Lutts, Pickwick Lake, Cypress Inn, Gatliff, Moscow, Murtea, Mienyang and other places nearby.mantle

Cover art: The Nine Senses by Melissa Kwasny

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Milkweed editions has just released ‘The Nine Senses’, Melissa Kwasny’s fourth book of poetry.

She writes about ghosthandkerchiefs, being dead and almost dead, the migration of birds, water, being mute, bridges, burlap, flour-bags, cloaks, shrouds and sacred cloth, venetian glass, linen and salt, frosting and a Cold Milk Moon, where the women of myths and fruit trees intersect, and almost every color.

Thank you, Melissa! I feel very at home on the cover of this lovely book. theninesenses_cover

2010 drawings & prints

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2009 collage

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2008 Drawings

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songs from the book of knowledge: pigeon

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listen to pigeon

The Story of The American Pigeon, Cher Ami

Pigeons bred and trained for racing or for carrying messages are termed homing pigeons.They possess a remarkable sense of direction and can be trusted to return several hundred miles to their home lofts. Caesar used pigeons as messengers, and at the time of the crusades, there was a well established pigeon postal service. Thousands of homers are kept by clubs in America, and even more in Belgium for the sport of pigeon racing. A speed of 60 miles an hour over a course of 75 miles in not uncommon. 40 miles an hour is considered good speed over distances of 125 miles or more.
During the World War, where telephone and wireless communication was not possible, the services of these feathered messengers won for them the praise and admiration of the world. All the armies made use of them. At one point 12 miles behind the French lines, the British kept 60 pigeons housed in a London motor-bus. The outside had been roofed to form their cage, while the attendants, consisting of a chauffeur, trainer, and orderly, slept inside. A perch was cleverly arranged before the opening in the front, so that when the birds alighted on returning from their flight, an electric bell alerted the men inside, day or night. The pigeons were taken out to the trenches in baskets to serve as needed. If not used in 24 hours, they were released anyway with some message, to keep them in practice. Birds were always sent in couples with the same message, so if one happened to be killed, there would still be a chance of the message arriving safely. An American Pigeon, Cher Ami, brought help to the famous Lost Battalion of the 77th Division. They had written a message telling where they were and asking for help. This message they put in a little aluminum capsule, fastened it to the left leg of the pigeon, and opened the coop. Up Cher Ami rose until he was high enough, back to the American lines he flew, dropped into the coop there, and delivered the word which saved the battalion. Although seriously wounded when flying over the enemy firing line, he never wavered in his flight. They nursed him back to health and General Pershing gave the little hero a silver medal. When he died, his body was mounted and placed in the National Museum in Washington, D.C

Note: The words in all Songs from the Book of Knowledge are excerpts taken from a 1939 Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia and Fact-Index.

Songs from the Book of Knowledge: Airplane

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The words in all Songs from the Book of Knowledge are excerpts taken from a 1939 Compton’s Encyclopedia. The music is by Erica Harris, mixed with Garage Band.

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listen to Airplane

Never did things change so fast as in these days. Your grandfather’s father may have seen the coming of the steamboat, struggling along the river or lying with its nose against the banks. Your grandfather saw the early railway train, which came pushing proudly into the world at 20 miles an hour. Your father saw the motor-car riding the roads like a giant of power at a mile a minute. But you have seen a thing that clever men and wise men hardly dreamed of years ago; you have seen a thing that clever men scoffed at even when it first appeared – you have seen an airplane riding through the clouds!
In all the history of the world there has hardly been anything equal to that. Think of it in any way you like, and it must seem to you a miracle. Throw a stone up into the air and it falls down; throw a stream of water up and it comes back to earth; throw a feather up and, although it floats a little while on the wind, it soon glides back to the solid earth.
They fall, all of them, by what we call the law of gravitation, which means that earth pulls everything toward its center. A pebble rolls down hill; water runs to the lowest point. It is the pull of something in the mass of the earth that draws all things toward it as a magnet draws a needle. It will pull a flint down through a chalk bank if we give it time; it will pull down an overhanging tree if the tree is left long enough without support. This universal power of matter to attract other matter to it, the larger mass attracting a smaller, is one of the mysteries that no man understands.
And yet an airplane flies past a mile above our heads, so high that it looks like a bird, so beautiful that it looks as if Nature herself had made it, so confident of its power as it passes out of sight that it thrills a man to feel that he belongs to the race that made it. Now it is a speck! Soon our eyes will lose it, but we know that there is a man up there.