Flipping Pages

How’s your summer reading going?
I’ve been on an unusually good roll this past month and have lucked into a string of excellent books. If you’re on the lookout for some ideas to round out your August picks, consider the following:

The Nature of Things – Essays of a Tapestry Weavery by Tommye McClure Scanlin
Always intrigued by the behind-the-scenes methods of any artist, I gravitate toward the compare and contrast game that surrounds learning how someone else approaches their work. Scanlin clearly and effectively writes about the not-so-straight line from inspiration to finished piece that is familiar to all of us. While this book shares many practical details particular to weaving, you don’t have to be a weaver or know anything about the discipline to enjoy these essays. Rather, this is a book for anyone interested in learning how an artist’s process unfolds.

Blue Rib Sweater ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches Somehow my needle and thread have taken a back seat this summer and I find myself practicing relatively quick portraits. My goal is to completely fill this sketchbook, hoping to see progress. I’m not flipping the page from textiles, rather I’m taking an intermission with the thought that everything is a potential deposit into the creative bank.

Paradise in Plain Sight – Lessons from a Zen Garden by Karen Maezen Miller
As a huge fan of Japanese gardens as an art form, this book taps into my love for the layers of complex beauty manifested through each garden’s deceptive simplicity. Meandering through her own adopted garden, Miller highlights ways that life is often reflected in the specific characteristics of a Japanese garden and what can be gleaned from that parity. Elements of this meditation/memoir reminded me of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. Calm and wise, this is a great read for our tumultuous times; it’s one I expect to return to in the future.

Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult
Although Covid is still with us, unless one faithfully kept a journal throughout those early months, there are a lot of sharp details that have blurred, even in the relatively short time that has passed. This book is a crystal-clear fictional reminder of those fearful early days when the world changed so drastically almost overnight. While I would only give the story itself a B/B+, as an historical marker of the details surrounding our universal uncertainty, paired with the reality of what a tough climb recovery could be for those who survived being on a ventilator, I give this novel a solid A+.

Art & Fear – Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland
A perennial favorite that should be on every artist’s shelf. Like many good books, it will strike you differently depending where you are in your life and practice at the time you pick it up. That is exactly the reason this one is worth reading again and again.

The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair
There’s a certain joy to a book that can be picked up, put down, and opened at any given page without losing steam. St Clair’s bite-size essays tell the stories of specific colors, their history and the impact they have had upon human civilization and culture. You won’t look at your palette in quite the same way after reading it.

Profile ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 12 x 18 inches At life drawing, we all gather around the model in a somewhat haphazard fashion, skootching a bit to the left or right to try to get a good vantage point. I can’t remember the last time I had a true profile to work from, but this lovely example was a real treat to try to capture.

Taste – My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci
After watching Tucci’s gastronomic romp “Searching for Italy” last year, I’ve been waiting for our library to get a copy of Taste. I recommend the audio version, read by Tucci himself. At times humorous, other times touching, and always rich with anecdotes and recipes, this book is a feast unto itself. It is the ideal of what I think of as a “summer read”.

I’d love to know what books you’ve been reading this summer. Please share any of your favorites in the comments below.

Chipping Away at The List

My husband was recently bemoaning his seemingly endless project list.
It got me to thinking that, while superficially I too would love to check everything off my long string of to-do’s, in all honesty I don’t believe it’s a finish line either one of us really wants to cross, mainly because…then what? Seen from a certain perspective, always having something in the queue may be the secret that propels us forward.

I think the practice of making art is similar. If we’re doing it right, every day is a stretch leading to another stretch, and then another, and so on. It may seem like we want to get “there”, but do we really? Does “there” even exist? If every time I sat down to make something it just flowed out with ease, my guess is I’d get bored. Keep in mind that achieving a level of facility isn’t the same thing. For me at least, the challenges I set for myself and the resulting growth are perhaps more than half the point of doing the work in the first place. One could always use another 10,000 hours.

As I’ve been adding portraits to my sketchbook this month, I keep chipping away at assorted goals. My current “there” is to simplify, to make a conscious effort to rein myself in despite my love for detail and my desire to pack in lots of visual information. The big question is how does one do that while depicting a human’s individuality and alluding to what lies beneath the surface?

Along the way I’m discovering my own vocabulary, but I continue to look for pointers from other artists who seem to have figured out this mystery of distilling an image down to its essence. Joe Ciardiello sets a great example. His portraits capture a likeness and plenty of additional information with a relatively spare, but oh-so-expressive line. Often he fleshes the image out with just enough color to bring it further life, and/or offsetting that warmth with rich passages of black ink. Without fuss, his drawings seem to convey the soul of his subject. I’d love to be able to do that.

© Joe Ciardiello, Jimmy Smith

If we still lived in the mid-Atlantic, I would have enjoyed going to see Ciardiello’s recent exhibit “A Fistful of Drawings” at ArtYard in Frenchtown, NJ. However, I was able to listen to him talk about the show with Gil Roth on The Virtual Memories Show podcast. It was fascinating to hear him describe his thought processes and the technicalities of his approach, nevermind how heartening it was to recognize similarities between our working methods. He too begins each portrait with a subject’s eye, finding it key to a successful start. We share a preference for drawing older models: he says the lines of their faces reflect a deeper story — I just find the topography of an older face more interesting in general. And perhaps most reassuring of all, he freely admits to continuing to make many mistakes.
What could be more inspiring than that?

Consolation Though Art

It’s been a rough week.
And while this is not the place to outline my opinions regarding the crushing Supreme Court decision on Roe, it would be disingenuous for me to blithely write this post as though nothing had happened.

I give this book 5 stars

It often seems that when something sets me reeling, I’ll come across an idea or a sentence in whatever I happen to be currently reading – even if completely unrelated – which points me back to at least a small sense of balance. This has proven true even when regaining my full bearings seems impossible. John Green’s 2021 book The Anthropocene Reviewed has been such an anchor this week.

Yellow Tanktop ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Ink and watercolor on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches. My thoughts this week have been with the women of this country who will no longer have access to the care that should be their right.

In a series of essays that review a variety of diverse themes on a five-star scale, Green invokes our shared humanity via this quasi memoir that covers such eclectic subjects as “Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Stickers”, “Air Conditioning” and “Diet Dr Pepper”. In times of distress it’s helpful to be reminded that one can find unexpected significance and empathy in the ordinary. Perhaps most appropriate to where I’m going with this post is Green’s essay entitled “Hiroyuki Doi’s Circle Drawings”. It speaks to the consolation of making art.

Doi at work, Photo by Edward M. Gómez, accompanying his article about Doi on Hyperallergic

Addressing Doi’s obsessive abstract drawings, composed of thousands of circles and begun in response to the death of his brother, Green relates that Doi retreated to the act of drawing and the comfort of repetitive mark-making to find relief from his grief.

Creative work often brings one into a “flow state”, inducing a sense of being or, as Green comments, “a present tense that actually feels present”. He writes about this phenomenon in relation not just to Doi’s drawings, but also to the 150,000 hand-written signatures he supplied to his publisher to be bound into copies of one of his books (including my library copy above). He quotes Doi as saying, “I feel calm when I’m drawing”.

I have also found this to be true, and will add that it’s proving a viable means for confronting the shocking reality of American women in the 21st century being stripped of their reproductive rights and autonomy.

While the painted drawings I’ve worked on this past week haven’t softened last Friday’s blow, they have offered a space of gentle reprieve. My work is the closest thing I’ve found to a respite from my anger and despair. Ironically, the flow state that accompanies creative work appears to be a direct route to the end goal of so many meditation apps that reside on our phones. I guess I prefer to find my solace through a needle and thread or via an ink pen and a box of paints.

Know someone who needs help? Here’s a list of resources.
~ with thanks to @owasowfoundphotos via @gollyokate

Potluck

The past several weeks have been a bit of a smorgasbord of projects. Through them all, I can’t help but think I’ve been subconsciously influenced by our reawakened garden which, especially during this glorious month of June, has visually been like a rich shot of espresso after months of presenting as the equivalent of a weak cup of chamomile tea.

©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye on silk A thank you gift for @gollyokate, whose Catch-and-Release Program contributed, via her art, to feeding hungry families, maintaining community safety nets and helping the planet.

Now that our show Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments is closing at the Gruppe Gallery on the 19th (there’s still time to visit this weekend if you haven’t already!), I can move beyond the writing and back-end administrative duties associated with it to dip into a bit of artistic free-styling.

In process ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk This avian fellow was originally meant to be a chickadee, but took a turn toward a more vivid imaginary specimen after reading The Feather Thief and as color returned to our yard.

I look at our beloved perennials bursting back to life, each day’s view a bit different from the one before as they grow and bloom in a constant state of evolution, and I’m inspired. I think I’ll try to relax into that frame of mind in the studio for the next couple of months and see where it leads me.

Front Garden

Color + Light = Place

There’s nothing quite like travel for a reminder of how much light and color affect a sense of place. In fact, I don’t think it’s too bold to say that, for those of us interested in such things, the elements of light and color define place.

Kailua Beach

Matisse knew that fact, as did Winslow Homer and Gaugin. On the more contemporary side, look to Dorothy Caldwell, Eric Aho or the interior designer Justina Blakeney* for color that portrays the essence of specific locales.

Berkeley

Our visits with family in Berkeley and Hawaii were nothing less than a full-on immersion in chromatic glory – especially for this northern New Englander. It was the kind of visual shake-up that makes me sit up straight and pay close attention.

Hawaii

That isn’t to say things haven’t been waking up here in Vermont over the past weeks. We arrived home to find our garden bursting with the colors of Zone 4: phlox, azaleas, lilacs, iris, rhododendrons and lupins…and let’s not forget the lush Green Mountains.

Vermont

I’m not well-versed in the science of light wavelengths and how they are affected by their relationship to the sun or the surrounding environment, but at least I can say that their variations make my travels – and coming home – all the richer.

*Thanks for the introduction, Sandy!

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For a similar experience – especially while travel is still iffy with COVID – consider tuning in to the Strong Sense of Place podcast. Each episode explores one destination by discussing in detail, without spoilers, five books that will take you there on the page. Hosts Melissa & David ferret out books that really convey the feeling of a particular place — color and light limited only by your imagination.

Diving In

One of the things I’d like to work on this summer is getting to a point where I feel like I have at least some facility with landscape sketching. It’s kind of a logical thing to do in the warmer months when the temps are more amenable to being outside, but the truth is it’s a discipline I really struggle with and would like to improve.

In general, I’m not that inspired to make landscapes in the traditional sense. I am much more drawn to work with an element of abstraction that flattens space, integrates geometric forms, and allows materials to take center stage.

Winslow Homer, Sleigh Ride c. 1890-95, oil on canvas, The Clark Institute This painting is a wonderful example of the attributes I’d like to emulate.

I want to be able to capture the sense of a location by translating a moment through the various color combinations and shapes that grabbed my attention in the first place. It’s the quick marking of a specific time and place I’m after, not a formal finished artwork.
Plus, I can’t help but think of the possibilities of incorporating stitch…

We recently visited our daughter in Chicago; her condo looks out to Lake Michigan. Having grown up on the coast of Maine, I’m very familiar with the fact that bodies of water change by the minute / hour, so it was a fun exercise to practice capturing a similar view at different times of day.

At the moment my results are hit or miss, but I trust the key for unlocking the code lies in practice. Time to take the plunge.

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“Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments” made a bit of a splash itself this weekend.

Our artists’ reception was well-attended and it was lovely to be able to share and talk about the work in person. Thank you to Dianne Shullenberger, Leslie Roth and to everyone who came to see our work. And if you haven’t been yet, the show will be up through June 19th at the Emile A. Gruppe Gallery, Jericho, VT. Gallery hours are 10-3 Thursday – Sunday, or call for an appointment: 802.499.3211

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And one final suggestion within this week’s watery theme:

If you’re anywhere near Montpelier before May 29th, make sure to stop in at the Front Gallery to see Hasso Ewing’s exhibit, “inside&out”. Her swimmer figures “explore concepts of inner and outer worlds and the relationship between self and other…”. The show is thoughtful, humorous, and extremely uplifting.

For some context, Hasso was the creator/curator of “the Sheltering-in-Place project” at the Highland Center for the Arts in the summer of 2020. That exhibit was the impetus behind my very first Covid house, “Relative Distance”, and for the 17 houses that then followed as I continued making them to “personify” my observations and emotions during lockdown.

Hasso proved then, as in this current exhibit at the Front, that she is a master at producing immersive, magical environments. In a section toward the back of the gallery, she invites us to enter “a watery inner world that brings the viewer inside to find peace and to escape from that which lies just above the surface”. It’s truly a balm in the midst of our chaotic, overly politicized world. Don’t miss it!

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Last note: If you’re a fan of Wordle — check out Artle!

Finding Resilience Through Art

“The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.” ~ Chris Ofili

Last week, on my way to deliver my pieces to the Gruppe Gallery for our show “Tucked In”, it felt a bit like moving day. The back of my car was filled to the brim with work made in 2020/21 to mark many sides of Covid as I had experienced them: ten dyed and embroidered houses supported by foraged branches and a dozen framed portraits of friends who’d graciously shared selfies of themselves at a time when getting together socially, let alone for in-person drawing sessions, wasn’t possible.

One view of the exhibit, with Leslie Roth’s “Tick Eater” in the foreground on the left.

More than 15 months ago, Dianne Shullenberger, Leslie Roth and I began to scheme about putting together this exhibit of the work we’d been making since lock-down began. In the face of so much despair dominating the past couple of years, we wanted to offer some good news.

This selection represents half of the portraits I have on view.

A frequent topic of discussion between us had been how grateful we all felt that we’d had our art practices to help us get through this crazy time. It seemed important to share with others that hopeful perspective and the sense of resilience we gleaned from our work. The end product of those discussions is Tucked In: Resilience in Small Moments.

Another view that includes my houses, a couple of portraits, and one grouping of Dianne Shullenberger’s watercolors on the right. These photos don’t get close enough to show the finer details of all the work in the exhibit. I hope you will come to the gallery to take in those nuances in person.

It wasn’t just the fact that going to the studio offered regularity and purpose – although it did and that was huge – but our work also became an outlet providing solace and even something of a protective shield of normalcy against the chaos brewing outside our studios where everything seemed so topsy-turvy and out of control. This show is a feel-good manifestation of how we each, in our own way, found and tapped into pockets of positivity in the face of a global pandemic — through our homes, our gardens, our friends and our wildlife neighbors. The common denominator being our art practices.

And while what you will see at the Gruppe Gallery through June 19th is a culmination of the work of a specific time, it is also an example of how (certainly in my case, by branching out into 3-D work) those months were, as Chris Ofili’s quote references, a time of experimentation. His words remind me that every exhibit is just another mile marker along a path, not the end of a journey.

Please join us for the reception on Sunday, May 15 from 1-3pm if you can.

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I don’t consider myself a birder, but I am definitely a color-lover.
I have been reading The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson. It’s part natural history lesson, part true-crime, nestled under the umbrella of the world and art of fishing flies. I keep running to Google to check out alls sorts of unfamiliar birds mentioned in the book.
These spectacular photos, and this link, will give you an idea – as they did me – of what the fuss is all about.

Banded Cotinga

Lovely Cotinga

Spangled Cotinga

Paying Tribute

I was saddened to read last week that Jerry Uelsmann has died.
During college, we probably spent at least 95% of our time learning about art and artists of the past, but Uelsmann was a living artist who broke through that wall of antiquity.

Jerry Uelsmann, detail ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 12 x 9 inches. Working on these portraits is such good practice – but so humbling. I’m learning how important it is not to rush through the drawing phase. If I lay out the drawing and then leave it to come back to later, time and space make it easier to see where adjustments are needed.

Looking back, his work definitely had a formative impact on me. While I was intrigued by the ideology of the Dada movement and iconic surrealists like Dali, I found it hard to connect with much of their work. Jerry Uelsmann was a contemporary exception; his imagery spoke to me and stayed with me. His “artful juxtapositions”, as his NY Times obituary termed them, were both approachable and curious. Looking back, I think it was Uelsmann’s photo montages that first nudged me toward grasping the importance of looking for and creating unexpected connections.

I’ve always loved this image. This old dorm room poster is tacked to my office wall, where I still enjoy it every day.

The mystical quality of his photos pulled me in, appealing to my college-age self by feeding the desire to find meaning that comes with growing into adulthood. Yet even all these years later, his images still touch on something fundamental.

Electric Milk © Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 inches. This ancient painting (c. 1979) was inspired by the surrealistic objective to defy reason and Uelsmann’s example of combining disparate objects.

Intellectually, the intent behind his imagery still remains just out of reach, but one can understand enough of his visual language to feel encouraged that translation is possible — perhaps through the vocabulary of dreams. The various elements within each finished image have enough relatability to give the resulting montages an essence of personal relevance despite their mystery. Ultimately, he poses riddles that connect to something within our deeper selves.

I still refer to this wonderful monograph for inspiration and escape.

Uelsmann was a pioneer, conjuring in the 1960s what he appropriately termed “the alchemy of the darkroom”. Photoshop may have made that form of magic accessible on a more universal scale, but I’ve yet to find work that contains the same haunting aura of myth which makes Uelsmann’s work so memorable.

Look Into the (Working) Mind of an Artist

First things first:
This week marks the opening of Transitions at Axel’s Gallery in Waterbury, VT. This show explores change – through both material and concept, as seen through the eyes and hands of members of the Vermont chapter of the Surface Design Association. It runs through the end of the month.

Ulysses’ Wave ©2014 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye, paint and embroidery on silk, 19″H x 38″W x 2.25″D. My piece in the show is a meditation on how so often life mimics nature. How we see change coming from a distance, feel we are prepared, but are somehow shocked when it arrives. Strips of raw silk, hand-dyed to gradually transition from bright green to a subdued neutral, abruptly end in blue. Over-dyed patterns, created via stitched-resist and further enhanced with embroidery and paint, reinforce a sense of continuity. They roil and swell, not unlike a massive wave that, despite seeing it coming, still takes your breath away as it crashes into you. Read more about the creation and concept behind this piece, in real time.

I’ll be at the Artist Reception Saturday, April 9th, 4-6pm. Please join us!

Transitions Post Card

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Now for our regularly scheduled programming…
I owe a debt of gratitude to the friend who mentioned last month that she was reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci. When the book first came out in 2017, I made a mental note to add it to my TBR list in anticipation of the time when demand at the library would calm down. But of course I forgot. Thanks to her recent reminder, I finally followed through.

It was a fascinating read.
While no one would ever question Leonardo’s genius, Isaacson uncovers just how far-reaching and fascinating his mind truly was as he balanced art with science. One reviewer of the book alluded to how fans of traditional biographies might take issue with the heavy emphasis on art history, Renaissance Italy and Isaacson’s focus on painting and other artistic techniques over a dissection of Leonardo’s personal life. But that criticism never occurred to me; I think the author had the proportion of one to the other exactly right.

It’s true, this book concentrates more on Leonardo’s creativity and his work than on the finer details of his personality. But even so, Isaacson includes more than enough information about Leonardo as an individual to give one a healthy sense of him as a person, what was important to him and how his personality affected his outlook and, in turn, his work.

A page from Leonardo’s notebooks, with illustrations and notations about the embryology of the human fetus.

In the final chapter, the reader is offered a compilation list of 20 “lessons” encapsulating Leonardo’s unparalleled creativity, with the suggestion that they are skills we too can access. I’m paraphrasing several below which struck me as particularly worth passing on.

Be relentlessly curious
Go down rabbit holes – drill down for the pure joy of geeking-out.
Procrastinate (gather facts and let them simmer) – creativity requires time for ideas to marinate and for intuitions to gel
Collaborate. Innovation is a team sport; creativity is a collaborative endeavor
Take notes on paper. Leonardo’s notebooks are still around to astonish us

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It is a huge bonus that Isaacson’s biography contains plenty of accompanying illustrations of Leonardo’s drawings, paintings and pages from his notebooks — all of which provide a fuller glimpse into the way he kept track of and teased out ideas. With that in mind, if you’re able, please make a trip to the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro to catch their current exhibition: Frank Woods Minor Works.

The appellation of “minor” is somewhat misleading; there is nothing minor about Frank’s work. I was thrilled and inspired to see an exhibit of working drawings and sketches that, while perhaps initially created as a platform upon which larger work would be built, have much to say in their own right. It’s always a privilege to get a feeling for an artist’s process and to have a bit of access into how s/he works through ideas. Having such a window into an artist’s mind – especially one whose work I respect as much as Frank’s – or Leonardo’s for that matter – is a gift indeed.

This image of developmental sketches, next to the final piece that evolved from them, shows my personal approach to working drawings. I, too, maintain a notebook/sketchbook to keep track of fleeting ideas as they occur to me and to record notes from all sorts of sources: meetings, reading, workshops, etc. It’s helpful to have everything in one place and I definitely prefer analog to digital. FYI: I’m a big fan of Dingbats Eco-Friendly Notebooks ; there are a variety of options available. Snow Moon, ©2021 Elizabeth Fram, Stitched-resist dye and embroidery on silk with foraged branches, 18.5″H x 9″W x 7.5″D, Private Collection. Photo: Paul Rogers Photography

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Last, but not least – apologies for the repeat blog delivery a week ago. I definitely don’t want to gum up your inbox. Without straying too far into TMI territory, let’s just say MailChimp automatic delivery has been something of a challenge lately.

As I write this, my fingers are crossed that the issue is now fixed. But I won’t know for sure until after this post’s scheduled delivery time (Friday @ 4:00am ET). Meanwhile, your patience is and has been greatly appreciated.

Unexpected Gifts

I’ve been thinking lately about how, despite the ups and downs that come with wending one’s way through a global pandemic, there have still been some truly unexpected bright spots over the past two years.

Considering all that is happening around the world these days, it would be foolish to take anything for granted. And perhaps the enormity of the world’s current problems explains why it’s the little moments in life that offer the greatest reprieve and joy right now.

WH Auden ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and pencil on paper, 12 x 9 inches I made this portrait after reading Elisa Gabbert’s fabulous interactive feature “A Poem (and a Painting) About the Suffering that Hides in Plain Sight”, which appeared in the NY Times on March 6th. Her piece centers on Auden’s poem “Musée des Beaux Arts”. I found it very moving — another unexpected gift.

Two particular highlights that have come my way in the past 12 months were a total surprise. In both instances, I thought I was making a relatively small contribution to lighten someone else’s load, but truthfully, I’m the one who walked away with gifts far greater than earned or than I would have thought possible.

Thank you to my local art supplier, The Drawing Board, for coming up with the brilliant idea of a monthly watercolor subscription last year. When I signed up I wasn’t sure I needed a new half-pan of paint each month – but it seemed like an easy and fun way to support a local enterprise at a time when no one knew what was lurking around the corner for any business.

The thing is, I got way more out of that subscription than I ever would have dreamed. Soon I couldn’t wait to see the regular envelope which included not only the promised paint, but also other supply surprises (paper samples, brushes, a sponge, drawing tools, etc.). As Covid dragged on, each arrival became something of an event that was just as exciting and as eagerly anticipated as when the Scholastic book order arrived in elementary school. Remember those days?

On top of that, I’m super glad to have added Daniel Smith’s Genuine Serpentine, Rose of Ultramarine, Amethyst Genuine and Mayan Dark Blue to my palette. I’m not sure I would have tried them otherwise, but they are remarkably versatile and now an integral part of my kit.

Palette

The other highlight I wanted to share with you comes in the form of a daily email from artist Janet Van Fleet, who is participating in the March Arts Marathon to benefit the Central Vermont Refugee Action Network. Every day this month she sends donors a brief recap with images of her art career as she ‘looks over her shoulder’ at her creative journey. It’s a tremendous commitment and amount of work on her part, but for those of us who follow, it has been a delight that marks how thoroughly engaged Janet is with the world, its joys and its woes. The whole exercise has made me realize how often artists’ creative paths are overlooked, and how important they are to understanding the development of someone’s work.

To a great degree, I think the practice of art is a form of translation. One of the qualities I most value about it and the people who create it, is the ability to conjure unexpected and enlightening connections — associations that strike both a universal and a personal chord with viewers. Visual analogies are a strong means for making ideas and emotions relatable and palpable.

The Beginning © Janet Van Fleet, Oil on board with wine foils. Included in her 2019 exhibit “Vanishment” in the Vermont Supreme Court lobby, this and the painting below call attention to the devastating reality that we humans are killing off other species at alarming rates.

Please visit Janet’s website to see the breadth of her work. Look closely and you will see she is a master of metaphor. She tackles weighty subject matter without ever losing sight of the sheer joy of life. That’s a pretty impressive juggling act.

Her short film, March of the Teapots, will give you a sense of her marvelous imagination. And I trust it might be an unexpected gift for you today.

The past two years have been a long haul, but think about it — who or what has made small moments monumental for you? Whatever the answer, I’ll bet you didn’t see it coming.

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I recently discovered the sprightly work of M. Louise Stanley. If you curious about someone who combines her sketchbooks with old master works, laced with a healthy sense of humor, be sure to visit her website. You can also find her on Instagram @m.louisestanley.