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Recently I had the pleasure, albeit a somewhat nervous pleasure, of being interviewed by my good friend Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women via Skype (nothing makes you more aware of age and weight than knowing you will be on camera). That interview will go live very soon, but I thought I would share some thoughts that Monica and I never really got to cover fully during the time we spoke, because time did, as time does in real life, fly by.

I have had the good fortune of being able to spend nearly one hundred percent of my time these last forty years, making art in one form or another. I did take a few years off when my two oldest sons were little, but when I think back on that time, I was always dong something creative (and most of it was donated for fundraising events of one kind or another), just not all of it professionally. Aside from that short break, it has pretty much been non-stop all the time.

But, nonstop at what?  Well, nonstop at art. Art in many forms and in many materials for many venues. In short: I've been a painter, puppeteer, doll maker, soft sculpture artist/craftsperson, editorial illustrator, children's book author and illustrator, fabric designer, licensed artist, and now I am also painting again. I’ve also spent a lot of time decorating houses, but, to be very honest, that makes me zero money. It only costs me money. But that's OK. It satisfies my soul. It's a medium I have to work in almost as much as my paints. “House--just another art material and artistic discipline."

But back to business. If I look back over all my years as an artist, I see one thing: my aesthetic sensibility has not changed much in forty years. I am still drawn to the same things I was drawn to in college--characters, details, expressive gestures, and emotions. I love color and texture and patterns. I especially like narratives. Everything I do tends to tell a story, and the story is in the details, textures and characters.

I have written about this before and in much more detail. You can read the first accout I wrote years ago for my very first web site. It really rambles and tells the story of the earliest years. Here is the place to read that. I created an abbreviated version for my current web site. You can ready that one here. 

I’m sharing some recent art here at Cats and Jammers Studio to coordinate with the interview. I am also sharing some of the house and other new art on my other blog, Design Rocket.

What message would I love to give other artists? This: don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself and try new things. Life as an artist is a wild journey on a winding road. A few years back, I posted a long post about moving in random directions in life, seemingly as if by pure serendipity. Well, life is that but it is also by luck and pluck, and maybe much less by design than we think. Please read that post, Serendipity + Pluck = Life.

Much of the art here is from my 2011 Sketchbook Project, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” I loved doing that book. I have done two others since. You can see the digital scans of my book here. And you can see the show opening containg paintngs based on the book here.

Participating in the Sketchbook Projects for the Art House Coop really feeds my artistic soul. My most recent book was titled “Strangers.” In doing that book I dedicated it to my painting and drawing professor of my sophomore year of college, John Patrick Murphy II. John was the head of the art department at Rockland Community College for more than 30 years. On the very first day I met him, I shared some paintings and he gave me advice that has stayed with me all these years: “Barbara, draw out of your head.” Meaning, draw from the well within you that has your memories and your impressions. And that is the way I have worked ever since.

John very recently passed away. This post is dedicated to him, because, really, meeting him and getting to know him was pure serendipity and it pointed me along the way on my own artistic journey.

This is so in tune with my pulp fiction covers and Fancy Nancy YA book jacket, that I HAVE to share a  link sent to me by my friend Liz for "Vinatge Valentines WTF." And if you these are strange, wait until you see the rest of the fantastic collection.

I live for this kind of photography: haunting shots of once lively and active places, now in ruins. There is something that hits a nerve somewhere within me that makes me look at the disintegration of old structures, and see it not just as it is, but as it must have been. 

There's a lot to read and a lot to see in this wonderful photo essay about  New York's North Brother Island and abandoned Riverside Hospital from The Kingston Lounge, which may soon become another favorite photo blog for me, right up there with Shorpy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and the history tell it's own story.

Simms Tabak was one of very favorite illustrators, if not THE favorite. He very recently passed away and since I find that this blog seems more and more to be about losing artists who have touched me, it would be terribly remiss to not talk about Simms.

Although I got to know his books through reading them to my youngest son, Ben, I actually got to know his art when I first used one of his designs to wallpaper the room of my middle son, Mike. That was more than 22 years ago. Sadly, I cannot find a single image to post to show that lovely wallpaper. And it has been long papered over. It do remember that it was leaping kids, a boy and a girl, doing jumping jacks or something to that effect. If anyone has any left or knows where I can get some, PLEASE contact me!

I just discovered a wonderful video created based on his Old Lady WHo Swallowed a Fly book. It is narrated and the music sung by Cindy Lauper. I think this may be the best video adaptation of a kids' book I have ever seen. It seems that I cannot embed it. But go to Youtube and watch. It is totally worth the time.

I think my very favrotie book was the Caldecott wining, Joseph Had a Little Overcoat.

I think that this book is everything one can want in a children's book. It is has a page turning quality, with a lovely repetitive rhythm. It is fun. It is also beautifully illustrated, without being tight and self important and self congratulatory, not to mention pretentious, which is what so many kids' book art is. Not this book. The art has a wonderful mock-primitive feel that is actually extremely sophisticated and extraordinarily satisfying, from an artist's point of view. Any artist, even in the absence of liking kids' books, would love and appreciate this artwork. The art stands completely on its own. To be honest, a lot of art for kids' books may hold up in the children's book

If you read this blog, you already know that I obsess about the passing of time. You know that I wish I could time travel. You know that I love antiques and Ken Burns and the Oxford Project and anything that allows me a glimpse into the past. 

Now that I have discovered Google Street View, I even take trips to old neighborhoods of my past so I can "walk around" a see what those places now look like compared to  years ago. Let me tell you that can be fun, but also depressing. Sometimes places look very much like they did when I was living there, like my old street and house in Stony Point, New York (but the town itself is totally different) or the house my husband and I lived in in Buffalo, NY,  as newlyweds. Most of the time, however, things have changed so much, I don't recognize the neighborhood at all, or, in the worst case scenario, they  don't even exist, which is the case with both of the apartment buildings I lived in as a child with my grandparents in Newark, New Jersey. Gone. Empty lots. Rubble.

The discovery of Google Street View is just one of the wonderful things I came upon when I discovered my absolute favorite, MUST VISIT EVERYDAY blog: SHORPY.

To quote from the site:

THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG

The blog is run by Dave, who posts the most magnificent high resolution pictures of years gone by. I do not know any personal information about Dave, except that he has some facinating looking family members whose mid century pictures he occasionally puts up on the site.  

In past posts I have confessed to an obsession with the passing of time. I have had this obsession all my life. I am not sure why, but I have. On New Year's Eve, 1958, I wanted my grandparents to get me a jar with a lid.

"Why?" they asked.
"Because I want to save some some 1958 air," I told them. "Then I will have a little bit of 1958 forever."

When I look back on this memory, it makes me smile and shake my head at the way a kid's mind works--or at least the way MY mind worked. But I also still feel more or less the same way: very aware of the passing of time and wanting to preserve the present moment for future reference and for experiencing it once more. I guess you could say my little jar of air was my child's version of a time machine. But even though I am not filling jars with the air of time anymore, I still feel pretty much the same now as I did then. It's why I love antiques. It's why I play jukeboxes. It's why I will watch anything produced by Ken Burns. It is also why I read the obituary from my on line, home town newspaper every day: The Journal News, Rockland County section.

Yeah, I know. That sounds like something your grandmother would enjoy doing. Still, I do it. Everyday. Sometimes I see the names of parents of high school friends. Every now and then, I see the names of the high school friends themselves. Believe me, that is sobering. The strange part is that when I see no names that are familiar to me, I have a macabre sense of disappointment: no news, nothing of interest. And then, when I do, I wish I hadn't, because I would really have enjoyed seeing that person again at some point in the imaginary future, even though I have not spoken to him or her for that past 35 years.

One of the nice parts about reading obits is that I also check up on who else died, as reported by the Associated Press. In their little sidebar I learned that Killer Kowalski died even before I saw it in the Times. I learned that silent film star Anita Page passed away at 98. I read about famous Peanuts animator Bill Melendez. And I learned about the death of Jim Hoyt.

Who is Jim Hoyt? Jim Hoyt was the last surviving veteran of a group of four soldiers who liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. Jim Hoyt was a an extraordinary guy and an ordinary guy at the same time, because Jim Hoyt was part of a generation of countless soldiers who fought bravely and namelessly in a war unlike any other, where there was a clearly defined evil of great magnitude that needed defeating. Jim Hoyt lived a quiet life, was not a person of renown, and we would most likely never know about him except that he participated in The Oxford Project.

The Oxford Project, from an editorial quote on Amazon:

In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all of Oxford stood before Feldstein's lens. Twenty years later, Feldstein decided to do it again. Only this time he invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together they went in search of the same Oxford residents Feldstein had originally shot two decades earlier. Some had moved. Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by the passage of time.

In a place like Oxford, not only does everyone know everyone else, but also everyone else's brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, lovers, secrets, failures, dreams, and favorite pot luck recipes. This intricate web of human connections between neighbors friends, and family, is the mainstay of small town American life, a disappearing culture that is unforgettably captured in Feldstein's candid black-and-white portraiture and Bloom's astonishing rural storytell

You can visit the Oxford Project website and read some of the stories and see some of the pictures. That is where I went on to read about Jim Hoyt, who's obituary via AP I just happened to catch one day while checking the daily obits at the Journal News. I had never heard of Jim Hoyt, and I had never heard of The Oxford Project, but I am so glad to have discovered both of them. It is incredibly fascinating to see a picture of a person and a picture of the same person 20 years later. That kind of thing has always been my favorite part of the Ken Burns documentaries, and here is an entire book of aging faces, and what makes it even better is that these are ordinary citizens, living ordinary lives that are as meaningful and interesting as any celebrity or historical figure.

This book will be available on the 16th of this month. You can read more on the Amazon link. Needless to say, I have already ordered a copy. If I had thought about it, I would have created this book myself. It is, as they say, "right up my alley."

I do have one question for Stephen Bloom and Peter Feldstein: did you save any 1984 air?

EDITED TO ADD: Please take a moment to read the comment left by photographer and Oxford Project creator, Peter Feldstein. He shares a touching bit of information and an update on Jim Hoyt.

When I look around my house and see the enormous amount of stuff I have managed to collect and inflict on my family, I sometimes feel...well..a little guilty. I wonder if they would all somehow live a life of minimal objects with a different mother and wife. I think my husband would clearly live is less clutter. He is very neat and organized by nature. Not anymore. I corrupted him. He sort of "caught" whatever it is that has always ailed me, and he now subscribes to the same sort of busy look in decor that he has come to know and love. In a way, my kids have, as well, though I doubt that they will ever be as far advanced with this malady as I am.

With those thoughts in mind, you can imagine how utterly relieved I was to read an article in today's NY Times about renowned urologist and Columbia professor Dr. John Lattimer, who passed away at the age of 92, and left behind a life's collection of oddities that certainly puts my mundane assortments of objects to shame.

I think I would have found Dr. Lattimer to be a kindred spirit. The article points to the fact that he was an only child of two only children. So was I. It mentions that somehow his collecting was an effort to hold on the the past. I agree. And it is more. Somehow owning a piece or two of the past, helps to grasp the present. I would even go so far as to say that it increases understanding of the future.

My husband and I have often joked about what our poor kids will have to deal with when they need to figure out what to do with over 100 cookie jars, even more pieces of carnival chalkware, tons of cowboy stuff, and a gazillion vintage tablecloths, not to mention everything else in this house.

But this we can guarantee them: they will not have to deal with anything even remotely similar to the type of relics being sort by Lattimer's daughter Evan, as she catalogs his vast collection for sorting for auction, discarding, and keeping.

How do I know this? Read the article. What gives me the right to sound so damned cocky, pun intended? This fact: I do not have in my posession, for example, anything even close to being Napolean's penis.....

I am currently starting to dummy up a picture book that features a taxi cab.

When I draw the art for my own books or books by another author, I draw directly from my head and my heart, rather than from life, so that my art is fresh and not stilted, and so that it is mine, and mine alone. I know that what comes from my heart is not anyone else's work and it will always be in my own style. It will also be much more impressionistic. In other words, I do NOT want my drawing of a taxi to look just like a taxi does. I want it to look like my head thinks a taxi looks. By working that way, I can be certain that my art will be strictly my own sensibility, and not someone else's, and it will also not be too tight. The last thing this children's book world needs is yet another exacting and realistic approach to picture book illustration.

Of course, if one is to illustrate from one's head, there has to be reference material upstairs to draw from. And so, I do a lot of studying before the fact. And that means looking at tons of books or pictures that have the kind of stuff I am about to draw. Thanks to Tex and Sugar, I can now draw the pants off a steer, horse, or pig--animals that were not regulars in my repertoire, but who came to be very familiar to me.

Even though I will do some research, most of the time I have a mental image of the thing I am in the process of drawing. But sometimes, the image in my memory is so old, it's a little too vague. I knew that I wanted my taxi to be a model somewhere around 1960 or so. And in 1960, Taxi cabs still had meters with flags that the driver would push down when your toll was starting to be measured in time and/or miles. The problem is: I could not conjure up the fine details of one of those meters enough to make it believable. And Google image search did not have one, either. Or, at least it did not have one that I could find.

So I turned to my old stand-by: EBAY! And, lo and behold, I had several old taxi meters to choose from. Yessirree! Now, I am the proud owner of a vintage taxi meter.

"SO what's wrong with that?" you ask. I'll tell you what's wrong with that. Going toEbay for me is like taking sip of water after a trek in the desert. Get my sand drift? I did NOT stop at the meter. I also got this:

And while I was looking at "vintage taxi" search results, it was almost impossible to not check out "MORE ITEMS FROM THIS SELLER." SO I did. I now also own this:

And then that led me to the item above.

Now I think I need a twelve step program for ebay addicts, which I used to be, big time. There's a reason I have over a hundred cookie jars, or an equal number of carnival chalkware pieces. Thanks to my little visit ebay visit this past weekend, I currently have about 12 items listed on my "My Ebay" page, and the tin toy collection that use to be on hold is now in a serious acquisition phase.

Creating this book might turn out to be very expensive....

Very cool. I'm the featured site at the Whispering World's Magical Fairies site. Check it out here.