Art I'm Making: Art Trails 2022

Art Trails, Sonoma County's premier juried open studios event, is approaching. More than 120 local artists, including me, will be opening their studios to the public over two upcoming weekends for the 2022 event. Studios will be open from 10:00AM to 5:00PM on September 24 and 25 and then again on October 1 and 2. If you're in the area, come by and see new work and see how I make the abstract monotype-based collages that are now my main artistic activity. This year, I'll be Studio 94. I look forward to making new friends and seeing old friends as well. Monotyping demonstrations on demand throughout the day. 

To preview some of my work, visit my website at: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 244 (Santa Rosa)

A small collage from earlier this year (May 10, 2022). This is Untitled Collage No. 244 (Santa Rosa). Acrylic on paper, acrylic monotype, collage. Image size: 9.8 x 7.6cm (3.9 x 3.0 inches). Matted to 10 x 8 inches. Signed on the mat. Signed and dated on the reverse. 

This one is small and simple, but I think it has presence. It repays attention. Click on the image for a larger view. 

For more of my abstract monotype collage work, visit my website, at https://ctalcroft.wixsite.com/collage-site. 

Books I'm Reading: Moby Dick

It was 34 years ago that I first read Melville's Moby Dick. I was 28 at the time and I enjoyed it immensely. I was grateful then (and still now) that no one had forced me to read it in high school--that no one had ruined it for me. When I read it, I wanted to read it, and I went on to read most of Melville's other seafaring tales, among them Billy Budd, Omoo, and Typee. I've just finished reading Moby Dick for the second time. 

I remembered quite a lot about it. In some places I remembered the text in considerable detail, while some parts I had virtually no memory of at all.

The book is sprawling and choppy and unfocused, but that's part of its charm, I suppose--if you have the patience to take it as it comes. There are numerous chapters that make no contribution to plot advancement at all--chapters designed to explain the practical aspects of whale hunting and the economics of whaling with a view to allowing the reader to understand the details of action in chapters ahead, for example, or short, descriptive chapters that simply describe downtime for a sailor on a Nantucket whaler in the 1850s (and among these are some of the most beautiful passages in the book), and even some chapters that seem entirely unrelated to the story (for example, a early pub scene in which the narrator, Ishmael, relates a yarn about another voyage altogether).

I'd forgotten how funny Moby Dick is in places and also how little of the book involves the white whale of the title. There are 136 chapters in all, including the epilogue. The edition I read (Collins Classics, 2021) is 589 pages long. Moby Dick, the whale, doesn't appear until page 561, in Chapter 133. Once he does appear, the action is fast and furious, though. The world collapses around Captian Ahab, his ship, the Pequod, and Ishmael virtually all at once, underscoring (like so much else in the book) the fragility and incomprehensibility of life. Only Ishmael survives the final disaster, eventually rescued by another ship, hanging on to a wooden float fashioned from what had originally been a coffin.

Words I'm Writing: Sunday Morning

Sunday Morning

Sunday morning
Toaster-oven
Beeps thrice quick
My toast done

The microwave beeps once, at intervals, separated,
No hurry, reminding, faithfully, that...
Coffee milk
Is warm

Coffee maker beeps, beeps, beeps--
Beeps five times in all
At a measured pace
Morning coffee brewed 

Breakfast
Announced
Electronically
Sunday
Morning