As a child I fantasized that my bedroom had a bunk bed and the room was completely filled with paper up to the height of the bed. I sat on top of the bed and filled the paper with either writing or drawings.

I’ve kept journals and sketchbooks most of my life. My sketchbooks are strangely orderly. I tend to follow a theme and work on variations of it throughout the book. Conversely, I feel challenged by what I should keep in a journal. I have journals that recount my day, others about work, separate ones for travel, and still others filled with automatic writing. Talk about “organizing your thoughts!”

I live in a rural part of upstate New York, and when I first moved here in the 1970s, it consisted almost entirely of struggling dairy farms. Most of the homes were over one hundred years old, and were frequently uninsulated. My studio is in such a building: originally an 1887 seed company (once the largest in the world).

Artists’ Things: Rediscovering Lost Property from 18th Century France, by Katie Scott and Hannah Williams is a book that asks the question of what we might learn from examining an object that an artist owned. What does it tell us about the artist and what does it tell us about the object.

The article explores John Coltrane's "Circle" concept, connecting jazz music to mathematical and physical principles, and how the author's personal experience at a jazz concert led to a deeper understanding of this connection.

FEBRUARY 2024 STUDIO NOTES

January NOTES FROM THE STUDIO