fast and slow

I had an Anthropology professor once who spoke of living and working in Jordan.  During Ramadan, she fasted like everyone else.  Each long, hot afternoon, with the hunger perched on her belly like a sickly purring tom-cat, she would draw.  She said the drawing calmed her, and took her mind from the hunger.  For hours she would obstinately record the minutiae of a flower, or a seed, or a leaf.  To her, it was meditation and therapy, a way to pass the time while keeping the mind idling somewhere below a dull atmosphere of panic.

With this in mind, I have long enjoyed the practice of tracing over newsprint images with ink.  It is first and foremost a therapeutic practice and, though I really hate to say it, it centers me.  It brings the emotional calm of journaling without all the messy struggle.  It brings the delight and wonder of neat images without the skill and patience required to actually draw something well.

Another great thing about this is that it can be done anywhere, and the materials are mostly poached from the environment.  It is basically free.  I take these things home to shellac on cardboard with modge-podge.  Sometimes, if I have two or three that work well together, I twist little screws in the tops and bottoms and hang them with fishing line from otherwise unremarkable walls say, above the toilet.

Anyway, take a look.