Grateful Dead

From waves of grain to the golden coast.

April 7, 2014 — Leave a comment

I used to pretend I could find my way home by the moss on the trees, or the leaves of the compass plant in the prairie. That was my Illinois. A grassland spotted with rivers and forests. An existence on the verge of a great adventure.

But that was Illinois and this is California.

I don’t recognize many of the plants here, and I don’t know any wives tales about them. I can’t find any discernable moss on any part of a tree around here.

There are a lot of long nights of highway driving between where I write these words, and where I was born to do so. highway homesick blues.

Hearts and ideas going by like the tops of the telephone poles through the window while you lay on your back across the whole backseat while your friend drives.

Driving across the country I grew up in helped me fall in love with a whole planet.

To be embraced and cared for. Fragile like eggs in a backpack full of hatchets.

I’d heard it sung:

“Picture a bright blue ball,
Just spinnin’, spinnin, free.
Dizzy with the possibilities.”

Too look over my shoulder tonight at Illinois and all it taught me, It leaves me feeling blessed for this opportunity to try my hand at an age old craft, and with my time, give something to the world to help it see it’s own beauty tied into the thread of our life in Earth’s natural kingdom. And California seems a fine place, with great biodiversity…..and The Grateful Dead are from here so yeah.

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Let the echo decide if I was right or wrong

February 2, 2014 — Leave a comment
When reading through the titles of the posts on my blog it won’t take long to find the musical influences on my artwork.
My dad shared a lot of really great music with me while I grew up. We went on a lot of  camping trips all of which involved a good ol’ fashioned road trip.
These trips are where I heard Bob Dylan’s music for the first time. Between Frank Zappa albums and NPR shows like Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion.
Dylan’s lyrics stick to my brain like glue, and climb out of my head to help me reference and sort out trials in my personal life and the world around me.
The end of a doomed from the get-go relationship last fall brought me to “It’s all right, don’t think twice”.
Just about any news coverage of violence brings me to “Desolation Row”….”The riot squad is restless, they need somewhere to go”.
That mysterious girl I met in the meadow last month reminds me of the words, “She’s got everything she needs
She’s an artist, she don’t look back,  She can take the dark out of the nighttime,  And paint the daytime black.”
Spending days on end working on these drawings furthers the connection some how.
Red-shoulder Hawk.

Red-shoulder Hawk.

Zone-tailed Hawk.

Zone-tailed Hawk.

From simple to sublime, I connect strongly to his poetry.
While I heard Dylan’s music a lot as a youngster, it was the Grateful Dead who I found as a teenager that brought me closer to Dylan’s work and more importantly his lyrics. Neither Dylan or the Dead will probably win an award for best singing voices, that’s not the point. Though I’m in so position to say so, I’d venture to guess it’s the poetry in the song that is the point.
I listen to a lot of music and I draw a lot of birds. There’s a connection there, but I’m not sure where and I’m not terribly interested in finding out what it is. I just know it works for me.
My goal above all is to share the results of such in some way with the world to give light to a beauty sorely missing in many of our day to day lives.
This will be how I save the world around me, or at least try.