This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content.

Well, it’s been an amazing week. Still processing, but despite the sheer sensory overload of Greenwich Village alone (as well as a housing screwup that wasn’t nearly the big deal it would have been even five years ago—and I’m still mildly freaking out about the fact that I wasn’t freaking out as a result), I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even managed to get some sketching done.

I hit Washington Square Park at least once a day and indulged in a little John Sloan cosplay with the above sketch (he is to me what Carrie Bradshaw must be to so many other Village sightseers; visiting McSorley’s Bar—where none other than Maya Rudolph may have occupied my seat almost as soon as I left—was my equivalent of cupcakes at Magnolia). My worries that I wouldn’t be able to sketch at the Met proved unfounded, though I kept it simple as I’d never been before and wanted to see as much as I found of interest (I was there for over eight hours).

My host herself is a longtime local artist and conducts periodic sketch sessions in the park every weekend. I managed to drop by Sunday where several folks were sketching the “Hangman’s Elm,” an English elm that’s apparently the oldest tree in Manhattan and which still lives in a corner of the park.

I had a lot of creative-related thoughts bouncing around my head while… bouncing around the city (mostly Manhattan, but I did get a brief look-in around Brooklyn—North Williamsburg and Bushwick for a couple of shows—OK Cowgirl at the Union Pool and Habibi at Brooklyn Made). Maybe most exhilarating-and-at-the-same-time sobering was that sketching people from life feels almost redundant in a place where in some sense… everyone and everything lives and happens. Once you’re there, you might as well just make shit up, right? It struck me that maybe this was one of the reasons Abstract Expressionism got started; when everything is a constant swirl long enough, that’s what life starts to look like for people trained by the likes of Sloan or Thomas Hart Benton (for all I know there are whole buildings full of essays on this very subject).

I’ve got the next couple of days off and I’m hoping to start working on art again, but I have no intention of harshing my lingering buzz. I’m sure someone else’ll do that for me.

The header image is part of an interior of Pearl’s, a Bushwick bar I swung by en route to hear Habibi; it turned out to be a perfect place to sketch as there was a long open window with plenty of light in contrast to the darkened inner bar. Definitely going back next time (and holy shit will there ever be a next time).

How’s your work going?