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. Those of you who’d like to post future Creative Endeavors Threads post your request in the comments below.
Well, last week sucked. Strangely enough, this wasn’t in a creative or even directly personal sense (for a change), but between the next big heatwave (which I’m pretty sure pipped the one a couple of weeks back), my roommate getting the ‘spora, and last but not least the wildfire smoke from across the Great Lakes (which absolutely pipped—and considerably some—the last big clouds in ’23), the environmental threats really hung (quite literally) in the air almost to the extent that I took them in some kind of fatal stride. While it looks like this week’ll back to “normal” (and, to the best of my knowledge, I’m not sick), the past several days have been a sobering wake-up call, normalizing a standardized summer emergency plan for both creative work and general existence.
I wound up canceling my planned trip to Detroit Wednesday in which I not only intended a morning swim at Belle Isle but also a solid work session in the Detroit Public Library’s historic main branch on Woodward Ave. I learned the week before to my delight that they’d reopened most of the third floor, with its cavernous old-school reading rooms (some facing the DIA, no less) and open-faced collections. I love the University of Michigan’s Tappan Hall, but there’s something to be said for wandering around and picking something that catches your eye. My friend’s informal book club is reading Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, apparently, and I’d just arranged my impromptu workstation only to notice a collection of his illustrations right in front of me.
“Sadly,” I had to “settle” for U-M’s Art, Architecture and Engineering Library, but I’d been planning to do that anyway, and managed to get a fair amount done regardless—not least trying to get the hang of the Derwent pastel pencils I picked up on my last visit to Blick. I’m becoming more and more enamored of pastel work but the chalk blocks I’ve got can be unwieldy, and the pencils (paired with paper stubs) are obviously a lot more suited for detail work (I ought to try both in conjunction this autumn once I get my shit together). So been working on those quite a bit, as well as trying to find my way towards a style for representational graphite and charcoal work (I increasingly prefer the visual texture to my ink work but I’m trying to figure out how to make it all come together—if it’s the same tempo as finding a style for the former this… might take a while).
On top of all that, Art Fair hit Ann Arbor last week and was overshadowed for a change (quite literally) by the heatwave and wildfires; the fair did early soft closes two out of three days and attendance was understandably at record lows. Less-than-stellar vibes all around and I almost feel bad about my cultural handwringing the past couple of years. The concerns remain, though, and the one artist who I was really hoping to show up decided to pass this year. I didn’t buy anything (most anything I was interested in was either too big or too dear, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about not buying anything for more than I’d charge—a low bar, obviously, but still). The header this week is a sketch of passersby I managed to get the last evening; at some point I want to do a big picture rolling all of this into a solid narrative before my planned move in the next couple of years—maybe next year’ll be better.
How’s your work going?