It's World Migratory Bird Day!

It's migration season! All around the world, creatures large and small are on the move. In truth, migration isn't just "a spring thing" or "a fall thing," because the diversity of migration strategies is as broad as the diversity of animals that migrate! Short distance, long distance, elevational... North to south, east to west. Some ocean creatures even migrate vertically, living at different depths of the sea at different times of year.

Personally, I love the spring migration of birds. After a long, gray winter, it's so fun to suddenly see bright flashes of color in the landscape. Today a Baltimore oriole came through my yard for the first time, and yesterday I saw yellow warblers and common yellowthroats.

This year migration seems extra-delightful. It's a reminder that even if human movements are restricted at the moment, the rest of the natural world is going about business as usual.

In a typical year, today is a day that would see hundreds of events across the globe celebrating World Migratory Bird Day! Back in January, when I revealed the poster art I created, none of us knew that we'd be gathering digitally, but the folks at WMBD have gone all out to bring us a virtual festival! All day long they'll be streaming programming on Facebook!

I put together a couple of short videos that they'll be sharing on their social media channels today, but you can get a first peek at this one right now! In it I share a look at how I created the art for the poster, and a short demonstration of the reduction linocut process.

World Migratory Bird Day: The film!

Well... not film, really. And I guarantee it's not Oscar-winning material. But I put together a little 4-minute video about my linocut process for the World Migratory Bird Day (WMBD) poster. Basically I propped up my phone, shot some footage, and taught myself how to use iMovie. (Thank goodness for YouTube tutorials!) Considering I put it all together in less than a day, I think it turned out okay!

Actually... working on it seemed to awaken some latent film-making-wannabe gene... but who has time to start a whole new career right now? I'll leave it to the experts, but I hope you enjoy this just the same.

New video about my work!

Whew! What a great opening weekend for Under Pressure: Birds in the Printed Landscape at the Museum of American Bird Art. I was delighted and touched by the turnout and support for me and my work. Thanks to everyone who came to the museum, asked questions, and shared their delight and curiosity with me. I appreciate all of you.

Now that the show is up, I would like to share the short video made by filmmaker Drew Fulton that accompanies the exhibition. Drew did a great job, and I appreciate all he did to create this great overview of my linocut process and inspiration.

So what's next? This week I'll be catching up with sending some work to a few galleries, plus preparing for next week's 5-morning field sketching workshop with the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. I think there might be a spot or two left, so if you'd like to join us next week for adventures in sketching outdoors along the Maine coast, pop on over to the Farnsworth website and register!

Time Out for Filming!

Me... trying to get comfortable with the idea of being in front of cameras. EEK!

Sorry to leave you all high and dry with the sparrow linocut-in-progress, but things were just not dry enough for me to tackle the last color pass before I went to Florida.

Florida! Where spring is so far along that the sandhill cranes already have good-sized chicks. I spent two weeks working with filmaker, photographer, and (IMHO) technical genius Drew Fulton, who is producing a complete Learn Linocut online course for me. There is still much to do: editing the 5+ terabytes of footage, writing the accompanying course document, organizing the online community for course students to interact with each other. We anticipate a mid-July release... don't worry, I'll tell you all about it when it's ready!

A three-block multi-block linocut demonstration for the course...

This morning I'm back in Maine, trying to catch up with all the tasks that accumulate whilst one is away from home and studio. Tomorrow I have to drive up to Rockland to take down a show, so it will be the weekend before I can wrap up those darn chipping sparrows, but they WILL be done before Monday.

The surprisingly nice thing about being back in Maine, where it's still gray and brown and snow lingers in the shadows is that it feels like I get a second spring. This is good, because from now until October things really ramp up.... and being in Florida, where it's practically summer already, was making me a bit panicked about time.

I've got three exhibitions opening in the next three weeks and fresh work to get to galleries in both Maine and Colorado. Plus I'm preparing for a solo exhibition at the Museum of America Bird Art in Massachusetts! Drew was kind enough to include an interview with me in our shooting schedule, which will narrate a video piece for that show. We shot it the last day of my trip, delightfully outdoors instead of in the studio. Well, it was delightful until the bugs started biting. Thanks for not being perfect, Florida. It could have made my return to Maine a bit awkward if you had been.

Filmaker Drew Fulton, lured into position in front of the cameras for a change.

PS: Lest you think we were all work and no play, we did take breaks to go birding in some of the great forest and park spaces around Gainesville. And of course we saw 'gators. Because, you know. Florida.

Black-crowned night heron

Common gallinule (formerly moorhen, formerly gallinule)

American alligator. A big'un.

A warm post from the frigid coast

As I type this it's afternoon here on the coast of Maine. There's a deep blanket of snow from our "bomb cyclone" blizzard earlier in the week and everything looks picturesque and lovely... a veritable treasure trove of potential linocuts.

Until one goes outside. At noon our temperature had risen to 0 degrees F. (That's minus 18 for you Celsius types.) Except for that brief respite when it warmed up enough to drop a ton of snow we've been in subzero lows and single-digit highs since Christmas. 

As a result I've had to curtail my wandering in the woods or scrambling on the rocky coast. It's a good time for catching up with other projects, though, including an "introduction to reduction linocut" video. The spectacular landscape painter Tim Deibler shot the raw footage just days before I moved away from Colorado. His daughter Rachel, the project editor, sent me a rough cut just before Christmas, and yesterday I finally had time for a first review.

We had just one day to do all the filming... in the midst of towers of boxes and half-packed belongings. In true Sherrie fashion it was essentially a seat-of-my-pants endeavor and the intended 3-color demo turned into five colors. (It could have been six or seven, of course, but... time limit.)

It is a little strange to watch the process unfold in a studio space that no longer exists (for me), especially when my search for suitable space here in Maine has not yet met with success and my press is still in storage. Yes, it's a test of my patience. But the video project reminds me who I am, even when I'm not able to work the way I'd like just now.

Between Rachel's travel schedule and mine it will likely be late spring before the video is finished and ready for prime time. Hopefully these few screen captures will whet your appetite for the completed project. 

There is one important aspect of the video that hasn't been decided yet, however, and I need your help!  Assuming we end up with about 2 hours of instruction, if you were interested in the video would you prefer to receive it packaged as a physical DVD or delivered online behind a paywall? 

Personally, when I purchase a class online I rarely watch the entire thing through, or I forget that I have access to it and it languishes. But I'm starting to fall into the dinosaur category for that sort of thing, so I'm curious to know what Brush and Baren readers think. Let me know!

In the meantime, stay warm... and if you have a favorite manufacturer of snow pants, send me that information, too! Needless to say, I'm shopping....

Pecha Kucha Night Midcoast

Hey! I know that linocut! Photo by Michael O'Neill

Hard to believe it's already been a week since I launched my new Maine chapter by participating in the Pecha Kucha Night in Camden. The presentation videos went live yesterday, and I'm happy to share mine here for Brush and Baren fans far and wide. All the presenter videos are linked at Vimeo, if you'd like to get a feel for the entire event. Thanks to Ned Lightner of Belfast Community Media for video recording and production.

And now for something a little different

Here in Heart of the Rockies I'm still carving away for the next color pass on the bufflehead linocut, with periodic time outs for things like framing and packing finished prints. Later this week I'll venture up the Front Range and over the Continental Divide on a three-day road trip to deliver the aforementioned framed and packed work to galleries. More on this soon!

Since there's not much to see on my block, I thought I'd share some vintage relief printing from British Pathé. I love these old films, even with their eye-rolling narration. This one features print blocks carved by a woman wielding a router, the effective "beat-it-with-a-stick" method of creating flocked wallpaper, and William Morris designs. You're welcome.

Hog Island Educators Week video

Ultra-efficient Hog Island staffer Erica has already posted the slide show created by campers our last day on the island. I guess the rendering cut off the tops (read: people's heads) and bottoms of all the photos, but it's still awesome.

Linocuts on PPLD TV! The video is here!

PPLD Off the Wall: February 2011 from PPLD TV on Vimeo.

Oh. My.

Late this afternoon I received an email from Ralph Giordano at ArchAngel Productions with an ominous link.  Yup. To the premiere of "my" segment for the PPLD TV short program "Off the Wall."

I made the Darling Man come and stand next to me when I clicked PLAY. It's probably an understatement to say that I, um, dislike having my picture taken. Video? Even worse. But when the Pikes Peak Library District contacted me to announce that I will be their Featured Artist in February, I learned a video interview came with the honor. My mouth cheerfully agreed, but the rest of me went in to a bit of dread-and-panic mode. (Video. Shudder.)

Thankfully Ralph and his co-producer Lee Graham worked wonders with the limited screen charm they had available to them. They were kind and encouraging and fun to work with. (Although I did tell them I would also let everyone know they put me on a pedestal when I did my interview. Literally. I was a bit vertically challenged for the shot they had in mind. I had to stand on the video equipment's hard case so they could see my linos in the background of the frame.)

You can see other artist features on In My Eye Entertainment's Vimeo channel. I imagine "Art Underfoot" might be the lead video until late February when the next feature takes front and center. (UPDATE: The video link above now goes directly to the PPLD TV channel and is the permanent link to "my" segment.)

If you have a Vimeo account and can leave comments, please let Ralph and Lee know what you think of their work. You can tell 'em I sent you!

Leafy Sea Dragon Video, Take... Three?

Hey! I think it worked this time! Here are the groovy little leafy sea dragons at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I'll see if I can't convince the DM to do something with the jellies videos, too. :)

Ambient soundtrack provided by the Aquarium. Squawking kid included.