Spring!

Spring is finally here! Its been wonderful to watch the flowers grow a little bit every day. I have been so busy lately that I am afraid I will miss the whole event, so I have been making sure to pay extra attention.

Lately I've started teaching and am also scrambling to get pottery work finished for BayArt's annual pottery show (in which Sue is also a participant). I often get to paint while I teach, which is good practice. Here is today's figure study:

Still unfinished, but we are going to resume the same pose next month.

But don't worry! I am sketching and brainstorming like crazy for the Small Good Things show. I will start as soon as the pottery show is finished (May 13th). Can't wait!!

In honor of poetry month, here is one from my favorite, e. e. Cummings.
I don't think that anyone can do justice to spring like he does.

Spring is like a perhaps hand 
(which comes carefully 
out of Nowhere)arranging 
a window,into which people look(while 
people stare
arranging and changing placing 
carefully there a strange 
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps 
Hand in a window 
(carefully to 
and fro moving New and 
Old things,while 
people stare carefully 
moving a perhaps 
fraction of flower here placing 
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

e. e. cummings

This next poem contains one of my favorite lines ever. It's also by e. e. cummings. The part I love is in bold.

voices to voices,lip to lip
i swear(to noone everyone)constitutes
undying;or whatever this and that petal confutes...
to exist being a peculiar form of sleep

what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated:i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May

-bring forth your flowers and machinery:sculpture and prose
flowers guess and miss
machinery is the more accurate, yes
it delivers the goods,Heaven knows

(yet are we mindful,though not as yet awake,
of ourselves which shout and cling,being
for a little while and which easily break
in spite of the best overseeing)

i mean that the blond abscence of any program
except last and always and first to live
makes unimportant what i and you believe;
not for philosophy does this rose give a damn...

bring on your fireworks,which are a mixed
splendor of piston and of pistil;very well
provided an instant may be fixed
so that it will not rub,like any other pastel.

(While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneyed son for a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

each dream nascitur,is not made...)
why then to Hell with that:the other;this,
since the thing perhaps is
to eat flower and not to be afraid.