I thought it appropriate to re-blog last year’s rage comic, “Stamps in January”. I love making those stupid things, it just releases so much pressure to be precise! Anyway, you’ll be glad to know that THIS year, I had only three Christmas stamps left over to use on utility bills. Either I have more friends this year, or I bought fewer stamps. Does it really matter? Allow me my folly. 
All words and art copyright Kathy Ferrell 2012-13.
Lilly J., Winner in Youngest Age Group
Hey there, faithful Art Fans! Before January days run out, I want to share with you a post about my latest art contest.
In December, I purchased some age-appropriate art supplies from Dick Blick, and printed up some of my black & white line art. Made up a little flyer, the whole bit.
Diana D., Middle Age Group Winner
The wonderful staff at the Guyandotte Public Library were kind enough to help me yet again, by handing out the coloring sheets and encouraging all of the young patrons to enter.
Naturally, I had a hard time choosing the best ones, out of so many truly wonderful entries. There is so much creative talent in the young people in my little corner of West Virginia!
Austin W., Winner of Oldest Age Group
I did finally narrow it down, though, and I’d like to share with you the pictures of the winners, each holding their winning picture! The gift bags in the photos contain the prizes. They won assortments of markers, art paper, watercolors, brushes, colored pencils and the like. I know each one will put the materials to good use and create many beautiful things! I hope they will bring in a picture now and then to the library so we can enjoy their latest creations!
Thanks especially to Priscilla Marten, for providing these photos, and staff Katie, Robert and Joe (my better half), for all the help!
Congratulations to all the winners, and a big thank you to ALL the young artists who took part!
I’m going to try to have another contest in the spring!
words copyright Kathy Ferrell 2013, photos copyright Priscilla Marten 2013
Flowers from my garden last summer, in my studio window…
Reviewing my Duotrope profile today (a site that I highly recommend), I see that maybe there’s something to me after all, as a writer.
I really gave myself permission to take this seriously in September. When I was in school, I always enjoyed the writing assignments, and several teachers were generous with praise. But I never took it seriously, because “I am an artist“.
So backwoods ignorant that I didn’t know you are allowed to be more than one thing in the world.
Growing up, I was surrounded by…ahem…characters. “Character”, by the way, is a Southern euphemism for any individual pulled from the grab-bag of eccentrics, faded gentry, desperate schemers and run-of-the-mill lunatics that can be found on any given day in my home town, family being no exception. As a teen, I think people suspected I might be taking notes. And they were right.
My mother was terrified of what I might reveal. She hammered it in pretty hard…”Kathy, don’t you know anything?! You don’t ever write anything down!! That’s how they get’cha!” With her sketchy dalliances in the criminal underworld, to her, all writing was “evidence”. She was right, in her way.
So, I wrote, but about, as she put it, “nice things”. Teachers said I had excellent penmanship. And I painted a great many unicorns and insipid, doe-eyed girls holding dewy roses.
At twenty-one I found myself tearing through the tri-state on the back of a Harley Davidson. To make the rebellion complete, I started writing about real things. One thing the biker way of life teaches…no one wants to hear any B.S., and that suited me just fine. So I wrote about what life was really like for me, and I painted things that were true for me and it felt great.
But I put it on the back burner when my son came along. I was very eager to share art with him, but I quickly realized that he wanted to do his own thing. Not wanting to screw up motherhood, I backed off immediately, and instead encouraged the thing he was naturally inclined toward. It turned out to be writing. As a teen, he became very serious about it. He won awards and I was terribly proud. And I didn’t write anymore, because I knew it would be weird. No teenage boy who wants to write wants his mom doing it, too. That would be lame.
So I held off some more. He entered college, and my mother went…where people go when they do those things, and I suddenly realized that I had no more excuses. So last September, I finally gave myself permission. Since then, I’ve completed and submitted several poems and four short stories. I’ve got two stories half-finished, and then there’s that novel. Believe me, those characters sit down beside me every day and tell me things. Terrible things, and they want me to tell.
That’s what you have to do, eventually. Just give yourself permission to tell. Just curl your lip at the world and say “I’m allowed.”
And write down all the really shocking bits first. Write the ones that could get you cut out of a will. Write down that story about which you were told, long ago, “You can’t breathe a word about this, do you hear?” Breathe words. Breathe a lot of words. Because you’ll suffocate if you don’t.
All words and images copyright Kathy Ferrell 2013.
Absinthe Bourgeois advertisement circa 1900
A publisher has put out a call for an upcoming collection under the theme “Absinthe”. Having read so much about other artists making frequent use of this liqueur at the turn of the century, I decided it was high time I experienced it for myself.
Believe it or not, absinthe can be obtained in the mountain state, though there was some confusion at the check out counter. Barring the occasional glass of Pinot Noir in the evenings, I am not much of a drinker, so rather than trying to navigate a large liquor store, I went straight to the register, and asked if they carried this mysterious beverage.When the clerk responded by asking “wine or liquor?” I was taken aback. I had only ever heard of the liquor and had no idea that there could be such a thing as wormwood wine. “There’s a wine?” I blurted stupidly, and then stood there looking absurd in my puffy purple coat for a very long moment. Finally, a man waiting behind me took pity, and straightened out the confusion.
Another clerk led me, face aflame, to the shelf of boxed “gift sets” where I quickly selected something pretty that had a picture of Vincent van Gogh on it, and slunk back to the register. To make my humiliation complete, before I could pay, my husband came into the store looking for me, wondering why it was taking so long. Is there anything quite so embarrassing as being fetched from a liquor store by your spouse? If there is, I don’t want to know.
Getting it home, I found that the set contained a large, imposing looking bottle, a nice glass with a lozenge-shaped reservoir at the base (for the absinthe, I learned), and a very lovely little engraved filigree spoon, for holding sugar cubes. The only thing missing were tiny tongs and a second glass. It seems these makers of absinthe simply assume that artists will be drinking alone. One wonders where they get these ideas.
I have two weeks to experience this and come up with a poem, but it may take me a while to get over my embarrassment. I hope the world appreciates what I do for art. My apologies for the poor layout of this post. WordPress seems designed to frustrate me. Until later!
Words in this post copyright Kathy Ferrell 2013.
“Rose Hips” 5×7″, Faber Castell Polychromos pencils on Stonehenge paper
In an effort to move swiftly away from yesterday’s post, here are two pieces I did in the last month or so. I had never used Polychromos pencils before, but since Dick Blick is my candy man, I couldn’t resist. I cannot recommend these wonderful pencils highly enough. Incredible to work with, and combined with the Stonehenge…something close to Paradise.
The rose hips were snipped from my climbing white rose. I’ve always been told that you can eat them, and they are an excellent vitamin C source, but I’ve always been afraid to try. The piece below is a branch my husband brought into the studio, after my request to bring in something “natural for me to draw”. I asked him from what tree it came, and he replied, “I dunno. One of the trees out there.” The “trees out there” in West Virginia amount to a lot of trees, if you’ll forgive the understatement. So…sorry I don’t know the species of this one.
“Withered Branch”, 5×7″, Polychromos pencil on Stonehenge paper
Words and images (unless otherwise noted) are © Kathy Ferrell 2013
I’ve been putting this off and putting it off. You know how it is, the New Year rolls around and we are filled once more with foolish optimism. Pardon me while I plunge in once more…
Ask any Eastern-leaning philosopher and they’ll tell you. Clinging to some inner hurt, rolling it around in your gut, produces more ulcers than pearls. The advice is the same, always. Let go. Practice detachment. Release.
I cannot ignore my blog any longer. But my followers deserve to know why I’ve been hiding. There’s an elephant in the room of my psyche, and it’s been hindering me long enough. When I deal with it, right now, I’ll have a clean space once more, and will be able to fill it up with good, healthy things.
I’ve said very little about the incident with my mother that happened last summer. It’s not something that decent people talk about. To spit it out, her mental state resulted in someone’s death. And I was not surprised. And I’ve been living with that. And it’s awful. I tried to gloss it over, posting occasionally little snippets about a drawing class I took, with delicate mentions of cleaning her apartment mortised between perky phrases. If one had tried to read between the lines, I don’t think they’d have got much.
But in truth, my summer and fall became simply the ultimate wreck of a train that had been highballing toward me for forty years. My winter was a hibernation to recuperate. I climbed out of the scorched, mangled havoc and I’ve been writing like something possessed. To paraphrase Charles Bukowski, it doesn’t matter how awful life is, MAKE GOOD ART. So I’ve been reading and writing and painting and I don’t think my time has been wasted.
She is now in the care of the state. Where she should have been decades ago. What do you do when you know things are going to end very badly? When you try to warn people, and they just laugh? She was “so charming and fun” and I was just one of those weird, dark, moody kids with my nose in a book all the time.
She went through people like tissues, using them up and tossing them down. She giggled like a child at the gifts she was given, and I watched people line up to give them to her. In return, she gave heartache and mockery. She loved nothing better than a sucker.
A rumor once circulated that she had been killed in a car wreck, and my father had to watch two grown men, strangers, burst into tears at the thought of it. She glimmered one way when men were around and she sparkled another when she dealt with women. She had the best “dumb” act I’ve ever seen. I was nearly thirty years old before I realized she was the most cunning person I’ve ever known. When there was only me around, she was another way. She scared the living hell out of me every day for years. I tried to warn people. But people only laughed.
Even hospitalized this summer, all of the staff seemed to feel that it was helpful to constantly tell me how pretty she was, how she didn’t look her age, how she must have been a great beauty, and, frankly, most disturbing of all, in light of what she’d done, what a “cute” personality she had.
There must be a reason for all of this.
A very good friend once told me years ago that I am the sort of person that is not satisfied with pain simply stopping. I have to know WHY the pain stopped. Since he said that, I’ve found a way to channel that need into something that I think is healthier than three am phone calls to friends.
I’ve decided that the reason I knew that woman is so I’ll have something to write about. So I’ll have a reason to paint. So I’ll have a reason to clean the crud from the rubber seal on the refrigerator. But she wasn’t put in my life to make me weak.
Thanks for reading. Decide with me not to waste a nice, clean slate of a New Year.
Words and images (unless otherwise stated) are © Kathy Ferrell 2013.
“Partridge with Pears” Kathy Ferrell, Corel Painter
My Christmas card design chosen yesterday! I’m very surprised and flattered! What a nice Christmas surprise! More shortly, I PROMISE!!
