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Who am I?
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Who am I?
I sat next to my daughter painting for a bit today and I was reminded to add some blues and greens, to work the whole piece, and I o just have fun.
She’s pretty good; very intense and unafraid to try different things. I hope no one ever changes that in her. At any rate, with her influence I was able to finish this Nolan Ryan piece today. I am very pleased with it.
Then later this evening I was able to work a very tiny painting in my sketchbook with a big brush. Long live the joy of six year old girls seeping in.
Who am I?
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Who am I?
Well, today’s post probably has more to do with remembering baseball history than it does remembering the card. But I owed the universe a little more energy on the daily today after yesterdays failed voyage.
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Who am I?
This fellow got a little dark real quick and working with the e big brush I had trouble resurrecting the features. Not sure I managed.
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Who am I?
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Simurgh
Borges talks of the Simurgh, a spirit of Middle Eastern mythology; an eagle made up of 30 separate eagles.
when I read this I thought of Willie Mays’s catch. He was an eagle and the baseball was his prey. I am trying to figure out how I build my Mays of thirty separate Mays will I use the same drawing repeatedly or work with different images? I’m not really sure yet. The idea is still rather in its infancy.
I do know that Mays is a perfect alignment for myth. All of the old timers were. It is a wonder what baseball is without a thousand different camera angles over telling the story.
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A Change of Venue
For a little over 16 years now I’ve used Twitter, now X, to share my artwork. When I started my account that was actually the very beginning of The Mighty Lark. I had been participating in The Hive Gallery’s group shows and they had just put together a show of avatars. My paintings at that point were all birds and robots and so I decided that I wanted to create a bird avatar. It was also a bit of an homage to Kevin Cross, who at the time was creating a character called The Monkey Mod. I had a couple zines and stickers featuring that character.
At any rate, I never would have thought that a decade and a half later the moniker would still be going strong. And look, it’s now been adopted even into the name of my site, so I guess it’s not going anywhere. But with that in mind, I feel like X and I are headed in opposite directions. We’ve grown apart these last few years. Twitter was cute when there was Tweet Whales and 140 characters. It was even pretty great when Periscope came along. I’ve weathered some rough times since SpaceX Uber Rich TESLA mElonagomaniac came along, but at this point, I’m just not sure that the business that I drum up and the card talk that I get is really worth it. I’ve gotta try something different because I know my LGBTQ friends are not welcome there. I’m pretty sure my librarian friends are not welcome either.
So, if you are here and would like, welcome to a “new” old venue where I used to share a lot and where I intend to do so once again.
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Keep on Rocking
I have been obsessively playing instruments this year. I started with my son’s ukulele, hiding in all of the quiet recesses of my house while single parenting. I’ve found that where I have trouble getting my paints and prints out and finding space that they can stay without my children getting into them, I can take out and put away instruments twice as easily. About the only painting I get in regularly is my daily drawing.
Since picking up the ukulele, I’ve had my father’s acoustic guitar which I learned to play on 30 years ago repaired, begun playing mandola that I received from my Aunt after my Uncle passed, and most recently started strumming a mandolin which I purchased online.
I’ve been writing a lot of different progressions and melodies and even creating a few songs with a friend, though I’m not sure that that is going to be the final iteration of anything that I’m playing. I’m really hoping to put together a few projects that involve visual art and my own soundtracks a la WMR whose cassettes I’ve been collecting a while.
However, as a sort of bridge between my two creative areas for the time being I have begun carving woodcuts of instruments. Here is the first, Keep on Rocking in the Free World.
It seemed fitting to start with a ukulele. Prints are available on my Big Cartel page for $20.
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Is Anyone Good at This?
Parenting is difficult. I had no doubts of that really, but I never really prepared myself for the amount of time that I would spend arguing about seemingly meaningless things. Brushing your teeth, combing your hair, and getting dressed hardly seem like negotiables. Nor, really, do finishing chores, reading, or playing quietly before you earn screens. However, that is the world that I am living in.
I’ve wanted desperately to make more art since I became a single parent and yet, it is more difficult to find time to make. The time is there though. I have more time to myself. That is why I’ve felt really frustrated that I haven’t been making as much as I would. It’s only been recently that I’ve discovered how much pressure I put on myself to perform as a parent, so much so that I don’t perform particularly well as a parent. And so, when I arrive at this mysterious increase in time, I am exhausted. I am doubly exhausted after the mental battles that I must play constantly.
Of late I’ve been letting the art seep in though. It is still difficult, but isn’t it better if something is difficult and there rather than difficult and mourned for? Yes, I wish that I had the time and space to make that I did before, but I do not. I will not until my children are a bit older or a bit self reliant. In order for them to become more self reliant I must start to let the artwork and the reading and the “me” elements seep in more. They need to spread and grow. I wish to be like this burro’s tail plant; growing in and around wherever I need to be.
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The Detroit Stars
What is it about what could have been that makes life so much more interesting? Over the past two weeks I found myself reading The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World by Joshua Prager. The book, of course, tells the story of the 1951 Giants Pennant, but pays special heed to the way in which the Giants cheated.
It makes you wonder. How well would that team have performed if they had not cheated? This year Elly De La Cruz and the Reds young core has served to light a fire under the Reds, propelling them into first place. Everyone talks about Elly De La Cruz’s “it factor.” But let’s take into account for a second the young core of the 1951 Giants. At it’s center were young pitchers, Maglie and Jansen, and perhaps even more importantly a young Monte Irvin and Willie Mays. Would Willie Mays have ignited the 1952 Giants in the same manner that Elly De La Cruz has done for the 2023 Reds? We can never be fully certain because it is fact that the Durocher’s Giants cheated.
It’s the not knowing that I find interesting though. While we can never really know if Walter Johnson would have pitched as well as Randy Johnson in the nineties, or know if Ty Cobb could have hit .400 in the seventies, or if the Fifties Yankees were better than the Nineties Yankees, the biggest question to me will always be how the Negro Leaguers would have faired in MLB.
This week I started working on a series of drawings of the Detroit Stars and of Detroit Tigers wearing throwback Detroit Stars uniforms in the style of 1933 Goudey Chewing Gum cards. I can’t help but feel curious about the what could have beens, but I also just feel so attached to the what was.
I’ve just started Buck O’Neil’s Right on Time. He talks of being so proud to have played baseball with and against some of the most talented ballplayers of the thirties and forties. A man who could have been so bitter, just wasn’t. I think there is a lesson in that for all of us. While Capitalism has built an entire monopoly off of FOMO, what is it to recognize the beauty in the what is and what was.
I think that is why I am focused on this little Detroit Stars project. These men were great, maybe not recognized for being so, but no doubt great. I feel like in my art that is all that I want, to be great, whether anyone thinks I am or not. And really, what is being recognized as great, when you know that you are more of Bobby Thomson shirking the spotlight than you ever will be a Satchel Paige embodying the spotlight.