Cay Denise

For those of you who don't know Lynda Barry, she is an American cartoonist and an Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity at the University of Wisconson-Madison.  She has also received a MacArthur Fellowship.  Her work is stunningly imaginative.  Her drawings complemented by her writing is the reason she has published numerous books...my favorite so far being 'What It Is'.   I'm only a third of the way through her 'Making Comics' book, and what I've accomplished so far--is filling a Michael Roger Decomposition Book of my work based on Barry's Daily Diary practice.   The first part of her course and that I did was to create a caricature-like image of me using the principles of Brunetti.  The result is not as sophisticated as a caricature and not as simplistic as a stick figure.  Rather, it is inbetween and has characteristics of how I think of myself (like having short hair, wearing glasses, my hands drawn as mittens, etc.).   The daily...

During the last weekend of June, my latest class' wrap-up call was conducted by the curriculum creator and instructor, Louise Fletcher (an English artist), and her coaches for Momentum 2026.  The class was six months (having begun in January) that followed Creative Reset and Find Your Joy last fall.   At the start of Momentum, students chose a subject to focus on.  Mine was tree bark.  Many of the pieces in the photo below were based on that focus.  Mid-way through the course, we also started a three-month project after writing a project brief as a way to keep us on track.  Mine is an exploration of grief and darkness, and the project is still in-progress. That said, in looking at the work in the this collage I see that one of my shape preferences is curves.  That is a valuable insight--because it means I'm more likely to be happier with my creative works when they have curves in them versus those that don't.  A footnote to the class is that Louis...