Fran Meneley

Architectural Gems

Way back in December...what seems like forever ago now..I ventured to the big city to take Judith Cassel-Mamet's wonderful Architectural Gems drawing class. For three Mondays we gathered to learn about perspective drawing and had the chance to explore some great Denver landmarks. This is a keyhole view from inside the State Capitol Building looking out to Civic Center Park and the Rockies in the background.

We wandered the Capitol building on one of the days. It was too cold to draw outside...this journal page is the result of my explorations. Amazing what you can do with an iPhone these days. Just loved the beauty and grandeur of the old civic building. Very surprised how completely accessible everything was.

Beautiful brass statue of Abe Lincoln...the patina of his hands worn off from the people's touch...

...and these great reflective, solid brass drinking fountains...love the shapes against the geometry of the floor. They don't make 'em like this anymore!

Another day I ventured to the plaza by the Denver Art Museum and the public library to take in the architectural gems by Michael Graves (library on the right), old Denver Art Museum by Gio Ponti and the new Denver Art Museum by Daniel Libeskind. That's quite a few big egos in one small space...but we are lucky to have them represent in little 'ol Denver.

My journal pages of that day...so many good things to draw and angles to take in! 

Other days were spent in the Capitol Hill neighborhood (what I think is also called, Quality Hill) with grand old homes from the silver mining boom days of yore. 

This detail from the wonderful old building on 23rd and York, where Judith teaches. It looks a little chinese to me...but was working on the lines. A little wonky, but what a treat to sit in the winter sun and just look and take those lines for a walk!

Hope you are walking your lines and doing something creatively good in this last stretch of winter!

An Atlas of Unsettling Vision - Sketchbook Project 2013

Well.. I got my Sketchbook Project finished and mailed just in the nick of time yesterday! I'm not sure why I procrastinated, it was a joy to work on.

My theme this year was "Almanac" but I made it into a kind of dream Atlas.

I came across this wonderful quote from the movie, Here, and just let the images flow keeping the beautiful text in mind. I couldn't explain it all to you, even if I wanted to. I just responded to the words, loosley thinking about how we all make up our own realities and we are like those map makers of old, just trying to chart our way, comparing maps, trying to make sense of the world as we know it.

"The story is still asleep. It dreams. Scientists and dreamers they traveled the world with watchful eyes and guzzled hope like water. The journeys were separate but their purpose was common. To map the world. One begged for money and pencils. Another tore his shirt to strips, carefully wrapping his shredded feet. Yet another, thirsty, near starving, suckled the sap from plants. No one had an easy road. Though utterly dependent on one another, most found the other's maps unsettling. They denied one's perspective by charting the land incomprehensibly, calling into question one's very being. 

Still when they met on the lonely roads, the explorers would present one another with their maps. Some seemed to say so plainly, directly, "the world is like this." Others were more oblique, skating, impressionistic, unstable, they froze mere slivers of the infinite earth as it skittered by in orbit. If ever these maps could be gathered together, they would comprise an atlas of unsettling vision. A final proof that truth is conjecture." by Dani Valent - In Every Roaming Heart.

To learn more about The Sketchbook Project, go here. If you'd like to see what other Sketchbooks I've done in years past, plus a story I wrote for The Fiction Project, you can go their site and go to the 'Digital Libaray" from the menu at the top of their banner. Type in my name and, voila! you should see my other work. I know they are working on their digial library, so be patient. You can see about a million other amazing and cool journals as well. Warning: It's a rabbit hole...proceed with caution, lest hours be eaten up with deluxe inspiration!   

p.s. this just in: a great little video about the Art House Co-Op from my fellow sketchbook artist, Cynthia Fawcett -

 

Check out her blog, Cynful Musings, to learn more about her work here...and see how she cleverly took over her kitchen as a studio space for her Sketchbook Project journal! Love it!

May The Clarity of Light Be Yours

Well...I've been away for a while. Attending to home things and family and holiday dinners and school presentations and sick children and drawing excursions and a new computer, among other things. And now I feel, on this brand new day of 2013, that I can return a bit to myself. On the winter solsitce I fashioned this new winter alter... 

...listening deeply for the blessings and lessons of the season of darkness. Things are asleep, the sky is dark, the moon on the snow bright. I light the little fires on my alter and burn the new studio fireplace....

...beckoning to the light to enter my life and help me find clarity for the new year, the next turn around the sun. Tea is sipped and ideas and dreams of plans are swirling; the new year a open book. I wanted to share a very dear poem by John O'Donohue for this special day, given kindly to me by my sweet friend Ellen. May your new year be blessed always, in all ways.

 

A Blessing For The New Year

By John O’Donohue 

 

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The gray window

And the ghost of loss gets into you,

May a flock of colors,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you,

A meadow of delight.

When the  canvas frays

In the curragh of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protections of the ancestors be yours,

And, so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.