Good Friday in Savannah

Some folks call them palmetto bugs
since they occupy the palms
wedged decoratively between the live oaks.
The size of first grade fists,
they lurk under leaves
until once a week,
they are evicted briefly by the street sweepers,
only to scurry back to the darkness.
At times, though, they stray
into the light.

And if you stray east,
past Broad,
past Savannah Marble and Granite
(celebrating 100 years),
with its sample tombstones out front,
where the sunburned houses
keep a sleepy watch over scattered Kroger carts,
and the sidewalks are as dependable
as disciples,
to the east,
they’re just called roaches.

It’s the same thing,
almost.

My roommate and I discovered one
on the entryway stair,
upturned and waving feebly.
She took the roach phone book
and did the deed,
as I stood in the kitchen plugging my ears
and squeezing my eyes shut.
I wasn’t against the killing so much,
just the crunching.

This is sort of a routine,
she’ll crunch, and I’ll clean up;
equally complicit, a partnership.

Today was different, though.
I’d never seen such violence.
Outside so ordinary,
inside, a kaleidoscope of color;
a roach exterior
a palmetto interior,
dashed
smashed
splayed
laid
visible for anyone to see,
dead as a doornail on the threshold
of in and out.

We try to keep our surfaces clean,
so I grimly did my deed,
and tidied the remains away
in the garbage,
no room for resurrection.

In the second before it died,
did it think of another world,
of better times, of palm fronds?
It probably had no time to decide:
roach or palmetto.
The label was up to us.

INRI
Word made flesh
and blood
and color

It’s the same thing,
almost.

Well, duh!

Hello Everyone,

Everyone has an inner voice that affects the way they do anything. The way you do your taxes and shop for clothes and participate in committee meetings all have something in common: You. And it is often only when you place activities next to each other that you realize a shared thread between them. That thread is your voice, and people who know you well can see it in you the way you can recognize a friend from far away because of the way he walks.

This is particularly true of your voice when you’re an artist of any sort, and even more so when you’re a commercial artist. You’re hirable partly because you have a consistency to your work that allows art directors, editors or companies to know what they’re getting. If I were hired for a project and the final art I gave the art director looked entirely different from what was in my portfolio, she would probably be less than enthusiastic about my spontaneous new artistic direction. When you buy a Beatles album, you want it to sound like the Beatles. When you buy an Eric Carle book, you want the pictures to look like Eric Carle made them.

For some people, the terms “voice” and “style” are interchangeable. Others think that your voice is relatively stable, whereas you can adopt different artistic styles as though you were changing outfits. My opinion is that it depends on the person. Some people really just draw one way and it reflects how they see and interact with the world. Others tend to draw in different ways, depending on the circumstances and on what they think that particular image needs. I think I fit more into the second category, which can be difficult when it comes to putting together a body of work that has a consistent style.

The fact that I have written about style several times since coming to SCAD reflects the amount of time I have spent thinking about it. Our program is designed to allow a fair amount of experimentation in the first year or so, and my work reflects a variety of techniques and approaches to drawing. I’ve been trying to narrow my focus this past year so that my work would begin to look more consistent. I’ve ended the last three quarters thinking that I have a good idea of where I’m going with my portfolio. I’ve then begun the last three subsequent quarters convinced that my work is all over the place and I feel like I must start completely from scratch.

This artistic oscillation comes in part from the many voices we have in the department. We often begin our courses by showing our work to the professors. “I like this one,” he or she will say. “Make your portfolio like that.” Then the next professor will choose a different one: “This one is great. Make your portfolio like that.” The variety of opinions among the professors is definitely a strength to the program, but sometimes I feel like drawing one of their names out of a hat and just going with whatever that one advises. This, of course, is the easy and inauthentic way out, but sometimes it sounds lovely.

The truth is, I’m somewhere between the two extremes: I certainly haven’t yet arrived at a style that is completely consistent, but I also am not completely lost. One thing that all my professors have told me is that I have good basic shapes in my images. My reaction is usually, “Well, duh! Isn’t that what the world is made up of?” But then I remember that not everyone sees the world as I do. Some people may draw a tree with intricate line work. Some may draw a tree by emphasizing a range of values. Some may draw a tree as a pattern of different textures. I apparently draw trees by plopping a short rectangles under triangles on the paper.

This sounds so elementary, so obvious. My inner cynic is saying, “You’re in graduate school, Mouse. You’re still getting excited that pictures are made up of shapes? What were the first 17 years of education for -- learning how to sharpen your pencil?” But for now, it’s helpful for me to think of my style in “Well, duh!” terms. It’s the very thing that I think is most blatant that best shows how I think and see.

At a teaching workshop last week, we talked about the personality types described in the well-known Myers-Briggs test. As I read the description of my personality type, I found myself thinking, “Well, of course. This isn’t saying anything about me. It’s just saying what the world is like.” And then I read that only 1% of the population falls in this category and thinks in this way. Oh.

Though it can be helpful to think through these issues (us INTJs like to do that, you know), they won’t ever be completely resolved. Plus, at the end of the day, there’s something to be said about just having fun with paint and trusting that your “You” will show up in the final result.

Here are a few examples of recent work I’ve done.

"The World's Largest Russian Doll (Or the World's Smallest Kremlin)"
gouache resist


"Savannah Bold," coffee bag design
mud, gouache resist and digital


"Whale Fountain"
gouache resist

"The Big Day"
mud and gouache resist

I’ve updated my website with more images from last quarter, if you’re interested. For the moment at least, I have been rather indiscriminate in my choice of what to include, so the variety of images I mentioned is reflected there. Eventually I’ll go through and prune it back to the essentials, but I’m going to make some more essentials first. It’s at www.clearasmudillustration.com.

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse

The Savannah Cyclist's Manifesto

Hello Everyone,

On Thursday night, I got in a minor bike accident. My friend Erin and I were independently biking to the Green Truck Pub for dinner and I saw her up ahead at a traffic light. I tried to get on the sidewalk so I could pull up next to her and we could bike the rest of the way together. The pavement was taller than I’d anticipated, so though my body was heading to the right, my front wheel kept going straight. I landed on my face, knee, hand and hip and the visor on my helmet popped off. “Oh no!” I said, and then attempted to fix my bike chain, which had been knocked loose, without getting too much grease in my scrapes. I called Erin and she kindly came and brought me napkins from the restaurant. Once there, I was able to clean up a bit and the server kindly provided some bandaids. Erin and I enjoyed a delicious dinner followed by a fascinating lecture on how the internet changes our brains.

Thankfully, I’m healing quickly and no longer look like I have an unfortunate case of oral herpes. For a while, I’ve been wanting to write a piece on cycling in Savannah and I figured now would be an especially appropriate time to do so. Plus, it’s been quite a while since I wrote a manifesto. Here it is:

The Savannah Cyclist’s Manifesto

Fellow bicyclists, join me as I petition Savannah and her guests for a moment of her time. We who love both economy and efficiency, who swim through the vehicular currents and torrents pulsing through downtown, who curse the cobbles and praise the pavement, we are the Savannah Cyclists.

One: Savannah Cyclists are equal members of the traffic conversation echoing through this loquacious city and are to be treated as such.

Two: Savannah Cyclists are pro-Lincoln, pro-Habersham, and anti-Broughton (and we are not talking Civil War politics).

Three: Savannah Cyclists arrive perspiring but find a parking space within seconds.
Four: Savannah Cyclists are particularly adept at biking one- or no-handedly due to their need to simultaneously tote mat board, Kroger bags, or yoga mats.
Five: Savannah Cyclists delight in coasting down the slight declines, locally known as “hills,” that are sprinkled throughout the city.
Six: Savannah Cyclists are pleasantly surprised every time they return to their bikes and both wheels and the seat are still attached.

We cyclists declare to our vehicular companions a message of peace, of dignity, and of efficiency:

-To the SCAD busses: We have done nothing to you but help to pay for your upkeep. Kindly desist from running us off the road.
-To the tourists (either walking or on Segways): Yes, Savannah is a gem. She’s stunning, gorgeous, charming, and many other adjectives your book hasn’t even conceived of. She is also best appreciated from the side of the street.
-To the myriad tour guides driving fascinatingly slow-moving busses: You will get more tips if you don’t hit bikers during your tour.
-To the drivers entering the traffic circles around the squares who assume you have the right of way: It’s not you, it’s me.
-To the geriatric drivers who pause in the middle of a busy intersection to contemplate the meaning of life, the universe and everything: It’s 42. Let’s keep moving.
-To drivers who have recently parallel-parked: LOOK! I’m a bike this time, and car door beats bike, but next time I could be a U-Haul, and U-Haul definitely beats car door.
-To the horse-drawn carriages: We’re sure it’s awfully quaint up there in your turn-of-the-century buggy, but it’s awfully horse-urine-ish down here.
- To the cars that drive cautiously just behind you for three blocks at your exact speed: We could fit one of the smaller European countries in the space between me and the center of the street. I promise there is enough room for you to pass.
-To our fellow cyclists: Wear your helmets. Use bike lights at night. Don’t ride in the middle of the lanes; you’re giving us a bad reputation.

Finally, Cyclists and Non-Cyclists alike, remember the two things that unite us all:

1.) None of us can see around the parked cars when we’re trying to turn onto a road.

2.) The Savannah Transportation Annoyance Equations:

myself = in the right
everyone else = in the way

Remember that “everyone else” believes this too.

Have a good and safe week!

Sarah/Mouse