Summer school

Summer brought both quiet & storm.

At home, 9 years of accumulated items made it into small office
supply boxes. A third followed us up the hill to our temporary
respite, the rest were hauled to an air conditioned warehouse where
time erodes their relevance. When we unpack in several months' time,
it will be an excavation- both welcome and strange.
I come from 3 generations of boxfillers. Some family create labrynths
of cardboard and pillars, others line the walls, shrinking floor area
year by year. The contents are precious. To fill so many of my own
with stuff generiously labeled with "knick knacks" is bittersweet.
Most of my daily needs follow me in a blue backpack to and from davis.
To face the volume of other objects is disheartening.

I am teaching drawing 1 in Davis summer school. Class is good. Below
is a nice one from a positive/negative space drawing exercise.
The city itself has been socked in by smoke from nearby fires and the
temperature crested 108 the last few weeks, so I've been spending time
in the bay area. With a Little One on the way (my other big news) I
keep seeking put the cleanest air. This means refamiliarizing with
past patterns of graphic design work, while slowly unearthing paper
and plastic from stacks of cardboard.
Personal art is on pause. Skittish about toxicity- although I know
there is some media that will replace (sigh) the oils and their bad
solvents. Some beefy watercolor brushes arrived in the mail- hoping
size will overpower the delicacy I normally associate with this media.
Also have a few good block prints left to execute while I still have
access to a press.