Month: October 2015

A Cat By Any Other Name

Being in Spain, France and England for a few weeks this year, I naturally became very aware of both the challenges and the interesting things about language and dialect. When you’re waking up in a new city or country every few days, it’s not hard to absentmindedly mix words from different languages together in the same sentence. When I returned home to the states, I was designing a cat-themed poster when I decided to look up words for “cat” in various languages. That’s how the above poster came to be. This poster is one of six different giclée art prints being offered with a portion of sales going to the Gifford Cat Shelter in Brighton, MA. The shelter is the oldest no-kill, cageless cat shelter in the United States. It’s been operating since 1884! Here’s more about this dedicated organization. I’ll be hosting a “First Friday” event at my Boston studio on November 6, with the above mentioned six print images offered to benefit the shelter. There is a limited quantity of each available for this fundraiser, and I encourage anyone interested to pre-order …

Museum Hangover Creates Craving for More

Since returning from a vacation in Europe a few weeks ago, a longing to wander around art museums has been rekindled in me. It’s not a new experience by any means. When I moved to Boston almost 23 years ago, I got a Museum of Fine Arts Boston membership and enjoyed spending days off looking at art exhibits. Locally, I’ve visited Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the museums at Harvard, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Worcester Art Museum, the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, and the National Museum of Illustration in Newport, RI, among others. I’ve also had my share of visits to the many wonderful museums in New York City, around the country, and to some memorable ones in Europe. Somewhere along the line, however, I slowly and quietly trailed off. I might blame that on an erratic work schedule, a more intense focus on doing my artwork, or a full day-to-day life naturally causing some interests to fall away. Or all of these things. Add to it that until very recently, I hadn’t had a regular dedicated day off for three years. So what …