birdspot

As I write this, they, the nefarious “they”, are breaking ground in the lot behind my building. I mostly spend the days of summer working in studio, insulated from heat waves and humidity, and avoiding the putrescent swirl of vapors oozing out of every nook in the city. I still love New York, I promise, and I am grateful that my studio has been blissfully (relatively) quiet and blessed with open, South views and astonishingly good light. These are things you only luck into or pay for exorbitantly in Manhattan. That open lot has been a beacon of hope, a fount of stifled dread, and a dream of wishful denial since the day I moved in. I only would have loved it more if it had been unpaved and I could have peered in for birds, bugs, and weeds. Oh well, so it goes (singsong voice, skipping off into an unknown future). Here is a toast – with tea, this time around, since I have just been awakened by the rending of concrete and earth – to change, and to riparian and boreal forests that exist someplace firmly where I am not.

Ovenbird Studies, ink and watercolor on paper, 2010