Palmyra Virginia: June 2005

Here is my workspace. I'm using the school desk Amber and I got at the auction. Amber gave me the paint hanger for my birthday. The brushes are bamboo and have painted depictions of the 8 immortals of Taoism on them. The two rectangular black objects with writing on them are my ink sticks. Open at the bottom is my ink stone. Center is my first piece.

Here is the piece I did tonight. It is my first stab, after a couple of hours of stroke practice. It is for Amber and reads "If you have something special, never forget it."

The bamboo painted on the folded back.

The back opens to accept a letter, or some pressed flowers.

This is my ink stone. Sumi-E artists say that the inkstone is the soul of the calligrapher. You are supposed to dwell on your choice. This stone is over 140 years old! It is not a show piece, but rather a real stone used for a century and a half. A Japanese importer here had dozens of them on a table in their warehouse. I only dwelled for half an hour. This one really grabbed me. I think it was the fact that it had a lid and was so old. Oh, and the red spot is a previous artists' chop.

It is great having a lid. It was of a single piece of stone, hewn open and then carved out.

The inkstone opened. You can see how deep the well is and how worn the stone has become.

This spider has spun a web over our upper pond. I misted it with water so the silk would stand out. That's what the larger white bits are from. The camera doesn't manually focus, so I had a hard time getting it to even see the web. I had to trick it into locking focus on a rock at the same distance, then swinging the camera around to the web. You can barely discern the spider in the middle, but he is a real funky green and yellow guy. He's been living here for 4 days now. The frogs do not dig the competition.