In Praise of Moleskine

If I had to rush out of a burning building, I would be clutching my Moleskine sketchbook. It goes everywhere with me. Then there's the Moleskine notebook that I use for my journaling. Moleskines are nothing new, they've been around for a couple hundred years. A favorite of artists and writers, because they are relatively cheap. They are ever so portable, coming in a myriad of sizes, shapes, some with lines, squares or even blank. In the recent past the last of the Moleskine makers closed their doors, but like the Phoenix rising from its ashes, they are being manufactured again. The little black notebooks are easy to find. I buy mine at one of the large booksellers. After all, when you have an idea, you need a place to keep it.

"The Gibbes"

As an artist, I take a lot of pictures. Most of these pictures make little sense to anyone else. I think of them as reference photos. I was in Charleston, South Carolina and my aesthetic radar was having a wonderful time. Reacting to the architecture of a large white Victorian era building, I began taking pictures. Instead of taking one picture of a place, I like to take a series and then piece them together. The perspective is often a bit wonky, but the end result has a kind of energy to it. The resulting image always seems truer to how I experienced the place or subject. "The Gibbes" is one of those photo collages. This time I printed the images on aluminum foil. I juxtaposed elements of vintage elegance against the building blocks of creating art: color, line and shape. The resulting piece is intentionally whimsical and recalls for me that sultry Spring afternoon.