July 2010

Independence Day segued into a week long vacation, followed by an additional week of catching up from holidays and lazy days. Midsummer has rapidly become late summer - or at least it feels that way. 

It’s expected that a typical Ohio summer contains a fair amount of hot weather, but this month has been positively steaming. Nightly thunderstorms and daytime temperatures in the 90s this past weekend coincided with the Akron Arts Expo. I spent only a couple hours at the Expo this year, as a visitor, not an exhibitor - quite a switch after twenty years as a participating artist. The decision was made last March, amid the late snows and chilly temperatures, so I can take no credit for being prescient about the rain, heat and humidity.

Next month there are a couple one-day festivals on my schedule. Coming up are the University Park Art & Music Fair at Grace Park, near downtown Akron, and Art in the Square, right up the street in Highland Square. I’m looking forward to catching up with fellow artists, patrons and friends at both of these events. . . let’s hope cooler temperatures prevail!

University Park Art Fair
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Grace Park, Akron, Ohio

Art in the Square
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Highland Square, Akron, Ohio

What a fine collection fionadesigns has put together on Etsy: the raven celebrated in a variety of media and styles!  Check out  the treasury here. My little crow has strutted his way into the company of some fine feathered blackbirds, and is available in my Etsy shop.

While on the subject of groups, collectively blackbirds are referred to as ‘an unkindness of ravens’ and ‘a murder of crows.’ Terms of venery, “those imaginative collective nouns that evolved in the Middle Ages when the sophisticated art of hunting demanded an equally sophisticated vocabulary” came into being partly because “our forebears also delighted in the  play of words, and so the use of such fanciful phrases became codified.” Many are listed and illustrated in the delightful book, An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, originally published in 1968.

Many thanks to fionadesigns for including my work - it’s very kind, despite being an unkindness!