two artists | reverse threading

February 20, 2019
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a small adjustment. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

we sat arm-in-arm in the megaphone. we had been hiking in the snowy woods and it was the driest place to sit. we’ve written about this megaphone before; it is a nature megaphone and it is supposed to amplify the sounds of nature from the woods and into the woods. because someone didn’t maybe quite get the purpose, the megaphone is actually pulling sound from the street – a county highway through the woods on the narrow side of the amplifier, the side that draws in sound. a small adjustment in its location would afford it the purpose for which it was designed. it was built lovingly as an eagle scout project, but until this small adjustment in placement happens it will, unfortunately, not be as effective as it could be.

a small adjustment. how many times would just a small adjustment create a path closer to success, a path more in alignment with purpose, a path that maximizes effectiveness, a megaphone that actually amplifies the amazing nature in the woods? we get stuck in a line of thinking and, full-speed-ahead, think that is the only route, the only way. until someone says something – a suggestion of a small adjustment – in thinking, in action, in REaction, in placement of our focus. an ah-ha moment.

in the recording studio, as really in every musical performance, there is a groove. it is the place where the tempo of the piece being played is “right”… everything comes together and syncs, the intent of the piece shines. sensitive musicians and conductors can feel any deviation from that groove. when it’s off, too slow, too fast, it doesn’t deliver the same emotional message. just a slight adjustment brings it into center.

it’s the same with tuning. A440 pitch is the universal standard tuning pitch. a quarter tone off here or there makes a difference; not only can you hear this slight adjustment, but you can feel that the vibration is quivering, off its mark.

two people. a difference of opinion. the quivering vibration is palpable. a small adjustment left or right, quietly spoken or wisely quiet, pivots them back to the heart-core, brings back solid ground.

that same kind of vibration…present in any gathering of people…in sync or magnets repelling each other…with underlying fields of pre-formed assumptions getting in the way of the small slight adjustments needed – the ah-ha’s – to be in actual alignment, stronger together than separate, amplifying the real sound of this earth – in the groove, in tune, on the mark, grounded, mutually, cooperatively, collaboratively on-purpose.

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

February 19, 2019
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oy! [two artists tuesday]

i recently read these words in a written interview: “i believe in a benevolent universe.” i wrote it down. “a benevolent universe” is a good mantra. i have never met the person who wrote this, but i already like her.

i believe in joy. finding joy. leading with joy. the word JOY has a prominent home in our kitchen. above our big old sink, over the backyard window, sitting on top of the wooden window cornice sit the metal letters J-O-Y. lately, the J is refusing to stay standing. we’ll walk into the kitchen and the word OY is there. OY has a totally different connotation than JOY, but i must say that -right now- OY! also fits.

having grown up on long island this is not an unfamiliar phrase to me. i have used “OY!” a time or two or maybe a few dozen more. right now, though, i ponder why OY keeps appearing in our kitchen. is it a message? is it empathic support from afar?

each time i fix OY back to JOY i laugh aloud. and i wonder when OY will reappear. what does it all mean? does it mean anything at all? what message do we want in our kitchen on the top of the cornice over the window gracing the sink? it’s like a 70s mood ring, the thermotropic liquid crystals, moving with temperature change causing color change, flip-flopping within your own little world. what is causing our J to fall?

is it JOY or OY? hm. either way, no matter what we are experiencing at the moment, i do trust that yes, ultimately, it is a benevolent universe.

read DAVID’S thoughts about OY! this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

February 14, 2019
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we jump anyway. [d. r. thursday]

i searched for quotes about risk. there are a plethora of them out there. then i realized that maybe the best one for today was already there – no good adventure is without risk. there are no guarantees in life. we all know that. nothing that says if you do this, that will definitely happen. the ifs-thens are not absolute. the ifs-thens aren’t even, well, iffy on occasion. and sometimes there’s no chance in hell that an adventure, an experiment, an endeavor will work out. we jump anyway.

in this anniversary week of THE MELANGE, we’ve done a great deal of looking back at our jumping. those jumps reach much further back than just this past year. as two artists living together, two artists working together, two artists laughing and breathing and arguing together, we have experienced lots of falling-into-the-water as we’ve gone. our individual artistry output pre-dates this year by decades. epic moments of success are conjoined with moments of missing the next rock in the stream (see CHICKEN MARSALA sketch above to see what that looks like.) but, even knowing that – by reverse-threading now – in looking ahead, at all the mystery of that, we jump anyway.

nothing worth doing comes without hard work. no good adventure is without risk. there are no guarantees. all wise words. all daunting. we jump anyway.

read DAVID’S thoughts this ANNIVERSARY MELANGE D.R. THURSDAY

THE MELANGE ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

images in THE MELANGE ©️ 2016-2019 david robinson & kerri sherwood

CHICKEN MARSALA ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

February 13, 2019
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187. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

i had no idea how much i would love designing. through the first ten years or so of album covers, i watched. i sat with my dear friend 20 as he designed so many of my CD jackets and tray cards. i learned a lot. not about how to use photoshop or illustrator or quark but i learned about balance and clean design and how to “see”. so when we started designing for THE MELANGE, that part came more easily. the photoshop part? well, that had a bigger learning curve (as does website designing.) manipulating images and navigating programs without real directions can be a challenge, but i was up for it. lots of learning.

the thing that really surprised us was when we looked at each of our society6.com stores this week and literally counted our product lines. there are 187! 187 lines created across the five stores.

187 product lines later, i look back in wonder.

mugs and laptop covers, tote bags, prints and cellphone cases, beach towels, shower curtains…not to mention leggings. in the course of the last year, i have designed between 50 and 60 pairs of leggings. leggings with morsels of david’s paintings, leggings with graphics we have designed or photographs we have taken, leggings with words of wisdom, leggings with punchlines, leggings with lyrics. i was a leggings-designing-maniac. i think about even just these leggings designed, available on an on-demand site, and think – we could have all those made and just sell them ourselves. we could sell those designs elsewhere – to a company that already produces leggings. we could open a shop with all these products – interesting, different, artistic, not mass-produced or mass-purchased. we could… there’s no telling what we could do.

i asked david if he knew how many blogposts there had been in this MELANGE year. he had already done the math. we each posted 260 posts, totalling 520. that’s more than a few words, more than a few thoughts, more than a little heart.

immeasurable energy has been devoted to these designs, these blogs, to this MELANGE. here – at the one-year-old mark – we are astounded by the amount of time and effort this has all taken. and we look back in wonder.

what has been the reward?

there is no way to underestimate the power of i/we-can-do-this. the sisu of sticking it out, meeting the challenge, staying in the game, learning.

THE MELANGE is celebrating one year. but we are celebrating so much more than that. we look forward in wonder.

read DAVID’S thoughts on this ANNIVERSARY MELANGE NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

THE MELANGE ©️ 2018 david robinson & kerri sherwood

images in THE MELANGE ©️ 2016-2019 david robinson & kerri sherwood

February 12, 2019
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feeling it. life. [two artists tuesday]

in the beginning…..

i just re-read the first week of our MELANGE, a calendar-year ago now. words about our little boy CHICKEN MARSALA, words spoken by my sweet momma, words about our community, words about david’s studio and my studio, two artists living together, and our own work-in-the-world. i can feel it. that first week.

we come to this place. one year later. i kind of want to go back and re-read each day. study the images we chose, browse the products we created, watch the arc of changes in design through the year, notice the growth, the things we added, the things we let fall off. somewhere around week 3 i wondered if i would have enough to say, enough words that would be interesting or, at-the-very-least, palatable, inviting for others to read.

i write from my heart, most of it experiential…moments i have netted and captured, written down to hold onto the feeling-of-it. i wondered if that might be too….much…for some. in the middle of living life, i want to remember some of the tiniest morsels of time, layered in the sedimentary layers, bits of shining mica in the middle of ordinary….mica that is celebration, that is eye-opening, that is excruciatingly simple bliss, that is painful, that is full of maturing, that is on-the-edge-of-your-seat-nerve-wracking, that is full of hopes and dreams and regrets…all mica indeed.

“live life, my sweet potato,” my sweet momma said to me. yes, momma. this sweet potato is feeling it.

read DAVID’S thoughts about this ANNIVERSARY MELANGE TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

TWO ARTISTS DESIGNS ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

February 11, 2019
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old dogs. [merely-a-thought monday]

a couple years ago our CHICKEN MARSALA went with us everywhere. i mean literally everywhere. FLAT CHICKEN traveled across the country and we have pictures of him in the scion, in front of the ‘welcome to colorful colorado’ sign, with rest area volunteers, sitting with family at an outdoor bbq.

we had submitted CHICKEN to all the major cartoon syndicates with some interest on their part and so we were bringing him with us, to document his travels and keep our hopes up. ultimately, CHICKEN MARSALA, the strip, was not syndicated and we ended up concentrating our efforts more on short bursts of wisdom and thought in one-panels of CHICKEN in life.

CHICKEN MARSALA and another one-panel cartoon named FLAWED CARTOON, graphic designs we were making or photographs we were taking, david’s paintings, my music – all were fodder for what became a melange, a mixture of it all, the crux of what we would write about each day. and so THE MELANGE, offered monday through friday, was born.

it has – this week – been a year since the first MELANGE was published. and monday through friday since, we have had an image that we each have used as a jumping-off ground for our blogposts, the chute through which we have funneled our thoughts.

i was a crazy person designing products for each of these days…mugs with our sweet CHICKEN MARSALA on them, BE KIND tote bags, FLAWED CARTOON prints, painting morsel throw pillows, what-seems-like a zillion leggings with song lyrics. we posted links for our product lines and re-assessed things daily – placement of images in the blog, placement of hyperlinks, whether or not to include FB ‘like’ buttons….it is an endless list.

somewhere along the way we realized that it was possible that other people might not be as invested in our CHICKEN MARSALA as we were. he wasn’t their imagined little boy; he was ours…

i have this great tear-off calendar i enjoyed every day last year. it sat on my dresser and had a unicorn on every page. it also had a saying of some sort…some words of wisdom, some tongue-in-cheek, some downright sassy. although i love unicorns, for obvious reasons, i found that i could not tell you what the unicorn was doing each day; i barely looked at the unicorn. for me, the important part was the saying. when i realized that, i also realized that was possibly the same reason people were not investing in CHICKEN. it was whatever the panel said, the words, that held the interest. when someone would randomly come upon the image of CHICKEN MARSALA, no matter how adorable the drawing, they wouldn’t ‘see the unicorn’ so to speak, but instead would read the words, the starting gate for our posts. ahhh. we are ever-learning.

and so, we changed our MELANGE monday from CHICKEN MARSALA MONDAY to MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY. and i stopped, for now, designing more CHICKEN products for a society6.com store that was already full of products. CHICKEN MARSALA will have his time in the light; it just isn’t right now.

the same thing happened for our FLAWED WEDNESDAY. as funny as those single panel cartoons were, we found they weren’t necessarily connecting in-a-big-way to our audience, so it was time to re-evaluate our posts for wednesday. FLAWED WEDNESDAY became NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY with interesting tidbits we encounter in life.

today (ok, technically calendar-tomorrow but alas let’s not be too detailed) we celebrate this monday in february a year ago. a year of our MELANGE. a year of selecting images we would feature. a year in which we have we have blogged every monday-friday. a year of designing websites, blogsites, products. a year of questions and thoughts. a year of assessing and re-assessing. a roller-coaster of learnings.

who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

thank you for riding along with us.

read DAVID’S thoughts this MELANGE ANNIVERSARY MERELY-A-THOUGHT MONDAY

CHICKEN MARSALA ©️ 2016 david robinson & kerri sherwood

February 7, 2019
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paintings are like that. [d.r. thursday]

K.DOT & D.DOT SEE AN OWL mixed media 24″ x 48″

as you know, we are two artists living together. so everything around our house has meaning of some sort. each rock, each piece of wood, each feather, each vintage suitcase, each peace sign, each wooden box, each old window frame, each peeling screen door, each painting. before david’s paintings also found their way onto the walls, there were several paintings i had painted. well, “painted”. i spattered and brushed black and white paint to the beating of my heart onto large canvases until i knew the paintings were done and then hung them up. they each have a story – a heart narrative that might not be obvious to you, but is something i can feel each time i look at each of these paintings.

david’s work is stunning. although some of them are for sale, we have pieces of his displayed on our walls – stories on canvas, we have chosen to hang paintings that tell part of our story together. you never get tired of looking at something that is a piece of your life, a canvas of an intimate moment here or there. K.DOT & D.DOT SEE AN OWL is one of those. it’s an exquisite collection of color and movement and reaching. in our story, it is about seeing an owl in the big old pine tree in our backyard. on your wall, it could be about any moment in your life that you and your beloved looked forward, pointing into the future, embracing it, excitedly sharing together something inordinately full of meaning and just yours. paintings are like that.

click here to view this painting on david’s online gallery

read DAVID’S thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

February 5, 2019
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back to back. [two artists tuesday]

dogdog and babycat – back to back

in the middle of the night when i wake up – which happens every night thanks to the keeps-on-giving gift of menopause – i can hear them.

dogdog is gently breathing, sometimes punctuated by his paws running in a dream where he is doing laps around our pond, excitedly barking. his even breaths, a dog in mostly-quiet slumber, reassure me, and my heart and i listen as he peacefully sleeps.

the peaceful-sleep bar is different for babycat. he is not a stealth-sleeper. well, actually nothing that babycat does is stealthy. he’s not that kind of cat. instead, his sleep on the end of the bed (he picks the side and you definitely know early-in-the-night if you have drawn the short straw) is noisy, fraught with snoring. i’ve never heard a cat snore as loudly as he does; it is absolutely necessary to nudge him a little so that he steps it down a tad bit. even with the snoring and the give-him-an-inch-he’ll-take-a-mile-bed-hogging, babycat’s presence sleeping on the bed is reassuring and i lay awake in wonder at how peaceful he seems, how content.

these two are buddies. i was concerned at the beginning, having never had both a dog and cat simultaneously. i needn’t have worried though. they will lay napping on the raft back to back, with their people nearby. perhaps at those times it is the two of them tuning in and listening – to our voices, our laughter, the rhythm of our day. and perhaps it is those times that they are reassured.

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

January 29, 2019
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ice pops. [two artists tuesday]

i know it comes as no surprise to you that we watch the national geographic show ‘life below zero’. we’ve talked about it before and have even quoted snippets of wisdom from some of the show’s regulars.

in the next day or so it will drop to a “feels like” temperature of -52. that’s negative fifty-two. the “actual” temperatures won’t even reach the single digit negative numbers. now, that’s cold! and yet, each time the temperature is posted on the screen when we watch ‘life below zero’ it is usually some negative number (which doesn’t include the wind chill.) then, whichever arctic resident they are following will proceed to go miles to hunt or gather or fish, walking or driving snow machines in bitter winds, dragging behind them sleds upon which they will place their findings. i think we watch it because it is so far from our own lives. we love the vistas and can’t really imagine the life.

the whole town was closed today; the school system, the colleges, the city offices. and we haven’t even gotten to the life-below-zero temperatures yet. at lunchtime we took a walk and the snow was amazing. it was quiet and the lakefront was full of ice. our sedum plants looked like the lemonade ice pops i used to make The Girl and The Boy with the tupperware do-it-yourself-ice-pop-set i’m saving for the possibility of grandchildren. the snow is everywhere; there are enormous baby-sled piles on the sides of the roads. icicles abound. it’s beautiful. it’s a vision of real old-fashioned winter, a calendar entry on one of those the-year-in-wisconsin calendars, postcard images of this time of hibernation.

and so, in deference to the scope of mother nature’s ability to stop us in our tracks, we plan to limit our outdoor exposure the next few days. we look outside at all the snow that has already fallen and, expecting more, make sure we have enough basics in the fridge and the cupboards to last, in case we can’t get out. our little scion rocks, but unplowed roads and extreme cold are not necessarily its gig.

maybe we’ll take a little time and watch some more ‘life below zero’. by sheer comparison, we’ll realize how easy we have it. oh! and hey, maybe we’ll make some ice pops. or not.

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

January 23, 2019
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snow angels. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

it wasn’t exactly a blizzard, but it was a great snowstorm. it makes me wonder what would have happened if i had wished for something else….

every weekend My Girl drives back and forth across the high mountains. she is a head coach for a snowboard team in aspen and instructs in telluride, so this four-and-a-half-hour-each-way-she’s-driving-where-there-are-no-guardrails-worry-zone for me is a necessity in her life. i check the weather and implore her to stay in touch as she goes. this last week, both of these towns and pretty much every town in-between had “winter storm warning” and THIS posted:

not exactly words that warm a momma’s heart. but kirsten knows i am worried and, probably rolling her eyes, generously lets me know how things are as she goes. she has good snow angels and i count on them.

i always say things like, “someday you’ll understand” to kirsten and craig, but i know that right now my mom-worrying might just be a burden to them. i’m grateful they humor me, and i do know that someday they’ll understand.

when we were driving across the country in really bad weather, wendy had the ability to locate us and we were both really relieved for this. checking in every so often, had something happened, at least she knew where-in-the-world we last were. a good snow angel. both The Girl and The Boy can locate me at any time too. this is not an uncommon device used by families and i know that every mom has eternal gratitude for such a thing.

we took a walk in the freshly fallen snow. It was very cold out and the wind was blowing, causing drifts across sidewalks and the waves to slam against the rocks on the lakefront. i was glad not to be driving and my mind wandered back in time to other snowstorms….ones where my children bundled up and ran out to build snowforts and snowmen, ones where i was the one on the road and my sweet momma was the one worrying. snowstorms when i went outside and played in the snow laughing with beloved old friends.

it had been kind of a long while since i’ve made a snow angel. we got back from our walk downtown and were in front of our house. i took david’s hand and we fell backwards into the snow. i drew in my breath at the cold and laughed, my arms the wings of a snow angel.

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

reverse threading

the path back is the path forward

Tag Archives: two artists

a small adjustment. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

oy! [two artists tuesday]

we jump anyway. [d. r. thursday]

187. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

feeling it. life. [two artists tuesday]

old dogs. [merely-a-thought monday]

paintings are like that. [d.r. thursday]

back to back. [two artists tuesday]

ice pops. [two artists tuesday]

snow angels. [not-so-flawed wednesday]

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