Lots of new work- and ciao ciao!

I have been working hard in the studio for months trying to meet a deadline: I was asked to make a whole bunch of small work in six months- but I only had four months. So I worked like a fool, and I made twelve new pieces. And then the gallery had to postpone the appointment- which turns out to be great, since I felt like I hit a new stride right at the end of the four months with these two pieces, and now I have more time to make things at a slower pace, which I like. If you click these images you can see details on the website, and there are links that will take you to the rest of my new work.

Given All This, Ink and watercolor on paper, 30"x22", 2014

Still, Still, Ink and watercolor on paper, 30"x22", 2014

I really want to write about the text in this piece, because there are lots of funny details, but I have to pack. I'm going to Rome! I love Rome. A curator I know said that there was a long tradition of artists going to Rome and having their heads explode- it's true. The city is full of exuberant Baroque art, and the standard for exuberance is radically different in an old quaker city and an ancient catholic one. Being surrounded by Berminis, Borrominis, Michaelangelo, and Caravaggio- and all their thousands of imitators, all of whom were also amazing- changed my art forever. To say I'm looking forward to it is a massive understatement.

So this blog update is necessarily tiny- but there is lots of new work on the website, and in four months there will be work from Rome..

Atlas moth! Peacock spider!

I'm stopping the huge piece I'm working on to make some small pieces- I can't stop thinking about an atlas moth that just hatched this weekend in the butterfly room at the Academy of Natural Sciences. The volunteer working the room this weekend told me that atlas moths get up to a foot across and come out of their cocoon without mouths, which means they only live for three days. "Some people wonder what is the use, three days," she said, "but they serve as food for other animals."

This phrase is ringing in my ears. I'm going back to draw the moth and talk to the full time butterfly guy today- Atlas moths are incredibly interesting creatures. It turns out they live for about two weeks as mouthless moths, sustained by the fat of their caterpillar lives. They eat lime, guava, willow, cinnamon, poplar, avocado and tea... They are full of implications. Even their caterpillarhood is exciting. You can see their video here...

And in the wormhole that is youtube videos of bugs, I found out about the Peacock Spider, who drove me to blog despite the fact that I want to get to work. Because you have to see this guy.

It's a courtship dance. 

In the meantime, poems

I've got a new drawing in progress that I'm really excited about, but in the meantime, I've been discovering great poems for kids. 

 My friends Dino Pellicia and Anda Dubinskis, who both happen to be wonderful artists, gave me a great book of children's poetry that they used to read to their eldest son to help him fall asleep. It's a wonderful anthology- way better than any others that I've found so far (and I'm kind of a geek this way- I've been looking for a while). There's not a lot of competition. The anthologies I've seen so far don't hold a candle to the one Dino gave me, which a falling apart copy that was as well worn, soft and earmarked as mine has already become in the few months since I ordered my own. It's called Favorite Poems Old and New by Helen Ferris. 

This is her. It is perhaps retrograde to comment on the fact that she looks like a librarian, but it turns out that you want someone with librarian impulses picking your poems for you. Especially if it's Helen Ferris.  She must have been obsessed with Children's Poetry. One gets the sense that she read everything that there was to read for years- the book is just too good, too thorough and too smart- and it's 640 pages long. I did a little research about her and discovered that she was was editor-in-chief of the Junior Literary Guild from 1929–1959. Favorite Poems Old and New was published in 1957. I find it entirely plausible that she worked on this book, collecting poems and squirreling them away, researching old and forgotten authors and finding new great stuff- for at least 27 years. However long it took, it paid off, because she wrote the book that is still clearly the best over half a century later.

I often fantasize about approaching someone and asking if I can edit a new edition for the new century. 1957 was a long time ago, and that's a good thing. There is some ugly racism and a few crazily rhythmic poems that use the language of a fake Italian immigrant and many of the rest of the things that you'd expect in something from a 1957 white person. Except that the person involved was Helen Ferris, who makes you sad that she wasn't completely better than her time. I dare you not to love her a little if you read this book. Every single poem in the book is there for a reason, and the reasons are great. Helen liked things honest, funny, beautiful and real, and most of the poems are at least two of those things, usually three. 

There are short ones:

Algy met a bear
the bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy.


And all the long ones I remembered liking as a kid. But there are also a million more equally good ones that I should have liked but never heard, like Custard the Dragon (realio, trulio), The Rum Tum Tigger  and The Song of Mr. Toad. (See the great illustration below by Kerry Lemon from the London Times.)

Helen Ferris was a big fan of funny, and she had a good ear. She liked ridiculous, too.

 Once a Big Molicepan 

Once a big molicepan
Saw a bittle lum
Sitting on the sturbcone
Chewing gubble bum.
"hi!" says the molicepan,
"Better simmie gome!"
"Tot on your nintype!" says the bittle lum.

(Not on your tintype, the internet informs me helpfully, meant no, but the idiom seems to have existed for no good reason, which is explained at some length here.)
Eletelephony by Laura Richards
Once there was an elephant,
Who tried to use the telephant—
No! no! I mean an elephone
Who tried to use the telephone—
(Dear me! I am not certain quite
That even now I've got it right.)
Howe'er it was, he got his trunk
Entangled in the telephunk;
The more he tried to get it free,
The louder buzzed the telephee—
(I fear I'd better drop the song
Of elephop and telephong!)

Today I am in love with this guy's poem. Isn't he handsome? It's a shame he's married. And dead. His name is Thomas Hood, and he lived from 1799–1845 and wrote the truest, funniest account of parenting that I have read so far. A Parental Ode to My Son, Aged Three Years and Five Months.

In the Belly of the Beast

I'm in the middle of another big piece that will take a while to finish, but this one was done before the holidays. Click here to see it on my website.  

Samantha Simpson, In the Belly of the Beast, Ink and watercolor on paper, 22"x30", 2013 

Here's a detail...

I've also been making small digital collages for a project called Super Twelve. We were asked to make a small 12"x12"drawing every month of 2013 in response to a piece of music. I thought that was a nice idea, but it drove me a little crazy at first. I am not interested in working very small right now. I started making small drawings anyways, then as the months went on I began taking details of my big drawings and making repeat patterns from them on the computer. I was happier with that- digital files don't have an inherent scale unless you print them, so perhaps that fixed my problem with the size. I'm curious to hear responses to those (or any other) pieces, so if you have one, drop me a comment.