Reading · It's Good to Be Here

The book comes with this cool door hanger which is all about creating a residency

I was surprised and delighted to hear from Nina Vichayapai, an artist here in Portland, OR who was writing a book about artist residencies and wanted to interview me about the self-appointed artist residency. We had a great conversation where we kicked around the many ways this idea could work. Here’s an excerpt of a moment in our conversation that I especially liked:

Amy: I think declaring yourself artist in residence of a place like your local park or coffee shop is like giving yourself an assignment. It gives you a reason to make something. But it’s also an honor for the place. If you make your local coffee shop your residency, you’re saying, “I feel that you guys and your coffee are worth drawing.”
Nina: That’s really sweet. I never thought of an artist residency as being an honor that you’re giving to a place. But it really is because you’re spending so much time thinking about and being devoted to that place by being there and being present.

The real joy for me was in discovering so many other truly expansive ways that people think about artist residencies! I especially loved Yvonne Shortt and her self-created Museum for Contemporary Artists, established at her place in upstate New York. As part of the process of questioning who sits on the boards of major art institutions, she appointed the animals who live on her land as board members, so that she would be accountable to them. She also made herself a museum card that identified herself as an artist in residence of MfCA and used it to get free admission into museums in New York.

YES. These are the kinds of mind-blowing stories you will discover in Nina’s book. It’s a wild ride.

I was also blown away by the interview with Mary Boo Anderson about the very definitely unofficial artist residency she created at an Ikea store with her best friend Zoë Blair-Schlagenhauf. Artists would apply to them for the residency, and then make art, sometimes sitting in the showrooms and leaving the art behind. Or they’d hold a gallery show in the Ikea food court.

AND…(there are so many good ones it’s hard to know where to stop) I was especially thrilled to learn about the Piney Wood Atlas, a directory of weird and wonderful and unconventional artist residencies, including one in a hammock in someone’s backyard. Collaborators Carolina Porras Monroy and Alicia Toldi have visited these places and created wonderful handmade, printed guides to them.

You can order this wonderful book directly from Nina right here. It’s a treasure.

Nina's shop

Yesterday we had a great event here in Portland with travel artist and urban sketcher James Richards. He’s a terrific artist and a wonderful storyteller, and he combines the two in this beautiful hardcover book, filled with his on-location art and stories from his journeys. (I wrote more about it right here.) The nice folks at Broadway Books handled the booksigning, and Jim left behind some signed copies for them to sell in their store. This book makes a fantastic gift for yourself or anyone who loves travel, art, or both. Grab a signed copy while they last right here, and Broadway will ship it to you.

Broadway Books

Do you need a book that you can just sink into and get lost in and feel wonderful about? Ann Patchett’s new novel Whistler is that book. Like all of her books, it is warm-hearted and deeply satisfying. It doesn’t matter so much what it’s about, what matters is that you’ll feel good reading it and you won’t want it to end. Find it at your local bookstore, or order it on Bookshop.org, which supports indie bookstores. (I keep a list there of books I’ve recommended in this newsletter over the years.)

Bookshop.org

And as long as we’re talking about books, I thought I’d pass this one on: Chirp, an audiobook company that sells audiobooks at deeply discounted prices. It’s owned by the same people who founded BookBub, a discounted ebook platform. The deal is that publishers will drastically reduce the price on an ebook or audiobook for a short time, with the idea that a bunch of new readers will scoop the book up for a few bucks, hopefully review it online or tell their friends about it, and maybe decide to buy it in hardcover, or check out the author’s other books. Authors get a greatly reduced royalty on these sales, but then again, you might sell a few thousand books in a few days, so it sort of evens out.

So Chirp and BookBub send out emails, tailored to your tastes, letting you know when books you like might be on sale. You also can build out a wish list of books you’re interested in and they’ll let you know when they go on sale.

I did this recently on a trip when I couldn’t sleep. I had opened up Spotify to look for an audiobook to listen to, hoping to find something soothing, preferable read in a nice calming British voice, and I found something right away that fit the bill. I don’t want to say what the book was, because I’m afraid the author would be insulted if I said that the book was just cozy and picturesque and soothing enough to let me drift off to sleep. But the point is that I liked her enough that I wanted to buy the book and just keep it on repeat, night after night. Her books happened to be on sale at Chirp (this was probably not a coincidence, the Spotify promotion and the Chirp sale were probably part of a package deal), and I actually snatched up four of her novels.

So! Find a pleasantly dull book on Chirp and buy it so you can play it on repeat during those maddening hours of insomnia! This one book is still working for me, a few weeks later.

The Jenkins Arboretum has invited me to give a talk on The Tree Collectors on July 16. It’s online and open to anyone. Pre-register here.

Supporters get another email from me, one that is more focused on how to do all things sketchbook or notebook-related. You can check out the full archive here, and get access to all of it for a few bucks a month.

141. New pocket-sized art supplies!

Jul 6

Because I cannot resist new art supplies, I picked up a couple of pocket-sized sketchbooks with new (to me) paper and put them to the test. I also grabbed this cool little Liquitex Freestyle short-handled paddle brush in the 1 inch size. This is the pocket-sized, square travel paintbrush of my dreams. Also, you can get these sketchbooks in lots of places, but I like to

Am I coming to a city near you? Check out my upcoming events right here

Find my books at your local bookstore, or order right here, and support independent bookstores with your purchase.