painting water

Here are three things I felt inspired by this week:

I’m painting more, and I want to paint water, so I’ve been referencing other paintings of water.

Of course, there’s David Hockney’s pools:

I’ve also been loving Per Adolfson’s water:

This song came up on my gym playlist this week and I’d totally forgotten about it, but damn, what a bop.

Danny Day in Portland, Maine via Maine Public:

Stacy is absolutely killing it:

I’m throwing a little party on Thursday, July 2nd!

Join Josh of Directangle Press and me at Specs to celebrate the release of my art book, Quilt Study:

After doing a residency at Directangle Press in 2024, Josh invited me back in May 2025 for a publishing residency in which he provides the time, space, materials, and support for artists to produce a book that he publishes under his imprint, Directangle Editions.

I didn’t have an idea for a book, but Josh liked this butter quilt I’d made during my first residency and clocked that I incorporated quilt-inspired imagery into a lot of work. He suggested that might be a direction to go in. I can’t find a picture of the butter quilt print, but it was based on this barn quilt I painted:

I knew going into the residency that I wanted to work as analog as possible. With a risograph printer, you can print precisely minipulated digital files from a laptop and aim for perfect color mixing and registration, but you can also throw shit on the scanner bed and pretend like you’re a 90s punk making zines on a photocopier at the 24-hour Kinkos, elbow-deep in copy paper, scissors, and gluesticks. I wanted to feel like that.

I spent the whole two weeks playing: cutting and collaging different papers, drawing and layering tracing paper, and layering all of these things together somewhat recklessly to let myself be surprised by what appeared on the page. When I saw something I liked, I’d build on it.

I spent the whole two weeks playing and experimenting; I did not leave with a book. Not even close. But I left with a collection of illustrations I wanted to expand on, a color palette to work in, and a rough idea of how I wanted the book to be constructed.

I ended up going back to Directangle another 3-4 times over the past year to keep working on the book.

One of those visits was last October. Most of the illustrations were complete, and we were manually laying up each spread and printing the book:

On that visit, Josh and his wife Emily greeted me in their kitchen and almost immediately asked why I’d stopped posting about my intersection on Instagram. They told me they missed my crossing guard reports. I explained that I loved sharing out from the intersection, but I felt stupid and boring using Instagram to do it. I told them that I’d love to do a newsletter or zine about it instead, but I couldn’t justify the time.

Over the next few days, Josh and I worked on Quilt Study, and the idea of the newsletter rattled around in my brain. After several months of working on Quilt Study, I was feeling excited and inspired to keep making things. Josh showed me a couple of examples of newsletters and direct mail pieces from his extensive collection of zines and art books.

When I got home from Directangle that week, I started working on the first issue of The Cloud Report.

I share all of this to say: There’s no Cloud Report without the incredible gift of time and space to make Quilt Study–an opportunity I wish every artist had, because it totally changed my life.

Quilt Study is a limited edition of 200 books. I’m donating 100% of my sales from Quilt Study to Directangle to support scholarships for future residents.

If there are books left over from the event, I’ll post them in my online shop... stay tuned for more on that.

Other things:

• The Cloud Report is open for new subscribers–sign up before 6/15 to get June’s issue

• My friend Adrian O’Barr is playing a show at Riven Studio in Burlington on Monday 6/15 and he’s amazing, I recommend going!

Thanks for being here!

Christine Tyler Hill

Website: christinetylerhill.com

Email: cth@christinetylerhill.com