"Ammonite: Orange Peel"

Sixth in a new series of collographs. Here's the first. The plate was made with cardboard, chipboard, and string. 



"Some think love can be measured by the amount of butterflies in their tummy. Others think love can be measured in bunches of flowers, or by using the words 'for ever.' But love can only truly be measured by actions. It can be a small thing, such as peeling an orange for a person you love because you know they don't like doing it." -Marian Keyes

"Ammonite: Fault Lines"

Fifth in a new series of collographs. Here's the first. The plate was made with cardboard, chipboard, burlap, and string.


"The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body; after all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind, and they are in continual danger of breaking the skin and bursting out again." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"Ammonite" by Ieuan Edwards

Image posted with the permission of the artist. More linocuts by Edwards can be found at his website, The Black Gold Press.

The young man in this image is not smiling (his face is serious, even skull-like.) But I am. I know it's done from an old photo taken to show off, in terms of human scale, the tremendous size of this ammonite fossil. But the background print makes me think of old-fashioned wallpaper, and instantly I associate this image with a high school band geek in uniform being compelled (probably by his mother) to stand beside his sousaphone for a nice, family album photo.

And really, in the grand scheme of things, what is the difference between a bored teenager's sousaphone and the fossilized husk of a creature that went extinct millions of years before humans were even a whisper on the breeze of the African savanna?

"Celebration" by Bridget Mary Henry

Image posted with the permission of the artist. I first wrote about Henry's work in 2012. Check out her website to see more of her work, including an amazing wheat paste installation.  

It is a grey and rainy day, and I need some seasonal color. In the words of Albert Camus that have stayed with me, "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."  

She jumps for joy, I know not why. But I suppose it is either pride over the accomplishment of amassing such an enormous heap of leaves, or the youthful exuberance enjoyed as one leaps into such a pile. The soles of her shoes are camouflaged against the scratched earth. Footless, she flies. 

"Ammonite: Wearing Away"

Fourth in a new series of collographs. Here's the first. The plate was made with cardboard, chipboard, and string. 

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself and an eventual extinction. -Jean Dubuffet 

"Ammonite: Shore"

Third in a new series of collographs. Here's the first. The plate was made with cardboard, chipboard, and string. 


The Nautilus and the Ammonite 

The nautilus and the ammonite
Were launched in friendly strife,
Each sent to float in its tiny boat
On the wide, wide sea of life.

For each could swim on the ocean's brim,
And, when wearied, its sail could furl,
And sink to sleep in the great sea-deep,
In its palace all of pearl.

And theirs was a bliss more fair than this
Which we taste in our colder clime;
For they were rife in a tropic life—
A brighter and better clime.

They swam 'mid isles whose summer smiles
Were dimmed by no alloy;
Whose groves were palm, whose air was balm,
And life one only joy.

They sailed all day through creek and bay,
And traversed the ocean deep;

And at night they sank on a coral bank,
In its fairy bowers to sleep.

And the monsters vast of ages past
They beheld in their ocean caves;
They saw them ride in their power and pride,
And sink in their deep-sea graves.

And hand in hand, from strand to strand,
They sailed in mirth and glee;
These fairy shells, with their crystal cells,
Twin sisters of the sea.

And they came at last to a sea long past,
But as they reached its shore,
The Almighty's breath spoke out in death,
And the ammonite was no more.
So the nautilus now in its shelly prow,
As over the deep it strays,
Still seems to seek, in bay and creek,
Its companion of other days.

And alike do we, on life's stormy sea,
As we roam from shore to shore,
Thus tempest-tossed, seek the loved, the lost,
And find them on earth no more.

Yet the hope how sweet, again to meet,
As we look to a distant strand,
Where heart meets heart, and no more they part
Who meet in that better land.

-ANONYMOUS 

"Ammonite: Maladjustments"

Second in a new series of collographs. Here's the first. The plate was made with cardboard, chipboard, string and burlap. 


Frank Lloyd Wright's inverted oatmeal dish and silo with their awkward cantilevering, their jaundiced skin and the ingenious spiral ramp leading down past the abstractions which mirror the tortured maladjustments of our time. -Robert Moses