A sampler from the FEAST exhibit by Julie Paschkis and Joe Max Emminger

September 24, 2012September 23, 2012 ~ jama ~ 19 Comments

bread girl — “Good Morning” (Julie Paschkis, 8.5″ x 10″)

Happy Monday!

Let’s start the week off in the best possible way by looking at several of the gorgeous paintings from FEAST, an art exhibit at the Grover Thurston Gallery in Seattle featuring the work of award-winning children’s author/illustrator Julie Paschkis and her husband Joe Max Emminger.

The September show includes separate paintings by Julie and Joe Max, as well as a number of collaborative pieces, most of which are related to the theme of food and feasting.

papercut — “Ever Together” (cut paper by Julie Paschkis, 12″ x 20″)

I’ve been a big fan of Julie’s work for years — she’s illustrated several of Janet Wong’s and Julie Larios’s poetry collections, as well as a number of folktales and picture book biographies. She’s known for her love of folk art and pattern (she also designs fabrics), and she likes to make bread and SOUP! 🙂

It’s such a treat to see Joe Max’s work; though I knew Julie was married to another artist, I hadn’t seen any of his paintings before. You lucky Seattle area peeps can sashay on over to see this wonderful exhibit in person. The rest of us can focus our appreciative gazes at the FEAST blog and the Grover Thurston Gallery website (whom you should contact directly if you’re interested in purchasing).

Julie’s gouache paintings are of various sizes. Joe Max’s paintings were rendered in acrylic and are 30″ by 44″. Collaborative pieces are all ink and gouache.

Enjoy this mini feast from FEAST!

summer feast — “Summer Feast” (Joe Max Emminger)

things — “The Things We Leave Behind” (Joe Max Emminger)

unseen guest — “The Unseen Guest” (Julie Paschkis, 23″ x 16″)

canning — “Canning” (Julie Paschkis, 15″ x 22″)

bluebird — “Flow Blue” (Julie Paschkis, 8.5″ x 10″)

crunch — “Crunch” (Julie Paschkis, 16″ x 22″)

cake — “Cat and Cake” (Joe Max Emminger and Julie Paschkis)

jug — “Jug and Cherry” (Joe Max Emminger and Julie Paschkis)

Amazing, right? I’d like to steal that piece of cake in “Crunch” right off the table. Love love love their work! I should also mention that if you attend the Closing Potluck Celebration on Saturday, September 29 (1-3 p.m.), you get to take home one of the bread pieces! (Click here if you’d like to make your own bread sculptures.)

* * *

♥ GOOD NEWS! ♥

Julie will be visiting Alphabet Soup soon to talk about her tasty new picture book, APPLE CAKE (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012)!! Stay tuned ☺.

Have a fabulous week!

♥ Visit the FEAST blog.

♥ More about the exhibit at the Grover Thurston Gallery. Show runs through September 29, 2012.

♥ Julie’s official website is here. She blogs at Books Around the Table.

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sweet treat

August 29, 2007 ~ jama

RONDEAU
by Leigh Hunt

Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have missed me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kissed me.

(1838)

I’ve loved this little poem since college. With each reading, it’s always fresh and accessible. I marvel at how simple words can freeze a moment in time forever.

The “Jenny” here is Jane Carlyle, wife of Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, Thomas Carlyle. Hunt had visited them to announce the publication of one of Carlyle’s works. Today I toast all friends, family and significant others of writers everywhere. Thank you for helping us celebrate each small step in the arduous journey.

thought for the week

August 28, 2007 ~ jama ~ 3 Comments

“Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and sublest test of the possession of its essence is in expression; the variety of things to be expressed shows the amount of its resources; and the continuity of the song completes the evidence of its strength and greatness. He who has thought, feeling, expression, imagination, action, character, and continuity, all in the largest amount and highest degree, is the greatest poet.

Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible to the mind’s eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by sound and proportion without singing or instrumentation. But it far surpasses those divine arts in suggestiveness, range, and intellectual wealth; — the first, in expression of thought, combination of images, and the triumph over space and time; the second, in all that can be done by speech apart from the tones and modulations of pure sound. Painting and music, however, include all those portions of the gift of poetry that can be expressed and heightened by the visible and melodious. Painting, in a certain apparent manner, is things themselves; music, in a certain audible manner, is their very emotion and grace. Music and painting are proud to be related to poetry, and poetry loves and is proud of them.”

Leigh Hunt (from “What is Poetry?”), 1884