FINALLY I get to toot the proverbial horn, to clap together a pair of hollowed-out coconut halves, to chortle gleefully about why I’ve been so quiet about work for so long. Since late September I’ve been preoccupied with the design, illustration and animation of my first iPad app, Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Holy Book of Days. Working with Melcher Media in NYC and timed with the re-release of that classic comedy movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Blu-ray, we crafted 28 pages for the Holy Book as well as galleries for images and outtakes, a Scene by Scene section, etc....

What a strange year this has been: my professional pendulum has never swung quite so wildly from one extreme to the other. But it’s exciting and all to the good. In the spring and summer work was slow. Very slow. I traveled, I gardened, I spent time with friends and family. And I wondered where all my clients and work had gone. As summer moved along, the phone began to ring and I worked on several museum/ gallery exhibition graphics, a staple of mine. In early fall, the dam burst wide open. Although I am currently working on only two projects, both are complex and multi-part and involve design...

Make no mistake, I draw. Neither as often nor as well as I wish, but I have been drawing all my life. But I also make collages as you might have noticed. Often they are made on assignment, but my affection for fragments of paper is so great that sometimes I’ll just have a little throwdown for the fun of it. Like a magpie, I save the shiny gold-edged bands from my husband’s cigars. They make such pretty patterns, although my sketchbook cover is nothing compared to the brilliant work of Felipe Jesus Consalvos. The love for someone else’s work cannot stop us from doing our own....

A number of recent calls on design projects prodded me to expand the site’s design portfolio. In the process, I was reminded of how my collage work has informed my design work. Collage has been a particularly useful design strategy for group exhibitions, where the design must suggest multitudes and the politics of emphasizing one artist over another can lead to difficulties.The first time I really played with this possibility predated my working digitally, when I was art directing and designing the Venetian glass arts exhibition catalog for Muriel Karasik Gallery. Noticing connections of...

For the past few months, a steady client of many years entrusted me with a complex project of utmost importance: the graphics for her daughter’s wedding. This is a woman with great attention to detail (as is her refined daughter) and they wanted each and every article in the wedding package (of which there were many!) to be distinct. Thankfully there is digital printing and we were able to do small runs in full color of each element. However the designs required assorted different shaped die cuts, trims and folds. The client knew of my love of vintage typography and chromolithographs, and...

Glen Nakasako at Smog Design has honored me with a feature on Smog Design’s blog . It is not often that I’m in a line-up with KD Lang and Madonna. As a client and friend remarked on Facebook: “Woot! Woot!

BACK TO SCHOOLEvery winter, for many years now, I teach a segment of an Illustration Concepts course at Syracuse University. The one continuous factor in my assignment is that students must employ alternate media. As the years tick by, the media changes. At one time, most of the students would grab the J. Crew catalog as they rushed out of their apartments or dorms, to cut and shred in class. Nowadays many of them employ Adobe Photoshop. But never underestimate the inventiveness of a good student. One drilled books and built plasticine sculptures growing out of the holes. One used thousands of...

When teaching my illustration class, I did something I’ve never done. I did the assignment. Well… I did 2/3 of the assignment! Time and real jobs intervened. But the experience helped me to appreciate their trials and tribulations in trying to solve the problem I’d posited for them. When much younger, I had friends who enjoyed reading Tarot cards, and it was a treat to study again the meanings of the cards. I used my cabinet card technique as a stylistic conceit, and could quickly see that as extensive as my collection of unaltered cards is, I’d need more if I were to do an...

Giddy with the pleasures and leisures of time off, we (it must be the Royal We, for who else can I speak for but myself?) are recharged and ready to dive back into paper collages and digital magic. All best to all; talk to you in the Now New Year.

The gifts are all wrapped, but they sit forlorn without a tree. We will have to travel to my folks to see a decorated tree, with the additional bonus of glorious nieces, siblings, and parents. I come from a family of excellent cooks; that, coupled with our affection for good wine will ensure extra padding against the wintery air. The anticipated indulgence feels most welcome. In spite of the rough economy, I’ve been lucky to find myself very busy since summer, with additional rush jobs rolling in over the holidays, financing it all. I’m awfully lucky to be able to teach, to design...

The past month has been inordinately busy. Experience tells me that academic conferences are by their nature: 1. timed events, so delays are not possible and 2. always extraordinarily late in the arrival of copy and pictures. So the poster and program cover have a luxury of time to be massaged into beauty, and the inside pages? Not so much. We just hope that the critical information is accurate and legible. The best part of the project is that the conference was for great author Toni Morrison, and used a photograph by great artist Carrie Mae Weems. Now the work pendulum has swung into...

Heavens to Murgatroyd! Summer is OVER in every way. (Aside from that dreamy evening last Friday, as the 90 degree day softened into a balmy night the full moon rose over the swamp, the Canada geese and great horned owl entertained a gaggle of gals as we gathered on the deck by candlelight for book club—our thin but beloved pretext to hang out together.) But I digress. Work has been flowing in, including book jackets in both my cabinet card collage style and a new style with roughly-cut paper. The Parmigiano Reggiano newsletters will be going to press this week. I’m teaching as well as helping...