Cold Splinters

Thank you, thank you Jay Carroll for posting these David Fowler paintings. I have not stopped staring at the New Mexico painter’s work for the past couple of days. Enjoy a few more after the jump.

Any of you down there in New Mexico?

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Field Illustrator Cathy Johnson wrote and illustrated a book for the Sierra Club in 1990 titled Sketching in Nature. In researching Johnson’s work a bit more, I happened across her huge archive of work on flickr and had to share. Incredible detail with very minimal marks, it’s hard not to love the attention she pays to design and text on each hand-bound sketchbook page. Littered throughout her flickr are photos of her repurposed mini watercolor “field boxes” for work outdoors. It’s amazing to see how she curates what materials to bring to each spot.

Good morning!

Cruise eBay and buy up all of these vintage National Park View-master slides in all of their saturated Kodachrome goodness. And if the throwback handheld viewer doesn’t suit your fancy, get the grown-up version here.

(Thx AAPC. More here.)

I’m not sure how I came upon Jess DeSelm’s blog, Sketches Now & Then, but I suppose that’s the way the Internet works. Lots of wormholes to follow. There’s not too much one can say here as there’s little info about Jess on the site, and I guess that’s what makes her site so wonderful. (Love the “Alone In The Wilderness – Dick Pernicky.”) She lived in Boulder (maybe she still does?), and from Oct 2007 – Jan 2010, she scanned her journal onto the world wide web for all of us to see. Thanks, Jess.

Enjoy her sketches and writings here.

If you’re not familiar with Louis Reith and you’d like to see more (which I’m sure you probably do), visit Reith’s homepage, Flickr account, and Little Paper Planes page. And when you’re done ooohin and ahhin, check out the Dutch artist’s Camp Out Zine.

I’m assuming that The Burning House needs very little introduction, but in case you’re not hip to it just yet, here’s your chance. Foster Huntington, the man behind the “shoe throwing” blog as a friend once called it, A Restless Transplant, asks that million dollar question, “What would you grab from your house if it was burning down?” Readers send in photos and he posts them. And there you have it.

The Anthropologist, Anthropology’s site that, from what I can tell is dedicated to art projects of sorts, is running a feature on The Burning House that Foster was responsible for photographing. He came on over to CS headquarters a couple of weeks ago and shot the photo above. Read the feature here.

The First Book of Hiking was written in 1965 by C. William Harrison and illustrated by E. Frank Habbas. I found this guy on the bookshelves of a local Salvation Army and held on tight while finishing my shopping (even after brushing a good two months of dust off the cover). The illustrations are 2 and 3 color woodcuts with amazing detail.

If you stumble upon this one, buy it, cut out those illustrations and tack them above your desk at work to remind you of what’s great.

Adam Wolpa is an amazing artist/educator working in Michigan. I’m not really giving any context to these grabs from his site, so click over there and get lost for a bit.

Sun is shining, y’all. Have a great weekend.

More of Thomas Merton’s photographs are after the jump and on the Thomas Merton Center website.

MP3: McGuiness Flint – When I’m Dead and Gone
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