Tag Archives: letter B

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Daily Evil: B is for Brag

Ooooo, B is for Brag. I can brag about my mother artist AND I got to do work with her. In the 1980s I ask if I can write poems that she will do etchings to illustrate them. She had done a series with a friend when I was a baby. I was jealous and wanted her to illustrate mine.

“Yes, BUT,” she replies, “The poems have to rhyme. I don’t like free verse.”

I laugh, because the man she did etchings and poems with before did all free verse.

This was right after I had finished college and wanted to write, but was certainly rather terrified about submitting anything. My degree was in Zoology and Scandinavian Studies, so I did not exactly have the writing connections.

I sent my mother ten poems, all rhyming. One was written with a finished etching in mind, but she did etchings for the rest. Almost all are about animals.

She had a friend who runs the Lead and Bread Press print 50 of each poem on etching paper and then started running the editions. We had a gallery opening together in the 1980s in Alexandria, Virginia. This did not make me rich but it certainly made me pleased and proud. Bragging rights are mine. The prints and poems are in a book as well, of women sibling artists. We got in even though we were mother-daughter rather than siblings.

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B is for Busy and Burling

My mother, Helen Burling Ottaway, was a very busy and prolific artist.

Every New Year’s, she would resolve to paint a water color a day. By March she would complain that she had only painted 25 or 30. However, she would also be doing birthday presents for me and my sister and our father, all in March, and crafts and etchings and pastels and a life drawing class and the sketchbook that she constantly carried.

B is also for baby. The etching is of my sister, Christine Robbins Ottaway, as a baby. The title is Chris I and she did this in 1968.

I have described the process for etchings here: Four Seasons.

My mother was a very busy artist.

#ATOZBLOGGINGCHALLENGE2022 # art # Women artists # Helen Burling Ottaway

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birds, beauty, brains

Three happy things today: Birds!

Not a great photograph, right? I like it, partly because it was such a challenge. Still on the big island of Hawaii, we spot two very small birds building a nest. I am zoomed all the way in and holding the camera up to catch a glimpse when one flies in. They are very quick and there is lots of greenery in the way!

I am happy about brains. No, I am not a zombie, I don’t eat them, I just like that my work engages my mind. I learn new things daily from patients, from specialists, from looking up engaging questions! Medicine is changing continuously and I am grateful to be part of it.  (Ok, I am not grateful that insurance companies are increasing prior authorization exponentially.)

I am happy about beauty. Here is another glimpse of our small nest builders and we think we’ve identified them.

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I think that this is a common waxbill, also not a native bird. Either that or a black-rumped waxbill but neither of us got a good shot of the back. Hooray for spring and nests.