And then her grace emerged, like a tortoise who has been released into the water.

He also had a speech impediment.

I would like it to be wrapped very tightly,like a Victorian baby.

thread display in chelsea, february 2010

Of course their resources are unlimited.

It doesn't matter.

They have forgotten how to dream.

"Francis' blind old nanny,Jessie Lightfoot,knitting away at the back of the studio,came as a surprise. Besides helping Francis cook - she slept on the kitchen table - Nanny provided cover for Francis' shoplifting sprees(groceries, cosmetics, and Kiwi shoe polish for his hair. Nanny also helped him organize the illicit roulette parties that paid for the copious drink and excellent food he served to his guests. The lavish tips she extorted from gamblers desperate to use the one and only lavatory helped pay off Francis' gambling debts. Supposedly she also vetted his lovers. When she died in 1951, he took against the studio and sold it - a move he would always regret. The space would linger on in his visual memory: many a triptych is set in a photographer's studio in hell."

John Richardson on a visit (circa 1946) to Francis Bacon's studio,

New York Review of Books, December 17, 2009

wrapper from a red velvet cupcake, New York City, 2009

Custom fur coat, Grand Central Station, NYNY, 2010

christmas decorations, South Philadelphia, 2010

They pushed the coyotes backwards into the mountains.

But two years later the pack returned.

It had doubled in size.

You should buff your skin until it has an eggshell finish.

They walked together through the streets of Paris,dressed as men.

That's no way to achieve clarity.

I saw it in a fever dream.

Pictures taken at The Netherland, Cincinnati Ohio. Built by the team which went on to create Rockefeller Center.

At a certain point I stopped caring about whether or not anyone was kind.

But even behind the counter in a grocery store she knew exactly who she was...

Smitty's Clothing Store, Cincinnati Ohio, December 2009

Bury your nose in the neck of a very wet dog.

It is velvet on the tongue.

color and texture studies

Cappel's Party Store, 920 Elm street, Cincinnati Ohio

color and texture studies

Cappel's Party Store, 920 Elm Street, Cincinnati Ohio

color and texture studies

Cappel's Party Store, 920 Elm street, Cincinnati Ohio

They searched for weeks but all they ever found were a few buttons.

color and texture studies, Cape May, New Jersey

color and texture studies, Cape May new Jersey

Even as I watched the plane fly away, I had no idea if I was happy or sad.

I have no feeling for that kind of music.

I just push different buttons until it does what I want.

I know that she is the engine that drives the train but she has turned fantasy into a day job.

Grate near Spitalfield's Market, London October 2009

"I must have been the first person to put on that mackintosh since the handkerchief was used. She who had worn the coat then was tall, slim, broader than I about the shoulders, for I had found it big and over-long, and the sleeves had come below my wrists. Some of the buttons were missing. She had not bothered to do it up. She had thrown it over her shoulders like a cape, or worn it loose, hanging open, her hands deep in the pockets."

from Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

color studies, November 2009

The Medici records show that Eleonora di Toledo's dress maker was paid even more handsomely than Bronzino himself.

She used both of them.

• One evening in Paris, we went to the Escargot restaurant in the rue Montergeuil, in search of snails of course, and of Montreuil peaches. I did not expect to find anything special about the strawberry fritters which I chose out of curiosity for dessert. It had been a good meal, in black and red surroundings of past elegance, with a close friend. Those fritters were to be the fault, the way Chinese and Japanese potters deliberately put a fault into their vases to make them human. But I was not allowed my fault after all. The fritters were perfection, the batter crisp, the strawberry inside firm but meltingly delicious. Even the creme anglaise was right.

-Jane Grigson, Strawberry Fritters

There was an old wig lying in the middle of the road.

He said that his actions were directed by lunar phases.

Philadelphia, September 2009

book ideas and spot drawings

There's a crow flying
Black and ragged
Tree to tree
He's black as the highway that's leading me
Now he's diving down
To pick up on something shiny
I feel like that black crow
Flying
In a blue sky

I took a ferry to the highway
Then I drove to a pontoon plane
I took a plane to a taxi
And a taxi to a train
I've been traveling so long
How'm I ever going to know my home
When I see it again
I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue, blue sky

In search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving.
Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing
Just like that black crow flying
In a blue sky

I looked at the morning
After being up all night
I looked at my haggard face in the bathroom light
I looked out the window
And I saw that ragged soul take flight
I saw a back crow flying
In a blue sky
Oh I'm like a black crow flying
In a blue sky

-Joni Mitchell, from Hejira, 1976

When you hear the recordings of his voice you can tell that the crack-up is well under way.

But now she just blinks in and out, like a digital watch.

Fish in the Road, September 2009, Philadelphia PA

scenes from North Creek Farm in Phippsburg, Maine September, 2009

French Bakelite beads from the 1970's

Quilting it is not going to solve the problem.

It was a garden for the blind: a constant offense to the eyes, a pleasure strong if somewhat crude to the nose. The Paul Neyron roses, whose cuttings he had himself bought in Paris, had degenerated; first stimulated and then enfeebled by the strong if languid pull of Sicilian earth, burned by apocalyptic Julys, they had changed into things like flesh-colored cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense, almost indecent, scent which no French horticulturalist would have dared hope for. The Prince put one under his nose and seemed to be sniffing the thigh of a dancer from the Opera.

-Guiseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard

Constelation textile design

He can't catch or throw.

She remembered the blue air of her life on the coffee farm.

Of course it's rick-rack, but it's also something more.

Aquaman at 30th Street Station, philadelphia PA, september 2009

No one expects the candied walnuts.

from the Yinka Shonibare show at the Brooklyn Museum, September 2009