Mary Adam, visual artist

The house is becoming more empty. Yesterday a bed was taken away and I emptied a bookshelf onto the dining table. What a lot of space books occupy when they're not in a bookshelf! It didn't look like much when they were in the shelf but now it's piles and piles, taking up the whole surface of the table.

Today I began sorting through them, yes, no, maybe. Some of them were journals from various courses and since graduating. In one of them I came across a page with an idea from years ago that I'd underlined and highlighted and mentally bookmarked to keep. I put it aside but later it somehow got torn up and thrown in the rubbish. Luckily I remembered it in time and spent an hour sifting through torn-up papers until eventually finding it. The fragments are now taped to a piece of card and I scanned it to make sure it doesn't get lost again. 

It's a strange idea but I've never seen it anywhere else so it's worth keeping in mind. It's to do with art and time. When things settle down I'll start thinking about how I could make work based on it.

Two scorching days and it's been all garage sale. These two days weren't supposed to be the sale, that's tomorrow, but people came anyway. It's been exhausting. And the things that went were things I especially liked and didn't want to part with. Like this chair ... 

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*No break in the hot humid weather, and garage sale all day -- not terribly successful, I think because I didn't think it out properly. It wasn't really a garage sale which people here expect to be small things like pots and pans and ornaments. It was more furniture and appliances. and it was too soon to be selling our fridge and stove. May have to do it again later in the year. But the YTT was in beautiful bloom and I took a few photos of it. 
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I haven't yet figured out exactly what I'll be putting in this blog. At present it's a vague notion of documenting with notes, sketches and photos the time between now and when we leave this house for the last time. We have lived here for over 22 years (23 years next month). The usual time between the agreement for sale and the closing is 90 days, hence the blog title. So that's what it's about.

Going through another bookshelf and sorting into "keep" and "don't keep", I found a book called "An Atlas of Animal Anatomy for the Artist" which definitely goes into the "keep" pile. I began delving into it, and also made another sketch of the bowl, this time in crayon. The book is a Dover publication, from an original published in Berlin in 1891. It doesn't say who did what, something I'd like to follow up, if only to find out which of the three authors did the illustrations which are beautifully done.

A scorching hot day. The move still doesn't feel real. Clearing and sorting continues. Went out to make a delivery and on the way bought a blue and white bowl at Con Brio (in Kavanagh Street off St Clair Avenue). I like the shape and colour of the bowl and I haven't refreshed my stash of still life objects in a long while, so now there's a new addition. In the evening I made a wonky sketch of it in pen and wash. Need to work on those ellipses and the symmetry.

 Today I found my old passports while clearing out a drawer. 

Continuing the "hand drawing" project -- bones of the hand. Are those metacarpals too long?

Not yet in the flow of moving, it hardly seems real.

Drawing hands, continuing project.