Wisdom from Fiction: What Matters

“By the time everything is decided, it will be too late. The moment is always now. There is no then, it turns out. Everything real is a kind of now.”
—Hope, the elderly artist in John Updike’s Seek My Face

[I’ve no idea whose artwork this is. Do you?]

Artist Revives Vintage Print Castaways

For some print lovers, Kay Tuttle’s art is sacrilegious: “Uphold All that’s Been Published,” they might scold.

But the truth is that if a few artists weren’t recycling books and periodicals, the published works would be in a landfill somewhere instead of drawing the attentions of appreciative gallery visitors—some of whom might not otherwise realize the specialness of these bygone publications.

“What art offers is space—a certain breathing room for the spirit.”
—John Updike

This first photo is an example of Tuttle’s animal paintings on the covers of vintage leather-bound encyclopedias. The second photo shows her illustrations on pages of the Victorian-era Peterson’s magazine. (The links in this paragraph will take you to Tuttle’s explanations of her art.)

Ah. The beauty of recycling.