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KATYA REIMANN ○ WRITER & ARTIST

Katya has told STORIES, BUILT WORLDS, & CREATED the ART to go with them for most of her life. THE CONTENT OF THESE PAGES REFLECTS HER DIVERSE INTERESTS OVER TIME. Condita Est Anno MCMXCV.

Latest from the Blog

April 19, 2023  These pages are in a transitional state. Access to content predating March of 2023 is currently not available, excepting two “test” blog posts dated June 2022, and April 2018. Full access will be re-established in the coming months.         –Thank you, KAR

Topsfield Fair

Draft Horses at the Horse-Pulling Event Massachusetts Topsfield Fair

The Topsfield Fair is America’s Oldest County Fair. Started in 1818 by the Essex County Agricultural Society, the Topsfield Fair was originally a one-day cattle show.

My favorite aspect of County Fairs is… pretty much everything in the big animal category. And my favorite event to watch is… the agony and the ecstacy that is big horse pull.

My site here has been dysfunctional for the past year–the transition to the new platform has been a PITA.

But… good things can come around again.

Somerville Open Studios, 2023

Somerville Open Studios 2023, Katya Reimann studio

Somerville Open Studios 2023 is done.

It was a confusing, stressful, positive, wonderful tumult.

A lot of people supported me as I put my part of this event together, Thank you. A lot of people supported me on the day by dropping by. Thanks you, too.

And thank you to Frances McCormick and Beth Kevles, my collaborators in this specific space (isn’t this porch structure lovely?) in the renovated Tannery Brook Row Warehouses.

After days (weeks!) of chilly weather with dubious sprinkling rain, the weekend weather could not have been more generous and perfect for the event.

Bird by Bird & other inspirations

Ann Lamott Quotation  'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

It’s been more than twenty years since I read Anne Lamott’s memoir-journal, Operating Instructions.

It was a book I intrinsically disliked.

Why? As I’m writing this post, the urge to reread is surging: I probably misunderstood what I was reading my first time through, probably related too closely to certain elements. One writer reading another’s advice on the creative process is surely a recipe for a critical reading! My initial “writer’s read” likely pulled my takeaways from Lamott’s story out of shape. I’ve done that often enough in the past…

I detested George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones my first time through. The lack of fantastical elements following the atmospheric and ominous opening — where was the follow-through, the expected magic?
A year later, out on a walk, I found myself arguing in my head with various Stark family members all of whose names and idiocyncracies I remembered) — immediately I knew: it was time to start rereading…

Operating Instructions was not Lamott’s first book. The references to her earlier work, Bird by Bird, were frequent and detailed. Bird by Bird‘s title “comes from an episode Lamott shares from her childhood. Her 10-year-old brother had been assigned a book report on birds. He was given three months to complete the report, but he had procrastinated until the night before it was due … His father’s simple yet profound advice was to take it “bird by bird,” or one small step at a time…

In Operating Instructions, we heard, more or less word-by-word, the same story.

I understand why she reused it. Looking it up on the Internet this morning, I appreciate the strong imprint the story made on my own brain, read so many years ago.

Not only is it a good story, but it’s one we’d ALL be well-served by internalizing, and actively, at that. But. Bird by Bird was not the book that delivered me the story, and if there’s nuance between Lamott’s numerous retellings, I’ve yet to find it.

I’m participating in Somerville Open Studios this upcoming weekend. I’ve procrastinated, and I’m overwhelmed. Some element of my participation will be in classic Ann Lamott style: ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’ And sure, there’s something in me still, that really kicks against that.

Giorgio Vasari, back in the 16th century, detailed how Michelangelo submerged his models in water and then slowly lifted them above the surface as he carved the emerging details onto full-size marble. Art historians and sculptors since (as well as the examples that remain of Michelangelo’s work in progress) challenge this as a creditable description of Michelangelo’s literal process, but the metaphor works. The idea, the statue is already there in the water, the stone. The blank page.

The artist’s work–the work is to see it, to drain the water away, to bring into life.

Work-table drawing of birds in tree by Katya Reimann, placed over 12/6/21 New Yorker Cover by Edward Steed.

Step by step. Bird by bird. Add one bird in after another, until the project is complete. But what’s the project? What’s the… picture? The deep shape behind every bird that gets sketched in?

When I first saw Edward Steed’s New Yorker cover, “Enchanted Garden,” I collected it for my ‘ideas’ box, and, for whatever as-yet-unexplored reason, I started drawing my own birds on a tree, some time later.

What prompted the birds? That’s what I want to know. Why am I currently bird obsessed? Why all these different, tiny birds? Why was I thinking “Bird by bird–that’s from Ann Lamott?”

I’ve learned, both as an author and in life, that repetition is unavoidable. Asking yourself, over decades, things that seem to be the same questions. The greatest artists know how to repeat themselves in a way that’s…. not repeating themselves. Juggling between the specific and the universal, the prosaic daily steps and the vaunted sense of the greater figure, as yet under the water of one’s unconscious that one hopes those prosaic steps are on their way to be uncovering.

Will any of my damn bird drawings be completed for the day? I’m exhausted and overwhelmed (right now, with my non-artistic life) and honestly I don’t know.

But Saturday, something about my process at least will be up to see. And that is what THIS open studio will be about.

I’m grateful for every bright, colorful bird, for every spark and idea; I’m grateful to Lamott for the repetition that cemented this idea in my head.

Fruit Boxes

Katyas-work-surface-circa-April-2023

Artists work in many modes. A lot has been written about how to find the “sweet spot” or attain the “flow state” that puts the brain into an ideal space for creation.

I work through phases of effectivity. I’ve come to recognise that practices that might be highly effective at one point will become stale before I recognize the tipping point, and need to move on.

BUT–right now, setting some brain time to do some puzzle-work in the morning is really helping me.

The “Two Not Touch” puzzle in the NYT was, is my understanding, invented by Jim Bumgardner. If you want to play it yourself, online, try it here.

Online, it’s a game I like enjoy during deadtime travel. Online, it’s a puzzle that’s good for interrupted attention.

On paper, gameplay is very different, and if you choose to fill your squares in with ink–or something more complicated than ink, letting your attention wander in no way is rewarded.

Over months, my practice playing Two Not Touch has evolved into… a back and forth mental exercise of “focus and diffusion.” I’ve worked out a number of themes to approach my squares: lilypads, from an old math riddle, constellations, from the TNT original theme, and… fruit.

The fruit box idea is the one I’ve stuck to–it mirrors the puzzle idea that each box has a binary yes/no answer. On the days when I get the puzzle solved, it’s when I’ve been able to hold that idea in my head.

But there are a lot of days when I can’t get the puzzle finished. My conceit of intersteller dotted waves, or leafy clusters that defy the one-to-one box/object ratio, lead me astray. I’ve “gone beyond the box.” It’s time to set the morning paper aside, and get down to my day, creating art (I hope) that goes beyond the lines.

Either that, or I have a completed mini-graphic, that sets me already forward into my day.

For now, I’m finding this a productive practice for my mornings.

SOS 2023 First Look Exhibit

The SOS First Look Exhibit is up in the Somerville Museum’s gallery space, 1 Westwood Road, Somerville, MA, and “Dutch Sails” is up there with the many, many other wonderful Somerville artists for visitors to enjoy.

From the SOS Website:

SOS 2023 First Look Exhibit
Somerville Museum • 1 Westwood Road

Friday, April 21  – Saturday, May 13, 2023

This show is open to all 2023 SOS registered artists. We strongly recommend viewing this artist choice non-juried group show – many studio visitors plan their trip based on what they see here.

Pre- and post-SOS hours: Thursdays 2-7 pm, Fridays 2-5 pm, Saturdays noon-5 pm
SOS weekend hours: Saturday and Sunday, May 6-7, noon-5 pm

The Somerville Museum is now fully accessible, with an elevator at street level.

Rough Start, but Operational?

After more than six months (effectively) offline, thanks to the genius and patience of Liz LaManche, I am back.

No real content to add today, just a big thank you to Liz for walking me through advances in web-building since circa my last major revisions in 2010. Ish.

Fantastical ink & watercolor

Artist’s Statement (from the Somerville Open Studios website)

Imaginative realism: fantastical images in watercolor and ink.

These are the things I love: the mystery of the natural world, draftsmanship, storytelling, and imagination. Recently I have been working on a small scale, viewing the world through a tight lens, seeking to capture and create gleeful imagery that suggests the wondrous nature of the world.

My series, “Improbable Escapees” is a riff on the colonies of exotic birds that have successfully colonized urban areas–the Peacocks, Monk Parakeets, Red-Crowned  Parrots and the like who have made their homes among our native hornbeams, birch, and other cold climate trees of our northern biome.

These cheerful, if not cocky, fantasies in pen, ink, and watercolor will likely be the centerpiece of the work I show in May.

In my decades working as an artist, I find myself returning in a loose cycle to inspirations from nature, myth, and archetype–and, of course, the other artists I see working around me.

Katya Reimann / Somerville Open Studios 2023

Somerville Open Studios will take place this year on the weekend of May 6 -7, Saturday + Sunday, 12 – 6 pm More than 300 artists across Somerville will open their studios to the public to display their latest work and meet visitors.

I will be participating this year, thanks to Frances McCormick, who generously provided me studio space for weekly workshops, and Beth Kevles, my fellow exhibitor at Fran’s.

Details to follow.

Time and Place

Sometimes it’s about when you read some piece of writing that it becomes totemic.

Sometimes it’s just the writing.

“The past,” he thought, “is linked with the present by an unbroken chain of events flowing one out of another.” And it seemed to him that he had just seen both ends of that chain; that when he touched one end the other quivered.

—Anton Chekhov, The Student (1894)

the great harbor chain of Constantinople

Received in the Mail

Paul Gallico- The Man Who Was Magic

I ordered it about a week back. My childhood copy had gone missing.

I love Paul Gallico’s writing. He’s probably known best these days for The Poseidon Adventure (1969), but I hope not. This one, The Man Who Was Magic (1966), remains one of my favorite books–not least for its portrayal of magic. My grandmother gave me my copy, back in the day. I vividly disliked the cover at the time, and consequently it was years before I actually opened it and read it. But from the first chapter, I was in love. I don’t think I slept until I’d finished it.

Gallico was a bestselling writer in his own day, and he’s one of those writer’s whose prolific output hasn’t served to cement his literary legacy. There is a tendency to dismiss him as a great “storyteller” rather than a writer, and certainly the archetypes in his narratives… could use some updating. But when he hits it, he really hits it. There is a description of a little girl’s uncomfortable spangled tights in this book–forty years after I first read that passage, it still has a special niche in my brain. There was an observed sympathy for her situation that Gallico understood, and I understood that he understood.

Gallico was a man who could write convincingly about human goodness, and human bravery. That’s a rare and under-rated talent in our culture.