The ZENOBIA AIRPORT

Let’s assume we know about butterflies. Look how they flutter. Some girl on Zenobia Road sits by her window and cuts each one out of paper. She paints their wings, winds them up, and lets them fly. She spends every moment of the day making something this beautifully, utterly absurd.

Gilead's dream

Gilead Baum has a hit 45 single for the jukeboxes of town, but he can't listen to it!

before and after

Gordon Mono collects dreams in buckets.

almost beautiful

The plot thickens in AMERICAN MANTRA

another Huck

Another Robert Huck illustration for AMERICAN MANTRA page spread.

Constance DuCanne

Here is a page spread from AMERICAN MANTRA, published this year. Gilead Baum has gone back in time, to 1955, to find an elusive poet, Gordon Mono. Fortunately, Constance DuCanne shows up instead. The novel is illustrated throughout by Robert Huck.

another Fred

Another page from KENNEDY with fantastic Fred picture. The Ripper was a real person who used to show up in the dark and play Buddy Holly and Sam the Sham.

Fred

Fred Sodt drew this for Good Deed Rain novel, KENNEDY, published 5 years ago.

A Flutter of Birds, Robert Sund

A HORSE NAMED CARL SANDBURG

An old white horse is riding the elevator of the Leopold. Nobody knows how it ended up in there. The crowd in the lobby watches the arrow as it rises between the floors. For a moment it rests on the 11th floor, then it’s moving two stories down, then somewhere else again. By night the people have gone, except for the clerk at the desk who has grown used to it.

royalty

Another handsewn book I made in 1999. Cover by Maestro Mike Paulus.

piranha parents

Working on putting together an animal book, going through Good Deed Rain novels, short stories, and old handsewn books rounding them up. Here's the cover of a collection from 2004. I pictured this guidebook on nursery tables and birth center shelves. Cover by a wee Rosa.

horsebeans

picture courtesy of staff spy, Rob

alligators!!

Found these alligators in front of the art building this morning!!

Spring Dog/Summer Dog

Salmon of the Future

Who Wouldn't Want a Gorilla Mask?

LAKE ERIE SEAHORSES

Somewhere along this lake in the 1950s was a roadside store. It was filled with those things summer tourists love to buy. Most amazing of all, on the wall was a fish tank filled with living seahorses. It was easy for the children stopping there to believe they could run to the shore and scoop a bucket through Lake Erie in hopes of catching their own.

from 'Something Bright'

The Bob Hope Effect

Double Hope

Double Indemnity and Bob Hope and Lana Turner

The Cosmic Man, 1959

The Las Vegas Airport

The Los Angeles Airplane

FLYING CONDITIONS

It was eighty-one degrees last night. We have fans going on every floor. A breeze runs through our house like a stream. When I opened the door this morning to let the dog outside, we almost fell. The house was hovering in the air, caught by the corner, held tangled up in the telephone wires. And what a racket—we’re roaring over the cement foundation loud as a zeppelin.

The 1956 EDWARD

Presenting a real-life Hollywood story!

The GIANT MOTH

Its wings are the color of concrete, spread across the entire city. Run through with roads and a highway, apartments and parking lots. Only from the air can you tell the shape outlined against the forested hills and the bay. We’re all living on a giant moth and we have no idea when it will fly away.

The ANT PEDDLER

He knocked on the door and our dog barked. I opened the door and there he stood, wearing a strange uniform like a rocket pilot. He told me he just happened to be in the neighborhood and he wanted to know if we had ants. This is the season to welcome them, he said. He tried his best to convince me to open the crawlspace vents and let them in. “Put sugar on your kitchen counter and they’ll build roads and farms and little towns, and you’ll grow to love their company,” he promised as I shut the door.

COTTONWOOD LEAVES

I stop on the path to watch a rabbit fishing the stream. He makes lures out of silver cottonwood leaves, binds them to the line of a bamboo pole and casts. The current never stops flowing from the mountain. He doesn’t catch anything but the branches overhead and snags underwater. The lures are left hooked, sparkling down there like treasures, and caught in the trees like tinsel.

The STAFFORD HOTEL LODGING HOUSE

Gene Vincent is on the radio. Someone is parking their DeSoto. The backseat has a suitcase and some cardboard boxes and a tilted parakeet cage. The car makes a lot of noise fitting into the spot next to the curb. 702 ½ West Holly. Someone leans in the windshield, reading the Room to Let sign.

The SHIP of MONSTERS

He’s told the story before about how he had to defend the Earth only this time it’s true. A rocket lands near his ranch. A vampire is after him with her outer space crew. He prefers her sister and he sings to her from his horse. He’s a fool but he’s fearless. All he needs to do is capture their command belt. He fights a giant spider and gets trapped inside a tree and she hears him. They leave this planet in her rocket. He’s up there in the night sky now, on that little green dot of light, Venus.

The KNOW IT ALL

I cross the street all the time. It’s not dangerous if you know what you’re doing. Relax, I know all about cars and trucks and buses and bicycles. I’m not a kitten anymore, I’ve been around for years. My advice is, if you really want to get to the other side, you just have to run like hell.

Hawthorne's Rabbit

Still enjoying Nathaniel Hawthorne's American Notebooks collection. It's very inspired. I sure get a different picture of him than the one drilled at school. Did you know in August exactly 172 years ago, he was walking around the village carrying a rabbit!

ARBUCKLE'S DOG

I know that world of theirs, I’ve been there in dreams where our gravity doesn’t apply and I can fly between the tenement buildings. You have a brown and white dog named Luke who moves twice as fast as us, outracing cars, climbing ladders, diving off piers like a fishing lure. Arbuckle’s dog never slows down until the end of day when he lands on a pillow and his legs keep running in his sleep.