Blog, 2026

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1/18/2026: Well, it’s been quite the busy time since I made my last blog entry in the ‘through 2025’ page. Despite being fully vaccinated, before Christmas I got the really bad flu that’s been going around, which pretty much took me out for three whole weeks, followed by a bacterial secondary…. as that tapered off, a family member in a different city had a medical emergency, one which continues. As a result, I haven’t done much over the holiday season to now. One thing I did do, however, was take photos of some pieces done my my father and mother years ago, which I’ll get posted over the next couple of days. I grew up surrounded by art, which has no doubt had an influence on my artistic directions…

3/31/2026: Well here it is two months and change later, and I still didn’t get around to updating my blog… but now it’s time. The entries below are dated according to when they happened, as best I recall… Been an exceedingly busy few months, and not in a good way. But while all the undesired excitement was happening, I still managed to go to a few art events and create a few things, and now that things are starting to settle down it’s time to share them on this page! First up: On February 7th, we (my wife, the “Fat Happy Dragon Co. CEO”) and I (“Staff Artist” for the same) had a couple of booths at the Helena, MT Civic Center’s Feb Fest (Valentine’s Day) show. We sold an amazing number of 5×7 cards and absolutely zero paintings… At our last Civic Center show, we made far more from paintings than from cards. There’s no outguessing what will be in demand on any given day! Here’s a pic of our two tables (below):

I really have to hand it to a couple of the staff at the Civic Center! Byron Dike and Natasha Hoover bend over backwards to make sure that vendors have everything they need. For each of these events they work a ridiculous number of hours making sure that when folks come in the door they find a first-rate experience. BTW, the Civic Center website is at https://www.helenamt.gov/Community/Civic-Center ; I really encourage anyone in or visiting Helena to check it out. Lots of great events, first-class performances by the Helena Symphony and other local and national acts / entertainment in the auditorium, and a fascinating history. Check it out!

My wife and I celebrate our anniversary, her birthday, and Valentine’s Day all within a short period of February. For this year, I made some heart-shaped mini–Black Forest Cherry Tortes - chocolate cake, a cherry kirsch middle layer, and an airy-light vanilla frosting, topped with grated dark chocolate and a dark maraschino cherry. I worked as a pastry cook for a short time many, many, many years ago, and I really enjoyed the creative aspects of the job. Here’s a pic of one (below):

02/24/2026: The Holter Museum of Arts (Helena, MT) is in the middle of a series of arts sessions for veterans of military service, which they’ve named “Courage to Create”. Any veteran or veteran’s caregiver is welcome to attend, Tuesdays from 10 to noon and/or Thursdays from 5-7pm. There’s absolutely no cost as it’s all covered by a couple of grants (I’ve posted about it before; see my blog page up through 2025). It’s a great group of veterans, folks who can speak each other’s language and understand our military experiences. Every two or three weeks, we are introduced to a different art form. I’ll be instructing - or perhaps I should say facilitating - a couple of sessions on painting with acrylics this June. In February, we did some circular weaving - sort of like Native American ‘Dream Catchers’, but as a solid textile instead of a web. Interesting, but I’ve decided that this is not one of the art forms I intend to pursue. Nevertheless, here’s the first few rounds of mine (below):

3/10/2026: Omerta Arts, located here in Helena, recently received a new grant to serve veterans through the ceramic arts - something they’ve done before, and which got me back into “playing with mud”. For the opening session of this round, I thought I’d try something a bit different from the ceramic sculpture dragons and waves I’ve done before, and so I did this reclining female nude (below). It’s drying for the kiln, and so far there’s not a single fracture! I wanted to keep it from being too detailed; my thought was that I’d shoot for a finish texture more akin to Alberto Giacometti’s later work than the polish of a renaissance artist, but without the extreme elongation of Giacometti’s post-WWII sculptures. In the end, “she” wound up a bit smoother than intended, but that’s OK. Once it’s dry, I’m thinking I’ll glaze the entire figure in a shiny metallic black… we’ll see.

03/21/2026: I spent this day making 5×7 greeting cards from the paintings of Tenmile Creek Park that I did last year - in part as a fundraiser for the Prickly Pear Land Trust and the Helena College arts program; at this point, two originals have been sold, yeilding a small donation to each. I thought I’d show how I’m making these cards. So far, it’s a small-volume operation; if I ever get to where I’m selling thousands instead of dozens, I’ll have to have them made commercially. The profit margin on these is ridiculously small, but I figure it’s worth it so that a) more people can enjoy my paintings and b) it helps get my name out there… These will be available at Omerta Arts as single cards or boxes of all nine paintings. I print them on my very old laser printers, an Oki 5100 and Oki 5400 (ca. 2004), which still work just fine. Although not truly archival, I’ve printed signs on these that were posted outside for an entire year without any visible fading of the image or yellowing of the paper, so I’m reasonably confident that they’ll hold up long enough! When I trim them from the 8&1/2 × 11 inch sheet,, the part you see at the bottom becomes a bookmark which I give away for free. I used to throw the trimmed paper away, before one day the ‘light bulb went on’ and I realized that there could be a practical use for that piece.

I have a fairly heavy-duty paper cutter to trim these… up to about 50 at a time. Here, I’m just trimming a few to get the photo…

The next step is to run them through a ‘creaser’, which makes an indentation for folding them far more precisely and cleanly than trying to fold them strictly by hand. If I was a huge corporation, of course, I’d have the fancy machines that print, trim, fold and package cards all in one continuous operation… but those machines cost somewhere around the same as our house! So once it’s through the creaser, we still finish folding by hand.

We (my wife and I ) place individual cards, along with a mailing envelope, in clear ‘glassine’ envelopes. Card collections along with mailing envelopes go in clear-top ‘view boxes’. For the boxes, we print a ‘box-backer’ that shows what’s in the box. Here, we’re cutting the ‘box-backers’ prior to glueing them onto the back of the ‘view boxes’. It’s all a bit labor-intensive, but we simply don’t sell at the volumes which would justify fancy equipment.

A couple of finished boxes, front and back…

The end of a long day: Packing up finished boxes and individual cards to take downtown…I’m donating 50 individual cards to the Prickly Pear Land Trust to use as thank-you cards to their donors, plus the cards I printed to sell. $5 for an individual card, or $35 for a box of nine cards, all with mailing envelopes…. at Omerta Arts, or buy directly from me by using the contact page of this website. The original paintings are on the “Landscapes - Tenmile Creek Park” page of this website.

3/24/2026 and 3/31/2026: As part of the Holter Museum’s “Courage to Create” program for veterans, we began learning to do some Chinese ink calligraphy / painting. A few of my practice pieces from last week (the 24th) and today below:

I’ve decided that I like this medium - it rewards working fast with a looser style that I’m really used to. Expect to see more of this on my page! A reminder that any veteran can participate in this series of events!

I’m also going to post several of my really old pieces, along with some pieces my parents did back in the day, over the next little bit. Here’s a teaser: I drew the design for this T-shirt for the Leaf and Bean coffee shop in Livingston, MT (located where the Perk on Park coffee shop is today; the building is much the same) sometime back in the very early 1990s… I don’t recall exactly when. That was back when most T-shirt designs were done by hand instead of by computer. I found it a couple of days ago while Digging through some old T’s that are destined to become rags.

4/14/2026: I’ve mentioned a few times in this blog that I have some catching up to do… I’m not a very good blogger, I guess (or web designer, for that matter)… so since I have a little time this evening, I thought I’d go through and see what all from the Holter Museum of Art’s “Courage to Create” program I never posted. That program is free to veterans, active duty, reserves, and veterans’ caregivers, thanks to grants from the NEA and (um) I forget who else. If you’re a vet in the Helena, MT area, you should feel free to drop in, any Tuesday from 1000-1200 and/or Thursdays from 1700-1900 (that’s 5-7 pm for anyone who’s completely over their time in service!). It’s a drop-in-when-you-can, zero-pressure environment, a chance to express yourself creatively (even if you’ve never done any art whatsoever before) and, in a way, a social club for vets. We have covered quite a range of materials and techniques, with a new ‘adventure’ every couple of weeks. I’ve posted some of what we’ve done previously in my blog(s), but I’m kind of delinquent, so… Here’s a drawing from our very first session, when the Holter’s Executive Director Christina Barbachano had us all draw a sphere, just to show us all that we could in fact learn to draw. Reflecting my sense of humor, mine comes complete with the spider, a bird out the window, and is signed “Bob Ross”.

The following week (this would be way back in September), we experimented with the different “hardness” grades of pencils, from 6B (softest) through the standard of #2 to 4H (very hard). If you look closely, you can see in these quick drawings where I’ve labelled which pencil was used for each part…

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve done artistic papermaking (recycling old paper). We start with shredding old paper and soaking it in warm water until the fibers begin to break apart. To accelerate the fibers separating, you can use a blender… if you have a blender that you’re willing to dedicate to that purpose. Our facilitator had some wads of partially 'disintegrated paper ready to go to save time (below). You can see a few of the screens (called ‘deckles’) used to sieve the fibers into a sheet of paper in the background, along with a tub of fibers… a couple of sheets have been pressed onto a bedsheet rag sitting atop a towel; those are the brownish gray squares by the hands. Finished paper sits just to the left of that.

In this pic (below), there’s a tub of orange-brown fiber ready to be re-made into paper in the background, a couple of sheets from that tub to the right, and some paper sieved from a different tub in the foreground. Leaving bits and pieces of the original paper gives it that interesting texture. You can also add ‘inclusions’ such as bits of feather, or press your sheet against a mould of some sort to emboss it with a texture. It winds up far more interesting than your ordinary sheet of say, copy paper!

The new wet paper sheet takes quite a while to dry, so we put them on cardboard where they’ll stay for a few days… I used a ‘deckle’ dipped into three different tubs of fibers to make this green, yellow and purple sheet (below). Nothing I’m going to frame or hang on my mom’s refrigerator, but still, it’s pretty cool… and the paper some of the other vets made is probably frame-worthy!

Creativity can be expressed in many different ways… From back in December, here’s a decoration I made from 1×2 frames and gold-glitter-painted window screen. My wife had seen a commercial ‘stack of presents’ decoration at our local Lowe’s hardware store, but it was way too small to be visible from the road beneath our house, so I made a much larger one (about eight feet tall). Looks OK from the window, and great from the road. The “reindeer’ behind it is a commercial purchase from, you guessed it, Lowes; it has its antlers askew due to a recent windstorm. I maintain that whatever you do can be a way to express your creativity, and thus an ‘art’; this is just another example of what I do… plumbers, cabinet makers, architects and lawyers can all be artists at what they do. Your creative outlet is up to you…

My final update before I give up for the night is from a different veterans’ arts program. Omerta Arts in Helena received a new grant to work with veterans on clay sculpture. As you know from this blog, I’ve done a fair bit with clay at Omerta… here are my latest creations, drying in preparation for the kiln. A funny tableau of odd creatures inspired by Dr. Seuss, and another Fat Happy Dragon holding a heart (next two pics). I’ll try to get around to posting more “catch-up” blog entries tomorrow!