Rediscovery.

Six weeks ago, my brother-in-law and his wife welcomed a new baby (and the very first Brad's-side-of-the-fam grandchild. Now there's a race we were never going to win.) We found out early on that it was a girl, but the child's name remained a big secret up until it was inked in on her birth certificate, and then, the announcement:

Harper.

So, in the weeks before our first visit to meet the newest member of the family, I made this.

What you're seeing: Six linoleum relief monoprints.

I think I've mentioned before that I studied art in college; unfortunately, the nature of printmaking combined with the constraints of New York life made it one passion that was just too hard and time-consuming to pursue (at least for a lazy person like me). This is the first thing I've produced in nearly six years, and I'm embarrassed to admit how much I'd forgotten about how to do this. The behavior of ink, the feel of the linoleum, the painstaking minutia of registration, the way the paper curls as it dries... have you ever returned to something you used to be skilled at -- playing a musical instrument comes to mind -- after a long hiatus? It's half remembering, half re-learning, because it feels familiar but not exactly the same. You make rookie mistakes but feel the sting of your missteps like a veteran. I cut myself more than once.

But it's finished now, and although it's not perfect, and I'd love to spend hours more trying to make it perfect, and there are stray traces of ink where I wasn't quite careful enough (which has always driven me crazy but which I've never been able to avoid) I'm sort of... ecstatic.

So, we may be seeing some more of this. (You know, in addition to the usual kerfuffle and cussing and stories about wangs.) Indulge me, would you?

And if there's something you used to do -- something you used to love, but that got pushed to the fringes by the daily crush of adulthood -- consider this some emphatic urging to pick it back up. Now. Do it now.