Kater's notebooks

I attended Clarion with Kater Cheek. At critiques, I started noticing Kater drawing in her notebook. Then I noticed that her drawings were really good. I especially liked some images of crows in flight she was doing one day.

It turns out that in addition to being a very skillful writer, Kater has an unstoppable ambition to master every conceivable medium in the visual arts. She has agreat website where she shows her creations.

The more I got to know Kater, the more interesting things I learned about her. She has written a ton of books, and she can build habitable buildings from bread. She is married to a Morris Dancer. Here is what she said when I asked if I could post images of her journals:

Glad you like the art journal. There are actually two. My sister and I have been working on them for over a year now, we take turns doing stuff in each other’s books.

On her website, Kater explains more about the journal pages:

I used copies of the notes I took at Clarion for the background, and the brown paper are tea-stained scraps of two short stories I wrote.

The title of the piece is Rewriting: An Armful of Tomatoes. My analogy is that carrying an armful of tomatoes is like trying to write a good second draft; how do you get more without losing what you’ve got?

The fox is drawn in colored pencil. Why a fox? I like foxes, and they’re easy to draw.


























This is another page from Kater's journal. On the right is her self-portrait as the Wicked Queen from Snow White. At Clarion, Kater and I became known as dark lords of deadpan and black humor. This pleased me, but of course, I savor approbation of any kind.

One of the inspiring things about Clarion was getting to know some creative people, people who not only make cool art, but live in novel and creative ways.