Category RileSmith Arts

Did you know that Mozart’s parents had SIX babies, but only two survived infancy? And those two turned out to be world-changing musical geniuses. What about the other four? I used to think a lot about how death was much…

December, 2019. It’s been thirty years since I drew the Babar Christmas Card. And the times have changed. No more collection of India ink-filled Rapidograph pens carefully humidified with a kitchen sponge in an old pickle jar resting on the…

They’re Paper, They’re Folded; They’re Covered with Fonts: 10 Pamphlets for Recent Grads by Karen Rile How to Buy a Stamp: An Illustrated Field Guide Feeling Entitled to Petty Theft? The Unpaid Intern’s Introduction to Office Supplies (Including Stamps) My Mother,…

One a day, added throughout April. First day of April: the sky, like an empty book, and the scribbling trees.  1/30 Snow on daffodils— delicious melancholy. Press on that sore tooth. 2/30 April afternoon: the daffodils are shrieking their terrible…

TREE HARMONICS  for Calla on her 19th birthday I. A modulation in the wind foreshadows the new harmonics. A modulation in color: cherry petals resolve towards green, yellow-green, as if liquid light were puddling in those thin leaf-cups. We are…