Drawn the Road Again

Category: City Mouse

  • This American Sketchbook

    This American Sketchbook

    Last year the folks at Tacoma’s Broadway Center for the Performing Arts asked me to do a set of illustrations of their historic theaters. Then they kindly offered me a media sponsorship of one of their upcoming shows. I was happy to say yes (hey, free tickets for me and my friends!), but I didn’t…

  • 63 axe handles high

    63 axe handles high

    Well, I wouldn’t exactly call this statue the handsomest Paul Bunyan in the world, but you gotta love that plaid shirt and winning smile. He’s got plenty of moxie—which makes me think Portland is the perfect place for him.

  • Pink palace

    Pink palace

    If you’ve seen the film advertised on the marquee, you’ll know that there probably isn’t a better place to see it than at a bright pink vintage theater.

  • Putting the “win” in “window”

    Putting the “win” in “window”

    Window dressing, I am sorry to say, is a dying art. There are still so many old storefront buildings in the U.S. with massive display windows. And so, so few of them still use those windows to display anything, let alone create an imaginative world in still life. Whenever I find an exception, a holdout…

  • Checkmate

    Checkmate

    My French isn’t anything to write home about, I’ll admit. But at this moment, it didn’t matter, because there are some things that transcend language barriers.

  • Boston Strong

    Boston Strong

    I wasn’t there at the time of the Marathon bombings last year—I was here, on the opposite coast. But Boston is my home city, and I remember feeling at the time that I had to do something, no matter how small. So I grabbed the first thing I always think of—my sketchbook—and put together this…

  • Water fortress

    Water fortress

    Okay, now this is a water tower. End of story.

  • Follow the Red Brick Road

    Follow the Red Brick Road

    These days there are many places where the Freedom Trail is marked with ugly red paint on concrete. But wherever you can find the path traced in brick, running out from one of the old bronze markers—well, that’s where you can almost feel history pulsing under your feet.

  • Check, please

    Check, please

    I wonder if these guys are arguing over who gets to leave the tip…

  • Fishlass

    Fishlass

    You know, Salmon Beach is already a kind of mythical place, the kind of hidden world you read about in nautical legends. So it was completely fitting to follow the boardwalk path around a curve and suddenly find a siren* waiting on the rocks below. *sculpture by Marilyn Mahoney