Dean C. Graf's Uploads

Prudent ponder.

What is your relationship with a Higer Power like? A friend of mine mentioned to me that a Rabbi Friend of his suggested that God likes a good argument. I thought that was funny. The self portrait is G2 .o5 on bristol board with marker for the added color.

Pen over pencil with contemplations that hint at child development and parenting strategies. A very wise person told me that it is our life's work to forgive our parents. Another wise person told me that sometimes there is no forgiveness, just forgetting.

The mall is busy. Kids are shopping. I am hiding in a chair, drawing a chair.

Watercolor and pen

As I reflect on my past experiences, I am accutely aware of how often I have spoken from opinion rather than from experience. I have made mistakes. This makes me think of the Mark Twain quote -"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." Let's go out and get some experience, shall we?

A Brief Pause at the Edge of Becoming It seems I am always seeking a place to sit— not just to rest the body, but to settle the soul. Yet even in stillness, Gary Brecka’s words whisper: “The quickest way to old age is the aggressive pursuit of comfort.” So I do not stay long. I walked until I found a picnic table beneath a canopy of bare-limbed trees, branches like open hands waiting for green. The blue spruces nearby— stoic, unchanged, whispering that some things endure. I sketched. Not perfectly. Not for anyone’s praise. Just a mark to say: I was here. Alive in this in-between. Waiting. Listening. Not for leaves— but for something truer than comfort. Thank you for joining me in this small noticing. A moment borrowed from the rush. A table. A tree. A thought. A gift.

Vine Charcoal and Oil Pastel make for a messy, smudgy experience. A certain amount of messiness can make a process feel more real and human. When things aren’t perfectly polished, it reflects a genuine effort, imperfections, and growth. In personal life, letting go of the need for everything to be tidy can promote a more authentic existence. The hat is a Stormy Chromer. It also evolved out of a mess. More on that later. Peace.

It's hot. No air in school, so we took to the shade and drew trees. I drew students drawing trees.

Some don't drink. Rumi said that wine made some people angry, therefore wine was forbidden to all. Not sure that would go well in the mid-west.

HB pencil.

Reflection of our state. Reflection of our time. Reflection of our lives.

An exercise in observation - quick sketch. I was told that if I made a drawing a day for 365 days, that in a year, I might have a couple nice drawings.

It has been a delight to share with my students the incredible resource of people. Over the years, I’ve had the great privilege of connecting them with inspiring individuals such as Lois Ehlert, Dave Nice, Gregory Martens, Colette Odya Smith, and—as seen in this “Behind the Professor” sketch—Dr. Gaylund Stone. There’s something powerful about the presence of someone who lives their craft with humility and depth. In moments like these, my students are reminded that more is often caught than taught.

Quick sketches for the processing of incomplete thoughts. Everything is created twice, first in thought, second in form. I am still thinking and still forming and still being formed.

When the beautiful waitress bent down to pick up a napkin, I saw this..

Church sketch

We are dependants, all of us.

Chairs are more than wood or iron. They are metaphors, quiet keepers of what it means to be present. They wait, as Wendell Berry might say, for us to “make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet.” I draw them because they embody the humblest love—affection, as Berry calls it, that “gives itself no airs.” In their stillness, chairs hold the weight of relationships, the churn of thought, the grace of silence. They are where we meet, where we linger, where we become. These three drawings are offerings—sketches of chairs that invite connection, reflection, and the slow work of being. Each is a small sacred place, as Berry reminds us, not desecrated by haste or distraction, but alive with possibility. Drawing 1: The Coffee Shop Chairs Two wooden chairs face each other across a small round table in a coffee shop, their grain worn smooth by years of elbows and whispered truths. The table is a circle, a shape that knows no hierarchy, only intimacy. These chairs are for relationships that dare to deepen—for friends who risk vulnerability, for lovers who speak in glances, for strangers who become less strange. They ask for eye contact, for mugs of coffee grown cold in the heat of conversation. Here, sentences begin, “I’ve always wanted to tell you…” or “What if we…” These chairs shun the clamor of screens, as Berry urges, and invite the “three-dimensioned life” of shared breath. They are the seats of courage, where presence weaves the delicate threads of togetherness. Drawing 2: The Sandwich Café Chairs In a sandwich café, two wooden chairs sit across a small square table, its edges sharp, its surface scarred by crumbs and time. These chairs are angled close, as if conspiring. They are for relationships of a different timbre—perhaps the quick catch-up of old friends, the tentative lunch of colleagues, or the parent and child navigating new distances. The square table speaks of structure, of boundaries, yet the chairs lean in, softening the angles. They wait for laughter that spills over plates, for silences that carry weight, for the small confessions that bind us. These are chairs for the work of relating, for the patience that “joins time to eternity,” as Berry writes. They ask us to stay, to listen, to let the ordinary become profound. Drawing 3: The Patio Chair A lone cast-iron chair rests on a patio, its arms open to the wild nearness of nature—grass creeping close, vines curling at its feet, the air heavy with dusk. This chair is not for dialogue but for solitude, for the slow processing of thought. It is the seat of the poet, the dreamer, the one who sits with what was said—or left unsaid. Here, ideas settle like sediment in a quiet stream; here, the heart sifts through joy or grief. As Berry advises, this chair accepts “what comes from silence,” offering a place to make sense of the world’s noise. Its iron roots it to the earth, unyielding yet tender, a throne for contemplation where one might “make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.” This is the chair for becoming, for growing older, for meeting oneself. These three chairs—one for intimacy, one for the labor of connection, one for solitude—are a trinity of relation. They are not grand, but they are true. They hold space for the conversations that shape us, the silences that heal us, the thoughts that root us. They are, in Berry’s words, sacred places, made holy by the simple act of sitting down. My drawings are but traces of these places—postcards from moments where we might remember how to be with one another, or how to be alone. So, pull up a chair. Or three. Sit down. Be quiet. The world is waiting to soften.