Margaret Reed

Fine Art + Illustration

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Coming soon to @soagallery #ithacaartscene #ithacaart

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EPOCH

I just received my complimentary copies of EPOCH magazine. My chalk pastel drawing of Herne the Hunter was chosen for the cover of Volume 65, Number 1! EPOCH is a Cornell University publication edited by faculty in the Department of English Program in Creative Writing. 

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Thanks @jpopstudios for printing my final AP before I send this block off to @kzoobookartscenter for the Poets in Print Series!

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I'll be there-- you should be there too 💥🐺🌷

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Nonce (Hour of the Monkey)

(charcoal on paper 30in x 22in)

unframed $975

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Evensong (Hour of the Rooster)

(charcoal on paper 30in x 22in)

unframed $975

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Lauds (Hour of the Hare)

(charcoal on paper 30in x 22in)

unframed $975

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JUSTICE (ST. NICHOLAS AND KRAMPUS)

(charcoal on paper 22in x 29in)

$950

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I’ll put up all my black and white drawings that I’ve done this past year. I’m excited to be a new member of the State of the Art and glad to be in the first show of the new year!

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THE PRESENT AT LAST

“Oh,” breathed Georgie. “It's the world. It's the whole world.”

It was true. The gift from the Goose Prince was an image of the earth itself, shining and turning in the stupendous immensity of the coat closet under the stairs in the front hall of the big house at No. 40 Walden Street in Concord, Massachusetts.

Take good care of it, the Goose Prince had said.

“Oh, yes,” whispered Georgie, renewing her promise with all her heart. “I will. Oh, yes, I will.”

 Slowly the ball stopped turning and began to grow smaller once again. In a moment it looked like an ordinary rubber ball. It was hardly glowing at all. Georgie held her hand under it, and the ball dropped lightly into her palm. She took it upstairs, showed it proudly to Dollabella, tucked it safely under her pillow, hopped into bed, put her head down on the pillow, and went to sleep.

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FAREWELL

“Good-bye,” whispered Georgie. “Will you come back next year?”

“Next year?” Gently the Goose Prince brushed Georgie's sleeve with his wing. “Next year! Well! I will certainly try.” Then he stood back in all his princely dignity and inclined his head. “The present – take good care of it.”

Georgie nodded. She couldn't speak. Lifting one hand, she watched the Goose Prince turn away from her and make a limping rush at the night air.” Why was he running all to one side? Had he forgotten how to fly? Georgie looked on in dismay as the Goose Prince blundered across the grass, flapping and heaving in a frantic effort to lift his heavy body from the ground. At last he was airborne, and now he was circling over her, looking down. Georgie lifted her face and her two hands in farewell...

The bird was an easy target. Ralph Preek sighted along the barrel and pulled the trigger lightly. There was a deafening report. The bird dropped at the feet of the little girl.

For an instant Mr. Preek thought to his horror that he had wounded the child as well, because she made a tremendous leap into the air. But then he could see that she was all tight. She was standing still, staring at the dead bird. Now she was throwing herself down on the tumbled heap of feathers.

Ralph Preek lowered his gun and smiled with grim satisfaction. He walked across the street, got back in his car, and drove away, as the bell in the steeple of the First Parish Church began ringing midnight for the second time.

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ELEANOR HAS A BIRTHDAY

“Thank you, Georgie dear.” Georgie's mother put the buttons in her apron pocket and looked helplessly at the cake. The top layer had slid a little sideways. She nudged it back in place. Silently she handed Georgie one of the bowls of leftover frosting and a spoon. Georgie scraped frosting from the bowl and sucked the spoon. Aunt Alex began cleaning up the sticky table.

How different they are, thought Aunt Alex, Eleanor and Georgie. Altogether different. Georgie is different from Eleanor all the way through, from the inside out. Why, look at her, right now. She doesn't even know that she exists. She's just eyes and ears, that's all she is. Just looking and listening. She doesn't think about herself at all. The world outside her rushes into her, and that's what she becomes. She doesn't think to herself, “This is me, Georgie.” Instead she pulses with the sunrise and the rain and the geese flying over the house. She's in them, not outside them. She's more like a bird or a flower than a girl named Georgie. Whereas, Eleanor! Oh, Eleanor! Just look at Eleanor! Eleanor is all Eleanor! And everything outside Eleanor becomes Eleanor too – sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts! She sucks us all in! There isn't anything else but Eleanor in all the world!

The kitchen door opened. It was Eleanor. She had changed her clothes. She was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a shirt with a large slice of watermelon printed on the front. Her hair poured hotly over her shoulders. Her face was red from crying. “My cake,” moaned Eleanor. “Just look at my cake. It's beautiful, really beautiful. Oh, Aunt Alex, I'm sorry.”

 Eleanor collapsed against Aunt Alex and howled. 

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FLYYYYYYYYYYY!

The emptiness below her was an immense gulf nothingness. There was only the steely surface of the gray pond, far down, flat like metal, and the dark bristle of the trees poking up around it. Georgie gave a strangled cry, and dropped one arm.

Instantly she was falling, spinning over and over, plummeting straight down. But only for an instant. With a tremendous jerk and a terrible pinching pain in her left arm, she was snatched out of her plunging fall. The Goose Prince was dragging her through the air, his wings thundering, struggling to hold her aloft. And soon he was lowering her gently to the ground on the nearest shore.

Georgie lay on the stony path for a moment, trying not to cry, and then she stood up, trembling, rubbing her arm. “I'm sorry,” she said.

But the Goose Prince was gallant. “Oh, it's quite all right,” he said. “I hope I didn't hurt you?”

“No, no,” said Georgie. “Could we try again?

 “Try again? Are you sure?” The Goose Prince cocked his head at her, and she couldn't help laughing. In his tender concern he looked for a minute like her mother than like the splendid prince he really was.

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Above Walden Pond

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Mr. Ralph Preek

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MS. PRAWN BEHOLDS A MIRACLE

Dear Ralph,

I write in haste about a matter of supreme importance. Since my telephone has not yet been connected I will send this by special messenger. I have just witnessed a miracle. Oh Ralph, it is vouchsafed to a few of us to behold such things!

The child next door is a SAINT.

Either that, or she is a visitor from FAIRY-LAND.

Believe me, Ralph, cross my heart and hope to die. Far be it from me to let a fib or the tiniest little white lie cross my lips. THIS IS THE NAKED TRUTH.

A moment ago I happened to glance out the window, and I tell you, Ralph, I nearly fell to the floor in a swoon. She was FLYING. She had climbed up on the railing of the front porch (this is Fred Hall's youngest, that skinny little stepdaughter), and then she jumped, and believe me, Ralph, I hope to die, she went up in the air as high as the roof and then came down easy and landed on the grass. It was a genuine bona fide guaranteed miracle, and think of it, Ralph, it was vouchsafed by me, Madeline Prawn, to stand here and behold it. I swear this is the truth. What have I done, I said to myself, to deserve this blessing. Oh, unknown to us in our humbleness, Ralph, I said to myself, how our inner goodness works in mysterious ways on the Almighty Deep.

Of course on the other hand perhaps she is a fairy moon-child. You must know, Ralph, I mean it is a well-known fact that fairies come at the full of the moon and kidnap a newborn babe and leave on of their own in its place and then one day at the full of the moon the moon-child flies away to join the fairies and is gone forever.

…

So you see, Ralph, we must get together and talk. There are things that might be done. Who knows where such a piece of good fortune might lead?

…

Breathlessly,

Madeline

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GEORGIE TRIES AGAIN

Eddy lifted his eyes from his homework and gazed dreamily our the window. Then he jerked up in his chair and stared. “Hey, Eleanor, did you see that?”

Eleanor didn't hear. Her dress was whizzing through the machine. The grinding of the motor pounded in her head. She didn't look up.

Eddy got out of his chair and parted the parlor curtain. The hall was dark. He put out his hand and felt the smooth round marble head of Henry Thoreau. Georgie was coming in the front door, noiselessly, like a moth in the gloom.

“Say, listen here, Georgie,” said Eddy, “didn't I see you just now– ”

“Oh, Eddy, look,” said Georgie. She was holding something up for him to see. “I made Dollabella a new dress. See? It's ferns. It's all made of ferns.”

“Oh,” said Eddy, “Dollabella. Well, well. Good old Dollabella, Hurray for Dollabella.”

 Eddy dropped the curtain and went back to his homework. He must have been mistaken. He couldn't have seen what he thought he saw. That Georgie. She certainly was a nutty kid.