J.B. Sommerset

  "Moose and calf" J.B. Sommerset (c) 2025 Continued from Part 1: "How I wound up on this mountain..." We used to live in the city, back so long ago on that proverbial Tuesday I previously referred to. This story actually starts then, in 2016. I and my wife had just sold our previous house. We got bored and decided to start over again in a smaller more manageable house with less electrical issues, newer plumbing and a bigger yard. But also, we wanted a nicer neighborhood. At first, that little place had everything we wanted.   We bought that small house on a busy street corner. When I think back to how much we paid for that house I get a little teary eyed. It was in the "before times". Our mortgage was $700.00 a month. This was pre-COVID, things were better back then. However, at the time, the mortgage on the new place was more than the place we left, mostly because it was a double lot with a detached shop in the back. For the most part we were doing alri...

"Bear in the way" (c) J.B. Sommerset 2026 This all starts with a gang member, an attempted stabbing, and the follow up fentanyl foil in our yard... Wait, wait, hold on...  What is this story about? Well, as it turns out, its about how I wound up on this mountain and why I chose to live here, in the middle of the woods, thirteen miles from town. I figure this one has several parts, so strap in and buckle up and stay locked in, there are going to be a number of these. This is going to be a longer story, so lets back up and start in the "way back then" so the context will be firm and in place before we arrive in the "here and now". Lets go back to the beginning of this and then I will walk you through the process that led us (me and the wife) to where we are.  Context is everything, so lets define that context, bare with me while I walk you from through a few years of my life. This part, or more specifically these parts, are my origin story. Everyone has that...

It's all too often that I try and switch up my drawing styles; I like variety.  Below is a more recent doodle I did on my google tablet. I find drawing on a tablet to be easier than drawing on paper. There are never any eraser marks, I can layer it, I can select specific parts and delete them, I can paint without the mess, and so on.  However, it's for the same reason I find that real skill comes from pen and ink on paper. It's more a challenge to create on paper. Also, there is a tactile sensation that can not be replicated by any kind of device. Especially the feel of good paper as the pen glides across it.  It's been hard recently, as a musician, writer, or artist. We are all being replaced by A.I. generated slop and soon we will have to rely on our small communities who still appreciate "man-made". And those communities are growing fewer and further between. I am generally very careful with my art, in fact I make sure that most of mine are water marked. An...

I woke up this morning, in march, after a very minimal winter to see a foot of new snow on the ground. This was very surprising, and also a little concerning. For years I have watched as the weather has changed. I should say the climate has changed. This winter has had around a foot total- for the whole winter.  When I was a child, a light winter in the state I live in, was four feet. I have watched this over the past three decades, it has changed. Specifically the last ten years. It seem rare that we get snow down in the low lands. Up where I live on the mountain the average cumulative snowfall is around seven feet, or at least it used to be. We only had a week of snow this year. And most of that was in March.  It got me thinking about climate change. I know, I know, a lot of you people here in the states think it's a hoax- well spoiler alert, most Americans are idiots. Even If I didn't know what it was, I would suspect that something was happening in our environment. The gra...

Here in the US, we are dealing with a lot. And as you overseas know, what the USA does will affect the rest of the world. And oh, boy, it's some new shit show every day. Our country is currently imploding. I am hoping we survive to "politic" a different day but currently the prognosis isn't great. I am not looking forward to "Gilead", and maybe it won't get to that. Hopefully the people will pull their heads out of their asses long enough to figure out how to deal with these "brown-shirts" and their psychotic over lords. It has become more and more apparent to me, that with each day that goes by, we slide deeper into the dumbest apocalypse ever conceived. If you'd asked me what the end would look like 10 years ago, I never would have said: "A slow death-slide into stupidity, racism, bigotry, greed and gaslighting, led by an idiot with dementia who paints himself orange and inserts his tiny littler pecker where it doesn't belong....

So, I do a lot of art, it's sometime that takes me away from the current state of affairs. Me, being an introvert (for the most part), need to recharge. Art is a perfect way to do that, so I do mandalas to relieve stress from time to time. I am starting to amass quite a portfolio of these things. So, I decided to start posting them here. These are my original works, any if I get enough feedback, I might start selling them. So email me if you think that would be a good idea. I hope you enjoy them.  "Crosshatch Mandala- (c) 2025 J.B. Sommerset Cheers!