A Fun Guest Towel

I bought this as a present... first for a young relative. And now I'm debating on whether to send it to my sister. My sister just bought a house, and this does crack me up.

Wouldn't that be a fun house warming present? Its from Recycled by Hyena's shop on Etsy.

Reality Time

Well. Its no walk in the park that's for sure unless the park has poison ivy and chiggers. One thing I've heard about global warming is... poison ivy and ragweed are supposed to flourish. Why don't they just say the end is near? Really. My last bout of poison ivy left me puffy and drippy with the blinds drawn and memories of being a kid with this stuff... aren't you suppose to out-grow it? I finally dug up the offending mega poison ivy root from the side of the house and felt victorious and in control doing so.

The above is in some side ways reference to I haven't done my taxes yet. A pesky bit of living task that seems to increase... with global warming so it seems in odd congruent fact. *sigh* This year is a... mess.

So I went and bought this print from wondercabinet.etsy.com. It won't help with my taxes or global warming or help with my ragweed allergy. But I adore her detail and form. Her work seems very meditative... like there is a parallel universe she is giving a glimpse into. And it is a fascinating glimpse.

Lucky AND Good

Thankfully the Pats listened. (hehehehe.)

You know. I'm a bit new to this. The whole sports viewing/rooting kind of thing. It started a year or 2 before Brady was quarterback. I had a job in downtown Boston that I would get out of about 5:30-6 o'clock on Sunday. I'd head for the nearest bar and root for the loosing team of which ever football game was showing, and drink a couple of brews. I hated my job. Football and beer gave me a purge distance that helped... and then I got into watching the game itself. I really didn't root for the Pats until I moved to Rhode Island and Brady started quarterbacking. I have no knowledge to judge his quality of play.... he wins. But why I liked him at the first was that he made things happen. I think that is the core of what makes him great. The range of potential. He and others might look to stats, completions or whatever.... I think its still the potential that is what's important. Its what can be sensed in a player or a team... Its what gives a freak series of plays (SEE RAVEN'S GAME!!!) room to happen. They say you make your own luck. That could be open to debate. I do think you have something to say about potential....

This might be why people take sports so personally. When the team wins you are better... when the team looses... you loose. Whether you need the purge (wouldn't any teams' victory suit?), or the fulfilling of what you sense they might be able to do that, well, in some tangential universe, there is a potential you can don as easily as a purchased Brady jersey. Is living well a quality of limited viewing... well angled snapshots... or matching the player with the play.... And you the figure on the sidelines in a Hoodie. (An aside. This evening a lady that knew Bellichick's hoodie is the best selling item in the Pats store watched the game in the next barstool. (!))

And here I'll depart from psychological propping to real life flaillings. Flopping wildly about, as it were. The easiest way to piss me off is to suggest that artists (or myself) do not or do not want to work. Success is the one vindicator. But, in art... Okay. let me back up. With a job you have a paycheck. In any artistic fields you have... a show? a sale? a line of work that is marketable? an idea? Where does clocking in in the morning give you the paper to stuff up someone's nose? Honestly. Yet. It is assumed, that, as an artist you don't want to work. WELL FRAK THEM! A sentiment I will not apologize for. (Besides I love the word FRAK.) (frackety fracktey frak!)

eh. how to end this. Because you know it goes on and on. Its one of the compromises with life. Here I am, one round diagonal self, with nary a corner to blend into. There is the world with its ever flattening edges. Is sports gaining in popularity? I don't feel totally alone in this. Maybe others find other blending tools. More power to them. In the meantime... GO PATS!

Love the beer enjoy the game CHEERS people.

Fixing Faces

*I am well aware that you are suppose alliterate with restraint. But this is MY blog... not some English paper.*

Anyway. Here's a picture of my latest endeavor. The nose is unfortunate. Kinda reminds me of Michael Jackson. I'm thinking on trying to fix it... there's a bit of porosity in this casting which would make soldering on a scrap of metal risky business. (Heat makes porosity a bit more expressive, you might say.) I carved the original out of wax. This is the model, out of silver. The end product will be bronze. But I need to be a bit more happy about it. The nose is bugging me.



The box is out of glass.

Fun Stuff

I purchased this from TheSillySpermShop.etsy.com the other day. It was just way too appropriate for me to ignore!

New Things

I think one has to come to some accommodation with how things get made. You always want a Monet or Carrivagio or Michalangelo... and the fumbling towards the finish has its majical moments. But, sometimes a torn fingernail intrudes. (The British painter Turner grew one fingernail longer to scrape at the paint. Turner rocks. Some folks just teach you lessons in awe.) But back to the making of things... Kitty Karma, a pendant, was my fourth cat pendant. The other 3 didn't quite make it. I wish I were more succinct in making stuff, but I hope that the frustration of failure condenses the final piece and makes it finer. (Failure ought to be good for something. It's the thriftiness in me.)

Here is a bird piece that is undergoing further revision. This one is part way there... I have another sketch I'm currently working on also. (The birdie pictured has not been polished or antiqued. Models don't generally get polished.) I do have some fondness for this piece... which is probably why it has stayed so long on the to do list. However, the frustration with birdie might have helped with the other sketch.

Productive Cocoon

Cocoons have a bad rap. I don't know why, particularly with the world as crazy as it is. Here are a couple of pictures of my refuge. On the floor at my right side is a boom box, behind it on a small stool is my ultrasonic, and above that is the polishing wheel. To my left is the torch pickle pot and flux. Among other assorted items... it is a well textured space.




I like looking at other's workspaces. Its not just a vingette on someone's personal space and style... it is deeply and recognizably human. There is a bonding to be had at the point of creation that is, I think, most accessible in the space of creation. Perhaps because everyone has held a pencil, or a knife. The product is of the artist or artisan, but the space can be looked at and recognized for its small universal components.

Etsy's Own Personal Shopper, KarmaRox!

Big round of applause please. The Personal Shopper created by KarmaRox at etsy.com, has been one of the most entertaining features of the Etc section of the Forums. Alas, it was sentenced to the Promotions sections and has since ceased to exist. I have asked Karma a few humble shopping questions and this is what she responded with:

1. For the gal who needs a new life.....how about something to jot things down in that bother you....nothing cures that better than a lovely journal!
Whitecupboard.etsy.com http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6732671

2. For the person looking for a clue....ha ha ..... I don't have a clue but I did like the board game when I was a kid so here's your clue!
StillLife.etsy.com http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6423861
3. Need a new face? Well Halloween IS around the corner! I found this for you: ('Miniature Masquerade Mask Pin')
lilacgrove.etsy.com http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6726407
4. Your attitude is what it is so just live with it and get this from Etsy.com:
Cassiscreations.etsy.com http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6722199
5. Well brains are hard to come by but Etsy has this which I personally would love to own! Hope you like it! Foodpainter.etsy.com
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=6644860


Thank you so much Karma! Brilliant. If anyone has any shopping questions for Etsy.com, I may try to host Karma the Amazing again so just include the request on the comment page.

Reasoning Reasons

Okay. Yet another explaination.. of the title for "Fluff" this time.
(I like to wax philisophical, as it were. To lean back in a comfortable chair, clutch a cold brew, and to fuss at the universe with a teaspoon of not so well intellengized reason. But occassionally I find I have less inclination or time or fatigue or there's strong web of preoccupation entangling the small rodent that is my brain...)
Anyway, that's my excuse for not updating my blog for a while. Thought I'd get that explaination out of the way first...

Now as to "Fluff." The first reason for the title is: I like it. And of course, in my small hemetically sealed world, that is most important. The second is something I've seen a couple of times in my anemic purusal of the art/neo-art/art-a-fart... wanna fart... (where was I?)... ART world. That is, the motivating force of vengence.

Years ago, a lady that is (I'll assume present tense) a wonderful repesentational watercolorist talked about motivation... She said how when she was starting out... she painted a couple of watercolor paintings, and through a fluke, they were fantastic. A gallery expressed interest and asked for more work. Her subsequent work stunk. She spent 3 years relearning how to paint, and why those first couple of paintings were so good. During that time, whenever someone made a disparaging remark, she put them on a list. When she was in a small show and the guy that hung the show put her piece back by the trash cans, she put him on the list. The list was for her first one person show. And that guy hung the show.

Another artist was told the material she used was "cafty." As in, not good enough for art. Or something like that. Who knows what he was talking about except that he was disparaging in a unengaged abstact I'm-just-bad-mouthing type way. That artist is now fairly successful using just those "crafty" materials... (will print name after okay.)

Now to "Fluff." I showed a ring I'd carved to a fellow employee.... his response was "fluff." He didn't know it was mine... But. The fellow has made my list... (not that, actually, I think "fluff" negative. Neither is "crafty" for that matter.)

Such scheming and whatnot requires... success. "Getting yours" doesn't count if, well, you don't get yours. You can clutch your shopping cart as vehemently as you wish but if you are homeless.... people will walk around you. (Though. they still might not wish to be on any list of yours.)

I'm up to fifty-two cents in my lottery-retirement wanna-suceed with-change-off-the-street fund. Somehow it all hangs together... I think....

Doh!

One never knows but at least one can stay entertained. There's a lot of ranting railing peeling and pooping about the culture we have somehow derived. But has anyone considered, it is the most valiant? I bought a painting tonight. Because, in part, the artist (and I had deduced that between bathroom breaks he is an artist), described it as, the paint "is thick." Pardon me and you probably need to, but that is freaking brilliant. There are two piddly things in my piddly universe. One is, I like paint. So crucify me for an object loving hedonist. Yes! The other is no bullshit. "oh I did this painting because of a sunset that happened on a day when my dog died and I was 12 and I had my first kiss." Save my piddly from such dribbly.

But I have, relunctantly because I love to complain about the world I am not succeeding in, decided this culture is the best. Has anyone else thought that? Look at it. Given the circumstance. We as a living organism are effectively on death watch. Dunno about you, but I don't see a fabulous future. Because of some wierd creature organism hangover from a more ignorant time we expect something like at least 10 kids a generation will read Middlemarch. And we are appalled (and I singularly am) by the fact few read, and the number reading Middlemarch has dropped to 8. (Forums are addictive, you've gotta rec that, LOL!)

Don't key in on the name "Paris Hilton," but think instead of a damp smelly twig poking out of the water and sluge on a flood plain. And we, as the primordial muck of a prehistoric phasmortigation (?) reach for... our forearms distended with the effort of survival and hope... fingers seperating in deliberate aim and desperation... we... the culture at large make the last flailing grab for... Carrie!

Ah man. One never knows does one. But at least, one can stay entertained. And the shop I bought the "thick paint" from is MoTowne.etsy.com

THIS IS MINE

This post is in response to a few questions received and the, ah, times we live. And the art we produce. And the visual statements made. The communication inadvertently, or not so inadvertently, created.

I'll start in flashback mode. (You know, one of my frustrations in life is in not being the author of a Tale of Two Cities. I totally disagree with the folks that say the best has been written and therefore... I know I can't set the scene the way Dickens did, or rant like Faulkner or Baldwin, or hallucinate like Joyce... But that won't shut me up. No way man. As a pugnatious 2 yr old kept telling me once, "no way man no way man..." in a high pitched and determined voice.)

Getting back to the flashback... years ago... how many won't be specified... I took a light metals course at a prominent art school. During this course I watched fascinated as a fellow student cut the feet off of a cheap rubber duck and cast them and call the product "her"earrings. It never seemed to occurr to the artist that in fact a sculptor had made those ducky feet she was now appropiating and calling her own, unique, art. Actually, I'm not sure she cared enough to think about it. Because, what she did, is not unusual at all. Its seems totally acceptable. My crossed eyes and silent retching is the oddball reponse.

I can think of 2 theories about this. One is that there is a whole lot going on, some good, some not so good. Linking in with my second theory: the flashing billboard syndrome. People (not me, but those that don't have bad backs and fat rears) can run fast. But. Traveling at the speeds we do today...(and how quaint those words will be 50yrs from now... another billboard flashing by)... what effect does that have on our ability to absorb and perceive depth in images and information given. How does the speed of travel effect our critical facilities? Are our perceptions tunneling to flashing billboards?

I think I'll leave that rant there, coasting the car to a stop in a weed choked driveway. Who said "I yam who I yam." Some cartoon character? Getting back to charms and THIS IS MINE. I make my own stuff. Butt. (referring to my running abilities again.) Butt. (oh dear oh dear). I am within a tradition that I respect and enjoy. Charms are "a cross between a power amulet and a security blanket." A quote out of a book on charms, titled "Charms," oddly enough. I make hearts because I like to make them, and they remind me of a lot of silly and very human stuff. Bees? I haven't made one yet but I will. I will make one because I used to catch honey bees in my hands and let them go. People may, or may not, buy bee charms. But if they do they will do so because of how it looks, what they think of when they see a bee charm, or because bees charms are considered lucky.

I'm sure my making charms is all E.D.'s fault. '"Hope" is the thing with feathers-' Without her I'd be casting rubber ducky feet.

A couple of wonderful and original shops to check out at etsy.com... BiscuitOfDoom and Evod.