it's all about me

Art Related:
1. I will have 3 pieces in the Lake Oswego Festival of the Arts from 6/22/07-6/24/07. I won a blue ribbon here last year. Time to raise those prices!

2. I supposedly have some work in the new Altered Couture Vol. 2 magazine due to hit the stores in May 2007. You should see my altered beret from the Art & Soul 2006 gallery. I used Pere Lachaise Cemetary in Paris for my inspiration, so it's all goth and spiky with chains and a crucifix. oh my.

3. Suz Simanaitis has asked me to write a spotlight column for the summer issue of Artitude Zine. She is spotlighting my visual journal work I did in Juliana Coles class last October. Need to get cracking on this one.

4. "Kaleidoscope" ISBN-10: 1581808798 is #13 on Amazon's Art books list. My work accompanies the Juliana Coles postcard book chapter. If you click on the book on Amazon, you will also see a photograph of my pages. Once I learn how to add links to this blog, it will make it easier to navigate directly to this stuff. Anyone know how to do this?

5. My mail art went out yesterday. Heads up to Paula, Randi and MA.

6. I haven't heard back from Rockport Quarry Books about whether they are going to use my journal pages in their upcoming book "1000 Artist Journal Pages". The picture posted here is one of the pages I sent in.





7. I'm working on a 3-D project where I need to make 12 little 3"x3" houses out of different materials. I am starting with my tried and true, beloved rusted tin cans. I threw about 5 tin cans out in the back yard to start cooking while I chase down some small wooden blocks. 2 of my blocks ended up being 2"x6" so it looks like I may have to go condo on those. I'm going to be nailing vintage lithoed tin can walls to my wooden blocks and putting rusted "corrugated" tin roofs on some of these little darlings. After that, I am imagining houses with rubber walls, duct taped walls, and on and on. Any suggestions for wall material will be highly appreciated...

8. Tania Davenport at Northlight Books has asked me to do my own book. This is a great acknowledgement but I really can't come up with any new fresh ideas for her. I'm a big blank.

House related:
1. We have decided to get rid of our front lawn (if you can call it that, more like a whole lot of sprouty, tufty bits with moss all around them) and replace it with a ground cover. There will be vinca minor all over with it's little purple flowies that match my house perfectly. There will be round concrete stepping stones all over in a random pattern so I will have dots all over my front yard. Yea, dots!

2. I bought my next door neighbors there own horsey to tie up to their horsey ring. They named him Champ. I call him Chump.

I'm leaving the building now. Can you tell I like lists? A bit of the old OCD coming out. Well, that's what you get for hanging out with me.

born in the wrong time

I love the past. My muse is Clio, the muse of history, the one with the laurel wreath and a volume in her hand. I am the one who finds a vintage photo and peers deeply and intently into the fine details, placing myself there and wondering how it felt to live then. I want the story. I have a hard time living in this century. I can't drive anywhere without imagining the town 100 years ago. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Weege's photographs leave me weak in the knees.

Here is a photo I took downtown during Randi Watt's photojournaling workshop. I added this one to a series of shots of neon signs I'm working on. Just a recording before they're all gone.

mi casa es su casa

One more post about my house before I get to the art...

I love my house. It looks like a bowl of fruit. It makes me smile everytime I drive up to it. It's an old house. It's 101 years old. Funky colors for a funky old house.

The inside feels like me, all retro. I always wanted to live in a novelty store and now I do. How old am I anyway? Old enough to appreciate a good cigar box, the dynamics of Pez containers, the whir of the wheels on a tin toy, and the collective wisdom of owning a whole village of salt & pepper shakers.

My kitchen is retro too. My prize posessions are my Gaffers & Sattler stove and my gorgeous pre-50's fridge with revolving shelves.

Ok, ok enough about the house...yawn.

what gives with the horse?

About the horse tied up outside my house...

http://horseproject.home.comcast.net/

There's another horse across the street and I can imagine these two neighing it up when we are sleeping.

look ma, i'm bloggin

Well, here I am, in blogland. Another distraction. See, I should be in the studio. At least, that's what the voice in my head says, my granma's voice. The voice that tells me that life is a struggle, that you must finish your chores before you can play, the voice that says you must sacrifice if you want to go to heaven. Well, there it is then. I am hellbent, for sure.

What I would be doing if i was doing it...

1. Making some mail art for my friends, Randi and Paula.

2. Looking for Chagall pictures for a presentation on color that I am giving in May to my local art group. I went to the library yesterday and every single Chagall book was checked out or the catalog said "this book is unavailable for checkout". wha wha wha??? They must of all been stolen, I guess.

peeve for the day...
my neighbor to the back of me just put in a new water feature and it is so loud that i couldn't hear my birds singing this AM.

praise for the day...
my backyard looks gorgeous. I love, love, love the spring in PDX. Everything is just vibrating with color. It makes me want to cry.

That's it. My first post. I'm going to try and get some pictures up for ya'll so you can see my environs as the weather warms up. I have a new steed tied up out front. Wait 'til you see this.