So what do you do?
Oh yeah I wait tables too.
No I haven't heard your band,
Cause you guys are pretty new.
But if you dig on Vegan food,
Well come over to my work,
I'll have them cook you something that you'll really love
Cause I like you, Yeah, I like you,
And I'm feelin so Bohemian like you,
Yeah, I like you, Yeah, I like you...
The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You

Sam's been having a ball playing with Casper the kitten. He just laughs and laughs. Shadow emerged a little more last night and we were able to pet her for a while. Well, she allowed us to pet her. I took some pictures but haven't uploaded them yet.

I have to take my little flea bag to the vet today. When we got back from the lake the fleas had a feeding frenzy on our ankles. I hate that!

Joann sent me a link to a great cat site, the infinite cat project. It's greatness. It reminds me of a cup that my brother had. On the cup was a picture of a bear drinking a cup with a picture of a bear drinking a cup with a picture of a bear drinking a cup... It blew my mind!

This is the best image I could find:

Someone sent me this link to an exhibition called Ashes and Snow. Shelley saw it in New York and raved about it. Beautiful.

Even when I was a little girl
Even then no one could tell me why
No one convinced me
Through the cathedral
The high windows spilling crimson light
Across the deceived ones
No evidence of grace in their eyes
The Story - The Gilded Cage

Took lots of pictures of the campfire that we had on Sunday night. I was hoping that I wouldn't melt my camera.

I don't know if it's just a boy thing, but Sam sure loves fire.

Future Boy Scout or budding arsonist?

The fire images remind me of a painting by Lee N. Smith III that I believe belongs to the Dallas Museum of Art. There are a group of boy scouts sitting around a campfire and the glow is illuminating their faces... I couldn't find an image of it online, but this one is kind of similar.

I watched a few movies this weekend:

I Heart Huckabees - very funny. Kind of weird and quirky. I thought Jason Schwartzman was great. Didn't realize that he was the kid in Rushmore until I saw something about it last night.

Junebug - kind of a quiet, nice little movie. Lots of great characters, but Ashley really stood out. She was great. One of the characters is a gallery owner who is courting an outsider artist to show in her gallery. The paintings were crazy weird, created by an artist named Ann Wood. I just came across the artist's website this morning through her link on whipup.net. Weird.

Proof - Gwyneth Paltrow and Anthony Hopkins. I thought it was really good - Gwyneth Paltrow was great. Emotional but not manipulative.

Last night I watched the 100 Funniest Movies of All Time on Bravo. I don't know what it is that I like about those "list" shows... The OCD person in me, maybe.

It was fun to see clips of the movies and hear people talk about them. I question their putting Dodgeball above Dr. Strangelove. And putting Police Academy on there at all. Please!

It takes a friend to laugh when it's over
It takes a fool to cry when it's over
Take the sun
Take the sun
Take the sun from the sky when it's over
The rain won't help you when it's over
Alejandro Escovedo - The Rain Won't Help You When It's Over

Went to the lake for Memorial Day weekend. Boating, swimming, eating, reading, watching movies, eating... Did I mention eating?

Sam had a lot of fun playing with his cousins, Savannah and Madeline. They spent a lot of time scheming and planning "revenge against Ahmeen." (When Savannah started talking, she decided to call my stepdad Ahmeen for some reason.) I stayed with them in the guest cabin, aka "The Bunkhouse." One of the rooms contains a white board upon which they attempted to hatch their evil plan. They collected a lot of information, drew maps, etc. I love the section below, listing his weak points, favorite channel, and current position:

Obviously they spent a lot of time on it, but the only thing I recall them doing was putting his hat in the freezer.

I'll post some more pics tomorrow when I have more time at work to mess with them. :-)

I don't know how much more of this I can take
She's filing her nails while they're dragging the lake
Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives

Sometime last summer, I went to a show of Amber's paintings and one of my favorites was a great painting of a weenie dog. Several people commented that she should do pet portraits for fun and profit. Well, somehow I asked her if we could do a trade and I got the idea to have her do a portrait of Chocolate. I had taken some shots and sent them to her but then promptly forgot about it.

I saw her yesterday and she mentioned that she was trying to paint but that she had a block and didn't know what to paint. So I suggested that she paint Chocolate. I took some more shots last night and sent them to her. It's hard to take pictures of a cat, by the way.

Sam and I went over to Jenna's last night for pizza and to visit the kitties. We're going to play with and feed Shadow and Casper while Jenna's out of town next week. Sam had a blast playing with little Casper. He tried to play with Shadow but she wasn't really having any of it. She seemed to prefer sitting around and being fat. I prefer that, too, now that I think about it.

So Sam's really excited about being able to play with Casper every day for a few days.

Cockeyed.com had a link to this site for Improv Everywhere, a guerrilla improv group based in New York City. The Aspen, Best Buy, Cell Phone Symphony, and No Pants "missions" are quite hilarious.

Did an angel whisper in your ear
and hold you close and take away your fear
in those long, last moments
Lucinda Williams - Lake Charles

Last night Jenna and I went to the Pocket Sandwich Theatre to see Erin perform/direct a sketch comedy show. I guess she directed and did the introduction... It was really fun. I think everybody did a great job, especially their Jenna. She can bust a move!

It was fun to get out into the "big city" for a change. I was telling Jenna that I've started to perceive Dallas people differently recently. I'm not sure exactly how they're different, but I guess I just feel kind of self-conscious when I get away from Denton. My little Denton bubble. I've become such a homebody. I used to go to Dallas all the time. But now the traffic bugs me and I feel too tired. Maybe I'm just old. I'm afraid that's it.

In order for Jenna to go to the thing with me last night, I had to tape the season finale of Lost for her (she doesn't have a VCR). It's just a step away from paying someone to be my friend.

Yesterday was link overwhelm, so I'll just post this one today about someone who moved out of a house and left 70,000 beer cans. Liquid diet, I guess.

Chapter One: We didn't really get a long
Chapter Two: I think I fell in love with you
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter 3
But you were up to your own tricks in chapters 4, 5, and 6
Elvis Costello - Every Day I Write the Book

The photo above is of reflections of lights in the river at Bricktown in OKC. Trish sent it to me. I don't know if it's one that I took or that she took.

Here's a picture of Karyn, Trish, me and Clint at dinner:


I sent a bunch of paintings off to a gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts yesterday. It's at the very tip of Cape Cod. They're only open for the summer during the tourist season. It sounds like a really great place to visit in the summer. It's an artist's colonly and it sounds really progressive and liberal.

I was contacted by a gallery in Nashville the other day. I had sent them my brochure and they asked for some more information. Cool. This just means that I need to get to work!

Cool links:
Utopian Endings for Reality Shows. Greatness.

I find a lot of cool things on Boing Boing.

This is one and it is freaky cool.

I can't remember if I posted this already. It's a great place to go if you need information or personal advice.

I haven't explored this one too much, but it looks interesting. Learning to Love You More. Created by Miranda July, who wrote and directed the quirky Me and You and Everyone We Know. I really liked her character in that movie.

It's interesting to read all these websites and blogs that have assignments - Sunday Scribblings, Studio Friday, Illustration Friday, Whipup, etc. Like me, I guess a lot of people need some sort of deadline or structure in order to complete (heck, sometimes to even start!) projects.

Oh, I wanted to add to what Colleen said about Lyle Lovett. I agree with what she said and I think that there's just something about his voice - a crack or catch in it that gets me. It's somehow both sad and sexy at the same time.

I could salute the water by swimming in the deep end
You could salute the grass
It's waving at you
And then we could be a whole
With a W
I'm only a half
With an H
Meredith Louise Miller - Whole

(I stole the photo from Trish's blog - she took it in OKC at Nonna's Purple Bar - they were hand-blown glass with LEDs inside that changed colors. Super cool.)

OK, music... Colleen's recent post, "Soul Food," has me thinking about the music that I like and why I like it. She mentions CDs that she listens to all the way through... I was thinking about some of my favorites.

ifihadahifi by Meredith Louise Miller - I first discovered her when I went to the taping of the NPR radio show, Whad'Ya Know? in Dallas. Must have been 1997. I had never heard of her before but immediately loved her. She performed two songs and Michael Feldman flirted with her a lot. I immediately went to Border's and found ifihadahifi. I still listen to it all the time. Every now and then I would do a Google search for her and I discovered a few years ago that she's not doing music any more. I've recently discovered two people that I know that know her. Ed is friends with her - he went to her wedding and she performed at one of his house concerts when he lived in Huntsville. (He said that "Whole" would be a great opening title song for a movie. I have to agree.) Trish hung out with her back in the day. Weird. Anyway, her lyrics are great - clever and often funny. I love her voice, too. I love the whole CD but my favorites are "Dreams of You and Elvis," "Whole," and "Chapel."

Songs for a Blue Guitar by The Red House Painters - I listen to this a lot while I'm painting or working on creative projects. It's fairly mellow but does have a few screechy guitar solos to wake you up. Mark Kozelek's voice is soft and sort of breathy. For some reason, a couple of songs - "Have You Forgotten," and "All Mixed Up," remind me of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genuis by Dave Eggers. I really have no idea why.

Smile by The Jayhawks - This is another "painting" CD. The Jawhawks get categorized as "country rock" quite often, and I think they have some of that late 70's Eagles feel. It's just easy to sing along to. I defintely listen to the whole CD, but I love "Smile," "What Led Me To This Town," and "A Break in the Clouds:"

Every time that I see your face
It's like cool, cool water running down my back

You Were Here by Sarah Harmer - I discovered her from a short little review in the paper. After reading it, I looked her up on the internet and listened to snippets of her songs. Shortly after that, I happened to be in Best Buy and I happened to remember her name and found this CD. She writes great lyrics and has a great voice. Some are upbeat and some are more philosophical. "Basement Apartment" is one of my favorite, more upbeat songs. "Coffee Stain" felt a little too personal there for a while:

There's a coffee stain around your eye
Lines that I don't recognize
Everything changed from being OK
the night that you came home so late
I knew by the time on the stove
You were no longer mine alone
I guess we're all just out on loan
Everybody is only their own

Soundtracks and mix CDs - I love soundtracks because they usually feature a variety of music. Some of my favorites are the two Six Feet Under soundtracks, Garden State, Vanilla Sky, The Myth of Fingerprints, High Fidelity, and Big Night (you just can't be sad when you listen to the Big Night soundtrack). Allison makes great mixes. She's given me quite a few great ones - the one I listen to most often is called, "Drawing Mix," and it features Lamb, Morcheeba, and Cheryl Crow.

What are your favorite CDs?

If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts
Counting Crows - Mrs. Potter's Lullaby

I've been thinking about movies and music and dreams this morning. Last night I had a really weird dream or series of dreams that seem to have morphed into one. Parts of this dream seemed like a movie and it was influenced by things I had seen in movies/tv recently - there were elements from The Ice Harvest, I Heart Huckabees, The Da Vinci Code, and last night's Sopranos episode. Weird.

I had a really full weekend! Friday night I went to my book discussion group where we discussed Bee Season. Everybody seemed to have liked it a lot. There were a lot of people there this time, so it was a lively discussion, and not always about the book. It's fun to see where the conversation leads. We usually chat a little bit and then talk about the book for a while and then we'll get onto other topics, usually other books and movies that we recommend to each other. It's great to get together with a bunch of smart, articulate women and talk about stuff like that.

Saturday morning I met up with Trish and her friend Karyn and we headed to OKC. There wasn't a great turnout for the artist's talk. I was a little disappointed but I thought it went OK, anyway. I was really nervous and forgot a lot of what I was going to say, but I think it made sense. Someone that I didn't know came up to me after and said she enjoyed it, so that made me feel better.

Amy and Michael were there, too, so it was fun to see them. Everybody helped take down the show that evening, so it went really quickly. I definitely recommend having six people pack up your show for you. :-)

We went to a Chinese place for dinner and Clint, the rockstar gallery dude joined us. He told us a little about OKC and the music scene there. It's a much more progressive (less conservative) city than I had originally thought. Or maybe he just knows the cool people and areas...

After dinner, Trish and Karyn and I went to Bricktown. It's sort of a touristy night spot area. We walked along the river and witnessed a potential domestic abuse case, listened to annoying tourist boat captains, and saw lots of graduates, wedding parties and prom dates. It was a busy night in Bricktown.

Amy and Michael had recommended a place called Nonna's, so we went there for dessert. We sat on their third floor patio and listened to the competing live music from Nonna's and some other place across the street. We had some really great desserts. Then we waddled back to the hotel and got some sleep.

I remembered to charge the battery for my digital camera, but I forgot to actually put it in my camera, so I didn't get any shots of the festivities. I'll have to post a link to Trish's pics when she gets them up.

On Sunday we loaded everything up into our cars and headed home. It all wouldn't have fit in my car. Luckily Trish's car has a huge trunk. She can rent it out as a studio apartment if she needs to.

After we got back to my studio and unloaded everything, we decided to go see The Da Vinci Code. Nothing like sitting in a car for three hours and then going to a movie! I liked the movie. I had really low expectations, so it would have had to be really really bad for me not to like it. I loved the book but not in a "great literature" kind of way. It was really well put together but not well written, if that makes sense. The dialogue was really bad, for example. But the book itself was clever and fun. I enjoyed getting out my art history book and looking at the paintings.

It's been a while since I read it, but it seemed like the book had more to do with Da Vinci than the movie did. There seemed to have been reasoning behind why the guy picked the particular paintings to leave his messages by... There were some differences that I could remember, but nothing that bothered me. Tom Hanks' hair only bothered me a few times. I guess it was long so he could look dissheveled or something.

Trish's friend Joann sent me a great new cat link! Kitten War!

Colleen got me thinking about music, but I'm going to post that one later...

Flat Stanley came to Texas and Sam jumped with him on the trampoline yesterday.

I'm heading to OKC again tomorrow to do the gallery talk thing. I have all my slides ready and waiting. I'm just going to show slides of some older work and show the progression to where I am now.

My fear is that people will say, "I like your older stuff a lot better than your newer stuff."

Or even, "You suck."

I'd rather hear, "Where do I send the checks?"

Let's see, what have I found that's interesting? Oh, yes, I rediscovered an oldie but goodie, My Cat Hates You. Someone needs to censor the captions, but otherwise it's funny.

Let's see, I think a link on ReadyMade led me to photojojo, which led me to this interesting site. You can upload a photo, work on it in Photoshop and then upload it again. Kind of fun.

Oh, I also came across some super cool cakes. If only cake would come out of that slot on my computer...

Yet another installation shot... I need to get out there and take some pictures.

I guess Sam is fine today. He spent the night at his dad's last night and apparently he was fine this morning. The doctor yesterday said he might just have a virus or something. Who knows...

I finally started reading Bee Season for my book discussion group. The meeting is tomorrow night. I don't think I'll be done, but I read the book a couple of years ago, so I'll be able to talk about it, at least. I really like it. It's really well written.

I watched Spellbound last weekend (the spelling bee one, not the Hitchcock one). I really enjoyed it. I was expecting to hate some of the parents but none of them seemed overly pushy or "stage-motherish." The more affluent families went a little overboard with tutors and coaches and the kids seem to be fairly over-scheduled, but they also seemed relatively happy and well-adjusted.

I fell in love with a couple of the kids and want to know what happened to them.

Anyway, I'm obviously on a spelling bee kick. I've been reminded of my very short spelling bee career - I won the school spelling bee in 6th grade. I went on to the district bee where I promptly lost. It didn't occur to me to study or anything... To add to my humiliation, when I got home, I told my smart ass little brother the word that I had missed and he immediately spelled it correctly. I still haven't forgiven him for that.

Shards... a piece that's hanging from the ceiling at the OKC show.

Well, Sam's sick again today. He says he has a sore throat and that his body hurts all over. He doesn't have a fever but he does look like he doesn't feel good. My mom's out of town today, so I'm home with him. Poor guy.

Last night we walked to the square for dinner. We started a "go out to eat on Tuesday night" tradition a couple of months ago. Since it was so nice yesterday and I needed some exercise, I talked him into walking to J&J's pizza on the square. Of course, then he talked me into going to Recycled Books and then to Beth Marie's for ice cream... But at least we got some fresh air and exercise. For the record, I didn't have any ice cream.

I was just remembering something I read the other day on the Dallas Morning News website. They have a section where people can comment on TV shows and movies. Someone had posted a comment about the recent episode of The Sopranos. One recent story line involves a character named Vito who is gay. Someone saw him at a gay bar and told the other guys about it and he had to leave town. Apparently being gay in the mafia will get you a brand new pair of cement shoes (and cement is SO last season...).

Anyway, the person commented that when they showed Vito and his new boyfriend in bed, he had to leave the room. He didn't seem to mind when Bobby was kicked in the stomach and then shot in the face by some gang members or when Vito shot an innocent man in the back of the head. It's interesting that we're so used to seeing men hurting and killing each other that it's shocking to see them loving each other.

More fishies...

I just heard from the person at the community college in Reno where I'm supposed to have a show later this year. Shwew. I was worried that it wouldn't work out (like the show in Iowa), but it's going to be December 1st, 2006 through January 30th, 2007. There will be a reception on December 5th. So start saving your pennies!

Now I have to figure out what to do about the show I set up in Irving. It's scheduled for January 26 - April 27. And the one in Manhattan, Kansas is scheduled for April 14 - May 26. Oops. I might forfeit it and recommend another artist friend or maybe I'll do something completely different - a new body of work.

I don't even know what the space looks like or really anything about it. It's a gallery at the Irving community television station. I suspect that it's pretty small. Irving has a lot of art stuff going on, so I thought it would be potentially fun. I had originally submitted a proposal for a group show of artist's books but they didn't have pedestals, so I submitted my work instead.

Fun web stuff:
Cockeyed.com had a link to a site where a guy named Keith writes about all the jobs he's had. It's pretty funny.

Trish sent me some scary videos - one was an educational video on menstruation and one was Mr. T, singing. Not sure which was worse...

The fish whisperer...

For my Mother's Day lunch yesterday, I decided to go to Guisseppe's. Sam didn't want to go, of course, but I made him go because it was Mother's Day (in fact, I made him do a lot of things yesterday because it was Mother's Day. Why don't we have it more often?). We sat outside by the fish pond, so life was good. The weather was beautiful.

His head's really not that big...

Then we headed to Sunny's reception. She's graduating with her BFA in painting and I think her minor is ceramics. She had taken my encaustic workshop twice, and included some of her encaustic work in the show. Her imagery includes pears and origami cranes.

Her reception was awesome. She had great food, doughnuts (a bonus for Sam), a chocolate cake with an image of one of her paintings, sparkling pear cider, napkins with pears on them, free pears for everybody, an art table for the kids (with origami and coloring pages), Korean singers, AND she even raffled off t-shirts that had images of her artwork on them. Oh, and her artwork is a tad bit fabulous, too.

Then I forced Sam to go to my studio again - two days in a row - torture! I showed him how to paint with the wax and he loved it, especially using the heat gun.

We ended up leaving earlier than I had hoped, because Sam burned his arm on the heat gun. It was totally my fault and I still feel horrible about it. I stopped him to show him something and I didn't make him put the heat gun down and he got distracted and touched his arm with it. He's fine now - it's not that bad, really - but I felt awful. And of course he milked it for as long as he could.

Oh, I also wanted to giveTrish a little preview... I made Trish some copies of mix CDs and went all crazy and made some CD sleeves, too. I had made a bunch of them for Christmas presents and just had a ball. I rip out pages from design magazines and my mom gives me her old issues of Departures, which have lots of jewelry ads. It's fun to find an image that goes along with the theme of the CD. And sometimes they have nothing to do with anything...


I forgot how much fun they are. I'll probably be making some more soon.

Yarn...

Well, I finally got brave and did something for the whiplash competition on whipup.net. I don't remember where I found whipup - probably from the ReadyMade blog - but I love it and read it every day. I don't consider myself a crafter, really, other than the collage boxes I made for Christmas presents, but I'm inspired by all the hip, cool craft stuff that's going on these days. I'm encouraged that in this age of impersonal technology, young people are taking up activities that were most likely passed on to them from their mothers or grandmothers.

The point of the whiplash competition is to make something over the weekend inspired by the theme. This time it's "yarn."

OK, enough stalling, here's my entry:

I don't crochet or knit, although I've always wanted to learn to knit... The yarn theme made me think of a ball of yarn that one of my students left with me after an encaustic workshop. Maybe it's not technically yarn, I don't know, but it's really cool. She had been playing around with covering the yarn with wax and then pulling it away to get some cool patterns.

Here's what the yarn looks like:

I started with a scrap piece of 2x4 (roughly 4" x 6"), brushed on 2 coats of wax medium that I tinted with prussian blue oil paint. I then brushed some yellow encaustic paint over the yarn and pulled it away. I did it again with magenta and yellow-green wax. I fused each layer with a heat gun.

Here's a cropped shot of the piece:

I'm sorry it took me so long to finally enter whiplash (this is the last week), but hopefully they'll do it again soon and I'll be more brave!

Barn swallow...

This evening, Sam and I walked around the track across the street at the middle school. In the middle of the field, I noticed three birds flying around close to the ground. I thought they might be purple martins but after looking them up I think they were more likely barn swallows.

We sat in the middle of the field and watched them. At one point there were six or seven of them flying, swooping, diving, and chasing each other all around us. Sam said, "It's like an air show except without the sound."

My cousin Ketty came over this morning and brought me flowers and a nice mother's day present - a pretty box with two little ramekins of flan. I've never had flan before. I'm eating some right now. It's really good - kind of like creme brulee without the burnt sugar crust.

I'm going to take a picture tomorrow when I eat the other one. It's very pretty.

Larry sent me some more great music. I'm listening to the Jayhawks right now. They're great.

Sam and I went to my studio today and I worked on a couple more paintings. I showed him how to paint with the wax and he had lots of fun, especially playing with the heat gun. I forgot my camera so I didn't get a picture of his masterpiece. I think my mother's day present will be to hang out at my studio again tomorrow. Maybe I'll get a picture then.

Another shot of the claynadoes, papernadoes, and waxnadoes...

Turns out Sam did have strep throat after all. My mom looked at his throat yesterday morning and said it looked red and suggested that he go to the doctor. I honestly thought he was faking. I was shocked when the doctor confirmed that it was strep.

I guess I need to look at his throat some time when he doesn't have strep so I can know what a normal throat looks like, huh? :-)

So he's at my mom's again, today, being spoiled rotten. That's what grandmas are for, I guess...

Haven't found a lot of fun web stuff yet today. Except for this artist's site. I didn't spend a whole lot of time on her site, but her artist's books are really nice.

Oh, I almost forgot about zombo.com! Came across this site yesterday - I think it was a link from the origami math guy's blog... I'm not sure why it amuses me so, but it does.

Another shot of the OKC show...

Sam is at my mom's house today, sick with a sore throat. I'm never really sure if he's really sick or not most of the time. Sometimes I can tell but most of the time I feel like I make the wrong choice - I either send him to school anyway ("Buck up!") and he ends up really being sick or I let him stay home and he ends up driving me crazy because he's fine. Yet another thing to beat myself up over.

I'm pissed off about an upcoming show in Iowa. I'm not sure who to be pissed at, though, them or me. I got a letter from them about a year ago saying, "Congratulations! You got a show, etc." And they tentatively scheduled it for September of 2006. The letter states, "We will be contacting you by phone and email to finalize our gallery schedule."

I haven't heard anything from them, so I emailed the other day to get the final schedule. The person emailed back saying that since they hadn't heard from me, they filled that spot in the schedule but they want my show there and hopefully will work out another time.

I was upset. The letter they sent doesn't indicate that I should contact them to hold the spot. I keep reading it to see if maybe I missed something. Anyway, I emailed back trying not to sound too defensive but still wanting to work with them. We'll see what happens. It might be February of 2007 instead.

I've been watching coverage of the tornado(es) that hit east of here a couple of nights ago. I was watching the news when it happened but since it was dark there weren't really any good shots of it. Three people died in the storm in an area that doesn't have sirens. Very sad. It was probably fortunate that it didn't hit a few miles to the south in a much more populated area. The tornado was about a half mile wide. I heard something about some strange things happening during the storm, too. Someone reported that after the storm, their horse was in a tree. I need to find out more about that story.

My stormchaser friend Amos has info on his blog. OK, he's not my friend, but he lives in Denton and I emailed him about my OKC show and he posted my show info and suggested I invite the storm tour people to the show... We're supposed to meet for coffee one of these days. I have a gazillion questions to ask him!

That reminds me, Twister was on again last night. I always catch either the beginning or the end, but haven't seen it all the way through in quite a while.

I want to go to the Twister museum. Good cheesy fun. I think it's down the road from the world's biggest ball of twine.

Let's see - fun internet stuff... Larry sent me this link for origami math. Not sure if he's making math fun or making origami boring...

Also found this site for The 1 Second Film. They're raising money for charity. You can donate as little as $1 and be listed as a producer on IMDB.

This just in...

Just got a link to a review of my OKC show in The Oklahoman!

The new mower...

I finally broke down and bought a lawnmower yesterday. I didn't want to buy a big honkin' gas-powered mower, especially since I have a miniscule yard, so I got a nice little reel mower at Ace Hardware. Sam was very excited about it. I hardly got to use it at all (I was planning on it being my exercise).

It works OK unless there's a twig anywhere within a 3 mile radius. It doesn't take much to jam it. Oh well, it's not like we have to mow an acre or anything. In a couple of months the grass will be dead, anyway. I'm not much for watering (or even going outside) in July or August.

Oh, and I'm planning on buying lots more at Ace Hardware to protest Home Depot's abandoning my side of town. They're moving over to the hell side of town (near Wal Mart and horrible traffic). So now if I need lumber, I have to brave the crowds and traffic. I liked Lowe's better to begin with (better customer service), but HD was so damn close. Ace has great service (they trip over themselves to help as you come in the door), and they also have a kitty named Sam. If only they had lumber and a bigger selection...

The find of the day (so far): NNDB - the Notable Names Database. Lots of info on famous people.

A couple of oldies but goodies that I dug up yesterday: Human Clock, Despair Inc, and Sorry Everybody. We're still sorry.

Enjoy!

A silhouetted version of a photo I used earlier... Playing around with Live Trace in Illustrator. Fun stuff.

I wasn't able to post this morning because Blogger wasn't responding. Well, better nate than lever, right?

I went to the dentist this morning for a cleaning. I'm such a dork that going to the dentist is an exciting thing. Especially now that I have insurance!

In my internet travels, I found some origami beer labels. Kind of fun.

Let's see... oh, yes, I found a really depressing article about single women in their 40's being alone forever... So it just compounds my fear - that I'll die, nobody will notice, and my cat will eat me.

Oh, I almost forgot - on a much more positive note - I'm going to have a show in Douglasville, Georgia, probably summer or fall of 2007! I had stopped sending out proposals but my aunt was here a couple of months ago and said I should send one to the Cultural Arts Council in Douglasville. She and my cousins live near there. My mom was worn in Douglasville. Oddly enough, so was my ex-husband's mom. They didn't know each other, though. Weird. Oh, btw, Douglasville is a suburb of Atlanta.

Anyway, the woman I talked to was very nice and I was very excited when she mentioned the word, "fee." As in, they would pay me one. Super cool. Nobody's ever done that before. :-)

Detail of a new piece I finished this weekend...

Last week, when we had some severe storms pass through, I was glued to the weather, of course. On the radar you could see these vibrating circles that indicated areas of rotation, which of course means a possible tornado. I don't recall ever seeing those circles before. I thought they were visually really interesting. So I made a painting this weekend that kind of looks like a radar image with some of those rotation circles.

I think I might do a whole series exploring that concept.

I did a "part 2" workshop at my studio on Saturday. A few people who had taken my workshops have come back for a second time, so I thought I'd offer a part 2, or open workshop type of thing. I didn't really teach, I was just there working and I answered questions or gave advice as things came up. Allison and Cathy came and we had a fun time. You can see images of the work they created here.

After the workshop, Allison forced me to go to Miguelito's for dinner and margaritas. This isn't the first time, either. She's a bad influence on me.

Then I went to my friend Tracey's for a get-together for her husband, who finally finished his PhD after only 8 and a half years. It was fun to see them.

I watched Shaun of the Dead on Friday night. It was quite funny. It was definitely a zombie movie that just happened to be funny. I guess all zombie movies are funny, just not on purpose.

I wanted to see it after reading this blog. I remembered seeing Dawn of the Dead for the first time. I must have seen it at a midnight movie when I was in high school. It's a little fuzzy... I remember it being a ton of fun, though. I definitely remember one of the zombies getting his head cut off by helicopter blades.

Not Citizen Kane, of course, but good zombie fun.

Anyway, Shaun of the Dead was funny but not necessarily a spoof of the genre. You could tell that everybody involved genuinely loved zombie movies. Lots of limbs being torn off, heads being ripped off, etc. Check it out!

One of George Wilson's pieces in the OKC show...

I love the Oklahoma license plates, "Oklahoma is OK." But to me it seems more like they're saying, "Oklahoma? It's OK..."

The reception went well. My feet hurt from standing for 3 hours in uncomfortable (but stylish) shoes and my ass hurts from sitting for 6 hours in a purple (yet very unstylish) car. I met a lot of nice people and talked about my work. No sales, but Clint is optimistic that some work will sell. I have no expectations, so whatever happens is fine. Translation: I'm used to not selling anything. :-)

I made a contact at the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition, so maybe I can drum up some more workshop participants from that.

I enjoyed looking at George Wilson's work. His work is more whimsical, maybe, and very well executed. He's a sculptor and a jeweler but also draws and paints. Similar theme, of course, with the tornado, but he also uses a simplified house shape. Interesting.


Clint did a great job installing the big tornado. It's not how I installed it previously, but I think it's going to be different each time someone installs it, which is a good thing. And having someone else do all the work is definitely a bonus.

Oh, I asked Clint what his work is like (he's a painter, too), and he described it as "pop surrealism" that involves hamsters and robots. I'm so intrigued by that. Who doesn't love hamsters and robots?

So I'm looking forward to going back on the 20th to do my presentation. I'm going to show slides of some older work. Maybe some vacation slides. Lots of baby pictures. It's going to be great!

He looks a little unstable...

So Teresa suggested a Salma Hayek-nado. See the comments to see Trish's great suggestion.

I vaguely remember some chips called "cornadoes," but can't find anything about them...

I just saw a trailer for the upcoming Running with Scissors movie. It looks really good - quirky, dark humor - much like the book, which I really liked.

I'm heading to OKC today - working until noon and then getting my stuff and heading out. I'll take lots of pictures and have some good stories to post.

A new phobia?

I've been reading a book called "Freaks of the Storm," a collection of weird weather stories. I got it for the tornado stories, of course, but I also learned more about waterspouts and dust devils, and a new kind of tornado - a "fire-nado." This completely freaks me out. Apparently tornadoes of fire can be formed inside really hot fires. Tornadoes of fire.


Holy crap!

I'm not sure what to do with this information.

It does bring up the question, "Of what other substances could a tornado be formed?" I, for one, would vote for a chocolate-nado. Let's see - cheese-nado, corn-nado(!), Jello-nado, cash-nado, Johnny-Depp-nado...

Climbing the wall... Sam's the one on the left.

The car is in the shop today, getting a tune-up. It needs to get me to OKC on Thursday. I hope they can get the hood open - some woman backed into me in her Humscalade a couple of weeks ago and crunched it a bit. I need to go get an estimate, but I've been too busy. And it's hardly worth it. Poor car. It's so sad.

I think it needs to be an art car. I've been thinking about that ever since I got it, but I'm not sure how to do it. I haven't been inspired yet, I guess.

Dude from the car place just called - so far we're up to $205. Tie rod's about to fall off, whatever that is. Something about steering. I guess I need to be able to steer...

Oh, check out these corporate training videos from the CEO of Despair, Inc. I like the "It Could Be Worse," strategy.