This makes me laugh every time I watch it:

I've been wanting to blog about my recent trip but haven't made the time for it until now.

I went to the Salem, Massachusetts area for an encaustic painting conference last week. It was a lot of fun.

Dennis gave me a pass for Southwest, so I had to fly standby, which is scary to begin with but a little more scary during peak travel times. The conference started on Friday evening but I had been invited to a reception on Thursday evening, so I had to fly on Wednesday just in case I got stuck somewhere and wasn't able to get there in time. I made it to Manchester, NH late Wednesday night.

I was originally going to take a flight from Dallas to Chicago that stopped in Little Rock and then I'd catch another flight to Manchester. Unfortunately the flight out of Little Rock was full, so I got bumped and had to wait there for 5 hours. I finished my book (The Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love - hilarious). I had brought another book (Off the Wall: a Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg) but it was very slow and hard to get into, so I went to the bookstore and bought Shopaholic Takes Manhattan. Trish had mentioned the series and said she liked them. Fluffy chick lit, but perfect for the plane.

I finally got on a flight to Baltimore and then got right on one to Manchester. I ended up getting in around 9:00 and then had to drive to Salem, which is about an hour away.

I had actually been to Salem when I was about 10. We lived in Rhode Island for 2 years and visited a lot of places while we were there. I remember visiting the Witch Museum and The House of the Seven Gables (although I have to admit that my memories of the House are mixed with my memories of that episode of Bewitched where Samantha is teased by the haunted bedwarmer or something or other in her visit there - yes! I looked it up - it was a bedwarmer...).

On Thursday, I drove to Lexington (that whole "shot heard round the world" thing happened there) to meet my cousin Rebecca and her girls. Rebecca is from the Atlanta area but lived in Providence, Rhode Island for a few years. She met her husband and they got married there but moved to Georgia after the wedding. They just moved to Massachusetts about 3 weeks ago.

Rebecca, Jenna, and Janelle

It was fun to see them. I hadn't met little Jenna. She's very cute and very busy.

When I got back to Salem I considered taking a nap but decided that I should go out and see stuff. So I walked around near the harbor and went into some shops. The weather was gorgeous - in the 70's and low 80's. One shop owner asked me where I was from and when I said Texas, he said, "Oh, then you're used to the heat." I said, "This heat? Are you kidding?"

I walked by The House of the Seven Gables and looked at the harbor.
I'm still amazed at all the history there. There were lots of houses that had these signs on them, listing the builder and the year they were built.


So much history, culture, and natural beauty... but of course I wouldn't last a winter...

That night I went to a reception of encaustic artists that was really great (I'm blogging about the conference on my other blog).

I need to process the rest of my photos in order to continue, so...

to be continued...

Just a quick post, since my fans (well, Trish) have been clamoring (well, mentioned it once) for one.

Trish came to my studio the other day and we played a bit with wax. That's her above...

Sam and I drove to Kansas on Saturday. We drove to Manhattan and spent the night. We took a scenic drive off the highway and it was really pretty. We drove through a couple of cute little small towns. They reminded me of Melissa, Texas, where my grandma lived for a while. The kind of town that you miss if you blink when you drive by.

We packed up my stuff on Sunday and then headed to Overland Park to stay with Larry and family. I hope they're not getting sick of me - it's the 4th time I've seen them this year and the 3rd time that I've said, "Hey! I'm going to be there tomorrow, can I stay with you?" They're good sports and are willing to put up with my last-minutedness. Is that a word?

Got to see Colleen for a while, too, and the boys played together. I took my camera but completely forgot to take pictures.

One evening we went to a park and got to see a few ducks and lots of geese, including some cute little baby geese.

Could they be any cuter?

We discovered that the adult geese will hiss at you if you get too close to their babies. I managed to catch Mrs. (or Mr.) Goose above in mid-hiss.

My dad and stepmom are visiting this week and we've been hanging out with them. Today they took a tour of the studio. After they left, Sam and his cousin did some painting.

It's so fun watching them play around with it.

I'm going to be busy this weekend packing up stuff for the art league's show. I'm going to start in the morning for a couple of hours.

I was supposed to do a workshop this weekend but nobody signed up for it. I need to figure out how to market those book workshops better...

I'm also doing some editing of some Word documents for someone that I know that works at UNT.

...and I need to prepare for my book workshop on Monday in conjunction with the book show at TCC.

Oh, and I'm going to get together with Trayc - she finished up her Waxy Buildup work. We're going to work on a proposal and figure out where to send it.

Schwew! Busy...

I posted some photos of a couple of Sam projects on Flickr. The paper plate popup book of the Texas Revolution and an action-packed comic book, The Adventures of Bob and Rob.

You can also see photos from Trish's graduation celebration last week. We had fun watching Trish get trashed!

Oh, and check out the installation shots of the Beyond the Scrapbook show at Tarrant County College.

This next week is Sam's last week of 4th grade! He's ready for summer. He's going to do a bunch of camps in June and go with my mom and his cousins to Palo Duro Canyon for a week. He's going to be busy.

Tonight I'm going to Trayc's 40th birthday party in Dallas. Tomorrow I think I'm going to hang out in my studio. I need to figure out what I'm going to paint next.

Sam's class went to the Fort Worth zoo last Friday. Here's a picture of Sam and one of his classmates in the petting zoo. It was fun but would have been better if there hadn't been 4000 other field trips happening there at the same time. It was a nightmare - so crowded! It took almost 2 hours to get there because of all the traffic, so we had to practically run through the zoo. "Look! An elephant! OK, let's go!"

I had borrowed my mom's car to make the trip to Kansas. Before I left I took my car to the shop so they could try to figure out what was wrong with it - it would occasionally just die while I was waiting at stop lights. Not all the time, though...

So they couldn't figure out what was wrong with it so I picked it up on Friday afternoon. I drove to Dallas on Saturday night for the spring gallery night but when I got to Lewisville my car just stopped accellerating. I pulled off the highway and stopped in a parking lot. It wouldn't start again, so I called AAA and my mom rescued me and I borrowed her car again.

Turns out the timing belt broke. It was going to cost more to fix than the car was worth. So I'm going to buy my mom's car from her. They were planning on getting a new truck soon, anyway...

I complained to John about the car but he said he wouldn't give me my money back. Rude! Oh, well - I guess I got my money's worth out of it.

We had some crazy weather yesterday. I was driving around when the first storm hit - buckets and buckets of rain. I had to pick Sam up during the second storm. Streets were rivers. It was crazy. While I was driving (the low-to the ground PT Cruiser) through the rivers, praying that my brakes would work, I was thinking, "This is so scary!" At the same time, Sam yelled, "This is so cool!"

The drainage ditch behind our house overflowed and flooded some of the houses behind us. Luckily our house is up high enough that we didn't get flooded. It was scary. They showed video from Denton on the Today show this morning...

But it's a gorgeous day today! Weird how that happens.

F2 - artist's book - installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

installation view from Seeking Shelter at the Manhattan Arts Center, Manhattan, Kansas

Had fun in Kansas. I drove up on Tuesday and had a fairly uneventful drive. I was wondering how many times I've taken that trip up I-35. When I was little and we lived in Kansas (between the ages of 3 and 7 and then again from about 10 to 12), my maternal grandparents lived in McKinney and Melissa, so we would drive down to visit them. Then when I was in high school, we moved here and we would drive to Kansas to visit Larry and Ellen and Colleen. I'd estimate that I've made that trip maybe 15 times. I don't know. There are so many things that are so familar about it. Frontier City in Oklahoma City. The Horseshoeing School somewhere in Oklahoma (I can always go there if the art thing doesn't work out), the Flint Hills along the Kansas Turnpike, the big Coors beer can at the northern end of the Turnpike (which is either gone or I missed it this time), and the curiously located Knute Rockne memorial. Oh, now I get it. If I had stopped to actually look at it one of those times maybe I wouldn't have been so confused...

Anyway, the trip always takes 8 hours.

I stayed with Larry and Ellen, who were nice enough to live with all my boxes for a couple of weeks. I had sent my work to them from the last show in Iowa, since the art center in Manhattan didn't have room to store the stuff.

On Wednesday, I drove to Manhattan, which is about 2 hours from Overland Park. Larry helped me stuff all my boxes into the car. I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't all fit. Well, it fit, but I couldn't see out while I was driving. I had to use the force the whole way. It was stupid and very scary.

I realized later that when I had fit it into the car before (plus two additional long paintings and Trish!), I hadn't packed everything for shipping. This time the smaller (14" x 14" x 14") boxes were packed inside larger (18" x 18" x 18") boxes. I also had my house sculpture and the wooden circle in boxes this time. So it all took up so much more room. Had I realized that earlier, I would have taken the smaller boxes out of the larger ones. Which is what I did once I unpacked everything. I broke down the larger boxes and brought them back with me. When I go back to pick it all up again, if anything doesn't fit, I can always ship it back home.

Manhattan is a really cute town in the beautiful Flint Hills. They call Manhattan The Little Apple. It reminded me a little of Denton, since it's a college town.

Colleen went with me to the reception. We were worried the night before since they were predicting 3 inches of snow in Overland Park and 5" in Manhattan. It rained and snowed Friday night but nothing really stuck, so we had good travelling on Saturday. We stopped in Lawrence to eat at one of Colleen's old college hangouts.

Not many people came to the reception but we had fun, anyway. Afterwards, we went to a cool restaurant near the K State campus - an area they call Aggieville (K State is a big agricultural school).

It was a good trip.

So this is my first full week of being an artist. I'm freaking out a little but it's OK.

Last night I went to a meditation class at the local Unitarian church. It's lead by someone from a Buddhist center (temple?) in Arlington. I enjoyed it. I've been wanting to try meditation and wanted to get more information about it.

I was supposed to go to Houston this weekend to teach a workshop but they had to reschedule, so I'm not sure when that's going to happen. I'm kind of glad that it's not this weekend, though, since I was gone so long last week...

Check this out:



How fun is that?

Do your own: Spell with Flickr.

My new iPod case. Lucky for me my stepdad is a tool guy. He cut the holes for me. Thanks for the tin, Trish!

I bought a sheet of craft foam and cut it to fit the inside. I cut a couple of pieces for each side of the iPod so it wouldn't slide around. I need to cut a piece of foam for the top to keep it from flipping around inside when it's closed.

Well, I guess a lot has happened since Pi Day. I had been thinking about it for a while but I finally gave my notice at work. I go through phases where I'm really excited about it and think it's the best thing I could have done and other times when I wonder what was I thinking?

You can see all my justifications and ruminations about it here.

Right now I'm in an excited phase.

Oddly enough, as soon as I gave my notice, I got really busy at work. Go figure. Next week will be my last week. I'm staying an extra week to help them make sure my position gets posted and to help out with an event - one of my bosses is coordinating a guest artist lecture next week with Lauren Greenfield, photographer and director of Thin, an HBO documentary about eating disorders. I brought a copy of the DVD home to watch this weekend. I'm afraid it's going to be hard to watch...

I was going to have a garage sale tomorrow but it's raining like cats and dogs right now and it's supposed to rain in the morning, too. Maybe next weekend...

I'm going to go with Trish to Fort Worth for her friend Bill's birthday party tomorrow. Then we're going to hit a few galleries for spring gallery night. Yay!

3.14

Happy Pi Day!

I've been spending way too much time playing in the ORG lately. Ze Frank's last show is this week. Kind of sad. Check out this episode - combines two great things - Ze and Jonathan Coulton. If you haven't been watching The Show for the past year, it might not make any sense... If you join the ORG, be sure to quack at me. I'm enchiladaplate, of course.

Jenna came over on Saturday night and I stir-fried some shrimp in my wok. It was edible! Jenna brought some of the new Ben and Jerry's flavor - Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream. It was very yummy. The "sweet taste of liberty in your mouth." Indeed.

Speaking of which... it's almost time for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report...

Krispen (on the left) with an admirer.

I had a great art weekend! The reception on Friday night was good - got to see some people I hadn't seen in a while.

I worked in my studio for a few hours on Saturday, working on my new stuff. You can see it here.

Then I headed out for Lawton. It took about 2 and a half hours to get there from Sanger. It was a nice drive, though. It's weird how it goes from super flat around Gainesville to really pretty and hilly all of a sudden. When I was approaching Lawton I could even see what looked like small mountains (or big hills) in the distance.

The gallery there was super nice. I was surprised that the place was totally packed. Krispen sold 2 paintings right away and 4 more at the end of the night. Pretty good.

This is a piece by one of the other artists showing there at the same time, Steve Hilton. This is called Tea for 48.

I headed back and got home around midnight.

Then yesterday I headed to Fort Worth and met Susan and Kathy at the Modern. We had brunch - awesome food - I had the mediterranean frittata. Yum.

We totally lucked out because the first Sunday of every month is free, so we didn't have to pay to get in. Bonus. We saw a show called Pretty Baby. It was different artist's views and interpretations on childhood. Most of the work was really creepy and dark. Kathy asserted that if you do work about children and you want it in a museum these days, it has to be dark. Probably true.

We walked around in the permanent collection a little bit. I had to worship at the Rothko altar for a minute...

Then we went to Starbucks for a snack and to get a little fresh air since it was so nice outside.

Sam's at scouts right now. Since it was so nice tonight, I decided to walk around the neighborhood rather than go to the gym.

I'm looking forward to the time change so it'll stay light later. And also the clock in my car will be right again. I've managed to change it before, but this time I just couldn't remember how to change it. I'm surprised I'm not an hour early to everything...

A ceramic snail - by Sam.

It's art weekend for me. I went to a reception in Dallas last night - a couple of my friends and fellow former grad-students were in a group show.

Today I'm going to go to my studio and work on my new stuff. And then tonight I'm going to drive to Lawton, Oklahoma to see Krispen's show. I'm supposed to have a show at this gallery next year, so I'm also going to check it out.

Then tomorrow I'm going to meet some friends at the Modern in Fort Worth for brunch and art-looking. We might venture over to the Kimball, too.

Yay, art!

Sam's eye is much better. He complains about it hurting every now and then, but it's only when he doesn't want to do something. Weird how that happens. I took some pictures of it but I'll have to get his permission before I post them.

He said that he told his friends to call him, "Scarface."

I forgot to mention the freakin' weird dust storm we got on Saturday. I looked out of my studio and noticed that the sky was kind of pinkish orange. It was very strange. Apparently it was dust from west Texas. It was super windy, too.

I kept hearing Prince singing, "When I woke up this morning could have sworn it was judgement day. The sky was all purple, there were people running everywhere."

OK, so it wasn't purple... but still. Weirdness. And then I partied like it was 1999.

I had sort of a traumatic day on Saturday. I was teaching my workshop - very casual this time since I only had one student - and Dennis called to say that they were fine, but that he and Sam had been in a car accident.

They were leaving the gym where Sam has karate class and were still in the parking lot, stopped right before turning onto the street, when someone ran into them on the passenger side. Dennis drives an extended cab Nissan pickup and the car that hit them was a full-size pickup.

Some glass must have hit Sam. He had a bad cut on his eyelid and a few smaller ones on his face. Dennis was just sore from the seat belt. The paramedics checked them over and recommended that they go to the minor emergency clinic. Dennis' wife, Melody, took them. They looked at Sam and said that he needed stitches and needed to go to the emergency room, so Melody took him there.

In the meantime, I was trying not to freak out. Dennis assured me that Sam was fine, just a little shook up. I wanted to be with him but then I also wanted to trust Dennis to take care of him. I don't know if that makes any sense or not.

Anyway, when Dennis told me that Melody was taking him to the emergency room, I decided to end the workshop early and go be with him.

I think he was mostly scared. And he freaks out when he knows he's bleeding even a tiny bit, so I'm sure he was really freaked out after the accident. The doctor said that he had two options for stitches - the dissolvable kind (with risk of leaving a scar) and the regular kind (that have to be taken out in 5 days). Sam opted for the dissolvable ones, which I would have chosen, too, I think.

The cut is on his right upper eyelid. He also has a small cut on his nose and a few little cuts on his forehead. They said he'd have a black eye, but it's not too bad right now.

I was trying not to look at his eye while the doctor was messing with it, but before he started stitching, he said, "Hey, look at this - this is really interesting..." Dennis wisely just sat there where he couldn't see (he's very squeamish), but like an idiot, I looked. I have no idea what the doctor said after that point. Something about it being amazing that something didn't do something... I don't know.

But Sam was really brave during the stitches. The shot to numb him might have been worse than the stitches, actually. I think he ended up with six stitches.

Before he went to sleep that night, he said, "I'm really tired. I had a rough day." I agreed. He said, "This is the worst day of my life." Poor baby.

Oh, and on the way home from the hospital, he said, "Life comes at you fast." Indeed.

Last night he said, "My dad used the f-word at that other driver." I told him that was understandable.

So we're very thankful that everybody's OK.

Sam's a little self-conscious about his eye, so I told him to tell everybody that he got attacked by a shark or a tiger or something. I got the usual response, "Ha ha. Very funny."

Oh, Dennis called yesterday to check on Sam and he told me that 10 minutes earlier someone had rear-ended Melody's car. He said there wasn't much damage. I told him to stay home for a few days. It's amazing that with all the commuting he does, driving to Dallas every day for 9 years or so, that he gets into 2 accidents in town, in one weekend...

The Found Art Tuesday theme this week is inspiration. I've been getting inspiration from reading recently, so I thought I'd include words as well as visuals.

This is an empty Whitman's sampler box collaged with odd images.


The inside of the top lid has a piece of paper with, "what inspires you?" over and over. I glued a little glass bead in the center.


Inside the box are 6 cards with inspirational quotes. Well, one of them is from Jack Handy. I think no collection of quotes is complete without a Deep Thought...

Oh, in my quote quest today, I discovered that Oscar Wilde said this, "We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars." Chrissie Hynde just sang it. And then I had that song in my head the rest of the day.

I created a little slip sheet thingie for the title. In small letters underneath it says "(i made this and left it here for you to find)". Last time I actually put my email address on the piece (haven't heard from anyone), but this time I think I want it to be more mysterious.

I don't know where I'm going to leave this one...

This is the start of Sam's Bioniclicious room. I'm not sure how far we're going to go with it...

We're going to go to IKEA tomorrow to get his new loft bed. Exciting!

We went to Temple last night and spent the night there. This morning we got up and went to the Railroad Heritage Museum. Sam had a lot of fun. You can see all the pictures in this flickr set. I went a little crazy with the macro setting. Sam wouldn't let me take any pictures of him, so I was getting excited about numbers and rust and gears and valves...

On the way down and on the way back, we found ourselves in West. I ate some kolaches for you, Jenna. I should have just eaten the ones for you but I also had some for myself.

I'm worn out, so I think I'm going to hit the sack.

Found Art Project

corazon, originally uploaded by enchiladaplate.

I've been carrying this little painting around in my purse, constantly forgetting to leave it somewhere.

The subject for this week is love, of course. The idea is to create a piece of art with that theme and then leave it somewhere for someone to find. Rosa Murillo introduced me to the idea. I've been following her blog for a while and finally got my act together and made something. Now if I could just remember to leave it somewhere...

I also got tagged by Nancy with the 6 Weird Things meme.

So here goes -

Six weird things about me:
1. I hate things between my toes - flip flops, toe socks, or toe rings. No thank you.
2. I love the smell of sawdust. And freshly cut grass. And dirt.
3. I don't like normal things that everybody else likes, like coffee and beer.
4. I like weird combinations of food - like butter on bologna sandwiches or macaroni, chili, and fritos (not that I indulge in those things much any more)
5. My closet is arranged by color
6. I can't stand wet socks - if any part of my sock gets wet, I must change them.

I'm supposed to tag 6 people - I think Colleen's done this one (but if you haven't...), so I'll tag Jenna, Trish, Jessica, and those are the only people I know that read this particular blog...

Now I need to go take my cat to the vet - she has a hurt foot. Poor kitty.

update:

The cat's fine - just has a sore on her foot (most likely from a fight). She got a shot and has to take medicine for a week. Fun for me!

I left my little painting in the art section of the library.

Didn't get the job.

It's OK.

Now I can just concentrate on the art.

And you can find me a millionaire.

The snow that didn't last long...

OK, still haven't heard anything on the job. I'm thinking it's a bad sign.

I still feel bad today but not too bad. I was able to muster some energy to paint half of Sam's room yesterday. I would probably feel better had I just stayed in bed, but I'm glad we got started. For a while I thought we were going to need to do 2 coats. You can't imagine my despair. But luckily it dried OK.

Oh, and Sam helped, too, so he was excited about that.

Last night I watched Thank You for Smoking. I really liked it. Aaron Eckhart is great at playing a jerk.

I think I forgot to mention that I watched The Last Kiss the other night. It was OK. I do like Zach Braff, but the movie was just OK. It reminded me a tad of High Fidelity, which did it much better.

Fun stuff:

Here's something fun to do next time you're on a plane.

I find this jewelry to be alluringly creepy. Of creepily alluring...

I made this piece for Marlys. Late Christmas present...

I think I might have gotten Sam's flu. Thanks, Sam! I started to feel a little icky yesterday and I feel really tired today - I slept most of the day. I had wanted to start painting Sam's room this weekend, but just couldn't muster the energy today. Maybe tomorrow we can start on it.

Cathy and I saw The Queen last night. I really liked it. I thought Helen Mirren was great - she really became her. Sometimes they were portrayed as unfeeling but sometimes as slaves to tradition.

Fun stuff:
You have to check out the Caveman's Crib. Be sure the help him get dressed... Don't use the microwave, though.

I'm so excited to have found out that Michael J. Nelson and the boys have been hard at work, making fun of lots of new movies! I've missed them so much... That reminds me - I think I have one episode of MST3K on tape - The Mole People. I'll have to dig that out and watch it.

I love remixes. Here's a great one, transforming When Harry Met Sally into a horror movie.

Snow!

I didn't have time to upload pictures this morning, but I took a couple... It snowed for a while yesterday but none of it stuck. It snowed again over night and it stuck this time. It looks really pretty. It's really just a light dusting - there's still some grass showing, but it looks pretty on the trees. It's snowing again right now.

No ice or bad roads, though, so we had to go to work and school. Sam was sad. He was out playing in it this morning, of course.

He stayed home from school the last 3 days with the flu. Poor guy. He felt a lot better this morning, though.

I'm starting to feel a little icky, though. I just drank some Emergen-C. Hopefully that will help.

Still haven't heard anything on the job yet.

Here's something fun to waste a few hours:
http://www.bandnamemaker.com/

My new band will be Deanna Smash and the Enchiladaplate Worshipers.

What's your band name?