taking steps

After all the festivities and hostess-ing I'm also proud that I made a deadline!

"Material Witness" being held by the WCAGA right here in Georgia.

Time to get some of these creatures out into the public eye. I'd cross my fingers but I have work to do.

all manner of celebrations

It's been an interesting weekend.  Discussions with a young and successful commercial artist (the great Bamboota!) has led me to new paths of thought regarding specialization and niche marketing. This article about the death of art galleries and the games played out there was a brain expander as well.

detail from current wip

Throw in an orgy of unaccustomed physical activity (that pot garden) and few thousand alien calories and I feel like the day after certain illicit activities back in the late sixties with some new grooves in my brain and some old ones paved over.

As an unaffiliated and unshriven heathen I'm always interested in the religious and secular festivities of other groups. Neighbors up the street have roasted something large on a spit and are now soccering loudly. Folks were rioting for chocolate bunnies in the stores around noon today and a local hardware store was giving away bunches of nearly dead flowers. I took some of course.

So I left TB with my holiday lunch (chalupas and lime spritzer) and crossed the street to a decommissioned church and sat in the car listening to jazz and waiting out the sudden downpour. When the rain stopped I could see that I had backed my car right up to the edge of the abandoned cemetery and so, left my raggedy but hopeful and highly redolent purple hyacinths planted over Mrs. L. E. Paris, dead of the grippe in 1888. Once home, I sat through most of my favorite vaguely religious cartoon - "the Prince of Egypt" . Happy Easter y'all.

 Now it's time to settle in for a nice stitch fit.  I dreamed my way through several approaches and have decided that I'm going to spend a good long time embroidering this one.

You can see why the look of this animation appeals to my magpie brain.

Now it's Spring..

I used chunks of broken cast iron and some good sized pebbles to keep the drainage clear and built a base of bricks to get pot up off the ground. This tub is nearly three feet across and tall, a real beast.

Bless Colin for all the heavy lifting and shoveling. I got the fun part, setting the plants and watering.

Our first garden visitor of the season looks like royalty.

I really like this....

Happy Friday everybody!

There is nothing like having company to shake up a lax household. Since my Goodman has gone on the road for his job this place has become rather like Animal House without the liquor and the orgies...just the Sloth, thank you.

But because one of Colin's friends is here for a short visit I was out the door at 8 to get the makings for breakfast and a spaghetti dinner. Bathrooms were sanitized, and the whole place generally deloused before the arrival. I may take up offering the living room couch once a month on AirBnB just for the incentive.

I don't think I've cooked a decent meal since Jim was last home and that didn't turn out all that great. The other night I even let Colin talk me into having TB for dinner. I do not want to know what is in a Baja Chalupa or the Apple Carmel Empanada, I just know they were delicious.  If left to my own devices I would be eating bread, butter and sugar sandwiches, turkey pot pies and Nestles Quik stirred into water and the occasional roll of raw cookie dough . Yes, that bad.

While I was out shopping I was waylaid by the displays of annuals banked up in front of every place with a cash register and did my bit to support the economy of Plant City, FL.

I started pulling the old dead stuff out of the giant planter by the front walk only to find that just under the surface  the pot was filled with water. I was able to get it turned on its side to drain but the whole gardening thing will be on hold until I can  clean it out and start from scratch.

Can it be? Actual fun in the studio? Had myself a good start on my own kind of  Holi day  most of yesterday and before noon today..I don't know what's being celebrated but I'm having a good time.







I know design rules are being violated up, down and sideways but at this stage of  why be a spoiler?  It's early and wiser eyes will settle in along the way.

the little things

While I was shooting something else, I rediscovered this tiny detail sewn into one of the corners of the backside of "Spooky Stories".

I remember carrying this tiny shred of damask around in a shirt pocket for the longest time. It got washed inside there several times.

Just two inches on the long side, I just didn't want to see it dissolve into nothingness.

sunny day color play

Just having a little quick and dirty color  play in celebration of  a sunny day over fifty degrees, the full moon and a day off from the whine mine.

Time for a little basting before he comes back for round two.

auditioning and wraps-ups

I started the morning with all good intentions - the only way to a fresh start is with fresh materials - so I pulled a couple of the "mine" bins from the shelf and began eyeballing things. Too many things, as it turned out.

Unfortunately, I also came across FOUR nearly finished small things and my Yankee frugality kicked in and derailed my boho-creative side for practical matters at hand. Git 'er done.

story telling and true truths

What to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon when the muse is awol but to surrender to our resident film critic and watch a film he's been insisting I would enjoy. He was right.

Cloud Atlas was visually compelling, revelatory and inspiring. You have to wonder about why certain films don't make it out to a wider audience. It's nice to know that  True truths have a way of getting out there.

whitework

While artists all over the world are exploring "white" with Jude, I unearthed this little 12" square that I did some time ago. I do recall being mostly unsatisfied with it because nothing I could do compared with the beautiful scrap of Mountmellick embroidery (that very white, deeply embroidered flower) that I had the nerve to incorporate and stitch all helter-skelter around.  

Somehow that doesn't bother me much anymore and I have an idea of how I want to finish it.

voodoo in repose

Voodoo making the best of a damp, chilly Friday afternoon.  

Pops "Spooky Stories" has become the favorite cuddle in the studio.

Basta!

Enough! I've turned the room upside down and can't find them. I need a chirper for my cutlery. Must speak to M about that.

I've convinced myself they were getting dull and had been disappointing me. As soon as I buy a new pair (yay 50% off coupons!) they will turn up and I will grovel, apologize and love them.

Nothing wrong with two or three or four good scissors..