When my kids were little the three of us spent a lot of time watching Sesame Street together. One of the Bert and Ernie sketches had the two of them in a rowboat, fishing — without any luck, until Ernie had the bright idea to just call the fish. “Here fishy, fishy, fishy!” And suddenly fish were flying out of the water and into their boat.
There was another little “mini documentary” about an Eskimo child and her day to day life which had one line in it that Lina and I still quote pretty much any time there’s salmon for dinner: “I realllly, realllly like feeesh!”
Well. I DO really, really like fish, so I am having a great time creating a series of 10 small tarps which will be hung on the framework of the patio railing at Reel Foods on Capitol Blvd. starting in July, and running through September into October, depending on the weather.
I’ve completed the first layer on all 10 — they are cut and taped — and will start in soon on the second layer of Sharpie and paint pen “grafitti.”
Yesterday I found refuge from all the sturm und drang of our house sale in the pleasant distraction of doing a little house painting.
A little bird house painting, to be exact.
They say when you’re feeling sorry for yourself the best medicine is to think about somebody else and do something nice for them.
Every year the Idaho Humane Society finds various creative ways to raise money to help find homes for all the wonderful animals that end up on their doorstep. This year, artists are painting bird houses to be auctioned.
It felt good to think for a change about somebody else finding their perfect people and future home.
I know, I know! I’ve been just terrible about keeping up with this blog. Inertia is a total bitch! She sneaks up on you and before you realize it, it’s been 2 WEEKS since your…MY…last post. Uuugh.
At least the inertia hasn’t extended to the rest of my life as I’ve actually been quite busy. On the TVAA front, I submitted a piece to the TVAA & Track 13 juried exhibition “Water Works” called “The View from Logan.” I’ll find out if it gets into the show this week.
I also got the prospectus written, and it’s now posted for Foray IV — our final FORAY, and my last exhibition as the Chair of the TVAA Exhibition Committee. I’ve been the “buck stopper” for all 15 shows we’ve put on so far, 14 of which I curated. It’s been wonderful, a crapton of work, and I’m ready for a break.
Along with Will Spearman and the other Excoms, Carol Elliot Smith, and Jordan Newberry, we laid out the dates and themes for the shows through 2015 and will soon have those posted on the TVAA website. It will be a good year and I plan to create new work for each of the shows. Our themes will be “Menagerie,” “Spring Awakening,” “Collage/Assemblage,” and “Cuisine-Art.”
I’ve also been seeing spots everywhere I look!
That’s a hot pink Lula as one of the See Spot Walk dogs I painted for this year’s campaign. My designs are showing up everywhere — on posters, rack cards, in the Boise Weekly. Lula’s famous, and she has no idea!
I also took the time to create a piece on the off chance it might become the cover of this year’s Moxie Java Idaho Ho Ho CD. They said they’d let us know by the 15th of September and I haven’t heard anything (All together now….Grrrrrrrr!) so I guess, no news probably means no cover. But here’s the design anyway. It’s called “Googly Tidings to You and Your Kin.”
I also (I’m trying to see how many “I also’s” I can get into this post) completed my first Second Life of my Treefort Tarp Picada “Granny Squares.” It’s too big to have just one photo of the whole thing, so here are a couple of detail shots:
And finally, I also (that makes 5) have begun yet another rearrangement of our house to better accommodate our use of the rooms as studio/working/living/showing/entertaining/escaping spaces. The first room to be transformed is a room that we called the “workroom” but which was really the “dump” — the room where things we planned to deal with later went to die.
We emptied it out completely, vacuumed up about 20 deadly poisonous spiders, then replaced tools and things we actually will use again in an orderly fashion, and today I plan to prime the walls for painting a color other than their current shade of “death warmed over.” I’m so excited!
Oh! And the best part is we’ve discovered that if you put ANYTHING with a “FREE” sign on it out in our driveway it will disappear. Like magic. All this time, and it was our driveway where we should have been putting those things we planned to deal with later! Well, live and learn!
I’ll try to be better about posting from now on. But if things get too crazy I can’t promise I won’t hang a “FREE” sign around my neck and go sit in my driveway.
At least you’ll have an explanation if I disappear again!
The deadline for submissions for TVAA’s next exhibition “Four Eyes: An Optical Collusion” is looming. I’ve completed one collaboration, the block print “Confluence,” and I am in the process of completing a second one with Barbara Bowling.
It will be titled “The Abdication of the Sylvan Beauty Queen on the Occasion of her Epiphany,” and will have three parts.
This is one of the parts, which I have just finished, the second part is underway, and Barbara is busily fabricating the third part as I write.
And this is the fabric design using the image without altering the color. I’m calling this design “Shards.”
This is a grouping of the doggies I designed for this year’s “See Spot Walk” fundraiser for the Idaho Humane Society:
And this is the fabric design with the colors altered. This one is called “Hot Dogs!”
Finally, this is the ink drawing I did for the design for the block I carved for my portion of the collaborative block print “Confluence.”
And this is the fabric design with 24 colors — I told you I was obsessed! I’m calling it “Fire & Ice Indian Feather.”
What do you think? Seriously.
Am I just having too much fun, or do you think these would actually make fabric which you would buy? Let me know. You can let me know by emailing me in the “Contact Me” link in my sidebar.
