Monday, April 28, 2008

Happy Valley

So Jaclyn and I have been wanting to move to the woods for a couple of months now, and the perfect place landed in our laps...
HAPPY VALLEY!
Happy it be! It's about 12 minutes deep from the 17 in thick forest jungle ISH complete with ready to eat garden, kiwi and avocado trees! There's easy hiking to a nearby winery and super chill people on the property!
The main room is hexagon shape which means the bathroom and kitchen are huge.
Its mostly run on propane, and the floor heats up from the bottom- like those butt warmers in cars BUT FOR YOUR FEET! There's a woodfire stove for the cozy factor and the bedrooms are at least 20' x 25'!
So, along the tree house right outside in the works we will be guest ready! Sure it's in the Santa Cruz mountains, but we're told the meth labs are over in Boulder Creek. As long as everyone's fine that I choose to shower and shave, I think we'll all get along fine...
We're just waiting on the final ok... then we are open for creative goodness!

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Artist Quarters

Pics from last night's performance at Artist Quarters.
Thanks to canvas Dan Eisinger, the folks putting on Artist Quarters and all the inspiring artist and musicians!

The idea I had was to do 7 of these to represent the days of creation. But, with only two days to plan my new idea, I decided to keep it simple and do one:









"Let There Be Light"
Acrylic on Human
Approximately 6'
=)

After the initial "ooo a tribal man" and "what the..." I got a lot of "that is the COOLEST thing I have ever seen" and "I love watching you paint"...

Yeah I took a risk doing this at Westgate (I'm not really sure WHY, but I guess it's unusual), but hopefully more people will be encouraged to jump out of those boxes...

Friday, April 11, 2008

Where has all the art gone?

I am making a seperate blog now for different art projects i attempt.
You can find them HERE. Here's a teaser...
Good old Bob Dylan (my first attempted celebrity)...

It's not a great blog yet and I'm hoping to get a website of sorts up soon... but in the meantime, its something.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Quirky, Veeeeery Quirky.

Am I quirky? Some would just call me flat out weird, but they really love me for it. I think that's nice. It makes me feel really loved to be known, quirks and all, and still treasured. Makes me feel special. So, since Charlie, one of my favorite quirky of quirkies, who can finish my weird thoughts for me, asked to hear 6 non-important things/habits/quirks about myself, I will oblige. Charlie's oh so cool quirky blog inspired a bit of honesty on my part...

Slight tangent, one of my best friends, Sarah, introduced me to the song "That Time" by Regina Spektor with... "You HAVE to hear this song! It reminds me so much of you!"

"Hey remember that month when I only ate boxes of tangerines...So cheap and juicy! ...tangerines."

Yeah.

Some quirks...

1) I am cuddly, almost like clockwork, at 10pm. No matter where I am, I will suddenly be more touchy. I am also ridiculously cuddly for about 15 minutes when I wake up. My former cat LOVED this and waited until I woke up so she could stroke my hair with her paws, lovingly look into my eyes and start purring.

2) I am ridiculously in love with the smell of cloves. I used to chain smoke 5 of them in a row just for the smell! (And now have smog and fiberglass asthmatic lungs. yay!) I will gravitate to wherever the smell of cloves is and scour the Internet, health and spa stores for clove essential oil (actually difficult to find) cuz I think it makes a superior perfume. I am told it stimulates the circulation (and creativity) which makes sense to me because I am perpetually cold and in search of anything warm in the vicinity (see #4).

3) I wear beaded bracelets because I like to move them, almost like prayer beads, when I walk. I pretty much always like to have something in my hands and prefer to be on the move. I also should say that, while I'm walking or on the move, I avoid tall straight lined fences that cast distorted long lined shadows on the sidewalk. For some reason, that really makes me feel weird. I'm much more comfortable with circles, like beads and bracelets and chain linked fences, then lines.

4) I am almost always cold. If you are almost always warm, I'll probably be sitting right close to you, as close as I can socially pull off, cuz I'm freezing. This is even more true at night. I sleep with a space heater right next to me. When I was a little girl my sister would crawl in bed with me around 2 in the morning cuz she would get so hot she couldn't sleep and I would absorb all her heat. I'm sure theres something to that physically, something that can be scientifically explained, but for the meantime, I'm just drawn to people that are warm. If there's a fire in the room, I'll be right in front of it until my pants start to smoke...

5) Speaking of weird physical things, I just found out that I have larger than normal (substantially so) optical nerves. So much so that the optomotrist says they have to keep checking them, keep them under observation, just in case it "grows" to glacoma someday. But for now, it's just the way my eyes are, more sensitive. I've always known I had larger than normal pupils. They almost never need to give me those eye drops cuz my eyes naturally take in a lot of light. So why is this weird? Cuz I'm an artist and very sensitive to light and color. I used to read in the dark. It fascinates me that God would make me that way, like physically design me to be an artist. Or, I guess some could argue that I evolved that way and some people end up evolved into artists or poets. But is that true? Can you be more physically pre-disposed to live one way? Charlie says she thinks I have secret superpowers. She definitely might be onto something...
It's probably more like a talent you have to work at. For example, I also have ridiculously good hearing. Like I can hear what people are saying across a house. And I also have long skinny fingers- a freak genetic accident cuz no one in my family has fingers like mine. People predicted I would be a phenomenal piano player, but I just didn't develop that skill as much as other musical instruments, so I never became a great pianist... but maybe I could have been. So, I don't really know what's quirkier here, the fact that I have these bodily quirks or the obsessive fascination I have in analyzing them...

6) If my nails aren't well manicured, I don't feel pretty. I feel like a slob. Nobody ever REALLY told me this makes you slobby, and I don't really think that when I look at other peoples chipping nail polish, but I can't stand looking at my own screwy nails... by the same token, I think paint splattered all over my hands after painting is even prettier. I also think that people writing or paintings on my arms or body might be one of the funnest things ever.

Tag stratagem: I will tag Shannon, Jon and Raquel because I am SUPER interested to see what they will put down as their quirks... you creative funnys you...

Rules:
1. link to the person who tagged you.
2. post the rules.
3. share 6 non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4. tag at least 3 people.
5. make sure the people you tagged know you tagged them by commenting to them.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

We all need a little Poet, don't we?!?

Bradley Hathaway.
He's the coolest kid in your town, somewhere, maybe.

I just saw him at Vintage Faith Church on the "Dang Dang Tour"...

The Website: http://www.thebradley.net/

The Music: http://www.myspace.com/bradleyhathaway

Let me know whatcha think!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Easter, Nephew, Photoshop-BAH!

Up late tonight Xacto-ing contact paper on pretty birch; making some version of Aaron as Lazurus and ALSO some version of Aaron as Jesus, resurrected, pulling Lazarus up from the dead. Whatever that means- mostly I'm SO happy to have a real model.

Today Charlie blew my mind with photoshop. She saved me from a fate worse than death cuz you can see, in advance, what your painting could look like in different colors. Let's just say my ideas of making a contemporized Icon look pop-esqe would have been a painful choice. Thank you Charlie. (To be performed on Sunday- pictures to follow).

Finally saw Angela and baby Calvin (NOW ONE!) after nearly a month. Calvin is eating real food (Mickey Mouse pancakes!), has more teeth and curls and is kinda walking. Oh, and all that death metal Daddy listens too has seeped in- I have one growling, monster nephew!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

New Post, Older Art...

I'm pretty slow on putting up pictures, but I thought I should still share...

"I take thee in Holy Patrimony"

Acrylic on Canvas