loading cleaves bottoming

I believe the best part of your work has to be unconscious.   Louis Malle

Headed back to Boston of a few days to do a shower for by soon-to-be new grandson.  I'm sticking the laptop in the checked luggage so I may never see it again, but lugging with all the other stuff I haul is above my pay grade.  So tonight I am scurrying around grabbing cords and electronics and presents and party favor makings.  I have to take the huge suitcase because the present I have for the little guy is bulky.  Can't wait for my son to see it, know he will love it.  Also hoping that my DIL thinks it's cool.  In truth I have also ordered the little guy's Christmas present-  that's how excited I am over this.

The funny thing is that I was out to dinner with some friends from central MA a few nights ago and they were talking about an impending trip back to clear out their house that sold and I casually asked them when they were going-  turns out we are on the very same flight so I have a ride to the airport at 0:dark thirty in the morning.  Very convenient.  As if that wasn't enough I just got a call from them and they have to go right by my house on their way west so they are also giving me a ride to my door!  Talk about lucky!

UPDATE, I am home in Boston eating some stale corn chips and it's only 11:30!  My SIL cancelled our lunch today because she has a cold so I am free as a bird to head out on a quest OF MY CHOICE!

Spent a day in the studio yesterday because my neighbor gave me a project-  he had a bunch of butterfly houses built to hang in his back yard (which I see from my perch at my computer) and he wanted me to 'paint it yellow'.  So I mixed up some yellow and metallic gold paint and had at it.  Then I went back for the second coat and had a brainstorm to paint palm fronds on the top and sides.  Then I decided to use my palm tree stencils and they worked great.  First I put on the fronds with a light grey green to be the shadows, then offset the stencil an inch and redid it with dark metallic green and it looked great.  Final bit was googling Florida butterflies and printing them out on archival inks.  I spent a good long time fussy cutting them and sprinkled them all over the butterfly house-  it's about 3' high and maybe 6" wide and looked pretty good.  UNFORTUNATELY I forgot to grab a picture so I hae to wait for him to set it up I guess-  he picked it up this morning and I am a bit scared he will want me to deal with the other 4-5 of them he had built!

Also got the trash bags out, papers thrown away, things stashed so I won't be completely overwhelmed when I get back.  True to form I 'found' some things that seemed to harken to Other Things, and then I started rustling through bins finding yet more Things, all of which got pinned to the design wall-  maybe when I get back it will look stupid, but I think (!) I might have a skeleton of a plan up there now.    It involved sacrificing a dress I never had a chance to wear...and never will now!  I thought if I kept it it would be incentive to get back in it.  Didn't work.  SO, speaking of tubbies~

Born in Milan, Italy, in 1971 and now based in Anchorage, Alaska, Paola Pivi's diverse artistic practice embraces sculpture, photography, video, and performance. Several previous works have also featured large machines, including an overturned tractor-trailer and a helicopter placed upside down. - Pivi is making art headlines again with her fantastical feather-clad polar bears.  Influenced by the surrealists, Pivi’s plumed bears walk the line between dream and reality.  They are her version of the ready-made.  Prone to “visions,” Pivi says that she often sees animals located in a strange setting.  For her most recent show, entitled Ok, you are better than me, so what?, at Galerie Perrotin’s new space in New York, Pivi created a series of sculptures influenced by a vision she had of a polar bear dancing with a grizzly bear.  Rather than taxidermy actual animals, Pivi had an expert create bears from urethane foam, plastic, and feathers.  The results are fantastic in the truest sense of the word.  Meaning, they are imaginative, fanciful and slightly absurd.

And they SO reminded me of these plumpie and curvy sculptures that are the work of Chinese artist Mu Boyan

 Using a variety of materials, Boyan’s sumo wrestler sized figures are sculpted into contexts that make use of the space and density of the large bodies. The rolls of fatty tissue are shiny and smooth, the positions of the bodies graceful and balanced, though almost completely consumed by their own densities. Boyan’s figures are vulnerable, and each figure’s bodily placement underscores the vastness of their large forms. The figures’ faces and bodies are soft and playful, almost cherubic, lending a familiar and comfortable feel to the experience of the sculptures, though the figures are placed into vulnerable positions. According to Boyan, this series reflects his exploration and fascination with the depiction of Chinese political symbolism in art. 

My stitchin' hereo, Richard Saja who does the blog '

Historically Inaccurate,, tackles Darwin!

And a note OR TWO of bad news-  as I yanked my cord out of the surge protector back in Florida, apparently the plug part stayed put and I got busy winding it up to throw in the suitcase.  So basically after hauling this heavy laptop here with me, I now have no way to power it after the juice runs down on this charge.  I will try to find a minute to stop by the Mac store but if it costs an arm and a leg to replace I'll be forced into making a decision.  Grrrrr.  Guess I wasn't 'in the moment' when I yanked.

And worse bad news, Molly hasn't been herself lately and TY made a vet appointment for her today to find out what's going on.  They think she has DIABETES, will do another check in 2 weeks and meanwhile she is on antibiotics to see if that clears up a hiding infection since her check 2 weeks ago was clear.  TY says she caught it from me, I told him she caught it from her hidden stash of cupcakes.  WTF???  Doggie Diabetes???  Who knew...