voice voiceband void

There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works. 

Will Rogers

A herd of squirrel babies!

What happens to time?  Cannot believe I have been silent a week now, you'd think my arms were in traction or something.  But no, it's my brain that is not functioning the way it should.  I've been in the studio most days, at least for a short time but there is always something else I have to be doing or handling or getting ready for.  This week TY had a guy here for golf so he needed attention and it also involved a bit more eating out than usual.  Unfortunately his last day was today and we woke up to 40 degree temps and rain. So he went home early and the golf was cancelled for the day. 

As soon as he headed home Ralph cranked up the hottub and in we went sitting there in the cold rain-  it was wonderful, enjoyed it more than any other time I was in, except for the time we saw the Great Horned Owls watching us at dusk.  Worth every penny!

First of the week's worth of happenin' things, the opening of our show at the the New England Quilt Museum was amazing.  They started out putting 30 chairs in the classroom for the little talk of 10 minutes from the three of us who were able to be there.  By the time it was Showtime, every employee and volunteer was toting chairs in until the room was full with only standing in the back left.  We had over 100 people there and it was a great success.  Here are Judy Becker, Carol Grotrian, and Sylvia Einstein at the beginning, before being overwhelmed with questions and congratulations:

I believe that's a SAQA show in the classroom background-  something about the spice trade, sorry I don't know the particulars since I've been so involved with our own.

  
 I SHOULD be at the studio but it's Sunday and I really don't like being in the industrial park all by myself since I heard the gunshots a couple of weeks ago.  I have never felt nervous about being there but like it better when the car guy is across the parking lot or I see the painter's lights on and pan flute wafting up over his studio.  This is new for me-  when I moved in I had a Christian rock band from some church practicing next door on Sundays.  They were pretty good, funny young kids decorated with safety pins and black hair dye who didn't throw beer bottles or joints around the parking lot-  only an occasional water bottle rolled around.  Anyway, that guy sold his business so there's no busy loud Sunday stuff going on any more.  Just quiet slow stuff. Applique.  Not much slower or quieter than that.  Sigh.

Some previews of details of the current thing:

  

on the wall-  first time-  have to work on this on my table and it hangs over the edges, so I hadn't seen it

Don't quite know what's going on, do ya?  All will be revealed, grasshoppers.  As soon as I know what the hell I'm doing myself!  Anyway, my fingers can only take so long working through the canvas so I take breaks and work on other more manageable sized stuff.  I am currently in a collaboration with 9 other artists where we make and exchange pieces every month with each other.  The first round was fun and was pretty much book oriented.  This second round is about whatever we want to do so I decided I was gonna make series using only old stuff I thought so friggin' precious when I got it that I never used it.  Talk about ridiculous!  Anyway, this is using Merimekko from the late 60's, early 70's.  I found an entire bolt of the stuff that I shared with my crit group and appeared in several of their pieces, mostly Sylvia's because she is really into bright colors.  The rest came from Crate and Barrel outlets that used to decorate the store with lengths-  I'd always buy the non-bright lengths and hoard them.  Now I must divest of these things I really no longer love. So I am making my pages to send around the country all of stuff I don't love.  These are the backgrounds and now I need to individualize each with something else I don't care about-  remember I have bins and bins of it!  In the photo above you can see my fabric situation-  these are only 2 out of the five shelf units which are also topped with plastic bins 3 deep.  

There are times I wish I were an arsonist.  But it isn't like I want to get rid of a body or evidence or something like that-  I want to get rid of STUFF.  Don't call the Jupiter fire department on me yet, first I need to try to use more up or dump it!  

  

SO unlike me... but wait.  It needs to be bejeweled...

ARTY PARTY TIME, heigh ho.

For more than 20 years photographer Daniel Ranalli has been actively collaborating with the ecology of Cape Cod, with one of his most collaborative projects being his Snail Drawing series. The works each contain two images, the first capturing the snails in a simplified pattern of Ranalli’s choosing on the beach, and the second showcasing the ways the snails have decided to move out of this neatly formed configuration. The second image allows the viewer to see the trace of the snail’s movement in the sand, the small bodies slowly scattering away from center.  Click on his link to a YouTube showing how it's done.

So cool, heh?

And with that, I will head off to the current knitting and relearn Kitchener stitch since it's been a long time since I used it-  want this project closed up and  finished once and for all.  It's the yarn's second chance so it damn well better show me some respect when I can finally try it on.

Prod me to work on the blog a bit too.  I get lazy.

Sandy

osprey sign osseous

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.  John F. Kennedy

Squirrel after removing his pink hat.

Me, after never having put on a pink hat.

What a day, what a day.  Loved seeing the streams of marchers from every city being broadcast from helicopters-  what a day for helicopter pilots!  OK, now please tell me what was accomplished by that exercise besides people making a whole lot of money off the folks who showed up?

hotels

food, meals and snacks

plane and  helicopter pilots

bad bad plastic bottled water

bus drivers

Uber

yarn stores, pattern makers, fast knitters

garbage pickup

new sneakers, gloves, pink travel bags

poster board, brushes, markers, paint

etc. etc. etc.

I just think from my currently lofty, and getting loftier, age bracket that perhaps, just perhaps, it was a day late and a dollar short.  Why wasn't this gigantic meet-up done before the election?  Why didn't both parties put up winning candidates?  Why didn't all those people vote instead of playing dress-up?  This SO reminds me of the carrying on that happens at the big quilt consortiums where the bunny hop appears, grown-ass women come in costumes and tiaras-  yeah, you heard me- TIARAS!  They play games, they win prizes, they sing camp songs, they bond. It's a perfect 6 year olds birthday except they don't play princess any longer` if their mothers are doing it right- they come in astronaut helmets.

OK, I didn't march anywhere, not even on the treadmill.  Fitbit-aphobe.  I did read a great article, posted it on Facebook and got TWO responses, not much of a call for pithy I guess, folks sending selfies of their faces crammed into pink hats to show they belong to the right tribe...

I cannot find my tribe, but I know for sure it doesn't involve signing internet petitions or calling dead land lines looking for a congressman.  And my tribe doesn't wear clothes referring to pussies of any kind.

Look here, they said I'd never use geometry after I got out of 10th grade!

Went to the Farmer's Market this morning early, got another Vanda Orchid, this time a giant showy yellow one.  There were 4 of us who went and we bought 5 of these gorgeous things,

  they are the ones that have hanging roots sometimes 5' long.  Anyway, the car was really small and we were all holding onto at least one of them along with our bags of produce and my own dozen eggs.  Somehow we got it all home. Tonight I get to eat ribs...  a perfect food for a football game.

I was too tired when I got home to go back to the studio so I did a few things around home with all the food I bought, and then had a brilliant (!) little plan for the new piece.  All in all I overbought and will somehow deal with the dozen little eggplants I got because they were so CUTE.  WTF?  I don't even like eggplant all that much but was thinking of imam byaldi I guess.  Will add that to my to-do list.

I may get the whole new piece up on the design wall soon so I can take a picture, but for now I need it to be flat for the handwork and easy moving of the elements.  I have no plan for entering it into anything, just a need to DO it and it feels so good to be thinking like this again.  If I finish it soon I may be able to slide it along to a show if it fits-  if not I have a wall...

So, it's ARTY PARTY time again, isn't it?

It would not surprise me to learn that Polish street photographer Maciej Dakowicz has run out of available pages in his passport. Currently based in Mumbai, the computer science PhD abandoned a career in technology to instead focus on his street photography, a decision that has lead him to far-flung communities around the globe seeking incredible once-in-a-lifetime encounters. Sorting through his staggering library of some 5,500 photos is to take a journey through vastly differening cultures, miraculous visual coincidences, and impropable moments in time both amusing and terrifying.

OK Bunnies, that's all I have.  Hope that tomorrow brings a good studio day!  

osmosis osmotic cottage

‘Take a minute to build a small obos (three or more rocks piled on top of one another). You can come back in 365 days to see if it’s still standing.” (Robert Genn)

Hey kids, it's finally arrived after much anticipation!  Our annual highest holy day, 

SQUIRREL APPRECIATION DAY

and so it goes.

I've been taken over by doing things I haven't been around to complete all month.  I'm doing my massive closet cleanse, trying to find a carpet cleaner, deflating the 7' cockroach to retire it to a sealed box in the garage, picking up the tiniest Lego pieces that surely must be scattered around like fairy dust after I go to bed.  Removing them is like picking up glitter...And getting interrupted on my way to the studio every day!  But hey, I just can't turn down these offers from real people-  I tend to avoid real people as you may have gathered after all these years but I actually went to lunch  with a dear old friend the other day, and then yesterday found myself enthusiastically playing navigator to a big orchid farm a friend wanted to get to. Unfortunately it cost me big, not as big as her amazing arrangement she had put together, but I am still loving the dalmation spots on the three plants I got-

And yeah and behold, I have three other plants with similar dots and splashes of maroon on white-  they are all tied to my trees reblooming for me.  The coolest thing about orchids is that I cannot kill them if I just leave them alone!  Years ago I did a little quilt about them foreshadowing my love of them:

I wasn't as much interested in the flower when I did this as I was in the foliage-  I cut up nori seaweed and sewed it on and it turned into a pretty good leather substitute that has lasted for years... well, until I cut up all my quilts.  So much for foliage.


A quick and quite enlightening ARTY PARTY before I leave:

For the last 20 years, unassuming Dutch photographer Hans Eijkelboom has traversed the world, picking a spot, be it in Shanghai, New York, or Paris, and meticulously photographed what he saw. “I take between 1 and 80 photographs a day, almost every day, 12 months a year,” he says, referring to his “Photo Notes” project, which has now been turned into a book titled People of the Twenty-First Century. The “Photographic Journal,” published by PHAIDON, is the largest, most comprehensive work of his to date, and includes thousands of photos that, together, create a fascinating picture of mankind.

The “anti-sartorial” photographs of everyday people capture specific visual themes – people in red jackets, men with bare chests on roller blades – that are grouped together with the date, city and time range they were taken. And this combination and repetition is what makes the photographs so powerful. Viewed separately, they would hardly even catch our eye.

And away I go to go work on some dead palm fronds for the new piece on the wall!  Maybe I'll add some fallen orchid blossoms too...

And a parting Squirrel~

viva vivace cost

'Only use decorations bigger than a melon. The effect is all interior self-expression, no chaos.'     Domain Magazine

Awwww, a bebe!

The kids are at this moment boarding their flight for home.  The Lego mugs I ordered didn't make it here in time but I do have a hundred thousand pieces of Lego all over the house.  Soon to be swallowed by the vacuum.  That, an apple, and a couple of cheese sticks along with lots and lots of tiny clothes.  We spent this afternoon at the Busch Wildlife Center looking for bears that need to be poked, and Florida Panthers in full hunt mode patrolling their enclosure.  Do you believe people buy these gorgeous animals and DECLAW them to keep in the house as pets?  Oy.  Of course they outgrow the cute kitten stage very fast and end up in the refuge since they can't be released.  Why do people do that?

Yesterday we went to the studio for some serious drawing-  they didn't want any lesson, only to draw the turtles we saw the day before at the Loggerhead Marine Hospital here in Juno.  We also saw some land tortoises and their burrows on the way to the car so they were well versed in the differences.  And funnily enough more tortoises appeared at Busch, but look closely-  they are on top of each other trying for sun on a raft in the middle of an everglades display!

OK, enough with the nature walks.  This afternoon a box arrived and this was inside:

A solid brass turkey leg, our Christmas present from our son.  He says it's because we have everything!  It weighs as much as a car, guess I

ll hold down all the outside furniture at the next hurricane.

So, couple that with yesterday's post about the gift for my birthday from my daughter~ a reminder, the cockroach pool float:

and it begs the questions, 1. WTF?  and 2.  where did I go wrong teaching appropriate gifts for old ladies?

Sigh.  Let's have a party!

Merging botanical forms from England with the delicate plant shapes from her childhood in Japan, ceramic artist Hitomi Hosono produces delicate layered sculptures that appear as frozen floral arrangements. Often monochromatic, the works are focused on carved detail rather than color—repetition of form making each piece uniquely beautiful.

“The subjects of my current porcelain works are shapes inspired by leaves and flowers,” said Hosono in an artist statement. “I study botanical forms in the garden. I find myself drawn to the intricacy of plants, examining the veins of a leaf, how its edges are shaped, the layering of a flower’s petals. I look, I touch, I draw.”

Wowzer.  How gorgeous!

See you tomorrow-ish, I have much to catch up on!

interfere counterproposal interference

“Shock value only lasts so long.” (Robert Longo)

squirrel party coasters, perfect for your nutty friends

I know, I am negligent in keeping this up these past few weeks BUT I have screwed up and time has flown unrelentingly by and I don't know which end is UP these days!

But the Good Things that happened include the finished kitchen in the tiny condo-  all except the switch plates which arrived in Florida for me to stick in my next trip suitcase.  Still have to find a handyman to finish the molding around the open edges of the countertop, but I don't care enough to sit there looking for handymen.  Hopefully I will find somebody before I go back and if he also paints, he gets a bonus!  We will keep our eyes open the The Guy.

Anyway, I flew home to FL on Friday, unevernt=fully, since my kids were in the real of the plane coming for MLK weekend.  As soon as we arrived they started stripping down in the car to go swimming!  It really wasn't all that warm, but in they went like little salmon squealing and spashing around.  My daughter gave me a blow up pool float for my birthday that I haven't had the cojones to blow up but we did it finally:

Yeah, it's a giant 7' Palmetto bug, aka cockroach.  The kids are loving it, but it's still a bit off-putting for me-  I think it's the antennae.  I don't know.
Other grandkid prefers the giant 6' slice of watermelon, probably because her suit is the same color and I told her it's like she is camouflaged as a watermelon!

Today we visited the Loggerhead Sea Turtle rescue and sat through an entertaining and informative talk with Dr. Logger.  He had skulls from lots of different species and taught us about their teeth and flippers.  Walking out past a window like they used to have at the Dairy Queen, we looked into the actual hospital and watched a pretty small-  maybe 18"- turtle get his shell repaired and bandaged.  They apparently take these guys to the local hospital ion they need X-rays or CT scans.  They cover them with a sheet on their gurney so it doesn't freak the human patients...  Cool afternoon, and whole heading back to the parking lot we saw 4 different borrows of land tortoises, which they don't treat there but apparently stick them in the area where they stay.

Ode to Geometry

Then I made a giant birthday cake for the kids since I won't be in Boston for either party this and next month.  I've lost my frosting mojo but the chocolate cake was might fine.

*I*am*exhausted*, haven't left the kitchen in 3 days except for the turtle hospital.  It's 7:35 now and I would love to race out and rent a hotel room for a good night's sleep

  Life goes on in spite of the unbelievable choice some people made politically.  It won't be a day of excitement and possibility for me, instead a day or trepidation and fright.  But I voted and I tried, this all just sucks so I will find new murder mysteries on my podcast list and stick my head back in the sand for the next 4 years. And hope it's over soon,  Enough whining, lets hit it for the ARTY PARTY

In this fun illustration series, India-based artist Rohan Sharad Dahotre utilizes photographs of wild animals and applies a variety of fanciful costumes. 

Warning!  Professional Hazard!

Aiming to get back on the horse and POST!