My Latest Show

I have no evidence of this but I think my last show was in March. In any case, I signed up to show today too. The work I've been putting up lately (like the giant strawberry piece) is showing some wear and tear. It was kind of getting me down. So I decided to do something experimental this time.

I've been making elements similar to those used in this piece:

I've also got tons of random stuff in my studio that I thought might be useful in a larger piece like this. I pulled everything together and brought it down to Boston to see what would happen. So far it's been SO MUCH EASIER TO MOVE than most of the other things I've shown.

I gave myself a few days to install. Here's an early view:

Tough to see. It's wall-sized. Maybe you can see better if you click on it?

Here's what I ended up with:

There are things to like about both. I know if I did it on a different day I'd have come up with something else. I wished that I had made more of the elements: beads, flower lace, sheets of acrylic gel, pouffy things. I used what I had and I did the best I could under the circumstances. I think it looks pretty good. 

I'll keep cranking this stuff out as time permits and also think about combining these elements differently. You know, group some together and not others, see what all of one kind looks like. I'll just experiment with different ways to use them. As time permits. 

Here's a detail from above:

The opening is tonight and Pete's out of town. I hope some friends show up.

Show Your Work!

Art students (especially me when I was one) often make the mistake not showing their work because they think it isn't "ready" yet.

If you've made something you should show it as soon and as often as possible. It doesn't matter if it's "ready." It doesn't even have to be good. It can even suck. Just start showing as soon as you can find a way to do so.

Artists show their work. It shouldn't feel like a big deal. I'm fifteen years out of art school and at this point I'll put just about anything up.

Art is a process. Try it all. Most people who are watching don't have any idea what they're looking at anyway. If you're lucky they'll ask you about it and you can explain. Or you can be enigmatic and tell them a joke.

If someone's douchey about it that doesn't mean your work's no good, it means they're a douche.

Just get your work finished and out there!

Results of a Sort

Fay's test results came back and everything looks normal. Her organs are normal sized and they didn't see anything that didn't belong in there. So I guess that's good news. I suppose if there's bad news it's that she may need other tests. There was some mention of taking a kidney biopsy. I hope it doesn't come to that - it sounds hurty (also expensive)

We do know for sure there's a kidney problem. We also know for sure that some of the medication she's on to treat it makes her feel sick because she doesn't want to eat her food even though I loaded it with tuna. Crap. Poor her. I hope there are other options.

I met another new role model. There was a little old lady scooting around Davis Square in a wheelchair yesterday. She wasn't using it as a wheelchair exactly. She was sitting in it and using her feet (like Fred Flintstone) to move the chair. On my way back home from an errand I saw her struggling to get in to the post office so I stopped to give her a hand. She turned out to be a real wise-cracker. She was hilarious. Hilarious and resourceful. My new role model. A lot like Fay too.

Herself

Fay is at the vet. I had to leave her there today so she could get chest x-rays and an ultrasound. We know for sure that she has kidney inflammation. They're testing her today to find out why. Whatever it is it's not going to be good.

You can't tell anything's bothering her from her attitude. She's the same spazzy, bossy, demanding, hilarious, hungry, cute wad she's always been. She's my role model. When things start crapping out on me I'm going to try to take a page from her manual. Then I'll try to mooch treats off the person nearest to me.

Ugh - I Can't See

The left lens in my glasses sucks. I'm not sure that sentence makes sense grammatically.

What I mean is that the coating they put on the lenses to prevent glare has disintegrated (only on the left lens) so it looks to my left eye as if there's dust or grease or something all over the lens. This has been going on for months but it happened kind of gradually so I was mostly used to it.

I'm in the process of getting my lenses replaced. I left my glasses off at the optometrist on Friday so they could put in the new lenses. Meanwhile I wore some sample contact lenses. It was so great to be able to see clearly for a change. I couldn't wait to get my glasses with new lenses back.

When I went to pick up my glasses yesterday it turned out that the lab had sent my new lenses in the wrong prescription. Now I'm back to my old, crappy lenses while I wait for a new batch of lenses to arrive. It should take about a week.

Of course after wearing those contacts all day yesterday I had grown accustomed to being able to see. Now I'm all discombobulated because all I see is a smear in my left eye. Nuisance! I keep blinking because I think my eye has gunk in it.

That said, the eyes are only on the outside of the body, the surface. The blindness that's bothering me the most right now is inside my head. I have brain blindness. This could also be called "issues."

I'm so confused right now. There have been so many changes in my life and in my perceptions of life in the last year or so. The future is looking pretty unusual too. Everything is topsy turvy inside. I can't tell if I'm seeing things for what they are or if what I see is overly colored by my emotions. In other words, do I feel uncomfortable because the situations in my life are challenging or are the situations in my life challenging because I feel uncomfortable about them? In either case is there something I could be doing to improve things?

I feel like I'm living submerged in a giant pot of beef stew. The broth is so thick that I can't see if what just hit me in the face is a pea or a piece of meat. Or perhaps I'm walking around with a sack over my head, bumping into or being pelted with things? I don't know and I don't know how to find out.

For now I'm just going to wait until something makes sense. I hope that will be soon but this being life, who can say?

Minty Drink

Quick post while I'm thinking about it:

I'm listening to Christmas music while cleaning the mouse crap off the dining table so we can eat off of it tomorrow. You read that right. I'm thinking a drink would be good around now. Probably a stinger.

Stinger Cocktail, one serving:

Ingredients:
Ice
2 ounces cognac
1 ounce white creme de menthe (trust me)
Twist of lemon peel

Directions:

Fill a mixing glass two-thirds full with ice. Add the cognac and white creme de menthe. Shake well, then strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with three or four ice cubes (not crushed ice). Garnish with a lemon twist.

I got this recipe from the Washington Post Spirits columnist, Jason Wilson.

Yes, I too was scared of the creme de menthe (my mom used it to make a really tasty grasshopper pie that I loved when I was a kid. I thought that might not be so good in a cocktail now that I'm an adult) Turns out it's damn good. It's kind of easy to drink too many of these so be careful - the price isn't pretty in the morning.

However, I'm going to wait on my cocktail until food is more imminently on the horizon.

Yawn... Whatever

I might have hurt myself today. I like to work out with video games. I still love "Yourself!Fitness" for the old Xbox but there are a couple of Wii games I like too. I played them both today. I hope I can move tomorrow.

I really like "Gold's Gym Cardio Workout," a boxing training game. As far as I can tell your avatar never hits anybody (except a bear in a side game. Poor bear) Still, all that punching nothing is really fun and great for stress reduction. There's footwork too - you're sort of bouncing back and forth, stepping side to side, ducking, weaving and all that jazz. I find myself so engaged and distracted by trying to follow along that I don't notice until afterwards that I'm sweaty and winded. Fun! And, of course, sore the next day - in a good way.

The other is "NewU Fitness First Yoga and Pilates." I have yet to encounter any Pilates. I wonder if I have to get to a certain point in the yoga before Pilates is available? Maybe I have to change my "goals" settings? Whatevs. The yoga is pretty good though. Definitely challenging. I do the "quick class" most of the time. It seems to go on forever and I'm wiped when I'm done with it. Maybe if I did it more often it wouldn't be so difficult? I'll try to work on that.

So, I guess if you're thinking you might need to move yourself around those are two fun and productive ways to do it. 

And now, time to make my new favorite home-made supper: hot dog slices and kale. Yup, you want to take fitness and diet advice from me!

Wow, that post was almost NaBloPoMo quality.

High Maintenance

I went to my first holiday party of the season on Wednesday: My sister-in-law, Kristen's, biennial cookie exchange. I believe I have mentioned it before (here and here) I don't seem to have mentioned that this is NOT the kind of event to which you can bring Entenmann's (halleluja - I HATE Entenmann's. YUCK!) You can leave your Pillsbury cookies at home too. This show requires a certain amount of sweat. It's also easily the nicest, fanciest holiday party I go to most years. Kristen is a fantastic hostess and gets everything right, from the hors d'ouvres to the cocktails to the decorations. There's a certain amount of pressure to PERFORM at this event.

The cookies I made this year are show-stoppers. I've made them a few other years and was not planning to make them this year but Kristen asked me to.

Honestly, if you have to make four-dozen cookies I would not suggest choosing a shaped sandwich cookie. It's at least three times the work: you have to make double the dough, roll it out and cut twice the number of cookies, you have to make the ganache and then fill the cookies. You could probably get away without decorating them with drizzles of melted white chocolate but there's no way I'm bringing a plain brown cookie to this cookie exchange.

This dough tends to be sticky too so it requires quite a bit of chilling time. It must be chilled at least four hours before you roll it out the first time, you must re-chill the remaining dough before you roll it out again to cut more cookies and the cut cookies must be chilled for ten minutes on the sheet before you bake them.

Once baked, the cookies must rest for two minutes exactly on the cookie sheet before you can scrape them off the parchment paper they have been baked on (I used aluminum foil which ripped with every batch I made. I got the cookies off with no damage but the foil ripped every time) Try to pry them off too soon and they'll distort, too late and they'll stick (Don't f*%k with the instructions, b!#ches!)

Then of course they have to cool completely before you can spread on the ganache (and, yes, the ganache has to chill and thicken before you can spread it on) Later, when all of the cookies have been assembled, the white chocolate drizzles need time to harden before you can pack the cookies up and take them anywhere. Actually, the white chocolate drizzles are a simplification I devised. The recipe suggests you pipe on the melted white chocolate. I might be an intense baker at times but I'm not pathological.

These cookies are impossible to make at the last minute. I took three days to make them. I made the dough and the plain and peppermint chocolate ganaches the first day (I made double batches since the recipes yield two dozen. In fact, I ended up with five dozen. Bonus) I baked the second day and assembled and decorated the day of the cookie exchange. You also don't want to assemble them too far ahead of time because they can get soggy.

The result of all of this labor is a truly amazing cookie. In fact it's more like a confection. While I was making them I was thinking, "This is the last time. I'm retired from making this cookie!"
Afterwards I thought, "Well, it is a great cookie. Maybe I'll make them again. Maybe just not four dozen."

Of course I'm whining about having to make four dozen cookies but most of the women at the party had had to make eleven dozen cookies for a school event the next day. I hope Pillsbury was good enough for that event. Something to think about if you plan on moving to Wellesley Massachusetts and enrolling your kids in the Wellesley public school system.

As for our event, it was so festive and convivial and the cookies exchanged were so delicious (at least the ones I tried were) that I felt like the trouble was worth it. And who knows, maybe in two years I'll have rested up enough to make those again? If anyone wants the recipe let me know.

Five dozen cookies in our sparsely decorated apartment

Tremors

Well, it's the holidays and I'm already feeling overwhelmed by all of the stuff I have to do. How about you? I'm not even thinking about the gift shopping either (Gift shopping doesn't actually worry me - I'm a fantastic shopper)

There are also big changes pending in my life right now - things that might happen in the next year or so or not for a long time if at all. (That statement is so vague! That's how things always are and we just try not to think about it) Despite my discomfort with the way things have been going lately these changes have me worried that I might lose some things about my life that I love (And how obvious is that? That is the nature of change. We're always afraid that the things that come into our lives after a change aren't going to be as good as the things we don't have anymore)

In short, SHAKY GROUND!!!!! AAAAAAAA!!!

I feel like I'm less resilient than I used to be. Just when I'm feeling pretty good some dumb thing happens and I'm smacked back into the dumps. I feel like I used to be able to shrug off setbacks more easily, that I didn't take things as hard as I do now.

I vaguely remember hearing (reading?) a story about a study someone did on rats. The theory being tested was that rats that survive through really difficult circumstances are the toughest rats. The study found that the surviver rats had been the toughest rats before their ordeals. After their ordeals they were just stressed-out, depleted rats.

Perhaps I feel like a depleted rat?

Well, nothing I can do about that now. I just have to wait and see what develops and get cracking on the tasks I've set for myself. At least I can wear a cotton-candy-scented wig while I'm at it.

Last Night And Today

I have a new nephew, born last night! Congratulations to Christian and Sarah!

More trivially, here's what I want to do today:

1. Weed, weed block and mulch the paths
2. Clean up all the flattened stems left behind by the October snow storm
3. Tidy the roses
4. Do the fall cutting back
5. Clear the dining table
6. Clean the shower
7. Laundry
8. Put away the nine plus piles of books that I have left all over the house
9. Read Sin and Syntax
10. Get groceries
11. Wash the lettuce
12. Bake something
13. Meditate

As you can see I'm in over my head by the third word of the first item on my list. Guess I'd better get going.

Something Or Other

I finished these fingerless gloves last night.

I'm surprised by how warm the vestigial finger nubbies are.

We have about a million photos of Fay. She's so darned cute how could I not photograph her all the time?

A propos of nothing, I am doing NaNoWriMo this month. I am hilariously behind. I wrote like a nut on the first day and haven't written a word since. I'm around twelve-thousand words behind. HA HA HA HA HA! Yeah, we'll see what we get.

November First Friday Show

Well that was really fun. We had a number of surprise visitors and there was a lot of traffic. The gallery was very crowded at some points. Pete sold a photo and there were some nibbles at this guy:

He's the Don't Bother To Dream Monster, the first show-ready monster from my new monster drawing series. He's about four feet tall. The paper he's drawn on is about six feet by four feet. I think he got a lot of people to think about my work who normally wouldn't have. People often dismiss things they don't immediately perceive as serious. Putting this guy next to the giant strawberry painting seemed to make them think twice. I got a lot of thoughtful questions and comments on my work. Very encouraging. 

The whole night made me excited about the work that I know is coming. I make the work that I'm called to make regardless of whether I think others can connect with it or not. Still, nothing like getting a positive response to what you're doing.