Monday, October 30, 2006

Girl Caught in the Wind


Djuna, not blowing so hard, originally uploaded by little green.

The super creative costume made by my friend Spring for her daughter to wear. Her hair and dress are wired to make it look like the wind is blowing, and the inside out umbrella with the leaves is a brilliant touch!

They got a mention on the make blog!

Spring is so talented!

hi there...remember me?

I think that I've recovered from open studios now! It was so fun and very tiring! I didn't take many photos because I was so busy talking with people and watching people and looking at all of the art.

I bought a few pieces and traded for some things and sold some things and it was excellent.

It took me a while to recover.

And then there's Halloween! My favorite holiday. (my photos of the kids are on Scott's computer, so I'll show those soon) S is going as a zombie nerd. He picked out some amazing clothes at various thrift stores, and his costume is creepy and nerdy as can be. He has a briefcase to collect his trick or treating candy in.

Z was going to be something, I can't remember what. Something weird. And then just a few days ago she decided to be the headless horseman! We had to scramble a bit, but I think we made it work.




Scott and I got to go to a real grown up's Halloween party, so we went as skeletons. I was inspired by the series of photos of last years Dia De Los Muertos in the mission. The ones that Gage made his paintings of. Oh, and Scott had his first pieces in a gallery show, he put two Day of the Dead photos in the "Calacas" show at Boomerang, and one sold!


This was one of my favorite costumes from the party. My friend Justine and her sister dressed up as the twins from the famous Diane Arbus photograph.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

new shirts!



The shirts are being printed today! Here's a sneak preview being worn by Scott. I have this design and two others. This is a two color print, black and discharge ink on an American Apparel shirt.
Free Hugs !

Okay, one more you tube video. This one is so beautiful too. I found it through mecozy who found it through superhero. thanks Shash and Andrea!

Monday, October 09, 2006

one week of art works

I found this video on youtube, if you have a few minutes, you really should watch it. It shows a group of Japanese artists making paintings on a big canvas or wall, painting them out and starting over.

Friday, October 06, 2006

visitors


Bees are always flying in to my studio, attracted by the beeswax scent, I suppose. This guy was was the first to actually keep bumping in to the paintings. I managed to snap a few photos before he flew back out through the open door.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

breaking news



My good friend Todd Barricklow was one of three winners of the Sonoma County Arts Council "Emerging Artist's Award" this year and he won a lovely grant and there will be three shows featuring the three award recipients.

The second show is coming up this Saturday at Blue Gum Gallery right outside of Santa Rosa, and it's "Emerging Artists and Friends". Todd has invited me to hang some pieces in the show too! How exciting! I went yesterday and put a some things up.

I want to talk more about Todd's work, because it's brilliant. But I can't quite get the right words together at the moment. Hopefully later today I'll come up with something coherent.

I feel funny about having Arts Council-y people see my work. I feel a little bit naked and dumb. But oh well. We all have to stretch and try new things, right? My work looks so un-serious next to the other stuff.

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

laurel

Another artist and friend from Compound 21 is Laurel Roth, who is generously allowing me to share her space. Her work is beautiful, fascinating and so intricate you can't even believe it. Her recent body of work is about nature in urban environments; nature, and people. She takes things like bits of plants from the street, cigarette butts, layers of paint from old buildings and fake fingernails from the dollar store and makes them in to these incredible things.

She carves old billiard balls into realistic bird skulls and fashions little bodies and wings for the birds and...well, you just have to see it.

This piece is called "peeps" and it's from last year. It's one of my favorites.

and this one is unbelievable. the skull is hand carved and the body is made up of fake fingernails and barrettes that she painted, oh and fake eyelashes. this bird took many many hours of delicate work.

Another body of work she's got going on is in collaboration with her boyfriend, Andy Diaz Hope, and it's mainly installation work. They've done installations at galleries all over the place, New York, Chicago I think, and probably other places. This week, on Thursday, they are doing one at Frey Norris, here in San Francisco as part of the "Who's Afraid of San Francisco" show. I will be attending, and I'm super excited.

I saw one of their installations at the Marin Headlands open studios and it was brilliant. I really covet the little pill people and pill angels and pill devils. They are so tiny and cool.

Here is what Frey Norris has to say about Laurel and Andy's work:
Laurel Roth and Andy Diaz Hope will collaborate on two projects for this exhibition. The first relates to intravenous drug culture and the second to California's history of "Sundown Towns," communities that posted warnings to minorities, most often African Americans, Mexicans, Native Americans, Chinese and Jews, that they were expected to vacate the town by sundown. Laurel Roth's work is about finding patterns of adaptation, ecology and anthropology in an urban environment. Her sculptures are made from leftovers of city life – second-hand billiard balls and salvaged acrylic block, pharmaceuticals, 99 cent store beauty products, and fragments of street plants - deconstructed, carved, polished, and reassembled. Andy Diaz Hope's two most recent series are "Everybody is Somebody's Terrorist" focusing on hand knit balaclavas that transform their wearers into terrorists, documented in photos and films, and "The Morning After Portraits," portraits of strangers and friends using rows of custom manufactured colored capsules glued to a white foundation.


And then I could say a lot of stuff about how incredible I think Laurel is as a person, and how glad I am to know her but she might get embarrassed and scowl at me.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

eve of my b-day


something i got for my birthday
something scott got for his in august (made by heidi!)

tomorrow i will be 35. and i don't think listening to two hours of elliott smith on repeat all day long is helping my slight case of pre-birthday melancholy. maybe ice cream and the unicorns will help! ooh, they're canadian! like i am originally.

Monday, October 02, 2006

working hard


I gathered all of my paintings together and hung them up in my studio, a bit haphazardly, but it is helping to see that I do have a fair amount of work ready. I have some new small collage pieces too that I'm pretty excited about.

I sent out my newsletter thing about open studios today. I'm hoping that it worked and looks good. If you didn't get one, and you want one, sign up here.

It's going to be at Compound 21 and it's going to be great. I think I'll pop in here each day to talk about one of the artists who will be exhibiting there too. The resident artists there are all incredible, and so kind to let me show along with them.

First off, is Mati McDonough. I imagine that most people who check in here are aware of Mati's work, because it's incredible, and she is always busy and always progressing. Besides that, she is also funny and smart and thoughtful and interesting and pretty.

I can't wait to see what she will have this year for open studios. I got a print last year and I adore it.

Her etsy shop is pretty cleaned out but there are still four paintings to look at.