4 a.m.

For serious...

I watch this every few months...
LOVE it!

Coincidence? no, it's creepy...

Love TED Talks.

Who needs skin on their thumb anyway?

Once upon a time a girl created a piece of art.  It was very mixed-media-y. . . made of wood, bottle caps, lambs wool, and mirrors.  A year passed and, although the girl liked the concept, she became dissatisfied with the way it was put together.  She began deconstructing it, saving as many of the original elements as she could.

Unfortunately, this girl never went to kindergarten, so she was never taught not to be a "glue monster."

She tore the bottle caps off the wool as carefully as she could, but giant,wooly blobs of glue clung to the backs.


In a moment of rare stupidity, the girl grabbed a steak knife to scrape the blobs.  As you can imagine, this didn't end well, but with a few bandaids on her index finger she was back to work.

Then, in an even rarer moment of pure lunacy, she grabbed an exacto knife to resume the glue excavation.

*slip*

*slice*

*panic*

Obviously the concept of learning from one's mistakes was foreign to this girl.

Four words come to mind...

Feathers!

Barney Fife Canvas Panel

Red and Black Hex Nut Earrings

Map Door Frame

A gift for a friend:

...and Ride On

Another custom piece for a cyclist friend.

Keep Calm

The puzzle piece represent autism awareness.  This was a custom piece.

create and create and. . .

Don't let yourself become a prisoner to anyone's expectations or their lack of belief.

Plaster of Despair

1. Experiment, skim directions
2. Trial A
3. Realize Trial A failed
4. Mourn Trial A remains
5. Trial B
6. Success!

Suppose...

As much as I'd love to be labelled as a "creative," what I'd really love is to be a "facilitator."

I am the queen of unfinished projects.  Great ideas that reach various stages of fruition but never reach that point of completion.  I'm not so vain that I think this is a problem only I have.  I'm sure there are so many other with closets, portfolios, and hard drives full of works-in-progress.

My initial thought was "Someday, when I run a gallery and frame shop I'll have specific shows featuring unfinished work.  But what if we as a community of artists gathered to hold some sort of unfinished project collective. . . A place to share ideas and inspire each other. . . Musicians, painters, knitters, poets, etc. . . All media, all stages welcome.

How can I make this happen?
Or am I the only kook with more half finished canvases than shoes?

Finally finished...

My fear...

bannerriffic 2: electric boogaloo

I'm still playing, but I kinda like this:

I like the word cathartic, and the idea of art as a release, as being therapeutic, healing, etc. . .

Is there too much going on?
Is it readable?? 
Am I ever going to open the dang thing??!

bannerriffic

I've been talking about opening an etsy store for over a year, but I'm easily distracted.  The simple, non-essential things are hardest.  I played around with these banners awhile ago. . .

Eh?  Whatcha think?  Picture it with a TBA store name, instead of "the drc."

I kinda want to include more than paint since my merch will be a little of everything. . .
I'll probably work on something for hours then change it all at the last minute anyway.  That's pretty much how I roll.

sharpie shrapnel

I have a riduclous amount of art supplies.  Beyond ridiculous.  It's like someone magically fit an entire Hobby Lobby into a shoebox and mailed it to me.  I opened it, then BOOM

Acrylics and brushes and findings and rub-ons went everwhere.  My living room has never recovered.

Still, I keep getting stuck mid-project without whatever crafting I need to continue.  Tonight it's spray adhesive and some sort of glazing medium.

But really, these things haven't been around forever, and great art has.  I like what Hugh MacLeod says:

The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
Abraham Lincoln wrote The Gettysberg Address on a piece of ordinary stationery that he had borrowed from the friend whose house he was staying at.


James Joyce wrote with a simple pencil and notebook. Somebody else did the typing, but only much later.


Van Gough rarely painted with more than six colors on his palette.


I draw on the back of wee biz cards. Whatever.


There's no correlation between creativity and equipment ownership. None. Zilch. Nada.


Actually, as the artist gets more into his thing, and as he gets more successful, his number of tools tends to go down. He knows what works for him. Expending mental energy on stuff wastes time. He's a man on a mission. He's got a deadline. He's got some rich client breathing down his neck. The last thing he wants is to spend 3 weeks learning how to use a router drill if he doesn't need to.

This guy is full of great stuff.  For real.  Go buy his book.  Actually, buy two, and give one to me.

i made this

Last December I was invited to an ornament exchange.  Fun right?  And really, there are some cute ornaments out there.  But in an all to frequent moment of insanity, I decided that I needed to make my ornament.  Like, from scratch.  This was decided on December 1st, four days before the event.  Obviously I'm really an idealist just pretending to be a pessimist, because there was no way this was going to work...

So now, two months later, I give you the finished product [it morphed into something non-christmas-ornamenty at some point]:

The inspiration:

This bench sits across the street from Epoch.  Created by Eric Freeman, it was part of last year's Places, Spaces, Chairs and I absolutely adore it. 

shadowbox your ears

My parents are fairly anti-stuff, especially stuff I can afford, so finding good Christmas presents is difficult.  This year my dad got a Weird Al cd and bumpons.  Awesome, right?

My mom's present was a few days late but turned out pretty nice.  When I was home for Thanksgiving I found a box of my grandpa's medals from his time in the Army Air Corp, so I borrowed those and a few pictures and arranged them in a shadowbox for her.

Here's a close-up of the inside:






































I tried a few different mounting techniques with a mat board background but ended up using some heavy scrap fabric and painting it black.  Its not perfect and as I continue to learn more about framing I may steal it back and re-work some parts.  But for now, voila.

i paint unoriginal things

I'm seeing more and more of these posters, but (a) this one's hand painted, and (2) its not copy-written.

I still find myself collecting unfinished pieces, but I hope to soon have a better set-up to photograph them, and maybe that will motivate me to complete some.  Or perhaps this attempted new set-up will only result in another project abandoned half-way through...

bunny ears and miley at the park

My niece is six.
We partied hard. . .



The birthday girl and "Pa." Typical shenanigans.






I made this inspired by the party theme.
Copyright laws? What?






Baby Jax et moi. J'adore.