A Drive Down Memory Lane

I recently had occasion to drive past several "houses" that Bob and I looked at prior to landing in real estate nirvana (in the location of our present address at the BauHaus Chicken Coop). Above is all that remains from a truly decrepit barn- and a smaller, not too bad barn. This is sad to see! When we toured this property, yes, it was bad (Our real estate agent ran back to his car) but there were cows living there. And the property itself is nice: still rural and rolling and in a very pretty area. I guess no one else was crazy enough to even look. We actually dragged a carpenter friend along with us; he was polite enough to tell us we were out of our minds! We'd never have gotten a mortgage on this place.
And then there was this place:

This house has really come up in the world! When we toured this location, they wouldn't even let us in the house. I believe there was a small issue involving the structural state of the floors and the staircase.It was pretty old, possibly spook-ridden and there was definitely a grave stone in the back yard. There was also a huge boat (!?) that someone had been constructing and several barns. One barn- a rambling, lop- sided affair is gone but the smaller barn was also nicely redone.

I think quite a few trees were removed, too, as I remember a row of evergreens that don't seem to be there anymore. I'm glad to see that this place got the attention it deserved. It was interesting to happen on a couple of these "Coulda been Ours" (or more like: My God! What were we thinking!) I'm still eternally grateful that Bob and I wound up where we are: it really is home.

Neigh Sayer

Poor Maggie was so distraught at the cold and continuing unpleasant weather. She seemed most unhappy so I made her morning grain cheerful in attempts to start her day off right. Hey! She has company in feeling that this winter will not end, even if it is "officially" spring. But no one put a smiley face in my breakfast cereal.
I hear there was a movement afoot to decapitate Punxatawny Phil or Pete the Ground Hog. I think his credibility is in the toilet.
On the other hand, I was forced into the bizarre task of shoveling snow into a wheelbarrow (from the still huge pile at the end of our driveway) and wheeling in to the back yard so that the ever enthusiastic Jules had snow ball material. (This was before that most recent awful storm dropped snow and slush last weekend.)

Only for the dog would I do that! Jules stand at the fence and supervises to make sure I get enough snow to keep him busy. Check out the picture below.

Jules is incorrigible! He doesn't care if it's cold, or snowing or wet or miserable, he wants to play ball. I was in my studio attempting to create masterworks and he's begging me to come out and throw his nasty ice-encrusted toys around. But he is cute and pretty hard to ignore. And look at this last picture:

He took off after another ball I had tossed and left a perfect negative print; sort of a canine Andy Goldsworthy. He probably has a career as an environmental artist waiting for him. I hope he remembers who got him started when he gets a show at the Whitney!

Dessert 'Shrooms

I always maintain that if you leave artist's alone with anything- food, clothes, building materials- they'll start playing with it and make it into something else. That's what happened with our dessert the other evening.
We had one humongous banana left. I didn't want to eat the whole thing so I decided that Bob and I would share... but with a cookie jammed on top as a roof.
I had made cookies the day before- call them macaroons (not the coconut kind, but the Frenchie ones) or Italian amaretto cookies (as the book did). They're really good and crumbly and chewy at the time and taste like almonds. Nothing could be simpler than these cookies; you use almond flour in place of any regular flour and egg whites and sugar. It made a great dessert as there was smooth, creamy, crunchy, sticky nexus in your mouth. And they looked like great big toadstools.
Bob and I do like to experiment, and sometimes on friends. Obviously, what we consume is sometimes pretty entertaining and not always everyone's cup of tea. Once we served a few friends a "recipe" that we prepare occasionally that consists of length-wise sliced bananas spread with peanut butter and topped with chocolate chips. You then broil these creations for a few minutes. We think they're delicious. One of our friends said it made her think of something you'd serve to children at a kid's party. I'm not sure if that was a compliment exactly...
I guess that's a nice segue into the announcement that I am hard at work on a cookbook. Yes, I who do not cook am composing an artist's book entitled "Recipes for Disaster: From the Studio to the Kitchen". It's a fun project because I can construct/erect/destroy all these interesting assemblages of food and stuff and then photograph them... just like a "real" cookbook. As my sense of humor is often that of an adolescent eighth grade boy, all hell is breaking out. But it's a bit different as I'm working with weird edible materials and photographs. I'll keep you posted!

Hey! Where's the Rest of Me?!?!?! And Corporate Stupidity

I'd say there's something missing; something called having enough horse sense to get out of the snow and rain! That's my crazy Maggie, standing around bored and wet, wet, wet. Here's the missing part:

Maggie is just here as a "cute" (if soggy, smelly, steamy horses with large noses can be considered "cute") diversion.
Anyway, now that I have your attention, I'd like to present today's sermon: Corporate Stupidity. I know; this topic could take us well into the next millennium and beyond... I may as well begin.
Banks: we all hate them. I mean, they're supposed to guard our money, and yet if memory serves me correctly, we (the American people) needed to bail a few of them out because they couldn't seem to manage their financial houses. And Bank of America is the worst. I have addressed this problem previously and assigned them the new moniker of "The Devil". Let me explain.
Bob and I have a credit card from Working Assets. This entity used to donate a portion of their fees and monies to worthy, lefty causes. It was all warm and fuzzy and supposed to make you feel good about buying things because you were helping disenfranchised, vegan, artistic lepers from Guam who wanted to marry their pets. (I was always glad to help!) And you could even cast votes for whatever organization or cause you deemed sexy. Until Bank of America swallowed Working Assets.
And it's all been down hill. No more votes for good causes or democratically motivated spending. I don't know why we still have the card. Then this came; our most recent statement:

Can't read that? I'll insert a blow up of the balance on our card:

That's right! Bank of America isn't too big to send out a bill for $0.92. Not too big to be stupid! And I am assured that if we don't pony up before the due date, they'll charge us a $35 late fee.
So I called them. I was thinking that they obviously want their $0.92 but that possibly I could just have that balance transferred to our next statement as the writing a check or calling to do a telephone transfer to cover that amount would certainly generate more than $0.92 worth of paperwork or hassle. But do you know the operator that I (finally) reached after a positively Byzantine computer driven phone loop tried- and failed!- to push that balance forward. The famous refrain of, "Once it's in the system..." was the reply.
I rest my case. How stupid was this exercise? I'm not entirely sure how I left a balance of $0.92 on our card, as I try and pay the balance off every month. I am guessing that I accidentally left off the change on last months statement. But BofA ("Bofa" does have a certain ring- like a buffoon) is really in the basement as far as I'm concerned.

Paranormal Activities at the Ranch

Bob and I don't really put much stock in poltergeists or numerology or other worldly phenomenon, but we do like our occasional horoscopes. I'm a Cancer and both Bob and Jules are Tauruses (Tauruns?) so that makes us all wonderfully compatible. (It's anyone's guess when Maggie's birthday is; for some truly stupid reason to do with horse racing, all horses are said to have January 1 as their birthday).
Anyway, we religiously read "Free Will Astrology" and have for years; otherwise, how would we know what to do with our lives? I can't say that Rob Brezsny is any more or less "accurate" than any other astrologer, but he's funnier and more provocative. Don't worry; we haven't gone all Nancy Reagan.
But now that I've confessed this much, one member of this household is always eager to look up the horoscope printed in any of the fashion magazines that I get. (I get these magazines for art purposes, like the porn magazines. That's another blog posting...) These horoscopes tend towards the "hot month to ask that new himbo at the water cooler out" persuasion and to give zodiacal tips on making sure your bag matches your shoes, especially if that catty Saturn is in your third house, which rules all things hosiery. This explains why we always look so good...
On a useful note, I think that remembering one's weekly horoscope is a good at home test for Alzheimer's Disease. Half way through the week, Bob or I will quiz the other with, "Do you remember what your horoscope was?" Typically, we remember one or the other; rarely both.

Our house is generally quiet when it comes to spooks and things that got rat-a-tat-tat-tat in night. When we were looking to buy a house, we always inquired about hauntings/ possessions/ apparitions and the like. I for one do not wish to mess where I shouldn't be a-messin', and things that visit from astral planes and parts unknown are in this camp. I have spent several (distantly past) uneasy nights in houses that were haunted and had no desire to purchase one. While Bob and I aren't superstitious, I think we're both cautious.
Having said that, I will allow that occasionally things disappear, such as the scrubber thing for the dishes in the sink (Both Bob and I are certain that that has gone over to "the other side"). And my socks... some spook with fifteen legs is having a field day as my socks are constantly disappearing. Perhaps I should ask Planchette for guidance.
A psychic whom we had visit to confer with our previous horse (to determine why he was so miserable) said that there are many Native American spirit residents of our property and that they liked us. We never really figured out what was bugging Crispin the Horse but at least the indigenous peoples think well of us.

A Certain Insecurity

My studio table is often littered with odd bits like this bowl full o' heads. I've been doing lots of collage work of late; often worry that I'm "loosing it", but then I think better and plow ahead...
I suppose- no, I KNOW!- that's a universal artist problem: insecurity. I try not to care too much. Really, what can you do; people either like your work and "get it" or not/ And trying to explain (art) work to people not attuned is hopeless. Hopeless.
I have always subscribed to the idea that you do work to please yourself and the devil take the rest. This is the only healthy response. Nothing in the universe is more depressing and dead ended than an artist thinking to make work to please an audience. If you do a landscape, they'll want a still life. make a red painting and they'll want it in blue. Who can work like that? And to worry about "good" and "bad" is to lose the day before it's even begun. Believe me, the artists (and writers and musicians and whatevers!) that worry about whether their work is good or bad are never going to do anything. They're paralyzed by fear; that's awful and soul-crushing. This is (partly) why my mantra is more. Just "more". Make art. Make more art. The good and the bad will sort themselves out. (Besides, plenty of really bad artists go places because they have confidence in themselves. Often waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more confidence than the really good- but insecure!- artists. Trust me on that.

(Another table shot). So why is this question on my mind? Because since I damaged my eye, I wonder if my eye is so connected to my brain and my art center and my hand/eye that my work is "off" (like bad meat). I don't really believe that, but I can't help at times but feel insecure because it's just so much harder for me to do things. I couldn't collage for a long time as I just had so much trouble cutting up tiny bits of paper. Then I just sort of forged ahead. I also keep working so as to not sit around worrying about whether what I'm doing is any good.

And as I hinted at before, this sort of un-confidence is very unlike me. What's a woman to do? I keep making art, good, bad or indifferent. I think I'd really be nuts if I didn't make art. I am also experimenting with new things, like using photographs and I still need to start messing around with my video camera. I have several things in mind for that. Always I have ideas! May not be able to execute them as effectively as I'd like, but the ideas keep coming...