Yule Logging

For no other reason than I needed out door-sy exercise, I started sawing up the downed trees in Maggie's field. Bob strained his knee and I encouraged him to forgo any serious physical exertion- like chopping and chainsawing. I took a small bow saw and started at one end.

See? I made progress. It got the blood flowing; I actually warmed up- something that's not been easy as we've had so many damp, gloomy days. I have a penchant for this sort of almost hopeless enterprise. I could wait and let Bob rip through this enormous tree with his chainsaw in a couple of minutes (and yes, he will have to do the big trunk parts!) but I like beginning at one end and plodding along a bit at a time. I think about what people did before power tools. They sawed by hand.

That's weird vortex picture! Not sure how I did that!
I also remember as a kid, getting in a small plastic boat and pushing myself around on our half frozen skating pond and playing "ice breaker". It was pretty useless, me and my miniature wooden oar smashing chunks of ice up but it was fun and I was persistent.

Maggie is shy about having her picture taken but enjoyed my spending time with her. After all, the tree is down in her field and makes it necessary to navigate around it. Maggie seems to have an unusual fascination with tools. When I feed her early in the morning, my flashlight is as interesting to her as the food. And she was very curious about the saw. It's yellow so maybe she thought it was a carrot.

In Pursuit of the Perfect Body

Yes, that's me flying through space in my self-imposed exercise regime, attempting to fight off mid-life love handles and mid-winter doldrums. I'm probably not succeeding at either as I'm sure I've been eating my way towards lumpiness, both because it's (not yet) winter and it's been cold, but also The Orange Menace provokes a certain level of anxiety in me that I suppress by consuming.

I've selected a range of DVD's from our local library, which I alternate with my own tailor-made inventive workout... part Jane Fonda/part me aerobically acting out. I have liked parts of each DVD- and disliked other parts equally. The first exercise disc I watched featured a woman who persisted in pointing out that she was on an island! it was warm! (needlessly as she was on sand, backed by rippling waves) and annoying me with her insistent arm motions. I could not for the life of me figure out what kind of weird figure 8's she was doing and I almost fell over multiple times. I'm not the most graceful being... but I try!
The yoga based one was better, and I felt good and relaxed after ward, but I think I need a bit more structure in the waist line area. Midriff bulge, muffin tops, love handles... I have successfully cultivated all three. I did both the beginner (kinda lame and too easy) and the intermediate the first time and today I combined the intermediate program with the advanced. THAT got my abdominals pumping! Saturday, I'll do my own spastic aerobic routine and then try the pilates DVD.

 As I lay on the floor, jack knifing and holding, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, Robin is throwing a fit in the hall. I think she thinks I'm suffering from some strange disorder. She gets plenty of exercise, running around the yard at full tilt. And I point out that despite having just celebrated a 3rd birthday, she's still young and I'm trying to be somewhat younger than my chronological years. The cold weather doesn't help! I haven't been able to go riding and due to the car dilemma, Robin and I haven't taken a walk in several weeks. (Hopefully that changes tomorrow!) Until then, here's to good health!

Dog Party

Crazy cat ladies do things like have 75 cats. Crazy dog owners dress their dogs in pajamas and drive them to play dates and have birthday parties. I will never order Robin a set of Star Wars themed dog sleepwear, but yes, I did plan a birthday party for her last Saturday.
I had originally projected inviting six dogs (and their respective humans) but three doggos were able to attend, and in retrospect, that was probably plenty. We provided cupcakes and crackers and dip for the humans and I wrapped small treats for the canines. I took the precaution of hiding most of Robin's toys and not offering too much in the way of dog edibles so as to prevent spats and aggression. This was probably smart on my part as Lil Robin seemed to discover that she could growl. In fact, Robin (who had previously met and played with all three of the dogs in attendance) decided she wasn't spectacularly happy with so many dog "frenemies" in her living room! Our friend Mary- who accompanied her dog Izzie- suggested that poor Robin was worried that this pack of dogs was here to stay... in her house!

Here's the guest of honor attempting to escape her collected friends. Here nose looked even longer than usual. It took her most of the afternoon to decide that a birthday party was okay. But the other dogs seemed to have a swell time:

Emily looked quite pleased. She is a delightful peachy pumpkin colored girl and seemed to beam the entire time... at least someone enjoyed themselves! And Emmett- quite dapper in his orange winter suit- liked being the only boy surrounded by lovely lady dogs. (His human, Michelle had fun, too. She made delicious brownies for us humans. We were pretty well behaved- no snapping or growling!)

Emmett appears bigger in this picture than he really is. I think he weighs all of 12 pounds! And our other guest was Izzie, a spunky and entertaining terrier mix who I was unable to get a good picture of. I seem to have taken a few blurry ones, probably because Izzie was always on the move.

That's Izzie (behind Emmett) in the yellow poncho, scarfing up bits of food dropped on the floor. At least I didn't have to vacuum! We attempted a group photo, but quickly abandoned the idea as our assembled guests were unwillingly to sit and stay. But I had a good time! I like to party with a pack!

In addition to turkey legs and wild thing dog jerky and happy birthday bones and assorted treats, I gave Robin an entertaining squeaky snake (squeaks in three places!) after her friends departed. It was a big hit: as we went upstairs to retire for the evening, Robin chose the snake to bring along and has been making quite a happy racket with it ever since. I guess I made a good choice!

The Tree Guys Returneth

Oh no!! Not again! Yes, we have more vast piles of sticks, trunks, branches and logs to remove from our yard. We do have our work cut out for us. But we're happy! We rejoice! Because they did come back and did a swell job. (We've been waiting for a few months, as you may recall. The tree guys were busy and the weather was against us. I guess we can also admit that it was nice to have a break in between gigantic clean up duties...)
Here are some action shots:

And they were wicked fast. The arrived shortly after 9:00 am and by 10:30 they were done and gone.

They worked fast but were remarkably accurate and careful. As we watched out the window, Bob
said, "I guess you can say goodbye to the little Japanese black pine you planted there." And I opined philosophically that was probably the price of having gambled and planted right where they were eventually dropping trees. But much to my wondering eyes, when I examined the scene of all this mayhem, the little pine was fine! It was surrounded by branches and debris but utterly unscathed. And all the rhododendrons were fine, too. (Which makes me doubly happy because they have finally grown and they all have buds.) Good job!

Boy, I could never do this: these guys are thirty feet up in the air in a bucket and it's windy and they're swinging a chain saw around. Not my idea of fun.
We had requested that they leave the trunks about 8 to 10 feet tall because I have this (half crazy) idea that I am going to apply mosaic to them, like we did on the pathway. I'm psyched but was a little disappointed that the one dangerous, precariously leaning tree was left- leaning- but about 10 feet tall. I remarked to Bob that I should have asked them to take that one all the way down. But he pointed out that that was actually the TOP of one of the trees they had dropped, and it had landed upside down, stuck in the ground. Wow.

There's Bob watching the last tree being removed. Bob is so smart; we had taken a walk in our woods the other day, searching for an Xmas tree. We tentatively picked one out, but I think we both felt badly sacrificing a nice living tree for a couple of weeks of joy. So then Bob says, "Why don't we fabricate a tree from the fallen pines and spruces?" What a genius idea! The constructed tree looks really good* and is ready to come in a be decorated. A win/win and it didn't cost us anything (except the money to have the tree guys visit.)

To be featured in an upcoming post.

Work Related

Just look at the cool dragon I scored at work! A nice perk has always been the ability to purchase (generally reasonably) interesting stuff. We joke at work that you have to be a "stuff person" to work at an auction house... otherwise it will overload your circuits and you'll go crazy. There is a lot of stuff in the world. The other truth of an auction house is that if you wait long enough, the same thing (or something very similar!) will come along. It's down right weird when we have an auction and get several identical objects consigned by different people. Last year we had the same Lalique vase twice in one sale and just last month, we had two nearly identical wooden swans from different estates. (How many of us have large wooden swans hanging around?!)
As many of you know, I have liked my job. I hope to be able to continue to do so but there are strange things afoot. Despite The Orange Menace constantly crowing about how swell the economy is doing, the auction that I work at seems to be floundering a bit. I understand that the auction world is changing and people are getting smarter about selling their own things on Ebay and Craig's List, and there are thirty million online auctions now...
Here's some really lovely fabric that I got- for a song. Even if I only used it as a backing for an art piece, it would still be a steal; there's over a yard and it's wide.

Anyway, I'm having my hours whittled and it doesn't make me happy. (And just in time for the holidays and the darkest, most brutish time of the year!!) Let's hope things pick up in the near future.

And here's "Steve". I pulled him out of the dumpster behind the auction. It is truly a source for strange things, and No, I did not name him "Steve"*. Look at the back of his neck:

See? I guess my point is how enriched my material world has been while working at the auction. Not only do I get to collect unusual and various things, I get to handle- and photograph- all sorts of delightful and museum-worthy items. I have developed a real appreciation for stuff I'll never own (nor particularly want to): like silverware and Chinese vases and ugly settees. They're all fun to absorb for a few minutes and then they go on their way.
Additionally, I feel entirely too jaded and exhausted to think of looking for another job. I have job-related baggage and little or no desire to have to become a perky and accommodating job applicant at this stage of my life! This has been a good, three-day-a-week job for an artist like me... don't make me start over now!!!!

*Steve is still living in my office at work. I have a prodigious collection of flotsam and ephemera that embellishes my work room, including a large drawing of Lenin and primitive Band-Aid art... and bugs! And teeth! And odd pictures of people grasping cats by their necks!

Thanksgiving Meat Feast

Can anyone tell me why this outlandish and frankly disgusting outer garment keeps showing up in the side border of our email? Bob and I have shopped online for boots and dog leashes and flower bulbs but neither one of us has searched for "jackets that look like marbled slabs of beef". Here's a fashion shot, featuring a contraposto male, just itchin' to show his meat off to some lucky lady:

Fetching, isn't it? And for some truly weird advertising, there seems to be "Arby's" embroidered on his left chest... Do they require employees to wear these smocks at work? Wouldn't that convince more people to eschew the consumption of meat? Hasn't anyone followed the downer cow/mad cow/Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease connection!?!?!?
I take into consideration that it is Thanksgiving tomorrow (be thankful that these ads have not been turning up in your email!) and hunting season is probably in full metal jacket swing, but we're not eating red meat anyway. We're having Chicken Marbella for dinner. Try printing chicken thighs on a jacket! (Or on second thought, don't!)
Okay... here's (I'm assuming) the same company doing themselves even one better if that was possible. Ready for this? (I think not: it was 6:00 am when I first saw this and almost screamed out loud.)

Yes, that's a jacket printed to look like the naked, incredibly hirsute fat middle aged white guy. Oh please! My eyesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Seriously? Who designs this stuff?) I guess this jacket is the logical rejoinder to red meat; a little white flesh, anyone? And would you enjoy a side serving of prions? Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Okay, okay... there's one more (incredibly enough) article of clothing in this line... you know the old jokes about how you don't want to see sausages being made? How about your anorak?

Early Winter

Just in case anyone slept late and missed the joy of waking up to five inches of slushy snow and rain and sleet and generally miserable conditions outside, I'll present a few pictures. How about we didn't get a measly inch or two- the proverbial "dusting"- but instead went for the full-blown, all out winter presentation: Look at this mess!

There's Robin, looking like she's lost in Alaska. She alone among us professes to like the snow. I suppose when one is young and carefree, snow is a blast. Robin does enjoy being toweled off (and given a dog treat) when she comes back in. No one gives Bob or me a dog treat when we come back in... but then again, Bob made French toast and the house smelled divinely like cinnamon and maple when I came back in from feeding Maggie.

Wow! I hadn't even thought about how monochromatic our world is when it snows... just shades of grey. It's hard to believe that just Wednesday, I was planting bulbs and raking leaves and Bob was splitting wood. I sure hope that this early snow storm isn't a harbinger of a long, cold, snowy winter to come. Yikes!

*At least I'm taking the day off from work. The drive in would be a nightmare! (Besides whne I called in, no one answered the phone.) Bob maintains you can't snow blow this sort of heavy wet stuff. But you sure as hell can't shovel it, either! Maybe (wishful thinking) it will melt??!?!?

A Post After the Elections

It's nice to be able to think about something other than politics (Go Blue Ripple!!) like the fact that Bob made this wonderful tile top table. It's got a great stable metal base with an attractive diamond pattern (maybe I'll photo that later) and these tiles were "found" down by Bob's studio. Amazing the stuff that turns up! I love the variation in blues among the tiles...

And you don't see items like this everyday! Our delightful and talented friend Roberta charmed me with an elaborate birthday package. This repurposed Osage orange (with a found alien hand!!!) announced my new magazine subscriptions (Remember that I use them in collage making). But that wasn't all: beneath the carefully wrapped orange was a lovely length of African cloth- perfect for upcoming project! and as if THAT wasn't enough, Roberta also bequeathed me a huge assortment of bulbs! Species tulips, scilla, daffodils, hybrid tulips... amazing! Any one of these gifts would have been more than generous but altogether, I'm overwhelmed! And really? It actually is nicer to receive gifts when least expected! Thank you Roberta!

And here's pastel upside down Robin to remind us that dogs enjoy getting mentioned, too! Robin's been very happy; I think she likes the colder weather, even if I don't. It makes her super frisky and nuts. She's been doing mad loops around the yard at like a million miles an hour. Craziness runs in the family.
I am trying to catch up with myself. It's hard to believe that it's almost Thanksgiving and the year is drawing to a close. So much has happened and continues to happen (and I'm not just thinking of politics!!! A decades worth of "incidents" in a day!) Remember that we experienced a tornado and we are still cleaning up from that. The tree guys are eagerly awaited to take down a whole bunch more dying spruces (the weather's been against them). I have a bunch more planting and yes! I have more studio ideas to implement. And don't get me started on the changes going on at work... anyone want to hire an artist? Actually, I have ideas in that department, too!

(Another) Week of Smelling Badly

That should scare you, a couple of days past Halloween! Just Lil' Robin the Good, rolling around exposing her teeth. And as frequently happens on my blog, the picture has NOTHING to do with the post. (I simply could not locate anything that smelled badly...)
This Wednesday, I was thrilled/relieved/ecstatic that I had NOTHING that I was required to do: no deadlines for submissions, no WTF merchandise to prepare (although I am receiving more orders!), no where I had to be. In short I had the day to myself and I decided to (finally) spend the day with Robin and plant the white daffodil bulbs I had ordered.
The day was perfect; warm (really warm), sunny (finally) and delightful. I gathered tools and dog and headed down to my "spring garden" area. As I wheeled the wheel barrow, I couldn't help but notice that one side of the yard presented the distinct aroma of chicken soup. Someone was obviously cooking. It wasn't the worst smell, just not what I expected.
But as I began cheerfully excavating rocks (lots of them) and inserting my first bulb, the atmosphere changed from chicken noodle to asphalt. The road crew had decided that today was the right day to pave our section of the road and I had to be party to it. Soon, further scents drifted over from our neighbor's house in the form of laundry softener sheets. I had anticipated the autumnal smells of fallen leaves and maybe a bit of apple cider but instead I got petroleum and artificial floral. Yeech.

This weekend, Bob and I are driving to Vermont to retrieve his sculpture that has been in a show all summer. In preparation for our voyage, Bob decided to apply a liquid metal patch to our truck's manifold which has a crack. (No danger in driving it, but it was getting loud.) As we are down to one vehicle, I have been driving the truck to work. About three miles up the road this morning, I became aware of a pungent, sulfur/eggy smell. The source was manifestly the patch, burning off but boy did it stink! I rolled down both windows, opened the back slider and tried to breath minimally. I have a forty minute commute to work.
As luck would have it, I wound up behind a school bus that was burning oil. The combined odor was something else and I was gagging by the time I arrived at work. There, I knew something was up because the front door was ajar. It has been unseasonably warm but it turns out that several pieces of furniture (and maybe a rug or two) that had come to the auction house smelled of cat piss and my co-workers were attempting to air the building out.
But I did ultimately get that pumpkin spice/cinnamon latte/apple cider autumn smell I had sought. There is a leak somewhere in the wall behind the bathroom at work and to mask the smell, our general manager had plugged in one of those peculiar room fresheners that get stuck in wall sockets. (Who thinks up this stuff??!) Truly this week, my world stinks!

A Successful Big Mess*

Hoo boy! You can tell we've been busy because the house is a mess and look at the deplorable state of my (home) studio! I was working so hard to get ready for City Wide Open Studios that I wasn't putting things away and was simply tossing fabric and stuffings and trimmings in heaps and piles.
The happy ending to the above disaster is that I sold a bunch of those "WTF" sculptures (yeah, yeah, they're pillows...) and tee shirts and patches. I was... SUCCESSFUL!!
And people came looking for me, which was no easy feat as the building that Open Studios was in this year was a vacant labyrinthian corporate office building with three floors of rabbit run cubicles. I assure you that absolutely no one saw all the artists... over 230 of them. I sprinted away from my space a few times to quickly scope out a few friends and recommended artists, but I missed 85% of what was on display. That's the one downfall to showing and not being a visitor.
But when people found me, they exclaimed, "Oh! You're the WTF woman!" Word traveled. It was gratifying, after poking holes in digits and wearing my poor fingers to the bone, to have so many people enjoying my work. All who came and spent time commiserated with me about the sorry state of affairs... and they spread the word of WTF by buying (and wearing in some cases) my work. I even got special orders- one for an Xmas gift. How thoughtful!

I am exhausted today, as I know everyone else is, too. We were there for three days and had to take our work down and clean up the space the last night. Bob had also showed two sculptures so by the time everything was loaded and transported back home, we were seriously tired. And that's in addition to all the energy expended after three days of talking to visitors and explaining the work and the process. We're hoarse!
At work today, I was less than my usual energetic self, but I carried on and photographed a million statutes of Little Red Riding Hood (don't ask!) and a few Hermes scarves and some bad art and a couple of weird modern lamps. And I made it home. But now I'm going to bed. This is how tired I am: Bob and I were watching last night's Last Night with John Oliver on the computer and I admitted to Bob that while staring at John Oliver discussing Attorneys General, I thought, "After this, we'll have to watch John Oliver". So I confess that my brain has shut down and I'm going to bed.

* And I had a funny title for this posting (while at work) but promptly forgot it once I sat down to right** this. That how tired I am!

**Yes, I actually spelled "write" as "right". Now I know I was tired!!!

Merch

Here's the shot I was trying for the other day... an update on my attempt at a "WTF Emporium". I'm thrilled to be offering these sculptures... which, as stated, can be used as pillows.

You will find they are:
                     1.) Great for cushioning the blows of outrageous fortune.

                               2.) Terrific for crying into after your health care has been taken away.

                               3.) Perfect for punching when a right-wing co-worker starts denies
                        climate change.

                  4.) Amazing at muffling your screams when The Orange Menace lies yet
                        again.

                  5.) The best for smothering obnoxious rethuglicans.
          
       And they make great gifts! Also available will be:

     Handsome all cotton tee shirts with our copyrighted (not really) WTF logo sown on by me, my one and only, underpaid and exploited sweat shop worker. (I barely let me take bathroom breaks and I've yet to be paid! I'm thinking of unionizing me.) Also available will be WTF patches so you can sew them on almost anything to show support for the appropriate amount of outrage.

So I'm hoping to "break even" at least! I already have a pre-order on a patch and a tee shirt so maybe I'll at long last break the Curse of the Childhood Entrepreneur!

History Repeats Itself (Maybe)

It's a long story why I couldn't take a new picture so you'll suffer along with an OLD picture while I tell my story- a story involving parallel universes and time travel and yes, history (possibly) repeating itself(although the image is pertinent.)
I am hard at work constructing things that look like pillows, but are actually sculptures. (Yes, they can be used as pillows and if you come to City Wide Open Studios in New Haven on the last weekend of the month, you'll be informed of all the many uses...) These (admittedly soft) sculptures all bear the now iconic WTF motif. I am making a brilliant pile of these sculptures so as to function as an irresistible heap of jewel-toned eye candy. We'll see how well this works. I have warned Bob that we will no doubt become the permanent custodians of many "sculptures" and lucky friends and family members know what they will be getting for Xmas this year.
Which leads to my historic sad-sack pillow story. When I was 14 or 15 years old, I made a quilted pillow in an art class. As my mother (aka Mommy) was a seamstress, we had boxes and boxes of fabric remnants in our attic and I thought to fashion several more pillows from these scraps. A bit later, I thought to be enterprising, and I produced a slew of these laboriously hand made quilted pillows to try and sell at our local fair. My sister Beatrice and her partner John made stained glass objects and we decided to share a table. Beatrice and John cleaned up: they sold tons of their lovely stained glass pieces and bought a large color television with their profits. Guess how much I made? How about nada? I didn't even sell one (at a bargain $20 each!!!!). People looked at them and complimented me but couldn't even pony up a lousy $20 to help a kid see that her hard work and gumption paid off.  *1. Great lesson learned! WTF!!!!

And this story gets even worse as I further attempted to find an outlet for all that entrepreneurial energy and talent. I had Mommy drive me to a store in Guilford that had specialty items and one of a kind hand made niceties and I presented my pillows to the owner. This man dismissively commented that "they had pillows for sale made by blind people".*2. Well, that put the kabosh on my early efforts to "follow my bliss"; so much for "do what you love and the money will follow". Hahahaha.
So here we are, almost 48 years later, and I have a sudden sense of deja vu all over again. Didn't I already go that pillow route? Am I being set up by fate? That's where I come to the time travel part. I want to go back in time and help that young artist (ME!) rewrite her her-story and sell ALL the pillows- now "sculptures" (as art is obviously more expensive). I want a parallel universe to provide an entirely different outcome: I want success and to be rewarded for all my sweat-shop emulating, bloody finger-tip inducing, third world mimicking hard (American!) labor to pay off. Please, please just let me sell even one...*3.

*1. And here's another peculiar detail... I still have most of the pillows. No kidding! Our living room chairs sport many fine example of my childish sewing efforts. I guess they wore well... and were worth the measly $20 price!

*2. I admit the irony of me having damaged my left eye so that I now have limited sight and probably could get away with marketing my work as "having been made by blind people".

*3. The weirdest thing is that even if I bring all of the sculptures and tee shirts (yes! I'm doing tee shirts, too!) home with me, it can be said of me "she persisted". Let's face it: artists just don't give up and admit defeat easily.

KUWTK

Somehow, Bob and I successfully miss giant parts of contemporary American "culture" and survive just fine thank you. This week, despite all the news (love affairs with murdering despots, less-than-Supreme Court nominees etc etc) Bob and I discovered The Kardashians.
It was one of those weird 3 o'clock in the morning discussions that arise when we both wake up and start taking about whatever odd subject crosses our minds. I can't recall- but I'll blame Bob- which one of us said, "Just who are The Kardashians?" We started to amass the little bits and bots we both know: they seem to have big butts and large (most probably) implanted lips. There are many of them, divided into camps: Kardashians and Jenners and they have alliterative names (Khloe, Kim, Kylie, Kibble, Kanye). But what did we really know about them?

I have been able to accidentally identify a segment of the cast of players simply by standing in check-out lines and reading magazine headlines and from following the news scroll while on the Internet. They are ubiquitous (did I need to remind you?) but we had no idea that they've been on air for something like 15 years. That's impressive and says something about America's affection for stupid rich people and "reality" TV.*
Bob spend the better part of an evening watching snippets of Kardashian highlights on YouTube. We learned charming trivia about the extended tribe including ex's with names like Scott Dicksick (hey! If I had a dick it would be sick after sleeping with a Kardashian!) and the bizarre pursuit of sperm so that "all of the children would have the same father". They seem to enjoy creating artificial kontroversies and konflicts within their elaborate dynasty; the better to propagate spinoffs. I don't care if they enthrall an audience of millions, Bob and I found The Empire of Special K boring and vapid. Gosh! What will we discover next week?**



*It also partially helps to explain The Orange Menace's ascension to power.
**In all honesty, The Kardashians did keep us from dwelling on the destruction of democracy for a few hours this week.

Terrible Week! But Good Harvest

Grapes! Tons of grapes! 84 squash! (count 'em... Bob did!) Lots of green (and yellow) beans in the freezer! Quite the bountiful harvest. And all of Nature's goodness offsets some of the cosmic shit swirling around. Sometimes it helps to just stop and count the squash...
I don't even want to dwell on or dive into why this week (past couple of weeks, actually) were so atrocious but I guess it starts with discovering a co-worker doing weird- and potentially dangerous- "research" on a work computer and the management not dealing with this in any way at all. Or my not getting a raise... and then we all get our hours cut. So work sucked!!
I guess I am dwelling on why things have been awful. And we get politics; yes, it all seems to devolve back to The Orange Menace and his evil agenda. A bit of lying and bragging to the UN and (more) insulting our allies. Supreme Court picks that are less than Supreme... triggering more than just a little PTSD in yours truly. Let's talk vegetables, please!

Well here's a bright spot. My sister Cathy gave us an exciting Day of the Dead decoration that, for all of it's being a dead person, looks pretty happy. Probably because it's not following the news. I do seem to be incapable of not listening to the horror story that is our current predicament.
Here's a happier note: I've been working my butt off in preparation for being included in a couple of shows and I'm receiving good feedback on my work.  For City Wide Open Studios this year, I'm pushing my "WTF" theme which has become a series and will be featured in my "WTF Emporium". Many colorful WTF items will be for sale and I just recently had a curator call me and rave about my work and wonder if  they could cluster a stack of my WTF pillows in a window. (They can't as I'm still making them!) But it was nice to know someone is thinking of me and my work!

Here's a small one I finished. My work was also put up on Instagram (in a promotional posting for a anti-gun show I'm included in) and called "quirky" which I think is just fine. I myself have been known to be "quirky" so I guess it's a good catch-all.
Today was a better day all around. Not only did I get good art input, I seemed to cross paths with better people who semi-restored a tiny bit of my (lack of) faith in humanity. If there are so many good/nice/reasonable people out there, why do all the bad/evil/insane people get into politics!??!