From Art Fair to Animal Fair

 

Here I am, chillin' in my WTF Studio after a crazy time participating in Spring/Break Art Show. Hoo Boy! Tiring? Yes! I spent one day after visiting Spring/Break simply laying in bed recovering. I must have talked to a million and three artists and curators and gallerists and randos and friends... and everybody is looking for something (to quote The Eurythmics). Artists want shows and sales. Curators want shows and sales. Collectors (the few there are!) want bargains... But it was good clean, exhausting fun! Maybe do it all over again next year?

And here's a few things I saw- and really liked!

And...

And...

Hey! Those look familiar! Yep, that's my addition to the art fair. And they had a fabulous view out the window, up East 58th Street...

And we transition-

Here's me and Bob at the Durham Fair, picture taken by my sister Cathy. We had loads of fun. We ate, we saw odd chickens with fluffy heads, that scary Egyptian pharoah ride, lots of emus and alpacas! I still didn't get my fried dough- probably a good thing as it's not exactly health food! 

That's sister Cathy chowing down on a gyro at the fair. She begged me to take this picture as it was a sloppy (but delicious) mess and she entertained us with her table manners. We had pulled pork, rather sedate as opposed to her saucy sandwich roll!

As promised- and alpaca! Quite the charming personality on this one. Although I fell for a tall brown alpaca who made serious eye contact with me. He wouldn't let me photgraph him but he was quite the looker.

And emus? Did I promise emus:

These ones look two-headed from here! As we were enjoying the emu antics, a gentleman standing next to us remarked that emus are often raised for their meat; red meat in his words. We were happy when he moved off, as I'm sure the emus were. No one wants to be discussed as a potential meal while on display at the fair!

And, of course, a mandatory shot of the midway. (Not sure why it came out so dark as it was a pleasantly sunny day, with a light breeze and puffy clouds.) Also not sure why it doesn't look as packed as it was: REALLY crowded with so many willing victims. Willing to lose money on silly games with cheasy prizes and willing to throw up all that great fair food on terrifying rides that hurl you upside down and backwards. No thank you!

I Throw My Hat Into the Ring

As it is reported that there is a lack of enthusiasm among likely Democratic voters and many potential voters are wavering and still undecided AND there are still umpteen Democratic candidates, I thought, "Why not? Why don't I declare my intention to run for president?" Certainly, while my qualifications may seem skimpy, I could do no worse than The Orange Menace. At least I have read the Constitution!*
I plan on spending most of my time in my studio anyway, so I'll carefully select experts and pundits and pros and sages to actually run things. I'm simply running on the all-encompassing platform of WTF. Let's face it, I already have the tee shirts available!
My platform is pretty straight forward. I promise to minimize conflicts and war by maximizing cultural exchange. Under my leadership, we will sing and dance and make art and plant gardens and effectively dismantle the war machinery. Think what we could spend all that money on!
Additionally, I promise the following:

1.) Free studio space to anyone who wants it.
2.) Universal health care for all.
3.) Free, unlimited red wine. (Or, if you insist, white wine).
4.) Legalized marijuana.
5.) Intelligent people of impeccable integrity and credentials will hold important positions.
6.) A Climate Crisis task force will immediately convene and we will re-join the Paris Accord. 
     Alternative energy sources will be implemented and  SUVs will be phased out, along with coal
     fired power plants, nuclear reactors and fossil fuels.
7.) No guns, period. Fuck your 2nd Amendment.
8.) Nasty old men will never again make decisions regarding women's bodies.
9.) Artists, teachers and farmers will be paid more than CEOs, lawyers and politicians.
10.) Animals will be given a bill of rights. (Robin the Good and Maggie will help write this.)
11.) Anyone involved in racist, sexist, homophobic or in any other ways hateful behavior will be sent
       to re-education programs and taught tolerance and be required to perform community service.
12.) All of the errors/mistakes/evil and stupidity of the last three years will be corrected.
13.) The pursuit of happiness will be our guiding principle.

This is just the beginning! I could keep thinking of issues to deal with all day long, as I'm sure you all could add your own wishes to this list. Please contact me with your concerns! See you on the campaign trail!

*And for god's sake! If that weird Lincoln Chaffee is seriously running as a fucking Libertarian?!?! Why not me run?!

Fall is Coming

Boy, I hope that shows up- quite the awe-inspring spider web on a Japanese Maple in the garden! I'm not sure if the blog allows you to zoom in, but the detail was spectacular and it was one of those oh-so-elaborate and incredibly delicate works of perfection that only spiders can do. I can feel fall coming to the garden.
Things are getting squishy and damp and rotting and imploding. I'm not ready for that yet! I've been spending less time gardening and more time just enjoying the end of season mess. I actively like the garden when it starts to implode. I can't do anything to stop it and I might as well enjoy it.
That is, despite the fact that I feel like I just planted the containers and didn't I only finalize planting out those zinnias I started from seed like yesterday?!? While I appreciate the asters blooming, they too signal the approach of fall.
I am looking forward to planting bulbs (more white daffodils for the Lilac area) but I am NOT anticipating cold weather with anything even vaguely resembling glee. The summer never feels long enough.
On the other hand, the fall gets me double time back into my studio and that's a good thing. I'm hard at work on several new pieces and erupting into mass production of my WTF line of work. The annual "open studios" event happens a month from now, but I was offered the opportunity to present my "merch" at a pop-up marketplace. This means I need to do what I thought I had a month to do in a week and a half. Hahahaha! But I'll do it! I'll get it done. I guess it is fortuitous that the weather cooling and I'm in the mood to sew not dig.

A Brief But Heartfelt Post

Right now I am not happy with people. We have had several mass shootings: one (in El Paso Texas) being handled as a hate crime (as opposed to a "love crime"? Most crimes seem to involve hate!) by a guy who felt that Texas was being invaded by immigrants. The other (in Dayton,Ohio) seems to have been committed by (another) young white guy who had a "hit list" and a "rape list". Nice young man! And there was a shooting last night in Chicago- maybe not quite as splashy, but people are dead.
And don't get me started on the glib rethuglican responses of "thoughts and prayers" and video games being responsible and questions of mental illness. The rethuglicans need to grow up and take responsibility.
I had to suffer through some of the scripted remarks recited by The Orange Menace. I'm so cynical about the rethuglican comments on gun violence; it makes me gag. The same platitudes are invoked and there was some weird mention of "their deaths won't be in vain". WTF?!?!? These poor people were shot while buying socks and underwear at WalMart, or enjoying a night out with friends. Of course their deaths are in vain. They died because our country is too stupid and corrupt to pass meaningful gun laws.
And this was going to be a happy post about nice plants growing in our lovely garden and how happy I was to spend the day on Saturday designing and planting a whole new area. Instead, we finished up the day with the news of 20 people dead in Texas (and of course, the death toll has now risen to 22.)
I'm not going to spend time dwelling on the idiotic rethuglican (woman!) who ranted about the causes of this violence being gay marriage, drag queens, fatherless families and marijuana. Really? How about the vile anti-immigrant rants of The Orange Menace; the "leader" of our country who smirked when someone at one of his truly terrifying rallies suggested "shooting them" as an answer to immigration issues? The El Paso shooter obviously heard that suggestion.
And how come the rethuglicans have such a hard time admitting that the problem IS guns? The ease of getting one, the fact that almost any asshole can buy an assault rifle... why is the idea of a background check or a gun registry so appalling to rethuglicans?
I know several one issue voters and guns is that issue. They intone their 2nd Amendment "right" and think their wish to have "fun" reducing targets or animals or people to hamburger should trump someone else's wish to stay alive. We'd better do something fast but I know we won't.

Work in Progress

(I am not a happy woman as I type this as some fucking glitch of editing deleted my entire post and I am attempting to type this all again and recapture my witty and effervescent tone!!)
Ahem! I was writing that I have actually had time- in between the seasonal hysteria of gardening for myself and a friend and working and delivering a piece of Bob's sculpture to Vermont- to begin a new piece. Maybe gardening is slowing down a bit as most things have been planted and it's a matter of tweaking and weeding and fertilizing. My studio calls!
I hope the picture above gives some idea of my direction. The piece is about five feet wide and the back ground fabric is this great swirly, opulent yet sleazy pattern; over the top! (As is typical, I bought that fabric because I liked it and didn't have a clue as to what I'd use it on. When I started to design this piece, the fabric was shouting at me to use it.)
Here's a detail:

Fabulous, isn't it? Baroque twirly crenelations with leopard inlays- who thinks this stuff up? The top third of that picture is the fabric I'll use for the medallion area, where my text will go. It's this sort of spongey lacey gold and silver concoction; it's all so sweet it makes your teeth hurt. The text is going to be that aqua shiny fabric seen laying on top in the top picture. The sales woman at the fabric store said, "Oh! That's so pretty! What are you making?" "Trouble!" I responded. They always ask; I think they are required to. As previously mentioned, one store I go to greets me with, "It's the WTF lady!" I guess that's better than being called the "Star Fucker" after another notorious creation of mine.)
So I could be coy and not tell you what the text on this piece is going to say. But seeing as how I'm still experimenting with what the text is actually going to look like it may take a while, so I'll just go ahead and print it.
It started with my repeatedly hearing the word "kleptocracy". Here's Wikipedia's definition:

Kleptocracy is a government with corrupt leaders that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political powers.

(Obviously comes from the same root as "kleptomania". Let's face it, we now most certainly live in a kleptocracy!) Anyway, it had a certain ring to it and I played with "kultural kleptocracy" and a few other variants but I wasn't entirely convinced. And then it came to me- as my ideas often do!- while on my morning walk: "Uh-oh! Kleptocracy!" That was perfect. Sorta silly yet punchy and there's a hint of a warning in the "uh-oh".* I'm not sure when I'll get into my studio next for a extended work on the piece session, but you can be sure I'm exploring fonts and typefaces in my dreams!

* That phrase comes pulled up from the deepest dank depths of my childhood mind hole. See if you remember it. Bob got the reference right away and I was delighted.

Spring Break

It was so warm, so sunny, so NICE that you could almost forget that it is only the beginning of February. And whether it's a slightly late January thaw or an aberrant benevolent snap, it really doesn't matter... it was beautiful weather.
When I checked the thermometer, saw that it read a hair above 60 degrees, I removed our thermal window cover and let the sun and warmth stream in. It made me feel so much more optimistic and want to do things...
Perhaps I overdid, as today I can barely walk. I went (horseback) riding for the first time in over a month. It felt both oddly familiar and strangely odd to be aboard a fuzzy 900 pound being. The riding part came back to me quickly- thank goodness or my riding instructor would probably have brandished a quirt about my ears!- but my muscles felt savaged and resistant, and that's despite my exercising diligently at home! Riding calls into play all manner of interesting muscle groups; inner thigh and lower abdomen particularly. It feels good to work these areas, but not so good that sitting still for a few minutes makes getting and crossing the room a uniquely torturous adventure.
Adding to my soreness was my enthusiasm to cut back some of the grasses and perennials in the long border. The birds have no doubt eaten all the seeds they're going to eat and the plants are shattered from beatings of ice and rain. They look messy so I lopped them back and dragged them away. Now my shoulders are protesting...

Maybe that's why my latest WTF sculpture is green- a longing for spring. I am excited about the second kind of Spring Break I'm celebrating here. My work is  being included in a booth at the eponymous art fair (Spring Break). This is something I have wanted for years. My work was almost taken to an art fair a few years back and I was sorely disappointed (more soreness!) when my sometimes art dealer (hi Ellen!) decided not to participate. (Let's be real: art fairs are expensive and peculiar, a very complicated aspect of an already complicated contemporary art market). Many people express disdain and contempt for art fairs; truth be known, they are like shopping malls for art consumption. People stagger around, ostentatiously absorbing Kulture and impressing each other with their conspicuous "good taste". But as an artist, you gotta love the exposure! Holy cow! How many eyes will fall upon my work?!?!?? I'm psyched.
Another good reason to throw back the curtains and enjoy the nice weather!

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.

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!??!

Crazy Town!

A fair warning: for those of you who don't want to read an incoherent and obscure rant, just look at the pretty flowers and leave. (They are, by the way, all zinnias plucked from our cut flower area of the vegetable garden. Don't know why the colors got sort of dark; I think I was a bit late in photographing them and they are darkening with age. Then I manipulated the boring background.)
So nothing to report except... Fear! Unhinged! Fire and Fury! Lodestar! Collusion/No Collusion! Witch hunt! Lyin' New York Times! Lyin Ted Cruz! Lyin' Hillary! Hoax! Fake news!
Anonymous! I am the Resistance! WTF! Again: WTF! And I like that a new parlour game was invented: name the anonymous White House staff person responsible for the Op ED.
So, hi! I'm having an average week in an average year and lovin' it. I guess you have to go with it or lose your mind. I will leave it to others to determine whether I've lost my mind or not but welcome to Crazy Town! Are we supposed to feel relief that a few individuals in the administration see themselves as "adults" and voices of reason? That does little to reassure me. I do feel like we're being driven off a cliff and I didn't ask to go along on that ride.
I know, I know... this is the messy tirade that I threatened but I was on the verge of explosion and this blog posting was my safety valve to blow off steam before I went super nova. And I could go on and on and on. But I'll spare you and stop here. I will do better next time. I promise.*

* You want to know what would make me feel even better? Waking up and discovering this was all a really bad dream. Not gonna happen, is it?

Constant Consternation

I have been having many-so very many!- WTF moments lately. Just as I think I have ripened into a fairly unflappable semi-adult 61 year old, something else happens to make me exclaim, "What the Fuck"?!!?!?
Take this week for example. The Orange Menace, who masquerades as something called "The President" continues to provide so many WTF episodes that it's causing my head to spin completely around ala Regan in "The Exorcist". Firings, subpoenas... WTF!??!
And the weather? Does this sound like the first day of Spring?!?! We're expecting our fourth (FOURTH!??!?) Nor'easter in three weeks?!?!? WTF!?!?
I experienced a personal WTF moment after I had a flat tire.  Allegedly, you can't replace only one tire on the Subaru; because of all wheel drive, it is strongly "suggested" that you replace all four tires.  Each tire was quoted somewhere around $140. But it occurs to me that the Subaru has 234000 miles on it, leaks oil and smells like gas... Really? Isn't that throwing good money after bad? WTF!?!
I guess I should believe anything that comes my way, but I still keep reeling. That's why I embarked on the above piece, suitably exclaiming WTF!??! I think it expresses what many of us have been feeling.
Me? I want warm sunny weather outside my house and calm inside the White House!