All The Fixin's

Oh boy! It's Fat Tuesday and Bob and I are no slouches when it comes to celebrating Mardi Gras. (Or anything else!) So we found out our local bakery makes King Cakes and you best believe we ordered early. I think it was my sister Cathy (Hi Cathy!) who bequeathed us the assorted beads, masks and plastic shot cup (on a bead string to wear around your neck... wouldn't want to lose the shot glass.) So with all the accoutrements in place, we're almost ready.

What, you may ask, are we going to consume pre-King Cake? Good question as even we aren't so debauched as to eat only cake for supper! Bob's making muffulettas. I knew you were going to ask! Muffulettas are ham, turkey (and in our case) capicola with olive salad and cheese on a sesame bun (*1) It's pretty hard to go wrong with this combination of things; we went shopping this morning to obtain the ingredients and I can't wait. 

But of course, the excitement really comes from that crazy cake, with the baby stuck in it. (*2) But Bob and I remarked... Hey! Wait a minute! This cake is SMALL!! Like half the size of a traditional King Cake! Like they're supposed to be oval!! Alas! Looks great but... where's the rest of it?! (*3)

(*1) In New Orleans, they make this on a large, round loaf of bread that gets cut into quarters but we must make do with individual rolls. It still tastes great, regardless of shape and size of the bread!

(*2) For some reason, I think the plastic baby represents the Babee Jesus. The King Cakes we bought in past years had the baby taped to the top of the box and one of us had to insert the baby into the cake. That's no fun because then one of us knows where the baby is. It's supposed to be a surprise. Also, the person who gets the baby buys next year's King Cake. In this case, the bakery placed the baby.

(*3) KInd of an oblique reference to ""King's Row" an old movie that that awful Ronald Reagan was in. See? King Cake? King's Row? Royal pain in my ass!
 

Weather or Not

 

Nothing "candy ass" about the weather! Ay ca-rumba! One day it's 50 degrees and sunny, the next day it's 10 degrees with a wind chill of minus 5... then we get snow. Then we get weird rain and now we have three inches of soon-to-be frozen slop. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow when I try and venture out to feed the poor horses who have been struggling to remain upright on ice. Maggie went and cut her leg on something sharp (while eating her breakfast?) and her paddock looked like a crime scene. I was going to photograph it but even I demurred; too gruesome! I washed her leg off, and despite her protestations, treated her wound with Vetericyn and bandaged it. It seemed fine by this afternoon, no more bloody snow!

So at least the evil weather has proven to be fertile time for me to get into my studio and make art. Incidentally, it was so cold for three days that I didn't even attempt to make a fire in the wood stove in my studio. I worked- like old times!- in the living room. Today, I was back in the studio, cutting out letters for a new piece. Betcha wonder what this one is going to say?!?!?! You'll just have to wait until I decide to share my newest "words of the day". 

Here's a detail. Yes, all of those tiny dots are individual seed beads, hand sewn on. I was referencing that weird (to my mind anyway!) candy that came on strips of paper. It always had bits of paper stuck to the back of the individual dots and I can't for the life of me remember it tasting like anything at all. But some friends have confessed to LIKING that candy. Go figure!

And little did I know that there is a queer, Jewish, male artist named Cary Liebowitz who goes by the name "Candy Ass". And he and I have a lot in common when you look at his work: he uses text- often scrawled in a awkward, hand written sort of way, he uses profanity (who me?!?), references the art world ... and he's funny. Check it out! Anyway, I knew nothing about him until a friend mentioned him to me on Instagram. You learn something every day!
 

                                               

 I decided to do my Candy Ass piece because my good friend Wasil often used this phrase to refer to stupid, clumsy or weak things or people. (He doesn't recall using this phrase but where the hell would I come up with it??!?!) I am dedicating this piece to Wasil... he's not candy ass at all!!

 

In Which I Admit to an Art Error!

 

See? You can barely read that! That was a big problem and my first "mistake". The colors and textures were fine, but the text disappeared into the surrounding fabric... and this is after I pain-stakingly double stitched it onto the larger piece.

So I pain-stakingly undid all those double stitches and mounted it on a darker piece of nifty, pseudo- marbelized fabric and laboriously re-stitched it back onto the larger piece (which reads, by the way, "Uh Oh... Kleptocracy".)

See how effective this addition of an under color was? See how the text pops and you can easily read it? See how I made a big mistake? No, I didn't see it either until I hung the entire panel on my wall and... holy cow?!!! How could I have not seen that? I reversed "uh" and "oh" and came up with a piece of gibberish. Second mistake! (*1)

So I (for the millionth time) pain-stakingly unstitched the words, replaced to top layer as the edges were now seriously fraying, and re-sewed it on. Looks great now!

Here's the entire, correctly spelled piece: 

 Not sure why this piece seems to want to photograph really darkly... could be all we've had is dark, rainy days for what seems like weeks! And this piece looks tiny but it's actually quite large; probably six feet tall and eight wide. I'm still working on hemming all the edges- which is a cinch as the material is thin and silky. (Not like the other piece I'm working on which is like three layers of pseudo ostrich leather and forces me to punch holes in my poor bloody fingers every three seconds!!!) Interestingly, this piece also weighs a ton as there's beading on top of all that fabric. And hidden underneath is a section of ugly old table cloth, acting as an unseen support as the thin silky, Versace-inspired background fabric is very thin and would never support all the work on top. My work is starting to require structural support...

I guess the upside of the chilly rainy weather is that it drove me back inside and got me to finish up several in -process works. A couple of (fully vaccinated) friends have visited and it's refreshing to be able to admit them to my studio and show off what I've been up to Lo! these many quarantined months. Enough work for a good sized show...

 

(*1) And we all remember a previous art mistake. I was beading images of my credit cards and accidentally omitted the "P" in "American Express". But that one turned out happily, and the mistake remained and made the piece unimaginably more charming. Wish I could find that image to demonstrate but it's on a flash drive somewhere...