The Three Pillows of Wisdom

You may well remember my "Small Golden Pillow of the Resistance". It languished at Open Studios, despite my pricing it attractively. Several months after Open Studios, an astute collector (and friend- Hello Antony!) inquired as to whether it was still available. He was smart enough to snatch it up.
Then he approached me with the tantalizing question as to whether I ever do commissions. Of course I do! So he requested that I do two more pillows... one that reads "Bite Me".

And one that reads "Eat Me". As you see in the photos, "Bite Me" is complete and really a lovely thing to behold. "Eat Me" is still in process... I worked really carefully and consciously to make all the colors harmonize and to make the "fonts" that the words are written in different, yet complimentary. I think I was successful.

I actually wanted to photograph this and post it here to see if "Eat Me" read as clearly, or whether it requires tweaking and clarification. It looks pretty good although it's harder to see that the back ground fabric (under the gold) is really a very pale pink and it will be cut jaggedly to echo the star burst pattern. And then it's being mounted on a medium brown (kind of (milk) chocolate-y) pillow. But Bob just looked at it- unprovoked- and exclaimed that it was perfectly easy to read. That made me feel more confident, although I am still debating a narrow border of dark brown (bitter-sweet chocolate) beads around the interior of "Eat Me". Maybe not; maybe it's just gilding the lily!
I am very happy with how they're turning out. Sometimes someone else's idea is a good jumping off point. I have just completed 12 large scale pieces for my show in NYC and these pillows are a cosy way to sidle back into new studio preoccupations.

New Computer...

And it's about time! I bet all the philistines among you thought I had simply abandoned blogging as so many before me. But no! I am not that easy to get rid of. Almost a month ago now, our computer gave up the ghost. Bob went to turn it on and was greeted by a stony faced black screen. The timing was, of course, the absolute worst in history. I was just finishing installing my work "Better Guns and Gardens" at Artspace and there were images to send and artists statements to email for that show and my upcoming inclusion at Odetta Gallery. I was frantically uploading and sending off requested info from friend's computers during dinner parties and from work. A nightmare!(I am not even going to hint at how much unbacked up stuff we have sealed in that hard drive; we are going to have to pay for date transfer...) The good news is that we have a delightful new computer that has oodles of giga everything and we don't even seem to be upset with Windows 8. Yes, there are swirly, squirrely screens that flicker past at light speed and all manner of needless shopping apps but it's not THAT bad! I was worried.
And above, testimony to all the hard work I've been doing in preparation for that NEXT show at Odetta Gallery in Brooklyn. The studio is warm, wonderful and workable thanks to:

Remember "Yodel"? Yes, Yodel the Woodstove is now installed, thanks to Bob and our good friend Joe. They Saws-alled a hole in the studio roof and put in the new pipe. It works great and just in time; as I was finishing my book project, the weather started to get cold and I had begun to work in the living room (old studio) for a time. The studio heats up in no time and I couldn't be happier- or toastier!
But here's the pain side of all this work:

Kind of gross, all the splits and needle stabs I'm enduring. I jabbed a needle like 1/2" into this awful open bleeding thumb crevasse and then danced a mighty jig to stop from screaming. That really hurt. I guess that the down side to having a show in which all the pieces are sewn. But the work looks great and I plunge on wards, fighting through that old agony and ecstasy...
One more picture for good measure as I'm pleased as proverbial punch to be up and blogging again:

Dead flowers! A fitting last bouquet, plucked just before the cold weather began in earnest. Lovely perennial chrysanthemums from friend Bob. Well, they were lovely before they dried out, but they persist in our bathroom as a remembrance of this recently departed last gardening season. Only funny thing here is that I didn't take  picture of the new computer. Maybe next posting.