... And as Happy a New Year as is Possible Under the Circumstances

An interesting beginning to the New Year... I can say that Bob saved the day yesterday. I woke up at about 5:30 and I felt chilly. That's unusual for me as typically, I retain the heat from sleeping under the two hundred blankets with which Bob and I cloak the bed. (Over night, I almost always cast off sweat pants and socks as we sleep and when I stumble outside to let Robin eliminate I am enveloped in an invisible warm envelope.) In any event, it was only 60 upstairs- which is cold as the heat in our house reliably rises and the bedroom is often a good seven or eight degrees warmer than the kitchen. When I went downstairs, it was much colder and obvious that the furnace hadn't come on in a while.
I woke Bob up- such fun to be awoken on New Year's Day to a cold house. Bob tried the furnace and likewise, it didn't come on.... we made a fire in the wood stove.
The immediate tragedy of freezing to death warded off, Bob did some investigation with the furnace itself and found that the on/off switch had been tripped. (Probably be me as I brushed past the furnace in the utility room to flip on the outdoor flood lights at 3:00 am when Robin needed to pee...)

(Our little helper, rooting around for stray bits of dog food on the utility room floor.)
Anyway, Bob got the furnace working and we were happy for about a half an hour. Then Bob tells me that he went outside and checked the propane tanks and... they were all three empty! So he shut off the furnace (again) and we heated quite happily with the wood stove, planning on calling our propane supplier the next day.
The next day turned out to be a holiday (who knew?) and  we had to order on Tuesday. In the meantime, the weather continued warm so no big deal (although as an interesting aside, a good friend (Hello Sheldon!) had inquired about us heating with wood. I said, "Oh, with both Bob and I heating the studios with wood, we usually heat the house with propane. Running three wood stoves is a lot of work!" Little did I know.)
So on Tuesday, Bob orders propane and they came and filled the tanks and a general "hooray" arose from the denizens of The Bauhaus Chicken Coop as warmth would fill the land. The house was still warm from the continuing wood stove fire so it wasn't until early the next morning that we realized the blasted house was cold and the danged furnace wasn't firing and catching. It seemed to want to try, but something wasn't right.
Bob went on line and- intrepid guy that he is!- watched several videos about things that might cause the furnace to not start. He cleaned a widget and make a tweak here or there but still no luck.
Bob re-called the propane company and they dispatched a technician. The man arrived pretty quickly and looked at all the possible fittings and switches and I'm seeing dollar signs flash before my eyes as these guys aren't cheap. But he said the furnace looked in good shape and clean and went outside to test the hoses and line. There he discovered that the delivery man had SHUT OFF the gas coming into the house! He opened the valve and ta-da!! the furnace kicked right in. We aren't even being charged as the technician said that delivery guy must have mistaken our delivery to one that had a leak. So all's well that ends well and we're warm and happy. (The weather got cold right after this episode transpired...)

Yes, a shot of left over (from Lil' Robin's birthday party) balloons, now taken up residence in the downstairs shower stall.

The Requisite X-Mas Post

Well, here's the tree:

I think it looks exactly like last year's tree- although the needles are the longer variety. And this one cost $13.00- half price at Lowe's! (We're boycotting Home Depot as they apparently supported The Orange Menace). I'm glad we scored a tree only a couple of days before Christmas; it lent a modicum of "cheer" to a relatively cheerless holiday! (I mean, the world may soon erupt in a radioactive fireball when The Orange Menace blows us all to Kingdom Come. Heaven help us!)
I know it was this lack of hope and general despair that inspired this year's card.

(Caption inside: "Let's put the X back in Xmas"... who first used that weird abbreviation, anyway?) The image was a nice way of negating this holiday season, if not the rest of the year. Somehow we wound up with 120 cards, not the 60 we had ordered, so we slaved away in our little factory decorating a lot more than we needed before we realized our mistake. I guess we can use this nihilistic greeting as thank you cards or something.
I've had the week off and Bob and I have spent it lurching from social event to social event. I feel fat, logy and generally in hibernation mode. I've been playing an inordinate amount of video games and am surprised at just how easily enthralled I am by them. (In fact, the sillier the better!)

 See? Oh boy! I got to level 35! And I "bought" a Dragon Castle! And more fish! I do find these games relaxing and it sure beats crawling back to bed to sleeping for the next four years. (I've considered that, and I'm sure I have company!)
Don't worry: I have also spent time in my studio and am having fun with that. I have a few new projects in the works- one that I have been dallying with for three years or so involving a World Atlas sort of thing... and more seditious fabric pieces. Something to live for!

My Gift to You: More Free Art Ideas

Latest piece to erupt on that famous studio wall. I guess I'm (not so subtly) addressing the commodification of, well... everything! And certainly art and artists. I generally riffed on the Coca-Cola* style of font with a bit of personal tweaking (gotta make it my own). I especially enjoy playing with typefaces and fonts because my own handwriting is atrocious. (And if you're going to make big long words labor-intensively sewn onto fabric and embellished I think you'd better be able to read what's being written). This piece is about 70 inches long and about 38 inches tall. The edges are decorated with a half a million of those little white plastic tabs that come on the top of milk cartons. (We've been saving them for years so it's nice to finally have a use for them). I don't know if you can see it in a small picture like this, but the background fabric is pictures of International Harvester and John Deere tractors with cozy farmstead buildings and farm urchins thrown in for good measure. Obviously, Big Agra Inc has seen to the commodification of our food industry (thank YOU Monsanto!) and generally in this, the season of Xmas, everything is truly a commodity. Go ahead and commodify me!
And in the midst of all that commodifying, it occurred to me that this is often a great source of inspiration: a single word or phrase that gets caught in my cerebral cortex. I hear a word and maybe hear it again (or sometimes they just spring suddenly onto that TV screen inside my head) and then it sticks and I need to do something with it. The "do something with it"is to make it into an art project and I recommend this to you, if you're in need of prodding or encouragement. Find a word that resonates and illustrate it or illuminate it or just use it as a point of departure. For me, words that catch my fancy are most often political or economic in flavor. I did a whole series of collages that presented Economic Collapse vocabulary: things like Sub-prime Mortgage and Credit Default Swaps. Not only was it a good mental exercise in that I needed to research what the devil these things were but it was a way of making sense out of a pretty depressing scenario. (And then I sold a bunch of them which was good for my personal economy). A large fabric piece from two years back featured the lugubrious "Sequestration". (Anyone remember that?) You can even make a word up, which of course borders on poetry which is (obviously) creative in it's own right.
So for the holidays, contemplate words that reflect the edge of cliff feelings that we're all experiencing right now. "Unpresidented" is a good place to start...

*Probably the single most recognized font in world. I read a really interesting essay on line about how carefully that font was designed. And how it "shouldn't" work, as it has internal inconsistencies and odd spacing etc.

Full Moon

I can't deny it, and the full moon isn't helping: sleep is sometimes a fleeting occurrence. Talking with others has corroborated the clear fact that since the election, sleep disturbances are on the rise. I've been delaying posting to my blog because I didn't want every post to be dominated and preoccupied with recent historic events, but inevitably, the swirling spirals out of control and back towards the election results...
I am still in denial and recent revelations as to Russian hacking doesn't inspire confidence in the November outcome. I have signed so many petitions that I risk carpal tunnel and my inbox overflows with solicitations for donations to fight off the assaults on our freedoms, our resources, our sanity.
Troubling appointments, bizarre twitter rants and refusal to participate in security briefings... all of it adds up to a rather rocky start to the next administration not to mention the Holiday Season. Not much to celebrate here!

(Another omen! A dead mouse appeared at the top of the stairs; I'm not sure whether it's a victim of Robin's developing hunting prowess or a message from the gods!) Suddenly it's a cold dark season and it reminds me of that things are only going to devolve into even darker places. We have no Christmas tree yet, I'll get fatter if I bake Christmas cookies (and I read a story that said people are putting on weight since the election- stress induced overeating) and all my friends and I do is discuss how this happened. So much for Yule Tide cheer!

Oh, and as addendum, some of you will remember that the Bush Administration (Dubya incarnation) was a cottage industry for me. I created what I called "The Presidential Library"- three volumes inspired by the shenanigans and malapropisms of George W. They sold quite well. It says something about the incoming Orange Menace that I have yet to have a single idea or artistic response to his soon to be coronation. Heaven help us!

Robin's First Birthday

Our Lil' Robin! All grown up! Robin celebrated her first birthday in fine style yesterday. Her actual birthday was on Monday the fifth of December, but we had in mind to throw the party on two-for-one pizza night. Several friends- under the weather- couldn't make it but the friends in attendance had a wonderful time and Robin couldn't be happier.

I spent the previous evening decorating and cleaning. (Poor Bob was laid up by the unexpected extraction of a sideways wisdom tooth and was reduced to eating mush and retreating back to bed with a heavy dose of Advil to keep pain at bay. And while we dined on pizza, Bob consumed eggs, squash and mashed potatoes...)

The house looked festive with all the streamers and balloons and our friends were approving of the results (They even noticed the rug as being cleaner than is typical for our somewhat slippery standards. I pointed out that this was due to the fact that I had removed all the semi-chewed logs from the floor.)
So Robin is a smarty pants and realized that the packages I had snuck into my studio were for her. I had to take the presents to work to wrap them! She made out quite handsomely, with our generous friends Sheldon and Louise giving her a new dog-bone motif collar, cookies and a braided rawhide chew bone and there was a delightful rope toy from Bob and Bill:

Look at her haul! She likes every one of her toys. She had a dog food cake with a Pupperoni candle (not lit) while we enjoyed adult drinks and cup cakes. We also serenaded Robin with singing and noise makers... it was quite a lovely event!

 

Robin also received thoughtful cards with an emphasis on her status as a little princess. She looked quite pleased with herself this morning, carefully revisiting all of her new toys. I have told her we will spend part of the day composing "thank you" cards!

A Suggestion

(Attention! Something else to take our minds off of the Ascension of the Orange Menace to the Presidency! I must keep busy for four years...)
In light of the overwhelmingly positive response I've had to my (occasional) postings on art, artist's blocks, creativity etc etc, I decided to provide all my many readers with another foray into the workings of the creative mind and another exercise to pursue.
First, a suggestion- or if you wish, an assignment. This will sound really simplistic but it can be very effective. You may find yourself sort of stumped or stymied or even a tad weary of what has been occurring in your studio or work space, and what seemed like an effortless flow last week suddenly seems to have screeched to a halt and you're cosmically constipated. I know when I find myself occupying this cramped and awkward state, I often keep bulling ahead, as if forcing things to happen will make it all work out okay. (And sometimes it does!) But more often than not, it just makes you feel worse.
My suggestion? Do something entirely different. See? I knew it would sound simplistic but I mean REALLY different. If you paint, make a sculpture out of modeling clay. If you make sculpture, try making a video or hell, just draw on the computer and alter a few photographs, like I did in the above (heavily doctored) picture of a vase of flowers. The idea is to rearrange your thoughts so they're not so serious, but you're more available for play.
Often that's all I need to get things chugging along in the right direction. Let's face it: sometimes, I'm super fired up and ideas are pouring out so fast I can't keep up with the thoughts I'm scribbling down. But there are definitely periods where doing something/anything is tough. I can also find it helpful to divert myself by doing an activity NOT art related, like gardening or raking leaves or going for a walk. But that not art related activity can become an excuse or a dodge and take you away from the very real (and hard!) work of making art. I know that many people think making art is "fun" (and mostly for me it is. I'm pretty lucky...) But it's also lonely, isolating, and can be crazy-making.
And now a plug for an artist's book presentation (yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy!!!) that I'm giving in conjunction with the inaugural Collector's Club meeting at Odetta, the gallery in Brooklyn that I have been showing with.

Now, this should be fun. Some friends and I are going to read selected excerpts from my latest opus, "Rita Valley's Guide to Collecting Art". I- like most artists- am always on the look-out for new collectors; maybe this is the chance to jump on that gravy train!

Fussy Eaters (A Diversion from Politics and Art)

In an effort to buoy our flagging spirits and to prevent an erosion of my last bit of sanity, I decided to write about other dramas erupting at the BauHaus Chicken Coop. F'rinstance, both Maggie the Mexican Pony (hope she's legal or she'll probably be deported) and Lil' Robin the Good have decided to stage their own versions of hunger strikes.
In Maggie's case it started with the advent of true cold weather. Inevitably, at this time of year, the grass stops growing and a horse begins to consume more hay. Maggie loved the hay I supplemented her grazing with this fall. I mean, there was never a stray piece of hay in her hay rack; she ate every last bit. The man I bought the hay from ran out- which is a shame not only because Maggie liked it, but he gave me a good price because I bought a truckload. So I picked up 10 bales of hay from a dealer in the next town over, paying a higher price for their second cutting hay. (Horses generally keep better on second cutting; it's mowed in August or early September and is typically finer and greener and higher in available nutrients. Especially for a horse that's a bit "longer in the tooth", like our friend Maggie. Don't tell her I said that!) Bob and I liked the hay. It smelled nice, had good color and was in a bigger, heavier bale. We thought we were getting a good deal. But Maggie decided otherwise and turned up her long striped nose. She voiced her disgust at this (apparently) sub-standard hay by pulling it down from the hay rack and stomping on it. Just look at that picture- nose out of joint and very grumpy!
I called the woman from whom we've purchased our winter's supply of hay for the last four years and to my dismay I was told their second cutting had been a very small yield due to the extreme dry season and worse, it was all sold out. I went over and bought one bale of first cutting hay to tide us over and while Maggie is eating it, she didn't seem to relish it. I have subsequently ordered hay through a woman I work with who's husband is a farmer. He produces small batch, artisanal, hand-crafted locavore hay. Maggie better like it or Bob and Robin and I will be eating Mexican Pony burgers all winter long.

(Robin's personalized place mat. I apologize for the dark photo but I was rushed for time).
And meanwhile, Lil' Robin seemed to catch the spirit. She began turning up her rather long pointy nose at whatever we poured into her dish. And because this is 2016, she is not being offered some nasty dried out, artificially flavored and colored gravy train. 

No, Robin has been feted with uber expensive salmon tenders kibble with sweet potato sides and special large breed, grain-free blueberry chicken flax seed sliders. Frequently, her dinner sounds better than ours (and is probably more expensive!). She has also demonstrated a remarkable ability to determine when the bag is half full. That's when she expresses boredom with the offering and we have to buy another bag of a different flavor to mix into the first bag. And to boot, I mix in chicken broth or pre-browned turkey crumbles to make meal time all the more appealing; but Robin has perfected ways to pluck the meat morsels and leave the dry food behind...

(Note the "Super Premium" label and the statement that "... your best friend deserves nature's best ingredients!"And of course, the name of the brand is "Evolve". Lil' Robin's on her way!)

Maybe it's the election that put us all off our feed. Bob came down with a bad head cold, I bruised my butt (on a slippery pile of decomposing mushrooms concealing a tree stump) and several other friends and relatives reported injuries and illness, ranging from broken shoulders to odd bumps and rashes. Everyone I know is reporting sleep disturbances. I think I had promised to not discuss the tragedy of 11/9 but allusions to that date are inevitable. There are dark days looming.
Me? I can't help it and have been overeating in compensation for all the misery. I'll be fat and unhappy when the End Times come.