Best Holidays

Late October mornings are the hardest.  The days start grinding into gear before the sun is even up.  It's so hard, we decided we should all change the fabric of time, en mass to make it suck slightly less.  I'm for it, always have been. There was a time when that extra hour was a celebrated reprieve of bar time and the bonus magical hour on the dance floor.  It was an hour that appeared out of the sheer will of society and damn if I was going to waste it by not dancing and laughing under party lights and upturned Martini glasses. Making it the same weekend as Halloween was genius, ensuring it as the greatest of Party People's holidays.  Now it is the greatest of People Who Always Need Sleep holidays.

Don't Click Play at Work Mom!

Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism by FCKH8.com from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

Science Kid

Ella opened her homework folder the other day and I heard her squeal with delight, she said

"Ooooooooooh!  Data compilation!"


That's my girl. She's amazing every day.

Two Birds with Gum-ball Machine Ring

Much like how sugar just seems to accumulate in our house from various well meaning bank-tellers and check-out-clerks we also have a good amount of small toys that just appear.  They come from prizes won at school, pridefully cherished right up until the moment my child gets off the afternoon bus and walks in the house at which time I find the "prize" next to the crumpled worn socks of the day in the front hallway.  They are hastily grabbed in a hard fought scrum of children scrambling for the innards of a pinata at a party. They are begged from the edges of parade floats and given after finishing one's nuggets and fries.  They spontaneously appear in the bottom of my purse and in the floor boards of my car, in the pockets of the children and underneath the couch; these hot wheels and whistles, tiny bottles of bubbles, Frisbees with insurance agents phone numbers on them, squirt guns, packs of just three crayons, maze books, necklaces, temporary tattoos, gum-ball machine rings, rubber lizards, inspirational wrist bands, plastic frogs, tops, fuzzy moustaches and various plastic eggs that crack open to reveal something gooey, sticky and guaranteed to dry into a giant crust of gross on your mother's carpet.

As I find these items I've been throwing them all in one place, along with the missing dice, legos, meeple, marbles and playing cards that will only be important when they are missed.  They go into one giant bowl in my dining room.  Twice this year it's overflowed and I dumped it into a grocery bag with the intention of handing it back to a teacher to give out as prizes again and then having it instead collect dust in the hall closet.  Upon walking past the overflowing bowl again today I realized the most incredible solution!  Halloween. If you get to my house to trick or treat this year, you could get a candy or you could get a little balsa wood plane, or Alvin the Chipmunk on a skateboard. I hope you don't get the goo filled egg.

Morning Alarm

This morning I woke up to PEEP....PEEP..... PEEP! I think the smoke alarm battery is going dead. And I get out of bed slightly and hear it coming from the left of the bed... there's no smoke alarm there, so I sit up wide awake thinking the neighbor's house alarm is going off. I go to the window and tilt my ear and look around furiously, then I hear it coming from the other window... it's really loud now PEEP....PEEP..... PEEP! Standing at the other window it sounds like maybe it could be driving around the neighborhood. I wonder if a small bulldozer is backing up somewhere... I can't really tell where it's coming from... I sit down on the bed and wonder if I should investigate further.  My young child rolls over, it is then I realize... it's his nose whistling while he sleeps.

That Natural Look

It's Halloween and of course I'm looking at a bazillion cool makeups that will end up melting into my contacts by the end of the night causing a dense fog no one should drive in.  I thought I'd try to test a couple out tonight and got the smoky greys and blacks out.  I gently traced the lids with a nice jet black and blended out into grey and then finally layered in a lovely blood red at the end in an attempt to match the red the derby team I'll line coach this weekend will be wearing.  It ended up looking like the coal miner's take your daughter to work day.  Ten minutes of soap in the eye later I started again with liquid liner, drawing the perfect cat eye, followed by another perfect cat eye on the left side.  I stood back and looked at two perfectly non-matching cat eyes. arg. Maybe people will only look at me via profile and nobody will notice. After more soap in the eye, I gave up.  I'm going for good lips.

Three new paintings for Fall Art Scene.

Three new paintings for Fall Art Scene. They started with "Riding Hood's Heart" which went on the window outside of Bennie's Cleaners for Art Attack. It's just temporary and I loved it so much, having just laid my dear dog to rest after seventeen years of companionship, I repainted it only much smaller this time.

A tiny excerpt of "Riding Hood's Heart"

I wanted to do more, using the same palate I am in love with from Riding Hood's Heart, the very same paints I scavenged from the bucket of left overs at 317, when I was worried about covering all that large glass.  The paints that the late Tom Littrell left behind and that we in the 317 Artist Collective utilize when an emergency of scarce color arises.  I wanted to keep using Tom's paints. It felt sacred to me.

Tom Littrell 

I wanted to paint more strength, and in my search for strong characters I remembered Valkyries. The name Valkyrie translates to choosers of the slain. They ride into war and choose who will be whisked off to Valhalla.  They are feared and revered, they are the companions of heros, it felt right.  So  - I painted the "Ride of the Valkyrie"

A tiny excerpt of "Ride of the Valkyrie"

At this point, I didn't mean to be reusing the word "Ride" but then it seemed like I needed a third.  "Rider on the Storm" was the title that came before the painting. A lone captain in her boat, she's tiny among the landscape and steadfast in her resolve in her travels and adventures.

A tiny excerpt of "Rider on the Storm"

I love each of these paintings very much.  They ended up on the canvas exactly as they were in my head and I'm thrilled to show them this Fall at Art Scene.

If you'd like to come see (or BUY!) the whole of these paintings, not just a tiny excerpt come down to, 317 Studio & Gallery at 317 Market St. Rockford, IL, tomorrow or Saturday Night and then wander around the corner to see the temporary window mural that inspired the paintings.

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FRESHWATER MERMAIDS of NORTH AMERICA (22"x28" framed print) will also be at 317 Studio & Gallery for Fall Art Scene.  There are only 3 unframed signed and numbered prints left ($40.00) and there will be 11 posters ($18.00) for sale of the same.  So if you need a thing for the wall of your ice fishing shack... come get your poster this weekend.