Eartha Kitt...i miss you.......c'est bon.....enjoy!

jamie and rosie

jamie (my son) is here visiting us from santa barbara.
he is half british and looks it, don't you agree?

the 3 french hens (one soon to be an x-rooster) of xmas.........

Ok so silly. i wanted to do my xmas cards this year using the idea of 3 french hens..., but i don't know why but time slipped away. so here are the rooster/hens (i will de-comb and de- wattle the rooster) waiting to be used - maybe next year. i'm no expert on the difference between a hen or rooster by looking at their heads (of course i know the hen is the one who lays the eggs, silly). my guess is that these are two hens and one rooster. but it makes no difference to me anyway because i was going to dress them in little french maid outfits - so i will leave that idea to your imagination.
but for cards this year, what i did instead was make abstract collages with random lines from a romance novel as one of the many elements in the (card)-piece. i created these before i thought up the french hen idea.
still, i am behind and have to mail them out yet!!!!
they will be new years cards, i guess. very embarrassing to be late with cards.
again.
where does the time go?
*********************************************************************************************
and now,
to my exteneded family:
thank you aunt rita for rosie's present - she opened your gift first and then threw on the new clothes you bought her- loves them. she wore them today to lunch.
brooke - rosie loves her new book on making your own cosmetics - she has already concocted 2 that she has experiemented on me. AND, actually the hand softener worked!
and brooke- i like the Indian soap.
i will thank my husband here - although he NEVER reads my blog - for the lovely diamond earrings.....i hope i don't lose these.
and for the new easel, which i really needed.
thank you brooke for the white tiger book which i am going to read now.
that's all i will declare on the blog here. oh and thank you rosie for getting straight A's again! that's for you, nonno and nonna!!! with love.

tortilla curtain

just finished this book - although i was not that excited to read in boyle's prose (my daughter brooke loves his writing - i don't)....i did learn something about the life of the impoverished illegal coming to the states with big dreams and no money. it was a good story in parts and other parts not believable - a bit lacking in depth of character and character probablity, i thought.
oh well.
now i am reading "the white tiger" by aravind adiga......already it is a funny read. i believe it is this author's first novel.

observations in last minute shopping.........

it's christmas eve and i decided to go last minute christmas shopping. i noticed some interesting things while out and about and i will share my revelations to you here:
1. men shopping christmas eve are impatient in line.....come on, dudes, its crowded cuz you are all here!
2. men shopping last minute xmas don't talk on cell phones much - they seem to be unable to do both. and this frustrates them. i know they shop and talk at the grocery store because i have heard them asking the wife/girlfriend from aisle 4 what type of toothpaste/toilet paper/% fat milk/cans of beans/ice cream/frozen foods to buy. so xmas eve- there's the rub - they can't call and ask, can they.----although i bet some do anyway. (those ones are known as mammalukes and itch from a night in the doghouse).
3. men are not well equipped to handle parking lots on a crowded day. i saw the worse case of non moveable traffic at my local bevmo! from noon on. they were trying to come in the parking lot and go out too - ramheaded. the streets were backed up and honking and cussing.... (oops that was me).
4. men have no clue what information they need to have before going out to shop - honestly, i heard a panicked man (age about 50) ask a shoes saleswoman what size shoe (she thought) his wife wore - he helped her guess by telling her he "thought" his wife was about 5' 12" (kid you not) - he said "what do you think? think she is about a size.....".(thinking and looking at ceiling...) "... 13 ...?" the sale lady said she really couldn't tell, but shoe sizes did not range that high in her department.
5. men don't stop for starbucks or blended juices.
6. men will still go to the sports section in the bookstore on xmas eve, even though i'm pretty sure their wives are not that interested in boxing or football. they also find time to breeze through a few magazines.
7. men really do panic-freeze on xmas eve. i saw a man stand in the middle of the shoe department stunned that the type of shoe he was told to buy was sold out - immoveable (like in list #3) for 1/2 hour, slacked jawed starring at the empty shoe rack. and later when he found the same department store sold out of the type of fragrance he had memorized the name of-- he yelled, "I CAN"T BELIEVE THIS!"
8. "I'm sorry sir, we are closed" and "yes, sir, sorry we closed at 5" will cause the same result as #7. only to be followed by a mad dash to the car and screechy tires and trailing obscenities out the lot.
9. men don't buy stocking stuffers.
10. or ornaments. that's why the hallmark store was close to empty. but still, i saw a couple different men buy, 1 scotch tape and 1 roll of gift wrap. i bet dollars to donuts, those men will be in need of scissors soon.

caros, brooke and me.....

last mother's day (and brooke's 31 bday), just on our way out from the argentinia restaurant ...i was a bit tipsy and was whipsering something into my daughter's hair, apparently.
i think i was whispering (a bit loudly), "heeeeeeeeeey, look, there is a baaaaaaag lady!".

and got caught.

brooke and carlos look a bit tense -----i recognize that expression on their faces....my brother and i always had that sort of tense face when we went out with our folks, like, gawd, i can't wait for this nerve wracking evening finish and, dear gawd, please keep my parents from embarrassing the hell out of us!!

oh well.
you can tell by their body language, they were hoping for a clean escape, except i have their path blocked!

do your kids take pictures of themselves?

kids......

it's so hard to get them to not make a face for a photo.





rosie, a few months ago.

counter

Freelance Writer

swimming list

(pictured here is a very clean pool - in Gubbio, Italy)

ten things i don't like to see or experience at the swimming pool (lap swimming):
top ten list, number 2 in a small series.

1. anything left behind from someone's body! (groooosss).
2. too many people in one lane. i hate to swim laps and to be touched on the feet or anywhere else by a stranger.
3. people floating in the water with obvious lesions/ infected spots.......
4. finding debris at the bottom of the pool (these are things i have actually seen, apart from the obvious stuff); rocks, dirt-clods, candy wrappers, grapes/fruit, feminine hygiene products, hair balls, apples, beer cans, marbles, paper towels/toilet paper, folding chairs, umbrellas, tables, sandwiches, cakes, rats (dead and alive).
5. i hate to have an unidentifiable taste in my mouth after swimming. sometimes lasts all day - usually a coppery taste. OK, i don't want to think about #3 or #1 on this list.......
6. men with too much body hair on their backs, etc. women with too much body hair on their backs, etc.
7. anyone is a chlorine-riddled swimsuit.
8. burnt eyes and brittle dry skin/hair
9. inhaling chorine. and
number 10. bombarding canon-balling kids (i think i have come full circle, see previous post).

swimming pool........

i want to thank my friend janis for sending me this picture a few months ago....its the Carmen Ranch Club...its a swimming pool and clubhouse that our parents belonged (1960's) to so that they could let loose wild children. it worked, i think. looking closer at the photo, that might be me, janis and suzy putnam (wearing red), standing off shyly to the right. that was after we were a bit older. our homes can be seen up the hill.

i loved it at Carmen. there was a big pool (partly shown here), check out the bad starting blocks!,
a little padding pool and a lower level pool, that was open all the time for children and teens. the upper pool had adult swim. we used to get crabby about waiting for the adults to quit their slow swimming with their heads up out of the water, so that we could go back to swimming the adult pool. it had a high dive and a regular diving board. as soon as the adult swim was over, a lifeguard whistle blew and cannonballs bombarded throughout. adults scrambled for cover.
i have been thinking about this pool lately (long ago bulldozed over) i don't know why it ended that way. i guess insurance on a place like that was part of it. and maybe during the 70's 80's moms were working more and didn't have time to take the kids to the club anymore.
i remember loving the fact that i could swim all day and eventually look around the upper pool for my mom and her pocket book, the snack bar being my second favorite feature. my mom - always loved shiny swim suits and lounged around with her sophisticated friends, sunning themselves and gossiping, some smoking cigarettes. i was always amazed at how long they could just do that - immobile sunning. janis and i and suzy loved to run wild.

anyway, i don't remember ever seeing icky stuff floating in the pool (see, post of last weekend).
sure, occasionally a kid would throw up after too many sweets at the snack bar and sunstroke, but that was to be expected.


thanks for the memories, janis.
***********************************************************************
today i went back to 24 hour fitness to swim. i checked it carefully for gross stuff in the water before jumping in. it appeared clean.
i'm only a bit worried though, that i mat have contracted athlete's foot from the shower room though. ugh! i'm bring my own bleach next time.

xmas with uncle earl

and my brother when he was a baby.

my uncle earl was always very laid back. he was a carpenter, just like jesus!
so i felt it appropriate that he should be in a place of honor at xmas time.
i guess he was babysitting my brother the day the snapshot was taken (ultimately translated into this painting).

anyway this time of year, i think beyond xmas and on to new years. what habit of mine do i wish to change? i have a couple of weeks to worry about that further.
but it makes me think of lists. lists and lists. almost every magazine has a list of some sort on their cover, or at least one or more articles offered that have lists in them. like, 10 ways to intensify your libido, or 12 ways to diet that includes eating ice cream and hot dogs, or 8 of the most wonderful weekend getaways on a zero budget. (that one includes lots of imagination and imagery...)

so i thought i would create a couple of lists between now and new years day!

here is my list number one:
10 things i hate to see in paintings:

1. i hate to read words in paintings like: "create" "art" "inspire" "imagine" - they come across as very preachy to me and makes me wonder why someone would write "art" while doing it...
2. I hate to see cute and cuddly things in paintings- like doe-eyed kittens in a basket, puppies and kittens together on a blanket, soft bunnies in the grass, babies with big eyes and rosy cheeks blowing dandelions, etc. these cute things again feel preachy to me, as if i need to agree with the artist that these images are what i need to hang on my wall to feel good.
3. clowns - for the most part. BIG EXCEPTION: "Clown Paintings" a collection by diane keaton (check it out on amazon).
4. Tired old joke paintings: paintings of poodles sitting in an outdoor cafe with the Eiffel tower in the background. birdcage door open, feather drifting down and a cat with a smile and a feather stuck to its lips. wait, hold on, these were cartoons i saw as a kid.....
5. shock paintings: poo paintings, female parts exposed and up close, male parts only in a painting.
6. flowers in a vase.
7. sunset over a beach, where you can see the suns orangey reflection in the wet sand. footprint in the wet sand and extra E. U. from me.
8. paintings where the artist uses ALL her favorite colors in one painting. or mixed media paintings where the artist uses ALL her favorite techniques in the same painting. even worse, ALL the colors, plus ALL the possible mediums.
9. textured paintings, where the artist fills the entire paintings with heavy concrete like texture because she just discovered textures from a book she read produced by some paint company and just can't stop.........
10. paintings where the artist decides to glue organic stuff on like leaves and sand and seashells.

uhm, i may have been guilty of half these things some time in my career - maybe that is why i hate them so much now.
i don't think this nearly covers my painting hate list.....do you have any to add to this list?
AND, i have never KNOWINGLY have paintings large private parts in my paintings, however sometimes it has been pointed out in my abstracts ...............................

LA MOCA trouble brews......

does that cake look like it is a Jasper John? yep it is. (jasper john, contemporary art legend known for many things, one is a huge-ass target painting in the permanent collection at MOCA). ditto with the Judy fishkin paintings on cakes!!!
i found it kind of amusing that while the LA MOCA (LA's museum of contemporary art) is facing serious financial trouble, having lost loads of endowment money through probable mismanagement plus the contribution of this neo- depression we all feel, decide on the night of a planned board of trustees meeting, to hold a cookie sale!!!! the sale took place on the street in front of the museum building. now that sounds like something my juvenile mind would dream up if i were in charge! but i'm not.
sadly this is a true story.
all i know is that when i was in charge of the local girl scouts, bake sales always brought in significant funds. at least they would help partly pay for a weekend camp out. (which i hated).
back to the MOCA meeting with baked goods......but hey, they also offered a simple almond cookie at $1 million each. thats a hellava cookie! they reckoned that if they sold 15 of said cookies, then philanthropist/financier Eli Broad would match it, thereby saving the day! HURRAY for COOKIES!!!!
i can't wait to hear whether not this cookie sale actually worked and saved the museum of solvency problems.

if this works, i'm going to put down my paintbrush and bake instead...... but not for camp outs. ugh!

my birthday......

this day,

is really

my mom's day.


thank you

for having me.


wherever you are.....


flying around.......


up there in the sky.......

you are that--

ruby in the sky......


with diamonds.


miss you.


awfully.

nothing more

can

be


said.

favorite photographer, chrissy white

i have a new favorite photographer or image maker and her name is chrissy white. the first image here is entitled "Who Shall I Be Today?" then "Think Happy Thoughts and You Will Fly" and finally, my favorite for xmas "Bird Watching".
i love her mood and dark humor, i know she must have an awesome camera and lightening and must be great at photoshoping. these are things i wish i knew how to do but don't --so i appreciate them.
you can see more of her work at goto.seattlepi.com/r1859. i am too lame to know how to put in a link, i'm sorry.
anyway, she lives in seattle AND OH YEAH, she is only 15 years old!

wayne thiebaud

wayne thiebaud, i studied his work while i was in college in the early 1970's and i still love his work to this day. he takes mundane things like cake, pies and lipsticks and does this wonderful study in color. i also like how he isolates his choice of imagery, either by showing a single pie slice or by showing the same item in rows and rows, repeated to show the similarities as well as the subtle differences.
but mainly i have loved and love the colors he chooses to use in the areas that are normally left as a solid color, like here the pie crust is not a solid brown, but made up of many colors, but it still reads as pie crust.


that's all i just wanted to share one of my heros.

studio shots

i have been posing in front of parts of my studio because i am suppose to turn in a photo of myself in my studio for somerset apprentice magazine.
oh its so hard.
my studio space is much bigger than this - i hate seeing myself in it too.

i would like to take a second and thank my dear friends, meredith and kathy for taking me to lunch for my birthday this week - yeah, my bday is actually this coming tuesday, the 16th. anyway, i hve been having some awfully good eats lately.
aging up: i will be able to get some senior discounts now - dang i'm old. and jowlly - when did that happen?

more of dempsey and me

my dog dempsey

see? he is no longer a smelly dog thanks to the wonderful de-skunk recipe i found on the internet.

BTW, this face shot is for you SOM. you requested my face --- here come some more....gawd help me.
stay tuned.

counter

Freelance Writer

copy cats......

every once in awhile someone emails me or tells me that they saw my work in a local restaurant or a magazine - which turns out to not be me - just someone who does work that looks similar. this is not uncommon as i have taught many workshops to people who want to paint like me. and at the end of the workshop, well, there are many works that look like my work. that's the point f the workshop.
still it is kinda unnerving to see my work by someone else when i don't expect it. like in those magazines i publish in. i have to admit my heart goes still for a second. for that second, at least, i feel my livelihood threatened. is someone stealing my thunder?
this is a bit of a paradox or quandary. i am happy people like my work enough to take my workshops and to learn from my work because they are fans, but then i shouldn't feel slightly cheated if someone turns out a nice piece that gets published in my style even if mentioning me as their inspiration.
jenny doh, editor in chief of somerset studio magazine once told me to never to worry as i will always be known as the "watermark" of my own work. that most people will know that i was the first, the original, the barometer.

so it goes with the territory.

i get a twice weekly newsletter called "the painter's keys". (worth reading, you can get it for free).
the present newsletter is about learning by copying. is it legit? should artists who copy masters or other artists be able to sell or market this work even while crediting the artist? robert glenn calls doing this "tacky".
i don't feel that strongly against it.

in the article there is a quote by Louis Armstrong that makes me feel better.
"A lotta cats copy the Mona Lisa, but people still line up to see the original."
and Louis Armstrong - well, he seemed original.

well, there i go copying - i'm copying the quote that robert glenn quoted (and copied) in his newsletter.......i guess there really is no such thing as a true original. not when humans have been on this earth creating since the beginning of mankind.
does that bother me? nah.

the old man and the swimming pool......

what a crappy weekend. literally. it all started friday night...i cooked a nice dinner, roast chicken, potatoes, gravy, coleslaw, peas, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. but it was ruined because my husband came in from walking the dog at 6 p.m. - they had encountered a skunk. peee-uuuuu, pepppppeee-la-pew.
freak out, then what to do?
i read on the internet that tomato juice was not the best solution. nor is store bought de-skunk. instead a homemade solution of hydrogen peroxide, baking powder and liquid soap works best --- and so it does work immediately. after a lot of aggravation and hysterical talk of taking the dog to the pound (only kidding dempsey-boy) we got rid of the disaster. but , alas, dinner was cold.
***********
saturday night we bought a paid per view movie, deciding what to watch i had read that a movie entitled "kenny" made 100% on the "tomatometer". (online movie rater)
the higher the percentage on the "tomatometer" the better -high percent equals fresh tomatoes as opposed rotten ones.
so "kenny" we watched hoping to entertain our 14 year old daughter. she lost interest fast and was grossed out as it is about a nice hard working blue collar worker from Melbourne, Australia, working for a company called "splashdown" a port-a-potty company. it is a mockumentary. the film follows "kenny" on his job from event to event, with a glimpse of his personal life thrown in. its well done and you learn a lot about the business of making business. quote from movie" there is a smell in here that will outlast religion."
but we didn't realize it was a movie about poo when we started it -and also the bloke from australia's accent was too thick to understand everything.
next day, today, we went to the gym, rosie and i waited to go in the lap lane at 24 hour fitness ( you might recall a post i did over the summer where i complained about the pool there - it has a high level of eye burning chlorine and i had an encounter once with a fat guy and a red ripe ringworm on his stomach. that grossed me out so badly i didn't return for months.) well today a very old man got out of his lane and offered it to us. nice ol fart.
i mean he was old, about 80 years old, slow swimming, white beard down to his private parts, wrinkly skin. he creeks out and we jump in. we swim about 8 lengths before i see it. it was not the kind of poo that is a round ball and hard - it was the kind of poo that would come out of someone who just had an enema, high colonic or old age soft food diet.. kinda like an old man poo. gross, is was floating around, swilling at the bottom of the pool, great large flecks of poo, it traveled from lane one to land 3- drifting from the far end of the pool to the middle. yep, it was definitely the result of someone too old to take the strain of exercise. the trouble with this problem was that i was afraid to point it out to the staff, as they might think i did it. but i did, not poo, but point out the poo so that they could shut down the pool. so gross, we showered for 45 minutes.
when we got home we discovered our 100 lb. doberman had left a ripe patty in the living room. my husband was just saying ....it would be very bad luck if we discovered the dog pooped in the house .......(because we are having a very stinky weekend) - gawd, he called it. our dog never does that, it was like we were victims of a nasty voodoo spell.
what a gross, unfortunate weekend. i only hope 24 hour fitness does a clean up on aisle one.

i cleaned the livingroom rug while my husband followed with fabreeze. let me tel you poo smell and fabreeze together is not very pleasant. that was about the time my daughter brooke and carlos decided to come over. we were at that point having a family affair.

later, while we were watching "Dexter", my dempsey affectionately put his head up on my knee, as to say, i'm so sorry for being a screw up, i didn't intend to..... and thanks for de-skunking my face.
dogs, you gotta love em. but i think old people should not be allowed to swim in a public pools.

town talk......

This fun loving girl is on the outside of a box i created for an article i did for somerset magazine. inside the box is her counterpart, a conservative girl from west point.

painting again!

now this feels good!

i have about 4 big assignments due at somerset studio - their various publications.

one thing i am creating is a really cool set of small art quilts for the art quilt publication coming out in 2009.  i will be using my new batik technique.

also i have another new technique i can't wait to play with -- it is a new way to create paper jewelery.  that technique will probably come out in spring 09.

currently i have submitted an installation piece called  "girl totem" for the new "somerset apprentice" publication.  

i love being executive editor of an art TV show, but man o man, i miss creating like the devil.

new works with craft punches!

as the editor of , N Art Magazine, TV show, i have had the honor of meeting many new, accomplished artists.  take for instance artist, David Adey.

Adey had the idea that while photos take a 3-d objects and render them as flat objects, why not take the flat image (photo) and make it in the round.  

adey, taking this idea further, takes glossy fashion ads, (skin of the model only; not clothes or words) and extrudes a sculptural like 3 -d relief by reassembling the cut -by -craft -punch "skins" with specimen pins.   By craft punches, i mean the kind you would buy from craft stores like Michaels.  

Take a closer look and see for yourself (click on the image),  just how many different craft punches he used for this "skin" of Katie Holmes.  

or you can google his name, David Adey.  He is worth a look.  and its fun to play "identify the craft punch". 

thanksgiving week ends

it has been a long week - rosie was off school for the entire week.  she will go to school tomorrow and try to trick some friends by saying that school was only out a couple of days - and where were you? - kind of thing.

the N Art Magazine TV Show:  well,  getting the show done and off to close captioning and then to the local TV station was the last escapade of  many ---many nerve fraying and fully fret-some experiences.  yeah, i don't know if fret-some even makes sense. 

so the show aired today and my husband thought it was good.  i must say even my 14 year old watched the whole show.  last time she ran out after the first 5 minutes.

the show is not perfect, but getting better.

i liked simon - he was someone i met recently as i liked his art photos.  i asked him to come along with us the day to meet and interview other artists after we shot his segment.  (the rest of the show he did after we shot his segment, it was created out of sequence).  i.e.,  his segment was actually the first thing we shot for this episode, so if he came across as "fresh", that was because he was - right off the truck as they say.  but i liked him as he is an artist himself and was truly interested in what other artists have to say.

so i am going to ask him back - i do like the idea of having "guest artists" as co-hosts along with......., THE HOST, who is my beautiful daughter brooke!

if you missed the show, you can catch it on our (new) website, www.nartmagazine.com, click episode three.  it should be up in a day or two.

as for me----i'm ready to finish a couple of big paintings - i miss painting SO MUCH!