bonus post #2

just looking at this picture makes me weepy....

EDGAR

in my house, my name is Edgar


I need an Edgar today!  Caroline Szozda-McGowan and I spent many many MANY hours plotting out the show yesterday, and this morning I am still in my pink flannel pj's with the martini glasses and olives on them as i write this.  wicked, eh? Today, my calendar says "stop doing."  a day of floating nothingness I schedule in every 3 weeks.  however, i was wrong.  it is Halloween and I forgot to buy candy.  and since I am Edgar, it is my job :)

so let me tempt your eyes with some of the artwork we've prepared for selling!  Unless we all buy it before it hits the dance floor!
bracelets by Terry Handel.....

work by Cayetano Valenzuela, BJ Lantz, and Fred Wellner....

Phil Parsons, MB Shaw, and Sharon Bottle-Souva...

and THIS! I opened one of the boxes with artwork in it, and my FriendFriend Terry sent me WINGS and a WAND!  which i needed right then and there.  I haven't mastered short wings yet, and will admit that i had them on backwards at first, then got a wee bit stuck in them, but finally figured them out.  and the wand - sheesh - no brainer!  Thank you Terry, for the short wings, and for believing that I am a fairy.  (It's a hard sell).

and then I remembered another friend, Swirly, also believed in me...and I grew strong again, and less weepy and emotional. (even fairies have their moments when they are exhausted)

this may look like a random shot of a plant in my house, but au contraire.  It is visual proof of what can happen when you believe in yourself, and get a wee hand up at the right moment.  Sheila, the plant shown below, was a tiny scrubby not-so-beautiful little house plant that came in a dish garden.  I found her out by the trash can at my old job.  in the winter.  just her in her little mauve pot.  i brought her in and kept her warm and she was so grateful, that she continues to grow and grow.  she is super-deluxe huge now, as you can see...

now, you may be wondering what that masking tape square is on the lower right.  i will tell you.  it's a secret door.  once in a while, and especially in the winter, somehow little mice get into the house, inside the walls.  and there is a place where they get to a drop-off and it's the End Of The Road.  and that place is right where the masking tape is.  Bulimia cat will alert us that there is a visitor, and we remove him/her back to their normal outdoor environment.  It happens so frequently in the winter, that husband never fixed the sheet rock, since he'd have to keep cutting it anyway.  but look at that plant!

so i'm off to the printers - well after I get dressed, I think!

EDGAR!

more me!

part deux....here

housekeeping

a few posts back, i was freaking out because i felt i had nothing nada sheedoobie to give the gallery owner for the Very Important Show.  After the caffeine and Stella D'oro faux biscotti wore off, I realized that, duh, I had quite a bit of the exact work the gallery owner had asked me for.  It was a day of buying shots of panic all around.  i am calm now, and happy with the work i have lined up in front of me.  so now i am free to panic about the Storm.  Seriously? it's due to slam in on the very day I'm setting up the fundraiser show.  I am a block away from the Lake.  well, at least it's an uphill block!
stay warm, safe and dry everyone.

ahh - the light of day

it dawns all golden and fall-like and a bit lower in the sky than I'm used to, and with comes this run-on sentence and a new perspective.  after a day laying about slack-jawed and unable to move, feeling the effects of Octoberous Torporous Disease,  and a side case of overwhelm, I went to bed after the final repeating show of Restaurant Impossible that my eye was watching but my brain built a wall to keep out (thank you brain).  when the eye, hungry for candy, woke the brain up this morning, it re-looked at the work assembled for the Very Important Show, and said "hey, i like it."  so it was the brain putting pressure on the mind, after all.  silly brain.  so today i will distract it with music!  and while it tries to figure out the words to those hip hop songs on my iPod, the hands will make beauty with the beholder's eye.  until a webinar at 1pm, but i can be in my PJ's for that.  it seems once i get dressed, i want to head out and go somewhere or do something Not Work Related, so for me, it's best to stay pajama-clad with an apron over it, until noon anyway.  makes for an awkward moment when the FedEx guy comes, but he must see it all.  maybe i'll answer in my tutu some day.  why waste a good look, right?  tiara, tutu.  i still got it.
In other news, the Random Acts of Magic site is getting closer to being real!  wait till you see!  Just wait!

oh! it's me!

lookie here!

maddening!

having the worst time trying to just FOCUS and get some artwork made...throughout all the calamity that is my life, I have a Very Important Show of my own coming up, and have been stressing about doing some new 3D work.  I've been painting for so long now, and the gallery owner had expressly asked only for my 3D assemblage work, and some talisman jewelry to go along with some 2D work she's showing as well.  two years ago when she booked me, she asked specifically only for this.  2 years ago.  and I've done some stuff, but your eye changes, and style changes, and the things you thought were so deep and meaningful now look like schlock, so you try to make MORE but there's nothing that appeals and soon look at the shiny object soon it's time to set up the show oh a little bird and you just aren't happy about any of it but time's up.  so to the artists participating in the fundraiser - i do know deeply what you are feeling. but time's up - send it in.  and maybe i'll focus better when i'm not so multi-minded.  that's truly possible, but cutting it awfully short, with 2 major holidays, plus my birthday, and a weekend away to hang with Seth Apter in NYC,  so i'm pulling out all stops and calling on any & all Helpers that I can think of to get focus and inspiration and to help find more actual shiny objects to stick on the assemblages i need to make a dozen of.  that i assured the gallery owner i had sitting nearly complete and staring at me.  yes, i lied, because she had a certain strained sound to her voice that i now recognize...that "please-tell-me-you-will-not-mess-my-life-up-by-not-having-work-done" sort of straining tone with a under-tone of "I Will Make Your Life Uninhabitable," and floral notes of "I Will End My Own Life As I Know It Today-just walk out the door and into the desert to live in an adobe hut with a well and septic and make clay pots and grow dredlocks and wear long skirts and water buffalo moccasins."  just thinking off the cuff here, but as she kindly asked about my progress, and if i had, indeed, remembered the show (as if an opportunity like this comes every day!) as she inquired, it was as if a giant movie screen appeared and i saw all these things (well, not really, but i say this all for dramatic effect) clacking from the reel, and i felt so deeply a kinship with her, as we are both in the same position in our lives, except i am also in the position of being the liar.  it makes me wonder if she is in a show somewhere with a hard deadline too.  now that would be super creepy.  hunh, and guess what?  the deadline remains, despite me taking time to write about it.  darn.

hurry hurry hurry

i am having a love affair.  yup.  tis true.  with wood icing, Stencil Girl stencils, and Mary Beth Shaw.  Can't get enough of any of them :)
Mr. StencilGirl was very polite, too, though I wondered what he had heard.

But really now - go try these stencils and wood icing!  the stencils are heavier than most, and can stand up to some good molding paste or icing.  The wood icing is an amazing product - it holds it's shape and is paintable, sandable and tastes great!  (NO - I LIED ABOUT "TASTES GREAT" ...do not eat it. feh.  poo. do not eat)

there's been a gentle theme running through my day-to-day for the past few months...tugging at my sleeve, gently caressing my forehead, and occasionally running up behind me with cymbals.  funny about things like that...they just keep at you like a woodpecker until you think to yourself, "ohhh - right...hmmm."  and then, just like that, the heat really gets turned on.  no excuses.  no looking away.  no preoccupation or procrastination.  trust me.  so my theory has always been that for many, there are many paths to take in life...you may start out on one, complete that journey, then move to the next.  rinse and repeat.  i had forgotten that i knew that though, until Sue turned me onto an amazing book by Stephen Cope, and within pages I was underlining, gasp, and writing notes in the margins.  i am on a deep think to find my new journey.  living life as it comes day-to-day, but devoting big blocks of quiet time to see what the next Next is.  i think i know, and it's probably obvious to anyone who knows me.  but being built the way i am, i need to know how to make it work before i leap in.  and that is just how i am.  i've been beehive busy with the fundraiser forEVAH but it will soon be come-and-gone, and that will leave me with just 1 more uber-important deadline of my own, but plenty of plotting time.  i will give you a hint:  it involves a workshop that will not change your life...but reveal it.  good, yes?

finding your calling

ever since i chucked my Big Girl job almost 2 years ago, I have had people ask me how I knew it was the right decision, or that they were going to do the same and make art all day and eat glitter sprinkles on chocolate cupcake dreams la la la.  not to be Debbie Downer, but that's not at all how days go. even eliminating a bulimic cat and spoiled dog with dementia from the equation, most days can run like today - it's almost 10am, i am still in my bathrobe - because I got up at 4:45am and started work.  on a saturday.  after working til 11pm last night. and didn't want to stop just to shower, get dressed, etc.  i live in an area that's far away enough to discourage drop-ins, and am crabby enough to just not answer the door/phone if i'm not expecting someone.  (don't try it - i won't answer). i have a deadline, and while that may sound sexy and appealing to some, it's a hair-pulling stress ride for me, despite carefully mapping every second of my days for the past, oh, two years.   there are moments, long moments, and daydreams, of waking up & slamming down coffee while walking the dog & simultaneously blow drying my hair AND shoveling 1' of snow off the car, then going into a cubicle in corporate America USA to type, collate and otherwise degrade my brain cells and my Self.  and i'm going to be honest with you right here, right now - i did make mewing noises at the door to my old job last week.  i wanted them to laugh and say "HIRE?? YOU?? BACK??"  but at the same time, the relief i felt at the thought of giving up control of the ship was startling.  And if my body was able, boy, I'd be rowing my dinghy to that freighter and latching on.  but alas, it is Q4 and no one hires in Q4.  And I ran into a blog by Lissa Rankin (not only an unbelievable encaustic artist, gynecologist, Woman's Woman).  and in this post, she talks about 7 myths about finding your calling.  and it bears a few moments reading.  especially if you want to leave the desk and Swingline behind.  ummm yeah, uh, i'm going to need you to just go ahead and watch this now...



anyway...it isn't all gloom & doom, I'm just tired and exhausted.  and have many many more hours to go.  3 projects being juggled right now.  but i come from a circus family, so that's just about right.  (you never knew?  yep - dad worked the carnival circuit for a while, while he was Finding His Calling FOR REAL this happened.  and my brother went to SF to circus school and also worked at Circus Vargas Traveling Menagerie very briefly).  maybe I'll run away and join the circus...do gypsy crystal ball readings.  hmmmmm.....

smoking is healthy

ok - post #2
smoking is healthy.  it's true.  when i smoked, my cholesterol was perfect, my weight was perfect.  my pulse, stress level, concentration...check check check perfect.  i am now 6 months into this quitting thing, and my annual physical revealed cholesterol levels that are way off, shortness of breath that is wheezy and un-funny, the concentration of a gnat with ADD and an espresso IV, and an ass the size of Arkansas.  I'm just sayin.  "they" have been wrong before.  i mean check out the NEW food pyramid, which is upside down from what it was when we were kids.  that's a big uh oh.  and i say all this here knowing full well that it's not the smoking (or non-smoking) it's the Entemann's and Dunkins.  and lattes.  i think.

eye eye eye

I just love these!  I have a pair coming in green.  which are lovely.   and remind me of a call I took when I worked at an insurance company...an older Russian man called, complaining that his prosthetic eye had broken and he took it to one of the "approved" repair places, but they "wanted to charge an arm and a leg."  I know - bad me.  but there are so many things like this every single day.  Today is my brother's birthday.  I was upset because I wanted to throw him a supercalifragilistic 50th birthdaay party, and couldn't.  there was no money, and he had to work and I didn't have time to plan the audacious fete that he deserves....and, as he informed me, he was turning 51.  oy.  no one in my family is ever sure how old they really are, but he seems certain, so there you have it.  every single one of my aunts and uncles and my dad, too, lied about their ages.  we never knew how old dad was.  ok, so i'm rambling right off the top.  it's been a rambling day, though.  productive, but seemingly random.  i will be spending the better part of tomorrow making labels for artwork, and trying to figure out transportation for a gi-normous piece that came in.  and next wednesday and friday, i have a guest post going up at Create Mixed Media.  maybe I'll learn brain surgery in my off time.
sleep well, dahlinks.  i'll keep an eye out for you.

just guess!

as a reward to myself for all this intensity, I am headed to NYC to meet up with my girlfriend and attend this workshop:

I plan to travel a lot more this coming year, as I am able.  There is so much going on in my body that is saying NO, that i have to say Really? HA!  and just do it.  so I am.  at least for this day.

this could be reaching or it could be drowning, depending on whether you've got a tendency to worry

these days, so so many people starting the cycle again...the "just leap" cycle....the assurance that you too can live the life of your dreams...that if you just believe it, it will happen.  it reminds me of a church i used to go to that would preach "name it and claim it" faith - if you believed hard enough and had strong enough faitth, then God would heal you or find a husband for you or that dream job or or or whatever.  If it didn't happen, then you didn't have enough faith.  so many people caught in the web of send me money and i'll tell you how to make your dreams come true - if it doesn't work, then well, you didn't try hard enough or missed a step somewhere.  send me more money and take workshop #2 or prayer chain to heaven or or or.  I say this - for free - do what you have the stomach to do...what does your gut say?  what risk are you able to take without a breakdown?  what are you willing to risk losing?    if you are willing to risk it all - your home, your life-as-you-know-it, then go for the big one - do it all.  if you need the certainty of a roof and warm food, then plan ahead for a way to keep those things - wait & save enough to cover those expenses.  yes it sucks to work all corporate when your heart is singing songs of paint and splatter, but food and warmth are nice too.  I try to stay positive, but it just isn't my nature, so i'll say that i have really truly come to dislike the Dream Peddlers...those who want to sell you your own dreams...those who gloss over the realities of your own life and make everything wrapped in chocolate and glitter - just to pay their own bills.  sorry - this isn't the way you hoped to wake up, but i had two separate emails waiting for my coffee to open my eyes this morning.  both of them aimed at tugging my heart to talk to my brain softly and beg it to hand over a sum of money to be shown The Way.  know this: that just because a person is an artist, a crafter, a blog friend, a facebook friend, a church friend does not mean they won't take your money under grey-ish circumstances. and don't get me wrong - i think the age of miracles is still going strong...i believe there are those who will stand up in the middle of a power point and say "ENOUGH," and grab some free office supplies and go home forever.  and a year or two later, they'll be on Letterman hawking their new book or having their work ensconced in the Smithsonian or whatever.  but be careful from whom you take your lessons.  be very judgmental about who you will entrust to teach you how to get your dreams off the ground.  and there is a lot to learn before you leap, or while you are flapping off the edge.  my strong advice has always been to learn while someone else is paying you - night classes, meetings with support crew and accountants to learn how to set up your files and banking, investigating at least two suppliers for every material you need (trust me here), while you are still sitting at the corporate dinner table.  this is off track again.  my point is, don't wake me up to shine a light in my eyes unless there's a fire...i think it is wrong wrong wrong of  someone to base their living around talking you into choices that are not right for you, or are not the right timing for you.  and then when the poop hits the fan, they can step out of the way because you are an adult and should know your own boundaries and limitations and risk quotients and slide rulers and projections.  it will never be on them, as they count their money.  i really think i should drink decaf in the morning.  okay - you're on your own.

my friends

In the next chunk of time i have to call my own, I will be stripping down my website and re-doing it in The Coolest way!  I'm moving stuff, changing other stuff, and will have a section devoted to art by my friends.  Is that not the best, I ask?  There are so many fabulous people I know who make The Best Artwork - stuff I'd spend mortgage money on.  So why not share?  I'll feature each for a month, then pffft gone, so buy quick if you like...see it, like it, buy it.  Bam.  watch for it.

retreat!

I have determined that, despite a very long number of days away making art and prancing about in a tutu, i need an art retreat.  I am thinking about a weekend at my brother's hotel, complete with spa services.  my vision is to being knitting and embroidery only.  there are far too many choices banging on my studio door begging to be picked.  i would enjoy the meditative quality of embroidery, and knitting would be okay too - portability is the word for the day.  Although, it's almost time for Mr. Bear Grylls husband to go to his He-Man Woman Hatin' huntin' camp for many weekends, so i may just host an art party here.  no spa treatments, but no packing.  or worries about bed bugs.  which i was worried about til i realized i had changed shampoos and this one was not agreeing with me.  but you can imagine the freak out.  absolutely pathological.  ok today is supposed to be a day to just make some art. i have a Very Important Show in january, and need to make oh, 10-15 pieces for it.  in between all the other.  and poochie is vomiting again.  let's hope that's random.  The floor looks fabulous - husband finished the hardwoods in the bedroom! gorgeous.  and bulimia cat is having a riot racing into the room and skidding on the area rugs.  dorky cat that he/she is.  okay - time to get my monday on.
"welcome to the working week....I know it don't thrill you, I hope it don't kill you..."
from Elvis Costello

quietly confident and extremely joyful BAM!

from Brave Girls....

Last week, I learned that I am lovable.  so now i tell YOU - you are most lovable too.
f'reals

post #2

geez - nothing nothing nothing then BAM! two posts in one daypart!  so here is The picture that started it all.......

yes.  that is me being a fairy.  the kind that grants wishes, not the tooth kind.  i was promoted from forest fairy, which, as you know, is a huge honor and i took my duties very seriously.  mostly.  and something interesting you may not know is that never not ever should you give alcohol to a promoted forest fairy.  hunh.  who knew? many wishes were granted in CT, and there are many more that are on the way but needed a little more time to germinate.  Judi - you did not get what you specifically asked for because there is something better coming and fairies can't always control the mail and such, so do not add this to your list of Things That Never Work Out For Me Because I'm Not Special Enough.  You are More Than Special, and that is the cause of the delay.  much discussion around this one.   and-  i never realized quite how curious and how unbelieving humans are - the number one question asked was: where are your wings?  and i have to say How Rude because never not once did i say Where Are Your Legs, yet you were clearly standing there in front of me, right?  but had you looked, i was hovering, so there you have it.  Rudeness forgiven, but in looking for the obvious, you missed the magical bits.  I spent a day with an Australian woman and an English woman (from England!) and  began to talk like them for a while.  It's bloody fun, mate, try it!  you can say an outrageous thing, and it sounds like whipped cream and cherries.  like "Oh those bloomers don't suit you in the least!"  and the person laughs.  i didn't say that, but it's an example.  I also met a woman named Linda (different Linda) who makes dolls, although the truth is, they are vessels for fairies who don't want to take a human form with all it's management and upkeep.  they are beautiful-ish, and she gifted me my very own Glorious!  she will be helping with a Large Fun Project i have on the middle burner.  i have a lot of cooking going on, believe me.  i never knew wish granting would be so busy.

a little something

where in the world...???

have I been???  in Connecticut.  making art.  and although i just got in the door, i need a nap, food, and i have to help husband finish the hardwood floor in our bedroom before i can debrief here.  bt be assured that i have some tales to tell and some ExCiTiNg news!

monday post #2

Can I just say that I know the most wonderful people ever created.  not some - all.  I am totally gobsmacked on a regular basis with their generosity, caring, kindness, creative expression, and general immense capacity to find the best that life has to offer and fling it around for everyone to share.

i believe that's all i have to say right now.

click to enlarge

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