Christmas Narwhals!

drying narwhals on the balcony

one more time with the crappy cellphone images!
oh hipstamatic, who needs proper photography when you've got an iphone. 

 Getting ready for the holiday show at the studio next weekend. Making ornaments and cards and other trinkets. Its amazing what you can make with old packing supplies, air-dry clay and some glitter.

ME!

I was interviewed by Theresa Woodgeard for the Decatur Patch last week.
It was fun, and somehow my general awkwardness, and dislike for talking about myself or to other people, came across as being funny.
http://decatur.patch.com/articles/artist-takes-viewer-on-mystical-magical-tour

Friday morning

I realize its 10:00am, but its far too early for me to smile pretty and be nice to people. I've had half a cup of coffee and I am being subjected to painfully uninteresting small talk and Tony's terrible combination of show tunes and weird late 80's r&b.
Today is definitely a giant headphones, sunglasses inside, and sitting-in-the-corner-glowering-at-people-over-my-laptop kind of day.
grumble grumble grumble.
....

oh yeah, found this thing growing outside the studio a couple of days ago. and I can't find out what it is. Martha Stewart doesn't know, google is of no help, and the hippys from the mushroom club (yes, this is a real organization here in Atlanta) told me it was a Jack-o-Lantern fungi, it is not.
any ideas?

I know it's not a Jack-o-Lantern because, like an idiot, I spent 10 minutes standing in a small dark closet staring at a fistful of the bloody thing to see if it would glow... it did not...

wedding photographerizing

This past weekend I went to Savannah with Robert, Julia and StudioBaby to photographerize a wedding. This is something that Robert has been doing for years, but was my first wedding and my first outing with my new camera. Practice is definitely in order, but someone has to be the neurosurgeon's first craniotomy. 

So I would like to thank Jon and Kortni for being my first. I think we all escaped lobotomy free. 

but I'm still learning so we'll see how it goes.

It's October!

Yay For Halloween crafting workshops! last year was pretty awesome, but this year will be even more awesomer! We are once again going to be decorating and painting pumpkins, but this year we're going to be making monsters also. I am excited. not that it takes much, just stick me in a room with a pair of scissors, a glue stick and a few tubs of glitter and I will be the happiest of all the campers! 

Everyone wants to be loved.

So I updated my Etsy page yesterday and, because Etsy tells you exactly how many views each item gets, I have been obsessively checking to see if anyone is interested in my nonsense... as of this morning my shop has 9 "Likes".
Generally speaking I am not a fan of the "Like" button. I am beginning to question the true motives of Facebook and for some reason the "Like" button especially bothers me and I can't quite put my finger on why exactly.
But my weirdo, Facebook-is-watching-me-pee, paranoia aside now I am obsessed with the idea of who it is that is liking my shop... and I want more "Like"s, more and more! I want to be popular and have the whole internet love me and chant my name aloud as they buy my artwork waiting with bated breath for my next Etsy listing.

KidsFest

Its KidsFest this weekend. Another poorly publicized Avondale event. But despite the lack of advertising theres a pretty good turnout. So I'm sitting in the studio, smiling at children from behind my laptop and occasionally getting up to try to convince parents to buy my art. As we didn't know about this event before yesterday we hadn't planned anything. So last night was the last-minute-art-hanging/rearranging-and-poster-making mad dash!

The new intern starts Tuesday. Now we must find many a menial task for her so that she might learn we that we might be amused. Welcome to YayStudio, intern.

Saving Skizzle

My sister's dog has cancer. Skizzle is 17 years old and has an enormous malignant tumor. She is otherwise healthy, she's not in pain, but she needs radiation treatments which are expensive.  Before Dan starts selling her school books to pay for her puppy's vet visits, please donate to the SkizzleFund.

 

for updates, on Skizzle's progress visit saveskizzle.blogspot.com

I'm not bitching I swear...

We have Fiona Nolan's Show coming up in two weeks at the studio and getting things together and organized is driving us all slightly round the twist, but the show will be fun and worth all the effort. The Postcards came back with a typo, somehow with the three of us here no one caught it when the proofs came back so I sank into a momentary depression. over a typo. yup.
anyway, the website is updated with the upcoming event, and other stuff has happened too.
on a tangent, I hate facebook.
on another tangent, Nashville was nice.
Yeah, Art opening at the studio, September 17th. come.
postcard:

creative slump.

It seems, that aside from writing poems to the guy downstairs, there has been rather a lull in my creative output over the last couple of months. I'm not really sure what thats about, I guess I should blame a combination of working a lot and the downloading of Lego Harry Potter to my phone.

...But, my friend Kellyn asked me to make some t-shirt scarves to sell at her booth up in Castleberry Hill this weekend, so I did that and then made a sign, which is cute and somewhat creative and will hopefully inspire people to buy things:

Ode to the guy downstairs

Ah, the drunken babbling of the guy downstairs....
your voice is like a rubber mallet gently pounding away at my frontal lobe.
your knowledge of early 90's alternative rock music is unrivaled and very impressive to the ladies.
your persistence in the use of the word "dude", despite it being 2011, implies a "devil may care" attitude and a refusal to follow the rules.
you talk with ease on subjects about which you know nothing, never letting a lack of understanding or intellectual inadequacy stop you from making your point.
from the floor above, I hear you addressing the street below,
when you speak, I feel the need to clear my throat, but I don't, incase you should hear me and possibly try to use that gravel filled loud speaker in the front of your face to acknowledge my existence.
if I had to live with a voice like yours, I would probably be drunk too.

Happy fish!

Spaceship

Pumpkin and Ralph

So the dog wormer didn't kill my fish, but it did make Spaceship look a little pale and unhappy. unfortunately it also had no visible effect on the worms. Pumpkin was the only one with worms I could see so I set up a brackish tank and moved my mollies into it and continued to feed them the disgusting wormer/food mixture in hopes that the salt would kill the worms if the panacur didnt... and two days later, I see no worms and my fish all seem happy and alive!

Parasites and pizza.

This month I have mostly been dealing with fish issues and drinking far too much diet coke.
It seems that my fish are suffering from the hilariously named, but less hilarious to deal with, Camallanus worms, which for anyone who doesnt know, are small, red, hair like worms that cling to the fish's intestines and dangle out of their butt. it's gross. after several failed attempts to correct the problem I have now resorted to feeding them a dog wormer smashed up with their regular food into a disgusting looking gray paste...fish, it seems, will eat just about anything. anyway, it's a good possibility that I will be heading home to a tank full of bloated, floating fish...we shall see.
I also made breakfast pizza and it was awesome! I saw it on howsweeteats, I site I visit because I like the pretty food pictures, and so I made it. Also, pizza dough is super easy... so I will be making loads more pizza in the future!
Robert and I have been cleaning and organizing the studio space and finding homes for everything, which is also awesome, after my class today a couple of the parents commented on how great the studio looked and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy and proud of my amazing work space.

and thanks to Jennifer and Cole Parker of DivasInDefense I now know a variety of different ways of breaking someone's wrist!

...end post.

Limey Freedom Cookies

Partly inspired by boyfriend's request for cookies, Erin's key-lime cupcakes and July 4th discount cookie cutters at Michael's ...it's Limey Freedom Cookies! 

they were awesome, so heres the recipe: 

1 1/4 sticks of unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups flour (I used self rising)

1/2 cup  extra fine white sugar

1 tsp vanilla (plus a couple extra drops for icing)

1 lime (zest lime and juice)

powdered sugar for icing

preheat oven to 350.

cut butter into little pieces and mix in flour with fingers so its all crumbly (I usually end up adding a little extra flour) mix in sugar, vanilla, lime zest and half the juice (about 1 tablespoon) mix to form dough.

flour work surface and roll out dough to about 3/4 inch, stamp out cookies and arrange on greased cookie sheet, bake for about 17 minutes.

icing:

combine about a cup of powdered sugar, the rest of the lime juice (about another tablespoon) and a couple of drops of vanilla, mix until smooth.

when cool, spoon icing over cookies and let set. 

Panama

I'm in Panama, its beautiful, it's also impossibly hot and despite it being rainy season, so the sun hasn't actually been seen for days without a cloak of clouds shielding it, and my liberal application of sunscreen, I have managed to burn myself quite impressively. 

Living in a city, in an apartment with noise reducing, double paned windows, a balcony and a couple of pet fish, its almost impossible to imagine that in other parts of the world people live on tiny islands, in small wooden constructions with thatched roofs and glassless windows, on stilts, in the ocean. There are monkeys in the surrounding trees and dolphins in the water under the house. This is something that only exists in the medium sized black boxy thing that sits in the living room of our apartment, under the books and knickknacks, not out in the real world where the crocodiles live. 

We sailed down rivers and along the coast and out to little islands which look like tiny forests sticking straight out of the ocean. We paddled the dingy through Jungle, surrounded by giant snappy teeth, and flocks of parrots, listening to monkeys howling at each other, or us, either way they are loud and sound far bigger than they actually are. They sound a like a pack of dogs that have barked themselves almost horse all screaming into a megaphone at once. We met the people who lived in the houses on stilts and the children who all stopped to stare at us as they rowed to or from school in their canoes and their uniforms. 

and I'm pretty sure I discovered several new species of crab, that I shall name appropriately...small yellow feather duster crab is my favorite so far. 

Currently we're in Bocas del Toro, theres a town and bars and shops and an airport that runs the length of the island. 

I miss the monkeys.

chocolate and guava oatmeal bars

soooooo good. 

May, mostly in pictures:

May 11th

Desmond was born. sadly he was not born on my birthday so I did not get to chose his name, which would have been Batman Vs Terminator Lutgendorf, but he has the correct number of digits and was born without a tail, so I guess thats good too.

May 14
Turned 30, went to Serenbe with boyfriend, jumped on an in-ground trampoline, got bitten on the boob by some sort of flying insect, drank wine and played board games with friends.

May 21st
Cornmeal and Bacon muffins!

May 23rd
Disney Princess book inspired piccies, the little mermaid.

 May 29th

bought fishy friend for Mussolini the snail, a powder blue gourami, Spaceship.

May 30th

Finally moved out of house and into apartment, lost a garden but gained a balcony and a basil plant!

cleaned the entire house and threw out 3 truck bed loads of trash and donated another truck load of old tv's, guitar amps, candle sticks, weird art and clothes to Goodwill. 

May 31st
Bought new shoes, this may not be much of an event for most people but given that my shoe collection consists of about 20 pairs of boots and 6 pairs of paint and glue coated converse, actual shoes are something of a rarity. Also they are pretty.

figure drawing

given that its been about 8 years since I've actually drawn from a live model, I think I will give myself a break and say that I am seeing an improvement...if I don't look at it for too long, I would almost like to try and finish this one. 

...Also, hypothetically speaking, if someone were to take part in a figure drawing group week after week and continue to draw nothing but the model's boobs... can I say something to them or should I just let it go unless further creepiness follows? 

They are beautifully rendered boobs, but I'm not sure thats the point... 

I've been reading a lot of fairy tales...then this happened.

IF-Bottled

So heres a sketch, (below) I wasnt going to do anything new as I am all busy and the like, but I started this the other night while I was half asleep, totally forgot about it and then found it in my sketchpad this morning... maybe I will turn it into something... maybe I wont...its all a mystery. I think perhaps it is time for another cup of coffee. Also theres this drawing I did few years ago that just proves that I have stopped developing as an artist!  "bottled" Yay stagnation!

sadly I think I like the older version better.
...two days later: finished! (above)