Teacup Fountain

Would you like to know what wonderful thing I just discovered? Searching on Google Image Search for specific colors. It's pure visual opium. Plus, you get an excuse to word phrases like "thalo blue" and "alizarin crimson" as you type them out, mouthing them like phantom candies. How delicious.

There's a massive white stucko and glass monstrosity near the freeway. The sign, above the blank LED screen, proclaims the monstrosity to be the domain of "Le Nature," a recently defunct bottled water comapny. In fact, the company is so recently defunct that near simultaneous to the completion of the massive headquarters, the company went out of business. Across the street from this sad corpse of corporate failure, guarded by one inattentive and evidently very sleepy watchman, is this magnificent makeshift fountain, all sparkly and wonderful:

Xmas

This is the first Xmas away from Utah in years. J and I decided to stay in Phoenix this year, what with air travel being so unpleasant and pricey, and we're sort of at a festivity impass. Neither of us really are attached to the holiday, but we like it sorta. With this half-assed enthusiasm in mind, I threw together a couple things to dress up the living room. Above, is the "tree." It's made of left over upholstery velvet (from the couch) and buttons collected from years of disliking to sew on missing buttons.



My family has two beloved traditions for 12/25. The first is fruit soup, a heady concoction of fruit and spices that I've found other people who weren't raised adoring it simply can't stomach. The other is stockings stuffed with little items, with the toe of the stocking plumped with the ever present orange. I wasn't going to convince J to consume fruit soup with me, lord knows he's politely declined it countless times in the past, so I whipped up a stocking for him. The stocking is the foot of a giant stuff dog, which was previously eviscerated and plundered for stuffing and fabric for various other projects
. I stitched his name onto the top, using letters taken from various other scraps in the ever growing pile of scrap fabric.

Paper Wasp

This took forever.



And one on Art History notes:


The next few prints will be ones in preparation for my print show in March in Phoenix.

Baby Bird

I was thinking how the ground is littered with the corpses of babies birds every Spring. Maybe I'll draw some more of these guys then.

I printed on old homework and handouts from school. The intention is to wheatpaste these all over town. We'll see if I actually do it.

Upcoming events

Guess what! i'm a real live person and I do stuff! No, really, it's true. I promise. I'm not actually a fictitious character created for the purpose of more effectively selling prescription medication. Don't believe me? For proof of my corporreality, I present the following.

I've got a couple shows coming up, so here's a brief calender. You all, and I mean every single one of you, should attend these events:

Friday, December 1st--Gift Show at Trunk Space in Phoenix, AZ. Open 6 pm till midnight, and all of my stuff is priced below $50, most of it around $20. There's also the work of quite a few other local artists besides myself, but who the hell cares about them? Nobody, that's who.

Ok, so the reception is over and I wasn't even there because I was home with whispering requests for tea because I had strep and I'd lost my voice. But I'm sure it was awesome, and the show runs till January 7th, so you've ample time to still go.
You can even purchase pretty barrettes like the ones modeled here, by the incomparable Molly Crabapple.

Friday, December 15th--Pickle Company Xmas Exhibit. Well, I'll be in it if I can frame and mail off stuff for it in time. So, don't plan your life around it or anything.

Friday, March 2nd--As of yet unnamed show at Femina Potens in San Francisco. I don't yet know what this show will be called, but rest assured, it will be a title both confusing and pedantic. Should you have been to privileged as to have seen "Invisible Coterie" in Salt Lake or "The Self & the Shadow" in Phoenix, then you will see more of the same series at this show.

Friday, April 20th--Tentatively titled "What I owe to the people who have loved me" (but maybe that's a little too sentimental for me) at Trunk Space in Phoenix, AZ. Open 6 pm till midnight. This show will seriously ruin lives because it will be so awesome. You will step into the gallery, and quite possible die because your life will have been fulfilled at the moment you beheld this exhibit.

Orange Tree Leaves

I know, I know. I've been lax. But, I'm making up for it with a bajillion new awesome prints, all waiting to be photographed.

Orange Tree Leaves:




The only "true" trees that grow in Phoenix (palm trees are actually a type of grass) are orange trees, olive trees, and palo verde trees. The orange trees like the heat, but not the lack of water, and the tree in my frontyard I water once a week to keep it alive. Their leaves have a strange double lobed shape.

I just barely learned how to make these little lined pouches from a tutorial on Twelve22 (http://www.twelve22.org/2006/07/zipper_tutorial.html). I went a tad overboard on them.

Five hands

This month's Whiplash is "alternative materials". I have no idea if this fits.

I needed a display apparatus for my wristbands for the Gift Show at Trunk Space. A good display can sell anything. I took an old pair of brown pants, made out of a stretchy material, and directly traced my hand and arm in various lengths on the fabric. After pinning the two sides of the hands together, I cut them out and sewed them. I made five of them, and had to reinforce some of the fingertips with tacky glue because I'd cut them a bit short.

The stuffing was from an old pillow my boyfriend found in an alley. Each hand had a dowel that I cut to size with a hacksaw. Each dowel had an excess of about 1".


The ends of the hands were finished by threading around the raw edge, and then pulling the thread tight around the dowel, and adding a little tacky glue to keep it from fraying.

An old white laminate particle board shelf is the base, with five holes drilled into it. The dowel ends were fitted into the holes, and tightened with a little wood glue. Finally, it was attached to the gallery wall with L-brackets cannibalized from another shelf that was in the utility closet.

Gift Show

A whole bunch of new dolls in my online gallery (http://www.horsefleshproductions.com/dollgallery.htm), and another show coming up, this one a group show. None of my stuff will be priced higher than $50. I never know what people think about pricing plans for artwork. There's this perfect and tenuous line between overpriced to the point of making potential patrons irritated by your presumption, and underpriced to the point of affecting whether or not someone will view the object as something possessing any value at all.

http://www.thetrunkspace.com/
Trunk Space Gift Art Show, Nov. 17th 6 pm

There's an old black and white photo booth at The Trunk Space, and my new ploy for making cash is a series of wristbands, with picture windows the size of the photos the photobooth generates.
If you're lucky, you'll see the Jesus rappers before entering Trunk Space. Last time I was there, I was privileged to hear a particular piece about Jesus and how he will CRUSH! me. I like hearing people talk about their deity as though he is a particularly moody lover.

Folding over little teeth

These arguably pretty wristbands are the newset addition to things I have made:

I think that I might give in to the pressures of outside forces, and get a credit card. There aren't many reasons for this, but the few that exist are the behemoth known as Etsy, and airplane tickets. I resent Etsy's policy to only do business with people who have a credit card, but resentment isn't going to help me sell stuff.

Remaking shoes is surprisingly easy. There were pictures documenting each step of the remake of these blue pumps, originally very scuffed gold pumps, but then I deleted them all think I had already copied them onto the computer. They're pretty anyway, and have a cute white snappy strap.

There are not one, but THREE wholesale orders I'm processing right now. Pangea, Vegan Essentials, and Good Vibrations are all slated to recieve heavy packages from me shortly. Success is exciting, even if it is of a minimal variety. Vegan Erotica is no where near needing another employee (and I hope it never will be) but the hours I spend on it are increasing, as is my ability to make things faster.

Pyramid studs, in my opinion, are silly. I don't like they way they look, and I don't like the little teeth that secure them in place. Folding over little teeth seems so insecure, so temporal are way to attach things. But I have great piles of the things, and I need to use them up somehow, and there's no way I'm going to be wearing them, so I finally introduced some items to my catalog that are made with the damn things. But no triple row pyramid stud belts. I will not facilitate someone wearing those.

Failure Potato

I used to make potato prints. They were fun and cute, mostly because they were made out of a potato. I've even sold a few of these prints, the reason for their purchase baffles me, but they were purchased nonetheless. My plan was for this previous week's print to be one of this variety. My attempts were utter failures. I made three, and each time I asked myself "Am I doing this because I want to or because I'm too lazy to do it right?" So, there will be two prints next week, and this week will be for thinking about doing stuff right or not at all.

I was planning on sending you all over to see the potato prints of Samuel Curtis/Cory McAbee of http://www.myspace.com/thebillynayershow, but the website is down so you won't be able to see it.

teeth

Haha! Number 3, and I'm still going strong!

Eggbeaters

Eggbeater prints and a clever new print drying apparatus. I already started next week's print, and it's a little mo detailed and involved than the last two.

Arty

I got a package from Salt Lake City Weekly a couple days ago. I had asked them for a copy of their Arty Awards issue, because they mentioned me and I want to save it. And when the issue arrived, I was surprised to find a little plaque included! It makes it seem so official. I was giddy with excitement. I'm going to show it off to anyone who visits my house.


The series of dolls are at their final stages of being finished. I thought I could squeeze a couple more exhibits out of this series, but it's looking like no one is interested in them anymore. I'm not complaining, as I already got two solo shows for them, but it is a little bit sad as I think these last ones are ending up to be the best out of the whole bunch.

Here's a few in the process of glue drying:






I saw "The Science of Sleep" last night. I highly recommend it.

Underbust Corset

There used to be a very detailed and involved photo and text tutorial on how to make an underbust corset using partially recycled materials here.



I deleted it because many people used my pattern and didn't credit me, tell me, link to me, wholesale ripped off my pattern and claimed they made it up, etc.

Remember, crafters, give credit where credit is due especially when people share free patterns.
-------------------------------------
Another update:

Fine fine, if you go and join craftster.org you can view the pattern here:
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=122286.0

Please leave a comment when you do, and post a picture of your finished corset.

Don't ever say I never did nuthin' for ya'

Here's my press. It's wee and blue, and tiny. I have to prop it up on a blac of wood to make it high enough to be workable. I adore my press.

In an effort to keep my skills updated, and to keep myself from being totally sidetracked by eccentric and inscrutable projects, I've decided to make at least one small print a week. So, here it is. The first one. It's a small relief print of cherry blossoms, printed on Rives, with the serial number from Utrecht there in the corner. The photo is a little dark because I couldn't scan the print with the ink still wet. I promise, next week I'll get a better image of that project.

One more doll.

You can see most of the series at http://www.horsefleshproductions.com

Cheaters

Having finally finished the assignment I gave myself one year ago, I now have a series of exhibits displaying the evidence of completion to look forward to. Cheap wine makes everything rosy.

It hasn't exactly been a year, so I sort of cheated. Cheaters are also what Marilyn Monroe calls spectacles in "How to Marry a Millionaire", and I have new ones. New "cheaters," not new millionaires. My eyesite has gotten worse, but my new glasses make me feel likeI can see through walls.

The first one is next week at the Kayo Gallery in Salt Lake City. The denizens of SLC will be the first lucky enough to see this series, followed by the sweaty masses of Phoenix. One of the dolls was briefly featured on Juxtapoz, which sent me into flurries of excitement. I've already sold enough to cover the cost of the trip (that is, one doll) so thanks to Mr. Warren Jeffs and my friends who are willing to let me stay rent free at their home for a week.

Now I just need to get the scratch together for a trip to see Matthew Barney's upcoming exhibit in San Francisco.