Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Long Beach

la7
Ahh, Long Beach. The word "seduction" was mentioned more than once by the faculty and current grad students I spoke with while I was there, and I must admit that it was not inappropriate. The presses. Oh! The presses they had there sent me into such flurries of anticipation. What large and unweildy useless things I could make with access to those presses.

The Los Angeles area is so green. It's positively vulgar the amount of herbivorous procreation that goes on there on an daily basis. Having grown up largely in the desert, I can identify most of the native and nonnative plants that grow here, but there, I'd no idea what most everything was. It sort of all blurred together into a giant green mass, smelling strongly of unidentified lilies. My decision on school is still officially unmade, though I'm still terrified of the winter at the other option. Like most major decisions, this one is being made by a spreadsheet.

Asphalt and Air did an email interview with me, and reading through it I sadly realize what poor editing skills I have. But I take solace knowing that I'm a visual arts major, and being able to spell with any degree of literacy is an achievement.

Emily B, a wonderful fiber artist, featured some of my work on her blog.

And Found Object did a little feature, too.

All of this blog-related exposure convinced some poor sap to buy this fellow, of which I, of course, could only take only take the worst of photos before mailing her off:
DSCN1037

Figure modeling, that old standby of wellpaying and extraordinarily dull work that I find myself regularly swearing off of and then returning to whenever I'm at all hard up had produced these two paintings, or, more accuratley put, David Alvarado and James Buck produced these two paintings marginally related to me holding still for too long.

jamesbuck

davidalvarado

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Tentacle

Yesterday was Pi Day, and I'm certain you're already familiar with it. It's the sort of made up holiday that I find not nearly as insufferable as the others. On Pi Day, what does one do? Calculate the diameter of various circles, and see how far you can name off its various digits? Far less irritating than saying "Arrr" after every phrase. My friend Kevin's birthday was also yesterday, and never before had he realized that his birthday coincided with a made-up holiday. He's the one who bought he monkey, so I went to his party, even though I usually find most of his friends about as sufferable as Talk Like a Pirate day. We visited the monkey, hung from the porch rafters and bestrewn with ropes of LEDs. I'll admit, that despite my better self, I was worried about what would happen to this, my largest of all creations, once it was in Kevin's possession, and I was pleased with what he was doing with it. I cannot ask for anything better than being well lit and with no severe damaging.

All schools have written back, and I've not been rejected to a one. The letters of acceptance are hung like trophies from the print drying rack. From a school in the great Frozen North, a letter came describing the various grants and scholarships of merit that they had awarded me, the total of which was somewhat more than I had made last year. The amount stared up from the paper at me, beseechingly. A great wadge of institutionalized money, just waiting for a kind hearted person like myself to spend it. But I must remain strong! I steal myself against the sad saucer eyes of the Minneapolisian money, and decide to see if the school in Long Beach might see their way to giving me some sor of similar amount. Truth be told, I'm terrified of living somewhere as cold as Minneapolis. My personal insulation isn't much, and I don't know well I'd function at those temperatures. Next weekend the boy and I will travel to the coast to wheedle and coax, and perhaps there will then be an additional chunk of institutionalized money whose feelings I must consider.

tentacle

A few Phoenicians, some Chicagoans, a distant Argentinian, a couple of Los Angelinos, an affianced San Franciscan, a homesick New Yorker, and a great variety of Saltines have or shortly will recieve a single disembodied tentacle. For the sake of my wallet, I restricted the list to only those whose company I have physically been in the presence of. I envision a small town's worth of people, having consternation clearly read on their faces as they empty package's contents to find that single tentacle. Because, my darlings, I love you, but in a way that is best expressed through the language of perverse fetishism.

tentacles

If you were an attendee at my last solo show, ages in the distant past of last year's Autumn, you may have remembered these blank fawns that I made. They sold out within the first 45 minutes of the show, mostly because they were evidently the least disturbing and lowest priced of my extensive scion. But now, they can be had at the Frosty Darling Boutique in Salt Lake City, and The TrunkSpace in Phoenix. But if you aren't in either city and still want one, you can get it from my website just as soon as I find my way to updating the damn thing. And if you aren't one of the lucky few to be counted as among my most best beloved, then you can pretend you are by buying a tentacle from Synthetic Compound.

blackfawn

Phoenix is host to particularly fine weather right now. I don't have any delusions about how long it will last, but I'm rather pleased that I get to see the city with a smattering of green over the dust and brown. It still isn't half as pretty as most places I've lived, but it's tolerable for now, and I'll be leaving in the next couple of months while it's still pretending that it's a habitable place.

A great pallet of Lorica arrived last month, and orders that had backed up for weeks and months were suddenly addressed. I've beening doing nothing but make belts for what seems like ages now. And now I'm nearly done, and I don't care with what you keep your pants aloft, so long as I've nothing to do with it.

Wasps

kite show

Reduction style relief print, on a tetrahedron kite, edition of 20. Made for the Kite show at Trunkspace, and the kite part is made out of old chopsticks.