awkward jerking motions

The first thing upon arrival in Salt Lake City was to get my hair cut at Blitz. The mohawk had grown out, and the mullet-hawk was attracting way too many red neck lesbians. Xkot had opened a new salon, and he traded me a haircut for a doll. I came out the winner of the deal, as I was givng him a doll anyway. I wanted a pompadour, but I don't really know how to style it now, so it's not nearly as tough looking a coiffure as I had hoped for. I do not foresee anyone getting the impression that I can handle myself in a knife fight, but at least I look groomed for the opening.

The recent extensive fires in the Salt Lake City area filled the sky with ash and debris. As soon as I landed and up until I left, I felt like someone was squeezing my lungs, hacking and coughing as though I had never quit smoking. It's strange to long for the sunbaked Phoenix air.

Onto the show. Everything went off perfectly, or as much as one could expect. Everything arrived on time, the setup was fast, and Kenny even loaned me a frame when I said I was going to try to find one at a thrift store. Kayo Gallery was the perfect space, with it's high white walls, white ceiling, and dark black floor. In other galleries, my black on white stuff has to compete with all of the more colorful decor, and it often loses out, but at Kayo, with its clinical sterility, it looked wonderful.

The sign, "You may gently interfere with their lives," was viewed as another piece, and a couple of people inquired about purchasing it. But I simply couldn't justify selling a bad ink jet printout, and told them to just make their own.

More children than ever showed up this time, though, and the way they behaved was telling of the way they were raised. One kid wouldn't stop kicking things until I asked him and his mother to leave. Children are terrifying to me. You can't actually stop them from doing stuff unless they're your offspring, and sometimes those progenitors are reluctant to do any stopping. For the most part, though, the children who were there were very well behaved. One little girl, when given permission to touch the pieces, looked terribly confused. It seemed that gallery and museum etiquette had been drilled into her, and now here I was, undoing all of those lessons. So she and I talked about how it's ok to touch things in galleries if someone first tells you it's ok.

Brian Staker wrote a nice piece about the show, which came out post opening, so maybe it will drum up some more sales. Hug This

The catmen have hair in their little vials, and as always, I was asked many times whose hair it was. "The Russian's hair." I would answer. "Where's he?" to which I could honestly respond "Russia."


Salt Lake City at large:

We had brunch at Broken Record Bar and Grill, formerly Todd's Bar and Grille. It seemed near scandalous to me to be in a bar so early in the day, even if I wasn't drinking. The most debauchery was Matt getting a Bloody Mary, though, and the music being too loud.

Atop the light fixture suspended over the pool table, was a tiny plastic rabbit. And I pocketed it. And then I tried out the macro setting on my new camera.

Four of my friends have bought condos since last I was there. Condos are the next step in being a grownup, but I'm hoping it's a step I will skip. Matt showed off the newly installed harwood floors and took us on a tour of the grounds, the repainted walls, yet to be grouted brick walkways, and we stood on tiptoe to peer over the barricade at the pool, mid refurbishment and with signs warning about the toxic levels of chlorine currently in the water. The doors have high tech peepholes.

The space that Kayo Gallery used to occupy now is home to Nobrow Coffee. The only coffeeshop I've ever been in that actually has consistently good art shows. This time, there was an installation, with columns of beans and wire, and little yarn bouquets on wheels on each table.

New shoes from Frosty Darling, that I tortured extensively over before purchasing them.

Saturday evening, we reluctantly went to a BBQ. Despite the hostess thinking that chicken wasn't an animal, it was pretty fun and I never got hassled for my nomeat burger. Two of the guests were these pit fighting or cage fighting guys. They're job is to beat each other up in front of a crowd. They discussed the economics of this profession, how they refuse to fight one particular contender because they'd lose, and the participation money wouldn't cover the cost of stitches afterwards. I tried to engage one of them in a conversation about the Ultimate Warrior (the old WWF wrestler) but he's more interested in talking about actual fighing, and I realize that I prefer fiction over reality in most situations, and excuse myself and start a hulahoop contest with his daughter instead. Later, I taught them all how to play Cowboy/Ninja/Bear, and consider myself very clever for thinking of a game that can be played by both drunk cage fighters and 6 year olds without anyone getting terrible bored or confused.

I've lost some friends since I left SLC, and I don't know why. One simply won't acknowledge my existence. I'd really like to know what happened, what I may have done or failed to do. But if he won't call me back or answer the phone, there's not much I can do about it than realize there's one more reason besides the air in SLC to kill the nostalgia. But, I did find that someone who I thought disliked me does not, and even danced gracefully and prettily next to my awkward jerking motions.


Baby hobo super fast illustration for a satirical article about running away from home. Drawn from a photo of my newest nephew.


Did I tell you I'm trying to get into illustration more? Well, consider yourself told. Should you need an illustration of anything, then you should contact me.

And now I'm home, and getting back to work and trying to calm down the people who want their floggers right right now, immediately, maybe even five minutes ago, and finishing up piles and piles of belts and dildo harnesses.

Pedestrian drugs

I have this habit of taking on too many tasks, all of which I'm eager to do, and overestimating the amount of time it takes me to finish those tasks. I'd say I need to manage my time better, but I do manage my time well. Yet, I'm still four illustrations behind schedule, and quite a bit of sewing is left, too.

Last week, I ran out of coffee, and loathe as I am to leave my house and venture into the too bright out of doors, I drank strong black tea instead, waiting for the sub100 degrees opportunity to strike out and purchase the much needed caffiene. Now that I have it, I've been overcompensating and drinking too much. My drugs are so pedestrian.




Show card for show! Want one? Send me your address. Stateside only, if you please, unless you've purchased something from me in the past. Overseas stamps are too much for this venture, I'm afraid.

My alma mater of overdrinking and flirting with trashy band boys has an article about Solecist. True to form, they initially spelled my name two different ways and spelled the name of the show wrong, until I sent them an email gently correcting them. Too much reliance on spellcheck leads to lazy proof reading, but who am I to judge? I can barely manage to credit quotes accurately, and that not even all of the time. To be honest, I didn't really understand the article. What's not well thought out about the name?

Hey, ho, the gangs all here:

For sale at The Trunk Space.
This is the end of paper mached heads. I'm moving on to other time wasters, time wasters of more epic proportions.

I had a set, shot by Lorelei in Tucson, go up at the ol' SG last week. Heretofore, I had no idea how many men dislike short hair on women.

swim

Hair dying ritual




Friends of Trunk Space swimming party

Charming

I'm a criminal,





but only of the charming variety.

At long long last, I knuckled down and opened a wee Etsy shop. Ebay has left me terrified of those sorts of affairs, what will all that ugly layout and great masses of messy code. But, into the breech I went and came out pretty ok in the end.

Other activities of note:
Set which you really ought to take a look at.
Repository of photos documenting activities and friends.
Document attesting to my presence on another website.

It's made from paper

My friend David and I got a tad over enthusiastic about the Mail Art show at Trunkspace, opening this Friday. I had this clever idea that I told him about, and I only planned on making one or two heads. But he had never done paper mache in his entire life, so we went overboard a bit, and there still more heads to go.

We collaborated on some, and did some on our own. The washy brown ones are mine, the bold inky ones are his, and the ones that are a bit of both we worked on together, staying up too late and drinking chocolate tea.

These are made from the College Times, because they have no staples in their publications.

Coat monster

A friend loaned me these rejected passport photos, and I used them as models:




These were made a few days ago, by me. Either I'm terrible at painting flies or people have no idea what bees look like, because a couple people have commented on how cute my "bee mugs" are. Bees have four wings, not two, you silly people. Flies are the only winged insect that have only two wings. Even coleopterans (beetles, my dear) have elytra, which are chitinous nonfunctional upper wings, so they officially still have four wings. My computer committed sepukku, and so I can't get onto Horseflesh until after I find my friend who's hosting it, so let me know if you want to buy any of these in the meantime. I'll consider trades, too, if you're feeling adventurous.



This last one is from my friend's cafe in Couer D'Alene, Bella Rose.

This speaks for itself, I believe.


Off the top of your head, without referring to a dictionary, do you know what the word "predilection" means? What about the word "solecist"? These are not hypothetical questions.

Half cents

Warren Ellis blogged about me. Granted, it was in a completely perfunctory name and image posting only minimal information given sort of a way. But that isn't what counts. What counts here is that Warren Ellis blogged about me. My brother is going to be so jealous.

Oh, Kinkos. The relationship I have with you is just not healthy. You charge 8.5 cents per copy, although you insist, at least in print, that you only charge 8 cents. Are you saying I can't do simple addition, Kinkos? Really, now you're just being insulting. I had to account for those extra half cents, Kinkos, and that's why I took your gluesticks. Really, you drove me to it.

Gentle readers, I direct your attention to my newly added list of friend's blogs over there on your right. Those people, no doubt, have far more interesting things to say than I.

Shameful and shoddy

Lorelei shot this of me at the Hotel Congress in Tucson. Posing for SG consists of this: arch your back till you feel silly, point your toes, and SMILE! SMILE! SMILE! I made the skirt, shirt, and brooch and the sheets are from my bed at home. Then the plebians at SG rejected the photos. Plebians! I've got nothing else I can do with the photos, so I entered them into their Second Chance Sundays thingy. If you're a member, and legally an adult, etc, you can view the rest of the pictures here. Let me know if you think I should have done something differently or not, please.

I've been trying to remember how to make free-spine books. It's been years since I made a book, so I used some shoddy materials to jumpstart my memory.





I used a pair of a friend's old pants for the bottom cover, and I can't recall who sent me the shirt for the top cover, and I used the wrong board, the wrong glue, the wrong thread, and the wrong everything else. But I'm not going to use pricey materials until I can get it right again. I used to be so good at this, and now look at the loose stitching on that text block! Shameful. There's further process photos on my Flickr, so click on the picture if you're interested.

This doll, "She was better prepared for misfortune," was purchased ages ago, but I only recently got around to mailing her off to the saintly patient purchaser in SF. Not only was she made out of my favorite winter coat, that I only cut up when I realized that I'd most likely never wear it again as there's no call for a floor length hooded coat in Phoenix and it was too big to travel with, but she was also ridiculously hard to balance. There's giant metal weights in all those little feet to keep her face from toppling her over. Is it creepy that I talk about my sculptures as though they were people? Behind me are the prints for Solecist, all ready to sew. The fabric is from generous people with expansive wardrobes. And now I'm all out of black ink and must order more before I can print anything further.


What did I do for this long holiday? I've been painting flies and listening to Maria Callas sing about murdering her husband and children. Sadly, I've yet to see Medea performed live. That, and stress out about my stuff waiting to clear customs tomorrow. When it does clear, I don't know how I'll transport it from the airport to my house, and I don't know where I'll put it in my house, but I do know that I'll be making belts, floggers, and dildo harnesses all bloody week, as I've now been twice back-ordered.

Oh, and lastly, do you know what "solecist" means without looking it up? I was recently told that my show titles have too many $1.50 words in them, and it puts people off. So now I want to if I'm being confusing or not.

"Irrefragable"

Should you be reading this, diptegenarian Illinoisan, I hope that I did not contribute to your decision to delete your journal. If I embarrassed you, I apologize and I'm willing to delete my past journal entry if you wish. Please let me know. My plan was to try to convince you to send me your old clothes, because I'm always on the hunt for more materials. But perhaps I'm a bit too much of an opportunist.

Currently, I'm in the process of printing and carving for my next show, Solecist at Kayo Gallery. I'm also at the baby stages of a collaboration with a local comic book artist, and I'm beginning to suspect that he's far more talented than I am. My intention is to become more talented by proxy, or through osmosis. This is the shirt I made him after he gave me the Zardoz shirt:


Yet again, I ventured onto Frontpage. But this time, it was because I had scanned some new images to use, and knew that my harddrive is going to commit sepakku at any moment. I had to get those images online before they dematerialized, especially as the amount of guff the scanner gave me was not something I was willing to put up with twice.


Nerve (highbrow adult content warning) has a monthly photo contest, each month with a different silly theme challenging photographers and models to come up with something sexy. I won third place in last month's contest, whose theme was "Laundry." The judge called it spacey and that I looked vaguely unhappy. Evidently, these are positives. This month's theme is "bubbles," and even though I'm all psyched to try again, I'm at a total loss for ideas.



Thanks to the Westboro Baptist Church for informing me of the existence of the word "irrefragable." It was committed to memory by whispering it under my breath as I did laundry, telling the modest little piles of separated colors in one word that it was incontestable, and could not be denied.

Excessively Self Involved

That shortness of breath and rapid heart beat? It's because I'm far too excited for my own good to go see The Wolfs perform tonight, in only a few short hours. The lead singer manages to have an eerie resemblance to Charlie Brown, yet can sing songs about specific sexual positions without being creepy. Most of the lineup for tonight is from Salt Lake City, so I'm preparing to be assailed by great waves of nostalgia and sentimentality when I get to the bar, especially since summer is speedily approaching Phoenix, reducing its inhabitants to reverse eskimos, baring too much skin and constructing their lives to facilitate maximum exposure to A/C.

My desire to be back somewhere with tolerable weather is of such power that I was actually manifested in SLC. Yes, my sister saw me walking across the street last night.


It was, admittedly, in Tracy Strauss's painting form, but I take it as an auspicious sign. That, and the plane tickets, destination SLC.



While searching for a particular article about me, so that I could cite it in my press clippings, I came across two somewhat perplexing things. Firstly, there is a racing horse named Lady Camilla Taylor. I hate horses. They are horrible animals and I hope to stay as far away from them as can be physically managed.

This is secondly:

Have I yet elucidated how explosively hot Camilla Taylor is? She's hot. That's it: I must age six years in the next fifteen seconds and fight her (probably) sleazy, horsecocked boyfriend. The future is looking bright.

Why, oh why, is Camilla Taylor 26?

Seriously, Knox, internet, go fuck yourselves. I am overreaching, and to a greater extent than usual. And it is your fault. And now I am going to do homework and think about Camilla Taylor and be mopey and wish that I too could be an extraordinary weirdo genius troubled by a devilish imagination and a sickly constitution. Alas!

Huh.

Huh.

Quoted, not linked, because being an aspiring Lothario (look it up, it's appropriate) doesn't merit potential mockery and unwanted attention, in my mind anyway. My reaction to reading this was alarm, but not really of the sort that one would expect. Sickly Constitution? Really? I've always thought of myself as rather hale and hardy, albeit with an irritating belief in the merits of sunscreen, but healthy nonetheless. I don't foresee a romance between myself and this young scribe, but I'm somewhat baffled that my age, a difference of 6 years, is such a barrier. Six doesn't strike me as that big a difference. I once dated someone that much younger than me. He looked chokingly beautiful with his shirt off, played the cello, and I snuck him into bars when I should have known better. Evidently both of our friends had adviced as against it because of our age, and perhaps they were right as he and I don't really talk anymore. Or perhaps I'm getting all nostalgic about him because Rostropavitch just died.

But then, maybe that kid talking about a different 26 year old Camilla altogether.

Additionally, the first entry reminds me of how much I loathe eighties teen movies and the way their conceits have infiltrated society. Yeah, I'm talking about you, John Hughes.

Pretty new things in my shop. I've got big elaborate plans for my website, which will be implemented later in the week.

I'm finagling a trade out of Abbyjane. How does she make those beautiful birds and how does she keep them from toppling over? Some sort of black arts, I suspect.

Oh, and if you've got old button up shirts that you don't want, then I recommend giving them to me. I'm nearly out!

Highly Effective

I hate updating my website. It seems like it will be such a treat when I wake up and think about how I need to finally switch out the old stuff, and show off all my shiney new stuff. But it is not a treat at all. Frontpage was not designed as an intro to web design, it was designed as a highly effective means to leech the souls from its hapless users.

After all that soul-leeching, I've now got some new (and some old) shirts for sale, new wristbands, and finally posted the teacups and a hideous internet abortion that I will continue to direct potential patrons to.




My upcoming solo show in July at [URL=http://kayogallery.com/]Kayo Gallery[/URL] is simply too exciting for words. I'm working on new pieces for it and sewing like crazy. And somehow, I want to engineer some sort of demonstration on medium and technique. When you understand how something is made, it completely changes your approach to it and the manner in which you think about it, or so I think. Understanding the process makes it approachable and, depending on the process, gives it that edge of artisanship or let's you know that a preschooler really could have made it. Mostly, though, I'm just really excited to see my siblings and friends. I've already got a box full of presents to give to people.


I grew a tomato! Oh, come on, I live in Phoenix. If you have any idea how hard it was to grow two tiny tomato fruits, you'd be excited too.


Last night, I met with David B., and I gave him a shirt that was not even half as awesome as the Zardoz shirt he gave me. And then I neglected to get a picture of him in it even though I had brought a camera expressly for that purpose. Now I'm all giddy to have a new friend, and I'll probably end up just creeping him out instead.

I've got a new goal for the year. A new way to measure myself and probably find myself short, but it's the attempt that matters. Or so I think, but then, I'm addicted to fear of failure. It's my cocaine.

LA Times

Last night, I drove. In a car. All the way to Willowhouse.

It was terrifying.

In other news, there's a picture of my work in the LA Times. They've got the wrong title on the piece, but I don't care as long as they spelled my name right.

Culpable, II

Last night, I had a weird dream about one of my favorite internet comics. Mr. Jeffrey Rowland, true to form, wore an animal costume throughout the dream, and we ate large tomatoes together. His animal costume got sticky in a completely nonsexual way.

Onto more relevant blog subjects. Friday was the second reception for "Culpable" at Trunk Space Gallery. It went amazingly well. I sold quite a few pieces, and all to people who I was happy to have bits of me in their homes.

I had a completely new piece for the show, that I finished just minutes before the reception. Nop one purchased any of the edition for the new piece, but it was recieved pretty well anyway, and I'm very pleased with it. It was whipped out in less than a week, including sketches, mockup, carving, printing, and finally sewing (although, I was only able to sew two of the projected 60 in the edition).


In contrast to the last reception, people engaged in a little less "family making." Here's an example of bullying by proxy:

Although, one man went through the gallery and hugged all of the pieces. It was lovely to watch.




Noodle, the homeless gallery cat, made a brief appearance and sniffed around, before he finally got scared away by the crowd.


The show got some great publicity, which I'm certain helped to get people there and convince them to spend some money. Lilia Menconi did a studio visit with me, and was kind enough not to mention the ridiculous filthiness of my studio, or dwell too much on my bondage gear business as I'm way too familiar with journalists doing when ostensibly writing about my art.
(click on the image to read the article)


Lastly, and most importantly, I got the most awesome rad thing. And this thing, this most wonderful of things, arrived in an appropriate way. A quite boy who I had just met, after buying a piece fromt he show, returned to the gallery with a package secured with a big bulldog clip. What I found inside made me squeal and make horrible noises, so overcome with excitement was I. If you don't understand, it cannot be explained to you.