other things....

Our stove is dyeing. We decided to go with a new gas top stove so had to take some time to do some demolition (thanks to Mr. Eleven and Jarvis). We should be cooking with gas very soon! New stove is on it's way!


I dressed up as the Queen of Blue hearts for Halloween. Yes, it relates to the Monkeys. The blue heart of the little white Monkey sculpture...but no one at the party knew that.



My Luffa are almost ripe! Apparently you just peel off the skin, wash out the seeds and they are ready to go!



Yep, the Monkey faced dogs are here supporting every move I make. Lots of love from these Monkeys!

onward.......

The Monkey the snake and the moon....

So this is what I got from my journey to the Land of encaustic. I like the immediacy of the first few days, I felt like I was back in the 80's doing a cool expressionistic painting. Then I read this horrifying article about Courtney Love hanging out with Anselm Keefer!!! What? yuck! Oh yeah it isn't the 80's anymore! Does anyone do expressionistic work in 2010? Not that I care what others do. It just tainted everything! How could one of my your heros hang out with Courtney Love? OK I'll take a shower and wash the yucky off!

I declared I was returning to humanism a while back, and part of that is including feelings and expressions in the work. What makes us human. How to connect to that in 2010. So this side trip into expressionism is necessary in order to establish some perimeters.

Back to my Monkeys. Each of the panels has shards of the bowl I used in the Monkey bowl in the pervious post. Each has a 3-D moon with a face on it. The monkeys each have a bowl or cup of tea. one decides to greedily sit on it angering the snake and endangering the moon, spazing out at the situation he created. The other shares the bowl with the snake and lives in harmony with the moon safe and stable. At least that is what I see.

It took me about a month to finnish these panels. I took a lot of miss steps but in the process I learned a lot about what aspects of this medium I like. There is a lot of temptation to go decorative with wax and I rejected those up front, for better or worse. Each night after hours of applying wax, fusing it then scraping it back, flashes of the best effects hunted my dreams. The next morning I worked to find these special moments and recapture them. It was a first try at a new medium, 2-D. But it is also related to all the other mediums I have ever worked with. Like oil painting and sculpture combined with heat. Each medium has it's pluses and minuses. But it is empowering to have knowledge of many. More place for me to explore..

I am ready for the next big thing....because it is time to start a new project.....

Onward!......wait check out the mean Monkeys it will warm us up for the next project! Ok, proceed, ONWARD!!

The world of encaustic swallowed me up...

I last checked in to the Blog way back in the beginning of Oct. I have been wandering around the world of encaustic ever since. Yeah, like through the looking glass, it is another world!

At first I worked on just covering and building up surfaces on some of my sculptures. The experience is like looking through the opposite end of a telescope...inward, inward smaller little plane changes depth of surface, melting reforming and re-meling...Then I decided I must try something Big.

So I jumped right into 2 panels, 2-D encaustic painting. I am sticking with the Milk Pint for pigment. Notice the Monkey bowl above and the missing section of ceramic. Next Post: The panels.

what's up Wednesday, part 2

These guys are just starting to take shape. They are incorporating reliquary objects like the Hadad's,Vernor's summer bottle. I don't have much to say about them yet. But I can share the history of the reliqary objects.

The bowl part of the new Monkey Bowl is a small Chinese bowl. It was gifted to me by one of my dog-walking clients in Brooklyn. She left it for me, full of homemade cookies! She said take the bowl with you and remember me and my dog. Along the way the bowl broke, but I kept it. It reminds me of her and her sweet little dog, of a bowl full of love.

The Blue Valentine Monkey, has pink eyes made from 2 beads from an old necklace that belonged to my grandmother, I believe it is from the 1920's. I wore it a lot when I was in art school. The blue heart charm is from an old friend I lived with for a few years, while I was going through hard times. She gave me the blue heart and I wore it everyday during that time. The bottle is another gift from a dog walking client. Who left for Spain with her new husband to start an exciting new life there. It is full of the memories of 6 years spent walking her sweet Golden Retriever, on the streets of Manhattan near CBGB's and The Mars Bar.

These items have one thing in common, love. What a powerful medium to work with!

onward-
Onward Monkeys!

what's up Wednesday

This piece is still not quite finnished but it is almost there. It was inspired by a trip to Hadad's Lake here in Richmond VA. Hadad's is like an 80's teen camp movie set. With all the trimmings. But the most distinct thing about it is the magical color of the water, or should I say frightening! It is the most unnatural color of blue green-ever. Yes, I did swim in that crazy coo-coo water, and lived to tell the tail.

The bottle is a Vernor's bottle. Vernor's soda or should I say pop, was a big part of growing up in Detroit. Made in Detroit! It made your tummy feel good when you were sick, it made your tummy extra happy when it was combined with ice-cream--yummy! It was medicine and a treat and the big sign was there smiling over Woodward Ave. I still keep a few bottles around just incase I need it for my stomach, head or to taste a bit of my childhood.

The crystals and star piece are things I found in NY and have kept for years. I used to find crystals shed off of chandlers when I walked dogs in the city. Louis a big ol Rhodesian Ridgeback and I walked past a parking lot that served as a flea market on the weekends. Each Monday I looked forward to snagging a few crystal treasures from the asphalt lot and stuffing them in my pocket, like shells on a beach.

My friend Tere has been doing reliquaries, one new one each week, check them all out, her work is amazing. It inspired me to dip into my treasures, the relics of my life for some of the new work. In this case it is incapsulating odd summer memories from my hometowns, Detroit, NY and Richmond...what a strange trip it has been!

Finally, it is all topped off with the creepy summer moon smiling down on my memories.

Onward!

I have been busy like a bee

Like a vacation, I took a little trip into the world of illustration. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the process of bringing words to life. The story, a children's book, is about a conference of little critters airing their grievances with man. The story takes us to another world an illuminated place, with a much different perspective then the one we as people have. It teaches empathy and hope.
One day while I was working on the illustration a bee landed on my window screen. The light shown through his body and illuminated him like a light. He seemed to be there to cheer me on and also to remind me that though this illuminated world I was visiting was swell--I needed to get back to my Monkeys!

I finished up the illustration and lickety split, got my tail back to the monkeys!

onward!

What's up Wednesday

This lovely Wednesday finds me regrouping. I have an illustration due soon and need to get rolling on it. First step, making clean surfaces in my studio. While organizing I found a bucket of old brushes soaking in turpentine, only the turps had long ago evaporated. I was taught and always believed: "take care of your brushes and they will take care of you"! I normally would never leave brushes over long periods of time soaking and for sure not in turpentine. Linseed oil is far better soaking bath for the brushes. Ideally washing them after painting is best. I let these brushes down. From caked on thick goo on the handles, to the brush hairs being dried and bent with paint on them and still more goo. It was a mess. First the brushes soaked in fresh tups for a day. Next, I gave them an over night bath in a combination of oxy clean and my old friend Dr. Bronner's Peppermint Oil Soap. It worked like a charm. They are happily drying on my counter and will join the other brushes soon--ready for action!

Yet another step towards painting!
onward Monkeys!