Art@Home Show

Skip the mall this holiday season and
buy directly from local artists!

Enjoy the comfort of a private home, a sampling of appetizers and drinks, and
the ability to leisurely browse an amazing array of gifts and art made
by an eclectic group of artists.

Date: Sunday, November 4
Time: 1-4pm
Address: 717 Richmond Dr SE, Albuquerque

Participating Artists:
Ren Adams/Mixed Media & Printmaking
Donna Barnitz/Jewelry & Fiber Art
Phoenix Forrester/Jewelry
Raine Klover/Mixed Media & Photography
Kendall Murakami /Silversmithing
Leau Phillips/Jewelry & Mixed Media
Regina Portscheller/Mosaic Collage & Mixed Media

For more information go to: http://riograndeartisan.blogspot.com
to preview some of the artists work (including mine!!) and find links to their
individual websites.

Next Art@Home Show Date - December 2 - Info TBA
cash & checks only please!

Road Trip!!

Well my lovelies, the Colorado road trip has come and gone! Here are some of the high points.
We got stuck in the Balloon Fiesta traffic at 6 in the morning!
Beautiful sunrises
The best cemetery in Ojo Caliente, including the bunny Christ, we think that it may have been feathers but from a distance it looked like ears.
Beautiful route through Antonito where we saw the oldest church in Colorado and the coolest house ever made of aluminum cans and I picked up some purple glass in the parking lot of a funky apartment complex!
What a wonderful surprise Salida was, quaint, old, lovely scenery.
Waiting too long to eat causes you to eat weird things way too fast, where was Paula when we needed her?
Colorado needs to make their road signs clearer
Fort Collins changes every time I go and Colorado traffic is unbeliveable!
The Gorey DeTales exhibit is everything it is cracked up to be. It was fabulous and each piece was so different! I loved them all, couldn't choose a favorite.
Saturday night in a college town - not easy to find a parking space or a restaurant. We ended up with both and both were wonderful but took a while!
Rainy days in Boulder are great, made leaves stick to things they would be passed by on other days. Boulder hasn't changed as much as Fort Collins, still found haunts from my youth...ah Taj Majal at the Boulder Theater.
Fog makes everything look mystical.
Warm Brie with honey, rosemary, apples and strawberries is the best accompaniment to spicy eggplant soup with roasted red peppers.
Honey should be kept in separate compartments in the trunk, however, those heavy duty power washers at the car wash do get honey out of car mats.
Family is family... know what I mean?
Everything is prettier when you are on a road trip!

Why I paint and write and sing

"Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth." Madeleine L'Engle

As requested

Here is the mural from the previous post. The artist is apparently called "Burro". See the guy's feet are on top of Jesus and he is carrying a mallet. Never seen anything like it. I love New Mexico!

At long last...art!

Or big pile o' bones, you decide. I am not and have never been a seamstress, but I remember my sister talking about those Very Easy, Very Vogue patterns that seemed like they had 112 main pattern pieces and instructions in Latin, making that name a total joke. I thought about that several times this last couple of weeks while I was working on some danglies for a trade. I thought it would be so simple to put together what I had in my head. Joke's on me!
I saw a stamp of a skeleton with wings, kinda like Nick Bantock's cover for Griffin and Sabine and since I couldn't actually purchase the stamp, I decided to make my danglies based on that image I had in my head. I found skeletons in mass at the local super size craft super store - hey, I had a gift certificate - and some cheap wings and just kept adding to them. You know that "I'll just add one more thing, do one more step or glue something else to them" and so they became the most completely overdone danglies I've ever done. But the good news is that I like them, they are finally done, sent off to be disbursed to others, and I can't wait to see what I get back.

Graveyards and condoms

What a great weekend I've had. Too much fun to not tell everyone about. Friday night we went to a wonderful event at the Factory on 5th. First Friday event with really cool artists and good friends. Saturday I took care of the babies so Raine and Chris could go up, up and away in a helicopter at the balloon fiesta. Raine and I then went to re-shoot some cemetery photos. We hit a few, accumulated more than our fair share of those awful goat head stickers, saw rabbits, prairie dogs, lizards and something that moved in the leaves so we moved! Graves decked out with boxing gloves and wrapped up in Dallas Cowboy memorabilia. Amazing wonderful and sooo very New Mexican. Some are sooo old and some were so loved.

But by far the weirdest one was the one in the middle of the subdivision. We went in the back way, up a very steep sandy hill, amazed at how the wrought iron fencing could stand upright on the hill and then at the top was this great old cemetery in the middle of a brand new subdivision. All of the houses had huge windows and they did have the most amazing view of the city across the river. That wasn't the weird part. There was this great mural on the wall with Jesus carrying a gang member who had a mallet in his hand - gang guy, not Jesus. Big roses on each side. That wasn't the weird part. There was a grave with a cage built all around it. That wasn't the weird part. The weird part how many used condoms there were all over the cemetery! I guess nothing says romance like headstones and painted Jesus looking down and the added thrill of knowing the people in the houses could see everything. Weird, weird weird.