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.

Mystery Solved!

At the fair, I fell in love with a print that I saw in the Hispanic Village. A lovely man tried his best his best to sell it or one like it to me and if I sold even one more necklace... When I told Raine about it, she said she though she had seen it in a store here in town and last weekend she bought it for me!! How's that for a fairy god mother? It is the most unusual print. When I found out who did it, I googled the artist, Octavio Ocampo and fell in love with his whole collection. Okay maybe not the Jesus (hanging on the cross or crying one) or the creepy Mona Lisa cat thing, but most of them. anyway. Don Quixote is my new favorite. And Jimmy Carter is really cool with the cities and builidings and James Dean done with cars, this guy rocks!
I have always loved optical illusions. Loved the hidden picture pages in Highlights. Can't really do those dots ones that look like something from one direction and then you can see others things when you squint or move it of whatever, but loved the way they were done.
His stuff really makes me think about the whole "we of me". I am pretty sure that is from a book I read in my misspent youth, or I may have made it up or heard it somewhere else. I think the book was called "Members of the Wedding" or something like that. I know, I know there is this great data base in the sky. That's where the Internet is, isn't it? Next door to Heaven? Or maybe it is heaven? OMG, geeks run heaven!! I knew it, that's why it is so hard for me to figure out important stuff. I digress.
I always think about the "we of me" when someone leaves my life for any reason. My friend Regina has this great quote on her blog about being sad when you loose your daddy 'cuz that's one less person that makes up who you are or something like that . It really made me think the first time I read it and I should remember who wrote it to make note here. I know, I know, google it, but then I would have to stop this train of thought and once the train stops these days, I am SOL at getting back on track. See, I digress.
I want to start thinking about the "we of me" with each encounter. Each person I meet should contribute something to who I am. It's that either a good example or horrible warning thing. But then would that make me too scattered? Can I actually learn something from each person I meet? If you look closely at the not so wonderful picture I took of my new wonderful print, you can see that each part of every feature of her face is made up of other people. I kept taking pictures because I wanted to be able to really share how interesting it is, but they still don't show everything. And I haven't added the glitter yet! I digress.
The eyes fascinate me the most. It is 2 different peasants and her chin is a pope giving her roses which become her lips. How often do others see others in us like that? Good or bad? Other than family resemblances? Close up or at a distance? But then would we all end up looking like something Picasso did? But that wouldn't be so bad would it? I digress.
But on the other hand, it could just be like the Chenille Sisters song -Pizza Deliverance- about finding the face of the virgin in a pizza (just another cheesy shrine) and having all the town and newspaper and reporters there and everyone being in awe until a little boy takes a bite and starts to share, there is a little bit of god (I say others) in us all.