San Antonio Girl

It's like my brain was fried or something. After more than a month, I finally had the time and the place to paint. The canvas has been prepared for several months; it even had a little label on it that said "San Antonio Girl" so that it wouldn't get used for anything else.

The very small story behind this small painting (9" x 12") is that after a UTSA college tour for daughter Hilary last spring, we stopped to enjoy the River Walk. From 50-ish feet away, this little girl was sitting with a family member...aunt or grandmother or someone. She was absolutely irresistible. I quickly snapped a photo. Whomever owned the lap on which she was sitting noticed, and didn't like that one little bit. I got some serious stink eye. It was totally worth it.

Back Yard Evolution

There are several things I want to point out in this photo....

First, for those who might not be aware, we obviously have painted several murals on the back of the house. The paint is holding up quite well, as this was painted several years ago.

Second, the patio work and design is still in progress; the brick and flagstone arranged in swirls to complement Starry Night on the mural/top right.

Third, the fountain is working!!!! The Amazing Reese dug a huge hole so that we could submerse it in the ground because...well, because he wanted it not to be so obvious. It looks great. The little yellow thing floating on top of the water is a rubber duckie. One might care to notice that a little bit of landscaping has been started around the pond as well.

And fourth, in the foreground is the ultra cool lantern I had commissioned from local Houston artist Jonatan Lopez. He used our old blue Weber grill -- the very same one that I have used to burn paintings -- as the casing for the light bulb. He cut a vine type pattern out of the metal, and at night when the lantern is on, the light dances and sparkles from the old Weber grill pit.

Finding My Muse

It seems that my muse has been misplaced. To try to find it, this week I've gone to the Menil Collection to see the Max Ernst exhibit, the MFAH, going to a lecture today at the MFAH on the life of Mary Cassatt, went to Barnes and Noble to buy and peruse art magazines, and will attend the opening at Lawndale Art Center tonight.

It's a slightly desperate situation to be in for an artist -- trying to find one's lost muse. Lord, have mercy.

Hair Raising Experience

Last week an acquaintance was quick to remind me how obvious it is that I have aged. Even though I wrote and joked about aging a couple of months ago, I love being 45. I thought that the changes have been gradual....that I'm aging gracefully. But it reckons that for people who haven't seen me from week to week, the change, in particular of my hair color, has been stark. So there I was at a luncheon with some "old" friends and acquaintances most of whom I hadn't seen in several years....and as soon as one of these acquaintances saw me she exclaimed,

"Wow! The last time I saw you your hair was black!"

To be sure, I am part of a small minority of women who do not color their hair. Good grief; my first grey hair appeared when I was still in high school. But apparently, in the last five or so years, my hair has made the leap from looking mostly black to looking mostly white. Oh, well....

No More Partridges

The tree branch is gone
indeed the whole tree,
for Reese chopped it down
for himself and for me.

The old tree was rotten
right down to the core;
it will soon be forgotten
though here's one story more....

A year ago December
I wrote a small story;
to help you remember
click here to read more-y.

To sum up, I said
that bird poo was plenteous;
what we wanted instead
of bird poo was just emptiness.

So a year ago, Reese
put on climbing gear,
from his wife got a kiss,
climbed the tree with a prayer.

His goal was to cut
the branch hanging over
the front porch door step
where bird poo was greater.

The job was quite huge
as tree branches fell;
a tree branch deluge
of that I can tell.

Well, Reese was worn out
the job mostly done;
just the trunk standing stout,
just the trunk all alone.

A funny thing happened
the tree seemed to thrive;
the birds kept on crappin'
and bees built a hive.

(The bee part's not real
I needed the rhyme,
the truth is the leaves
started growing in time.)

But reality found
the tree was quite sick;
and Reese took it down
last week -- what a trick.

The photo you see
is Reese working his hardest
to cut up the tree;
cut it all up to sawdust.

I'm happy to say
we are both quite delighted;
the tree's gone away
and no poo has been sighted!

Texas Green

What I neglected to mention a month and a half ago, was that I have a painting in the Art Car Museum for their Texas Green Exhibit. The opening was on November 22nd. November 22nd just so happened to be the first day of street painting for Via Colori. After the opening at the Art Car Museum, Reese and I proceeded to attend an intimate dinner at a friend's house. It was an exhausting, exhilarating, and busy weekend.

The Texas Green exhibit will be at the Art Car Museum through February 15th, so there's still time to go. The exhibit has a wide range of art to view. Honestly, one of the pieces is a state of Texas made out of dryer lint. The most interesting thing about the exhibit, personally, was that I was able to recognize several local Houston artists' works without looking at the reference tags.

"Anna Swinging" is my painting in the exhibit -- top photo, middle row, far right.

Here's a closer look.

And this is just being silly. What else would one do at the Art Car Museum?

More -- It's a Good Thing

It seems like there's hardly been time to recover from the busy holiday season, and there's more to do already.

When I went to Bulldog Postal to mail Christmas gifts last month, the owner liked what I had made so much that he commissioned me to make one as a gift for his brother's birthday on January 3rd. First, I laughed...ha!...the absolute absurdity of doing one more thing by January 3rd! Then I agreed to do it, but not by January 3rd. Deal. That's the first thing I'm working on this week, something similar to the clock in the photo, which was Erin's homemade Christmas gift from me.

Then, last Sunday morning I received a really interesting e-mail. A new wine bar was gutting a warehouse, and had the bright idea to let artists come forage for stuff. The new owners were asking artists to make a piece of art out of the objects in the warehouse for Block 7 Wine Company grand opening sometime in late February/early March. Cool. It could be that the owners were just looking for some cheap labor...but they turned out to be super nice. So, Anna and I went foraging, and now we are both working on wine culture related art made out of the materials found in the warehouse. One of the cool things I found was an old army cot. Yesterday was spent trying to clean it (in the process of which I accidentally spilled a whole bottle of bleach on the driveway -- bummer.) Now I'm working on separating the canvas from the cot, then I'll build a frame for the canvas out of the cot frame, gesso the canvas, and use the whole thing for a painting. If none of that works, I grabbed some other junky type stuff from the warehouse and have loads of other ideas....