New Projects

I've been holding onto this window pane ever since I was an undergrad in northern California. My senior year, I lived (along with several other intrepid art majors) in one of the (poorly insulated, abandoned) bungalows at what used to be the Aetna Springs Resort, built in the 1870's and adjacent to a golf course (that I once snuck onto in the middle of the night for a picnic), and formerly occupied by the Moonies. The buildings on the property were all abandoned, filled knee-deep with molding books and rusting furniture. The cottages that were live-able still often contained baffling artifacts like a hatch from Lost-- I remember once crawling underneath the bungalow I lived in, finding a cache of mildewing cardboard boxes filled with slide carousels from what looked like a presentation about alcoholism. If I lived there now, I'd have to become a video artist and re-stage scenes from '80's slasher flicks!

In any case, it was a paradise for photographers and collage and assemblage artists. (Once my entire assemblage sculpture class visited for an impromptu field trip/scavenger hunt for materials for a group sculpture-- we all ended up making 2 nearly life-size elephants.) I've kept a ton of old books from there (literally, they're very heavy), the occasional salvaged antique doorknob and keyplate, and this wonderful old window pane with three original panes of glass-- intending to do something with it, especially after seeing several similar windows used as picture frames in different places over the years.

Zips finally compelled me to finish it. I cleaned it, painted it, collaged the gold from joss papers on the edges, and had some photos printed especially for this. Each of the photos evokes the time we stayed in a log cabin for the weekend in Brown County, Indiana, and most of them were taken that weekend.

There's a birdhouse washtub, and a slate board that says "Nothing Matters More than This Day", a snapshot of the koi pond, and the red metal rocking chair from the front porch of the log cabin.

I'm really happy with it. It reminds me to be serene. Here and on the other side, I've included a "double happiness" from the joss papers.

New Art: Pop Culture Ikons

One of the charming features of the new house we're renting is built-in nichos. We've got one on the front porch, one in the entryway, and one in the back hallway. But we haven't had anything to put into them until now. I've finally completed a project I've had in progress since we lived in our downtown 3rd floor apartment in Indiana. We've kept a running list of our favorite musicians and actors (mostly musicians) past and present, and created our own set of ikons.

The original set were images I had photoshopped to remove the backgrounds and heighten the images. But since I'm finishing this project several years later on a newer computer without photoshop, I did it old school and copied pictures into microsoft word, made them black and white, tweaked the contrast, printed them out, cut each image out, then photocopied them onto watercolor paper.

The rest is just some clever gold and copper paint, acrylics, and a red ballpoint pen.

We had many mutual loves (Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley in Ab Fab, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Shabana Azmi, George Michael, Margaret Cho), but believe me we also did some serious bargaining (I got Andrew Bird and Bjork; Zips demanded Catherine Deneuve, Marlene Dietrich, Yoko Ono, David Bowie, Marianne Faithfull, Nina Simone, and at one point, Freddie Mercury). We've decided our overflow favorites (younger vintage pop culture loves) will be cherubs instead of icons. We're starting a new list; Zips gets Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lady Gaga, and Daft Punk. So far all I'm getting are the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and they'll only count as one), and maybe I'll get the use the Lauryn Hill image I made. Yeah, guess which one of us usually buys all the music and movies...?

New Painting for Bastille Day!

We're finally settling into our new digs, and hoping we can rent this home for more than a year! We finally bought some furniture to assemble and put our tv, albums and books in and on. With this new stab at sophistication, we had a vast expanse of wall behind the tv, and I've been toting this huge (30"x60") unpainted canvas that I bought at a goodwill store for like $3 (with this unbelievable print of a fish that I discarded immediately). With the desire for simplicity and elegance, I drew on my inner Agnes Martin and practiced a great deal of restraint.

I used quite a bit of my titanium white acrylic and some end papers of some old, old books I've been lugging around for this exact use. And then I stopped before I messed it all up. Here's more Agnes Martin, if you're interested. She worked in Taos, NM. I hope to be able to see some of her work in person.