Drawings, stories and stuff

This ink splatter drawing uses an old trick:  splatter some ink on a page and then make an image out of it.

Stefan Bucher does some pretty cool ones at his site, The Daily Monster http://www.dailymonster.com/

Last week I attended a Valentine making party. It was great fun, a room full of girls, pink beverages in martini glasses and a table covered in collage materials and glitter (lots of glitter!).

So here are the fruits of my Valentine making

[warning: these are somewhat adult oriented Valentines. ]

This is a limerick shared by the lovely Laura.

When attempting some things out of the Kama Sutra, you're going to need luck most of all.

My thanks go to this recent article in BBC News

A tiny (parrot sized) dinosaur was recently discovered having only single claws for forelimbs. Of course, when I heard claw and parrot the association was irresistible. So I drew him in a lifestyle that he was a few millennia too early to enjoy. And I decided to give him one arm with some fingers, just for good measure.

Now that Christmas has past I find myself in that gluttonous position where I am home on vacation and surrounded by all the leftovers from last week. Holiday food only comes around once a year so I feel like I really have to make the most of it. And Christmas time is one of the few times of year when I think about (and actively crave) the traditional foods of New Mexico. This includes posole stew, tamales, and meaty red chile sauce.

We often have extra red chile left over from filling the tamales, so I try to use it on everything I can think of. This morning the result was huevos rancheros. There are thousands of different versions of huevos rancheros; it just depends upon where you’re coming from. Naturally, I’m making the kind I remember growing up and (most importantly) the kind I enjoy: corn/flour tortilla, melted sharp cheddar, red chile, and a fried egg on top.

Delicious!

the lava flow of yolk is very important

last bite

And just so they don’t feel left out, here are the tamales

Making things satisfies a place in us that rolls on its belly and purrs when its fed, but it’s  infrequently nourished. By now you’ve noticed that I advocate us all to make something (see prior posting Make Something). But beyond that I’d like to remind us all of the things we do “make” which might be over-looked.

This quarter I’ve been teaching a class about art and culture to a group of very enthusiastic students who have very little prior exposure to Art history or theories of art making. I like to think of them as representing the majority of Americans that like the “idea” of art, but for various reasons have never thought of themselves as Makers. Most people (the vast majority, in fact) are intimidated by the notion of making art themselves. They were told somewhere along the way that they cannot and should not make art.

The problem I’m seeing is that that those same people are always the same ones who are most eager to poo-poo art in general. I don’t understand Modern art, they say, meaning they don’t fancy the screaming video installations or voyeuristic portraits of transvestites featured by many art galleries and art magazines. They’ve been intimidated by the cult of art appreciation: a group which defends its contemporary art with 20 page long treatises or a nose in the air saying, If you don’t get it, then its beyond your comprehension. This attitude of snobbery, exclusion and over-intellectualization causes your average person to either a.) reject and avoid most art, or b.) humbly qualify their own interest in art. They lower their voice when they talk about an artist they found online. They look away when telling you about something they think is aesthetically interesting.

Those who are uncertain of their ability to evaluate art need not be so insecure. I wish more people could reclaim their confidence in art selection. Because making choices about the imagery you like is a form of making as well. What you think is good should be justified by what you think – not by what ArtForum or MOMA say is good – and your opinion should be enough. I could give this little pep-talk all day long, but I think it would be more significant to show you the one place where people are making the choices on a regular basis (and most don’t even realize it). This place is the computer desktop.

If we want to find the one place where people are making choices and displaying their artistic preferences, look at their iphone backgrounds and their computer. The things we pick for our desktop wallpaper is the most ubiquitous expression of artistic preference. We look at it daily, apply critical thought to its selection, change the image with relative frequency, and generally enjoy the images we select. This kind of artistic engagement is something everyone is doing – even more so as iphones & laptops because inseparable parts of one’s daily (hourly?) experience.

Begin a maker (at its simplest level) involves making choices. If you can make a choice about what to look at in your private desktop/phone space, then you can make a choice about what an item of your own creation should look like. Identifying this common experience that “artists” and “non-artists” share is a good step towards democratizing art to a level that can be enjoyed, appreciated and confidently discussed by all. In a time when K-12 art programs are being axed from public curricula, I think we’d all do well to examine what we regard as art. It shouldn’t be something that someone told us is “Art;” it should be that thing that you chose, out of countless others, to look at everyday when you press the “On” button. Maybe if more people realized how much art they actually make and make choices about they’d be more inclined to recognize its important role in our lives and educational development.

Below is a photo taken by a lovely woman and talented photographer, Tanya Anguita.

I’d like to invite readers and friends to send me what you are using as your wallpaper backgrounds. For the next month I’ll feature it on this site.

New book…

It’s silly, I know, and derivative of one of our conversations at home.

My favorite line is on the far right panel, “When I’m the snuggler I make the rules.”  Enjoy!

I always expect winter to appear suddenly in November. This is mostly because in New Mexico, year after year, immediately after my sister’s birthday a wave of frost blankets the state. It always seems like a surprise. We know it has to happen but until it does we milk every temperate day we can. You can smell the green chiles roasting outside grocery stores, restaurants and improvised parking lot markets, the cast iron roaster rolling like a fiery bingo drum. People stand outside, still in t-shirts and shorts, sucking down that searing sweet smell through their lungs. The days are perfect and the skies are clear (as always). Then, just when we think these temperate days will last forever, nature releases the easy embrace of fall, and we all rush to the freezer to make hot stew with our newly frozen chiles.

However, here in Northern California the temperatures are less conventional (thanks to our San-Francisco-values?). After the unrelenting and bitter chill of a San Francisco summer, October comes along and makes us regret we cursed the cold. You see, the Bay Area doesn’t actually have “summer” until September – we just get an Indian Summer.  So, here’s the scenario: June through August we all bitch about the chill, the fog and how we “feel like we missed summer;” then October arrives bringing triple digits and nature’s sassy revenge.

So for the last three weeks we’ve been eating crow and enduring that spiteful revenge in our air-conditioning-less houses. But it seems nature believes we’ve learned our lesson again, and today we were rewarded. The first rain of the season blessed us with bright grey skies, drizzle throughout the day and a welcome respite from the heat. It’s lovely, cozy, and demands a cup of hot tea with cookies… maybe even some green chile stew.

I’m making some jam today. Nine jars of lovely strawberry! I’ve been meaning to get to it all summer, but alas, the days get away from us.

I have been especially crafty though, and I thought I’d share some of that with you this week. If any of these catch your fancy and you’d like to buy one (or something like it) just post a message or email me. I’ll probably start an etsy store soon – but if it takes me as long as it did to make jam, you  may have to wait a few months.

Here are some sparkly hair clips made from drink umbrellas – for all your tiki needs!

Also, here are some shoulder bags with a little surprise on the interior pocket.