EAR ROSSY

I saw this graffiti while driving to Illinois. It was in Arkansas on the side of the interstate, about as close as you can get to Missouri without actually being there. It amused the hell out of me, and I was unable to photograph it because I was driving, and my dad was catching up on some sleep in the passenger seat. I filed it away to use someday in a painting. Maybe. On the way back we were lucky (?) enough to be snagged in a black ice traffic jam. Here was my grand chance. My second chance!  I was still driving, but managed to get my dad to take this picture for me. I never told him exactly what it was... just some stuff spray painted on the side of a building that was coming up soon. Mom laughed, horrified that I'd conned my dad into being a complicit participant in my crude sense of humor.

I guess the real lesson here is that a few extra passes of the spray paint and some inventive spelling is far easier than whitewashing a wall.  Where's Tom Sawyer when you need him?

SILENCE ON THE RADIO WAVES

After a week of not being in the studio due to Day Job obligations, I've been back, working on some new stuff, and brushing out the mess that had accumulated on my floor. Cleaning and rearranging did me good, and now it feels twice as big. Tomorrow holds the promise of an early roadtrip with a big McDonald's coffee and some NPR. I'm off to Atlanta to see Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring.

SUMMER OF '89

 

True story. When I was three, we drove out to Arizona. We were supposed to make the trip in my Mom's Ford Escort. Instead we made the trip in my Dad's Volkswagen Rabbit. With no air conditioning. In the summer. It was 1989, and the car was 10.  I'm not sure why The Rabbit didn't break down on the way there. I guess it's that reliable German engineering. This little adventure should have been its last hurrah. But that would come much later, and that's another story.

I'm sure vomit smells wonderful in the dead of summer. Sorry Mom and Dad.

VISUAL DIARY: ART MOVE, PART 2

VISUAL DIARY: ART MOVE, PART 1

A few weeks ago,  I got paid to go to New York. All I had to do was ride in a truck, help move a painting up there, and pick up a lot  of drawings to bring back for an exhibit in the gallery. No sweat, right? Well. Maybe a little sweat. In the spirit of the drawing show we picked up, I've done some sketches about the experience of making a long haul art move. Four days on the road left me with a tight neck muscle, some huge blisters, and a bruised arm from where a crate fell on me. (Don't worry mom. The art was ok.) However, all the art arrived safely, it looks great, and it only took two days to recover from the trip fatigue and my New York Chinatown binge eating. I met some great people and saw some good art. Enjoy the first batch of drawings.

How many people does it take to carry a 300 lb. 8' x 10' painting down a flight of stairs? The answer is 4. Due to construction, and some new front doors on the building, this became Plan A.

Whatever it takes for the sake of the art sometimes actually means, "Three people on a bench seat for 12 hours. Nobody order beans at the Cracker Barrel, OK?"

One of the big issues with driving a truck to New York is driving the truck in New York. It's not that it's just a pain to navigate something larger, but there are entire streets and parkways that you are not allowed to drive on. Not to mention, the ever-nagging worry of, "Will we fit under that......" Street truck parking, even if it is illegal, is golden if you are trying to make deliveries. I had a caterer try to sweet talk me into moving ours around the block so he could take our space to get closer to the building to make his delivery. He told me he thinks it's hot when women drive big trucks. That may have been true, but I wasn't about to aimlessly cruise down Central Park West just so he could get some cream puffs into an elevator.

Stay tuned....