October 5, 2022

Playing with my new gouache in a small sketchbook of olive green paper, portraits and anatomy from photos and screenshots. I took photos of some of the images in the book Natural Fashion, Tribal Decorations from Africa (wait–I can’t underline?? wth?) that I bought Vikki for Christmas, at last getting around to working from them. Also a screenshot from Vania Bashur, who teaches classes on Domestika. Nothing inspires me more than new materials.

I was telling the story of how I keep buying classes (mostly around $10 each, special discount) but can’t work in the linear structure of the courses. I get hooked on the trailer, and then am not happy with how the instruction plays out. So I am just taking screen shots from some of the video introductions and copying them, then clearing them off my computer.

Also about copying, judgement, what is art. Ok, here we are. This week’s work, so far.

9.29.22

Finally found an image I could cut a template for, to stencil the studio floor. I had smeared some of this deco-color cape cod blue from a tiny bottle on the deteriorating plywood to see how it would last, and heck, good enough. That’s how it happens, after months (years) of a blue floor rattling around in my head, i just started in. Cutting the printout I stuck to a sheet of bristol board with tape, I used a stiff acrylic paintbrush in different intensities to dab Daler Rowney FW iridescent acrylic black ink through the stencil. So satisfying! The more i used it the more water resistant the stencil got, pretty permanent now. Finished with a coat of Golden acrylic soft gloss medium, supposedly waterproof. Too late, I realized I could have extended the blue a bit with the medium. But I’m happy.

9.7.22

I have wanted to do this for so long. I tried white, ow, my eyes. Green, hideous. I really thought the blackish, chalked, charcoal gray would be awesome, but too hot to be practical on the sunny porch. But then, one day, looking out my window, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had seen some gorgeous patio chairs in black and they were perfect. I’ve had these great stackable chairs since the John and Linda times–that would be circa 1990, at the latest, and they were used then. The table was abandoned by one of my clients some ten years ago because it had a screw loose. Don’t we all, at some time. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out. Plus, Vikki’s birdcage.

p. s. The first can at my local hardware store, $6.49. The second can, at a 3-letter chain down the road, $13.99. Wth?

9.3.22

So busy, music wise, not much time or energy left for the pencil and brush. To see what I have been doing in August check out my site possumfamilysingers.com. Every weekend has been a gig, a festival, a campout, from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa. I plan some downtime for September, yessirreee.

8.24.22  

The Wood Rats are unrelenting.  Weird little people, they chew into tubes of vaseline, olive oil, bottles of silicone 3-in-1 oil, home covid test kit fluid, they secret away dirty sponges, strips chewn off an empty milk bottle, baseballs, tennis balls for nesting, a rubber ducky, a massage ball—chewed all the points off looking for a way in.  They chew holes in anything they think will have a viscous fluid inside, chew all the way around a plastic jar lid hoping to get it open.  I don’t know what the attraction is.  Alternatively there are some rats that eat all the leaves off anything I plant, a camellia was eaten to the ground, a french prune tree was nearly decapitated, a grape vine, a wood betony, tiger lilies, celery, onions, three blueberry bushes were eaten to death.  A Winter Banana apple tree was stripped of its fruit and demolished.

They get into the cars.  While driving the van once, bits of Kleenex began blowing out of the heater vent, followed by carpet fluff and some colorful threads.  When I opened the door a mouse ran out. I put a bottle of peppermint extract into the utility drawer, after I found someone had chewed up a matchbox in there.  Later I found a nest in the engine compartment comprised of insulation and bits of a chenille blanket.

The best remedy so far seems to be the cornmeal and jiffy corn muffin mix, just enough sugar to appeal to their delicate sensibilities, plus enough baking soda to give them gas.  They go to their little holms and to bed with indigestion, and wake up demised.  Rats can’t burp, a gift from the gods, as they are the only creatures for whom jiffy corn baking soda is lethal. 

Another oddity, I suddenly stopped drinking alcohol sometime last summer. I’ve been very careful about what I consume since the possible food poisoning incident early this month- woke up with excruciating back pain at 3:30 AM–I dreamed I was herding cats, tigers, leopards, in and out of a cage tied together with plastic shopping bags and string and wire.

There has been a lot of trauma going on in general, and I am very skittish, can’t sleep, too much light, too much noise. I think it is manifesting in my body as sudden pain. Lots of writing in the book of Grrrr, trying to find the new normal. Fun is barely fun, I am disentangling myself from where I am not needed, which is just about anywhere.

Think I’ll have a corn muffin and a bicarb, take a nap and check you later.

7.29.22

when I was a kid there was a corner store with a screen door that had been painted with an ad for orange juice. It was magical to me how you could see through the paint, but also see it as an image floating in space. It lead me to try painting on screen, and to copy a crochet moth with tinted acrylic medium on this 1/2″ hardware cloth.

7.2.22

Hmm. This is all I’ve done this month. in the realm of 2D art.

I have been doing a lot of physical work in the yard, uncovering an old flagstone path, rebuilding the grape arbor, cutting back the wild growth everywhere. I have been hiking about 3 miles every day or so, downtown and back, up to College or Telegraph Avenue, in search of pizza or gelato, and miscellaneous free items on the street. I found a circa 2013 gaming PC with Windows 10 that I named Curby–found it on the curb, had to buy a 19-pin monitor cable, transferring all my old photos and some music via thumb drives. Really fun to have a random project appear, just after I rearranged my office to take advantage of the summer sun.

6.14.22

I started an instagram page quite a while ago, following on my massive output of last summer. I have been remiss, neglected to share them here, until now. Oh deer. Never feer. They are not that square. Oh well, we shall see.

May 26, 2022

What is real? What is fake? I did not get a Birthday Cake.

How amazing that we can hear pictures–other people’s words- thoughts- language. I credit this discovery to the stunning book Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf, which I have read twice. 

I write and write- there is a picture here. Seems right to write, to catalog difficulties, to see a pattern of options, of solutions. The failures, the don’t-do-that-agains. Looking for space that is my own.

Chose one survival strategy. Embrace what is raw and vulnerable. Find an ally. Or maybe–Walk away from pain. Come back later, or not. Be sensitive. It’s not a crime.

How do I set boundaries? I “just go” as a defense mechanism. Don’t judge me, I’m Irish. I get overwhelmed. I am drowning. The solution is to swim sideways, out of the current.

What is the “secondary gain” of self-silencing? Bold Creative Non-action. Actually, it seems to be a Primary Gain. What am I hiding from? Anger? Judgement? Mis-characterization? Staying Silent may protect me from facing my own shadows. I seem to have made an Art of it. Don’t reach out. Don’t explain anything. It gets you nowhere. That picture is already stone.

piedras blancas, anza borrego, march 9, 2006, 11:16 AM photo credit Laurie A. Miller