left molybdenum tranquillity

Auden:  Every artist feels himself at odds with modern civilization.

A WATERSKIING SQUIRREL, look at the crowds!  This little guy was found as a baby and kept to perform circus tricks.  And all he gets is a few nuts.  Life is so weird, especially for oddly talented water-skiers.  Sorry, I forgot his 

nom de rodent.

I finished up the Spools Collage and got it off yesterday to the new owner.  Hope  she isn't disappointed, but I am gonna use the two samples I made in the Littlejohn Beaney workshops.  This one I only got the sears of paint on before I packed up, but finished it up with more stitching and a layer of tulle to hold it together.  Also, a real binding and label,  Done doobie do dum dum...  Gabrielle, its on it's way and actually doesn't have to go too far up the peninsula to reach you!  For the rest of you who don't know what Ilm talking about 10 of us have a little group where we exchange 10" collages, or 'pages' if it's for a book with any techniques we want.  One a month goes out and supposedly one a month comes back to us too.  It's been a way to force a focus for me.  OK, I know I have 30 days to turn out a 10"x10" piece BUT that means I have to get a shelf cleaned out to access the paints, or practice 20 hours on the Q-20, or find a bunch of magazine imagess that relate to each other, or order more archival glue and wait for it.  There is always something that everything else is dependent upon.  It's a rule, I think.

 detail


Ordinarily I am not crazy about net overlays, but in this case it sure helps tame it down.  If you didn't;t read every damn word the other day, and why would you, the colors of this were screeching.  Believe it or not this is better.

“It’s not so bizarre to have an imaginary friend; it’s actually fairly normative,” says Dr. Marjorie Taylor, a psychologist and professor emerita at the University of Oregon who has researched the topic in depth. Indeed, Taylor’s studies suggest that some 37 percent of children have imaginary friends by the age of seven. They often begin to appear around the age of four, are quite common still by age seven, and largely drop off by age 12. “They last longer than you’d think,” she offers.

 
MY imaginary friend is Mae Haffenbrookins and she has been with me since about 4.  Most things that go wrong are her fault, poor thing.  I think I may have made up her name from over hearing my mother on the phone calling Brookin's Florist back in Orchard Park, circa 1950, but that's the only connection I've ever made as to Mae's existence.  Here she is contemplating needing bifocals when she turned 40:

Oops, an image got flipped and I don't remember which is right.

'Mae Haffenbrookins' New Glasses' was done in the 80's, and it was when I was hired to do a lecture for the New England Quilt Guild in a big auditorium, I remember it as being during lunch so I figured no problem, everybody will be out eating, right?  Nope.  This was my first program and 600 people showed up.  There as a big stage and a deer-in-the-headlights Sandy up there in the middle.  The thing is that I was a Middle School Art Teacher so NOTHING scared me!  And away I went surprising myself more then I could imagine.  It helped that all my quits were loaded with 'story'.  So, even though Mae told me I was ready for bifocals, she led me on the way to be out teaching about my stuff and that led to a wonderful, few years lugging stuff back and forth across the country-  back then it was even fun to travel!

Thanks for trooping down History Lane with me there for a minute.  Let's ramp things up and get to the ARTY PARTY!
  






           

France-based photographer Stefan Draschan always keeps himself entertained at art galleries by creating his own art projects.

One of those projects is “People matching artworks”. Although at first Draschan’s images seem perfectly staged, the secret behind them is actually patience. The photographer enjoys visiting different museums mostly in Paris, Vienna and Berlin where he waits for visitors to suddenly match with a piece of art in a funny way.  

And there I go.