project 365 #165: django and the plunger 2

project 365 #165: django and the plunger 2
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

I've been having all kinds of deep thoughts on and off all day, which is quite something to deal with when you're also run off your feet busy. But I have and they've all been prose worthy wonderful bits of bloggy goodness, too. Unfortunately I no longer remember any of them. Them's the breaks. I do remember something about a line that went on about the evening light and an air of unbearable poignance which it adds to the most prosaic things so clearly it's probably all for the best that I've forgotten most of it.

I started watching a deep and meaningful movie, too, to wit, The Fountain. I think it's a good movie but personally I'm either too ADD or too something, possibly dumb, because I lost track completely very quickly and then I lost all interest and started drawing. Which half finished drawing is here for your inspection. I'm putting it up half done because I have a bad history of needing to do things all in one evening or they either never get done or become heinous and I like this so far, so, if it gets all awful, at least I'll be able to look back at the beginning and sigh nostalgically. And think about the poignant light.

Of course, it wasn't what I set out to draw. I set out to draw a camel. I've been watching Planet Earth on Wednesday nights and it's affecting me powerfully. I just want to draw camels in the desert and Tibetan foxes and polar bears and stuff. Grasses swaying in the wind. This is unlikely to happen. I know it's unlikely but one can hope and anyway it's something to mutter about to myself as I alarm the neighbors by pacing back and forth to my seizure inducing kitchen light (it hasn't recovered from the mysterious 1/3 power outage yet and barely gives any light except in sudden blinding flashes) and wandering around in the flickering rain outside in my gnome pajamas looking to see if the damn dog took my phone.

He didn't. All he ate today was my knitting, and that's a blessing in disguise. Now I don't have to finish that horrible hat.

Me and Andy Goldsworthy

We watched an amazing documentary tonight: Rivers and Tides, a film about the British artist Andy Goldsworthy. His work is so beautiful, I can’t stand it. I sat there and watched this incredible film about this intense artist who creates this astonishing, tremendous work that’s almost all completely ephemeral in nature and I thought well, hell, what does Andy Goldsworthy have that I don’t? Besides, you know, talent. But am I not also an Artist? By god I am, and I even have a diploma from the College of Charleston somewhere in the back of the coat closet (unless the cat peed on it, which is eminently possible) saying that I am. So I have come up with a list comparing me to Andy Goldsworthy (also, due to poor HTML or blogger or something, I have come up with a lot of weird white space, but them's the breaks and actually, you know, kind of indicative of my art, which relies heavily on it's, uh, spontaneous, childlike and whimsical qualities):

Andy Goldsworth	Me
Has many books both by and about him	Has read many books
Creates heart stoppingly beautiful objects	Creates heart stoppingly peculiar objects, such as my hats, also just plain heart stopping objects like my patented and amazing post gallery opening macaroni & cheese, which uses all the cheese cubes left over from any average opening and can stop up most healthy arteries in record time.
Creates objects from natural materials that become more beautiful as they fall apart	Creates objects from mostly fake materials that fall apart, period.
Creates objects that are held together with amazing craftsmanship	Creates objects that fall apart without ever exhibiting one whole hell of a lot of craftsmanship
Uses natural materials, such as thorns, to hold sculptures together	Uses hot glue and lots of it to hold things together, mostly unsuccessfully.
Has commissions from major international art centers.	Has sold a couple of paintings out of bars.
Lives in beautiful home in Scotland.	Lives in messy home in North Carolina.
Has German film makers following him about.	Has springer spaniel puppy with printer ink cartridge in mouth following her about.

So you see, we are very similar, Andy Goldsworthy and I. And when the dog is done making the beautiful documentary film, the world will see the truth.

Seriously though, it’s an amazing, amazing film and well worth seeking out. They have it at Orbits; that’s where I got it. Watch it. Be amazed. Be inspired.

The Painting Is Done

tabletop for new french bar two
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

This is a painting/collage I did for the New French Bar in downtown Asheville. Soon, it will join the rest of their collection of local art - as a tabletop, having beer spilled on it, cigarettes ground out on it, you know: the appropriate treatment for art. ;-) I've been a museum person for long enough where this thought both horrifies and amuses me. I get tired of people being all precious about art. You make it, you use it, it goes away - some things need a lifespan.

Actually I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out - it's a thoroughly new medium for me. Acrylic on wood and then collaged with images from the internet & from me, printed on transparency. There are a couple of my own photos, normal prints, also in there. I'm also really glad they asked me to do it, since it got me working again. It had been ages since I sat down and made a painting. Now I'm all fired up again and want to go get some Fredrix of Hollywood canvases (I hate making stretchers and then stretching canvas - hate it, hate it, hate it) and more ink for the printer and more transparencies (which are expensive as FUCK, why can't I have a cheap hobby like leaf collecting or something?) and make more, more, more!

Halloween is Up

I decorated my house for Halloween today. If you live here, you should most thoroughly drive by. Hell, you should drive by, park, gawp, and then knock - chances are very good that I'll give you a beer, particularly if you say nice things about my fucking AMAZING Halloween decorations. I swear, it always give me such a total kick to put them all up. I impress myself, and then I go around doing a loud mad evil scientist laugh and pointing and occasionally, god help us, even cavorting about the front lawn, while, naturally, rubbing my hands in that special evil way. My children are mortified. My mother will not even drive by my house. It's awesome.There's just something about Halloween, even if it's true that all the women dress up sexy and all the men dress up as women: okay, gender anxiety aside, it's a fabulous holiday. It makes no real sense; it isn't officially sanctioned (when I become the Evil Overlord, etc, etc, the day after Halloween will SO be a national holiday) and yet it chugs along, year after year, the closest thing our puritan nation has to Carnival. I love it. And I love the utterly awful tackiness of it all; the unfettered dreck that we bring out to teach our children not to fear Death. It's great. The macabre become banal, on a large Dollar Store scale.

Fog

There's been lovely fog in the mornings lately, as there often is in Asheville in October, and here's a charming little foggy slide show of fog images for you to mistily enjoy. You will probably notice, as I have noticed, that I actually used to take better pictures with my old point & shoot 3.2 megapixel camera than I do with my large, impressive, bells & whistles & manual stuff 5 megapixel newish camera. This has been kind of depressing me, as I have also noticed that I seem incapable of holding a camera straight. There's always a list to port on my horizon, and yes, I know, that lends itself to commentary right there, except I don't like port. I had port once, by mistake, when I was so young that we couldn't tell the difference between it and the sophisticated beverage we actually desired, wine that was not Strawberry Hill, and it was quite gruesome.

A week from tomorrow I'm driving to Atlanta to try out for Jeopardy, yikes, and alas, somehow time has gotten away from me and I'm not smart or thin yet, the two things I blithely assumed I would be by now. Damn. Oh well. I'm just going to go and wing it and if I blow it, I blow it: such is life. My family, particularly my mother, disapproves of this attitude. My mother told me sniffily not to let my children hear me talk like that, in case they started acting that way. I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was far, far, far too late for that.

Fair Planet

fair planet
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Because I just can't stop making tiny planets. Created with the help of the tutorial found here, where they also have all kind of other nifty and cool stuff. I am madly in love with that site, so look for more weird photo mods coming soon. Here's another planet, and another (I think they look best big) - and there are more. I know, I'm getting a bit carried away, but seriously, even if you don't like mine, these planets rock. I did a series of paintings of little planets with giant trees on them years ago, a la Little Prince, but this is just so much quicker and easier; it's fabulous. In other art news, I'm making a table for the New French Bar, which should be fun and I have all kind of weird ideas for it, and I'm building a monster in the front yard, or possibly a pagan god: he's not done yet. Either way my neighbors will be horrified and one hopes that the patrons of the New French Bar will be moved - into buying something.

The Fair is Back

the state mammal is a box turtle
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

S and I went to the fair last night. No, it hasn't started yet - I was doing my yearly volunteer stint as Mountain State Fair Art Handler In Chief and Wise All Knowing if Somewhat Snarky Judge. S was there because she's still new enough in town not to quail in despair when someone smilingly suggests a volunteer gig. Thank the gods she was naive enough to come, too, because this year the fair crew, in their ultimate wisdom, decided to cover the white pegboard walls we usually hang the art on with black burlap. It looked much better - it was awful to work with. If you think hanging a bazillion terrible pencil drawings on pegboard with these sort of hook-y pegboard things is hard, you should try doing it through one and sometimes two layers of black burlap. It took four people the same amount of time to hang less art than two people with twice the art last year. Or something like that. I recognize that that sentence was, in fact, unreadable, but it's been a long day.

Hanging the fair art is great fun in a weird way, particularly while drinking Yuengling in plastic root beer bottles so as not to epater the proletariat. It's also fun because when, like me, you hang the adult art (not adult like that, you fool. Adult enough to do 3 detailed pencil drawings of Johnny Depp and pay for them to be triple matted and framed.) you can be all mean and rotten about it and make hilarious comments at the expense of the entrant who decided that it would be a good idea to do an oil painting replica of the cover of a box of Sleepytime herbal tea. You can be mean without fear of karmic repercussion because, you see, you're there hanging the art as a volunteer and the good karma cancels out the bad! It's a beautiful balance. There are always some serious winners at the fair - and then there are the people who do the landscapes from the TV shows on how to paint. And then, there's Heather, whoever she is, bless her heart: she's apparently unhappy in these mountains: she paints lurid seascapes with wildly waving ferns and pirate ships under full sail. Heather rocks.

Everyone rocks, actually, for all that I double over in convulsions of laughter at the earnest soul who painted two giant and rather owlish sparrows fluttering madly around a green snake crawling up their birdhouse and then decoupaged in the words to a hymn (God Is Watching Every Sparrow, I think - yeah, judging by the painting he may be watching but he's not planning on helping much) there's something endearing and sweet about the art at the fair. These people take it very seriously, and they work their hearts out, get their work framed and take it in to be judged amidst the jars of pickles and vegetables shaped like Richard Nixon, the llamas and the sheep, the kids' diorama contest, the chainsaw bears and the man with the live bees. So I take it seriously too. Or kind of seriously in that I give points for ineptitude and dedication, and none for polished shininess.

And this turtle? This turtle is the state mammal of North Carolina, man! This turtle is on display with the kids' diorama contest, where the theme apparently is either NC's various state totems or pig racing, it was unclear. Dude! This turtle is AWESOME.

Wish Me Luck

I am about to turn off the computer and install a new CD-R drive. Yes, all by my techie little self. Remember, I'm the woman who successfully installed RAM - upside down. Which is supposed to be impossible, but I managed it. Now, I'm about to install a CD drive, because the vast number of photos on the hard drive is making World of Warcraft slow, and we cannot have that, boys and girls, because then our fire breathing horse will get cranky and we cannot gallop seamlessly through the desert for ages and ages while insisting we are doing something much more important than homework or sleep. So the photos will go onto CDs and be stored away to be forgotten, and the horse will gallop on.

It's a bit worrisome, because I can't back up my data first, because. . . wait for it. . I don't have a CD drive to back it up onto! That's why I'm installing one! Actually, that isn't strictly true. I have not one but TWO CD burners in my computer; problem is, neither one of them really work. Each of them works just a teensy bit, now and then, when they aren't busy making thwacka thwacka flop noises, refusing to release my CDs or being snubbed by the rest of the computer. I always feel bad for snubbed hardware; it seems so mean to say "Computer does not recognize the CD drive", or, even more cutting, "there is no CD drive." There was a CD drive there two weeks ago, asshole, and you were perfectly friendly then. What happened? Someone let their bar tab get out of control?

At any rate, I decided not to go out tonight so I could complete this vital task, and I had better hop to it. I also printed out a rasterbation of a sunflower that I made and I'm going to hang in my office. It's going to look fabulous, but, having now done one rasterbation, I would recommend, if you are going to do one, to pick a very clear, very graphic image with very few colors. The rasterbater is just not so good at color and my sunflower is kind of washed out looking. Still, it's cool. Supair cooo-ul, as the French radio announcer said of Augustus Pablo. And it will help my concrete dungeon of an office, as will the betta I'm going to install there at some point in the near future, at least, until it dies (she said cheerfully.)

Another Day, Another Hangover

Actually, the hangover was yesterday, and was so bad that I stayed in bed all day. 24 hours on that futon and my back hurts like hell today; oh well, another lost day, it was raining anyway. This rejoining the 9 to 5 world is kicking my lazy unemployed ass, I must say, although I grant you that being utterly sober all week and getting hopelessly sloshed on a Friday night is not the healthiest way to be gainfully employed. (Wow, that rhymed! I am a po-et and I don't. . the rest was omitted in the interests of not sending all of us into a crazed axe ridden fury. This has been a public service announcement.) Let's get all angst ridden, or rather, let's not, and instead dwell on this super groovy fabulously cool art show at the LG gallery. That's my friend H in the picture there, and his stunning work along with the work of a bunch of other extremely talented people is currently on view. The opening, which I went to on Friday night, was spectacular. Some of the best work I've seen in ages and so I urge you to make tracks downtown - 63 N. Lexington, to be precise - to check it out. Finally, finally someone has taken the technology behind that cool thing, the plasma ball and turned it into art, and the results are as amazingly wonderful as you might think they would be. The gallery is only open on weekends; don't miss it.

In other news, old friends are flocking to Asheville; my good friends D & A have successfully moved to Bat Cave and after I clean up this horrifying kitchen I'm going to try to go find their new house. That should be fun, since I don't think even they have a clue where it really is. Apparently last weekend in the midnight throes of moving with kid and friend and giant piano bearing truck they came over and banged on my door at about 3 in the morning. Noone woke up - not even Theo the watchdog. If only they'd put on dog or squirrel suits: that would have done the trick. Theo is really good at alerting us to the presence of animals; humans, not so much. Other old friends L & A and their three adorable daughters appeared suddenly in town and I met them for a drink at the Brew N' View, which is where I take all Ashevegas neophytes and visitors and which I think is probably directly responsible for D&A's decision to leave Baltimore and come here.

A went off to NY for the weekend and took my car to the Charlotte airport with her, leaving me the keys to her Frankenmobile. I hate the Frankenmobile; clearly, I'm an unfit parent, since although I won't drive it, I seem to think it's fine for A to toodle around town in a car with the hood bolted on by giant bolts (hence the name,)a drivers' side door that's in imminent danger of falling off into the street and a passenger seat that wobbles alarmingly all over the car, to say nothing of the assorted thumps and bangs and unnerving clunk noises the damn thing makes constantly. She left me a long voice mail about how to get Frankenmobile into reverse: put it into all the other gears first, let up slightly on the clutch etc., but I've come up with a better plan, which is just not to drive if at all possible. Every time M leaves the house I keep telling him in a doom laden voice that I cannot, can not, will not, pick him up no matter what, especially at night or in the dark. So far, so good, but A doesn't come back until tomorrow night, eek.

My Dream House

house on the lake
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

So I finally figured out where I want to live for the rest of my life and here it is, perched in the middle of a lake, or, well, okay, more like a pond, outside Black Mountain near Camp Rockmont. I went up there today on a work field trip to a quarry which was actually a very awesome way to spend a morning and on the way I saw this fabulous and wonderful thing. I begged my kind boss to stop and let me take a picture and she obliged while I salivated all over the road. I want to live here SO bad. I want to have geraniums in a window box under that window; I want a woodstove for the winters and I will be SET. I just really can't imagine a nicer place to be.

It's a lot like the Moomin's bathing hut, where Too Ticky lives in the wintertime, but a little bigger, so there'd be room for me and a dog. Alas no room for the kids, what a terrible pity - just me and a cat and a dog. And a fishing pole and a good book. Heaven on earth.

At Last, Good Pix of Ink

The Asheville Art Museum is currently hosting a tattoo show, which, if you are in fact in Asheville, you should make every damn effort to go and see. As we all know, I am somewhat of an alumna of the museum, being as how I worked there for five years and in fact was kind of involved with the genesis of this show. It's turned out really well - probably better than it would have if I'd worked on it, heh. It provides a very cool, well documented capsule history of tattooing and an incredibly cool series of tattoo related contemporary pieces and no, I don't mean those pages of flash with the little hearts and winged skulls and such. More like utterly creepy tattooed/embroidered baby dolls and a fantastic chess set made of tattoo needles and stuff like that. Stuff that it is well worth your $6 to see. Go.

And, indirectly through this show, I finally, finally managed to get some decent pictures taken of my own personal ink, or some of it, which is presented here for your delectation. I don't know why it's so hard to take decent pictures of tattoos - maybe because they're round rather than flat, or maybe because nobody's skin really benefits from harsh flash and close up lenses (eww! moles! pores! bumpy bits!) but at any rate these are quite fabulous.

Friday evening at Bele Chere a man asked me about my leg tattoo in less than pleasant or flattering terms. He was with his young daughter and I have a feeling that he was trying to use me as an object lesson as to why she shouldn't get tattoos. I like confounding people like that so I stopped and spoke courteously and literately (and by that I mean that I was polite and used big words) with him, which totally was not what he expected. I think he thought I was going to grunt or something, or get mad, or just ignore him. Don't you love people like that? What object lesson is he giving his daughter by demonstrating that he feels perfectly justified in commenting loudly on the appearance of any passing woman? Yuck. Oh well. I am fond of my tattoos; every so often I vaguely consider getting more - in particular I'd like to find an artist who could expand the Hokusai on my back so it doesn't end quite so abruptly - but on the other hand it's possible that I have enough ink for a middle aged lady with no biker pretensions. Still, getting inked is probably the one thing in my life that I don't regret, at all. Even if I do have to always wear long pants around my mother for the rest of my life.