What's the world coming to?

Current piece in process.

So I found out yesterday that my fuzzy ninja, Preston (that's the kitty), has a thyroid disorder, which means he needs to go on meds and has to have bunches of tests and oodles of other medical procedures. To raise money for all this I decided that I'm going to sell some of my belongings. As I was prepping boxes for packing I realized I had no packing tape. I turned my studio upside down looking for some, making it an even bigger mess than it already was (and believe me, it is a mess, a big one). Oh, I found all sorts of tape; scotch tape, painter's tape, paper tape, electrical tape, masking tape, duct tape, but no packing tape. Nooooooo. Why would I have packing tape?! I mean really? Who really needs that stuff? (I'm being facetious here.) Seriously though, I should open a tape dispensary. So today I trekked to the pharmacy (a CVS) around the corner to get some of this elusive tape. I knew I'd get ripped off, but I couldn't bring myself to get in my car and drive to a Home Depot (not worth the gas). So there I am, standing in front the extremely limited choices, gaping at the prices and asking no one in particular "Are you serious?" $8.19 for one small roll (meaning it's not the large chunky roll), or, get this, 2 small non-chunky rolls (exactly the same as the other), packaged together for $8.99. Which one do you think I chose? It was a rip-off either way, but I figured for an extra 80 cents I really got the best of them. Take that you crummy CVS! So I go up to the counter to check out, and as the girl begins to ring everything up her cell phone rings. And guess what? She answers it and proceeds to have a conversation with the person on the other end. Do I need to say more? I mean really? Reeeeally? What is the world coming to?

Baby Tattooville '09

A little late with posting about this event/trip, but nonetheless, here are some photos from this year's Baby Tattooville that took place at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA. Last year was pretty cool, but this year was even better - not to mention the fabulous weather, it really was a bummer coming back to cold New England afterward.

The Mission Inn (because one can never take enough photos of it):


The view from one of the rooftop courtyards (btw - that's the domiest dome I've ever seen):


The first evening began with some Mexican fare at a local restaurant, and the beginning of the Artist Jam. Some of the artists in front of the blank canvas:


L to R - Yoskay Yamamoto, Greg "Craola" Simkins, Buff Monster, Johnny Rodriguez aka KMNDZ, James Gurney, Travis Louie, and Liz McGrath. Nonetheless this was an artist-ful extravaganza, with Miss Mindy, Audrey Kawasaki, Molly Crabapple, Michael Hussar, Tim Biskup, Tara McPherson, Gary Baseman, KRK Ryden, and oodles of other artists showing up throughout the weekend.

The evening continued with Son of Baby Tattooville, an exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum featuring work by this year's participating artists. My fave piece, a Yoskay Yamamoto:


Then it was time for Dr. Sketchy's Anti Art School. Look, that's me sketching! (Photo courtesy of Arrested Motion):


Sometime during the course of the weekend, mysterious, creepy doll parts began appearing in attendees and artists' rooms. All included a mysterious note, which in turn led to a Saturday night scavenger hunt that began in the Inn's catacombs (Yes, catacombs. Real catacombs, which had been closed off to the public a long time ago, but were mysteriously opened up for us). My doll head and note:


Someone (Sarah) found a whole doll sitting in her room (which she found extremely creepy):


The hunt split us off into groups and had us roaming the old hotel throughout the evening (someone in our group tried to climb a roof in an attempt to break into a room just to get a clue, and security was dispatched as we all scattered to hide). Here one of us is "icing" a clue (which was a hoot as the first attempt included filling a whole plastic bag with ice and dunking the paper in it, which did nothing except make a ridiculous mess):


Later on the Jam continued (which included lots of socializing). Gary Baseman and Buff Monster:


As the clock (an hourglass) was counting down for the artists to finish up, the painting was moved to a table so that more of them could work on it together:




The finished piece:


There was also a giveaway/raffle of this massive (at least 5 foot high) painting created by Johnny Rodriguez. The joke was on everyone when we all received a winning raffle ticket. The painting was a series of smaller panels that were all bolted together, and in the end, everyone received a piece of this "pie":


At the end, all the attendees left with a massive goody bag filled with gifts from the sponsors and hand created pieces by the artists. There were so many things going on the whole weekend that I just wouldn't be able to list them all here. Arrested Motion did a full coverage of the event here.

Whew. Though the flying wears me down and I come home exhausted, I think I'll be returning next year. It was my second year at Baby Tattooville, but seeing friends from last year and meeting new peeps this year, makes it feel like a twisted family gathering. Which is a very good thing, and I don't think I'll be able to pass it up.

Oh, geez, almost forgot, my most-est favorite artist, Mr. Gary Baseman, out of the blue, presented me with his Barcelona book during Sunday brunch. That completely made the whole weekend superbly superb! (How could I forget to mention that?!)

How ridculously giggly I was! (And thanks to Andy Stern for sneaking my camera and shooting this photo!)

Updates & stuff.

Something in progress.

So, yeah, I'm getting really good at being MIA, huh? No excuses anymore since I no longer have a steady, sit-at-a-desk and be a desk-monkey, paying job. While I prepare for a next step regarding this situation, I have a bit more time to do artsy-fartsy things (ie; complete the 20 or so pieces floating around the studio, get that zodiac series finished up, and get some sort of online store open, AND get things done (like, other things, not the artsy-fartsy kind). I've already completed quite a few items on an ever-growing to-do list. Every time I check something off as done, I get filled with a brief sense of elation, the kind that makes you want to jump up on a podium in front of a crowd and yell "Do, YOU SEE?!! DO YOU SEE WHAT I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED!?". Though currently, thanks to the constant growth of this list, that elation is becoming a deflation, the type a balloon does when you make farty noises with it.

And then there was the car thing I had to deal with. The lemon went to the bodyshop since it failed inspection on me, which required bodywork, ...and then more bodywork. I was without it for two weeks. It sucked, but not really, since I got to drive a PT Cruiser in the meantime. I find these Cruisers a bit cheeze (strange looking and clunky), but I was surprised by how nice it was to drive (most likely because it was new). When I finally got my lemon back, it was so sparkly and shiny and new looking, that I had random peeps at the gas station giving me thumbs up including random hollers as I drove down the street. But, just like the list elation, it became short-lived when my engine light turned on two weeks ago, right before my trip to CA.

The lemon gives me poo again! GAH! GAH! (Grrrrgafushikkamakca!).

But I had a nice weekend trip out to CA for this year's Baby Tattooville (more on it later). It was a good break from car issues. Yes. And reality.

So, I've been thinking that this blog needs some serious sprucing up, and I'm thinking of editing back some of the previous posts, since sometimes I ramble on and really don't need there to be rambles all over the place. So I apologize ahead of time to anyone who might get random updates while I do this sometime over the next week... I think. Yes. (I need to add this to my to-do list).

I have no more excuses.

Bummer.

I got this far with The Veil until I decided to over-experiment, taking it slightly in a different direction, and completely didn't like where it was heading. (It's so... so, uhhhhhhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh.) Back to square one. I'm going to keep on recreating this piece until I like where it's going. This will be the fourth time that I will be starting it. Hahahahaaa. Nutty!

I've decided to be good and finish up all the fifteen or so (which means possibly more), random pieces I'm working on before I start something new. I promised myself. Well, no, not really. Well, yes. See, the promise changed a bit as I concluded that I couldn't just stop putting random new ideas down on paper. That's just not possible. So then after dealing with the realization of this, I decided that I should try and attempt finishing four to five pieces as I mull over new sketches. But I'm not sure anymore. Maybe the goal should be finishing up three instead, and then I start on something new. (?)

OH MY GOSH! I just realized I have artist ADD. 

Ohhhh.

Bummer.

Maybe it's my process instead. (?)  These take so long to complete. Hours, lots of them. Between sketching, transferring, revising, staining, linework and approximately three coats of ink.... no wonder I jump from one thing to another. If I have a large chunk of uninterrupted time, I can get pretty far along (the process still takes a few days). It's just that I don't have that right now and my focus and inspirations change (you know, one day it's yellow, the other it's blue). So I have all these pieces I work on back and forth and all over. My best bud tells me that one day (or week, or month) I'll just finish everything. All at once. Just like that. I'll have this big pile of finished pieces, out of the blue, just like that.

Man, I hope he's right because I have just oodles of other sketches to develop, and Ooooo, I want to try all sorts of printing techniques.

Oooo. Okay, I'm running off on daydreams now. I wish I had oodles of free time.

On a separate note, last night I dreamt that I was walking down a dirt path through a sparse, green forest to my father's house. It was a perfect late afternoon, the weather being amazing. As I moseyed along, stopping here and there to sniff some flowers (yes, I actually do that a lot in waking life), something strange began to happen. Most of my mouth, mainly my lips, but not my tongue, started going very numb ever so slowly. It's as if I had gotten a load of invisible novocaine shot into my mouth by an invisible dentist. It just didn't make sense. I oddly felt very Alice in Wonderland. By the time I got to my father's house, which no longer resembled a house, but a treehouse that started at ground level (bizzare-ness!), I could barely speak. I tried to tell him that I couldn't stay for dinner because I had to get to the dentist and find out why I was having novocaine syndrome. He couldn't understand me though. All that was coming out of my mouth was "Nai hab do gno tthh da nennis." At this point I became so worried that something was very, very, wrong, that I actually woke up to find that I had been sleeping with my face mostly in my pillow. My mouth was open, partially covering a balled fist, my balled fist, which was somehow trying to fit in there. Weirdness. I was very relieved that that's all it was. Talk about de-stressing while dreaming. 

I soooo need to get rid of stress. Big time. I have to think about this some more.

Oh yeah. Then I fell back asleep and fought some dementors, including Voldemort, in some fancy, public library, with Harry and a bunch of other people. This, I think, has to do with the fact that I just (finally!) went to see the movie this past weekend, and maybe because I was stressing (there I go again) about not remembering when my current batch of library books was due back.

It really helps to get this stuff down. I always knew that those damn dream dictionaries were a bunch of fluff. Just write it down and it all begins to make sense.

This post was much longer than I planned.