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LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN, ASSORTED BRILLIANCE + NOVEMBER 5, 2010

I am crazy crazy crazy these days- trying to hang work and finish work and update things online and get promo cards in the mail, all the while packing to move and preparing for a houseguest. I should also be planning Christmas cards & Christmas trips and also planning my wedding, which I have completely forgotten about.

The greatest news is that we have found a house and have begun to fill out paperwork. So finally hurrah. We are in walking distance to a Maudie's, and the two-bedroom house has a garden, a screened in porch, and amazing huge pecan trees. We will move in the morning after the last day of EAST.
Do I need to mention here the bit about when it rains?... Because it's pouring!

Remember when I mentioned that the kind folks at Free Crappy Portraits had asked that I do a free crappy for them?
Well I drew one for a kind young art student from the Isle of Man and I have since gotten in touch with the young lady, Jade, and have sent the drawing on its sweet little way to her. Isn't that grand?

So very soon after I sent my jpg to the FCP people they were kind enough to forward me Jade's review of her drawing. It's just the nicest little bit about the drawing and so I post it below.
She is just lovely and I would buy her a beer if she ever showed up in Texas!

Isn't that just the loveliest response ever? I should draw more crappy portraits. And I do hope that she appreciates having the original.

Do you also remember when I sold those skateboard halves on Etsy? Well I finally found my reviews and they're great! I sure do wish that it would translate to more sales, but it is very satisfying to know that the shopper was happy and that they were proud to give my work as a gift.

I have been posting all Etsy work on sale for this week, but have gotten zero response thus far. I will perhaps keep them on sale until the studio tour begins. Because jeez. I cannot start new work if all of my wall space is taken.

I am creating another logo for a precious Hockaday friend of mine from Dallas. We had drafted a first run in April and she is back for more! After a rough start (especially with all of the other craziness on my plate right now) we are scrapping all and starting fresh.

I had an art professor years ago that told me to never hold my work as too precious- to always be willing to paint over, draw into, or to scrap and begin anew.
It's one of the best lessons that I have ever been taught- to trash it and move on.

I found the work of Shuichi Nakano, whose enormous animal/city paintings are hysterical, beautiful, and a bit terrifying. Perhaps we all so easily call to mind Godzilla imagery.

The cityscape above is amazing amazing amazing and the big fat fish are so huge languid fat stupid.
So beautifully painted and I love the weight of the city here- and is as if the fish are hot air balloons.

I don't know about you, but I lose my phone all of the time. Like ALL OF THE TIME. And this kind soul has solved my dilemma. Simply type your phone number in here and your phone will ring. AMAZING.

I do hope that some of you have shown up to check me out due to some of my EAST promos. I am hanging my house and finishing as much as I can. I am excited to meet all of Austin's fun art fans and cook and laugh and showcase all of the crazy things that I can do.

So please come by and see me. Please. It will be fun.
I have new work & some old work and lots of things that I have worked more on throughout the past year.
And if no one shows then it makes for very slow days.

TARRYTOWN HAS CRAZIES TOO + OCTOBER 26, 2010

Heartbreak! We lost the Tarrytown house!
The owner is a nut and apparently intends to let his house fall to the damn ground with the most minimal upkeep possible and handywork done by only himself. What a hoser.
Throw eggs if you pass by Possum Trot because its just never going to work. I am allergic to cheap men.

So we are sticking to the loft for now and I still very much like where I live, but I did yell at a man last night who was relieving himself into a bottle on our front stoop. Hooray for the homeless!

Did go see a house today on E 7th and it's divine inside, but attached to other residences and no yard. Had a good walk through all of the construction, but saw a million things being remodeled, great graffiti.
This piece below is also on the side of the Mexi-Arte Museum, but in a red palette instead.

Do you know about Stacey Bendet's 4AM Finds? She's the designer of Alice + Olivia and she sends out the greatest e-mails each week highlighting incredibly decadent items that she has found all over the internet. Lots of beautiful furniture from 1st dibs, great vintage couture finds, jewelry, cool things for children... She has great, kooky, funky, rich chick taste. LOVE her.
Go to the page here to sign up.

There was a grand parade/festival/party for Dia de los Muertos across the street from our loft last Saturday and thankfully Slade and I had already come home from UT's devastating loss to Iowa State. Definitely made us smile after such a downer. Very cool and creative, very fun to watch.

I would now like to publicly declare my love for Jeremy Scott and especially his work with Adidas. I would rock these winged suckers anytime, but the snuggle pair would probably be reserved for home use only. Can you even imagine?

I've gotten some postcards printed to promote my studio during EAST that I must get addressed and in the mail.
I plan to send them in plain envelopes with new business cards also enclosed. I would very much enjoy a successful tour. Would be grand. And I would be able to buy shoes with flames on the sides.

I am running out of time before the studio tour and I very much need to get all work hung so that I can concentrate on the empty patches.

BUY BUYS, MESSY DESK + OCTOBER 19, 2010

Yes indeed. I made some money. Not a pile of money, but a nice little bit to get updated business cards and some postcards to sent to galleries, art directors, local friends, etc.

I sold a piece on Etsy and was also sent the contact information for a local woman that purchased all four of my 5 x 7 pieces. So hallelujah and bring it on. I wish that I had more of these stories to tell.

The Etsy buy was the two skateboard halves that were strung to hang vertically. They will eventually settle in San Francisco as a wedding present. What fun.

Half of the Etsy battle is apparently your presentation, your photographs, and your packaging. And I did the very best that I could on a budget of nothing & no change. My old business cards were very easily transformed into hangtags with two quick snips, a hole punch and a bit of ribbon.
Not sure how successful this is, but it works and I care very little these days.

Can we please talk about my desk and the absolute disaster area that it is? I obviously cannot find a damn thing and I make the same lists over and over again.
This fine view doesn't even describe all of the chaos underneath the desk which is thick with materials I never use and papers & bills that I never reference and certainly never pay.

What does your desk look like? Surely it doesn't look like this. I'm both ashamed and oddly fascinated with what a slobby hoarder I am and how I will just build up the piles of things on the sides and back to allow me a small spot for my arms to get to the keyboard and use the mouse.

I have started making some drawings from ACL and hope to have quite a few more to hang in the lower stairwell.

We took a ton of pictures while we were there and time permitting I will draw draw draw. It was a pretty interesting study- that of festival life, what people bring with them, how they dress, the HATS that people will wear in public.

I will perhaps add just a bit of color wash to them in the end. Perhaps a light green on all of them over the grass. Who knows.

I had forgotten how much I really enjoy drawing. And how hard it is to sit still that long.

Spent part of yesterday in a parking lot spray painting various things- most importantly boards that I will stencil chairs onto next and two hideous lamps that I have painted the same bright toothpaste blue as the stripes. I think that they look pretty cute, but I should try to branch out from blues because I am addicted.

I love spray paint and should perhaps invest in a mask- because that stuff gets me HIGH. And I mean this unintentionally. I am not sitting next to dumpsters huffing rustoleum.
But if you see me doing that, do not interrupt me and ruin my high. Manners always, please.

Created a quick HTML ad yesterday for the Ann Richards School Happening during EAST.

It should be a fun night and I will be excited to see the artwork that the girls have made as well as meet several of their biggest supporters.

~~1104 Possum Trot, 78703~~

Oh my goodness! BIG NEWS!
After a year and a half of living here in our cool eastside townhouse, Slade and I have decided that we need a house and a yard and more privacy and much more space. So we have been house hunting and have been so frustrated because what we like (and what I will tolerate) and what Slade will pay are two entirely different things.
And then yesterday, as we were casually driving through beautiful Tarrytown, we found the house that we will hopefully live in for quite awhile. (I got butterflies when we drove up.)

view from office/patio outside of master

It needs some work (!!!) and Slade has already committed himself to having the two bathrooms re-tiled and we will re-paint much of the house, tear down some awful wallpaper, re-do much of the landscaping, perhaps just set fire to the kitchen... What an adventure and the dogs will LOVE it. Move will probably happen immediately after EAST, which is a bit of a high stress season for me and it also means that I probably won't get to show in the studio tour next year so I had better make this one count!

Having a great yard and patio means that Slade can have a grill again and we both agree that he needs a Big Green Egg- Do you know about these? They're made of space-age ceramic, which just means that they are made of a material that was first developed for use on the space shuttle. The eggs are said to keep things on the inside hot and moist while the outside of the egg stays relatively cool.
Which to me sounds like a thermos, but with fire.

I enjoy the way that they look most of all and Slade has some connection to the manufacturer, so bring it on. I love that he will be grilling dinner all of the time.

Um and yeah, do I really have to explain why I'm not going to miss waking up to this type of s**t across the street from us?!
Mexicans aren't subtle at all. And rich white folks are quiet neighbors and hardly ever passed out on their lawns. And that's the kind of stuff that I love.
(Honestly! Living in the middle of La Trampas makes me crazy! See you later, crazies, I'm going back to Tarrytown)

Saturday will bring college football and we will go watch Texas play whoever it is. Iowa State. Whatever, who cares, go Texas. But its always a fun time at the stadium, so whatever, I'm down. If you got the money, honey, I've got the time. Eleven AM, that's where we will be and then that evening we will go to the reopening celebration at Arthouse. Long fun day.

And the next we will be off to the Hill Country to my grandmother's house in Kerrville. For Mexican food and perhaps some vodka.

BUSY BEE & ACL + OCTOBER 11, 2010

I am busy these days. EAST is right around the corner and my home will be once again OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. I have quite a few things to finish and even more to start! Hopefully all will fall into place by filling my days with work work work and Slade making some dinners, which he should really enjoy.

I have also started to make stockings for Christmas. I am going to spend it with my mother and my stepfather's family in South Carolina and it makes a ton of us for the holidays. I used my old standby blue & white fabric and have painted the leaves green and added holly. One unfortunate (or fortunate!) effect of the red holly is that the paint gets all over everything. What else can I do but embrace it?! I will have to set the paint somehow before they are hung in my mother's new house.

The backs of the stockings are unresolved as of yet. I'm sure that beginning with blues and golds is unconventional for Christmas, but that's just the deal- Christmas stuff kind of makes me ill, which I am sure is a terrible thing to say, but there it is.

I do want to have the stockings hung during EAST and think that a dozen silk stockings could be really striking. Maybe I will also go ahead and hang some Christmas lights as well. But then again probably not. Maybe just wrap the Christmas Cactus.

I have also been putting some serious work into Mr Maddens Dinner. I hope to have that functioning soon, but I suppose that would involve cooking for Mr Madden more. And I know that I've said it before, but this time I really do mean it. I do like the way that it all looks thus far though, so there's really nothing that I need to help finish except time and coffee.

I am still awaiting a sale on Etsy. I would love it. Would be so fun for me to get out of the house and go to the post office. I have been teased with some interest about a few things, but no one just snapping anything up yet. I remain ready to go!

THIS IS FUN!: I have been contacted by Free Crappy Portraits to draw a free crappy for their site. Is that fabulous or what?? I will show off ~~to no end~~ here after they have posted it.

ALSO FUN: Slade has snagged us some really great tickets for the Texas-A&M game on Thanksgiving, which is fun news and insures a happy man during his short vacation.

I found this print by Nate Duval somehow and now I know what a rockstar he is. I adore these: Delectable Duo 3 on the left and Miss Arizona on the right. See his work here.

Friday was the first day of ACL and so Slade and I got there around noon to kick the darn thing off right. We saw some of Asleep at the Wheel and then headed over to watch Those Darlins, which weren't as magnetic as the Mighty Cone. Once we were full of fried food we began enjoying festival sangria, which was exceptional & pure sugar and hung out for Chief and they were great. We caught some of Miike Snow before the Black Keys, who of course were sexy as hell and put on a great show. Spoon after and then the Strokes.
Spoon was super and did we all know that Britt Daniel is from Temple, Texas, much like my very own Mr Madden?

The Strokes were phenomenal. Remember how good you thought the Strokes were years ago? They're still that badass. Go download some Strokes.

Day Two arrived and we were slower than yesterday, but have both survived without hangovers or sunburns, though once we arrived we were told that they had Sold Out of festival sangria, which seemed not right to me. I want to say that we got there for the last three songs of Meyer Hawthorne. Local Natives came out and were amazing amazing as were Monsters of Folk. I really enjoyed Jim James, M Ward. Was really fantastic. Then we hit up MIA as the sun went down. Her graphics were great and the whole park was dancing. We took off, ate delivery pizza, and fell fast asleep with makeup on and feet filthy from dancing barefoot in the dusty sunshine.

Day Three became hard to do. We were tired and it was such a trek to even get inside Zilker, but we headed on in and over to Robert Earl Keen on the Budweiser stage, which featured blazing hot Texas sunshine in the eyes of the performers. We stayed there for Band of Horses and then hurried over for the National, next to the end of the Flaming Lips show. It was our weakest effort but we had a blast and saw such a divine handful of acts all weekend. Totally worth the advance local price. And did I say how fab the National was? Because they were.

I of course found the Spaniards in a crowd of thousands & thousands.

When we arrived home on Sunday night, we were hot and sweaty and exhausted. It was great to eat a homecooked meal and sleep like logs. There's simply no place like home and even three whole days away is too much for me. And although ACL felt way oversold this year, the cooler weather was totally a plus and I am down to do it again- not anytime soon, but in a year three days in Zilker Park will seem like a great time to me.

And although I am still so tired and my hip hurts for no good reason and I have so much work and overdue housekeeping to do, I have so many things to be happy about-- like dogs that think its normal to cuddle and the Roman orange tree that I have had for quite awhile now and still not killed. Tough little dude, that guy.

CACTUS CHAIR/BEST TATTOOS 05.27