Uncategorized

in

Last night I went to an opening at the National Museum for Women in the Arts. The show is a celebration of 20 years of collecting artists books. If anyone has a chance to go see the show I highly reccomend it. It's beautifully installed and there's over 100 books by 80 different artists. It made me want to go home and work from sun-up to sun down without stopping to eat or watch TV. (I'm sure these feelings will pass, probably around dinner time...) I was able to meet several artists whose work I really love, including this woman http://www.janowenart.com. Her website does make me realize the value of a good photograph since the beauty of the peices doesn't translate very well. Each peice functions a book and a wall hanging. They are all unique calligraphy pieces on tyvek and most have these amazing sections of woven tyvek that will blow you away in person.

It's also worth visiting the NMWA website http://www.nmwa.org/exhibition/detail.asp?exhibitid=150 Click on the link for the interactive books and you can flip through five of the books in the exhibition.

OMG!!

in

So you'll just have to excuse my moment of extreme dorkiness.

Yeah, that's Weird Al last night at the Brewer's Art (with some folks I don't know) and if you squint that's my drawing on the wall behind him!!

This morning I received a myspace message from a woman who saw my work at Brewers. She really liked the work and said she took some pics and want to use them in her blog. I said fine, nice to meet you blah blah. A while later I check her blog and it's all about having dinner with Al since he was in town on his birthday. Of course I wrote back. "Is that really Weird Al? Does he like my drawings? EXPLAIN!!!" Apparently her and her sister know him from way back and they always get together when he's in town and it just so happened that they were at Brewers and yes Weird Al did like my drawings.

I am so so happy. Actually he could hate the drawings. I'm excited enough that he sat next to them. *sigh*

Moving forward

in

The show is up, the opening has been had and I finally feel like I can take a look at all the other things that need to be taken care of. Yesterday morning did not go as planned since I spent three hours getting the newest version of the Norton Anti-Virus whatever loaded onto the computer. I had to leave the room several times to avoid smashing things. Yesterday afternoon went much better. Mickey and I started work on the vacuum table for the screenprinting shop. Hooray. I'm trying to learn (or re-learn) how to use power tools since I don't want to be one of those women who doesn't know how to do things. For some reason it's become important to me to know how to use the chop saw. Mickey has a tendency to just do things for me since it's faster and probably safer. I am after all the person who messed around with the wiring in the Ghia without disconnecting the battery, laid my metal bracelet across a live wire causing the bracelet to heat and break and my wrist to have a very very strange burn/scar pattern. So perhaps he's right to hide tools from me....

I've gotten a bunch of work done on my grad school application today. I still have to finish my essay but I'm feeling better about that too. Then I'll just have to make everyone proof read it for me and then deal with a few months of fretting about what I could have done differently. I'm sure I'll handle that well.

I suppose the really exciting news is that last night Mickey and I booked tickets to go to Italy in May. I can't believe we actually did it. I made Mickey hold my hand when I hit the purchase button. Now my compulsive planning tendencies will go into overdrive. I'll put together an Italy binder that will put the Las Vegas spreadsheet to shame!

in

Hello everyone- Here's your offical invite to my show at the Brewer's Art! For those of you who are also on my snail mail list- your postcards went out this morning. Here are the details-

October 16th thru November 19th The Brewer's Art 1106 N. Charles St. Upstairs back dining room

OPENING- October 16th (MONDAY) from 6-9

I'm really excited about this show and hope to see a lot of you there. Please feel free to forward this to anyone who may be interested. The drawing in the attatchment is one of two drawings that will be available not only in original drawing form but also in signed giclee print form!

Questions, comments? email me!

in

Hooray! I finally gathered and submitted all the information for my prelim application to University of Maryland. I paid my 60 bucks and soon will writing all about my educational goals and trying to hammer out a statement of purpose. (i would just like to say that the whole STATEMENT OF PURPOSE!!!! scares the crap out of me and it's going to take me forever to write. I can't even write a cover letter to a job application without freaking out and don't even talk to me about artist statements.....) Anyway, the main reason I'm excited is that for the past two weeks I have been very unfocused and unable to complete anything. I have one more drawing to complete for my show. I walk by it but I do nothing. My house is in shambles. In fact, the only thing I have spent any time on is We Love Katamari, my big accomplishment for the weekend was collecting all the cousins. *sigh*

Here's to being FOCUSED and getting all this shit out of the way! Perhaps I will even call my friends again.

what have i done....

in

i have made a huge mistake. i purchased and have begun playing "we love katamari". it's so crazy addictive. http://katamari.namco.com/ shit- I have a show coming up, a bedroom to paint (hopefully this weekend), and i believe I made some noise about applying for grad school. ahh well, for the serious gaming folk, I know I'm a little behind the times. For everyone else- you should at least check out the fan art..... here's to a rainy weekend!

too picky?

in

Would anyone care to explain why all of the males in the new movie "Barnyard" have UDDERS? I double checked- this character's name is Otis and his voice is done by Kevin James so it's supposed to be male..... It just goes to show that boobies win over penises any day of the week.

PS- it looks like all the other animals have nice smooth Barbie-like under parts. Only the cows have odd gender issuses.

I've been doing this art thing all wrong!!

in

Ok, So this is a good one. I would also like to know how to make a deal with the FBI so all those fuckers looting my funds go to jail.....

OFFICE34 Parliament Street,York, YO18SG,UK

Dear Friend,

My name is Ms SANDRA PHILLIPS, I am an artist with my husband James Phillips,We own SANDRA ART WORLD in London,Zealand(United Kingdom) I live in London United Kingdom, with my two kids, four cats, one dog and the love of my life my husband Mr James Phillips. It is definitely a full house, I have been doing artwork since I was a small child That gives me about 23 years of experience I majored in art in high school and took a few college art courses Most of my work is done in either pencil or art brush mixed with color pencils.

I have recently added designing and creating artwork on the computer, I have been selling my art for the last 3 years and have had my work featured on trading cards, prints and in magazines, I have sold ingalleries and to private collectors from all around the world. I am always facing serious difficulties when it comes to selling my art works to Americans,they are always offering to pay with momey order or casher's cheque, which is difficult for me to cash here in London United Kingdom.

I am looking for a representative in the United States Of America who will be working for me as a par time worker and i will be willing to pay 10% for every transaction, which wouldn't affect your present stateof work, someone who would help me receive payments from my customers in the states, I mean someone that is responsible and reliable, because the cost of coming to the state and getting payments is very expensive, I am working on setting up a branch in the state, so for now i need a representative in the United States Of Amareica who will be handling the payment aspect for our company.

These payments are in order or casher's cheque and they would come to you in your name if you are willing to assist as a representative,so all you need do is cash the money order deduct your percentage andwestern union Charges then wire the rest back.

But the problem i have is trust, i have made arrangement with the FBI in Washington,that if anybody gets away with my money they will definately get hold with the person,and the person will go to JAIL for LOOTING my funds , you are to receive the order or casher's cheque payment which will be sent to you by the Fedex or UPS from my business partners, which would come in form of a order or casher's cheque then you are to take it to your bank account to enable you cash it and send the money cashed for the order or casher's cheque to me via Western Union money transfer or Money Gram.

NOTE: All charges of the Western Union money transfer or Money Gram.will be deducted from the money, so you are rest assured thatyou wouldn't spend a dime out of your personal money. If you are interested, please get back to me as soon as possible via email. N: B, Please send to me the listed information below:

#Your full name: #Your full home address, #Your age, #Occupation and as well your #maritalstatus, and your,#direct contact telephone number,

I will be needing your home address, so that I will forward it to my customers to send you the casher's cheque . via Fedex or overnight shipment. Thanks for your assistant and God bless,

SANDRA PHILLIPS.

Director of SANDRA ART WORLD INC, London, United Kingdom.

The non-art post

in

Two posts in one day, very exciting I know.

This is a picture of my brand new (to me) stainless steel sink. My darling husband has just finished installing it in the room that will be my screen printing shop. It will also double as a dog washing station.

And now the first pics of the love of my life. That's right, my Karmann Ghia has finally returned to Baltimore and is snugly housed in the garage. For those who don't know, I bought this car when I was 15 and was forced retire it to North Carolina about 6 years ago. Since then I have saved almost all the money I have made through selling drawings to put towards the restoration of the car. It has just had a complete body overhaul and has a beautiful shiny new paint job. I still have to put the exterior trim on it and mechanically it needs some work before I can drive it again, but I will be working on that very soon. Never fear, I will be sure to keep everyone updated on it's progress......

in

A couple of cool updates. "The Adventures of SlugBunny" comic will be in the Zine Machine located in the University of Iowa, Main Library. It's similar to the Art-o-mat but it dispenses 'zines and comics. Check out it's website, http://www.zinemachine.org/. If anyone is interested in putting things in the machine email Jessica White at info@zinemachine.org. Jessica and her boyfriend Scott Smith have written some very funny 'zines together and separately,. I went to high school in North Carolina with Scott and our paths recently crossed again through myspace. You can check out Jessica's art at http://www.bittersweetnessandlight.com/. and Scott's record label at http://www.luckycreature.com/.

I also just finished decorating a bowling pin as part of a fundraiser for this music festival in Durham, North Carolina http://www.troikamusicfestival.org/ I admit that I don't know a whole lot about the festival but I'm pretty sure it's not sponsored by Wal-mart or Nazi Youth so I think it's an ok project. They are putting together a website about the auction so I'll post more info on that when I have it.

in

So I am finally realizing that October is fast approaching and that I have a ton of drawings to do if I expect to have a show. I'm having trouble being comfortable i the new studio space but I'm starting to settle into it. Here are pics of two new drawings. They go together, they don't have titles yet and they were sort of a commission and so are already sold. Enjoy!

I will also be posting pics soon of my bowling pin sculpture project....

New tiny paintings

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Here are pics of the new tiny paintings I'm taking to Minas tomorrow. Enjoy! I have now done over 150 of these. For those that may not have seen them, they are all the size of a hard pack of cigarettes. I also spent today painting what will be my new screen printing studio in our basement. I am one step closer to being able to screen print in my pj's. When it's finished I don't think I'll leave the house for months. I already have the first print planned. I am going to do a print version of the "Under An Orange Moon" drawing since so many people liked that particular drawing in the last show.

New territory

in

Today after a year and a half of having my motorcycle license I took my first ride on my own without Mickey. It was just from my house to work but I was still very nervous. I was feeling pretty good until, just outside of Mt. Washington, a group of 5-6 Harleys pulled up behind me. I was certain I was going to stall, fall over or just plain do something stupid but I managed not to embarrass myself and I don't think they made fun of my bike too much. (the truth is they were distracted by a large group of scooters and hey, at least I had a motorcycle) Don't tell him, but I think I might like riding without Mickey a little better than riding with him. I know it's hard to believe but he tends to be a tad bossy and exacting. Here's to a summer of riding fun!!!

in

Ok, this has to be a locked entry, but I have a slight moral dilemma. So the person who has this website http://www.fairieforest.com/ bought a drawing from me a couple of years ago and has been in touch with me off and on since then. She was very excited about the website and offered to put a link to my site on her site the next time she updates things. I made some noise about doing the same if I ever put up a links list.......So I recently figured out how to do that on LJ but the problem is that I really hate her work. There I said it, I think it blows. Should I suck it up and put a link or should I pretend that I don't have a links list and hope she never notices? Any ideas???

in

Today I took my first tiny step into the world of mini-comics by putting volume 1 of the "Adventures of Slug Bunny" up for consignment at Atomic Books. This is a re-tooling on a very tiny book I made for the Artomat project a few years ago. Slugbunny was also a strip in the short lived Baltimore newspaper/comic "Rhino". I have always thought that those strips could have been fleshed out a bit more and so here it goes... Slugbunny is available at Atomic for $2.50 and from me for the same but with free shipping!! (I will also accept baked goods)

Don't let the plain gray cover deceive you. Here's a glimpse of the cuteness inside.

One more thing

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And now the reason for my sudden on-line presence is this-

My work will be included in the next issue of Hellcar, number 23 to be exact.  What is Hellcar?  As it turns out,  there is surprisingly little information about it.  It is a promotional CD/DVD given out at these independent record stores,  http://www.monitorthis.com/ (click on participating indie stores).  Hellcar has music, comics, animation and much more and is supposed to come out around April 1st.  For those of you in Baltimore, Soundgarden is part of the Monitor This network and so sometime in the beginning of April go and bug them for your free copy of Hellcar.  

Here's what the Hellcar editor had to say about the new issue:

"hey!

the hellcar 23 should be getting here in the next couple of weeks.
I'll send them out as soon as they do. they turned out great!  could be
the best issue ever. the historians will certainly have something to
argue about on their podcasts."

His name is Paul Friedrich and he is one of my favorite artists and a nice human being.  You can visit his site www.onionheadmonster.com to see his work.

In a great leap of faith, I sent Paul some stuff for Hellcar and the only contact info I put with it was my, as yet unformed, website address.  Thank goodness for my wonderful and talented friends who actually put the site together for me........

The news continues

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So the next bit of news to share is that the rat drawing on my website was used as the title page for this lovely publication from Eight Stone Press.

http://www.eightstonepress.com/hon/hon7.75rats.html

How could I resist a chance to draw rats? Infestation!(Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore! #7.75) can be purchased from the Eight Stone Press website, Atomic Books,    http://www.atomicbooks.com/  or you can check it and many other 'zines out from the Baltimore County Public Library, Cockeysville branch,  http://www.bcpl.info/centers/library/zines.html

Starting out....

in

I suppose since I have an events link on my website, I should actually post some events. There are a lot of things going on but for now we'll start with this. There are a bunch of tiny (the size of a hard pack of cigarettes) paintings at the Minas Gallery!!! http://www.baltimorefunguide.com/calendar/detailAttraction.do?id=3448I've had them there for a couple of months and it has been going very well. It's a wonderful place to visit and shop. Besides being very nice people, they have wonderful clothes, books and art at great prices.

Anyway, I'll post a few pictures of what some of the paintings look like. I'm not sure what's still at the store but this will give an idea.

Also, I would officially like to say thank you to Eric, who designed the website and Chris who is hosting it. Without them my online presence would not be possible.