2008 has been for me personally a year that nothing much really went on. At least, nothing terribly good or bad. The only "yikes" moment being my fainting spells which turned out to be low blood pressure (in which case I need more salt -- I love salt!). This was my best year of art sales, which I found so odd considering the past 5 months in this global "crisis", and no matter what, I seemed to have things even out for me. I feel like I have been Jerry Seinfeld in this episode all year. Someone I know comes into crock-shits of cash while another loses everything, I just even out.
2008 has also had all my friends and family in and out of the hospital. Even now I can't turn my head without someone being put on life support; breaking a knee, ankle, shoulder, or wrist; having major surgery; or dying altogether. I'm not the best at handling these sort of things and I loathe the thought of getting old, since it will only mean more of the same. I am currently reading one of Cecil Beaton's diaries where he watches all of his friends break down like an old Buick and lose their youth beyond recognition; the similarities to what has happened to everyone I know this year is depressing, granted, they are all still young. I've made an agreement with a few friends that we shall try to end up in the same nursing home, and demand robot cabana boys to give us our sponge baths. Oddly this plan makes me feel a tad better.
I read once that 2008 was the end of The Age of Aquarius, and that something completely new (technological mostly) would happen while the astrological make-up around us goes into a new phase for the first time in 2,150 years. With the crazy weather, financial markets, and the first black U.S. president, you can't help but think, indeed, something major will happen in the coming years. In any event, I still consider late October to be the end of the year -- it makes sense if you think about it -- so I feel off to a good start with art shows and trips planned already.
For almost a year I had this painting marked as "sold", mainly because the gallery told me they sold it. Makes sense right?
What they meant to say, and that I have discovered this afternoon, was in fact this piece with a similar name had sold. So, you know, anyone who had in the past inquired about the purple haired Alexia de Luc can now know she is back on the market if they want to snag her.
Eat a dick. Seriously.
I don't know why people use you as a service because you are retarded, not very helpful, not very up-to-date, and usually your drivers are illiterate so of course things always seem to get delivered to the wrong address, or thrown in a bush while the sprinklers are going.
Your automated menu service isn't very good at understanding simple phrases, but then again, your customer support team can barley speak or understand English as it is. Not that they don't know English, it just seems they are too lazy to string a coherent sentence together let alone understand one when it is spoken to them. I'm sure you only need the IQ of a Tic-Tac to be hired.
This isn't really news to me. For years I have known these facts from all the art I ship, the mail-orders I've done for Elephant Stone, and all of the office jobs I've had since age 15. When someone tells me they sent something to me by FedEx, I get nervous. I want to ring their neck asking, "dammit man, why on earth did you do that?" and always always always my paranoia is proved correct. Today is no different.
Another baby painting, 5x7 inches oil on panel...
I've been in a pink-haired phase lately, I don't know why. When I was a little girl I hated the color pink -- hated it. I'd look at the color pink and just think "Pepto Bismol" in my head, or just plain "puke!" But now, I could totally live with a pink interior or something like this and not be bothered.
Carmine Magazine was nice enough to do a Q&A with me, as well as feature quite a few paintings with their bios. You can read it all here.
The past weekend was the 4th annual Bazaar Bizarre here in Cleveland, and while everyone seemed to be selling more of the smaller items, it was by far the best one put on thus far. Craft fairs aren't really my thing, but my pal who organizes the show lets me burgle in on her booth while I act as security guard for shop lifters (seriously, the little old ladies are always the ones taking a 5 finger discount!). I was totally cranky and having my energy drained by florescent lighting, but I find craft fairs to be very interesting to observe.
One thing that I noticed was all the fabulously dressed women. Where did they come from? Am I still in Cleveland? Do they just hide out and only go to rock shows or Bar Cento? I actually went and dressed up a tad on the second day because I looked like a slob compared with most women -- for real.
Then there was the drama, the drama. There are at least 2 crafters every year that make drama out of nothing and act as if they were the only PROFESSIONALS in the country. They need to chill the fuck out. Because really people, it is a craft fair, you aren't Madonna+Mariah+Oprah+Tyra with a dash of Donatella, and this isn't Paris Fashion Week. These are the people convinced they could run the show better, and I say fine, go ahead and see if you can be the orgainzer and not have something go wrong or someone complain about something. It all turns out okay in the end as usually the dramarama people get banned henceforth.
I like to observe the older ladies who don't normally look like indie craft fair buyers of any sort. Sometimes they aren't old, infact, they just have such poor fashion taste that they could be 33 and look 60 easily -- bet Tyra could help them. These are the women who have no idea what Etsy is and find out about the show through those old paper thingys you call newspapers. They are part of a group I call "the christmas sweater gang". Although sometimes the Christmas sweater is replaced by Winnie the Pooh or Mickey Mouse in warmer months. You can find these types across the US, Canada, and parts of the UK. Their hair has not changed since 1980, wear cheap gold jewelry that screams bad taste, own 4 pairs of mom jeans, and I imagine they probably own an RV or ATV. There is one I see every single year; she comes on both days, reads through every book, picks up every item, asks a ton of questions, and never buys anything - ever. After two full days of this show in particular, I saw she had bought a few bars of soap. Wow, she must really be bored and need to do something with her time, I suppose.
In the end it was fun to meet new people and it served a purpose. Appearantly my images get around, and so do the people who see my shows. It appears that Varuca is a popular LiveJournal avatar -- who knew?
It never even had a chance. Things were going so well, I really liked how it turned out and was planning on either selling it a Bazaar Bizarre or through my etsy shop. But no. Something happened. Clumsy, stupid, and in a workspace not conducive for "crafts" or any kind of fumes or spraying of lacquer or sealant. It didn't help there was a full moon and other things screwing up my day. Basically: I fucked it up big time. Over 12 hours of work wasted, and into the trash can. I couldn't save it and just made it worse when I tried. So long nice jewelry box, so long....
I totally thought this...
was Nicky Haslam, as seen here, when he dyes his hair black...
Close, but not quite. It is Nikki Sixx of Motely Crue. Damn, that is sad.
is the Hope freakin' Diamond. It has traveled across North America twice, been lost in customs, been in quite a few gallerists hands, and had 2 separate waiting lists at one time or another. Despite all of this, something happens where it never actually gets sold. The buyers punk out, people have tried to steal it, I've had galleries want to display it when it is on hold -- and when that hold is no longer -- an opportunity has been missed yet again. The whole thing is driving me nuts. Maybe I should just keep it for myself at this point? Maybe I should hike the price even more?
Yesterday I did something very out of character: went to Harry Buffalo and then to the Q for a hockey game. What did I learn? Well, as you could probably guess, Harry Buffalo is an awful, awful, horrible place and no one should ever eat or drink there. But, also that hockey games are fun even if your team doesn't win. Watching those guys beat the crap out of each other was a turn-on!
I've only been to one or two major sporting events in my life, both at University of Michigan, so to go where the Cavs play and see the madness of visual/audio overload was quite interesting. I really don't understand how athletes can concentrate with all the stuff going on -- very obnoxious really. It was extremely bright for some reason, and the retarded house music combined with GnR intros was annoying to say the least. I told my husband someday I do want to ride the Zamboni during intermission. The kids going nuts was the best part. Tickets were pretty cheap to sit in front of the plexiglass, so anytime someone slammed against it to the point of the wall shaking the kids were elated. As one little girl said, "we almost DIED just now, awesome!" Hockey is one of the few games were depending where you sit, you can get injured and have your teeth knocked out just as easily as a player; saw a player get messed up by a puck to the neck, a few punching matches, and a few clusterfucks of craziness. At one point a player was about to sucker punch another until he saw the kids sitting there 2 feet away and eased up. "Punch him!" "kick him in the nuts!" the 5 year-olds screamed. Ah, that's some family bonding I tell 'ya.
I'm kind of surprised my family never did the hockey thing, being we had the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Cobras all. I guess we were a basketball family and it never came up; after this and the adult league game I saw, it is way more fun and entertaining than basketball for sure. I'm just glad a puck traveling at 100mph didn't hit me in the face. I can also say I'm a bit more of a Clevelander, because I have now experienced..."The Beer Guy"
It was a short trip, but I'm back from Amish country. No photos this year, husband and I tried as much as we could to do nothing of interest and just lounge like beached whales. Our hotel was great as usual and all decorated for Christmas; husband describes the place as a 5 star hotel with a slightly creepy religious vibe. Hey for $80 a night you really can't beat it, I think it is even better than some of the fancy-pants rich jerk places I've stayed at. Although it is for retired folks and families with children, husband and I always seem to do the sort of vacations that old coots would do. We get strange looks quite often though I'm not sure why exactly. Maybe I'd fit in better if I had little girls named Kaylee and Britney, seriously, there were at least 7 or 8 girls running around the place named Kaylee!
Most of the time was spent eating, sitting in the hot tub, and doing old coot things like drinking coco in the library while doing this jigsaw puzzle...
Yeah that's right baby, I was sitting there trying to put this thing together! Well, really the reasoning was that our hotel had free cookies and coco before dinner, and we didn't want to look like jerks just taking the stuff and scrambling back to the room. There is no alcohol allowed or sold in any of the public areas of these hotels -- we learned this last year and found the local taverns in record time -- so this year we came prepared with bottles of Champagne and spent many hours going through cable channels we never see at home. "Operation Repo" is now our new favorite show. We felt sort of weird and guilty boozing it up and watching crap TV while paintings about faith, hard work, and bible passages were placed around our room. I was also intrigued by the amounts of young adult books based on Amish girls and sexual tension that were being sold in the lobby. Well, not always sexual tension, but they seemed very Sweet Valley High in a more innocent way. Plots lines included: the girl who loves animals and the boy she likes who goes hunting, and the boy whose mother dies and he vows never to love another woman again (kinda creepy actually). I come to find out Amish romance novels are also really huge, who knew?
The big excitement of the towns around us was the dead body found in a field over the weekend. Shot in the head, and set on fire no less. Super creepy! Sounds like a movie to me!
