22 posts tagged “life”

I'll be going to Las Vegas for the first time in 5 years this week -- very excited -- seeing some friends and catching up with some old haunts there.  I don't want to say anything is set in stone, but I may also be looking into moving just outside the city as well. In a very casual manner mind you. New Mexico and North Carolina are also in consideration.

For those who don't know, my husband and I have always been rather nomadic; severe cases of wanderlust you could say. Five years seems to be our maximum anywhere, and this past January was our four year marker in Cleveland. And while I rather like it here and wouldn't be totally opposed to settling for an extended period, dude, the options for a educated and smart man like my husband career-wise are pretty dismal! Every option in this city for just about anyone seems to either be step down or a lateral move to another lame ass gig -- in many cases with a lower salary. There's a reason it is cheap here. The city can have all your needs met, but if your job causes you to be miserable to an extreme level, all the other pros don't matter much anymore.

In the past we just decide to move somewhere and do it, with no job leads and sometimes no friends. We've never been afraid to do that. There's something really fun about starting all over every once and a while. New housing, new driver's licenses, new bank, new friends, and new activities to check out. However, it does get to be an expensive habit. So now we decided no more moving around unless a job is lined up -- a good one too. But hey, who's to say we'd still stay anywhere permanently? As much as I would like to live outside Vegas, I can't see myself more than five years there, or anywhere for that matter. Six years tops. It isn't just the nomadic tendencies, I get bored very easily.

I realized I only ever truly celebrated Valentine’s Day since I got married. Thinking back, I notice that every time this silly “holiday” rolled around I was either single, or in a long distance relationship (which doesn’t count), or had a boyfriend but was on the outs or temporarily broken up. Husband and I do like having an excuse to go to a fancy restaurant (and candy sales the next day!), but because I hate being around crowds of people and getting crap service, we have a thing were we go out the day before or the day after to avoid the bullshit. You can’t get a reservation anyhow, so why bother?

Does anyone else have this “Sweetest Day” in your state? Or is it just Ohio because American Greetings is based here? Its like Valentine’s Day but in summer, which is stupid, they should make it Steak and a Blowjob Day for the men to balance things out. My single friends sometimes ask me how they can seal the deal with their men; I tell them that although he proposed to me after our first psuedo-date, I got my actual ring after cooking steak in a bikini when I first moved in with him. I was in a bikini because there was a heat wave in Boston at the time and the kitchen was hot, I put it on so I wouldn’t sweat into the food. This was a guy that ate Hungry Man tv diners every night, so the combination made him quite happy when he came home from work that day. 

Husband never does anything for actual V Day for me, and I don’t complain. February 14^th has a knack for putting a guy in a bad mood and making him stressed out. It might be fun if you are new to a relationship, but after that it just feels like a chore. It doesn’t matter because he buys me candy year round; takes me out a lot; remembers my birthday; our anniversary; does most of the driving on road trips, and works a job he hates with a passion while letting me stay home. After being married 7 years, he still opens the car door for me first, as if we are on a first date. When I first met him when I was 6 years old I must have known a good thing when I saw it, because in my head I pretty much said “Mine!” My innocent little mind not really knowing what that meant, but knowing I wanted him somehow.

As sort of a Valentine’s Day inspired post, I was going to attempt for the first time to write out how we came to be together. Then I realized -- it was too damn long. I honestly don’t think any of our friends or family know the full story; just condensed versions or parts of it, even the people who were there don’t know everything, and to this day we discover little details. Seriously though, our love story kicks the pants off pretty much anything you’ve read or heard! It was many years in the making, and I think we are just happy every day that we got to be together finally. He means life and death to me, and I don’t need stupid flowers or a heart shaped box of candy to know I mean the same to him.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a steak to broil.

It recently started with a nice write-up on Creep Machine and just kept rolling after that...

CreepMachine.com
Juxtapoz.com
PinkBlog.it

Sweet.

I spent my Saturday morning going to a real auction. And it was fun. Long, but very fun. Gray's Auctioneers opened not long ago in my neighborhood, and after checking out the website my husband decided to take a look at a cabinet we had our eyes on. After realizing our turntable wasn't going to fit, we fell in love with a mid century dining room set instead. Funny the furniture you think you want, and what you end up getting. We got ourselves a paddle and sat for the fun. Way more social than Ebay, plus you are able to inspect everything before you grab a paddle to bid which is nice. That dining room set looks way better in person.

Artist Scott Miller was showing in the lobby, they had champagne, chocolate and goat cheese, plus the auction itself was pretty mellow and actually quite funny. "I just sold a freaking boat!" the auctioneer would yell at various points. If something was going for a stupid low price with no bids, "I'll throw in a bottle of wine, come one, bottle of wine and $40 you take it home". Here are some photos....

Overall I'm shocked at how low all the prices were, on top of the weird crap people were buying. Hey, nautical stuff is still king I guess. Some nice jewelry, art, and I may indeed go back.

Odd happenings going on here at Casa Vendetta:

My cat won't stop humping his plush monkey doll. He does it twice daily now. He is neutered, and I don't think that is normal for a cat to be such a sex addict when they are neutered. He makes a very loud weird purring noise when he does it and doesn't care if people watch him. He is a deviant! Dogs I can understand, cats, not so much.

My next door neighbor was just taken away in handcuffs by the FBI. They asked my husband to identify her, and there were lots of them in our hallway for quite a while. I never liked that woman. I knew there was something not right about her and thus avoided talking to her. Especially when I found out she was going door-to-door borrowing money from the elderly tenants to buy cigarettes. FBI means serious shit, I wonder what she did.

Due to boredom and too much coffee, I now play a little game when out interacting with the public. Especially when a stranger talks to me for no reason, and I really didn't care to talk to anyone in the first place whilst running errands. I call this game "most ignorant woman" where I lately have just said the stupidest stuff to strangers to see what their reaction will be -- all while trying not to laugh. I don't plan, I just roll with the conversation, and some pretty funny facials expressions have come out of it. For instance, the other day I'm in a check out line softly singing the horrible "Crumbelievable" song from the Kraft cheese commercial. I know it is based off the EMF song "Unbelievable", I went and saw them play with Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine once! I don't know why I did this, it was so mean, but I guess I just wanted to see what would happen:

Woman in checkout: Oh I used to love that EMF song
Me: huh, oh no I think it is a Kraft cheese song
Woman: um, well yeah but it was based off the song by EMF
Me: EMF?
Woman: Yeah (her facial expression was priceless)
Me: Wait, I think you mean that band REM, and I know they never did a cheese commercial
Woman: No, ugh, wait, no that band EMF don't you know?!
Me: (in irritated valley girl voice) Like, I have no idea what you are saying to me right now (and proceeded to pay for my things).

I'm sure she's told her friends all about it. I just had fun annoying her with my supposed stupidity. So then yesterday, I didn't mean for this to happen, but it was just so easy. It was MLK Day and I went to the post office to get mail from my PO box. The actual office part was closed for the holiday of course. As I walk out with my mail, and guy walks in and states,

Man: Oh boy, I forgot that it was Martin Luther King day
Me: Who?
Man: (with the most dumbfounded look) Martin Luther King Jr.
Me: Oh yeah, I forgot they have holidays for those moon astronauts now. (and I continued walking out).

That man stared at me through the window as if I were the dumbest gal on earth. It was hilarious.

Galleries catching fire, people getting art stolen on opening night, galleries getting broken into. WTF is going on lately around the USA?

Friends and fellow artist collective raw umber had their artwork hanging in true art gallery in collinwood. i just found out that the gallery got broken into and nearly every piece of art was stolen from the space.

i personally had 7 pieces up in the show. former apollonova artists bernadette and becky both lost quite a few pieces as well. i am sad and in shock. this a big loss for us.
should anyone have any information on this event or the whereabouts of our artwork we would be very happy to know.
we will keep you updated if we find out anything new.

thank you for supporting the arts. we appreciate your positivity. now and in the future.
-beth

The cruel irony is that this was the gallery's last show.

Wow, now that the whole holiday season is over, I feel like I'm back to normal and not all punchy and stabby.
I totally skipped Christmas and all that stuff this year; I even refused to send out cards. Now suddenly I want to do cards and the whole shebang. I guess it will have to wait until Talk Like A Pirate Day. I didn't do gift stuff with the hubby either, but now I think these mugs would be perfect for him, especially the Don't Provoke Me one.

In other news, I'm probably the last gal on earth to finally open an Etsy shop: BellaVendetta.etsy.com
This is where you can get some nice prints of my work when you can't afford the actual paintings. Support the arts, and help me restock my bar!

I also did another installment of musical inspirations for Vain Zine where I talk about Seven Percent Solution and Billy Nicholls. I'm no music reviewer (though hey, have you read the crap on Pitchfork?), but I think I got the point across; at least I know my music history and do my research. Doing music reviews is way easier than art reviews I would think. I can't even talk about my own art; let alone try to talk about anyone else's. I hate it when people ask what I thought about an exhibit, as if because I'm an artist too, I must have something really great and insightful to say. I do know my art history, but they are probably disappointed when I just say stuff like,

"dude, this blows" "this is freakin' awesome!" "Ooooh pretty"and "Meh, I'm done can we leave now?"

I can however, talk about Hollywood film history and Jem and the Holograms in great detail for hours. Or rather, that's what I prefer to talk about with a martini in hand.

This week I met with one of the assistant curators from Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art. She came and just did a private walk through the show, as viewing the images online isn't as good as in person and you don't get the full experience with the biographies and family trees etc. It is good to know the staff at MOCA like to be on top of what is happening in the area.

I was so nervous at first early in the day, I freaked out wondering if I would turn into my 18 year-old self at CalArts having to constantly defend my work and not really knowing how to do so. I thought I would get a slew of questions in the manner of a Spanish Inquisition and then have it turned around and thrown back in my face. Ah, those CalArts critiques, they didn't really teach me anything they just annoyed me to no end. Technique was never really taught, only theory. And being that installation art was the hot poop and figurative painters were looked down on didn't help. "Painting has been done to death, do something original!" I'd get all the time. This was of course right before John Currin and Cecily Brown started getting popular. Only a few instructors I could tell were supportive of us non-installation or conceptual students, like Jim Shaw, Derek Boshier and on occasion John Mandel. In recent years I have become better at talking about my paintings, but still I'm at a loss for words 40% of the time and find other people are much better at describing my stuff. To be honest, I think I went to college too young. I also think I chose the wrong school for what I was doing, but I did want to do film/animation and they gave me good scholarships, so I stayed.

At any rate, I was surprised how few questions the MOCA curator had which I was rather happy about. I mean there were questions, but not the totally loaded and combative type of questioning I was expecting. My work isn't some big statement about politics or the environment, nothing that is analyzed or with a message about the human condition. I just do what I like and what interests me without thinking hard about some big loaded concept. And that was what I got scolded for in school and by critics still at times. It is also exactly why I don't get grants.

But no, we talked about how happy we were the painting comeback, about the pros and cons of installation art and our disdain for Thomas Kinkade -- albeit we admire the empire he has built for himself. We also talked about the career fall backs art students need. Most people don't know that I was totally set on being an animator early on, that was my fall back to fine art. My career path I plotted out by age 19. I think I didn't pursue it hard enough once out of school due to getting married, low self-esteem about my animation and just the fact I realized I wasn't too great at it. It has gotten to the point now where every program I learned has been outdated anyways. I don't think we even had Adobe InDesign when I was in school. I don't know what people do these days out of art school for a real job since art school enrollment has gone up drastically the past 7 years, along with tuition. My mom told me that I should go to beauty school once I graduated as my back-up income making job. And I think she was right. Then again, there is only so much you can do with a lot of college degrees now isn't there?

My dream "day job" at this point? To just be someone like Diana Vreeland who spews proclamations about art, decor, fashion and get paid for it. I doubt I need beauty school or interior design courses to add to my resume for a "job" like that now do I? Because even though I love over-the-top and opulent decor, this is just disgusting and I could do better...

It has been decided that we are moving. To a new and bigger pad. Sorry I know most of my family are secretly holding their breath for me to move somewhere "nicer so they can visit" or back to Los Angeles. But no, we're just moving down the street as we need a real office and a studio or music room. The nice thing about this city is that I can demand things from an apartment building or management company, unlike other cities where you are at their mercy to approve you and in competition with other prospective tenants. Here I can say: "I want a 2 or 3 bedroom, with hardwood floors, and high ceilings, and underground parking, and heat included, and an elevator, in a not-ghetto area and I don't wanna pay more than $650 for it -- now gimmeh!" And they totally will! Basically we need doors that close properly. Doors that close to keep this bugger away from computer cables, records, books, wood furniture and oil paints...

Milkshake & George

It has also been decided that Milkshake here will have to learn to be a big boy, and stay home alone for 24 hours with no supervision or kitten brothers to play with. He's 3, but he still acts like needy-princess-baby-sparkle-pants. This will either be a good step, or end in complete disaster; much like what he did to my husband's mint condition new wave records, or like this morning he whacked my phone off the table  -- because he gets bored you know -- and it shattered into bits. I'll be away every weekend in November so I better get used to it I guess. Here's hoping he gets so bored that he just sleeps all the time.

Anyhoo, here are some more photos from Friday courtesy of Julie Finley...

I haven't been to Russia since 1999. I kinda miss going there to be honest, it was so weird and wonderful -- except the years of Communism totally sucked and depressed the hell out of me. But when Russia hopped on the capitalist bandwagon and went full throttle, it was a sight to be seen. It freaked me out actually. One moment you feel like a constant prisoner, the next you are getting berated for not having a stylist. Let's put a La Perla store right behind the Museum of the Revolution -- why not? The best years for weirdness were the developing ones I think; life was hard, but affluence was creeping up in strange areas: one time we had no hot water in our apartment for weeks and had to boil it in the kitchen, we could still go to the Estee Lauder store to get eye-brow pencils.

One of my favorite blogs Demon Baby had a recent visit to Moscow and Petersburg, and it is clear the weirdness just keeps developing...