Coming soon to a gallery near you

In the midst of everything (great) that is going on here at the Mexican Chalet, a gallery in Wisconsin has asked me to send them these 13 paintings to sell there. I am thrilled that they liked them and as soon as this is all finalized and shipped I will let you know where you can see them in real life (where they look much, much better than my photos. Even if I do say so myself.)

Just between you and me, it feels so validating to be discovered like this, for my PAINTING, not quilting. I am verklempt. But in a good way.
So I bought myself six new brushes. Woowoo!

And tomorrow, if I recover from this nasty summer cold, my sister and I are piling in my van and going to IKEA together, to buy some furniture for her new life here. Woowoo again!

The new catalog just came out and it is online and the first thing I did was decide what new stuff I might have to have too. I have been keeping a secret but it now time to reveal all.

I got the Ektorp!!! IN RED. And then I went back to IKEA and bought the white slipcover too! Brooke is modeling it here. I have it in the studio and will now have the white cover for summer and the red corduroy for winter. Brooke is buying the red one too tomorrow, hopefully... so we will be twins, sofa wise.

Welcome Home!

This is where my sister Brooke and family will soon be living and where I will be a lounging-by-the-pool guest. Woowoo! If I were going to pick an apartment for them I would have picked this one. It is so nice, with two full bathrooms, washer/dryer hook-ups in the apartment itself, a dining area off the kitchen, gas log fireplace in the living room and a walk-in closet that could be a guest room, it's so large. Just perfect. I am so happy for them all. The place is currently being spruced up for occupancy and we await the call to say when it will be ready, but we think Monday or Tuesday of next week.

So much of the decision about where to live depended on the high school that my niece Glory would be attending. It is all screwy where kids are taken. Her school is ten miles away, even tho there is a new school much closer. But that's the system in Chattanooga these days.

Her first day is today and they had to get her there by 8 am Eastern, and since it is over an hour away from here, everyone had to be ready and on the road by 5:45 am Central time! They did it and I told them how proud I am of their effort. Today is only an introduction and 'bonding' experience, with the new freshman all having games and such to get over the shock of a big new school.

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Envious by Joann Kiehn

Isn't this great? It's my hand dyed cotton and silk fabrics, fused of course, and created by my old pal Joann Kiehn who lives in Pacific Grove CA. I just love love love this quilt. And of course it got my juices flowing to make some more fabric like this for me to use in some new work I have planned. I ordered a mere 100 yards of bleached mercerized cotton print cloth and I have ideas of how I can produce some of this kind of special edition fabric without my old platters and shelves.

Here's my idea: Styrofoam sheets, like 1" thick, cut to 48"x24" wide or 48" square. I hope to find some plastic sheeting to cover the styrofoam, to make clean up easy. I will place a styrofoam sheet on my table and dye the fabric, and then put the sheet on the garage floor and move onto the next piece.

So much has happened since last we spoke...

It has been a non-stop circus around here with five of us for meals and with cars revolving like a parking lot out front. It has slightly calmed down today, and most people are sleeping in or going back to bed for an early morning nap.

Not me. I love the early parts of the day and I have lots of dishes to wash and 'stuff' to pick up everywhere.

Apartment hunting has been intense, with school registration for my niece needing to be done asap. Freshman orientation at most of the high schools begins August 5th, but it all depends on where they end up living. Stress levels are reaching a tipping point. Today may prove to be the day of decision.

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I thought I would show you how my plan with the mounted canvas in a frame turned out. I sent this one off to its owner yesterday and I must say, I am very pleased with the look. BTW, you may have heard me say that I NEVER do commissions (not counting the painting commission I did for Tommy last summer) but I have been contacted about doing a quilt for another artist. She chose a large abstract style for me to make and I got all excited about the prospect. So I said YES. We have yet to finalize the details, but this is surely going to be an adventure for me.

Methinks I won't get back to painting, quilting or blogging much until after my sister's big move takes place, so I'll post when I can.

Variety is the Spice of Life

Since my sister et famille is only five hours away (by car and trailer) I am not going to be painting today. So I thought I would post some of the work that remains in the studio. Some of these are very early pieces from my just getting back into painting days. I can really tell the difference in my confidence.


The house is all cleaned up and the studio looks ready for prime time. I am sooooo excited that they are all about to arrive. This is gonna be FABU!!!

Surrounded

Surrounded

Oil on ultra fine canvas, mounted on masonite and framed, 8.75x11" $150 Email me

I'm really enjoying my painting routine. I get up early and start to paint, and finish around lunchtime. Then we have our main meal and I am free to fool around the rest of the day. This ends up meaning that I am reading novels. I love to read but could never get my time organized so that there was time for it, without feeling like I ought to be doing something more important.

When I look at what the other daily painters are doing, I see a variety of small works, like 3x4" or 6x6". I have painted canvases that small, but I prefer the larger sizes, which I think make for a better finished presentation.

Gathering

I took a look at the paintings I did last summer and noticed the looser technique that I initially used, and decided to give it another try. The idea is to block in the color, highlights and contours without fussiness. It turns out to be much more fun!

I can't decide how to best photograph this work, so here are two versions using different lighting.

Gathering

Oil on ultra fine canvas, mounted on masonite and framed, 8.75x11" $150 Email me

Hero Worship

Hero Worship

Oil on ultra fine canvas, framed under glass, 8.75x11" $150 Sold

It seems to me that this little cherry has a big crush on the voluptuous pear.

Solutions

When I was at IKEA Sunday, I found these frames which I thought provided me with an answer to a semi-problem. Several years ago I bought this fabulous roll of primed ultra-fine canvas and it needs to be supported for a finished painting. I hate to staple canvas around stretcher bars (don't you?) and I don't actually have any stretcher bars currently.

So how to use this fine canvas?

That's where the frames provide a solution. The backing board is thin masonite, and I can adhere the canvas to the board with acrylic medium and when the painting is finished, it can be framed!

This 'experiment' will be a nice size to try out, and I have five frames as a start.

Another solution...a new floor lamp from IKEA (on sale, $10) to use to light my subjects. Lighting is so important and this lamp will make it so much easier to get what I want, lighting-wise. So I am off to the races.

Play Ball

Dave warming up

and ready to swing.

Dave gets up at the ungodly hour of 3am to drive to Atlanta to play baseball on Saturday mornings. This weekend was an exception because it was Tournament time. He came home Saturday afternoon instead of staying in Atlanta, and we packed up a clean uniform and returned to town in the new Chrysler to stay overnight for Sunday's games. Two more games!

I hadn't seen him play in years, so this was a treat. Sort of. Um. His team isn't exactly a winning team. One win and all the rest routs. O dear. But it was still fun and I could tell he was having a blast.

Most of the players are, shall we say, mature. Dave is 54 and one guy is 67. Amazing.

The second game on Sunday really weeded out the riffraff and luckily Dave escaped injury. Several others of his team were not so lucky. Final score: 24-1.

I did not have to witness this disaster, as I was excused to go shopping. The ballpark is only ten exits from IKEA! So I had two hours alone in the store with 30 thousand other shoppers. I found several bargains and will reveal them in days to come.

On the home front, we have two water lilies in bloom at once.

A Sad Farewell

I admit to being a little teary eyed to see the PT go. It was the first car I bought for cash. That meant a lot to me at the time. And I guess it still does. I never had a bit of trouble with this gem, and I'll miss her.

And A Blue Car Day

We made a few calls and decided that the van I wanted (Is this your final answer?) was not a good deal after all. It has a rebuilt title (which I had never heard of) and Dave nixed it immediately upon hearing that news. So back to the first van I wanted, a 2004 Town and Country Touring, with everything, including the heated seats.


This dealer was in Fayetteville a mere 60 miles away in midstate Tennessee. What a beautiful drive this was, in Ugly Betty. We thought it resembled the milk and honey views of SW Wisconsin. Hilly and greeeeeeen. They have real dirt there and the cornfields were proof.


Dave coached me to act nonchalant so I wouldn't screw up the deal.



We took it for a test drive, and unfair as this comparison is to Ugly Betty, it was superbly smooth, quiet and so comfortable. I was in love. So Dave played it cool and we talked numbers and got a good deal but decided to wait over lunch before committing.


After a great patty melt at Mildred's down the road, we came back with Dave wanting to drive a few more cars on the lot in search for a little something for himself. He made overtures about buying two cars, and the possible deal he could get?? What a guy.

As the papers for my van were being written up the dealer kept coming back with lower and lower prices for the Sable Dave liked. So he acquiesced.

Two new cars? Yup. Both 2004's. We emptied out Betty and will have to return to get her later this week. The drive home was sooooo much nicer than the trip there. Sigh.

I definitely got what I wanted from the beginning. The seats in back all come out, and the front seats are deluxe for old farts like us to take on a long drive, which is everywhere from here. It has that nice feature of mpg readouts, or time and temp, or how many miles til a fillup. All that extra stuff. But the quiet and smoothness and space is most important. And of course the heated leather seats. ha!

Autotrader.com

We had to stay home and wait for the towtruck to arrive and take away my PT. And of course he never showed up. Even experienced drivers get lost this far away from everywhere. He will try to get here today, at 8:30am. We'll see.

In the meantime Dave introduced me to shopping for cars online. There are many many different sites to peruse, but I found Autotrader.com very easy to navigate.

Type in your zip code and decide the range of miles to search for your desired car. It is possible to narrow the search by model, year and price parameters. This is a good thing since the choice is overwhelming. Dave has greater endurance for this sort of thing, but I had to stop and take a nap after a few hours of dinkin' around.

One begins to forget what one initially wanted and doubt one's reasoning. For example: what is the most important feature one must have? I got stuck on heated seats. Wha? Yes, I know I live in warm weather 90% of the year. But that fact left my cranium for a spell. Coming from the frozen north made me think heated seats are a must. OK... I finally crossed that off my list of demands.

Since we live far from town and wanted something specific, I typed in a radius of 100 miles to search. I found the above pictured vans in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Two are 2007 with nearly the same mileage, and one is 2006 with less mileage. All are the same price. As you might have guessed, I was partial to the red ones, but I do have a speck of sense left in me, and decided that the lowest mileage, but one year older model is my final pick.

That doesn't mean a thing until we go down to Alabama and drive it. It's only a two hour drive.

Geesh.

Update: Totaled

R.I.P. PT

We have finally gotten the results of the estimate on my PT's booboos and the insurance company decided to total the car. It doesn't look all that bad, but the wheels are bent and the frame must have been bent too, so it's getting a new car time around here.

Well, not exactly new. We rarely buy new. The PT was an exception, as I fell in love one day in July 2002 and that did it.

But now, I am thinking seriously about going back to a van. One in which the back seats can be removed, so I can bring home STUFF.

And it needs to be deluxe, so we can use it for touring the magnificent South. We are only a day's drive away from the Gulf of Mexico, or The Atlantic Ocean. We would love to take a few trips, in comfort, because as you know, we are officially old farts.

So we are spending a lot of time surfing car sites, comparing models and prices and features. I should have new wheels by next week. And not a minute too soon.

Black Grapes

Black Grapes

Oil on gallery wrapped canvas 12x12x1" $150 Sold

It's that fresh fruit time of the year, where I must bring home a little of everything at the farmstand. These black grapes are huge, and SEEDLESS, which I have never come across. They are super sweet and were the least expensive grapes on the shelves. So home they came.

I looked at the paintings from last summer and realized I have been ignoring the sensuous fruits I painted then, so I here's my latest contribution from Nature's bounty.

Garden Discovery Walk

1. 2.

3. 4.

Lots of things are appearing that surprise me.

1. Last year we grew Giant Pumpkins in the worst possible spot and were lucky to get just one big fruit. But then we didn't have the interest in doing anything with it, so the plant got tossed aside at the end of the season, and we kept the pumpkin on the porch until it froze and then we just tossed it into the yard to decompose. Well, who would think that it would self seed. We have a lot to learn, because now we have a volunteer pumpkin climbing up the 'Suez Canal' feature that we built earlier this year.

2. The Echinops Ritro which is blooming! I didn't know much about this plant that I originally saw in Switzerland, and had to have in my garden. So now I know that it is a flower, not just an interesting seed head. Hmm.

3. I transplanted/rescued a sedum from the shade garden since its roots had been eaten away by the stinkin' voles, and put it in the lasagna bed. Somehow, with it another plant was in the same earth clump. It looks to be a Black-Eyed Susan, which must have been seeded at the nursery. Wherever it came from I am happy to have another flower, even by accident. I think by next week we should see the flowers.

4. OK this is no surprise, a big fat red lily. But I had to include it because its so beautiful. The stalk has five big flowers and the rain knocked it down so into a vase it went.

We have lots of wild black raspberries on the hill and I considered them a weed, a mean weed with lots of thorns, but this year we have had adequate rains and the berries are HUGE and sweet, so I am reevaluating them. I already ate the biggest ones, so no photos of those.

In case I hadn't mentioned it before, and you know I have, the frogs LOVE the lily pads, and here is a photo to prove it. Five frogs all lounging about in total peace. In the center is a plastic marker which came with the plant so we could tell where it was tossed into the pond.

And I was super lucky to have come across this teeny one inch long froggie, who is trying to be invisible. This fellow lives in the yard along with ten zillion others who serenade us LOUDLY all night. It's a frog orgy here at the Mexican Chalet.

The Silver Thimble II

The Silver Thimble II Oil on gallery wrapped canvas 12x12x1” $150 Sold

I’ve rearranged my lighting and cast a spot on the arrangement, and funny thing, I could SEE EVERYTHING SO MUCH BETTER. How much easier it is to get things to look right when one can see clearly the light and shadow.

The beads on the pin cushion are a perfect example. Each little bead casts its own shadow.

The Silver Thimble I and The Silver Thimble II