Work in Progress!

Moving is such hard work! Every day I discover more and more stuff to wade through; mostly not the kind you put in boxes. Mostly the kind you put in your head. It's a mess in there sometimes, but its clearing out and becoming. It's work in progress! Here's what's happening in the studio at McGuffey Center these days... really good stuff. So happy in my studio there and soooo lucky that our rent is subsidized somewhat by the city (phew!).

I have carried the bird's nest around with me for years, sealed in two ziploc bags to kill whatever tiny creatures might live in it! A great friend of mine found it for me in Corolla Village (she's 8 and still remembers what is beautiful). This image is a detail shot from a larger collage made of two windows, each salvaged from a demolished farmhouse in Point Harbor, NC. The nest always makes me think of robin's eggs and my favorite blue, which I would use on everything I paint...including The Hymnal, with Glass, salvaged from a historic home in Wanchese, NC. Love the simple certainty of this piece. It does not ask too many questions. It would not get kicked out of Sunday school like its maker...hmmm.

With all my changes and growth experiences last year, I loved the "Do It" ad I found in a vintage women's magazine, exhorting us to use our summer "leisure time" wisely, prettying up our homes as a special treat for our hardworking husbands. NO JOKE. Since I've been redacting everything, deleting the extraneous elements (or the offensive ones), it immediately begged to be bathed in pink and reduced to those two words. Whatever you will, do it. Like the shoes said.

I make stuff. The dog eats it.

I make stuff. I call it art. Some people call it other things. All artists are perpetually broke. You freaks, by some art! Hello? Is anybody out there? Random: I listen to Radiohead too much to walk around like a normal person. I pretend like Ben & Jerry's does not exist in the building next door to my crappy part time job. I would like to eradicate the papyrus font from the face of the earth. Plastic ivy, too. Oh, and guess what? I am uninsured, of course. But sometimes I can become a river, or an osprey, or a drumbeat. I feel self indulgent and silly. A blog is a letter to myself, and infinitely better than shooting myself in the head, which is what will happen if I take one more web design class.

Learning in this breath and this one to be aware of the blooming pear trees and the drowsy bees and the red door to my studio. Dog is happy, nieces are happy too. How random? Should this be an exploration of the messy slog of weirdness floating on the oily surface of my mind? Well, today its a bit oily, but yesterday it was clear like tulum in 2002.

This image is called Happy Pills. I am a little obsessed with the Zoloft ads from a few years ago. First the saaaaddd pill is lamely limping around (you know when you feel the weight of sadness). But then, joyful day, the ssssaaaaddd pill gets a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and then magically transforms into a hhhaaapppyyy pill, forever and ever, bounding and bouncing through the screen with a big round smile. Having tried it myself, I feel justified in mocking the ad campaign that promises you and your kids that one day they can be happy pills too. One day the Zoloft people will probably sue me.

OK, that's me. I make stuff. The dog eats it. Alligator.