Step By Step

I'm trying to get back in the good graces of my Blog Wrangler. Nonna's cookies from Whole Foods are a good start. 

Here's the latest, step by step:

Just in case you needed a reminder, the movie American Graffiti is a look back at my teen years.

Before and After

Work is being done! The little Dudes above have been bisque fired and then coated with black glaze.  Just so you don't think the magic happens easily, it is very tedious and messy to then scrape it all back off (below) to get the right effect after they are fired once more.

 And sometimes the magic never happens. This Dude (below) got Susan's critical eye: "The hat looks like Dopey's in the Seven Dwarves and the arms are pathetic. And why do his lips look like they got botox?" So the hat is gone (previous version was rejected because it looked like Merlin the Magician) and the face and body are being redone.  Don't you just hate it when you ask someone "What do you think?" and they tell you the truth?

Your trivia question for the day: Name the Seven Dwarves.

Not!

Susan speaks:      Not.  My.  Fault!

 

There is a limit to what a Blog Wrangler can do when the Person Of Interest refuses to come up with anything to say on his blog. And clings so possessively to his iPhone that photos he's taken can't be commandered by the Wrangler.

 

Above is part of his workspace. Birds, Dudes, faces, scarabs, etc, etc, etc. Oh yeah, he's farting in the colander again. Oh yeah, that link shows my angst.

 

He's also back in school. He likes to pretend he does a lot of work there but class begins with coffee and snacks at Russell's, followed by a lot of "visiting with my fellow students", followed by " we were just experimenting with a new technique", followed by "I needed to see what they were doing", followed by "just a little break for something to eat" and so on. 

 

I'm not really complaining, after all, I refer to his going to school as "Adult Day Care". 





We Remember, September 11

We lost family. Actually, we all lost.

Seth Apter

"Look, Don, see how easy it can be. I promise."

So said Seth Apter at ArtUnraveled. Seth and I are quite sure we are identical twins, separated at birth. People who know me think they know me and if they know me they know that I'm pretty much a loner. Seth knows how to get into me. He can even make me talk to him. We have similar souls and karma, except that he is a really talented artist and I just pretend. 

"Don't worry, Don, I'll show you how to use all these supplies."

 

"Relax, Don, it will all develop nicely."

 

These are really small pieces, 6x6" and 4x4". And no clay involved!  Go here to see more of the classes Seth offered.  Not only did Seth encourage me to paint with wild colors, he put me on a panel with other real artists. I tried to hold my own by keeping my personal mantra in mind:

The myth is greater than the reality.

 

 

I Art

I went to ArtUnraveled. I took classes and not a one of them had anything to do with clay. I had a great time. I got out of my comfort zone and did different things. It was comforting to be (sometimes) the only guy in a class. When you are the only guy in the class you seldom lack for positive reinforcement from your classmates.

One of my favorite instructors is Mary Beth Shaw.  I made these two paintings in one of her classes. I'm probably going to do something different with the doodads that stick out - the photo makes them look more dominant than they really are - but they aren't speaking to me anymore. (obviously they spoke to me in class).

Susan also makes art. She relishes the challenge of taking the paints that no one else uses/wants and works with them. When the instructor says "Come up and get some paint I've brought" she just sits back until the feeding frenzy is over. She did this piece in a different class with Mary Beth. It's on plain copier paper but since it's acrylic paint it stiffens the paper.

Susan speaks: If you notice odd happenings on this blog .... There is no reason why Blogger will sometimes delete the Profile photo or refuse to resize images or put random multipe blank lines in the middle of text or just plain misbehave.  Oh yeah, there is a reason: Because they can.

On The Road Again

We've been in Phoenix for 8 days of classes at ArtUnraveled. We drove 18+ hours over 2 days to get there. Doesn't everyone go to Phoenix in August? We do. Is it hot there? Yes, but so what? We are inside all the time going to classes and the hotel room rates are very low in August.

We love the drive through west Texas and New Mexico/Arizona. The terrain slowly changes from central Texas Hill Country to flat desert filled with saguro cactus - cacti? - and we never fail to wonder how in the hell anyone in a covered wagon or on horseback ever made it to California.

The drive for about 8 hours in west Texas is on a highway where the legal speed limit is 80 mph. It's very isolated and rest stops are about 90-100 miles apart. Susan hates them because they are open air; it's not the lack of air-conditioning but the flies that aggravate her. This, however, doesn't seem to bother her.

We took 3 cartons of art supplies, used up lots of them, but somehow wound up coming back with 4.  We are still unpacking. More to come.

Odd Ends

How To Look At Art Like An Artist is the title of this sketch posted on an art instructor's door.

 

This was on another instructor's door.

 

Here's my Sunday morning breakfast at the Whole Foods Mothership, consumed after a hard bike ride.  "Mothership" is how you refer to the Whole Foods headquarters/store here in Austin. Trivia: Yes, we shopped at Whole Foods when it was just a dinky hole-in-the-wall store, before it became big and famous.

I love their gumbo in the winter and Susan is addicted to their Nonna cookies. People like to refer to it as Whole Paycheck but if you shop carefully, pay attention to what you are buying (like no Nonna cookies!), and skip the prepared take-out, the cost is not that different from any ordinary grocery store.

Little Dudes work in progress:

Ugo, I Go

This is my creepy doll collection. I go to Goodwill and Salvation Army and Savers stores and find the dolls. First thing I do is pull up their dresses to see how the legs are attached. Then pull at their hair to see how the head is made. So far no one has arrested me but Susan tries not to be near me in the store. The inspection is mandatory because you need to know what they are made of and if you can take them apart. The non-plastic ones are the best. If they seem right, I buy them and they undergo serious surgery and a haircut and get added to the collection.

Yes, they will eventually find their way into something, like the figure above. Or, since I consider myself an Artist (with a capital A) maybe they'll just be "My Creepy Doll Installation". The black holders were a 70% off sale Halloween item at Hobby Lobby, they were supposed to be candle holders. I'm going to be watching for more this year.

One of the best parts about traveling is the unexpected. We had no idea this was in Rockefeller Center until we wandered through. Huge. Way cool. Perfect sizing for the site.  Human Nature by Ugo Rondinone.

It's Not Always About Me

Sometimes it's about Susan's art.

Give-Aways and The Ghostbikes

 

This is a Ghostbike. You can see a documentary about them here. This is our pedestrian/bicycle bridge spanning Lady Bird Lake, recently named after the wife of the former President. He had a lake named after him, Lake Lyndon B. Johnson but everyone calls it Lake LBJ. So why didn't we call this Lake Lady Bird?  There's no good reason for that weirdness but anyway it used to be called Town Lake because it divided the town. Duh.

 

Moving along folks, it's not exactly a lake, it's the Colorado River.  Pay attention, boys and girls, because this will be on your final exam:   The Colorado River is the 18th longest river in the United States and the longest river with both its start and ending within Texas. If you put dams on it you create reservoirs and then you can call all those places lakes.  Austin big-wigs can call it whatever they want but us long-time Austinites still call it Town Lake and EVERYONE refers to living south/north of "the river" or "crossing the river".

 

Back to the Ghostbike: Here's a close-up and the weird thing is that when I placed the Sweater Child (Remember them? Go here if you forgot.)down there I had the front (opening) facing away from the bike. Someone picked it up and turned it around. It's been there for over two weeks now. 

 

Here's another Ghostbike I found in Austin:

I placed the Sweater Child a few weeks ago and took these pictures then. I went back and looked at the bike this past weekend. The weird thing here is that the city mowed the grass around the bike and carefully replaced the Sweater Child. Somehow, someone is making a connection between lost children.

Is there a reason why sometimes I can take a great close-up with my iPhone but most of the time my pictures are lousy looking? Susan told me that for a change she didn't have to do any tweaking at all of the photo except to reduce the size for the blog. Go figure.

Not Going Anywhere Fast

A drawing with some ceramic pieces put in place -- I have good intentions but ...

Add caption

... as my To-Do list shows, these pieces aren't even on it. And nothing much has been done on the list. I don't even remember why there is a big W at the top.

To make matters worse, most of the supply drawers still don't have anything but temporary blue tape labels on them.

These pieces are all about 1". Susan reminded me that the round ones would have made nice buttons if I had remembered to put some holes in them. Here's a tip: Neutral shoe polish will give those white sort-of buttons a nice glow.

Coffee Soup?

I

do

not

get it.

 

I don't even remembering it being like this in Paris, France, where I have had coffee in a cafe.

Let's talk about food for a change. Food is a topic close to my heart and the clear proof of closeness is quite visible above my belt buckle, regardless of how hard my Spinning workout class is. 

Shown above is how I was served a cup of coffee at Le Pain Quotidien cafe in New York City this spring. What?? Where is the handle? Why am I getting coffee in a soup bowl??? The waiter was very snooty about my request for a regular coffee cup ("Sorry, no, never.") until he very astutely figured out we were tourists and asked (snootily) where we were from.  Somehow mentioning Austin, Texas, breaks down that Snoot barrier and, of course, he knew someone there and knew people who were planning to move to Austin and so on.  (Please don't! We have enough traffic problems and we are running out of water!)  But I still couldn't convince him to find me a coffee cup.

Usually I drink my coffee black but when I share with Susan it gets creamed up.  Lunch was interesting - I expected my sandwich to show up on a plate but when the coffee came in a bowl ....

Susan really liked her chicken curry sandwich with the cranberry chutney and told me to stop fussing about the coffee because the best dessert in the world is the Belgian Brownie from Le Pain Quotidien. She tries to stay vegetarian but sometimes she backslides and this time it was worth it because she'll figure out a way to use cranberry chutney on something vegetarian.

All this goes to show you that you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.

I'm A Bookie

Sort of. Actually I'm taking a class to learn how to make my own sketchbooks. That makes me a Bookmaker!  The white one is a strap book, the straps can come off and the cover lifts off and you can replace the block of white pages with fresh ones. The leather book is very manly. That's politely saying it looks like a Guy book.

We were in Houston recently and got some good shots of the building next to the Contemporary Craft Museum.

While we were there, Susan defied death once more by stopping in the middle of an intersection to take a picture of a Graffiti Man she spotted.  Her technique is to stop suddenly and yell at me "Tell me when the traffic starts up!" and then ignore me while she takes her picture. 

If you use Google Earth she said you can go here to see where she took the picture:
Latitude 29°43'32.55"N and  Longitude 95°23'22.84"W
I have no idea how to figure these out but I've been watching The Bridge on FX (pretty good but not as good as The Americans) and some brainy young kid knew exactly what numbers like that meant.