Christmas Cinnamon Cheer!

 This is my new friend! We spend a couple days together during the week. This week we made delicious cinnamon rolls while my friend, Bryan, tuned and repaired my piano, a delicious and musical time...just following the fox tradition!

She is sooo cute!

Princess Religion Workshop

We had a blast at the PRINCESS RELIGION WORKSHOP. Ten wonderful children showed up and we made collage princesses, using some materials that inspire me: antique portraits, kittens, Mr. Sketch markers, and lace. I loved having Emily Melander be my co-teacher with me, we are an unstoppable art team duo, we had a lot of fun talking to the kids about their creations:
"What are you going to name your princess?"
"Cinderella"
"Well, the goal is to come up with YOUR OWN princess, one that doesn't exist."
"So, what are you going to name your princess?"
"Cinderella."

Oh dear. Those Disney Princesses are hard to shake.

 Even adults liked the workshop!

Hot off the Press!

read this article from the City Weekly about my current exhibit! What do you think?

Oldies, but goodies

 Saturday, Dodge and I went to the Salt Flats. Dodge and I have been friends for 11 years now, the flats have been around even longer...salt is a great preservative of friendship I guess.

Yoga on the flats (below) we brought our bikes with us and rode for miles on the crunchy salt.

the job

 exterior of the truck

the gem on the interior

Announcing!

Princess Religion, Salt Lake City Library, Sweet Branch
 November 28, 2011- January 7, 2012

Mixed media 2D and 3D exploring issues of domesticity, women in a post-feminist era, and making social commentary on the cultural perception of women.
Public reception: Saturday, December 3, 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Children’s workshop: Dec. 3, 2- 3:30pm.
We will be deconstructing princess identities through a fun art project!

Halloween Dance Dolls

 Erin and I went to a Halloween dance this weekend. Erin was a doll. I was myself. I wore the same black sequin shirt I wore last year. I was dressing with the intent to dance. Today my neck is sore, it's as if I have whip-lash, that's how hard core I was dancing.

Happy Halloween!

Angry Day

I think there was an emotional hail storm that came through my body last night while I slept. It left my mood a brown stinking cesspool. I was angry all day long. The day began with some weird dreams involving our old home at 8106 Livingston, horses that nobody would let me ride, and people that I was looking for and couldn't find. Finally, after several terse interactions with people, and after the days work, I went for a walk in the evening. The walking combined with heavy breathing of fresh air as I climbed the side-walked hills of the Avenues, plus talking to calm Lauren on the phone eventually tempered the mood and finally quelled the 9 hours of bad moods I been weathering. I'm glad I survived. In the final blocks of my walk home, after the sun had set, I found some peace chanting these words aloud: "I don't know everything. I can't do everything by myself." While the words are not profound, they helped bring some clarity. Am I sounding crazy yet, or just like my Mom? :)
(Love you Mom!)

For your enjoyment here are some recent pictures from when the girls descended upon SLC. (Grandma, Mom, Lauren, Ruby)

blue

I took this picture on a really cold and rainy day here in UTAR, it represents my sad bleak outlook on the winter on a bad day, and on a good day it shows how fun it is to layer up and wear knitted hats indoors because your apartment is really that cold. I haven't posted in a while because I didn't have anything to post about, but here is an update- and you can decide if it was worth posting:

I have been getting used to my new job at this place. That means I am learning to repeat myself A LOT. I go around to elementary schools and other public venues with a traveling exhibit that resides in the back of a huge truck (I am also the driver of the truck. Today I totally rocked backing out of a parking lot and then parallel parking my truck in it's parking spot. I am adding a new skill to my repertoire: truck driving. Let me know if you need me to drive something for you.) I give a 20 minute presentation to school classes and take the kids through the exhibit, then I do it again 15 more times in the day. And then I wake up the next day, go to a new school, and give the presentations again all over. But don't be fooled: I love my job.

 

This next picture shows another adjustment: I'm dating a black hole. Just kidding, I'm not dating anyone. Not anymore. I keep wondering if we humans are cut-out for this kind of brutality. Are we designed to keep giving our hearts out to almost-strangers, over and over again, not knowing if we will get it back in the same condition it was given? (What about leaving something better than when you found it?!) I think my heart is going to give out, and be unable to sustain the energy necessary to begin more relationships, which past experience has proven to ALWAYS end in a Challenger-Space- mission-like explosion. But like Celine says, "near, far, wher-eever you are...my heart will go on and on." It wouldn't be right if I didn't acknowledge my wonderful family and friends right now, because they keep answering the phone. Even when they see it's a call from me... and I'm probably going to express some sort of sadness, and a wistful thinking comment about the break-up. And then I'm going to call them again the next day with the same sort of comment. Love you all, thanks for listening to me. Every day. All day.

Anyways, moving on: I'm also moving to a new studio space, that means I won't have to use my bedroom as an art studio anymore! I'm also preparing for an upcoming show in December at the public library in Salt Lake, it's called "Princess Religion." Things are cracka lackin! More art to come! Thanks for reading!

Erin's Birthday (a couple weeks ago)

 birthday alfajores

birthday girl at birthday lunch

What's Next?

Of course Thomas Kincade does paintings of Disney princesses! Why wouldn't he?  He is on the pulse of the nation!

Look how long my hair is! I made it through the dreaded chin to neck length phase, that is enough for celebration in itself!

Almost Over

Carnival

 The Summer magic here in Utah just diminished slightly with the passing through of the Carnival. I dropped Geoffrey off in Brigham City this weekend so that he could drive a carnival semi down to AZ. We pulled into Brigham late Saturday night, the Peach Days Festival was still in full sway with the Ferris wheel rotating and the "Death Drop" eliciting adolescent screams, by Sunday morning the streets were empty. Candy wrappers circulated in the wind and all the port-a-potty latches indicated "vacant"- only their tanks holding evidence of the crowd that once gathered. G was assigned to cart away the race truck, unhinged and separated into pieces like a giant Brio train track set. 

The "City of Fun" ready to depart (temple in background)

Geoff in the truck

After Brigham City, I headed to Logan to visit my long time friend and roommate Chelsea. She teaches art at a charter school there. It was a nice trip to the North, I'll have to go again soon!  

Miss McCoy

Here I am trying to assert my identity as "Artist"   :)

Disney Princesses

I'm preparing for an installation at the Salt Lake Public Library branch in the Avenues. I've been thinking about the Disney Princess religion/school of psychology. I don't know what to call it, but just the fact that I can get Disney Princess toothpaste, bed sheets, fruit snacks, and socks, and multiplication flash cards seems a little obsessive and commercially lucrative (Maybe I can actually SELL these paintings). In taking the facebook app quiz, "Which Disney Princess are you?" Guess which one I am...Is it Aurora? Snow White?....It's BELLE!

"You're smart and very beautiful! You tend to take your time with love and don't judge on appearances alone. You are very close to your family and make new friends easily. You love to curl up with a good book and let the fairytale take you away."   

I love a Piano

I have a piano now! It was free, I just had to pay a moving company to get it to me, and then it became mine! Hooray! Let the Chopin roll off my fingers!

Art Camp!!!

 This week a friend and mother from my elementary school had an art camp at her house, for two hours each day for four days. She arranged it all for seven kids and I just showed up with some art supplies and know-how. We took turns leading activities with the kids. We had a lot of fun printing off of craft foam, doing watercolors, side-walk chalking, and cookie decorating. Look at these cute prints!

yum! and fun!

I think it's done now.

a makeover/ facial restructure

So I finished this painting a while ago and was never really satisfied. Here she is now:

 I pasted two photographs of my eyes over hers, and now I like it a lot better. It is a self portrait now. It is myself as a doll, but an intelligent and feeling one, with human eyes. On the bottom of the image are horses and a cherry pie. Next to the pie are the words, "Yes, I can bake a cherry pie."

 I was thinking about the song lyrics "can she bake a cherry pie, billy boy, billy boy." The song indicates that in order for a girl to be married she has to have kitchen skills, specifically cherry pie baking skills. That seems to be kind of a surface skill in my opinion, a non-essential to a happy marriage, but in answer to the question, I say "Yes. Yes, I can bake a cherry pie, so I guess I'm ready." :)  But instead of being a dumb plastic doll, I want to be an intelligent one. I don't want to be limited by my molded body, with joints that only go one direction, eyes that roll back in the head, and silent pursed lips...I don't want to make pies all day...just some thoughts about dolls...

More Santa Fe Fire Camp

 This is my co-worker, Chris. He was a sandwich making champ. We made about 800 sandwiches every day.

I went to the Georgia O' Keefe museum. I was admitted for free because of my affiliation with the fire, pretty nice!

 The pond where we all camped, my home sweet home for two weeks.

This is how we make 800 lunches each day in an assembly line. What is in the lunches you may wonder: Things your mother would never let you have as a kid. 3 kinds of candy, 2 kinds of cookies, a sandwich, roughly one piece of fruit.

I am so so glad to be back in Salt Lake now.

Santa Fe: Pacheco Fire

 I came to Santa Fe a week ago for this fire, but yesterday this fire began (see picture below) it is in the opposite direction. Whoa, I think the whole Southwest is on fire. I woke up this morning with ashes all over my tent and a large red ant crawled over me.

Colorado Fire Camp

hungry wild fire fighters (me in the window)

our traveling kitchen

the dining hall tent

fresh fire in new mexico

Oh my goodness. I have just had one of the craziest weeks of my life. I took a summer job working for a catering company that feeds wildfire fighters. It was intense: hot dry weather, lots of cooking, long drive to southern Colorado, working 12 hour days, etc. Glad to be back...at least until we're called on another fire...stay tuned!

fried fish mustache