I watch this every few days and it makes me laugh every time!

the scent of fall

Today, we had lunch at one of my favorite places, Cafe du Jour. They have this gorgeous patio outside. It's like a hidden, sunken garden. Even though it's not sunken! It is decorated with stone figures and wall hangings. It's super cool. I love gardens that look kind of wild and secret.
They have some tomatoes and flowers growing by the brick walls, a little water fountain and this fabulous pseudo sculpture garden pictured at right.........
I love it!
Plus, they have delicious food! I had roasted veggies over polenta.

So, it's a holiday weekend and we are probably going to take a ride in the country on Monday- the other day in the car I had the distinct urge to ride out to the country and get a whiff of cow poop on the air! Don't ask me why?! It's a mystery. Saturday and Sunday I will go to my studio and decide what to do next. I think I need to go to the zoo to see the polar bears in action and take some pictures of them.
I went to an art opening tonight at Carnegie Mellon. One exhibit was Dee Briggs, a metal sculptor. My favorite pieces were the paper maquettes (miniature models) of her torqued flat forms. There was one large floor standing sculpture that was made of steel and was like a 3 dimensional line drawing of a squiggle shape. A second sculpture was suspended from the ceiling and created a graceful delicate shadow drawing on the wall.
In the upstairs gallery, was the furniture design of Nakashima-- it was very finely crafted, beautiful furniture with inlaid wood, triangle joints.... I don't know much about wood-working or the terminology but these pieces were very simple and elegant and well made. A lovely example of form following function.

Ugh- off to clean the green room and make some drawings!

Me and D at Denver's birthday dinner a few months back. It was a cold night in the spring.

middle beginnings

Above are some images of works in progress from my studio. These are some swirly cutout ink drawings getting ready to migrate to a collage or multiple collages. Not really sure yet.


This is Murray, the barrel shaped polar bear. You can't really see his nose but it's there in front. He only has two legs at the moment.

ha

Time flies like an arrow.
Fruit flies like a banana.

~groucho marx

Sally Tomato

I am off to a ridonkulous start this morning as I drove around aimlessly for a little while looking for a parking place so that I could get a coffee. Finally, I pulled into a metered spot to realize I didn't have any quarters. I was so disgusted I just came home.

Every time I do some internet surfing I am amazed at this invisible network of bloggers/etsy shop crafty artsy fashiony people that all seem to link to each other. I always seem to find myself on these blogs looking at different art and design.

Like this
or this
or this.

I have been thinking a lot about color combinations lately, like pink and orange,
turquoise and yellow, and purple and red

i am a walking faucet

Well, after a weekend away in Boston and New Hampshire for Brenda and Tom's wedding- I came home Sunday and promptly got sick.
It is now Wednesday and I am still a stuffy snotty mess. This was supposed to be my art-making studio week and it's turned into my "I need to take a nap and drink lots of fluids" week. What's a girl to do.

Anyhoo- here is a summary of the weekend.
Friday, our flight was delayed for FOUR hours and some of my beloved beauty products were confiscated because I forgot about the 4 oz. + plastic bag rule. :( When we finally did arrive in Boston, we picked up the rental car and hightailed it over to the waterfront where we grabbed lunch at Quincy Market, ice cream at Emack & Bolio's (YUM) and then went to the ICA which is AWESOME!! The building was designed be Diller + Scofidio and is really slick, the /front/ hangs out over the water and there is a deck and stadium style platform seating situated outside underneath an extended part of the museum. When you're inside, you look out the window onto the harbor and feel like you're right over the water. When you're sitting outside, it's sheltered and cool and it will be a great place for events and music. Inside, the walls and floors curve into each other instead of being at right angles. When you are in the galleries, you sometimes steal glances through the glass windows to other floors, other galleries or the water outside. On view -a great photography exhibit of works by Philip Lorca di Corcia which gathered together several different bodies of his work- street photos, heads, hustlers, and strippers. It was a great survey and I was really struck by his ingenius use of lighting and composition.
Also on view, Louis Bourgeois- sculptures and drawings. Including a room with a gigantic sculpture of a spider-- that the viewer walks under. It was quite incredible!
After the gallery, we went to Doug's cousin's house in Wellesely where we had a great dinner outside with grilled fish and steak. Then to sleep.
Friday and Saturday were wedding festivity days. Brenda was a gorgeous bride in a strapless ivory colored gown that gathered diagonally along the bodice. Saturday consisted of taking loads and loads of pictures-- the actual wedding ceremony, where we all cried and then the reception and celebration in a barn at the inn. We ate a lot of food, frolicked in the midst of the White Mountains of Chocorua and met a lot of family.
Sunday, we had a final brunch in the barn-- said our goodbyes to the wedding party and drove back to Boston. We had some time before our flight so we walked over to the North End and had a delicious lunch of calamari meatballs-- and homemade pasta with calamari in white wine sauce. It was delish! We polished that off with a latte and a break at a cafe and then headed to the airport.

Unfortunately, I woke up in the middle of the night Sunday with a sore throat and swollen glands and have been a sicky ever since. I'm kind of bummed out that I am not able to fulfill my image of myself spending hours in my studio and creating but I've learned the hard way that my health comes first.

Meanwhile, the garden was prolific in its output of tomatoes while we were gone. I spent this afternoon trying to make pasta sauce and I still didn't use up all the tomatoes.

Things I'm thinking about:
A brand new wardrobe
Yummy treats
painting the bedroom
ways to decorate the spare bedroom on a budget

a world of books

I just finished reading Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress yesterday. I picked this book up a few years ago, read the first two chapters, then let it go. I was at the library the other day, and checked it out again, and it was well worth it. I was swept into the narrator's world ---set during the cultural revolution in China on Phoenix Mountain. Our narrator is the son of a Surgeon and plays the violin while his best friend, Luo, is the son of a Dentist and a passionate storyteller. We meet the boys in a work camp where they have been sent for re-education while their parents are named enemies of the state. The first chapters describe the boys daily lives and grueling work. Half way through, it really became interesting, pitting the lack of culture and backward thinking of those in the village against the curiousity, interest and evolving thirst for books, film, etc.. by the two boys and the Little Seamstress.


I am getting ready for my Mom and Jim to come visit today in Pittsburgh. More later!