Super Green Garden

I'm rather proud of this artsy kind of shot. It's from above and it shows a collection of glass bottles, chopped off and finished with a crusty rim of gold paint. Together with some glass marbles and stones, potting soil and a plant, it's a little garden. The glass echoes terrarium but it's also like a planter. I spend time and anxiety worrying about the variety of glass colors, heights, thicknesses just to make sure that the bottles are all slightly different; that each brings its own piece to the overall puzzle. I'm liking how this collection is going. (I have my own little garden of bottles on my window sill.)

And here's me holding the smallest of jars. It's tiny. I'm hard-pressed finding a plant that will fit inside this little guy, but I'm working on it! And in the background you can see the plastic container of marbles, stones, and sea glass pieces that I've collected to be the water-draining portion of the planter. Oh and you can see the mixing bowl that has been repurposed to house plants as they await their final planting in a jar. And, for kicks, you can see that this whole operation is currently going down atop my stove. Like I said a week ago, there are little projects everywhere! As long as I stay sane, I'm happy to let the crafts take over. It's not like I could put the plants under a cabinet or anything anyway.

Finally, the plants in all their glory, with some glitteratti frogs chillin' in the open space. I don't know exactly why I decided that I needed to glitterize a set of plastic frogs, but I enjoy them living among the plants.

In the Beginning

So this is a painting of the first book of the Bible. Genesis 1, the creation story.

4	And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5	And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6	And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Those are the verses that inspired this. On one side you've got the light and on the other, the waters. I've never actually painted "something" before. My paintings are usually like Seinfeld, all about nothing. But this one is about something. It depicts the very creation of the Earth. At first I didn't think I'd like the way my painting of "something" would turn out. I assumed that it would look corny, but when I was done I really liked it.
I guess even in its depiction of something, it is still pretty abstract. You probably wouldn't believe how long I worked on it since it looks rather like all the other paintings I have done before. Yet, for some reason, I took hours and hours painting this, making sure that each layer of paint was just so.

Sacred House of Blues?

With a West Coast baseball trip for my beloved if not beleaguered boys of summer and a bit of a bout of insomnia (must stop with the drinking of the diet dr pepper so late at night!), I find myself glued to the MLB HDTV (my favorite kind of acronym soup, honestly) with nothing to do but watch the Sox fail miserably and, well, present some new crafts to my loyal readers.
Here is a new painting. It's the first time I've ever left the majority of the canvas (a 12x12 square of glass) even partially unpainted. In fact, I had every intention of making a giant picture with all kinds of zigzag layers, but when I got to this point, I knew that I needed to stop and relish the simplicity. And I feel like the result looks like a cross between Mexican-inspired renditions of Catholic symbolism like the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the somewhat corporate, irreverent House of Blues logo. Anyways, I'm pleased with punch by it and I like how I've arranged trinkets around it, especially the fact that I can actually place things behind it and still see them, like the antique Maine postcard. When I started the drawing for this painting, I had intended to channel Indian patterns (as in subcontinental Asia, not Native American ones, though they are quite nice, too). The paisleys were supposed to set that spicy, exotic tone. It would have been fine and Indian looking had I not decided to paint with a bright, Latin pallet. As soon as the pink was layered atop the yellow, I knew that it was headed in a different direction than my original intention, not that I mind.

What's that I hear, did Don Orsillo say "ballgame over?" Long yawn and I think I'm ready to hit the hay. Amazing how awake I am when there's a live game, even if it was a bit of slaughterfest in the yuck direction for this little fan.

Brr-Rrrr, Heavy Traffic

When I was a child back in the days of "C:/" instead of today's visually intuitive computers, my daddy bought me (or maybe he bought it for himself, fuzzy memory) SimCity. I'm not going to say it was the very first ever edition of SimCity, because I really don't know. Alls I do know is that I loved that game. LOVED. It was so fascinating. I could build a whole town. And then destroy their power plant and see how long they'd live without electricity. In many ways, SimCity might just be what started it all. From there I graduated to home design software (I'd try to fit all the essentials -- stove, fridge, toilet, shower, bed, door -- into 100 square feet or less. I think the best I ever did was 80 square feet, in a house where the bed was stacked above the fridge and stove, which, obviously, would be a really pleasant place to live). And from that software, I started to read interior decorating magazines, study art history and ultimately become a craft blogger. Wow, what a progression...
And you may wonder why I am mentioning SimCity in conjunction with a picture of my kitchen. I'll tell you: in the SimCity of my youth, when you had traffic congestion, a radio helicopter-esque voice would say, "Brr-rrr-rrr-heavy traffic." Or at least that's how my dad and I interpreted what the guy said. And it joined the Henry family lore as a family phrase -- brr-rr heavy traffic. It's right up there with "tit-titilly-boo," "teeka-teeka," or "fiffffty." And if you know much about we Henrys, you may well have heard these phrases. Well, when I was painting this piece of glass (detail shown below), I could only think of one phrase, "Brr-heavy traffic." I don't know why it reminded me of a busy SimCity, but it just does somehow.
I painted this 1 square foot piece of glass over the weekend. I thought I'd tuck it in behind my kitchen CD player and radio to create a little vignette right there under my canned goods cabinet. It's about three layers of paint deep, so it's pretty busy. Good thing it is nice and small. The color palette is a range of colors of the rainbow between orange and blue -- all my yellows, greens. It's like Mediterranean citrus colors, the palette of a bottle of Orangina (seriously consider clicking on this link, if nothing else than for the cute little Vespa graphic). All the swirls, curls and zigzags are very tightly wrought. And there are dots on top of dots. Plus I used lots of shimmery and glittery paints so that the whole thing really sparkles, much like the fizziness of a bottle of Orangina sipped in Italy... (cue some Dean Martin and daydream with me).
Frankly, its been a long, long time since I last presented a painting. This is partly because I didn't bother to post my last three paintings and partly because I thought ran out of glass and keep forgetting to order more. But over the weekend I found this pristine little piece and pulled out the paint trough. It felt so good to get back into the paint-covered swing of things. I found three other plates of glass -- all so well organized that I just forgot how neatly tucked away they were -- so I have lots to work on. Keep your eyes peeled for more.

Sorry Kid, You Really Do Use Math In Life

The title says it all here, but upon the rarest of occasions, I have to use math to be creative. Yuck! You know I was the president of the math club in high school (mom said it would look good on the transcript for college applications and I was the only one who showed up on Mu Alpha Theta election day). And then you know I got a D- in calculus freshman year of college and retook the class to get to B-. Oh Paul Bourdon! That class was all but impossible (to me, lots of other people seemed to ace it, overachievers). Not that my personal relationship with mathematics is particularly exciting (Does it count that a lot of my favorite people in college were math majors -- Dj Jazzy, LDA & Molly McGint?), I just wanted you to know that it is only on the solemnest occasions that I will get out the tape measurer, graph paper and draw something to scale. You do know that "to scale" means solving some math equations, right? So being a regular Archimedes, I decided that I wanted to make a wall of art. And I couldn't decide on the right arrangement for these prints and paintings. So I took measurements of the wall, the height of my comfy reading chair and then measured each little work of art. Above you see the results. I'm actually planning to show you a collection of arrangements I come up with and letting my general readership vote on the final selection. We'll see if that works. I fully expect no votes at all, but who knows.

Also, it has always bothered me that people of UK-ish origin (Aussies, Kiwis included) call it "maths" instead of "math" with the idea being that its a shortened version of a plural word: mathematics. I've never bugged a Canuck about that particular English misnomer, but I ought to. I'd like to think we have Canada on our side of this crucial linguistic debate. And today, I've really strayed away from the usual topic. Err, sorry.

Plug #2 Art Show

In many ways, it is quite fitting that my first ever art show should take place at Inwood Village. It's a shopping center that is so tied to my childhood. I had my first job there -- at Smoothie Zone (I can't even remember if that was it's real name!) down where the TCBY used to be, near the old Black Eyed Pea. I made smoothies and served up fro-yo back when I was old enough to work, but not old enough to drive so my mom had to pick me up and drop me off every work day. I had my second job in Inwood Village. I worked at the Zuka Juice that became a Jamba Juice that is now a high-end candle store. So many fond memories of working at the trio of smoothie joints that tried to make a go of things in Inwood Village.

It's amazing that I can get so nostalgic for a simple shopping village, but I love that place. It's anchored by the ever-bizarre Inwood Theater, where, a few weeks ago, my mom and I were walking past the box office as a ticket seller sat in the booth serenading the empty parking lot with his guitar cover songs. I believe he had turned on the box office microphone and was belting out John Denver's classic "Country Roads." It has shops that rival Highland Park Village, Preston Center and Snieder Plaza, yet it is outside the Bubble, and therefore more casual and serves a broader, more diverse community.

In my childhood we took family walks to Inwood Village, accompanied of course by our most beloved dog, Montie. We'd walk to that Starbucks and the cashier would bring out a cup of water for Montie and she'd make a big mess. Now days, there's a permanent doggie water bowl outside the Inwood Village Starbucks, but back then you'd have to tap on the glass, point at your dog and hope that the employees were feeling generous.

The countless hours of time I've spent there eating and shopping, bumping into friends--I really feel like its my home base. I remember my cousin Emily's surprise birthday party at the pizza joint that eventually became Lover's Egg Roll, only to recently become the crepe hot spot, Rise. Emily thought that no one loved her because we'd all done such a great job forgetting her birthday that she ran away from home and missed the first hour or so of her surprise party. And when that pizza place closed, I thought it was the end of the world. And again, when Lover's Egg Roll met its demise (that's the original location, you know), I thought that the place would never be the same. But Rise fits in as well as any place before it. But now I see that it is in those cobblestone paved streets that things are always changing. A smoothie store can become a candle store. And Children's Collection can become Chico's. And Mario Accardi's parents' costume supply store above the floral shop can become Tyler's Dallas. And, finally, the girl who's mom dropped her off to make smoothies $8 an hour can show her art at Starbucks at age 26, 11 years after her first debut in the Inwood Village community.

So, at the top is my invitation to my art show. Which really isn't much of a show because it's just four paintings on the wall between the bakery counter and the bathroom (pretty glamorous, huh?) but it is a start.

And sorry if I get a little too verbose on the subject. I haven't written much lately so I'm feeling a bit wordy.