Art Plunge

Latest commission completed! My favorite dude... David Bowie. I could do a whole blog about the wonderfulness of Bowie but you already know and there's nothing more to be said about it. This is a hand painted vinyl record. I actually do not like doing these in the summer months because of the heat and what it can do to hand painted vinyl during shipping. I have had records stick to their sleeves in transit and also get broken despite my best packing (I have shipped hundreds so I'm Pro...mailmen-not so much). I have taken to using waxy paper to create a barrier against the surface and extra curing time for the gloss protector I use... But still... The anxiety of them melting and getting screwed up is a bit much. So please, wait till Fall on your records. If possible. A friend reminded me of our joint birthday coming up in September and how it will be so different because of the virus. We usually celebrate together and it's usually delicious sushi. I found these on Ama...

Leave it to a pandemic and life threatening virus to get my butt OUT of the house during a Saharan Dust invasion. All things that tell you to stay inside. Don't worry, there were no other humans out so it was fairly safe.  As a recently recovered Covid19 person I am feeling the lust for life while I have antibodies. So I've picked up PLAYING OUTSIDE again. It's a great way to get some activity, exercise and usually fresh air...if there's not a damn dust storm blowing around the globe. My sport of choice...disc golf. More realisticly put... throwing discs unsuccessfully at a basket. I'm learning about focus, aim, body mechanics and how to play fetch. I'm sweating, running, getting sun and dust and not feeling cooped up during a pandemic. The opposite of feeling weak and vomitty in a dark hospital room, which is where I was. This is a reclamation of life. My personal revolution is riding on the plastic round discs in the wind.  I've lost some weigh...

It's Saturday and I accomplished a lot this week so I'm not going to push myself too hard today. My body is telling me to chill out a bit and my body is always right. I did get up at 1am and surfed the net while drinking coffee and half way watching  Mannix and Cannon. Don't worry they are old people shows, you've never seen them. 😂 Then at 6am I was out the door for my morning walk before the sun came out to annihilate. It's already humid and there's Saharan dust to contend with. I'm not doing all that AND the sun. I made the walk short because my body is tired. I pushed it up hills repeatedly this week. I did manage to snap some pretty flower pics on my walk. It's a good morning for a gratitude shout out. This week I'm grateful to my friend and coworker who gave me these two maidenhair ferns. They took to my washroom greenhouse wonderfully and perked up right away. I'm lovingly calling them the Peanuts and have let my Mothra protec...

I've been steady replacing bad habits with good ones. Such as-time wasted in the mornings on Facebook have now been replaced with morning stretching sessions and honestly -it has made a WORLD of difference. Starting your day on the floor is grounding. Literally. Remember when you were a kid? You actually spent a lot of time on floors, on grass, sitting cross legged for some thing or other. At some point you lost touch with that, trading up for the adult world of ergonomic chairs at computers on desks and busy offices. In my case, I also entered the adult world of back injury and all that entailed. The back injury made me quit my job to pursue art life and it feels like my brush with Covid19 has made me have another epiphany to change things as well. My life had gotten stagnant and joyless. Chasing rent and never getting ahead will do that to you. Then Covid came and slapped me in the face... The body and spirit I had was being wasted and squandered. My health sucked. So ...

My latest painting and my Dad who watches over my studio and art creations  Finished for Father's Day, my dad's name lives on ❤️ "Monarch of Michoacan" is dedicated to the king of the monarch butterflies, Homero Gómez González , a conservationist who was murdered for protecting and conserving the lands for the protection of the butterflies. I started this way before Covid19, way before the world turned even worse but seems to be a grim harbinger now of bad things to come. In the hospital I thought of this painting, sitting unfinished on my easel. It would have been my last piece. Homero Gomez Gonzalez I'll be posting it up for sale later this week, with some proceeds going to Santuario El Rosario Ocampo Michoacan, the sanctuary Homero gave his life protecting. It's become a tradition for me to finish a piece on Father's Day and sign my dad's name and reflect on his life. I think he would appreciate me raising funds for a good cause in...

What do I do on my day "off"? Clean, organize and declutter. Apparently. What started out as a simple "something smells funky, let me clean this rug" then led to me sweeping, cleaning rug and then thinking all the linens that my cat sleeps on should be washed, decided it's the trash can that smells... So scrubbing that down  and while I was in there ... Dishes and counters got done. Then back to rug room where I do my stretching and decided that all the clutter on the table needed to be addressed which led to me sorting 2 years of mail and ending up in the living room tidying and putting things in place. All because of one smell. It ended up just being the trash.  All my second hand "given to me by friends" furniture except for one sleeper sofa I paid $100 bucks for. I've come to the conclusion acquiring material stuff is not my interest. Repurposing stuff already here on the planet...yes. This is my living room I hardly use until now... ...

This week was full of productivity-hence why I fell asleep at 6pm and am now up at 3am with acup of coffee listening to rain storms. I've done work at the jobby, kick started my stretching and walking routine and played disc golf almost daily. My body was confused by all this activity and by Friday I was all yawns and ready for sleep. I am also busy setting up more baby herbs since my first try with Thyme was a flop. These look better. I need to replant my Chives I accidentally murdered when I dropped them from the fire escape trying to dodge wasps. Yes. The wasps are still here. Bane of my existence!  It's my weekend so time to get back to my life and finishing commissions and starting new paintings. Yay! I've been daydreaming about it all week and looking at inspiring things in anticipation. Jumping off Facebook has given me time to accomplish things and taken away the pissy chatter that used to fill my head daily. It's like inviting mosquitoes to buzz around...

Second week back at work since my Covid19 adventures and I'm starting to get my groove back. This week I'm silver leafing, etching and glazing a new lamp shade while trying out some experiments on different processes to achieve certain effects. It's a little bit science a little bit Rock and roll. 😂 The goal is to recreate the sample style, so today I etch and glaze. Everything is a process with drying and curing time factored in, so I usually have a couple of projects going at once. I really like my job and am glad we were able to reopen and that they waited for me to recover.  I start every morning pretty much in gratitude. Thankful for everything and today I'm thankful for my job and learning. I'm also itching to get back into my studio, finish stuff up and get started on new work. I also took a few moments to write out some goals for art, finances and health and am pretty focused on achieving them. Covid 19 made me appreciate my life and time here. ...

Great weekend getting some outside time in. Noticing flowers and plants that might be fun to paint. And I picked up a new hobby which will be fun until it's too hot to be fun...disc golf. More like throwing frisbee like discs into a basket and trying to make it in...is where I'm at. It's good practice to try to make your goals and figure out your body mechanics and it's a sport I can do if I practice at it. I needed something in my life and that something was PLAYING OUTSIDE. Outdoor time, a little exercise and play. I lost touch with playing. Everything is always work and productivity. Part of reclaiming your life and time does include fun. 🙂 I have also steadily but surely been tidying up my little pad. It was a disaster zone after the hospital/quarantine/too weak to do anything trip I've been on. So I pick a room or area that is an eyesore and just tackle it for like an hour or so until it's tidy. I don't try to do the whole house at once. It...

I think I jumped off Facebook on the 3rd...it's somehow now the 14th. Time has kinda been zooming this month! Yesterday I got some prints matted up to ship out, transplanted some baby tomatoes (fingers crossed, these are my first tomato plants I started) and did some much needed chilling. Godzilla marathon was on, how could I resist? Today will be more chilling in the AC with my cat tribe, finishing up a few projects and I think I'll learn a new recipe today. There's always tons to do and now I have time to do it. It really does feel like I left a terrible relationship when I left Facebook and now I'm standing in the sun with the wind blowing my hair and I'm spinning and laughing and...ok not quite like that but kinda. I recommend if you are feeling overwhelmed and just need a break. 🥰❤️  My sister sends me the cutest mail! I can't wait to try my hand at felting that cute hamuchan (hamster)🐹. My mom and I have talked about starting a garden at her ho...

Yesterday was one of those strange days where it felt like yucky things kept washing up onto my Shoreline. It started with a mean and misguided letter that I had to attend to and then throughout the day I was privvy to bits and pieces of this or that and people seemed intent on sending me negative news of the world directly to me with a "did you hear about this?" Did I need to hear about that? Isn't this why I jumped off Facebook? Wasnt my mind filled with all of the ocean of Facebooks polluted garbage already? Didn't I swim away from all that? Truth of the matter is that humans are hooked on negative junk. All junkies...mainlining the negatives and bad emotions, they seek it out like sweet, sweet elixir... Who can I get into it with today? Where's the gossip? I NEED to know what's going on... I don't need to know what's going on. I already know what's going on. Same shit different day is a great quote for a reason, because it's true. So ...

Meditation and Joy Happy Friday! I'm excited for the weekend. Going back to work let's me appreciate days like Saturday and Sunday again instead of everything feeling like one big long same day. It's nice getting projects completed and turned in and being a productive member of society. I work for a small business with fewer than ten employees and have my own little work area. But I've had to adjust my schedule a bit to add in necessary things like morning stretching... Morning stretching is mandatory if I want to stay functional and mobile. My back injury gets super mad if I neglect this. So where my old habit was not stretching and hanging out on Facebook all morning I've now implemented morning stretches and my body thanks me. Taking care of your body leads you to think about better eating. I've been making a conscious effort to eat fresh, lighter and healthier and do mindful cooking and food prep. My shrimp cocktail last night was divine. Yum...