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Showing posts from March, 2018

cigar-tin stories number eighty four // i never sleep

Spring, and getting warmer. It  seems like I never sleep. The drifting classes are all over Princess Street, spectating and standing around. Some have spotted dogs. Fat kids in pink corduroy try to eat giant chocolate bars that are too big for their hands and mouths. Silver foil litters the sidewalk. Why are their feet so tiny? A woman with her head in some kind of decorative net tries and fails to walk and cough at the same time; she keeps having to stop and fling herself around. The cough itself is an animal, ugly and wet, the kind of cough they use as shorthand on television when someone's going to die from cancer. A million years ago, in some remembered lifetime, a guy I used to work with enjoyed teasing me about dying from cancer someday. It was just something he did. He had been a Thalidomide baby, so now he'd use his stunted arms and sardonic mind to mimic a cancer guy having to talk with a robotic voice through a hole in his throat. It always made him laugh. One day

sky, sometimes falling

sky, sometimes falling ; mixed media on paper I made this painting last weekend, on a vintage map (which you can still see aspects of, in the background, most clearly at left). This morning I digitized it to see how it would translate onto various objects, such as an art print ... a carry-all pouch ... a notebook ... a phone case ... and others . There are times when art almost works better as merchandise. This particular painting was created very wet, and the effect, while still filled with detail, is very rough and ready, but the merchandising process transforms that, flattening and cleaning, applying a kind of gloss. And reproductions are completely valid, in their way. Okay, onward and upward. Happy Wednesday.

cigar-tin stories number eighty three / / a Friday, in several parts

A Friday morning. It's the end (finally, Jesus,  the end) of Oona's March break so I don't have to make any breakfasts or lunches but my own. And that's easy: coffee with cream. My brother-in-law is a believer in short periods of fasting so I'm trying it on; although I won't make it to noon, I can probably last 'til 10, with more coffee and water along the way. Since starting this dieting business, I've lost nine pounds. I have until the end of April to lose twenty. I use my no-rushing, no-coercing, no-craziness morning time to write in my day planner. I am that person who is more or less organized because I constantly struggle and fail to be more or less organized. But soon I have to get going; Oona has a play date at a frenemy's this afternoon which means her mom needs the car which means I need to go catch a bus. After a warm, hope-filled day Thursday, the weather this Friday morning is a rap across the knuckles, with a hectoring wind that cuts