Did a couple of paintings for Eco Gallery in LA. The owner, Peter Schulberg, makes painting surfaces for artists out of discarded billboard material and exhibits them in his gallery on Pico near La Brea. I'm glad he asked me if I wanted to do some paintings, as it had been a while since my last involvement with the gallery. Here are the paintings that resulted:
Dawn, 24" x 24", acrylic on billboard material
Dusk, 24" x 24", acrylic on billboard material
Peter initially was going to give me just the orange surface, but then I saw the blue one next to it and immediately had this brain storm thinking of a night/day kind of theme. Since he'd already asked if I'd like to paint some birds, I had to do some research on which morning and night bird I wanted to paint. There are a ton of morning birds to choose from, but not so much with the night birds. It's pretty much just the owl. But there are so many different kinds of owls! I definitely wanted to paint one with discernible eyes--the ones with small dark eyes kind of freak me out. But anyway, I was really happy with the way they turned out. It had been a while since I'd painted realistic objects and I wondered if I'd be really out of practice, but it turns out it's just like riding a bike.
The opening reception was last Saturday night, Nov 14th, and quite
a few people I knew showed up, which is always nice. In addition to
finished paintings there were a couple of artists doing live paintings
on enormous panels as well as a sculptor working on his cool
bended-wood sculpture things. He makes lamps and things with these and
they look really cool. There was also a big reveal on a billboard
behind the gallery. At around 8pm we all went outside and did a
countdown, at the end of which they dropped the curtain on the
billboard to reveal three paintings by different artists. That was fun,
like a New Year's Eve party. Here's a link to some pics from the opening.
Arrrrgh, why did I have to see this??!!!
Ever since I started knitting, there's been all these goofy ideas I had about knitting-related designs that I could apply to T-shirts, mugs, etc. Now it's come to fruition: http://www.zazzle.com/stephhw
I have some more geeky ideas, but these are the first four. I believe they are for the true knitting afficianados, no generic "I Love Knitting" here, I tell you what.
"Rip It Good" - ripping refers to when you have to "rip" out your stitches because you have to start over--major suckage.
Lambtastic! Because they are!
We all hate splitty yarn!
I bet aliens knit too, and when they visit, they'd say "Take me to your knitters"
The original plan was to just drop my car off for service early in the morning, go out to breakfast, and just laze around all day and spend some QT in The World of Warcraft, teehee. Sounded pretty good, actually, but then I got this little thing in my email box about a "Matisse and His Amours" exhibit at the Norton Simon and it sounded really cool. I hadn't been up there in ages, and I was thinking I could drop off those towels for Anita while I was at it (since, like a dope, I forgot last week). So when I let Anita know I was going to be in the neighborhood, she was like, hey why don't you guys meet and Aaron for lunch? What, Roscoes? Ha, you don't have to twist our arms for that! So meeting up with them at noon before the museum. THEN I was thinking, hey, Pasadena's practically Monrovia, which is where a bra store I've been wanting to go to for ages is--The Wizard of Bras. C'mon people, how can you not want to check out a store like that? Seriously, though, one of my knitting friends' mother-in-law owns that shop and and a bunch of them went up there a couple of months ago and had a great time and found some really great bras. Hmmmm....one can always use a great-fitting bra, and I'd like to get professionally measured, etc etc, AND find the Spanx-like thingy for that bridesmaid dress. So now that's on the agenda, and suddenly things are looking decidedly action-packed! Still planning on being home by 5pm or so and playing Warcraft. We're not venturing out at night, that's for sure.
Didn't do a whole lot: got up around 9am (which is really late for me, but then again we were out til 2am or so last night), did some laundry, went with Curtis to get his mom a bday present (espresso machine), then came home and read some manga, watched some anime, and lay down for a little nap around 3pm. Well, it's 9pm now! Boy was I surprised when I got up to find that I'd taken a 6 hour nap!!! I guess I really needed it after last night. Feet are still sore. I have pretty big blisters on my "problem" toes (4th toe on each foot); hope those go away soon. Should have worn my toe socks! They really do help keeping my problem toes separated and preventing blisters like these. Oh well, live and learn.
Speaking of which, never doing the disneyland new year's eve thing again. Well, definitely never staying til midnight, that's for sure. Everything was pretty cool til about 8pm, because the crowds started gathering for the 9pm fireworks and after that it was totally packed chaos. If you didn't stake out a spot on Main St hours before (which we didn't), you're relegated to being part of the wandering masses that can't stop anywhere and can only go one way in a certain route around the park. We were able to stop near the Dumbo ride and chill for the 9pm fireworks, but for the midnight one, forget it--we finally had to force our way behind some ropes on Main St so we could stop walking! And then the irony of all ironies: it got so foggy we couldn't even see the midnight fireworks!! The ones near the castle we could make out, but the ones in the background that go off near Toon Town, forget it--we'd see the sky light up and go boom but no sparkles...so weird. Then of course there's the massive throng heading for the parking lots afterwards, and then getting out. So glad we live so close--once we got out of the damn parking lot it only took us like 15 minutes to get home. It was super-foggy, though, very scary.
*sigh* Well it was certainly a memorable new year's eve. I think I'll be OK with staying in for another ten years or so. We usually never go out for NYE so it's kind of funny we decided to do this thing, but I think we were ready to do something a little different. Hope you all had a good new year's day, and let's hope things get better in 2009!
