Art + Word

The Day in Cartoons: What Day Is It - David Fitzsimmons

what day is it David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

Gray Thursday. Black Friday. Shop Small Saturday. Cyber Monday.

Shop. Shop. Shop.

Shopping is one of my least favorite things to do.

Shopping small to support local businesses and restaurants? Yes. Shopping at 5 a.m in a big box store or the mall? No.

I have to admit, even though it is meant ironically, I like Thrift Store Thursday.

Now here's a real event day to get excited about: Giving Tuesday

What I am going to do and be this season is more generous. In addition to the usual gift giving, I want to give more intangibles:

Forgiveness I've been denying. Kindnesses I've been hesitant about offering out of fear of misinterpreation. Compliments I've withheld for a myriad of lame reasons. Silence when I want to fix something when what is required is to just shut up and listen. Time and patience even when I am out of both.

Here is my plan with the concrete, the tangibles:

Pack up clothing, dishes, furniture and donate to the local Goodwill. Clear the shelves of canned goods and donate to the local shelter. Make beet cake for my favorite (and not so favorite neighbors).

Finch Lane Galleries Art Barn Holiday Show - 2012

carved clay beads

carved and pierced bracelets with beads

Carving clay has turned out to be an obsession. It is deeply, deeply satisfying to subtract clay and watch a design emerge. Usually craft art is a sublimation. This is therapy. And I've found a way to translate this technique into my paintings, assemblages and sculptures.

I've been carving clay since early October in preparation for this holiday show. I did not take pictures of the beads assembled into necklaces and earrings - forgot in the rush to make the deadline for delivery - 8 p.m. last evening. A few bracelets are visible in the second photo.

What I've discovered is that I love carving clay. Love it! I have now transferred the medium and process to my fine art. fyi: in case my use of "fine art" sounds snobby, "craft art" has a different purpose, hence the adjective). I am in process at this moment of carving a painting for a submission, due this weekend. I will remember to take a photo and post it.

art barn holiday craft show

Celebrate the holidays with a visit to the Art Barn for the 29th annual Holiday Craft Exhibit & Sale, a distinctly artful experience of original craftwork by dozens of local artists.

Offering an abundance of choices for gift-giving, the show includes jewelry, bowls and vases, holiday cards, clothing, ornaments, and much more. The Holiday Craft Exhibit & Sale is a feast for all the senses, with craftwork in glass, metal, silk, wool, paper, wood, clay, paint, and natural materials.

Holiday Opening Reception

Monday through Friday: 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Gallery Stroll
Friday December 7: 6:00 - 9:00 p.m

Craft Show Gallery Hours

Monday through Friday: 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday: 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m

Artist of the Day: Winter Wonderland - Yann Photographer

winter wonderland yann photographer

Thanksgiving is over and now Christmas is on the horizon.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I wish it would snow. I'm ready for turtlenecks and sweaters, heavy socks and snow boots. I'm ready to sit by the fire all wrapped up in a blanket and sigh for the warmth and flowers of spring.

We've had our first snow, but it has been an unseasonably warm early winter. I remember slogging through a foot of snow by this time in years past. I've pulled out my heavier scarves, vests, and serapes, but have yet to wear a coat.

This photo illustrates the confusion of the season well. Perhaps I want it to snow only if it looks as lovely as these flowers weighted down with a skiff of snow.

My perennial and annual flowers all wilted from the bite of frost and heavy snow a few weeks ago, but my herbs and decorative grasses are still green and upright. I will have to photograph them once it snows again.

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artist bio: I am a French professional photographer. I specialize in many things: portraits, products, landscapes, reportages. Feel free to have a look at my website on www.yannphotographe.fr

Land of Deseret: In My Own Back Yard

I was surprised to discover that one of my neighbors has been raising their own turkeys. Both Toms were very friendly. I was a little revolted by their wattles, which they waggled a great deal. They also shook their tail feathers and posed for my pictures. If they didn't have those terrible wattles, I think I would consider a turkey as a pet. An outside pet. The hen did not trust me one bit, and protested from a safe distance.

I asked if these two Toms were given pardons. Sadly, no. They made it through Thanksgiving alive, but one of the duo will be the main course for Christmas. Man eat turkey world.

My neighbors have big plans to become farmers. They have plowed up their back yard and plan to raise corn. They have a fat goat that has yellow billy goat eyes, the kind from childhood horror fairytale stories. The goat likes to body slam. I am not a fan of that damn goat.

I read on NPR yesterday that Farm School is the new black.

I wish them luck.

December Books 2012

charlotte's web

I didn't post a list for October or November for three reasons:
1. I was rereading sections from 2012's January-September books.
2. I was glued to my laptop and iPhone reading all things Presidential Election 2012!
3. I've been carving and painting like mad getting ready for holiday shows.

I suppose I could list all the articles I read, but on second thought, no.

Happy reading!

Bad Marie - Marcy Dermansky
Bad Marie is the story of Marie, tall, voluptuous, beautiful, thirty years old, and fresh from six years in prison for being an accessory to murder and armed robbery. The only job Marie can get on the outside is as a nanny for her childhood friend Ellen Kendall, an upwardly mobile Manhattan executive whose mother employed Marie's mother as a housekeeper. After Marie moves in with Ellen, Ellen's angelic baby Caitlin, and Ellen's husband, a very attractive French novelist named Benoit Doniel, things get complicated, and almost before she knows what she's doing, Marie has absconded to Paris with both Caitlin and Benoit Doniel. On the run and out of her depth, Marie will travel to distant shores and experience the highs and lows of foreign culture, lawless living, and motherhood as she figures out how to be an adult; how deeply she can love; and what it truly means to be "bad".

Birds In Fall - Brad Kessler
One fall night, an innkeeper on a remote island in Nova Scotia watches an airplane plummet to the sea. As the search for survivors envelops the island, the mourning families gather at the inn, waiting for news of those they have lost. Here among strangers, they form an unusual community, struggling for comfort and consolation. A Taiwanese couple sets out fruit for their daughter's ghost. A Bulgarian man plays piano in the dark, sending the music to his lost wife. Two Dutch teenagers rage against their parents' death. An Iranian exile, mourning his niece, recites the Persian tales that carry the wisdom of centuries. At the center of this striking novel is Ana Gathreaux, an ornithologist who specializes in bird migration, and whose husband perished on the flight.

The New Work of Dogs: Tending to Life, Love, and Family - Jon Katz
In an increasingly fragmented and disconnected society, dogs are often treated not as pets, but as family members and human surrogates. The New Work of Dogs profiles a dozen such relationships in a New Jersey town, like the story of Harry, a Welsh corgi who provides sustaining emotional strength for a woman battling terminal breast cancer; Cherokee, companion of a man who has few friends and doesn’t know how to talk to his family; the Divorced Dogs Club, whose funny, acerbic, and sometimes angry women turn to their dogs to help them rebuild their lives; and Betty Jean, the frantic founder of a tiny rescue group that has saved five hundred dogs from abuse or abandonment in recent years.

Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and The End of the Roman Empire - William Rosen
During the golden age of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian reigned over a territory that stretched from Italy to North Africa. It was the zenith of his achievements and the last of them. In 542 AD, the bubonic plague struck. In weeks, the glorious classical world of Justinian had been plunged into the medieval and modern Europe was born. At its height, five thousand people died every day in Constantinople. Cities were completely depopulated. It was the first pandemic the world had ever known and it left its indelible mark: when the plague finally ended, more than 25 million people were dead. Weaving together history, microbiology, ecology, jurisprudence, theology, and epidemiology, Justinian's Flea is a unique and sweeping account of the little known event that changed the course of a continent.

The Black Book - Orhan Pamuk
Galip is a lawyer living in Istanbul. His wife, the detective novel–loving Ruya, has disappeared. Could she have left him for her ex-husband or Celâl, a popular newspaper columnist? But Celâl, too, seems to have vanished. As Galip investigates, he finds himself assuming the enviable Celâl's identity, wearing his clothes, answering his phone calls, even writing his columns. Galip pursues every conceivable clue, but the nature of the mystery keeps changing, and when he receives a death threat, he begins to fear the worst.

If the Buddha Dated: A Handbook for Finding Love on a Spiritual Path - Charlotte Kasl Ph.D.
Kasl brings a compassionate understanding to the anxiety and uneasiness of new love, and helps readers discover their potential for vibrant human connection based on awareness, kindness, and honesty. She approaches the dating process as a means for awakening, reminding us that when we live by spiritual rules, we bring curiosity and a light heart to the romantic journey.

The Art of Civilized Conversation - Margaret Shepherd
In our fast-paced, electronic society, the most basic social interaction—talking face-to-face—can be a challenge for even the most educated and self-assured individuals. And yet making conversation is a highly practical skill: those who do it well shine at networking parties, interviews, and business lunches. Good conversation also opens doors to a happier love life, warmer friendships, and more rewarding time with family.

Slow Dance on the Fault Line - Donald Rawley
From the seedy sun-drenched bungalows to Polo Lounge booths to opulent mansions along winding canyon drives, Donald Rawley shines a merciless light on a city perched precariously on the rim of the desert and edge of reality. In these fourteen finely crafted gems of impassioned lyricism, the author rakes his pen across the glistening veneer of Los Angeles' elusive fantasy and hard-boiled glamour to expose the unvarnished, unsavory truth underneath. Whether focusing on a comedian's homicidal greed, a second-rate screenwriter pondering his lot sitting naked in a Bentley, or a valium-addicted beauty seeking gratification amid a tawdry carnival sideshow, Donald Rawley relentlessly excavates LA's sun-bleached graveyard of broken hopes, shattered dreams and sordid memories.

The Middlesteins - Jami Attenberg
For more than thirty years, Edie and Richard Middlestein shared a solid family life together in the suburbs of Chicago. But now things are splintering apart, for one reason, it seems: Edie's enormous girth. She's obsessed with food--thinking about it, eating it--and if she doesn't stop, she won't have much longer to live. When Richard abandons his wife, it is up to the next generation to take control. Robin, their schoolteacher daughter, is determined that her father pay for leaving Edie. Benny, an easy-going, pot-smoking family man, just wants to smooth things over. And Rachelle-- a whippet thin perfectionist-- is intent on saving her mother-in-law's life, but this task proves even bigger than planning her twin children's spectacular b'nai mitzvah party. Through it all, they wonder: do Edie's devastating choices rest on her shoulders alone, or are others at fault, too?

The Round House - Louise Erdrich
One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and thirteen-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.

Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver
Flight Behavior transfixes from its opening scene, when a young woman's narrow experience of life is thrown wide with the force of a raging fire. In the lyrical language of her native Appalachia, Barbara Kingsolver bares the rich, tarnished humanity of her novel's inhabitants and unearths the modern complexities of rural existence. Characters and reader alike are quickly carried beyond familiar territory here, into the unsettled ground of science, faith, and everyday truces between reason and conviction.

Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation - Tom Bissel
In Magic Hours, award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of The Big Bang Theory to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox's work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as The Believer, The New Yorker, and Harper's, these essays represent ten years of Bissell's best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.

Cooking the Blues Away: Beet Cake

The days are shorter, the holidays are here, so I'm back cooking my blues away. I made this beet cake from tiger in a jar's video recipe I found over at designmom. It was a hit, and I loved the looks of shock when everyone discovered the chocolate cake was actually a beet cake.

You will want to watch this lovely recipe video, but here is a standard list of ingredients with my additions in parentheses:

Beet Cake

2 c. beets (pureed)

2 c. flour

1 1/2 dark brown sugar

4 oz. semisweet chocolate

2 t. baking soda

1/4 t. salt (kosher)

1 t. vanilla (Mexican)

1 c. butter

3 eggs

(dash powdered sugar)

(heavy cream whipped)

(mix ingredients together, bake for 30 minutes at 375)

(allow cake to cool, then dust with powdered sugar and serve with whipped cream)

Black Friday Wish List: Homemade & Vintage Gifts

I don't participate in Black Friday. The introduction of Gray Thursday is just way beyond the pale. It's not that I have anything against it, I just cannot see the point of getting up before the sun is up to power shop and fight and push and maybe endanger other people.

I also don't participate in Cyber Monday. I'm not a shopper.

But, to be completely honest, if there were a store that specialized in original artwork and was offering cutthroat prices, well, I might consider and grab a cart and run like hell, no excuse me, just get out of the way!

I would hang the following art on one wall. Here's my wish list: