More work...

Back to life....

Well, I am FINALLY back in the studio. After a very long and hard two years, I am back to my life and in the studio again. It feels GREAT to be focusing on myself and on art again.....

Miles to go....

Well, my last painting ended up in the crapper--literally. (It's that small thing over the toilet bowl...and I purposely made the photo tiny). Funny how "out of shape" you become after not working for a long while. One really needs to keep those artistic muscles exercised or it all just goes to pot. I expected it, though. My work has been so sporadic over the past year and it's gonna take some hard work to get my game back. Lately I've been spending more time pretending to be Martha Stewart (re-upholstering my kitchen chairs, painting furniture, sewing pillow cases) than I have in my studio making art. And when I'm not being Martha I'm pathologically watching MSNBC, CNN, C-span, and every other news channel on earth, frantically watching the presidential primary polls and obsessing over what a close race Iowa is. It's all just part of my mad procrastination plan to stay as far away from my studio as possible.
In my own defense, I did make some progress tonight and started work on some collages and shadow boxes. I spread out my collection of objects and scribblings and did some prep work. I've collected quite a selection of junk over the years and I think I get more pleasure just looking at it than I do in turning it into art. Each and every object has a story or memory and it's always hard to commit one of my obscure treasures to a piece of artwork, knowing that it will live there permanently. I sometimes prefer keeping things in boxes so I can take them out every now and again and just "look" at them.....

New Etsy page!...

I've set up an Etsy.com page so now people can purchase ALieN faRm t-shirts on line (since my web site is not yet functional for on line sales). The address is, what else,...alienfarm.etsy.com. Only a couple of items are posted to sell so far, but there are more to come. Please take a look and pass it on to all your friends, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances, co-workers, and total strangers with babies or kids!

For what it's worth......

HERE IT IS...the first piece of finished artwork in months......!

Available at........

My Alien Farm t-shirts have been selling well at Honey Bee and Me in Park Slope. The owner has been very enthusiastic and supportive of my work and wants me to bring her some paintings to sell at the store, as well as design a line of t-shirts for adults. With the Christmas holidays right around the corner, I will be selling at various holiday sales so keep checking in to find out where. The shirts are currently available on my web site at www.felixandfinster.com and will soon be available on Etsy.com.

DUMBO Arts Festival--this weekend!

The DUMBO Arts Festival is this weekend and I have one painting hanging at Realty Collective, 25 Washington Street, suite 501. The festival is a lot of fun and DUMBO is such a great part of Brooklyn. Even though it's being completely bombarded with high end coop apartments and cutsey shops on Washington street it still has a great aura to it, with that wonderful bridge always looming over you. There's usually lots of food, live music and events, as well as ton's of great art.
For information on the weekend's schedule of events, go to http://dumboartscenter.org/festival.html.

Late night, Dreary day......

Kind of a gray day today. I was up super late again last night, watching the re-broadcast of the Democratic Debate. Late nights are usually when I work but having a roommate sleeping in the next room has completely cramped my creative flow. It's been over a year that I haven't had my space to myself and it's really starting to get to me. I have begun a new project though--collage shadow boxes--which I hope to sell around the holidays. Hoping to incorporate some of my unused ceramic "doo-dads" with encaustic, photos, clippings and whatever else I can find. I saw the Joseph Cornell retrospective in Salem, Mass this summer and was completely inspired by it. I've been thinking about working with collage and shadow boxes for a while and am now finally getting to it. Funny thing, Joseph Cornell was a complete recluse and although I am not quite as isolated as he was, I do feel I am a loner and I relate very much to his somewhat "offbeat" personality. I think shadow boxes often provide a "safe" representation of the little bits and pieces of one's inner life without really exposing too much of the real thing......

Work comes hard and infrequently these days.

I haven't been working much at all these days, and this is the last painting I did several months ago. It's hard to get much work done in my studio, which is just a room in my apartment. There are too many distractions and I rarely feel free enough to dive in and create havoc. The day job saps my energy and the evening hours drift by quickly leaving me little time to get anything done. Winter is approaching, so I'll be spending more time at home--which is good for my art, I guess. But the early onset of darkness does little for my frame of mind and just makes me want to crawl in bed with a movie at 9:00pm. Unfortunately, the summer was not very productive even though the long days invigorate me and I am usually up and feeling energetic until 2:00am. I may just have to start waking with the early morning light and jump right into the studio before I leave for work. It may be the only time my mind and body are in harmony and when I can get my creative juices flowing.....we shall see.

President Street, early evening in August

This is the view from the tiny windows in my bedroom, taken one August evening when the beautiful Park Slope sun is still high in the sky.

A happy moment in Montreal this summer.....

This August, I had a wonderful reprieve from an otherwise brutal summer in New York --- six fun-filled days in Montreal Canada. I spent the first four days alone trying to quiet down the constant dialogue in my head, and then my friend Dee joined me and kept me in stitches laughing pretty much every moment we were together. This photo was taken during one of the utterly European meals we prepared for ourselves on the little terrace outside my adorable room...fresh tomatoes, spinach dip, yummy fruit, and French bread. And of course no meal involving a Scotish chick and a Sicilian chick in French-speaking Montreal would be complete without wine. We had two bottles -- a red for Dee and a white for me.

Start talking....

The inanity and insanity of blogging…
“Blogs”--a public forum through which one can proclaim ones personal opinions, likes and dislikes. An opportunity to declare ones points of view. A venue where one can shamelessly promote ones personal, business, or artistic endeavors, or someone else’s personal, business, or artistic endeavors. Blogs may be utilized in conjunction with a web site and a myspace account -- the ‘trifecta’ of virtual narcissism. To me, having a web site, blog and myspace is akin to having an engagement party, a bachelorette party and a wedding party. (I mean, how much Waterford crystal does a girl need anyway?)

Blogs are personal diaries made public. If you wish to expose your most private and innermost thoughts to total strangers, to friends who thought they knew you and, quite possibly to employers and business associates, blogs are the place to do so. They are a place for mental vomiting, if you will. A ‘virtual’ vomitorium where personal boundaries do not exist. Convenient for those of us who get tired of the sound of our own voices, but still feel we have so much more to say.

I’ve always felt that blogs are narcissistic and self-indulgent. I’ve read blogs that are so inane no one in their right mind would listen to what's being said in them for more than 5 minutes had they been expressed during “normal” verbal discourse with other humans. But, if it’s in a blog for some reason, people read it, listen to it, believe it, and yearn for more.

The techno-society we live in tells us that this narcissistic activity is completely within the realm of appropriate adult behavior. Although I am still not 100% sold on the idea, I have finally relinquished all sense of personal boundaries, privacy and pride and joined the ranks of the thought regurgitators. Up until now I have not had the fondest opinion of blogs, but now I have one of my own and can say whatever the hell I want to. I guess it's another place for me to talk my fool head of every chance it get……