Giving thanks to Number 5....

Just before Thanksgiving I made a list of 5 things I was grateful for ~ they were, in no particular order, as follows:
1. good health
2. family and friends
3. my home and work space
4. laughter
5. my ability to create something beautiful out of nothing

It would be hard for me to put these in order of importance, and of course good health usually trumps most of life's other blessings, but lately it is number 5 that I feel most grateful for. It is number 5 that gives my life a sense of purpose. It is number 5 that gives me deep satisfaction and satiating pleasure when I feast my eyes upon something that "tastes" delicious to them. And it is number 5 that is the ONLY thing in my life that cannot be taken away from me. Everything in life is temporary, transient, and ethereal. But creativity - wax and wane as it may - is permanent, innate, and immortal.

Work in Progress....

All life is a work in progress, a constant re-working of every situation, every challenge, every task. The trick is to know when to stop. Everyone knows this simple rule - don't over do it, don't overwork it, don't try too hard.
The same is true, (IN SPADES!) with art. Knowing when to stop is the moment we must be most aware of. It's that moment where a successful piece of works starts, and a hot mess begins -- and vice versa. I've always credited myself with being a good editor and having good selectivity. To me that is more important than being the most adept at technique, or being the most talented colorist, etc. What to keep in, what to throw out, where to place objects within the frame...or as they say in filmmaking the 'mise en scene'.

Calling in sick......

I just love calling in sick to work and then spending the whole day in the studio. For some reason, weekdays are always more productive than weekends. There is something about knowing that everyone else is hard at work in their offices, and you have all those free hours to do what you will, that gets my juices flowing. Saturdays and Sundays are not the same. There are so many other chores and things to do on the weekend, that even when I have an entire Saturday or Sunday, I still feel like there is never enough time to get down and dirty in the studio.

Today was one of those wonderful "call in sick" days where the sun was shining outside, a cool breeze was blowing in my apartment, and I was on a creative roll by 1:00 in the afternoon. Got multiple mono-prints done, and two new encaustic collages to add to the "family history" series.

Dreary Friday 13th....

Well, season 3 of Mad Men has come to an end, my trip to Italy is becoming but a mere memory, swine flu season is here, the weather is getting colder, holiday season is approaching, and the one year anniversary of my mom's passing is right around the corner. Things are starting to feel a bit dreary. Even my plants are barely hanging on to life....

I'm certainly not giving equal weight to all the things I just mentioned - I mean Mad Men is a great show but the end of season 3 was certainly not as big a blow as my mothers passing last January. Having said that, my life always flows more smoothly and productively when I have a goal, project, or some little thing (like a brilliant TV show) to look forward to and not having one at the start of winter is not a good thing. I have started taking Italian classes, this time with a group rather than privately, so that might give me a small jump start. But it's gonna take more than learning the 'congiuntivo presente' to get me through the next five months.

I've always loved getting cozy and reclusive during the dark winter months in my rustic, sun-drenched, book-filled, top floor apartment in Park Slope, but that can backfire if I don't have some big creative mess going on in the studio. Gotta keep myself accountable to myself and get things rolling in there. Time to get my ass to Pearl Paint and get me some early Christmas presents......

Italian hours.......

So what was the most amazing thing about spending three weeks in Italy?....The fact that I came home more inspired creatively than I have been in a very long time. First let me qualify that by saying it was not the ONLY amazing thing. Seeing new places, like the incredibly fantastically wonderful Bologna, was also great. But even the most wonderful thing about Bologna was the way it inspired me creatively and how much I couldn't wait to come home and start incorporating those warm colors, the shapes of the arched porticos, and images of graffiti into my artwork. The whole city is like a living collage; layers and shapes seem to overlap one another in the most natural way--like the city was always meant to be seen that way. The barrage of graffiti-covered walls and scraps of peeling advertisements and posters do not take away from the burst of deliciousness that assaults the eyes on every street. It actually enhances everything about the city.

I was only there one day and two half days, but I made the most of every minute. I visited the Morandi Museum, the Casa Morandi (Morandi's former home and studio), MAMBO (Bologna's modern art museum which houses one of the most wonderful Sean Scully's I've ever seen in person), and the mind-blowing Santo Stefano church (known as Sette Chiese because it is a series of chapels, courtyards, naves, and rooms all inter-joining one another in a heavenly maze of connected-ness). But I digress......sort of.

Let me step back to my first two weeks in Tuscany. The first couple of days were almost, dare I say, a disappointment. The teacher, Julian, a wonderful English art teacher with an undying penchant for all things Renaissance, was a virtual Bernini's Fountain of Knowledge! Unfortunately, it was a subject that could not be less interesting to me. But I stuck it out through the first few days of basic water-color lessons, visits to churches filled with Fresco's, and mini lectures on god-knows-which-Renaissance painter, and waited for an opening to start my own work in the studio independently of the other dilettante participants. Then one day, Julian showed me a new technique which he called 'monoprinting' and the flood gates opened. I spent the rest of the week cranking these things out on cheap newsprint paper, one after another. By the end of the week I was so wound up I decided to extend my stay for another 4 days. It was heaven on earth! Waking up every day with nothing else to do but work in the studio, eat the three delicious meals prepared by Julian's lovely wife Amanda, and at night drink all the yummy wine my liver could handle. E' stato stupendo!

I'd like to recommend this place to anyone who wants to take some time away and spend some unstructured time working in a light-filled studio one hour away from Florence, Arezzo and Rome, perched on a sun-drenched Tuscan hill on the border of Umbria. The website is www.artistinitaly.com. Tell Julian and Amanda that Jo the New Yorker sent you....Buon divertimento!

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……