Running Rabbit: Art and Madness

Running Rabbit gets Schooled

Looking forward to my session with the great guys at Homestead.com, they are the hosts of Runningrabbitstudios.com. I have discovered that I may be too curious about everything and I love doing so many things that I need a department store instead of a boutique!

So today hopefully I can learn more about the underpinnings of web building. Who knew I'd have to turn into a computer genius?

Other things on the horizon: Illustration for the WTO poster, way out of my usual whimsy but here goes...

Dying to get started on my next painting, yellow dog and a yellow cat with a ball between them. Visualizing it and working out the details in my head. Process baby, process.

Want to get downtown and photograph all the tugboats and all the tall ships while the sun is out today. Looking forward to some cool shots.

Mad Tile Skillz

This week I was delighted to put my tile and china stash to good use. I finally had a chance to tile the sink surround in the bathroom. I dragged out my boxes of tiles and chose colors to match my Mexican shower stall and I even found four beautiful Mexican sunflower tiles to use to tie it all together.

The hard part is always the prep work but if you want it to last and look great, you have to focus on the un-fun stuff first. It took a chisel and a hammer and a couple of hours to get up the old white tile,grout and mastic. I have some interesting bruises from missing the chisel a few times. My son was working outside and after the third yelp he stopped asking if I was alright and just started saying, "Miss again, Mom?"

Tiling area clean and ready to roll, I got my tile nippers--a tool worth the fourteen or fifteen bucks for sure. Set up the tile saw, (didn't even need it) and the glass grinder, my fave electric tool. Got my jar of tile adhesive, aka mastic and a big box of assorted tiles, safety glasses and a hammer. It took almost three hours to "butter" all the pieces of my mosaic and stick them down. They had to dry for 24 hours before the fun part could start.

I love Spectra-lock grout. It's a two part kit and its not cheap, but its epoxy and seals and sticks like crazy. To get this tile up is going to take a hand grenade, not just a hammer and chisel! I chose a silvery gray to complement the rest of the colors in the bathroom and because it won't discolor like white does. Just like choosing carpet--choose something that doesn't show dirt.

I got my 2 gallons of cleaning water with vinegar in it ready with sponges, mixed up the grout and got started. In a big job I'd use a float. It is made of soft rubber with a handle and works to force grout into the holes and smooth it all nicely. I worked in a smaller space so with rubber gloves and putty knife in hand I grouted the whole thing. Leveled it afterwards with the float and then waited for 30 minutes. It was still very sticky and gummy and destroyed the sponge in no time flat cleaning up the excess. After clean up one, its an hour wait and then clean up two.

Next day, it was beautiful and well worth the hard work. I always take my dremel tool with a grinder bit and knock off any sharp edges when I use broken tile, don't want anyone to run into sharp edges.

We love the way it looks and can't wait to show it off to friends.

Texas Hill Country, Austin is more than Music...

Sometimes being a conference speaker is fun. This time I got to go back to Austin where the family has deep roots. Austin on a Sunday morning is a wonderful place to wander with a camera.

Not many tourists, the bars are closed and the bands are resting up for the next session of living up to their reputation. The Sunday scenery made me smile and I got to escape before the heat hit.

The Museum of the Weird was no weirder than this note saying this is not the museum of the weird on the door next door.

And then there is the town of Oatmeal, Texas. Their only function appears to be the Labor Day Oatmeal festival!

I do love the hill county houses.

This one was empty and abandoned, decaying gently in the spring sunshine.

Remembering Susie

Tonight for some odd reason, out of nowhere, I decided to "google" Susie Paul. Susie and Bobby were friends from the Texas days, Corey was small and Joel was brand new back then. Bobby and Susie lived in the upstairs of a wonderful dank falling down Victorian house out on Westheimer in Houston. Susie was unique and original and one hell of a photographer even then. We were both just getting started and I always  planned to go back to Houston one day to finish the circle.

Somewhere in my boxes of things there is an exquisite photo Susie took of Dan holding Josh like a father madonna figure, shadowy and in black and white, I have such vivid memories of time spent with them in the Texas summer time. Smoking dope, making dinner and laughing. It was 1972 and we were so young. They sent us a Christmas card one year ala John and Yoko, naked on a bed with an American flag behind them. We loved that picture and I still have it.

Dan and I divorced and Susie and Bobby divorced. I lost Dan to non-Hodgkins lymphoma a few years ago and tonight I discovered Susie lost her battle with breast cancer in March of 2005. It just broke my heart to find she was gone before I could double back in my tracks from here and now and go back to find her and reconnect.

Susie  was incandescent and an earth mother at the same. I was so happy to find out that she became a very well-known photographer in Texas and won all sorts of awards. What I found is that she became even more of a  political activist over time and I'll bet she never compromised or faked anything.

Susie, I can't even afford to buy one of your photos now and that is as it should be. You are in my memories and my heart and you and Dan will be forever sitting by the window in your shady living room on a warm bayou smelling summer evening. I'm happy that I knew you.  In my mind's eye, your hair is long and dark and parted in the middle,. It falls forward and gets in the way of your camera. I think you had that 1957 camera even then, and your bathroom was a dark room full of shots hanging from the ceiling. I see you both and you are laughing and wearing some sort of peasant shirt and no bra. I don't think you owned one ever. Dan has on cut off jeans and blue shirt and no socks and he needs a haircut, he looks intense even with a baby on his knee. When he laughs, its a big laugh and his head goes back and his white smile and dimples show. 

I believe in ghosts. Mine are in my heart haunting me.  I know exactly what they would say to me too.

Get the hell out there and LIVE.

Birthday for the Mad Rabbit

I was driving yesterday, taking the Mini to get its annual check up, and thinking as I am wont to do when I'm driving. I observed it is almost my 60th (retch) birthday and I'm not happy about getting older. There is no such thing as aging gracefully. "Age appropriate" is repulsive on either of the spectrum--teen age or my age, necessary but appropriate.

I concede that there comes a time on either end of that specturm to embrace or give up mini skirts and shiny eye make up and really high heels and at the far end of the 'appropriate' specturm I turned loose of those manifestations of my culture with grace and gratitude.

But, to circle back to my red convertible, as one of those who in the past snickered at 'mature' 'oldsters' driving really nice convertibles and cars I have to say I have rethunk my position. I think my previous disdain was 3/4 jealousy--I would have looked fabulous in a convertible at 30 or 40! Why not me? Why didn't I have the money and leisure? Well... four sons and a house would answer that question pretty fast. I have come to the conclusion that old dudes in Corvettes have them because they can--and when you get up in the morning you still feel the same inside, looking in the mirror is the shocker.

Where did I get those crows feet and the smile lines around my mouth? How did I start to get spots on my hands and when did my eyebrows lose their mind and join my gray roots?  Yes, I have all those things and more that I don't even want to think about, but I also still have a keen zest for what's around the next corner. I still love to drive fast and well and I can. My Mini Cooper convertible is probably a truer manifestation of who I am inside that anything else I currently own.

It makes me smile to drive it and it stops the clock and maybe turns it backwards for awhile when I head out on a road trip. I feel better and younger and happier in my car--and unless the guy in the Corvette has a blonde 30 years younger than he is in there with him, he's my compadre on the road of life, literally. If he has the girl friend trophy wife thing going on, he's so damned boring I'm not interested in talking to him anyway--she's the male version of a mini skirt, fish nets and too much make up. 

Happy birthday to me, I made it this far. When I'm rolling down the road  smile and wave when you see me, and know someday you'll get your red convetible too.

May Days

I am so glad that spring seems to be here-- finally. Washington State springs usually land full-blown about mid-April. Not this year, spring seems to be coy this year. One day  sunshine and heady flower scented breezes and the next its gray again, spitting a mist of rain on the greening flower beds.

This past weekend I dragged everyone and everything out of the greenhouse. The scented geraniums all got a major pruning and bolstering of their fragrant egos I'm sure. They are in residence around the portable pond on my mosaiced 'deck'.

Note to self: pieces of china and tiles will spall and give off chips when they freeze and thaw again and again through a cold winter so don't make another 9'X6' mosaic deck covered with broken tiles and china bits.

The orchids are still inside the greenhouse until the temperature climbs to the 70s and stays there. I found all the pond pumps and put two of them to use already. I bought two new pumps and here's an irritation--neither of the brand new ones works right! Arg. I have to return them to Home Depot and go through that hassle. How aggravating is that?

The pond in front got all the reeds and plants clipped of dead bits of grass and now it looks beautiful again. Next to the pond, my beautiful, beautiful copper beech suddenly sprouted delicate new leaves overnight. I love that plant that is going to be a magnificent tree someday. It is absolutely magical. One day it is covered with sere, tan leaves and it looks dead. The next, the new leaves pop out of their buds and drop the leaves from fall. It goes through a series of colors too. Starting in pale pink like folded fans and as time goes on the leaves turn the color of a new penny.

The jays are glad I hooked up the pump in the pond, they love splashing around in the stone bowl that is at the top of the small waterfall. I found a plastic duck decoy at Good Will and added a mallard to my pond. Since my sanctuary is a Magic Place, the duck looks at home.

I'm still out nipping and pruning and clipping and shaping but I can see the spring is on the way, like a green express train. I'm waiting to be run over by the season in the middle of May and I'm staying on the tracks until it happens!

I SOLD something!

You know, I am pretty mellow, maybe even blase (missing the accent-blah-zay) about making art. Today I just checked my email accounts after a few days away and found that someone in Ohio had gone on to my website and bought one of my bracelets. Now, that's a real wow. Someone who doesn't know me at all, found my stuff and bought a piece. I feel like I have arrived at someplace entirely new.

I am stressed because Arm Kandy is up and doing well but Running Rabbit is still not launched because I haven't had time. It is frustrating. I'm painting and getting ready for a show but I still NEED to get RR up.

ARG. Miami and photos this weekend, looking forward to overdosing on color. The only question is how many cameras to drag along?

Too Many Pictures

I spent all day Sunday sorting out my external hard drive. Its old enough now so I'm feeling like I have to back up the hard drive with another hard drive. No way will I ever have time to sit down and put all those 7000 photos on CDS! Add to that the fact that I'm hoping to scan in all the ancient family photos yellowing in a box about six feet above my head at present and you can see why I'm cranky.

How on earth did I manage to get all those in there and what was I thinking when I named file folders things like 123 dump and best photos and to print? Add to that Nimue Moved 07--which had 40 other folders inside it and you begin to get an idea of the crabby level I attained in six hours. I desperately long to start building more complex digital images but I have to get them in order from chaos to find the ones I want. (imagine teeth gnashing here...)

Why don't the outside and inside match?

Why doesn't my generation age well? Why are we so resistant to getting old and heading downhill like our parents and grandparents? My grandma looked like a granny when she was 50, hell 40 as far as I can tell from old photos. I couldn't really relate to where she was in space and time until I started getting older and accepting that yes, my children were going to reproduce and their children would call me grandma. I'm still not ready for that name to be applied to me although I love my grandchildren dearly. I have old grandma baggage I'm carrying around in the shape of a negative stereotype and I can't shake it. When I was really young that granny thing was a really positive stereotype to me but as time crept on, it changed when it ran over me at the speed of some cosmic snail.

My grandma was comforting, warm and forgiving. She was round and had iron-gray hair she wore in hairnet. She always wore a housedress and an apron, the complete granny package. She and my mother loathed each other which made her a great ally because through my teen years I pretty much loathed my mom too. As time marched on I started encountering these creepy Las Vegas grannies--the ones you see in white capris, big flowery shirts, straw hats and rhinestoned studded sunglasses. I think LVGs are worse than comfort grannies if I had to choose, but the thing is I'm not ready to try and fit into either mold. I get a shock when I look in the mirror. What the hell happened? Inside I'm not this old, I'm somewhere in my 50's okay? I don't want to be put outside the door of everything au courant and left to howl in the wilderness and play old records and whine about how it used to be.

How is it that we all try to find slots, cubbyholes and places, to put everyone so neatly? I'm as bad as the next person measuring, judging, figuring it out and assigning people places in my pigeon-hole desk of life. The problem is that my mental roll top desk is now so full with all my life experiences that when I open the lid everything comes tumbling out and falls on the floor. Sometimes I think that's better except when I have to remember where the hell I put the IRS bill that is due NOW. For the most part I think It's better to have everyone tossed in a sort of wonderful acceptance salad. I reach in and what I get out is what I get out. I'm trying to let go of my pre-conceived notions of who they should be for me, its a salad in progress...

Television is not my friend, it insists on categorizing everything-- and on the level of the lowest common-dumb denominator too. Ads with people of a certain age are all for things that make you stop peeing, start having sex, start pooping, stop getting even more wrinkled, stop falling down and breaking things, and creepiest of all? The ads with people a few years further down the road wearing little alarms around their necks like dog collars in case they fall down and can't get up, placed there by their loving children I'm sure. Maybe that's why I refuse to join the lemmings in their rush off the cliff. I haven't figured out how to age gracefully yet. I'm still kicking and screaming and bitching every step of the way down that long slope. I still have so much to do and see and make and think about, and that's why this child of the 60's hasn't figured out how to get old yet. I'm just not ready.

Already Thursday and I am seduced by the Gimp

I am losing ground on this big document I am wrestling with. Its like eating a dinosaur. I don't know what its supposed to look like but I've found a toenail and now I have to eat the whole thing. I think I'm done with the legs and one arm....

Gimp, a replacement for mega spendy Adobe Photoshop has seduced me with all it can do. I have put up three magical shots so far. And more, more, more will be hatched....