I have a little job for you

I am swamped - computer went haywire - house a mess, trying to navigate ETSY - etc.etc.etc. I need a familiar. I have plenty of familiars but they never perform tasks for me or magically fold laundry when I twitch my nose. They just pee in the house and look at me brazenly when I yell "who did this!"
i love Savannah but sometimes I miss the New England climate. When there is a nip in the air your internal sensors tell you its time to stock up,
make apple cider, get your firewood in order and haul out that knitting project you started but could never fathom yo sl2 yo sl2. That wonderful misty moisty atmoshphere where the world is full of slate grays, gauzy blues from chimneys and burnt oranges and scarlets of the maple leaves. Halloween is about my favorite time and in New England we lived next to a colonial cemetery. The boys played there and in the winter sledded down the rutted hill road that ringed the solemn and ancient sleepers there. It was a magic place and quite witchy. The town tomb was on the grounds and in olden times the dead were placed in its capacious vault awaiting the thawing of the ground in spring. I imagine there was quite the que. Many typhus and diptheria victims. Whole families of children. Horrible to have them in there and -accessible almost- and then go through the whole funeral thing again in the spring. My oldest son, i found out recently, shut my two middle sons in when they were 8 and 9. he and his friend howled with glee at their screams. Ah youth, what larks, as Jo Gargery would say.

I am a daughter of the universe

I have returned from a beach trip - it was wonderful because the whole family was there. Of course there are issues going away for so long. I have 5 dogs - a parrot - three cats and various small parakeets - more to follow on the keet world. Getting a reliable person to mind all of the animals is tres difficult. We had a new person this year and lawsy mercy!!! I purchased about a thousand pounds of food for everyone and piled it all on the dining room table. This pile was undisturbed. What the hell had he fed everyone. The cats could have been passed through a wedding ring. The dogs - frenetic and clinging.
The parrot's water was green and sludgy. he lost my house key - he used my computer and downloaded several cd's - in short - quell disaster. I know his mother - a sweet girl and most concsientious. She would have been appalled had i told her. My only conclusion re her son is that he saw the whole menagerie as a joke world owned by an eccentric old bag he had little respect for. All my little charges are now restored to equilibriam. Their brief exposure to the lifegaurd/qua babysitter is fading from their memory banks. All is well - the fat lady with the bikkies has returned to dote and turn a blind eye on the occasional indiscretions requiring paper towels and disenfectant. Harmony reigns. The dogs fall asleep and join in the snoring cacophany before the late night news - the cats stalk the squirels with bellies full and no sense of urgency, the parrot poops in her water knowing it will be miraculoulsy clean next morning and the little parakeets can resume sexual liasons knowing there is a plentiful supply of food and water. And I have taken my rightful place in the Savannah universe - i've screwed up a quilt
saved a baby snake from the cat and allied with a letter writing spider by placing the cat food under her web and shooing the flies that infest the dish towards her horrific maw. She is hell on wheels when they blunder into her web - and oh yes, just for good measure i accidently sewed over my finger with the sewing machine. in short, i am back.

Jungle Boogie

This is about my favorite printmaking piece. It is a linoleum piece I did which originated with the concept of the courting baboons in the center of the piece flanking the rhino. I made a valentine etching of the baboons and liked it so much I was inspired to do an african piece. I overdyed some silk in a hot orange and pink and inked the piece in black and printed it on the cloth. I tried to incorporate as many animals as I could - the lions of course, the zebra, the baboons, croc, rhino, hippo, wild dogs, leopards, giraffe, cranes and the native masks and hunters - oh yes a gazelle. i was inspired and made up most of the animals - I just started carving and there they all were so to speak.

Softly, softly , catchee monkey

This piece was so hard for me to do my whole brain fell out of my head. the umbrella could use a little depth but just getting lines and flowers was more than a poor body could stand. Anyway, the struggle is the victory not the finished project.

I have always loved this little phrase and I have done a couple of pieces in intaglio on the theme. But i used squirrel monkeys. Then i would have had to make the cat sinister, a jaguar. Nevermind the fact that chimps and tigers don't mix. Maybe they are at Michael jackson's Neverland.

How to catch a polar bear

it has been a mixed time for me. Before I unload my wittle cares and woes, I shall pass on this little joke I illustrated. I heard it in the 4th grade and it has stayed with me for 50 years. The 4th grade embodies trembling on the brink - too young to know about sex , yet vaguely aware something untoward is hovering out there. Something dark and mortifying. You've put to rest the wonderful fiction of Santa Claus and begun the deep distrust of adults. By then you have met many types of kids - some to emulate, some to despise and some that shock your socks off with the depravity of these little jokes you don't quite get. The rabbit, the turtle and the lizard are another such and of course confucious say: Anyway, on to my present world - saved a baby parakeet by feeding it every two hours for 3 weeks (including two times at night) but had the misfortune to receive a rejection letter from a fabric design concern who was concerned i was not famous enough for them. A pox upon their house.

The queen of Hearts

This is one of the earliest attempts at photoshop. I did this series as a black and white linoleum cut. But I really wanted the color - the registration would have been a nightmare - not to mention the amount of plates needed to get all the nuance. Its got its problems here and there - but I was thrilled and this little piece turned me on like nothing i had created in years.

Sometimes, in art, and i'm sure at any creative thing done, there is a moment when you realize you haven't breathed in a while. You are lost in some zen suspension of reality. i've only experienced it once in a while, now and then, when I'm cooking on all burners. It keeps you going for a bit - then you hit another plataeu. usually i am sitting on a mesa.

Indigo

I am working on this image for a show in Savannah - trying to be a little creative with the regional persona. I think really working with indigo, turned your skin blue. It was heavily produced in the coastal islands around Georgia and South Carolina and the slaves on those islands had their own language - a pigin English known as Gulla. The people who spoke it and still do are called Geechi's.