Lil pooch, God rest his soul.....

A woman I work with had me do this portrait for her son. The dog has recently passed away.

This is a pastel piece done from a photo they took on her son's wedding day. That is the bride's bouquet that the dog is munching on. Sweet.

I have often done portraits of people/pets that are no longer with us. The saddest one I did was of a young father and his 2 year old son sitting on his lap. The father was murdered in a drive by-shooting while at a McDonalds in California many years ago.

My mind raced into many scenerios behind that portrait the entire time I worked on it.

The second saddest was a portrait of a grown son that had committed suicide.

I hope my work brought some sense of peace to the people I did it for.

35 years! Egads!

I've been away for a few days....

It's school vacation!

AND I've been celebrating my 35th Wedding Anniversary!  Actually, two of us have been celebrating it because because that's what a wedding is. A pair. And this pair got hitched 35 years ago. BEST THING THAT COULD'VE HAPPENED TO ME !! Seems like just yesterday... 

And the only difference between then and now is that I now weigh 10 lbs more. Other than that, we look exactly  the same. (That is, of course, if I don't look in  the mirror...)

Nevertheless, we celebrated by taking a mini-trip to the Live Free or DIE state, New Hampshire. 

Mount Washington still has snow on it, this is the view of it from North Conway. I like Mount Washington because that is the exact spot that Birdman, aka Mr. Downeastdoingstuff, asked me to be his wife. One quarter of the way down  from the hike to the top of Mount Washington, he popped the question. And I said yes.

So, to commemorate, we booked a mini vacation at the White Mountain Hotel in North Conway, New Hampshire. The Romance package! Oooo La La!

Here is a view of the Dining Room windows, with a view of the White Mountains.
It's situated at the edge of a massive cliff. The parking lot is just a narrow patch of trees away from this foreboding precipice. This is not a place of respite for anyone with rock slideaphobia.

It has a year-round heated pool and hot tub. We've been here before for lunch in the winter and have seen  people swimming around as if it was the fourth of July, surrounded by drifting steam.

On our last day there, I took a dip in the morning after my workout. It was 48 degrees outside, but the pool was heavenly. Then a soak in the hot tub, which got me so hot that I was able to walk around in the cold air in just my bathing suit and not feel it. That, my friend, is perfect.

(Mr. DEDS wimped out....)

The main lobby. If you can biggify this photo, look at the fabulous painting of the hotel over the mantle. 

Another shot of the lobby.

As part of our Romance Package, we got 6 chocolate covered gargantuan strawberries and a bottle of champagne delivered at around 4 pm. (Yeah, we got 6 of them. Being in a Romantic mood, I ate 3 of them before I took the shot.) (In the end, Birdman ate ONE.......) (He did beat me in the champagne department, though.) With Romance in the air, I promptly fell asleep after a couple of glasses of the bubbly. 

Oh well.....

The night was still young.....
The view from our dining room table. The evening meal was absolutely wonderful. Salad, entree, and dessert.....delish.

After checkout, we took a ride on the Kancamagus Highway, a 28 mile winding road right through the middle of the White Mountains.
At the highest point on our route, there was still plenty of snow.

Ah, but no hot tub. So we got some ice cream in Lincoln, New Hampshire and then headed home.

A spectacular three days.

Thank you, Birdman......for everything.

Happy Birthday Donna....

Happy Birthday to a lovely lady and a good friend. Love ya.

SAY IT AIN'T SO......

My beautiful forsythia blooms.....;-(

Keep your heads up little tulip and iris sprouts, it'll get better.

Welcome to my first day of spring school vacation.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.......

In 1999 my son was 13 years old. He was so impressed with my TV Guide covers, who wouldn't be, that he wanted to create some of his very own. 

Having no TV Guides around, he found a Reader's Digest somewhere and the TV section of our Sunday paper. 

Here are the results......They're Animatronic, of course. (Photographed in sequential action shots....)

Viewer is required to pull the tab on her wrist...

Eyes start to close and tongue comes out....

Eyes closed and tongue in full Gene Simmons  position...

Another pull tab creation...

grrrrrrrrr. 

My Dad would be proud.

Altered 'books'.....

When you're an art major all your life, you always have to be doing something. Creating. All the time, whether it's in your head or reality. It's a curse sometimes.

The thing you're creating has to be something different, clever, innovative, creative or......maybe.....sorta stupid. (Wasn't stupid at the time. In fact, it was the smartest thing in the world, to me.)

When I was in high school, when  high school was first invented, I used to take my father's TV Guides, the day they arrived, and sorta, well, improved them. The height of creativity.

What I did had to happen  before Dad got home so that the new and improved version would end up in the 'mail of the day' pile. Like it was supposed to be there.

The first few were quick alterations, without too much thought. Slowly, they got more complex. Some even had moving parts.

Oh, I was something. Really something.

See for yourself.......

The knife was cut out of some catalog, the blood painted with acrylics, my paint of choice.

Cigar and hat cut out of another magazine

Jimmy Durante's face cut out and glued on, hair painted (on the top person).

Cut out and glued on.....

Bullet holes burnt into the cover with a rod of incense.

Mia Farrow's eyes were erased and repainted....(a pencil eraser would totally erase the color from the TV Guide cover. It was that kind of paper. Lucky for me.)

This one is hard to see. There's an arm coming out of the bears mouth, like he just ate someone.

And, of course, lots of blood. (I was truly gross.)

Now, this is the first of the moveable covers. Notice the 'pull' tab at the bottom. If you gently pulled on it, the mouth opened.....see below....
"arrghhh!"

Big teeth drawn, cut out and glued to Johnny Carson.

All the details painted on with acrylics.

No comment.

This is one of my favorites, I think.  (how the news is really made.)

Babs lighting up...cut and paint.

Second in my moveable series. Pull up and down gently on the pull tab at the bottom and Columbo is readjusting his tie, up and down, up and down....see below.....

Hand painted her middle finger on with acrylics. ( I worked sooo hard to match the skin color.)

Painted the fish in her mouth.

Cut outs and painted blood. 

There were more, but these were the only ones I saved.

I always heard chuckles as I hid around the corner while Dad was checking the mail. But he never, ever said anything.

I think he was used to this sort of thing.

What a guy.

Art project.....

After having a discussion about abstract art, I had the students construct these abstract sculptures. The nice this about these is that they can be stood up on their own, or hung from the ceiling.

Cut 12 Strips of white paper for each student...2” x 12”, stacked on top of each other and stapled together at one end.

(In the photo it looks like there is one strip of white paper....there really are 12 pieces there. Biggify and see...)

Prepare Multi colored strips of Railroad board (sorta thin colored cardboard)(google it..) , 3” wide x 20 (+)” long, one for each student.

Close up of the stack....

Don’t do anything to the first strip on the stack.

Take the second strip and start rolling, bending, folding, twirling etc. into some design. Make sure the ‘strip’ folding keeps the strip aligned in a straight line. (you don't want your strips going to the right or left and then sticking out all over the place later.) (well, maybe you do!)

Two strips folded or curled....

Do the same type of thing to all the rest of the strips except for the last one.

When all the middle strips are manipulated, staple the top and bottom strips to each other at the opposite end of the first staple.

Manipulate the designs happening within the top and bottom strips to get the look you want.

Close up of stapled end....

Select a strip of 3” wide railroad board in the color and length of your choice.

‘Fence in” the white paper construction with the cardboard and decide how big a ‘fence’ you are going to make around it.

You decide this by tightening the 'fence' and looking at the resulting design within the cardboard ring.
The smaller and tighter you make the circle, the more the design gets compacted.

Mark off where you want the strip to end for the size you pick. Actually cut it a little bigger so you have a place to glue it together to make the ring. There should be just a little overlap. Secure with 2 paper clips until the glue dries.

Here I glued three of mine together to make an interesting mobile.

This took less than one 80 minute period. They came out great and it was a good project to do early in the semester because even the 'nervous' artists were successful.

P.S. Don't even ask me why my fonts are different sizes and colors....as my student's say, " I didn't do it."

I don't have time to figure it out.......!