Looking Closely

Today's forest find:


Little pinecone rafts, with tiny white mushroom travelers!

Group and Sort

Deadlines are fast approaching!


7 paintings. 3 mini-paintings. One marathon framing session on 10/4. Writing the dreaded 'Artists' Statement'. Making little tags for the walls. Pricing? Shopping for snacks. Need something to wear other than jeans and t-shirt. Sending invites. Hanging posters. Olympian article? Owls need feet. Rent. Basic Health application. Temp corporate job for benefits?? Tooth crown. Paintings.

Oh, and also I need a jumpsuit.

Thirty-2bular!

Apologies, once again, for my absence! My tooth, and the upcoming art show, have been keeping me very busy..


..and guess what, today's my bday! I'm going to clean the house, work on paintings, and then eat crab with my friends. And now, eating comes with a very special treat: no tooth pain! I got the root canal yesterday, it was awesome, half an hour in and out, plus a free mousepad. The endodontist seriously made me take it even when I said I didn't need it. And a letter-opener! I think for $1200 I should at least get something I could use.. like a shot of whiskey or a coupon for ice cream or something.

I'm gearing up for the weekend: painting, painting, painting, and then the No Age house show on Sunday. Hopefully my camera will have come back to life by then, as once again the old cybershot3000 is on the fritz!! What gives?

I'm Keeping My Baby

Today I entered the Lair of the Goth Dentist! In Shelton! It was as rad as a terrible, doomed trip to the dentist could possibly be. For one thing, the dental assistants all wear purple and black scrubs. For another, the waiting room has a big dark facade with a little triangle that you look through to talk to the very friendly secretary. As I was waiting for Dr. Duane himself to enter (would he be wearing a cape? eyeliner??), I noticed there was something oddly comforting about the tidy black walls of the exam room. It all seemed so much more appropriate and soothing then the stark, beige offices of 'normals'.. no sailboat prints, weird teddy bears holding toothbrushes, or cartoon teeth holding dental floss for that matter. No forced cheeriness. I appreciate that from a dentist.


Dr. Duane (sadly without cape and/or eyeliner) was really rad and straightforward about the plight of little molar #2, upper right. It's all kinds of diseased, infected, dying. He showed me my x-ray, where my nerve was up into my sinus, then explained something I didn't quite grasp about my northern-euro cheekbones and giant sinus cavities that would make pulling the tooth really risky.. the bone is so thin between my sinus and my teeth that pulling it could cause serious damage in the future, something about sinus implants, something about $20,000 surgery! And I don't think he was trying to scam me into signing up for some goth root canal action, because he doesn't do root canals. I have to go to a normie over in Lacey.


He did offer to stave off the impending root canal for up to six months by stuffing some sort of Victorian herbal remedy up in there. Crazy! Goth Dentist is awesome. He told me to pretend I was a log being hollowed out for a canoe (in reference to my upcoming root-scrubbing, not just in general) which I enjoyed. Anytime someone tells me to pretend to be a log, they pretty much win me over.

I am a log. A $2000 log of oral health.

Floss the Pain Away

This morning I made a dental promise: Wednesday at 9 a.m., I will visit the Goth Dentist himself, owner of 30 pitch-black rental properties in Olympia.


I'm not excited. But I'm less excited about facing another day of 2000 mg of ibuprofen to control the lightning rod of metallic blinding white pain that shoots through my face, jaw, and head. Just take it, please take it out and put it in a little blue plastic suitcase as my prize and send me on my way. My liver will say THANK YOU.

One Hundredth!

Welcome to my 100th bloggg post! Crazy. I started this whole blogging business at the urging of my Poketo friends, Angie and Ted, so that I had some sort of public format to show what I was working on art-wise.. it's morphed into a little more of a peek into my daily world, which coincidentally involves a ton of stuff-making, color-mixing, and paint wrangling. Can I also just randomly talk about how much I'm in love with my studio right now?


Indeed I can, because it's my blogggggg! Weird! I used to think that blogging, livejournal, etc. were purely reserved for narcissistic freakazoids, which is probably at least partly still true, but I've also just really come to love the ritual of taking pictures, recording daily adventures, and then putting it all together in one place. Without all the paperwork that is usually involved..


..because, as you might know, I have way too much paperwork already going on! Plus I have a strange love of typing. I think I may transfer my typing skills to piano someday. It's the same thing, no?


So happy anniversary, Snaz-Bou, and here's to another 100. Clink!

Clogging it Up

I do other things besides paint, letterpress, and watch Sean Penn movies. For example, this morning I mail-ordered clogs.


I have found that as each year passes, the more I want things around me to be slip-on and non-slip. Comfort and safety combined with minimal fussing. Though I have not reached the Comfy Pants® stage of my thirties, the one involving elastic waistbands. Not yet.

Bizzeeee Bizzeeee

So much going on!! I am hard at work in the studio, prepping paintings for the Oct. 5th Artswalk and printing some letterpress posters to advertise. And my new Kill Rock Stars tshirts are out!


A tattoo jaguar and a mess of busy bees for your punk-rock t-shirt pleasure! On super-soft paper-thin 50/50 tees.. yummm.

Lately it seems that all my hands want to do is letterpress.. I've been hiding out in Community Print, the unbelievable printmaking co-op that is housed downstairs from my painting studio. There is something so immediately satisfying about setting type; the mechanical pickiness combined with a freedom of graphic design that is magnetic. I've said it before, I need to be working with my hands to be a happy customer!


The show isn't for a while, and I haven't even finished the paintings.. but making the flyers is so satisfying! I really have been painting though.. here's a preview of the new letterpress/acrylic bird experiments that are happening..