Painty Painting Times

Done! 

Flying Fish - my collaboration with shaper Paul Jensen

Details. 

Took the board to Paul's house, where Mike Cummins expertly applied the fiberglass and epoxy. I'm trying to look super casual, but am internally freaking out that the epoxy might make some of the blue acrylic run. It didn't! Hooray.

Phase one of 'glassing'. More epoxy and sanding to come.

We're all heading down to San Francisco for the big show on June 9th. Meet me at the Driftwood Salon! Now: time to tend to the very neglected vegetable garden. Next up: Slim's hyena tattoo.

Slowly Slowly

Making progress on the Utter/Jensen collaboration for the Board Aid Benefit! Slow progress:

This is the tedious part, which involves my own special (see: painstakingly laborious) technique of something akin to 'Medieval Silkscreening'. The fun part comes later, in the decorating, or actual painting.. loose brushy good times. 

I am so behind on the garden. If I have a second today I will plant onions. But most likely I'll be back in the studio, hunched over a surfboard with masking tape stuck all over my body. Two days left to finish.

Hello There

Last evening turned out to be one of the most magical and weird nights I've had in a long time.. the kind of specialness that only happens when you combine things like: a casino out in the boonies, Cheap Trick, an incredible funk cover band (seriously! the horn section!!), the mason county freak scene, absolute minimal concert security, finding a drummer you thought you lost ten years ago, and a posse of friends you've known for almost 20 years that let you (I mean, me) be a total ecstatic jump-up-and-down-screaming-fangirl without judgement. With encouragement!

My piece of flair. Too bad Ringo peed on my Cheap Trick shirt years ago.. AND my Ace Frehely shirt! Bad cat. 

I'm not sure how to describe the 'locals' in Mason County. Lets just say they keep it extremely real, country-style. Things such as 'Hipness' and 'Looking Cool' are not on the radar. Its very refreshing!

Homemade inkjet iron-on transfers? Check!

So I lasted sitting in my assigned cheap bleacher seat for the first three songs.. song number three was He's A Whore, and that's when my inability to contain my complete enthusiasm broke new levels of ridiculousness. After observing that the staff security didn't seem to care where anyone sat, I just boogied right on down the middle aisle of the floor, right up to the front section, while they played an amazing rendition of Need Your Love. It was all very cinematic and surreal, with half of the audience sitting down! Right there in the front! So I jumped up and down and waved my hands in the air to make up for them.

Yes, Robin Zander is wearing a really weird Dream Police-meets-Sgt. Peppers sparkly leather outfit. It was a little alarming. But his voice is still SO GOOD he is allowed to wear whatever crazy ensemble he wants! He apparently also has two children named Robin, odd.

My pal and neighbor Curtis met RZ in the parking lot later (the band was most likely on their way to an after-show pizza party) and got the palm-autograph pictured below. He has a lot of tattoos, including some Doc Dart homages, and is getting this inked today. Wow! Bold.

Thank you Kamilche! Thank you Cheap Trick! Fell apart, broke my heart, need your lah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ahve. Man, Rick Nielsen wrote some jams. Some of the best and strangest power pop! 

Diving In

....And I'm back!

That's right, I BEAT THE TOOTH! Advantage: Utter. I played the waiting game, and it worked (for now). No more exploding jaw/sinus/eyeball pain! All it took was a steady supply of ibuprofen and my own steely, grim determination. SO. Back to work. Painting this guy:

Its hard to tell by this picture, but that is a hollow, wooden surfboard built by hand by this legendary man, and its really quite beautiful all on its own. But I've been asked to deface it with paint (for an excellent cause), so here I go..

Step one: mask off the rails and dive in with an orangey-red. 

Step two: draw some vague waves. Surfers love waves! I actually have no plan for this board. I'm just starting with waves and going from there. That's how I roll when I paint.. very little preliminary planning. Although this uncouth method has backfired on me many times, I still gravitate towards spontaneity.

Day one, waves nearly complete. Next step? Hmmm. Need to walk in the woods and think for a bit. Stay tuned! And meet me in San Francisco on June 9th if you wanna hang!

ed. note: the only thing that is freaking me out is that this board is REALLY expensive. usually i paint on $5 paper! paul's boards are in museums. crazzzzzzzy.

Oral History

I was lucky to be born a healthy kid: good ticker, straight legs (well, one knee a little knocked-in), excellent vision, but in a certain department I was lacking in quality genetics, and am still lacking: The Teeth. My own little scourge. As a child, they grew in all crooked, or conversely didn't want to fall out (double sets on the bottom front row, yanked before I could terrify my classmates with my shark-ness). I got braces, and had them for SIX YEARS to straighten out the graveyard. I actually love crooked teeth on others, always have. But my own were not so...  pleasing to the eye. 

Can you see what's starting to happen here? Yikes.

A friend of mine once had the theory that the youngest child (I was the baby out of 4 tots) gets all the 'leftover' genes, with mixed results. I got: bad teeth (everyone else = perfecto), hazel eyes (weird), TOWERING HEIGHT (I'm 5'5", an Amazon in this family's land of 5'0" women!), and a penchant for loud guitars. I can't complain too much. This week has been a challenge, however. The Olde Wisdom Tooth is poking its cranky little head out again, ripping through my gum tissue, and it shouldn't be a big deal, but it is. Today, I came to the bottom of a 500-count bottle of ibuprofen. Holy crap. Where did it all go? Can't really concentrate, no painting, blah blah blah. Just a painful little hot poker, crabbing at my face all day long, causing a feeling that my lower jaw might explode. Never got the wisdom teeth taken out, didn't have the money, and they didn't appear until my mid-20's. But I'm starting to go here again:

No. No sad cat.

What to do? Give in, get it yanked? I'm sure if I wait a couple of weeks it will get better! Ha. Ha ha. Take it away, Ian + company. In the meantime, I'll just stay doped up on the ibuprofen, and eat Soft Foods. Tonight's Soft Food: Pasta and Cashew 'Cheese', with cherry tomatoes, green olives and albacore. Recipe to follow!

Here's the recipe for the Cashew Cheese, everything else is up to you. If you are a weirdo like me and actually LIKE rice pasta, go for this one or the TJ's fusilli (not the penne.. mushy/gross).

1 cup raw cashews, soaked in water for an hour or two

8 oz silken or soft tofu

2-3 cloves garlic 

1/3 cup nutritional yeast, or more to taste

salt or Bragg's aminos

splash of cider vinegar

Drain the cashews and throw all the ingredients together into an old yogurt tub or some other vessel. Use an immersion blender to pulverize until smooth, add some more water until you achieve your preferred consistency. Add to cooked/drained pasta, stir in 'fixins', bake in casserole dish at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Douse liberally with Tabasco and enjoy!  

Into The Abyss

About to embark on a Heavy Metal Date to Seattle. The things I do for love. These guys will be performing:

Hmmm. I predict epic people watching at this event. Hessian Obsession style! Will report later on the male-to-female ratio of the crowd. Educated guess: 9 to 1. But I could be wrong..

These men will also be performing. JT is so excited he is going to wear his thrifted Opeth sweatshirt!

Post-Metal Recap: I did not follow the dress code! You are supposed to wear a black hoodie w/ black band t-shirt peeking out to what we will now classify as an 'adult metal' show. I wore a bright red jacket. Totally NOT COOL! The male-to-female ratio seemed a little closer to 19 to 1. Yet there were no 'bro' vibes, such as at the Slayer show I saw a while back. A very polite audience. The sound was terrible, but the venue was nothing more than a glorified airplane hangar, so that was to be expected. Not to be expected, however, was the volume of the show. So quiet! 'Casino Level', as we call it around here. You could comfortably chat to your neighbor while someone was shredding their guitar onstage. Weird! Also.. apologies to the Swedish band Ghost, but I honestly thought they were playing Duran Duran's 'Rio' for a moment, which was confusing with all the dark robes and face paint and whatnot. Points for theatrics and costumes and incense, but dudes.. you gotta up the metal if you want to be ghoulishly frightening! Then Mastodon played for an hour and it was 'good', I just got bored. I think when you're playing 120 downstrokes per minute or whatever, it impedes your stage presence somehow. SO it was especially surprising to me when the final band, Sweden's (again! the swedes with their polished impeccable shit. i'm a swede, i need more of that discipline) Opeth actually held my attention. They are really good! What made them rule, most of all, was the singer/guitarist. Not only did he wear a KISS t-shirt, he was ridiculously polite and funny and charismatic and self-depricating, and stopped between each song to take on one or all of those characteristics instead of just blasting through the set. MEHHHHHTALLLLLLLLLL!

oh -- also the drummer of Opeth was a shirtless flaxen-haired unicorn, which only added to the unexpected awesomeness.

¡Cuidado! ¡Topas!

Dreaming of the Yucatan, where many things look like this:

Or this:

Where cemeteries are cheery..

.. and tooth pulling is cheap:

Mr. Cats lives here.

And magicians haunt pyramids. 

All the Mayan villages with their dogs and topas and cenotes and sweet ladies who try to understand our broken espanol..

.. each one specializing in hamacas, zapatos, or guayabreras. The hamacas are my favorite. Oh Tixkokob! Oh Valladolid! Oh tacos de pavo and Xtabentun... dreaming again. Tip: this is a great book to read while traveling in Mexico.

WANT WANT WANT

You guys, my birthday is coming up this year! Usually I say 'your presence is my presents' (wha-whaaaa), but this time I want A Gift:

Its the MINT twin to my SG!! 1985, 'polaris white' (which mysteriously changes to butter yellow if you sweat enough on it). For sale in Gig Harbor, only an hour away!! Damn you, craigslist. And, seriously, its $1150? Wow. I've never spent over $500 on any instrument (except for that ill-fated experiment with a Gibson Les Paul Jr, what a bad idea). And why would I want the EXACT SAME (except: my crazy hardshell Terminator 2 case is red inside) GUITAR? Because I break strings like its going out of style, and switching out mid-song to the same samey would be the best. Its one in the morning and I am obsessing on this guitar. Goodnight!

4/29 ed. note: looks like one of you bought it for me! THANK YOU. I can hardly wait for September.

Talkin' 'Bout the Taurus

One of the most exciting things to happen to me in a long, long time has occured!! I am dabbling in gouache! Today, for the first time. I've been painting in acrylic forever but finally decided to experiment. The results are thus:

I picked up an old, neat book about matadors at the library book sale today, and used it as inspiration for this exercise. Black gouache on watercolor paper.. so fun to actually draw with a paintbrush instead of blocking in sections of colors for hours and hours! This was accomplished in one little afternoon! Now, it is rough.. my drawing skills are pretty withered and getting used to a new medium is challenging (how do you fix mistakes w/ gouache??). I also have a really hard time staying away from color, so I decided to see if you can paint acrylic over gouache (yes you can!). I feel like the possibilities are limitless. I'm so excited to have given it a whirl. The only questions I have are: how to eliminate drag on the brush without losing the opacity of the paint? I suppose the answer is using a smooth surface, like illustration board. Hopefully more gouachey good times to come!

Grey Skies Again and Always

If you play all three of these songs at once, it kind-of sounds like how I feel today. A little restless. And its pouring outside.

I was actually searching for The Bats 'The Black and the Blue' for the middle slot, but couldn't find it online. The Go-Betweens will have to do. I love that Bats song though.. perfect for today. Maybe I need to double up on my Vitamin D intake?

Also my website is down for a few days while I switch servers.. hopefully back up soon with some much needed updates!