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i was going to make a story about it...the entertainer turned subway driver. The n i realized it would probably suck. Anyway... he sounded as if he was auditioning for a radio/dj gig. Telling us to "keep the smiles on our face", "its a lovely lovely day", "beautiful sunshine" and so on. There was little dead air on SBWY radio it seemed. I suppose he did his job because i smiled. Many people though looked too afraid to smile...to let him in. Though i appreciate your enthusiasm Spiral...the week is sucking ass just fine for me. |
Glad to hear that the subway gentleman made you smile though. I find that a smile goes a long way to making you feel better (cheesy as *that* sounds). I hope the rest of your week picks up. Was it anything specific? Or just duldums? I think I'll head out to sushi; it should make me feel better. I have become an instant addict. Although, to be honest, I am still very much an amateur. Oh well, how else to learn, eh? |
its just that way. im completely comfortable with it. it should pick up around saturday when i travel to Ventura for a birthday party. Not a close friend, but a solid one. I made some photographs for her. Actually a triptych. Im quite proud of it as it has cleaned up nicely. 3 8x10 frames with 4x4 black and white warmtoned images with my naked wife. She has this awesome 40s metal desk and fan on as accessories. What is super about this arrangement with the pictures is, you can put them in any order on the wall (each framed seperately) in fact I think thats the highlight of the triptych. After finishing the matts, i sat there and arranged and rearranged them for sometime. I numbered them and sent them on their way. My wife says I'm too generous with my work, but what good are these images sitting in my head and negative binder? So, when I see her face when shes sees MY WIFE'S ASS and TITS FRAMED (HA!) things should pick up. I like seeing people's faces at times like that. |
that made me happy, even though the little fucker cut a bit too short. but my hair grows fast, so thats ok. i went to this new joint in my hood called Rudy's. Its all the hipster rage. They have them in Seattle too...coffeecut. $20 flat for a cut. I appreciate that. Its a decent deal...when you weight the options for a mancut these days. Old school barber shop=$10 for the basic snip and shave...my hair has more complex needs than that. The MegaSuperGreat Cut joints=$15 but the Armenian ladies are really rough and lecture me about my dry scalp. Salon=$40 though my hair is not this complex you do get a really good cut, but the latte and obnoxious music I could do without. So that leaves Rudy's=$20+tip decent cut, no frills, no lectures and good conversation about the neighborhood. My wife said my hair makes me look like i just came back from war...meaning its not TOO short, as if its grown out but I look like a pilot from the 40s. Flying the friendly red skies! |
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woke up this morning and puked, which wasn't all that fun, but i put a good dent in my liquor supply last night, while i made homemade granola, strawberry coconut rice pudding, packed boxes, and cried on the phone with k. been feeling like shit all day. not like hungover shit, but just sort of generally out of it. fuzzy brain, no appetite. two more days of work stress. i've been emotional taboot. i cry at the drop of a hat. this is what k said last night that made me cry: i can't wait to kiss you in that gentle, easy way that only comes after hours of exhaustive love-making, in a way that conveys nothing but pure, natural love. and i already know exactly the way that i'll hold you and the feel of the skin on your back. and he said more stuff after that, but that's when i started crying so i can't remember the rest. and i cannot believe that someone spoke words like that to me, and meant it. i cannot believe how romantic he is, all of the time. i cannot believe how much love he showers on me. i i even got my sex drive back. it's unbelievable. it's so great to be so whipped on each other. and i'm sure it's entirely sickening that i'm sharing such gooby stuff with you all, but it's like i need to put it down in writing, i need to get it down on the record. my romantic life has been nothing but disaster after disaster, until finally i gave up altogether. and it's just in that moment when you don't give a flying fuck anymore that the most amazing thing happens and changes your life forever. anyway. i hope this puking thing stops. i'm definitely not pregnant. what needs to happen is for someone to come to my house and get all the liquor out, or i might drown myself in the next few days. |
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actually rhi it was rice pudding. i'll post it anyway, and then if you want strawberry bread pudding too, let me know. Strawberry Cocounut Rice Pudding 1/2 cup uncooked white rice 2 cups water 1 cup sugar 2 pints fresh strawberries, chopped 1 can coconut milk 1 tbs + 1 tea cornstarch 2 large eggs 1/2 cup dessicated raw coconut (optional) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine rice, water, 1/2 cup sugar in a large saucer. Bring to a boil, reduce and simmer until all of the water is evaporated and rice is kinda mushy, about 45 minutes to an hour. Chill rice in the refrigerator for an hour. If you want, you can sprinkle strawberries with 1/4 cup sugar, or not, depending on how sweet you like your rice pudding. Dissolve cornstarch in a very small amount of cold water, like a couple teaspoons of water or so. In a small saucer, heat coconut milk, 1/4 cup sugar, and cornstarch. Bring to a boil. In a medium bowl whisk eggs well. Add about a cup of the coconut milk mixture to eggs and pour back into pan. Bring to a low boil and cook for about ten minutes. When the mixture is really really really thick, remove from heat. Add rice and strawberries and dessicated coconut to the coconut milk. Pour into a glass baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. Allow to cool on counter for an hour, then cover and refrigerate overnight. |
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If you use frozen strawberries, they are way more watery, so i suggest you reduce the amount of strawberries to about a pint and use 2 tbs of cornstarch in the recipe and bake for a little longer in the oven. otherwise your pudding will be too soupy. |
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btw, life is almost awesome today. farewell to me luncheon at Bronson's and then tomorrow is my last day, when life becomes officially awesome. i get to sign a contract with the evil bank and charge them $70 an hour to fuck with their website AT MY LEISURE, until they find a replacement. and then i'm off to the big island to do yoga for five days in the middle of the jungle. also, no barfing this morning! |
Thanks for the recipe -- I'll have to scour around for a can of coconut milk, but this might be the excuse I need to go to the gourmet grocery store up the street. |
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God, where's Margret? |
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do you not have "ethnic" foods aisles in your grocery stores? and your produce sucks, too, right? why would anyone live anywhere but here? |
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rhi, you could probably use half n half instead of coconut milk, if you really can't find coconut milk. |
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My mother lives in Boston. She goes to Northeastern University. However, I believe she'd make a poor substitute for me, if I may have the nerve to say so, so I don't recommend that you look her up. |
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no way in HELL am i advocating milk. i'm just saying if she can't find coconut milk, there is an alternative. i was actually going to suggest soy milk, but it's too watery. |
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i get really jealous when sorabjiites meet and i can't be there. |
i've wanted to meet you for ages you were always a well written character in a book whose words aren't written down yet. that sounds cheesy but, wtf. really. feeling massachusetts. those young girl not quite rock stars. not that young, really. but that feeling. i'll shut up now. do you visit your mother? |
note: this does not include coconut juice, coconut cream, coconut sport, coconut sport balls, coconut sport strings, coconut meat, powdered coconut, etc. but there are SIX brands of canned coconut milk there: chaokoh royal blossom savoy aroy-d madame wong mae ploy I bought bing cherries and a banana. |
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maybe it's a west coast thing, cyst. i could live in seattle. i knew that already, i just forgot. i lived in woodinville briefly. woodenville? wankerville. always. |
specialty foods are not as available as they are here. hippies and west coast types demand more. yeah me too sarah, i get jealous. besides movies and nate heather, tell us about waht you did and saw out here? It's beautiful up that way, did you get to the beach? |
seattle weather generally sucks. this place is expensive and cold -- it doesn't have much to recommend it to most, I think. but, yeah, seattle and the bay area (and also l.a. and vancouver and portland) are going to have larger asian food selections than anywhere else on the continent. pacific rim trading, large asian populations, affluent consumers, etc. I would miss all the good thai food if I left. |
i saw my sister. her fiance. they are strange together to me. she took me horseback riding. i used to really like it [like 15 years ago. jesus am i that old?] but after 2 minutes all i could think of was how ridiculous it was. horses. horses that live there and eat stuff and are taken care of, just so dumbasses like me can ride in a circle. but the trails were beautiful. i'd rather have been walking. some regular sf stuff. no beaches |
i'm more interested in good produce than specialty foods. specialty foods can be ordered. i guess produce can be too. |
i don't know how much of a henry miller fan you are, but there is an awesome gallery and library there. You can get prints of some of fine watercolors for reasonable prices. there is also a wonderful restaurant and inn up there on the hilltop called Ventana....great place for wine and lunch...overlooking the ocean. |
but it failed. the plan failed. |
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I refuse to have a print in my house. I'd rather blank walls than fake art. |
miller gave most of his watercolors away to his friends and what not, so there arent many originals out there. a buddy who goes to big sur every year to "retreat" picked up a miller watercolor before people caught on and they started charging mega money for them. |
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the bay area sucks ass, even the city. big, gigantic, hairy ass. i enjoy short visits, but could never ever live there. *maybe* napa valley. maybe. once you get inland a little bit, you're golden. oh, and i've camped in big sur, and that rocks. seattle is... is... it's fine. it's not exciting, it's just fine. a bit too full of itself sometimes. portland rocks the mic. i'm anxious to explore the south. louisiana and mississippi and tennessee. |
It made me think I could fly. It made me think I should fly. I'd be walking between hotels at night, going to various technical sessions for the conference I was attending, and I'd get an urge to rise up the side of the buildings, skim along the brick and stone and glass, touching it lightly just to keep my balance. I wanted to look down at the people walking below and listen to their conversations and thoughts. Something about the city made me think I could do this. Something about the night, the chill, the babbling in many languages I couldn't understand: the language of bums pissing on the street out in the open, of young geeks wandering the streets in packs looking for any kind of stimulation, of the cars trying to navigate streets which intersect at crazy angles in all three dimensions. A little bit before then and very often since I've been getting constant feelings of deja vu. I've dreamed many moments of the past two months before, in bits and pieces, here and there, over the past decade or so. The past minute was one of those moments. I've written this post before in a dream, years ago. Something is converging for me, soon. I don't know what. |
the bay area is. it can't be beat. |
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seattle sucks. portland kicks seattle's ass. vancouver b.c. kicks portland's ass. based on places i've been, if i could retire today, it'd be the north shore of oahu or motherfucking new york city. based on places i haven't been, it would be anywhere but on this planet. sarah, i think i have a picture of myself at bronson's. was it bronson's? hmm. . . i also went to wisteria when i was there. very lame. |
what about woodblock prints? etchings? linoleum cuts? monotypes? drypoint? would you have one of those? |
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I buy Kleenex brand tissues, is that acceptable? I was referring to prints in the context of the discussion. The other types of work you're discussing seem like they could be more classified as original works. I know they're not strictly, but they're a big leap from a lame mass reproduction of a work by a dead artist. I suppose you're right that I shouldn't take the word "print" in vain. I won't do it again. Ever. Cross my heart and hope to die. |
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Did you want a white wig and gavel to go with that burger, Nate? blahblahblah |
i don't eat burgers. |
it's pure bliss. you got a problem with pure bliss, fucker? |
heh |
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To: Sunshine Artist, Reader’s Letters Re: “The Cruel Rule” on reproductions From: Maria Arango, Printmaker I read with amusement the designation of the practice of prohibiting or limiting reproductions as: “the cruel rule.” I am a printmaker, the kind with cherry wood splinters embedded in my hands (I mostly do woodcut prints), over-developed shoulder muscles from rubbing the back of the paper with a baren, and a permanent residue of ink under my fingernails. First, please understand I have absolutely nothing against painters and watercolorists making reproduction of their works and selling them in the same shows I attend, postcards and all. I too feel that many attendees want to walk away from a booth with something but cannot always afford an expensive original. Lately I have been hand-printing smaller “card-prints” to boost my sales. I have much against reproductions being called “prints.” Stone/plate lithographs, etchings and engravings, woodcuts and wood engravings, serigraphs and collagraphs…those are prints. I’m not making this up, check the latest issue of Art Law, by the Practicing Institute of Law for complete definitions, born out of litigation. A “limited edition” of 5,000 makes as much sense as buying one of 10,000,000 bean bag babies for their collector’s value. Nothing against disseminating images to those who can’t afford originals, but they are being called “prints,” thereby raising the hairs in the back of many a printmaker’s neck. The fault mostly lies with the printing industry found out they could make reproductions for dollars, sell them to artists for much much more than that, who then have to cover their costs by selling them for more than a copper engraver could ever sell a drypoint. A printmaker is left trying to educate the public on an issue that is so deliberately confused that we are the ones left looking like we’re nuts. So what’s my point? When you feel that no-reproductions-allowed is “a cruel rule,” think of this: - - I now have to call my works “limited edition original fine woodcut prints” which no longer fits on my business card. There was a time in the art world when saying the word “print” already implied such qualifiers. - - Had painters and watercolorists called their reproductions ‘reproductions’ from the beginning, there would be no need for a “cruel rule” today. - - People walk into my booth and expect a wood engraving which took 40 hours to engrave to be sold for $12.00 because it is, after all, an 8” x 10”. - - I could call my oil-based ink prints, “original oil-on-paper works” and sell them for twice the price thereby still beating out any oil painter in the circuit. People would then wonder why that original oil in that other booth should be worth more than mine. But I don’t do that, because that would be artificially placing a higher value on a work that does not merit the name. And that, you see, would be wrong. A print is a print. A reproduction is a reproduction. It is about time that the finer shows are finally making the distinction between works of art and mass produced (no matter how carefully and expensively) reproductions. Respectfully, Maria Arango, Printmaker www.1000woodcuts.com |
the world is full of ignorant cheap-ass people [and i don't mean to imply patrick] |
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nate quit your bitchin...if anyone is getting their shit fucked its me. |
in my work though...saying prints means originals. Mapplethorpe started out as a photographist, making images with other people's photographs. Collages. I respect the craft agatha and moreso your emphasis. it's good to be authoratative on something, I think. |
everything cat says is mean and rude. when it doesn't seem to be, you have to assume it is going over your head. |
not that there's anything wrong with digital art, but when i slave over a woodcut for days, and then nobody has a clue of what it is that i do, which is in fact one of many age old techniques, it makes me pissy. that's all. |
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i want a bacon cheeseburger o' bliss and i care very much about printmaking, and art. i'd love to see some of your prints, agatha. |
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(heather, please go back to cali. nate's getting difficult to live with.) |
and not in the i'm pissed off at sorabji.com i'm going away kind of way. or in the i'm not going away, i'm just not posting so please say nice things about me kind of way. or in the i'm never coming back kind of going away. please. continue as normal. |
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nate, you're descending... you're experiencing transference. what agatha said. aren't you glad you have the foundation of sage sorabjiite psychology to help you get through it all? whooo boy. |
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btw, i feel barfing coming on. shit. |
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What a mean and rude thing to say. |
I get irritated about the print thing too, since although I mostly make broadsides, I do woodblocks also. And people confuse various methods of printing all the time. For example, I work in a printshop. People assume I work for a newspaper. I don't. I don't even work for a lithographer. I don't work for an offset printers. I don't work at an intaligo printers. I work at a letterpress print shop, but since most people don't even know what letterpress is, I have to explain my job for half an hour whenever someone asks me what I do. Oh well, I guess I chose this job. Oh, and I HATE the Napa valley. The Napa valley is a big fat pile of SHITE. |
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except, i think sarah really was going to puke. she's been puking lately a lot. i don't think she was puking in reference to my printing rant. we can rant anyhow, though! it's the weekend, and i have allergies, and i am pms, and i have been cleaning, so i think a good rant session is in order. |
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I bought a largeass set of water-mixable oil paint a few months ago and i opened it and didn't dare touch them for weeks. They smell so good. I just ran out to my car to rescue my gouache tubes that i forgot in the backseat. It's so hot out there i feared they would be destroyed. The fuckers. If you don't know what gouache is, concider yourself a lucky bastard. It smells like chalk and ass, and it controls YOU, not the other way around. For a moment i considered leaving them all there to die, but there is nothing worse than coming across dead art supplies. That's the kind of thing that could really get to you. Especially since these pain jems in paint form cost $6-$12 per 14ml tube. Yes, 14ml. Just slightly larger than your average lip gloss tube. Don't even ask how much the titanium white and crimson red cost. I hate them, but i love them too. They're on my desk and i'm fretting over them like a mother hen. Please cool down, please? I'm sorry about all those things i said. Don't die.... i know of printmaking. It is a fine and respectable craft indeed. i have never heard a Gratefull Dead song. |
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holy fuck a moley. that's all i have to say. |
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loves them womens |
I've been bookmarking a lot of old threads lately. "you got a problem with pure bliss, fucker?" -dave that's super:) gouache still sucks. i stopped using it. |
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This one reminds me of the last time I talked to Cat on the phone, sitting in my apartment complex parking lot in Birmingham. |
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since the 'print' discussion I've bought a few reproductions of some Rothko paintings. They are nicely framed. and I could go for a cheeseblissburger right now. |
Thanks for remembering. Man, I was a major bitch in this thread. Well, probably not just in this particular thread. I still like paint on my art though. |
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heather |
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I saw Diego Rivera murals in Mexico City. |
d00d... |
Soon, but not now, I will find time to talk about Kazu and me in Mexico. In short, it was freaking awesome. Two weeks, no fast food restaurants, no billboards, no neon signs, lots of live music and great food. I gained like ten pounds and climbed the third largest pyramid in the world. Everyone should spend at least two weeks in Mexico. But not all at once. Did I miss anything good or dumb? or good and dumb? |
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glad you had such a great time. post pics! d and i are going to mexico for a week in february. last time i was there was 1990, i stayed in cancun and visited the ruins at chichiniza, or however you spell it. what do you recommend? |
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That cool page is nifty and cool! |
I want to go to Mexico. My school is having a class in Romania, and I'm fantasizing about taking it. |
Outside of Mexico City, you definitely have to go to Teotihuacan and climb the Pyramid of the Sun. It's the third biggest pyramid on the planet, and the rest of the site is astounding. At one point, it was the biggest city on the planet. Tula is worth seeing too, for the carvings and the giant statues. I highly recommend San Miguel for relaxing, great food, and if you like artists' markets. I'm going to look into finding a place to post my photos soon. Patrick, does the place that you use to post your baby photos cost anything? |
"I don't want people to think I'm difficult" Um, agatha, you could take a crap on the front desk, piss in my bed and throw eggs at my cats and I wouldnt think your difficult. most would agree im sure. ya dig? its ok to stick your neck out from time to time. unlike me, when you do, people are more likely to pay attention. |
the prints vs prints thing bothers me too :) |
I had a roommate whose cats would piss on my bed all the time. It really blew, considering the fact that I only had one change of bedding at that point in my life. Now we have two sets of sheets- living the high life, we are. |