I'm sittin on top of the world.......

Well, sort of :-)
It's August and the heat has abruptly given us a reprieve and we are not wasting one single moment of it building this house. Doing everything ourselves has taken us a long time for this baby (we broke ground in June of ... lets see.... 2008) and we don't know when we'll be finished EXACTLY, we think end of Sept. but who knows.
    Septic: Done. Plumbing: Done. Wiring: 3/4 done. Insulation: about 1/2 done.
    I spent the gorgeous day today painting the deck joists as our deck has a garage under it and you'll be able to see them when you pull up as our house is built into a hill. We took the cat out today (her third trip) and she loved it and was completely at home and wandered out onto the deck and we finally had to grab her and bring her back in before she thought it was okay to take off (with the coyotes near us and there are ALOT of coyotes, well, she'd be a nice little snack in no time). 

Speaking of coyotes, we saw two baby deer out in the road today, no mama in sight. The were confused and very very young and little twins and they took off together stumbling into a cornfield and out of sight and we both looked at each other and said the same thing... "Oh man, they will SO be eaten shortly poor things".  Life is hard in the country I'm discovering. Alot of bad things happen to alot of animals out here and  you can't help but feel their pain. I hope they make it the little sweeties. The odds are against them but I so hope they make it. (DON"T COME OUT AT NIGHT!)

I have been having the very best time with art lately. I think it's related to the positive way I'm living my life, and eating, and the exercise and well, all of it. I appreciate every moment of my life right to the core.  I've also met the most amazing women at Wild Precious, Effy and her crew, fellow artists who are more than fellow artists, they are kindred spirits and I'm already feeling like I've known them forever. A great, positive shot of adrenalin that I did need, art is a solitary experience for the most part and going "arting" with the gals is the most fun! Thankyou WP "esscees!" Thanks for taking me in from the cold!

I'm very lucky. I've always been a very positive person and seldom am depressed or down at all (when I am I can barely cope because it's so unusual for me, I find it totally debilitating. ). I was born this way, perpetually happy.  I am making sure this entire crazy art/building journey is the best days of my life (actually all days you have in front of you are the best days of your life, I've always thought), but in this case I am making sure I appreciate not having to go and work a job as if I'm on summer vacation every single day. I work hard and in order to live this "hippie" happy lifestyle I HAVE to do alot of work for it, but I do it cheerfully and I'm truly grateful to have this chance at this life. Who knows what comes at you in life, right? Making homemade bread, salsas and teas instead of code meetings? YES!

The other night I painted these dancers. Sort of got inspired and rememberd how much I used to love the costumes and the sequins and I wanted to do something sort of abstracish yet not..... I've gotten lots of positive support and feedback on them so I went ahead and threw them up on etsy as prints (I couldn't bear to part with the originals, there's something about them.... I put them up in the "Angieclementine" shop.) :-)
   Well, anyway, I'm rambling. I've also been working on wood blocks and texture, thanks once again to things I'm learning from "the ladies"... Courage is a recurring theme for me lately, probably because of the fact that building our own house and forging out into this art thing takes alotta "cahunas" but also because all of us, every single one of us, face all kinds of crap in our lives and it takes courage to just get through it all to get to that golden nugget called happiness. Also "Courage My Love" was a store I once went to in
Toronto that I used to love. If you're still there, props to you my friends!

The Heat Comes (and stays and stays and stays) and this and that

The heat has been unrelenting. over 100 heat index. building has been all but impossible but we've managed to keep on building. Today I was staining posts (and using my shirt to wipe the sweat that was dripping off my chin) until I couldn't stand it anymore. Dave had heat stroke last week and was out of commission for 2 days recovering. The heat is suffocating, oppressive, it has a life of it's own.

Due to the creeks near the house we're building being filled mainly with 46 degree artesian spring water, every night now the mist rises out of the creeks, turns into fog that has a life of it's own and spreads out towards us like something out of a horror flick. The cold water hits that warm air (lows of 77 degrees) and condenses into that fog immediately. It comes across the field towards us in soft, undulating waves as if it is truly alive. It is so dark out here (there is only one light off in the distance at our neigbors horse barn), but that light is no match for this fog and soon everything is swallowed and the light itself gives up and disappears into the mist; along with the road, the trees and everything but the night sky filled with thousands of stars, satellites, the occasional plane and comet.

I'm waiting for the mother ship to cruise overhead :-).

In spite of the heat I've still managed to work out, and to do a ton of web coding. I discovered much to my shock, that if I put "Angie Phillips artist" into google, it comes up with the 3rd page of an old website that I haven't updated in years. I only keep it because it holds literally hundreds of photos in the galleries of storage of paintings I did and sold and many of them I don't even remember until I see them. They aren't accessable to the public, they existed only during the time the painting was up for sale and have sat in storage ever since. Who'd have thunk that not even the index.html (the front end) of the site would be what google would have? No idea how it got optimized to show up first but all my testing on various computers shows that yes, indeed, it does, in fact skip the index and the link goes directly to the most outdated page (the site Im talking about is the-fringe-dwellers.com.)

So web coding I've been doing, and I'm not very good but I am competent enough to get it to work and work I have. I've decided to keep this site and use it as a middle man, a "selling" tool to act as a mediary to my 3 etsy shops, since each of the shops has a completely different theme so to speak. I need alot of web organization and so this week I shall push forward on it.

I've been painting as well. And doing other stuff as well. But mostly painting.
DAMMIT I try to not have a "dark" feel to my paintings but I keep on sort of drifting over that way.
Perhaps this week I will only work on things "undark". Or perhaps not :-) It's the heat I say, the dammed heat........

All things unrelated (or disorganization but organized in a strange way)

I've been thinking alot about this lately. I have been trying to focus on getting one idea across before I stumble onto something else but I cannot say how terribly, terribly hard it is. I have been waiting for years to get a chance to pursue art full time and I have so many ideas, wants, wishes and stuff to create with that deciding on what I need to work on is almost impossible.

Oh yes, the "Love never dies" is a print of a painting I did long ago, enhanced and turned into, well, whatever I want with it. I am currently offering it as a print and as a notecard but it was really nice to put words to the idea at long last.

Love never dies is a never ending theme with me. My mother died of cancer and she was pretty much an athiest which made her knowledge of her terminal cancer eat at her in a completely different way than that dammed disease ever did.  In her eyes I saw fear, and doubt and I watched her lovely blue eyes turn inward, into a place that neither I nor anyone else close to her, could follow.  On the day she passed I knew she was gone moments before the phone rang and it was my sister, telling me she was gone. I have incredible faith, not in the traditional way, but in the only way I know and I knew she was okay, and she was set free and that was that. Death to me is never and ending, it's just a transition from one room to another. I didn't learn this in any church, or any book, nor was I ever told this by anyone in this lifetime, that's for sure. I simply brought it with me from someplace else and it's been a truth that has sat in my head for as long as I could think a clear thought. And no, I'm not going to preach anything to anyone  :-). I just paint about it sometimes and I try not to give it the dark edge that so much of my artwork always has.

Since I become a full time artist and woman of, well, wantoness, I have been trying to get everything that's been building in my head out.

I think I need to make dolls. With faces. Painting might be a little two-dimensional for faces although I've been doing some face stuff lately too.

The night comes out here on this land and it is so humid and hot a person could literally cut it with a knife. New moon. Very dark. The coyotes will be thick as thieves tonight, along with everything else that comes out here at night to hunt. At night we are the intruders here and the night is filled with the sounds of things hunting, and other things squealing little horrified squeals of finding themselves the hunted. Life is hard in the country, I'm discovering, for alot of creatures. No, make that for most creatures. Sam lays in the grass in front of the porch (which I'm currently sitting on) and stares out at the night, my silent partner.)

When I look at Sam I know that love never dies. When I think of my Mom I know love never dies.

It's a strangely comforting thought, isn't it?

Pendants

Oh, sweet, sweet fun.
First off, I had a creative spurt and took these wooden african carved pendants and found a delightful stash of old vintage pieces to adorn them with. Pearls, vintage earrings, gold dimensional paint, what's not to love about these? (well, okay if you don't like African carved mask pendants then maybe alot)......
I love old rhinestones and these are especially full of sparkle.  I found them in a glass jar of vintage and antique jewelry at a monestary when I was having a birthday lunch with my friend, Kathy.

I could have stayed there all day, by the way, because the place is just equisite. But fortunately, we both love to root around in old items and double fortunately, Mount Michael has a lovely house you can lunch in complete with tons and tons and tons of wonderful treasures, all for sale. Repurposing them is just an amazing part of the fun and I could play all day long. Who wouldn't love to play in all those jars of sparkling jewels and fun?

Water in, Water out

First of all, Major flooding here. Really serious flooding.
Abridged version:
Record Snowfalls in the Dakotas resulted in Gavin's Point Dam in Yankton, SD overfull to the point of breaking and they opened the floodgates fully over the course of a month or so.
As a result, unprecedented amounts of water hits the Missouri river and the mighty Mo just cannot take it and overflows in a most hideous way. And this overflow will continue probably until August but no one really knows. Considering we've had torrential storms and rain for the last 2 days, I guess it will be a little worse now.
Impact to the build: Nothing (I feel guilty even writing this). We are spring fed and the only interaction our spring has is when the creek it feeds into eventually dumps into the Mo someplace far from our house.
Our spring continues to chug out it's bone-chilling water at the same rate, (5 gal / minute) and when I say bone-chilling I can't say bone-chilling enough. You simply cannot keep your hand in it for longer than maybe 10 seconds without the bones in your hand aching as it goes numb.
Wonderful though, having a water source like that.  And no flooding.

The septic system is in pending the inspection. My darling husband decided he could save money putting the septic in himself and off he went. And it all went something like this: First, the truck broke down and lost a leaf spring. My Xterra has no hitch. We have flooding (as I think I already mentioned) and everything you can imagine that has anything to do with heavy equipment is rented but we end up getting a uhaul, yes, yes that's right, a uhaul, and haul some beat up looking cat out to our land. Our land is on a hill. One hour or so into the digging and I (who by this time is inside the house, up in what will be my art studio, slapping on a coat of paint), hear a strange sort of muffled "OH MY GOD" coming from outside.
   I immediately rush for the stairs expecting the worst, and what I find is the cat on it's side and dave walking very quickly around in circles, shaking his right leg. Yes, he was ejected. He claims he saw the roof of our house for a brief moment as he was catapulted through the air and came vaulting down directly for the septic channels and he did some sort of tuck and twist to save himself (if you knew Dave you'd know how likely that is to have happened exactly that way)... except that he landed with one knee twisted behind him.

Hospital? don't be foolish. When I skewered my food on a metal plate last year through my shoe and had a river of blood (I kid you not, a river), running from my food, Dave wrapped it in saran wrap, drove me home and cleaned the wound himself, telling me "it's a mere flesh wound". (PS I still have strange sensation in that part of the bottom of my foot and I went onto limp for about 4 months but who's counting).

This all happened by the way about 5 days ago. Yes he's still limping and has alot of pain, which
he is controlling wtih pain meds and rediscovering the amazing healing properties of Jack Daniels.

Dogs don't work.

Dog's don't work take 2.

ONWARD BRAVE SOLDIERS:
I have become a late night lurker.  I seldom go to bed now before 2am. Also, there are some really strange noises out on the land, the wind, who knew that the wind sounds like all sorts of things (sometimes screams even). I lay in bed last night telling Dave all the slasher/horror scenarios that go through my mind when I'm out there.
"Jesus. You're creeping me out. Are you afraid to live there?" he asked me, looking a little worried.
"Yes"
"Really afraid?"
"Yes. I keep on seeing things out in the darkness and I imagine the worst. Horrible stuff. Scary, undead stuff . Figures out in the storms, just standing there, off in the fields, staring....".
"Do you not want to live out there now?" (looking at me worriedly again)
I looked at him and smiled. "I think my paintings will be darker than I thought". (oh, he has no idea)....
"Ah..." He smiled too.
I really do imagine all sorts of horrible things, the howling wind, the lightning storms under those huge skies and it is so so so dark out there probably doesnt help things. I should have never read so many horror books or watched so many creepy movies, I'm paying for it now.

The most AMAZING lightning storm the other night. I have never seen anything like it. 8, 9. 10 flashes of lightning at a time, going horizontally across the sky, loops of lightning bending back up to the sky, and clouds so huge and swirling it really was like a scene out of War of the Worlds and I mean the Tom Cruise version which had those magnificent storm effects.
Dave, Amber, the 4 dogs and I sat out on the front porch and watched the lightning in amazement for over an hour, that and the lightning bugs (and there were literally thousands of them out across the fields, as far as the eye could see). Gorgeous. No one else sees this view, because no one else faces into this valley but us so it's like a private little show of glorious lights.  Just the sound of the frogs, crickets and the yipping of the coyotes across the hill as they set off on their nightly hunt.

It is really freaking hot out. And we're both sort of getting tired of this build. And we haven't even started dry-walling yet. But no flooding so I should be grateful right?
right.

I'll meet you anytime you like.... at our Italian restaurant......

.... ah, Billy Joel and the days of old. I cannot hear that song (which is playing now) without remembering Toronto and the 1970's and singing along to that song with my friends while doing things that were, and still are, mostly illegal. I was coerced though, because I am very easily led.  Thats my story and I'm sticking to it :-) Ah, the days of old......

KEVIN BACON: Just read an interview with Kevin Bacon and the fact he almost didn't get the role in footloose because the studio head didn't think he was f**kable enough. Hilarious. For the record, I didn't like footloose, or Kevin Bacon for that matter in those days, or the dancing, the songs or the whole frolic of it all. The river wild, now that was when I realized I actually liked Kevin Bacon because the applie pie face of his made a really really good evil dude and he seemed to really enjoy being evil. Oh yes and stir of echoes. Loved it too, just thought I'd add that.

The HOUSE: We are putting up cedar trees for hand rails. Yes, oh yes we are. Dave got them from his friend Pete who cut down a bunch and they were exceptionally straight and the perfect diameter for handrails. So they're up. And of course we have no idea what we'll do between the top and bottom rail, that's sort of "to be determined" at this point but that's the kinda stuff that doesn't cause us one spec of concern. Putting in the septic, that concerns us, considering we've never installed one before and have no clue.  Oh yes and affording all this since we are, in fact, building this house as we go along.

5 YEARS: Today is the 5 year anniversary of the day we signed on the dotted land and so began the story of the Iron Dog Ranch. (Named after our deceased dog Max, who's actually buried on our land. Max spent about 5 years not meeting anyone because he would randomly walk over and bite people but if you ask Dave, he will say Max is the best dog he ever had. Max was, and always will be, the Iron Dog, although I also call Dave that as he gets a little greyer and impresses me more and more with the way he's pulled this whole thing off. He really is quite incredible).
      By the way, having never built a house before was huge. Deciding to design it ourselves, that was at times overwhelming. To anyone who ever thinks of designing and building their own house: NOTE to selves: It looks nothing like it did on paper, no matter how hard you try to be accurate. That's not necessarily a good or bad thing, I'm just sayin.....
   Dave no longer looks at the designs and I never did, so that just adds an even crazier element to it all. We've changed so much on the fly (Dave says I'm the worst and best client he's ever had).  Fortunately we're both artists, scavengers of things old and unusual, and we did work together professionally at one time (5 years to be specific) so it's not like we aren't experienced in building together. So for the most part we don't fight or even freak out. And we just throw in ideas and if it's cool, we just build it. And just once in awhile, when it dawns on us how crazy building this house has really been, and how not even looking at the plans is really ballsy, well then we freak out a little. Did I mention we are building the entire thing ourselves, board by board, block by block?  The first night of the actual build, we spent 2 hours lining up a line of 10 concrete blocks because we couldn't get it all square, and we looked around at the 2,800 blocks (I would come to learn that a block weights 37 pounds and let me tell you something: the last block is as heavy as the first block) piled up around us on so many pallettes we couldn't count the pallettes there was so many, and I came pretty close to completely freaking out. I looked at Dave, sort of horrified, and he looked at me and smiled and said "Hey, ...it'll be fun...." and there was a silence then, broken by the sound of the birds and the frogs off in the distance on this pleasant Loess Hills night in Iowa and neither of us said anything for a really long time... "we are so screwed" I finally said (it was all I could think of to say because It was all I was thinking over and over again...). and we both laughed the first of what would be a long string of "we're screwed" laughs to come in later months.
    Very shortly the construction crew (consisting of the two of us, as I have kept repeating), will be handing the build over to the artist crew (consisting of the two of us yet again) to really start the fun. Maybe the fighting will start then. (but I don't think so :-) But I don't really know for sure..... We don't even have running water yet. :-) We are so screwed. But happy anniversary to us :-)

Hello New Life

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep

.....Robert Frost

Hello New Life.



This is not the beginning. this is just the beginning of recording it because it is sort of crazy.

Dave and I are building a house. But not just any house, a house we ourselves designed and are building completely on our own. I cannot start at the beginning so the beginning will just get fed into the story as I go.

The house is on 5 acres of land and none of it is finished. Some of it not exactly designed, persay (quote: Dave: Yesterday: "God, I haven't looked at the blueprint in ... well, I don't know how long").

   We both laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.  And yes, it is ridiculous.

Yet I don't think I have ever felt so alive.

Perhaps it's because I quit my IT job after 12 years to pursue the life of .. well, of an artist, and sometime gardener, and businesswoman in my biz, not someone elses.

Or perhaps it's because of the fact that we're growing our own garden, and our own orchard, and our own beehive, our own herbs.

Or maybe it's because we're doing all of this out of her pocket so far (that's the long part of the story, because it certainly didn't start out to be that way, ever ever ever. I would NEVER have agreed to something as insane as that and I would have been terrified.  Oh wait, I am terrified.

Yet... I don't think I have ever felt so alive.

Funny thing, change.

:-) Hello New Life.