The Vortex of Strange

How's that for a name.
That's how I feel. I haven't posted here much lately but alot of that is because I've been very very very busy. First, the house, still coming along. As I've said all along, there are two groups of "us" working on this project. There's the "builders" <-- us in serious build mode, getting tons done - and we still drop in and work like mad little dogs on things like staining, and sealing and wiring and blah blah blah... That's us all in badboy mode and there's no tom foolery whatsoever. (That's the part that's done most of the work).
    Then there is us in "artist" mode and we get distracted by things like sycamore branches and how they would look... say... up here ..... or like.... "Hey, those train lenses? wouldn't they look really cool like this?" (holding them up in the wall of what will be our shower). you know, stuff like that. Amazing amounts of time can be eaten up by running up the stairs and saying "No, I mean here..... look..... what if. we take that antique apothecary cabinet, you know, the one your paper is in behind the front door at home and we put it in HERE.... right like this.... " "Why, holy shit, that's a great idea! Splended in fact!.... oh but wait..... looky over here..... we should...." you get the idea. Maddening amounts of time.  The builders are here less and less. The artists are starting to take over the project and things are slowing down and THAT IS SO NOT GOOD RIGHT NOW.  Mother of effing god,  enough already, but alas, we cannot seem to stop. We have this huge old house stuffed with the most bizarre shit. What DO you do with a 4' x 3' framed print of the signing of the original treaties of the four railroads taken back in the 1800's? Or the framed wedding photo in an origianl antique frame from somewhere back there too, or the really awesome 60's stained glass lamp that is currently sitting on the floor along with an Italian crystal chandelier that is perfectly intact and waiting to be hung up? (I don't know either). But we won't have room for alot of it here. Oh yes, we have every playboy issue from 1969 on, most still in their package that we acquired from god know's where - I need to sell this stuff, or do something with it. ... but... alas, I digress. Enough about the house. It's coming along slowly and it is going to be really cool if we dont' fuck it up somewhere between here and there.

Etsy sends me a notice today, "Jason" to be speciifc, to tell me that some beyotch owns the rights to the words "Vintage Vixen" and one of my 3 etsy shops (VintageVixens2) is going to be renamed or closed. After careful consideration I've decided to have it changed to a new name and call it "IronDogCreations" (a companion to TheIronDogMercantile). I will migrate all the artsy stuff over there off the Merc and migrate the non-artsty over to the Merc. Not to be confused with Angieclementine, (which will forever be my "dark" side and my alter as a painter. Talk about strange though.... what the hell? I've had that shope for almost 3 years and NOW ti's a prob? Whatever.
Speaking of which.....

This was actually my lesson in using stayzon ink but I turned it into a painting. Just a little one, but it was nice to go back to the dead tree again. I've been getting a "hankering" to move back to the trees for a bit and get some of that darker work out, must be the season for it... :-)

Sometimes you just gotta get that stuff outta your head, dontcha?









Dance, Laugh, Enjoy

Too bad you can't use your own fonts on this blog. I have amazing fonts, just amazing, amazing fonts.
Oh well. I have been incredibly busy and incredibly happy although there's a ton of stress at this part of our house build (I stained a 400 sf deck last weekend and will seal it prob tomorrow. I also block-tighted the entire basement myself and that stuff is ridiculously fumey and hard to breathe. What I do in the name of progress, eh?

But it is all coming along and it looks simply marvy if I do say so myself. We are still looking at studs though, as we have to pass electrical before we do drywall and we have to finish the last few iron-outs on electrical before we get that far. I've already resigned myself to the fact we'll be lucky if we're in here full time by xmas but what the hell, when it's just the two of us... I mean come on... I sometimes wonder what we'll think of all this later on. We are definitely supressing the incredible idiocy of doing this whole thing ourselves, it's like we don't mention it because it's just quietly understood that we're both terrified sort of under the surface... and yet... another part of us is enjoying the thrill and the risk of it all :-) I had no idea I would find something this huge so terrifying AND exhilarating at the same time. Of course we keep expecting the other shoe to drop at any moment and something to go terribly, terribly wrong, but that's the risk part again. :-) I think I will look back on this and say "what the hell?"

I have stripped myself back to the bare essentials with art, I'm sketching again, this time faces and chicken bodies and sometimes just faces. What started out as a simple exercise has turned into a sort of drive to do something and I'm not quite sure what.

Ah, to be continued.....

Getting serious about getting serious

First off, it's 3:25 am exactly and I cannot sleep because I fell asleep earlier. So now it's me and the cat, I have Pink Floyd "Shine on you crazy diamond" on my headphones (thankyou youtube) and I'm writing this blog. The night.... I do love the night when the world is asleep or hiding... now that I'm getting used to the new "hours" of my life, I love everything from dusk on into the wee hours best.. and I do love Pink Floyd :-).... a person can think this late at night...... I can see better as an artist during the day, most definitely, but I'm more truthful at night <wink>.

The house.

Coming along swimmingly, doesn't it seem to be? Why yes, yes it does. Since I snapped this photo, below we now have the deck completed. Now I get to finish painting the underside, and eventually will be staining and sealing the top (the stain has sealer, but mr. contractor says we'll be sealing it as well).

Inside even more funnneeeerrrrr....

But how fun is this? the stairway handrail is coming right along and we're thrilled. More twigs in there since this, this was "phase II". More to come... we're winging this as we go. Also debating the final finish and if there should be one prior to final clearing, blah blah. Fun though, oh oh oh so much fun.

    We truly cannot wait for this to be done. It's gone on for so long now that it has become surreal, and we both know it although we never say it. Somewhere along the line, if you so a project with just the right passion and you're lucky, it will start to breathe on it's own and is no longer under your control anymore. And of course then it becomes what it is destined to become. This house has not yet reached that point, but we're both secretly hoping it does soon. We need to get past the wiring to the drywall, we need to cover the bones.

  Who wants to look at bones anyway?

  I'm supposed to meet Amber tomorrow for Sushi but I've been sick all week. Hoping to be better so I can still go, I know she'd enjoy the time out and to be honest so would I. This new life is, at times, all consuming (much like art can be :-))

Speaking of art, my last week's creation, well, one of them. Here's the other....



There is a poem written on this second one, well, part of a poem. It says....

"I remember, the colors are prettier when they're wet,
 and even the roughest storm comes to an end.
 The water dries even the shinest, shiniest rock
 and sooner or later the real color shows through,
 But oh,
  ..... how I never took....
...........my eyes..............
.............off of you................

No explanation offered because it's private and you know who you are :-). but I'm liking the funky backgrounds. I haven't had much time for painting/journaling/artsty stuff because I've been working on other stuff... like this...

Yes, a lovely little miniature pink-frosted cake ring featuring "ta da" my fav chunky glitter and tiny tiny pearls on a filigree base (oh yes, etsy, by the way, http://www.vintagevixens2.etsy.com/) ha ha I fool around with these little jewelry things all the time even though I have tons of other things, much bigger things, waiting patiently for my attention. I did not need to make time recently making this either,

Who doesn't like glittered bugs anyway?

It's time to get serious about getting serious. I'm all over the place artistically and well, I guess in my life.
I can see that now.... thanks in a great part due to the incredible women at WP who are going through amazingly similar issues in their lives. As creative women I think maybe we tend to bite off alot more than we can chew... but it isn't my place to speak for everyone.
I'll speak for myself only when I say that I have to get focused and serious. It's Sept. 9, 2011 and time is marching. I cannot do it all, and I cannot flit from thing to thing like a child. I have to get focus in my life and organization. That is my goal. GOAL.
On that I'll sign off and go to bed.
But wait, one more thing. Dogs is one of Pink Floyd's best songs, period. And yes, it also sounds better at 4am.......

 

Got Wood?

Okay, that was sort of rude. But since this is about wood working, I thought it was appropriate :-)O

First things first though: the house:
Wiring is cooking right along. HORRIBLE storm with BASEBALL sized hail hit CB but didn't hit out here. House in town though, another story. Roof is trashed, 7 windows trashed, several skylights trashed, Damm damm damm... although Dave is ridiculously busy now and he's sort of delighted about it all.

I'm staining posts inside now and still have more outside stuff to paint and stain, we're moving along though, although right now we aren't getting as much time here as we were hoping to get.

But the good news is, we've been collaborating again, something I've truly missed (years ago, we collaborated alot, I'd make stained glass, he'd make the cabinets and I'd do funky paint finishes on them), we loved collaborating but life sort of got in the way. Now though, we are back at it but this time we're using wood primarily. Loads of fun. Wood wall hanging, made from all sorts of this and that, upcycled, reclaimed, some new, some painted, some washed, we've been digging into our "treasure stashes" and pulling out really nice pieces.

Best of all, we're inspired. And it is really nice to be working together again, even though anyone would say we do NOT have time to do any of this and we should be spending all our time building. And we know we should. But we're also artists and creating is da lifeblood. We get so excited an animated that sometimes it's just funny to watch and listen to us.

Man, oh man, I cannot wait to be in this house, I CANNOT WAIT!!!!!

Chicken Stew and Art

What does chicken stew have to do with art?
Why nothing, other than I am making chicken stew in the slow cooker and I feel really artsy today.

I have discovered, like so many artsy friends have, that there is no time to get the things done someone thinks they can get done in a single day. I thought with more time I'd be so amazingly functional, yet I find that I've tried to cram so much into every day, that it's really really impossible to keep up. I have half finished stuff everywhere. Here and out at the build, stuff everywhere. Bordering on out of control, actually, but I find myself not really caring all that much. Life is very very good for me right now. And I am very very happy and grateful for every single second of it.

Art excites me. And today is a good day. Not for any special reason, although I did do a mini self-portrait of me in the theme that keeps coming back again and again to bug me.... "With my hair blowing free, I face the winds of change..." 

Thats me. Notice the curves :-)

All this house building, and all this new stuff that I do with my life now is so different than my life of a few short months ago that it's like I'm a different person.  Well, come to think of it, I AM a different person. I'm now 30 lbs lighter, (which is a very good thing), and I have my new found art kindred souls that inspire me every day, and I have this house build thing that I find both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. I like to think of it as "re-engineering" my life... yes... yes that's good... I like that :-)

I've realized that I don't know shit about doing wall mosaics. The "undersea world" master bath I see in my head my have complications because of that. :-) I mean, I seriously don't have a, well, a fucking clue. I see octopus and starfish, and sea horses and all sorts of exotic fish, shimmering in metallic colors and swimming along my walls, interspersed with glass tiles of various jewel tone colors....... and I have no clue as to how exactly I'll get there from here. What I see is there. I am over here. hmmmmmmm..........

.... still, it's been a very good day so far :-)

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........