Mi Vida Loca

Peace Pride One, 12" oil on canvas, in progress

Hectic, crazy, overwhelmed, emotional.......this is my life currently! We are in the crunch time for preparing for the grand opening of Chroma Studios. Picked up our postcard announcements this morning. I have to get busy writing blog posts for my other blog(Chroma Studios) to introduce all our studio artists. Because I've been so busy and haven't started yet, I'm going to have to group artists together instead of everyone getting their own daily post. We've hired my youngest son to help with getting all the trim painted at the studios. Thank God for summer break and bored teenagers!

This weekend, same as last, we have to travel down south to Las Cruces/El Paso. Aaron has a gig on Saturday in Las Cruces and we have one more load of stuff to clear out my dad's house. Gas prices are skyrocketing so basically the money Aaron is making on the gig will all go towards gas! Oh well, it's all about the exposure, right?

I'm working on a new series of Peace paintings, incorporating rainbows, for an upcoming show. I have a booth at the Albuquerque Pride Festival this year and wanted to do some special pieces for that in memory of my dad. The painting above is the first one, in progress. It's a 12" square oil on canvas. I plan to make prints and notecards of these images.

Surprise of the Week!

I was pleasantly surprised yesterday to find that my Etsy shop was featured as shop of the week on the front page of Duke City Fix! DCF is a local news/community website here in Albuquerque, all about the Duke City (Albuquerque's nickname). The same website that had the group show this past Friday at VERB Collective. Spring Griffin is the blogger that wrote the feature, thanks Spring!!

New Grief painting.....Life Goes On......

Life Goes On

I think I may be finished with this painting now. This is the last (for now) grief painting. It's time to move on and get back to my regular paintings. I have a large one that I blogged about what seems like long, long ago. I was supposed to finish it the day my dad passed away, but it didn't happen for obvious reasons. My next goal is to finish that painting. Until then, here is a new painting, this one is 20 x 20", watermixable oils on canvas. I could probably do more, but I feel ready to move on!

Life is slowly getting back to normal. Summer is almost here. My youngest son finishes up the spring semester this week. Another trip down to Las Cruces to help my brother and his wife move into their new house! It has been HOT the last couple of days, topping 90 degrees!!! I can only imagine, it will be even hotter down south of here!

Also, coming up soon is the Grand Opening for our new studio spaces! Chroma Studios! I've started another blog just for Chroma news. I plan to interview our studio artists there as well as writing other interesting art related stories. We are having a grand opening reception/art show on the first Friday of June, June 6th 5:30-8:30 pm. If you are in the area, come down and see our great new space! We plan to have some fun summer art and music classes coming up soon as well. We will have more information about classes and upcoming shows at the opening.

Another planned event I'm excited about is our monthly Salon group. Our first topic of discussion will be "Censorship vs. Artist Responsibility". For anyone that doesn't know, a salon is a group of creative people getting together to discuss certain predetermined topics in a safe, friendly environment. We have had salons in the past, but it has been years!

Life really does go on

So, a couple of days ago I started what I think will be my last grief painting. It's called "Life Goes On" and I can't believe how easily the ideas have flowed for this one. Yesterday was my second day working on it and it also ended up being the first day that I felt almost normal again. I did think about dad a couple of times, but I didn't cry or tear up, I smiled. I will post a photo of the new painting once I finish it.

Yesterday, I went to the dedication of a public art project that my artist friend, Vashti, worked on. The project was three worm composting benches that were painted for a comminity garden. She worked with kids from a local community center and also had some high school students helping out. It was so refreshing to see the kids all happy and excited about going to see their work in the garden.

Another event that has me excited is a group art show, Porque Burque, over at VERB Collective here in Albuquerque. The opening is Friday night from 5-8:30pm. Check out the link for more info. It is a show of members of the Duke City Fix website. I have two pieces in the show and my hubby Aaron will be opening up the night with a set of his guitar music. There are also four other Chroma Studio artists participating.(Vashti Gamble, Josephine Brionez de Flores, Barak Naggan, and Terri Hansen)

I grieve

This is a great song! Thanks to Sus for reminding me of it! I first heard it on the City of Angels soundtrack, which btw, is one of my favorite movies of all time. Check out the video at the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O18A4RugiMs&eurl=http://www.last.fm/music/Peter+Gabriel/+videos/+1-O18A4RugiMs

Grief Paintings

I've finally had some time in the studio to paint my emotions and work thru some of the feelings I've had surrounding my dad's passing. Working thru my emotions and pain has been very helpful. I have finished 3 out of the 4 grief paintings that I plan to paint. I doubt these will ever be for sale, but I wanted to share them. Dealing with my dad's death has been the hardest thing I've ever gone thru. I still wake up every morning and think for a minute that it must have been a bad dream. Then I'll realize that it's very real. Tomorrow it will be one month since he left us and life is finally getting back to the regular routine. Normal is different now. I can't even remember the last time I've gone this long without talking to him on the phone or seeing him in person. Even though he lived 4 hours away from us, we almost always saw him on a monthly, if not more frequent, basis. I still miss him like crazy! There may end up being more than 4 of these, but for now, here they are;

Denial, 8 inch square oil on canvas

Pain, Sadness, Grief, 8 inch square oil on canvas

Anger, Heartache, 8 inch square oil on canvas

Contact your Congressperson!

I just received this forwarded email and wanted to get the word out to everyone I know. Below is the forwarded email and a link to the website. You can go to the website and send emails directly to your congressperson. If you are an artist, this is very important!

This is serious stuff. Congress is getting pushed by big companies to change the way the copyright laws currently work. If you have deep pockets, you'll weather the change...But if this law is passed, you will be forced to register (for a fee!) every single painting, photography, lithograph, sculpture, or pot that you make. The current copyright – you create it; therefore it's copyrighted – will no longer exist. The only way to stop this is to stand up and be counted.

How?
Today at 6 pm Eastern Time (New York time)
The Society of Illustrators
128 East 63rd StreetNew York, NY 10065

Will hold a live meeting and a WEBCAST.You don't have to leave home!
Just log on to: http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/And send this out to every artist you know!

Oh well.....Life goes on

As my dad used to say. Life is getting back to normal a little more everyday. Tonight we have an artist's meeting at the new studio. This will be my first full week back at work. We'll see if I make it thru the whole week. Last week we took off Thursday-Saturday to get the house clean and put my dad's record collection away in one of the bedrooms.

Not sure if I've written about my dad's record collection before. My dad was nuts about music. When I say nuts, I mean he had OCD. He collected records, I'm talking vinyl here, albums and 45s, starting when he was around 16. He ended up with a collection of around 40,000 records! It's difficult to picture that many records, so let me help with the visualization. His record collection takes up one FULL bedroom! That is records all around the room floor to ceiling! Now, many people have record collections, but not only did he collect them, he organized them! They are all cataloged extensively. The 45s are cataloged chronologically by the week they hit the Billboard top 100 and also by artist alphabetically. The albums are cataloged in alphabetical order by artist. He had the top 100 singles from 1943 thru the early 1990s!

Some of my best memories as a kid were the times I spent with my dad listening to music. It's no wonder I married a musician! Dad always had a record room. When I was younger it was just a closet or half a room, but as I got older, they took up more and more space. I remember weekends spent combing yard sales, Goodwill and anywhere else he could find records for a quarter or less. My brother and I would always whine because it was so boring! He always had a list in his wallet of the records he was looking for to fill out the collection. Every week when he received his newest Billboard magazine he would show me which songs had gone up the charts, which had fallen, and which were new to the charts. That was always my favorite part because he would then play any new records for me and we would talk about what we liked or didn't like. He loved to make me mix tapes of my favorites and I would play them on my cassette player over and over. If there was a record I liked, he would buy it for me and make a tape. I rarely got to keep the record myself, unless he had a double of it!

Now, all those records are in my house and I look forward to playing them soon. We still need to put up shelves so they can be accessed and set up our record player so they can be played. I know he will be there beside me, listening to music, just like the old days.