Afternoon at Bonnie Springs

Here I am with my baby girl:

Early Sunday evening we drove into the desert with Navjit, Britt and Leo to visit Bonnie Springs. An odd, but very entertaining place.

Here we are in the "town square", waiting for the 5pm Hanging skit (strange and slightly unnerving, but in the end - harmless):

Then we wandered over to the petting zoo. This potbellied pig bears an uncanny resemblance to a dog we just happen to know (hint: his name rhymes with fuzz):

Here I am showing off my photography skills (ok, maybe it was luck), and you might see this guy show up in one of my drawings. He is fabulous looking:

This one still makes me laugh. The deer tried eating Navjit's skirt first, and when she walked away, he went after Britt. Check out Navjit's face (AND that skirt. the color was so yummy it took everything I had not to take a million pictures of it - esp with her pink shirt. I love her great color sense.)

And here's my little family:

I'm busy working on my secret felt project. Can't wait to show it off, but it won't be for awhile because I don't leave for Spain until mid-October, and I want it to be a surprise for my sister Kristin.

Tootles!

Crafternoon Numero Duo - A Room of Her Own

I found a spot at the library yesterday in the Quiet Room. Where I can sharpen my pencils with my electric sharpener loudly! And spread out over the whole table. Then someone joined me in the Quiet Room, and my pencil sharpening was foiled. Here's what I worked on:

This is what I consider a problem area, but I'm showing it to you anyway. It's messy, and it's got no focus. But it's got its own little story... All those "B's" were inspired by my friend. She told me that when her dad was dying of cancer he lost the ability to speak, and he would write the same letter over and over in gradation from big to small. Things like this stick in my head you see.

The other morning when Pat brought Anabelle into our bed for our morning snuggle, her skin was so creamy and her cheeks were flushed so pink that they reminded me of strawberries:

In other news, Anabelle is back to her bad napping ways and only slept for 30 minutes total yesterday. (That makes having Maria even more valuable because it means I get a break no matter what.) We are trying to teach her "feet first" when getting off the bed or sofa - it seems to be a slow process. I'd also like to teach her how to Put Things Back so that there are no more meltdowns in music class when we have to give back the instruments.

Gotta run. Have a great weekend!

I did this and this and this with my Crafternoon

Yesterday at the library I turned the above into the below. It's a secret felt project that I'm working on for a certain niece or nephew coming any day now! And the best part is that this felt is made of 100% recycled pop cans. or bottles. I can't remember which.

And then those piles showed up here:

Here's another detail of the same drawing (which is NOT done):

Sort of strange. I have picked up this odd habit of working large (24" x 36"), starting in one corner, working small and going where the wind takes me - so to speak. So this is sort of a stream of consciousness piece. I find such satisfaction in not planning any composition. It's so luxurious in fact that I feel like I'm cheating. I do look at the whole puzzle often to see how it flows together, but without a plan... does it look like One Hot Mess? That is not a rhetorical question, so for those of you who'd like to leave a comment, please do.

Yesterday afternoon was my first Crafternoon, and overall I'd say it was nice. I was nervous because I definitely had to fight off feelings of "wow, I really should be using this time to go grocery shopping" and "eight hours a week? maybe I bit off more than I can chew" and "is my art even worth eight hours worth of babysitter money or am I being a spoiled housewife?" ew, that last one is really ugly when I say it out loud like that. But I'm stickin' with it kiddos, and I'll be eight hours closer to my dream of having a show and maybe an etsy store -- and even taking commissions. (Anybody, anybody?)

Have a lovely day!

I have Very Very exciting news

Good morning! So here it is...

I asked Maria to come every Wednesday and Friday to watch Anabelle from noon to 4pm so I can do. my. art. It feels absolutely overindulgent and wickedly wonderful all at the same time. Las Vegas and I have been at odds for a couple of months, and that has left me with a general feeling of malaise about being here. You chant "Vegas," I chant "Stuck!" Vegas! Stuck! Vegas! Stuck!

I love being a stay-at-home mama, and I wouldn't change it for the world. But I need a little time. Not being able to go outside because of the summer heat has left me feeling trapped, and I overflowed on Saturday. Read: I broke down and sobbed like a girl. which indeed I am - fancy that. This all led to a conversation with my dad and then a promise to him (thanks pops!) about taking that much-needed time, escaping to my own private carrel at the library, putting in my earphones to listen to craftsanity podcasts and drawing to my heart's content. For hours! I will tell you this: I made that phone call to Maria the very next day, and I know that if I didn't really really need this time I would NEVER have followed through. Everything about my mood has brightened knowing that I am going to get some time to do what I love. Yummy. I could eat up the whole idea! I could squeeze it like a pimple!

So there you have it folks. I now think I have everything a gal could ever want: a fabulous hubby, a beautiful baby girl, a chubby bulldog. And time to draw.

Sigh.

Our baby girl is officially 1.

Here is Anabelle helping Patrick put together her birthday gift from Grammie and Grandpa Don. She must have known it was her birthday because she woke up ready to party at 4:30am.

(I see I could really use a lesson in photography folks.)

Here is Buzz - our birthday boy - who turned 8 yesterday. If he looks grumpy, well, it's probably because he was. He hurt his leg on Wednesday and is now at the vet getting X-rays...

Last night our friends Britt, Navjit and their baby Leo came over for dinner and gingerbread.

I got a few minutes in the other day to do a little drawing. It is amazing to me just how rejuvenating it can be to sit down at my table and do art for even a teensy amount of time. I'm still listening to these podcasts when I can. I'll take what I can get, but I am craving a big chunk of time to do all of the above. Below is what I am working on. The kachina is a gift I bought myself in Flagstaff, AZ on the road trip out to Vegas. I chose it from a wall hung floor to ceiling with all kinds, but this one spoke to me because it's a flower kachina. I'd left my floral job, my friends and my family to start a new life Out West with my Main Man. I was embarking on such an adventure...

Also!! on a side note: you have to check out this colorful and fabulous project out. I love it, and I want to do it someday.

My little cupcake

This is Anabelle's birthday week, so the celebrations started yesterday with an awesome cookout at Lorraine and Karl's. The above picture is of the hostess and the cupcake.

Here is the birthday gal post-swim and pre-cupcake dive...

I was surprised to find that she seemed more interested in licking the candle than eating her chocolate cupcake...

Here's a before...

and an after...

I honestly can not believe our baby is turning one on Thursday. She is growing and changing so fast that suddenly I foresee weeks, months, years speeding by. The only time I nurse her now is in the mornings, but on her birthday I plan on giving her her first bottle of good old fashioned organic cow's milk first thing in the a.m. Very bittersweet...

Another Day

Today is indeed another day. Which is a very good thing. And here is what is on my studio table (aka dining room table) now. A new sheet of paper and my lovely new colored pencils! I have had this pattern roaming around in my head for months and months now, and voila. Look what showed up when I sat down to draw today! Ever wonder why things happen when they do? I mean, why now did I finally draw those wheel patterns when they were always right there on the tip of my finger?

Anabelle is down for her second - count 'em - second nap. whewwwwwwwwwww. AND it's raining outside! whaa? Strange things are occurring today. Tonight Maria is coming over to watch Anabelle and then I am getting my hair cut, going out on a sushi date with my hubs and then meeting our friends at First Friday for a wee bit of art and culture.

Tootles!

September calls for Pink Patent Leather Shoes

I am glued to my computer reading blog after blog. I am utterly amazed at the amount of creativity there is out there. It's so inspiring! and addicting too.

Everyone seems to be discussing the fact that it is "already" September. It does not feel like fall here in the desert, and in fact, it still feels awfully oven-y. All my nostalgic, back-to-school feelings normally triggered by a change in the sun's light, the shadows getting longer and the drone of cicadas are absent here for me in Las Vegas. I don't have the bittersweet feelings about saying goodbye to lazy summer days. It's more of a Thank-God-Summer-Might-Someday-Draw-To-A-Close sort of feeling. Anabelle's music class will be starting up again in a few weeks as well as mommy and me yoga, and of course there's always Oprah starting her new season. Yes, I like Oprah. All of my friends are flooding back into town again after escaping the heat, and so everyone is settling back into place. Ah.

Anabelle continues to put anything and everything up to her ear like a cell phone. She LOVES when I pretend someone is calling for her. "Oh, ok, You want to talk to Anabelle?" And she cracks a huge smile and holds out her hand.

Today she handed me her pink patent leather shoe and then looked at her foot. When I put that on, she smiled and handed me the other. Then she smiled again. And then she tapped her heels on the floor. Clearly she's in love.

Birthday Tutu

Hi Everybody! (I sort of have to wonder... is anybody really there?)

Today I made a tutu for Anabelle to wear on her 1st birthday which is rapidly approaching. It was a fun project, and while I worked on it Anabelle played quietly on the floor nearby. This never happens, so that is certainly something to write home about. Her naps seem to be a lost cause which leaves me with little time to do my art. BUT. She is sleeping like a champ at night -- down at 7pm (no later because she's so tired) and up sometime between 5:45am and 6:30am. What is this refusal to nap????? Anyway here is her tutu:

Aaaaand I wasn't going to post a picture of her in it till her birthday, but how can I resist?

I have so many ideas for projects and drawings to do, but I just don't have enough time. If I was lucky enough to be an insomniac like my friend Doreen, maybe I could really crank it out. Joking. I cherish my sleep. Such projects include:

another mobile

finger puppets

sachets

more greeting cards/drawings like this one:

Ok. I have to go cook up the flank steak I have marinating in the fridge. Pat just got home from work, and I should quit eating chocolate chips now. ;)

Pat and His Too-Tall Hat

Here it is so far!! Don tells me that Pat looks like a cone head because his hat is waaay too tall. I'd have to agree, so there will be a bit of tweaking, but I'm at a good stopping place for now. This evening Pat and I are headed to Moab, Utah to meet up with our friends Anna and Doreen. We are going on a white water rafting day trip on the Colorado River tomorrow! How's that for adventure?

Mom and Don are staying with Anabelle till we get back on Wednesday. Three cheers for fun grandparents!

A big huge thanks to Lara who is a seriously impressive artist (check out her portraits - wow!) and who answered my call for help with this drawing. She gave me some really great ideas. I think it is about the coolest thing in the world that I can connect with other artists who are across the country. My goal is to have a big artist community someday.

I used gesso to cover up some of the areas that I overworked. This adds a bit of a painterly feel which is a nice contrast to the pen lines, and it also adds a bit of depth. You can still make out some of the lines behind the paint. I'm really pleased so far...

Have a good week!

How's this for pure goodness?

An oldie

This is a painting I did last year for Pat's dad.

Oh Buzz!

Buzzbuzz. What a guy!

Ohmygoodness, this economy is so ugly

Here's an excerpt from time.com's article "Less Vegas: The Casino Town Bets on a Comeback." I finally understand exactly what a "short sale" is... and it's not pretty:

Boemio [a realtor] specializes in short selling, in a particularly Vegas way. Basically, she finds clients who owe more on their house than the house is worth (and that's about 60% of homeowners in Las Vegas) and sells them a new house similar to the one they've been living in at half the price they paid for their old house. Then she tells them to stop paying the mortgage on their old place until the bank becomes so fed up that it's willing to let the owner sell the house at a huge loss rather than dragging everyone through foreclosure. Since that takes about nine months, many of the owners even rent out their old house in the interim, pocketing a profit.(See pictures of modernist houses available for rent.)

Tons of people were doing this, but there were consequences. Renters were being evicted, through no fault of theirs, with a couple of days' notice when the house finally went on the market. People are now paying a premium to live in apartment buildings, which in Vegas are almost always owned by a corporation. Sure, short selling damages the sellers' credit rating, but they just bought a new house, so they don't care.

It's an entire city of John Dillingers, feeling guiltless for stealing from the banks. Boemio is well aware that short selling isn't ethical and is exacerbating Vegas' economic problems. People, she believes, should make their payments, accept their paper losses and ride out the crash. "Guess what, a______s of Las Vegas. That's what gambling is about. That's what investing is about," she says. "It's greedy. But we're all doing it. Because why not?" It's very hard, she says, to suffer as the one honest person in a town of successful con artists.

ugh. Are we the chumps for NOT walking away from our house?!!! The article is right; "everyone" is doing it - it seems it's become the norm. The stigma of foreclosing or short selling is gonegonegone. Our community sometimes feels empty -- so many houses sitting sadly vacant.

All of this has me feeling very down. And on top of it I should be:

folding laundry

doing laundry

making a grocery list and planning some meals for the week

cleaning out the fridge

I've been looking at other artist blogs (so much fun!) and daydreaming of a "real" summer via the photos they post. So many handfuls of sweet home-grown tomatoes, farmer's markets, even the soft summer light the photos capture... I'm going to go sit in the hot Vegas corner and cry now. boohoo.

i'm pretending i don't hear anabelle because she is supposed to be napping now

i haven't posted because life has just been chugging along - days made up of naps, heat, runs to the grocery store... the usual. but yesterday we had a fabulous family day! pat, anabelle and i spent the afternoon at mandalay bay's shark reef. we saw komodo dragons, sharks, jellyfish and lots and lots of fish, including lacy and papery lionfish. anabelle was mezmerized in her own laid-back sort of way...

last night pat and i left anabelle with maria and we went back down to the strip to sushi roku for dinner. what a fun night!!!! cocktails, yummy sushi, fabulous strip view and good good chats. afterwards we meandered around the forum shops, wandering in and out of stores like niketown, y-3, nanette lepore, brooks brothers, louis vuitton...

now. on the art front...

my portrait of pat is coming along:

my good ol' friend anna came to town last weekend and among other things we talked art. she gave me lots of good inspiration and ideas. ideas that involve: scale, repetition using different materials, color to create depth, sewing with thread, sewing machine without thread. love you anna!

and then -- OH NO -- i got completely carried away, distracted and i overworked it in a big bad way:

how does one fix a pen and ink drawing?????? ugh, i can't and won't touch it until i figure out how. help! it's heavy and off balance and pat told me he suddenly feels jealous of the house (which i think in art talk means that my two subjects are not working together to make up a very nice composition.)

ok, off to sunday morning yoga class. have a good day!

She stands!

Anabelle can now pull herself up to stand!  She works very hard at it, and she is very proud of herself when she gets there.  She huffed and puffed today, and then... voila!  she was standing next to me while I sat in the rocking chair with a huge grin on her face.  Now she is pulling herself up left and right.   She is good enough to eat.

I'm starting to see a pattern in my work

While Anabelle screamed herself to sleep last night, I cringed and worked on my portrait of Patrick.  It helped to put all of my nervous energy into something productive.  She fell asleep after 20 minutes, and I let out a huge sigh of relief and went up to bed.  He looks very serious in this drawing - unlike his silly personality.   

I started photographing some more old work.  This is a painting I did after my grandma Baba died.  I had a strange dream that the whole family was sitting at a long table, and there were waiters wearing tuxedos.  I had also just learned that a group of crows was called a "murder." Seemed so creepy and romantic all at the same time.  I love this piece because it was so UNforced.

These two are so strangely similar to what I am doing now.  These are marker and pen, and they are around 5 and 9 years old respectively!!

The Latest

After yesterday morning's Hallmark moment, my day fell on its face and went splat. I had a wrestling match with Anabelle to get her into her carseat, she screamed all the way from Child's Play to home and my car's air conditioner on its very highest setting wasn't high enough. I cursed the 111 degree heat, and I cursed Las Vegas and called it "God forsaken."

Though my haircut appointment (and thus my moment to bask in trashy magazines and stare into space while someone else washes my hair) was cancelled at the last minute, I didn't cancel my babysitter. I went to the art store to buy myself some bristol board and new pens. Then I went to the library and drew for an hour. Heaven!

I continue to struggle with quieting my inner critic, but talking to my mom this morning I realized again that we all struggle with that -- no matter what medium you work in. For those of you who might not know, my mom's a journalist for the Evanston Roundtable.

Speaking of my mom, she gave me this "recipe" to make for dinner during my cooking strike:

avocado

black beans

fresh corn

cilantro

onion

tomatillo

fresh lime juice

queso fresco

YUM!!

Here are some pics of what I've been working on:

Here is the start of a portrait of my wonderful and fabulous husband Patrick:

And here are my new favorite pens:

The Best Ever

This morning before breakfast Anabelle and I sat in the green chair and listened to Neko Case and a skipping Crystal Gayle.  She seemed so happy there on my lap, bouncing on my knees, which surprised me because she is so wiggly now.  Pulling herself over to the floor lamp to yank on its legs (watching me while I warn her with my eyes, grrrr) is her new favorite thing.  And then, oh this is so my favorite part, she snuggled up close and lay her head on my chest, and we just sat there together.  It was 30 seconds of everything that's good in this world.  

Here are some more Best Evers:

Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood's podcasts on www.craftsanity.com

I mentioned her website before; I have been listening to her interviews with artists everyday while I draw.  Jennifer is a very insightful interviewer, and now I feel like she is a link to the art world for me!!

I learned about Jennifer's podcasts because she interviewed Abby Glassenberg, an artist/blogger/mom who I stumbled upon one day while I was searching the web.  The name of Abby's website,  www.whileshenaps.typepad.com

caught my eye and inspired me to do my art "while she [Anabelle] naps."  Pretty cool huh?

I've also recently learned about www.spoonflower.com

You can create your own textile designs, and at spoonflower there is NO MINIMUM order to print your very own design!!!!  Whaaaa?!!  Will my dream of creating textiles really come true some day?

Ho Hum

It's a hot hot July day in the desert, and the Brown family is bored.  After a jaunt to the bookstore, we are back home drinking iced lattes and wondering what to do with ourselves.  Pat googled "Summerlin upcoming public events" for family activity ideas, and the response was a very meager one:

no upcoming events. 

Oh my.  This leads me to the question on many Vegans' minds: is Las Vegas truly "a soul-less city" with no roots and no culture?  Or maybe Pat and I are bored because in actuality, we are just boring people. 

There.  Some topics to ponder this afternoon.