Dispatch From LA

Magpie Mailart

I am digging this Italian tile wallpaper which a kind reader of this blog sent me. It has a slick glossy surface that is very pleasant to run your fingers over. You have not seen the last of it.

TYN sent me this mailart that has filled me with a feeling of fabulousness. Oh yes it has! For crying out loud the edges are soldered! And look at the little metal rings the ribbon is attached to. The magpie in me is very excited by all the glittery shiny parts. Yes siree Bob, this was mighty fun to receive. See the wallpaper underneath? Tyn sent that too. A person cannot have too much of that as far as I'm concerned. The nice neutral background will be perfect for laying stencils on top of and spraying away.

Then there is the small matter of the Roman apartment below. Who doesn't want to spend the night in a black, red, and white apartment? As far as I'm concerned I could not have picked a better color palette to spend my Roman nights in.

Sea & Land

Dusk is folding into night up here on my little hill. It's a warm summer eve in Los Angeles. I'm listening to the Chinatown CD by The Be Good Tonyas. Oh sweeter songs were never sung. And the second I'm done typing these words I'm going back to bury myself in this and imagine my little car winding its way down Italian roads. Windows rolled down.

I can study road atlases for hours. I never tire of imagining the pages springing to life as sea and land. In my mind I can see the details in the landscape. No better way to dream than with a road atlas.

Dear Suzanne from Chicago sent me her very own Rome travel guide. Bits and pieces of articles and recommendations and lore. She's heading off very soon for her 3 month stint in Asissi which is in Umbria. She rents an apartment and lives there for part of her year. She always stops in Rome and is very familiar with it so recommended the exact neighborhood for my sister and I to stay in for maximum pleasure. Photos of THAT apartment coming soon to a blog post near you! Yes, apartments are easier to find and cheaper to rent than hotel rooms in a city like Rome.

Buck thinks the whole travel idea is overrated. He has grown pensive imagining his 2 weeks alone. I told him it wasn't until April, but he's ignoring me.

Praying For Rain

Late August in Los Angeles and a windy promise of a real honest-to-goodness thunderstorm. The sky darkened, clouds rolled in from the west, a gust of wind blew open the french windows in my art room! I almost screamed in delight and clapped my hands together. Almost. Oh LA, I'm wise to your climate tricks, there's no fooling me. You don't deliver soaking wet late summer days, do you? But those lovely clouds did persuade a few teaspoonfuls of water to dribble down.

Even my trusty steed looked out the window and prayed for rain. The cat posse all stood in the front yard with their paws firmly planted on the ground and stuck their tongues out to catch a few drops.

In between dreams of summer showers I started a new book and worked in my visual journal.

When the sun dipped behind the wall of trees, we lay down and the white night swallowed us.

No I'm not reciting poetry again, that's the first line of my new book Astrid & Veronika. I can't take a proper nap without reading first. I deeply regret my recommendation of The Swallows of Kabul and I urge you not to read it if you are a sensitive type. If you're teetering on the edge of depression heed my warning. It really is Very Dark. I couldn't stop reading it, but I didn't enjoy it one bit. If you're a callous brute like me it will make you want to find the main character and sock him in the jaw.

My sister recommended Astrid & Veronika and she is extremely sensitive and cries at the drop of a hat. I think she would have mentioned if she had felt morose while reading it. So far I'm enjoying it very much.

You don't know Vynnie do you? I do because he and his cute wife, Robin send me fabulous mailart. He is in this month's Popular Mechanic. How cool is that? An artist AND a master gardener. I'm pretty sure the sight of my wild, overgrown perrenials would wipe the smile right off that sweet face of his.

Let's go see what the dear and delightful JUDY is up to in her lush Oregon studio. Oh look she's making stencils. I love the way she underpainted then stenciled. I'm going to try that.

Now let's go visit MAXINE and see how much she's grown. 135 pounds in one week. A pumpkin after my own heart! Stephanie has the most eye-popping photos on her blog dontcha think?

Okay. We're off to see what's shaking over at EB's I should have known it would be something bright and BIG.

Finally let's roll on over to see what flights of fancy VANESSA is taking these days. Mmmmmmmm pan ducle and stories and lots of beautiful things. I do enjoy going for a visit and being charmed.

Getaway Car

August is nearly over and this is all I have to show for it. One measly little journal page completed in jumbo journal #9. {And most of it censored.} This is how these things go sometimes.

I've been distracted. When the Italy bugs bites you in the arse what can you do but go along for the ride? We aren't even leaving until April, but we like to know where we're staying plenty of time in advance. So far from the comment descriptions in the last post, Rome sounds like my neighborhood "dirty & so-so" I think I'm gonna like it! Can you hear my donkey braying laughter tumbling out of my window and rolling down the street?

But seriously though, it's really great to read about everyone's Italian experiences. Based on the Rome comments we've decided to stay 4 nights instead of only 2, and they will be all in a row. All the better to experience the chaos & wonder of Rome. The Amalfi Coast is our ultimate destination and I'm pretty sure we're gonna dig that.

Look what my sister's been up to in her journal. Aren't these pages cool? When she visits me in October we are certain to have a good time out back with the spraypaint & stencils.

I'm looking forward to going on Autumn vacation in 34 days. I will have 41 luxurious days off. It boggles the mind to think of so many days to play strung out in a long row like that. Ahhhhhhhhh....

I spotted this sassy car on my way to work the other day. I like the pinkness of it against the downtown morning skyline. It would make a great getaway car. Just what I need to hit the road on September 28. I'm planning to leave the school parking lot and drive straight out of town bound for Northern California then Oregon. Hopefully the fact that my getaway car is being towed through downtown is not an indication of its driveability.

More bookcover mailart left my house this week. Hopefully it didn't get caught up in one of those wicked mid-west storms. I found piles and piles of books headed straight for the dumpster this week so I made an intervention and rescued them. Now I have more spraypaint "canvases". This thrills me to no end.

It's a lovely cool evening in Los Angeles. Before the sun went down I did some spraypaint prep in my journal. I also cleaned off my art table. Whew what a relief! A clean spot where I can get reacquainted with my journal.

Finally in book news...I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns. I love reading about Afghanistan so I picked up The Swallows of Kabul from the library. It's more like a novella, but very satisfying. What about you? Reading anything good?

I've just added more lovely and amazing blogs to my growing list. I was trying to keep it to 20, but I'm afraid I can't. Hightail it over HERE to Tyn's Flickr site and see the results of her stencil party. More about it HERE at Tyn's blog. Then giddyup on over to Michelle Caplan's Flickr to see more. Michelle blogs about the day HERE

Lookie Here!

In between booking a hotel in Amalfi & securing this shockingly fabulous villa in Praiano, I've hardly had time to blog, or make art, or journal, or eat. Wait. I think the wood-fired goat cheese pizza made in Italy via Trader Joes that's heating up in the oven qualifies as eating. Okay, well I've hardly had time to breathe. How's that? Now to find the perfect hotel in Rome...

The planning is almost the best part of any trip because once the planning is done the dreaming can begin. My sister and I think it's going to be great fun to drive in Rome. True, she said she was going to wear horse blinders, but I have assured her that a joyride through Rome is the perfect start to our Italian Adventure. If you've driven here I'd love to have my head filled with harrowing stories and daring tales of white knuckling your way through all the scooters. Please share via comments or emails. The more Roman Holiday stories the better. Please consider my tip/ advice/recommendation line open for business. Since this is our first trip to Italy we really do want to know EVERYTHING.

In the last week my attention has wandered over to the travel section of the blogosphere. I've really enjoyed reading about THIS family's trek through Europe.

If you feel like dreaming about a villa of your own you can go HERE and clickety click your way around. Something is sure to catch your fancy!

Amalfi Coast Curriculum

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Scorching hot days like today are made for plunking down in front of the computer in the air conditioning and putting the nose to the grindstone. I am waist deep in my new Amalfi Coast Curriculum. Studying hard each detail of every villa listed under the wide bright internet sun. Whew. There are a lot. How to choose? Do we want the one with the natural pool carved into the rocks and filled with sea water? Or perhaps the one with the path that winds down to the sea and passes through a valley of verdant oaks? Or maybe the one with the terrace bigger than my entire house would be a pleasant place to pass the bright days? Or the one surrounded by lemon and olive groves? There is a villa for every budget along this gorgeous stretch of Italian coastline.

I came across this charming blog when I was doing a Positano blog search: My Melange Robin was kind enough to email me the name of the enchanting hotel in her photographs.

Then there's THIS beautiful blog by a woman who's relocated to Positano. I love reading about her Amalfi Coast adventures. Her post about a recent trip to the vet on the scooter with husband, daughter, and cat was particularly entertaining.

And as if that weren't enough there's THIS beautiful blog filled to the brim with stunning photos and a brief mention of a trip taken to the exact spot I hope to land - Praiano.

In other news, the last of my mailart hit its target. I can hear you sighing. Do we have to see one more of these anytime soon? No I promise these are the last.

Meanwhile, back at the Moss Cottage, the front garden is a tangled thicket of chaos. Again. If you look closely you can see a window on the porch with the sun coming through a red blind. That's where I'm typing this post and that's where I'm conducting my Italian home study course. Things are going swimmingly.

But look... there are a few pretty things to see hiding in the dark nest of flax and wild alyssum.

Blooming echevarias!

And look! A cat having a bath!

Blue House

1. Little Blue House, 2. blue house, 3. Blue house in Penang, 4. Blue House on Union Street, 5. blue house, 6. Blue house with a red door, 7. Blue House, 8. blue house, 9. Blue House near north of Kaikoura

There's something about a blue house. Blue houses dazzle me. This one is a few doors down from my house. It's more of an aqua house, but very very nice. Don't you think?

After 8 days the mailart I sent my sister arrived with a thud. She thinks this stamp I put on the back may have caused the delay. It's hard to say for sure.

I sent out a whole mess of these. Half have arrived. The other are in mailart limbo. I think that would be a pleasant place to be. Maybe as nice as living inside of a blue house.

This mailart I sent to Vermont didn't get delayed. I like it when that happens.

Unputdownable

I am not a patient person. Sewing the pages in my new visual journal was very very unpleasant. I am not a bookmaker. Give me some paper, waxed linen, a couple of book boards, and a needle and I can put together a book, but it will not be pretty. It will be a rough-hewn awkward thing. A book-like container to hold all the pages of my up and coming visual meanderings. But because I need something BIG with just the right kind of paper I have to make it myself.

These are my first two pages. Unfinished, but at least started.

You will be seeing many combinations of these stencils in future posts. I cut the portrait from a printed photo. I didn't feel like making it b&w or even fiddling with the contrast. As a result the eyes need to be tweaked a bit - too much light and not enough dark.

This one on a book cover. I darkened the eyes in with a Sharpie. A quick flick of the exacto knife on the stencil can remedy this.

The new visual journal has 96 pages front and back. They measure about 11 by 13. I don't want to have to make another one for awhile, although a sewing cradle would probably make the job much easier.

Here's a look at the sewn in pages.

And the spine.

After all of that I retired by the window for an icy glass of tea and a book that is quickly becoming UNPUTDOWNABLE.

Got Darts?

I really am a one-trick pony. Things get lodged in the brain and like to stay awhile. The spokes of my burst of rays are stuck fast and I'm not planning to remove them. They are wedged in just in front of this great big fat 8. That's been there since late 2002. I didn't put it there. That's just where it landed. The number blinking across my internal news crawl today though is 49. That's because in 49 days I get to take a much needed break from school life. I'm really looking forward to my 42 day vacation. I'm a solitary person. I need A LOT of silence and uninterrupted days upon days to think, sit, dream, BE. Teaching is not conducive to solitude. I imagine days where I don't have to hear another human voice asking a question or dispensing information ALL DAY LONG. mmmmmmm I can just picture that day in my mind. The clouds will be extra white, the sky extra blue. I will go camping. I will sit by campfires. I will sleep in the middle of cool redwoods under a dark blanket of stars. Alone.

There's something about these rings and spokes and rays that my mind finds restful. So after school I tore off a fresh white page of bristol out of my pad and began to spray. This folder was on the table. It got sprayed too.

My ream of good paper arrived. I will sew in the pages of Visual Journal #9 any day now. The weekend has arrived. I will probably cut another stencil or two of my sister. Right at this second I am really really really grateful to KATIE for putting the link to The Be Good Tanyas up on her blog. I need to send her a giant boquet of stargazer lilies to say Thank You. I am digging this CD more than I can say.

LISA sent me this box of treasure.

Who doesn't want to get a box of treasure in the mail?

Some of the mailart I dispatched reached its destination safe and sound. This is what became of those stenciled book covers. I like it when those rascal steeds from the Pony Express find the right house.

Finally here is another shot of the earlier burst of rays. I like seeing them all laying next to each other.

I decided to take the Zen approach to my blog links. Every month I'll be rotating out some of the old and adding in some new. A new one I listed the other day is Dear Ada . This is an exceptionally good blog. In my opinion she's got some of the best referrals in the blogosphere. You will want to get over there the second you're done reading this sentence. You can thank me later.

Full Tilt Boogie

Look what's waiting for me every single morning. This little chick-a-dee comes charging at me full tilt boogie and doesn't slow down until she has MADE CONTACT. Can you imagine starting every work day with a dose of love this startling, this urgent, this alive?

Here she comes! Quick grab the camera! Somehow, I got these shots with coffee in one hand and camera in the other.... and lost neither.

Mailart has been dispatched in all different directions. Time will tell where it lands. I took a dip in Photoshop just long enough to add a few brushes over the recipient's addresses. The photos were taken in the dark of night which is the worst possible time. I'll share anyway.

A new stencil for your consideration. The burst of rays are here to stay. Once a design lodges itself into my cerebral cortex it is there to stay awhile. Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much time looking at Chinese Propaganda Posters last week.

But I mean just look at them! Could I really help it? Don't discount where your next visual inspiration will come from. One never knows about these things until they happen.

I am deliriously pleased with my latest book by Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns, which is why I have so little to say. The night calls me to my bed and my book.

Burst of Rays

Will you just take a look at that tuckered out box of spraypaint. "For crying out loud Mary Ann," I can hear some of you saying, "What happened to Operation Clean Nozzle? Where are the lids? Why are some of the cans missing nozzles? WHAT'S GOING ON OVER THERE?"

I'll tell you what's going on. It's me playing Andy Warhol on crack. It all started the other day when I could not go One More Second without knowing how to make a sunburst starburst line thing. In my mind I could clearly see the stencil of my sister with these lines radiating from her head. So I went HERE to this Photoshop Tutorial where it says right there in black and white: Learn how to create rays simply and easily.
Well I'm going to tell you right now that is a big fat lie. So I decided to do it the old fashioned way. You know BEFORE Photoshop existed. I mean surely Burst of Rays were being made back then.

I apologize for the unattractive backdrop, but this is not a stage set. This is a spraypaint crime scene. Nozzles are routinely zinging through the air, lids are getting tossed, things are pushed out of the way, cans are falling over, an ant is crawling up my leg, and in the middle of all this I'm running out of spray adhesive. WHAT?! (insert blood curdling scream here) That's NOT something you can run out of when you're in the middle of what is possibly your most staggering work of heartbreaking genius. Can you? NO! I did what any sensible person would do at this point. I went in the kitchen and ransacked the drawers looking for adhesive substitute. I found some! Skewers! You hold them like chopsticks, only you have 4 in your hand instead of 2, and they are very good stencil holder downers. Think Edward Scissorhands.

More frivolity and foolishness. Then I added some floral stencils to yesterdays bookcovers. Today, another round of decoration. Tomorrow, who knows? This is all pure experimentation & play which means the entire lot of it will become Mailart at some point.

Oh the ideas were coming one right after another! Let's have another glass of iced tea with lemon! Someone hide her circular dot halo stencils!

In between fetching spraypaint nozzles Wyatt did his best to look bored and unconcerned with the brouhaha happening out back.

10:19 P.M.

Back to the hardware store today to get more spraypaint. My color palette is growing. The cans runneth over their box. Now I have 2 boxes filled with cans. Most have lost their lids. How come the can can't just be the color of the paint is what I want to know? I only intended to stock up on black, but ended up with all sorts of new shades to try.

Then I came home and went at those book covers. I had an idea I wanted to try. These aren't finished. And the backs are hopelessly unlike the fronts. No matter I can't let a little matter of coordinating fronts and backs get in the way of a perfectly good idea can I?

More news tomorrow from the stencil portrait front. I'm cutting a few new ones tonight. Ideas are racing down my neural pathways. My neuro transmitters are itching. My brain stem is humming. I need a drink. Someone's not getting any sleep tonight and it isn't the cat posse.

Here's that collection of earth & water I've mentioned before. Pieces of places I've visited. Here's that beautiful white sand beach of Carmel. There's the fountain water from San Miguel. Look, the Aegean Sea is in that bottle right there. I'm constantly staring at my bottles and dreaming of trips to far away places.

Today I read a poem about Venice that I loved over on Soul Humming's BLOG . Anyone who can see the beauty in the grittier parts of LA is a person after my own heart. I don't think I've been to this blog before. Go take a look I think you'll enjoy it as much as I did.

I sort of feel like I'm blowing my own trombone by pointing you over here, but it isn't everyday that someone like Judy captures my alter ego in a stencil. Giddyup on over HERE and see what you've been missing!

Recently I came across THIS artist - Amanda Sears. Her work is over the top. Way over. I can't figure out if she's using stencils or silkscreen or something else...? Zip on over and prepare to be dazzled. Patterns, numbers, texture, and color. Oh Muchachos, I'm feeling feverish! Someone get me a cold compress.

I went to see one of Blaine Fontana's shows at a Silverlake gallery earlier this year. His work induces a trance state. I enjoyed THIS little U-tube video tour of his new studio up in Washington. Very very cool.

Finally, one more completely thrilling spot I found today while zipping around the blog galaxy. Are THESE wild mobiles cool or what? I'll take 7 please.

Oh wait. Let me get my trombone back out. I added more Mailart to the photo album up there on the left.

This Is The Home Of A Human Being

I've added some new pages from my last visual journal to the photo album there on the left and also made a Mailart album. The photos in the Mailart album will be rotating frequently. For now, they are mostly pieces from a couple of years ago.

Vacuuming Spiders

I admire their geometrical patience,
the tidy way they wrap up leftovers,
their willingness to be the earth's
most diligent consumers of small bitternesses.

Sometimes at night I hear them
casting silk threads, clicking their spinnerets,
plucking their webs like blind Irish harpists.
I can almost taste the fruit of the fly
like sucking the pulp from a grape.

But when their webs on the ceiling
begin to converge, and the floor
glitters with shards of insect wings
I drag out the vacuum
and poke its terrible snout under the sofa,
behind the radio—everywhere,

for this is the home of a human being
and I must act like one
or the whole picture goes haywire.

by Charles Goodrich, from Insects of South Corvallis

Lately my garage has gone haywire because several giant black widows with their red-spotted bellies have spun thick silver climbing lines up to the rafters. They've woven smaller webs to snare flies and other insects. Makes things interesting when I go inside to do laundry or retrieve stencils hanging from every available hook and knob. I was almost convinced that enough was enough the other day. I was going to put my foot down and show those big black arachnids who's the boss. But that was before I saw this poem. I know I should act like a human being, but it would be such a shame to have those thick trapeze wires go to waste.

I've been on Mailart Hiatus, but today I brought out the big guns and whipped up these cut up book covers. I'm always on the lookout for free books at the library. Picked up this big stack of outdated reference periodicals over a month ago. Since I hate having stuff laying around my itty bitty studio that I don't use I decided to spray every last one of them. They'll sail out of here sometime next week. Maybe headed to a mailbox near YOU.

This is the new Lucinda Williams CD. Believe me when I say it's G O O D. The inside cover has a herd of galloping horses which is always a good sign. If you don't dig gravely-voiced women who have a drunken quality to their singing you might not appreciate my recommendation.

The cat posse was put outside so I could have some ME time, with Lucinda and the new ARtful Blogging magazine I picked up today (fabulous!). I don't know why I bother. They just sit on the table right next to the windows and bray like a couple of mad donkeys.

My sister sent me this email today. I guess I'm going to need to give THIS recipe a spin. My sister found it originally over HERE I mean if Papa Moss liked it it's gotta be good.

Sister:
I just made posy gets cozy's buttermilk poundcake.
I am going to have to re-name this poundcake though...
This is now going to be called:
..."The Buttermilk Poundcake That Dad Came Back To Earth For"....
because we just sat down and had a piece of it together. I had mine with coffee, he had a piece of cold fried chicken on the side with his. I am not kidding. We both licked our plates when we were done and he said "that was lip smacking good sissy boo, give me a holler when you make it again and I'll be back for more". I bundled him up a few pieces and put it in a shoe box for him.
this is a true story