Dispatch From LA

These Are Not Your Mother's Brussel Sprouts

Thanks to the genius inspiration of THIS Georgia blogger I now have found a new digital pastime: Fake through the viewfinder pics. AND... I discovered just this very day the magic and mystery of Photoshop Actions. Check 'em out HERE . Flickr also has a TTV group. Plenty to look at over THERE . Maybe when you're sufficiently inspired, you too, will dash outside in the fading light to snap a picture of your neighbor's laundry hanging out to dry.

If Pancake Boy didn't need me to help him with his regrouping and if the rest of the little punks didn't need to stencil and print with the New & Improved JUMBO square doilies I just got. Well then, I'd call in sick and spend every last cotton-picking minute of my day blissfully turning the pages of this Stack-O-Journals. These belong to my friend, RANDI One jolt of visual excitement after another.

But tomorrow is Friday so I'll content myself with thoughts of my 48 hour vacation that begins tomorrow at exactly 2:25 pm. Plenty of time for making more fake TTV photos, working on the little canvases, going to town in the visual journal, burying myself in my new book, getting out the Christmas decorations, and making more crispy-edged roasted brussel sprouts. (Stop frowning already. These ARE NOT your mother's brussel sprouts.) 48 hours can last forever if you have a strong enough imagination.

Blue things are growing in the garden. Oh. Let's run outside and take a picture of it before the sun goes down and sprint back inside and make another TTV photo. Why not?

I heard MOLLIE Katzen talking up her new book on the radio the other morning. I've made these roasted brussel sprouts twice since then. I'm pretty sure you're gonna want some. STAT.

More security envelopes snuck into the journal.

Quick! Go look at THESE heartbreakingly beautiful winter photos.

Then go see what HULA 70 does for kicks on Friday afternoons. I want to get a note that says, "Your hair looks good today." Or maybe "You look great in those pants!" Don't you?

I adore APRIL'S art and photographs. I JUST discovered she had a blog too. Oyvey. Her archives are well-worth a good archeological dig. Really.

Thanks Citibank

More from the visual journal.

And a better look at this page I finished at the kitchen table.

What a wealth of patterned paper lurking underneath security envelopes. Thanks Citibank, Capital One, Discover Card, and other junk mail giants. Who knew?

I'm still dreaming of winter even with the sun spilling over everything like warm varnish. These old books keep winter rooted in my imagination.

I read most of them while growing up in Panama. No snow then.

No snow now.

I Took Winter Off The Shelf

Saturday morning, an English Breakfast Tea latte, and a sunny spot for reading. I'm a few pages from completion of this book. Wouldn't necessarily recommend as it's only been mildly entertaining.

Lots happening around the kitchen table on a sunny morning.

Snow was not one of them. My sister sent me this photo yesterday. Got me thinking about winter. And snow.

So I took winter off the shelf to read for awhile.

And look at all the winter pictures.

And read about the winter activities in places that have winter. I wonder if people still do this. And if any of them read this blog. And if they might need help this winter. I can be a very helpful person under the right circumstances.

Wyatt startled me out of my winter daydreams when he jumped up on the table in his dirt disguise. Cats couldn't care a less about maple sugaring or riding through snowy fields in a horse-drawn carriage.

Not when there are squirrels to chase and grasshoppers to eat and lots and lots of dirt to roll in.

The Boy With No Nose

This weekend feels particularly luxurious. It has been Friday after all since Wednesday. Imagine a pile of Fridays all stacked one on top of the other. Hour after hour to piddle around. Oh, what shall I do first? What's that John Coltrane says about starting in the middle and moving both direction at once? Yes. I think I'll do that.

Lately every page in my book has a stencil portrait. It's going to be that way for awhile. I'm just saying. I have no control over what gets lodged in the spokes of all those wheels whirring away up here. Whir, whir, whir.

The journal is halfway filled. It's a heavy behemoth of a thing. Soon I'll need a pack mule to carry it from porch, to spraypaint station out back, to workshop.

More little canvases are finding their way to the staging area. This is my latest. The Boy With No Nose.

This boy is very Scientific. I didn't intend for him to be, but that word jumped out at me from the newspaper. I'm hearing voices again. I try to ignore them, but sometimes they won't go away.

You know how it is.

Funny Is Funny

A visual journal page and mailart that found its new home.

The back fence is my new staging area.

It was a good day to bring the camera to school. My favorite classroom artist drew people with 3 rows of teeth.

And hid pancakes in his desk. I didn't want to encourage more pancake hiding by laughing too loud or taking a picture of the crime scene, but I couldn't help it. Funny is funny.

Later we made art.

It was a good day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Life's Brilliant Cast Of Chararcters

My wall mosaic is growing. The little canvases are quite a bit of fun. My visual journal is XXL all the way. The pages are a bit over 10 by 13. Working on a teeny tiny 8x8 or 5x7 or 6x6 boxy canvas is a completely different experience.

I've applied self-leveling gel to 2 of the canvases, but think I would prefer a thick layer of resin over the top. I think that involves mixing 2 different substances together then pouring. I like the idea of having a limited time to get the resin on the canvas, the strong odor necessitating a gas mask (?), and the vague possibility of a disasterous result. So thrilling!

The investigation I'm conducting on working outside the book continues.

And so does the fog. Just look at Moss Cottage floating in a dense layer of mist. If I can't have rain a nice blanket of fog will do just fine.

The barometric pressure seems to be wreaking havoc on the collective psyche of the cat posse. The Missus has taken to spraying the ornamental grasses. I thought only boys did that.

Someone else is pole vaulting off the counter every few minutes.

I finally got to the bottom of the flattened out crop circle effect in this pot. I blamed it on the other 2.

Yes, maybe this is turning into a cat blog. I'll lay off the cat posts just as soon as they stop doing such wildly entertainintg things. I can't say when that will be exactly.

Okie Adams died in the house fire in my neighborhood late last week. I was intrigued by his bango-making history, which I heard about on the news so I googled him and found this:

Okie has a long and colorful history in the Southern California banjo building scene. I knew and worked with him in the mid-to-late '70s as he was building block pots for Stelling banjos. The last time I saw and talked with him was early this summer at the Topanga Canyon Banjo/Fiddle Contest. Although hampered by old age and poor health, he was still active and happy, still building banjos then.
Okie was a fun, generous, humorous, non-conventional person to know. He helped many of us along as we were growing up in the banjo scene, leaving his mark permanently in our lives. A straight shooter, strong on clean living, hard, accurate work and faith, he took me in and taught me some of his trade and philosophy at a time when I was needing both work and skills. I know a number of others for whom he did the same.

and this:

I'm playing a banjo that was made by Okie Adams. Okie's philosophy in making banjos is "...the heavier the banjo the better it sounds." I bought this one from him in 1969; at that time his heavy banjos were 20 pounds, however in later years some of his banjos went up to 50 pounds. I consider myself lucky not to have met him in his 50-pound phase. Anyway, it seems like the older I get the heavier this banjo gets, but boy, it sure does sound good.

You never know who's living just around the corner. Okay. Enough waxing poetic about life's brilliant cast of characters, I've got wee canvases to stencil. Someone hand me one of my cans of paint and a fat cap! Clear the decks!

Pssst...wanna see something cool? I thought you might. Go HERE

Now go check out MADE by Mother. Plan to stay awhile.

A Tidy Little Package

My latest stencils all bundled up in a tidy little package. I've got this idea brewing for creating a real live mosaic on my workshop wall.

The art I ordered from MARK Traughber's Etsy shop arrived today. It really took my breath away. I'm utterly charmed with the smallness of it. The way the wood block the stencil is painted on stands up on my desk. I am seriously digging my ALL NEW little fellow. I think he needs a companion. Don't you?

Mailart I sent arrived. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of these stencils.

A terrible house fire in my neighborhood early this morning. This was my view from the bathroom out across the hills just after dawn. A couple of houses were involved. One was burnt completely down in under 10 minutes. The smell of smoke puts all my equine senses on high alert. I could be talked back down with a healthy dose of cool and wet.

Oh Dear

Another journal arrived on my doorstep late this afternoon from Patty . It felt so luxurious to sit out on the porch in all of this bright November heat and turn the thick pages one by one. Another persons visual journal is such a mystery and a wonder. And this latest book to grace my doorstep is a big painterly delight. Rich pages weighted down with paint & all manner of paper, vintage photos, stencils, glue, and a fine sprinkling of words.

A couple more pages from my visual journal. Soon these ideas I'm working out in my book will leave the confines of these pages and find their way onto a different surface. Canvas, cardboard, wood I'm not sure which. In my mind I can see an entire series of collaged portraits. For now I continue in the book. Everything goes into the book.

A few favorite blogs I can't seem to get enough of:

Wolfie and the Sneak

A Little Deer

Poppytalk

Go see this gluebook NOW over at Crust Station

Diana Fayt and her FOLKLORE pieces.

Go here this instant and scroll until you get to the 4 posts on SBP: Print & Pattern If that doesn't send you careening down your front stairs and running all the way to your nearest scrapbook store to touch all the paper nothing will.

Oh dear. The night is young. And I have 2 stencils ready to cut. 2 visual journals to pore over. And a lemon cream martini waiting in the wings.

Greek Spraypaint

I had an unexpected visitor the other night. A nice man named Harry hand delivered my spraypaint. I wasn't sure who who the fellow on the porch with the little box was so I just opened the french windows while still sitting at my computer.
"Uh...are YOU Dispatch From LA?" he asked. (My paypal identity)
"That's me."
"Sorry it took so long."
Wow. That's what I call customer service. He was probably not expecting Aunt Bertha donned in full apron getup.
Spraypaint from Greece without nozzles. One surprise after another. Harry explained the way things work carefully. I took notes. Now I have a pack of 50 fat caps on the way. Harry is one of the co-owners of CREWEST the store/gallery that sponsered the historic Meeting of the Styles a few weeks back along with
FOLAR.
HERE'S a video shot on that day that shows some of the murals being painted. I had no clue until I watched this that Sabotaz paint from Greece was the largest donator of spraypaint for this event. Cool. I can't wait to use it.

I'm having all sorts of good times with the scrapbook paper (SBP).

Also I'm suddenly into cutting stencil portraits of children. This is me circa 1972.

More evidence of SBP and my new acrylic pigmented ink. This time in white.

Looks like some of the little people are excited to be back in school. I'm still adjusting, but I appreciate their unbridled enthusiasm.

Another Sunday Sets In Los Angeles

Another Sunday sets in Los Angeles.

I've added a photo album of my sister's visual journal there on the left. I'll be adding more pages in the coming days.
Lately I'm enjoying spraying my stencils on top of vintage ledger paper. I found 4, 1930's ledgers that came from a fire insurance company in Pittsburg a few weeks back. 26 bucks for a lifetime supply of ledger paper. A good bargain I thought. I love that buttery background underneath a flat black stencil.

I discovered scrapbook stores about a year ago. The variety and design of the paper is spectacular! Who knew? That's another perfect surface to layer a stencil over. I had been making mailart on book covers the last few months until Patty sent me some mailart last week on scrapbook paper. Mailart is endlessly inspiring don't you think?

Someone hand me the glue! Toss me those scissors! Clear the area. I've got ideas rumbling around and a lot of them involve S.B.P.

The result of that rumbling will be landing in someone's mailbox this week.

Another fixation. Pen nibs and little glass wells of ink. I cleaned mine off and got a few bottles of new ink.

Lately it's all I write with in the visual journal. There's something very satisfying about dipping that metal nib into all that glossy ink.

Do you have a minute? Good because I have a few links for you. Well on second thought, this is gonna take longer than a minute. Go grab your livliest cup of coffee or tea and a cat for the lap. You can thank me later.

Reverse applique stenciled t-shirt anyone? Hightail it over HERE to Alabama Chanin. Plenty of fabulosity all under one roof. Start in the projects and keep clicking those red arrows. Their blog is fun too.

Next go see COG & PEARL

Katie Muth has some must see prints.

Finally, have you checked out INGRID'S visual journal lately?

Nope, not done yet. I hear Etsy calling your name. AMY STONER has stolen my heart. Can someone go pick it up for me? And while you're at it I'll take 8-10 of her pieces. No gift wrap necessary.

Spirited And Lively

"I start in the middle of a sentence and move both directions at once." - John Coltrane

This quote entered my mind at the exact millisecond that I attempted to begin this post. Okay, look, I'm excited. I drank a whole pot of coffee and thought I'd hit the spraypaint table outside to lay down a few new ideas jostling around up here in the brain stem. Then Michelle had to go and send me this cool link to this cool BLACK BUNNY of an artist Mark Traughber and then I had to accidently find HIS Etsy shop and wracked my brain picking out the one cool piece to grace my workshop walls. It wasn't easy people. Please know all the bad words I am deleting from this post as fast as my foul mouthed fingers try and sneak them in. Oh why does everything have to compete for my attention at once!? REstraint Restraint. What? Huh? More coffee anyone? Where's the bullhorn?

I'll be posting pages of my sister's visual journal in the days ahead. The mosaic up at the top is just a sneak preview of what's heading down the digital pipeline. The show we were in at The Paper Studio in Tempe just wrapped up and RANDI , Carol, and I decided to swap journals instead of getting back our own. So for the next few weeks we'll get to see each others books before ours land back in their rightful homes.
Looking at other people's visual journals is a serious jolt of a good time.

Let's see where was I...? (This 2 directions at once thing is fun!) So Robin, curator of the show sent me this stunning apron as a thank you for participating the last 3 years. Lisa Berg (no website) made me this apron after Robin sent her my blog link. She looked at my journals and came up with this design. Check out that big 5 appliqued on the front pocket. I'm wearing it right now and have no plans to remove it. It has pockets. That hold things. Lots of things.

Then I had finished the Etsy ordering and was just beginning to get back some semblance of ill-contructed order in the back closet of the brain when I went over to L2 DESIGN COLLECTIVE to investigate the origins of this Test Print Journal Robin sent me. One look at their Posters and that's when the real calamity began. The rods and cones of my eyes are working overtime. The nueral pathways are plugged up with too much information. Graphic images are swirling to and fro.

I'm holding this delectable new purchase from Trader Joes responsible. Spirited and Lively? No kidding.

Oh thank goodness. The voice of reason. The Missus with a bouquet of flowers stuck to her fur.

p.s. HAMMERPRESS thank you card from Robin. How did she know I was their biggest fan?

Pure Bliss

Dottie is winging her way back to the great plains of Kansas as I write this. She left late this morning. There's just one Moss sister left in LA tonight and she is enjoying a Lemon Cream Martini all by her lonesome. Oh Muchachos! You'll want to make this very very much. It would make a good dessert martini. Since I always eat dessert before dinner it works perfect for me.

1 oz. vodka
1 oz. lemonade concentrate thawed
splash of limoncello
1 oz. vanilla syrup
4 oz. milk (you could use half & half, but 2% really is creamy enough)

I invented this one myself. Once you have your ingredients stockpiled it's fun to experiment.

I've enjoyed my last day of vacation very much snuggled away up here in the tiny cottage on the hill. I like easing back into school with a 3-day weekend coming up.

I decided to carve an OBEY stencil of my very own. That Shepard Fairey is such an interesting fellow. My good buddy RANDI who is my pipeline to all things cool sent me THESE very informative and interesting videos on S.F. Then there is THIS old Salon.com article that I enjoyed very much. If you're a hopelessly clueless sort like me you might enjoy listening to and reading about the Obey Giant campaign. For years and years my curiosity about Andre the Giant has been simmering as I kept seeing his image throughout the city. I love getting to the bottom of things.
Okay one more...Go HERE to see S.F. talking about his artistic process in his garage studio here in LA.

Further exploration with Photoshop brushes. Between the S.F. correspondence course and the Photoshop mania I really don't have time to return to school tomorrow.
AMY sent me this fragrant box of earth and water from a secret location somewhere near the Columbia River. My very own box of the Pacific Northwest. Pure bliss.

Gator Pride shows her lovely face in the garden.

Someone's running out of t-shirts.

A chipboard book covered with scrapbook paper. And getting covered with more photos and scrap and paint. It's currently living on my oversized t.v. tray.

A person's gotta have an art project to work on during Dexter, Survivor, International Househunter, and Ugly Betty don't they?

Dottie

My sister Dottie has been in LA for meetings and is coming for a 48 hour visit. Oh dear! What shall I make her for dinner? Chicken Picata with the limoncello sauce? Sicilian chicken sausage & goat cheese pizza with fresh dough from Trader Joe's? (oh hell, let's not kid ourselves all good things originate at TJ's!) or smoked salmon quiche? Let's see she'll need 2 lunches and 2 dinners...Why not make all 3! Someone pass me the martini shaker! The Moss sisters are in town and as Papa Moss was fond of saying, they know how to live high on the hog.

This is Dottie's spot when she comes to LA. She heads straight for the glider and doesn't move.

I bring her things she'll need like books, cereal, dinner, martinis.

That's Dottie there in the middle. I wasn't in the picture yet.

Visual journal shots.

And more.

Unexpected mailart from PATTY !

Patty just introduced me to Shepard Fairy. She knows a lot of things. Like that S.F. is coming to LA in December.

It's good to have bloggy friends who know a lot of things and on top of that send you things. Cool things.

Wyatt said if I didn't make a mosaic featuring him and only him, he would jump on Dottie and rub all over her suitcase.

She's allergic to the cat posse. Which is why she'll be sleeping in this:

English Breakfast Tea Latte

Gate C22

At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.

Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching —
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.

But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after — if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now — you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

by Ellen Bass from The Human Line

A heavy blanket of soft fog on the hills this morning. A beautiful poem. And a steaming mug of English Breakfast Tea latte. After years of getting them at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf I decided just yesterday to make one at home. Inspiration can simmer for years you know. Seeing this giant plaid box of EBT at Trader Joes had me scooting around the kitchen in my apron.

Oh dear. I think it would not be at all tooting my own horn to say MY EBTL is far superior to anything CB&TL ever dreamed of creating. Here are the cast of characters: tea, milk, Torani vanilla syrup. Here are the directions: steep, steam, pour, stir, sip. In that order.

Giant Christmas mug optional.

When it's foggy and you have to turn your heater on for a few minutes to get the chill out of the air there's really no need to leave the house. May as well stay home and keep dipping my old Speedball pen nib in the ink and scribbling away on more pages.

Or stare at my new number sets.

Or fool around some more with my new Photoshop brushes.

And even if the sun does come out later and my other sister is popping in for a couple of days tomorrow there's no reason to clean house or even change out of the gown and apron.

Is there?

10:13 p.m. 58 Degrees

Visual journal pages from the past week. And a new art table chair. My other one met with an unfortunate ending last night. Uh...Paul. If you're reading this. No Pilates demonstrations on this chair.

Mailart and a long letter from dear Suzanne in Assisi. I'm vicariously enjoying her months in Italy very very much. I will have to put her on assignment photographing Italian street art for me!

And finally, I took so many photos yesterday on my graffiti bridge excursion that I wanted to share a few more.

See the little waving fellow? Did you know those little stickers were called street logos? I didn't. Here in LA you see them on all sorts of street signs, newspaper machines, electrical boxes, anything metal.

I started reading this book the other day in a bookstore and it was so interesting I had to buy it. If you have any interest at all in graffiti art (mine is mostly confined to graffiti posters and stenciled street art) this book is a fascinating read. R. Gordon at Amazon says it better than me:

This is a great book showcasing those who are on the cutting edge of graffiti art. This is not your typical "tags" graffiti. These folks are pushing the envelope, blurring the lines between cartooning, graffiti, and fine art. Visual artists, do yourself a favor and pick up this book. It's full of fresh ideas and talent that will make your head spin.

The Bones Of The City

I headed out early on my expedition. The graffiti from Meeting of Styles was very visible from both sides of the San Fernando Bridge. In addition to the graffiti murals, where entire teams of spray artists work on one giant image, there are also random tags covering this entire neighborhood. Street gangs look to be ruling the roost down here. I'm not a fan of this dog-pissing type of spray that's all about marking one's territory. But the murals are different. The skill it takes to render these giant images is evident on close inspection. Mostly I inspected with my zoom as you can't actually get down into the wash without considerable effort and agility.

Do me a favor will you? Just go LOOK at all the different kind of caps there are for spraying! Come on, it'll only take you a second. Makes it easier to understand how they can render some of these details.

So there it was and I saw it and it was pretty cool to see that much concentrated stylized graffiti, but........I was even more excited by the little jaunt I took up to the top of the freeway bridge that spans the LA River. It felt to me like I was wandering there among the BONES of the city. Oh, you have to really love a place to think this is something special. The bridge was built in 1937. I could go on and on about the stairs I climbed, the way you can climb up to the northbound side of the 110 and look down on the southbound side. Or the way the tunnels look up close, or how most of the LA River runs in this one deep channel, or the rumbling passenger trains on the adjacent bridge. How narrow the pedestrian walkway is. I stayed up thre awhile staring down at the river and the trains, the bridges. Thinking.

A Dreadful Inconvenience

Enjoying the last week of my luxurious 42 day vacation. As the Spanish proverb goes "How beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterward." Which leads me to my next conclusion. That being, that I should really have another 6 weeks off to rest. I do nothing remarkably well. And it really IS terribly tiring this doing of nothing.

What a dreadful inconvenience work is turning out to be. I can imagine all of my little alligators gnashing their teeth and expectantly swinging their reptilian tails. They generally hate all of this boring free time. They'd much prefer to be asking me questions, writing me notes about the horrible crimes their classmates are committing, chasing each other around on the school yard, skinning knees, losing baby teeth, growing big teeth, and listening to me read the ongoing saga of Captain Underpants.

While I was doing nothing last week I worked in my visual journal. Today I cut some more sillouette stencils. I am enjoying those more and more. Will post some of those tomorrow. That is, after I get back from my pre-dawn romp through LA. Monk's Sister is booting me out of the house bright and early. She will not let anyone come between her and her Murphy's Oil Soap. Hopefully in my bleary-eyed confusion my field trip to see the muralled walls of the LA river will be a success. I found out about THIS after the fact from a flyer at the library. It's not far from my Highland Park digs. Hopefully a train won't rumble by when I'm on that bridge. Great photos of Meeting of Styles at the Friends of the LA River (FOLAR) HERE My favorite is the ship on top of the weathervane.

Check out all THESE shades of spraypaint you can order online. Click on paint in the upper left hand corner. Love the different shades of grey. Who knew?

I nabbed these photos off the ARts & Events site, but I'd like to see what I can get myself from the San Fernando Bridge.

More from last week's journal.

If you have a little time to kill you may want to GO HERE NOW and take a look at this interesting fellow's work using toothpicks and nails. Whaaaa? Close your mouth.

Chances are good that you've visited THIS wildly funny blog. JUDY told me about it. Speaking of which, have you seen her encaustic work lately and her amber shellac experiments and her scratching waxy writing and her....HUH? Have you?

From LISA & CARLA'S blogs (both outstanding) I learned about MAIRA
Oh, the never ending spinning blog galaxy. It really is something to see.