Dispatch From LA

what it is

while i did this.

the garden did this.

and this.

so i responded with this.

back and forth.  inside outside.  

the world is beautiful.  

even if there are giant deadly twisters shaking us all up from time to time.

and when i'm finished posting this latest installement from the chronicles of moss cottage.

i think i'll head outside and do some sketching.  the leaves and petals beckon.

ya know?

sketchwars is reborn!

sketchwars has been revived!   sister and i are going to choose a room each week in our houses and sketch something from that room.   we're still going to include portraits every now and then.  and whatever else blows our skirts up.

sometimes when i'm thinking of what to sketch i never think to look around moss cottage - everything is so familiar.  like this view of an old street sign hanging crookedly from my bathroom doorway.  i have looked at it a bazillion times.  the drawing is crude, but full of life for me.  i drew it from my bedroom with the sun blazing in through the window.  

the loo - another room of the house i don't often photograph.  seemed like a good subject for a sketch.  and the light flooding the room was so pleasing.

while the sketchbook was drying i turned off my sketching brain and turned on my free-range brain.  color shape pattern galore.  something broke loose and wanted to roam.  so i said yes.

go go go go go go go 

squee!

and then i made and ate this sandwich.    

black forest bacon, cave aged vermont cheddar cheese, ripe tomatoes, lettuce, and mayo on these voluptuous rolls.  which, if i'm being honest, is going to be what i make for lunch all week.  

because i said.

hello monday!

went for an booty bustin' walk this morning.  i usually stop at the bus stop and sit for a few minutes.  this may seem counterintuitive but let me assure you that it is NOT.   i like to watch the people whizzing by in their cars and i need to catch my breath.  then it's up the hill i go.  i was amazed today at how energetic i felt today because of that walk. 

i went back and forth in my visual journal and sketchbook.  decided to sketch something from each room of my house.  will show those tomorrow!  

SYTYCD auditions are going on.  love that pause button my my tv.  i need practice drawing people, but i'm tired of portraits.  that didn't take long!  sister and i will have to revive sketchwars in some new form.  we'll put our heads together and come up with something.

sunny sunday

lets have a good laugh shall we?  at my expense.  i don't mind.  this was a blind contour drawing of pam.  we howled over this.  later i watercolored over it and tried to spell contour.  ha! ha! ha!  i JUST THIS MINUTE realized that i spelled it wrong.

the one above is a semi-blind contour with a water soluble fountain pen.  that purple lattice was already on the page when i started.  a remnant of a day a few months back.  there's some colorful language on that page so avert your eyes if you're easily troubled by brash talk.  yadda yadda.

i forgot to show the groovy cans of soup in my fav color combos that pam brought me.  won't they be fun to sketch & paint?

my GIANT journal is 15x11.5 inches.  it practically takes up half of my kitchen table.  which as you can see i didn't bother to clean up before i took this pic.  

sunny sunday in los angeles.  

my neighbor just brought me 2 tacos and a diet coke from the taco truck.  life is good.

 

 

james earl jones spoke to me

combinations of red & white are like heroin to me.  immediate high.  narcotic bliss.  all that.

i found myself charged with excitement yesterday and today while i built my new visual journal.

i was so feverish and swoony that i missed a couple of stitches on the spine.  whoops and who kayres?!

also someone hid my yellow waxed linen, i ran out of the orange, and i had to switch from red to orange sometime in the 3rd inning.  this is one big mother.

i might not have been thinking straight when i started cutting out letters and gluing them on the front.  maybe.  i'm not sure yet.  haven't decided if it's a mistake, a tragedy, or staggering genius.  

the back is my favorite part.  i was going inside the closet to get a roll of paper when the pinwheel i had taped to the closet spoke to me.  

"glue me on the back" it said in a james earl jones sort of voice.  so i did.

i'm thinking i'll incorporate this technique into the travel journal that i make for TICKET TO... class in the fall.  it's going to work perfect for the type of binding i have in mind.  something different.  know what i mean jellybean?

in the unlikely even that you were wondering, the binding on this journal is one i teach in TICKET TO VENICE.  

hope you're having a fabulous saturday.  doing something that makes you feel bright eyed and bushy tailed.  i know i am!

 

 

one flew over the cookoo's nest

pam my crafty gangster friend came over yesterday to play our favorite game:  one flew over the cuckoo's nest visual journal edition.

she brought her watercolors to tempt me with.

i don't think i've been surrounded by so many pretty palettes before!  naturally i wanted to try them all.  so i did!

i always insist upon gifts at our playdates.  in fact if pam doesn't bring stuff for me, i make her drive all the way home and get something.  who wants to do that in LA traffic?  no one that's who.  so she planned ahead and brought lots of good stuff, starting with these rose chintz and currier & ives plates.

"how can i possibly accept these generous thoughtful gifts?" i said as i shoved them into my cabinet and stood in front of it with my arms crossed to indicate that a change of mind on her part would not be an option. 

pam also brought me some gorgeous fabric scraps which i added to my fabric drawer in my art storage cabinet.  sweet ingrid from sweden sent me some beautiful scandinavian-looking scraps in march.  and now my drawer, which was very anemic looking, is full to the gills of bright graphic prints and pretty trims.   i sort of feel like i won the lottery.  i locked the drawer and hid the key after the fabric was safely inside.  one can't be too careful with one's lottery winnings!  

i always love going through pam's giant journals, running my hands over the pages, and staring at all the intricate patterns.  i casually remarked that i should make a BIG journal for a change.  but i rarely work in 2 visual journals at the same time.  pam leaped out of her chair, charged over to my bookcases, and grabbed this huge old postcard scrapbook i got at a flea market in paris a few years ago (for 10 euros!)

"MAKE ONE NOW!!  this can be the cover!"  she screamed at me in her best one-flew-over-the-cookoo's-nest voice.

"but i don't have a back cover," i whined.

then she rummaged around somemore and pulled out a gigantic piece of chipboard i had forgotten about.  "YOU'LL USE THIS!!!"

"but you know i can't start a new journal until i finish the old one," i whined some more.

"SHADDUP AND DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!"

i do not understand how such a little person can have such a big loud bossy-pants voice.  in fact i was just about to say, 'you are not the boss of me!' when i realized it was a good idea.  so i shaddup.

and today i went to work making my enormous journal.

i didn't have enough paper the right size so i just copied what pam did in her journal and sewed together enough strips to make the pages long enough.

now i'm getting ready to stitch the whole thing together.

and that's a true story.  um except i left the part out about the contour drawings we did of each other.  insert laughter track.

more on the GIANT journal tomorrow!

 

 

happy friday!

i did 2 more matisse studies this week in my visual journal.  one is below left.

i am crazy about all of the interiors he painted.  stunning richy patterned and exotic.

i also carried on with my own study of pattern & shape.  i am obsessed with stripes.

and carpets.

oh no!  i can't count!

another matisse interior on the left below.

i'm having bizarro dreams every night.  long arabian night specials featuring stories inside stories.  wild plot twists.  somethings funny!  someone's chasing me!  i'm chasing someone else!  i burned my sweet potato fries and they disappeared!

it's almost 4:30.  time to retire to the back patio to read.  3 coyotes were hanging out in the lane next to moss cottage last night.  probably trying to coax catboy and catgirl to come out and play with them.  but i didn't raise no fools!  no siree.

enjoy your friday doing whatever it is that blows your skirt up.  i'll just be here doing the same...

whizzing through space

i've been painting shapes and patterns.  again.  some i like more than others.  but when i see them all as a whole they begin to feel more visually cohesive.

when i started moving the brush around and making these grey zig zags i looked up at a rumpled taped magazine page that has been on the wall above my art table for around 2 years.  it's of a matisse painting that i found in a doctor's office.  and i stuck it up on that wall with yellow tape long ago because i wanted to study it.  find within it the thing that attracts me.   i've been wanting to recreate it in my visual journal ever since, thinking it had something to teach me. so today i did.  finally i did.

and now i am turning mental somersaults thinking of the matisse book from the library i'm going to check out tomorrow and come home and find more matisses to paint in my journal.  because there's things i want to know about painting.  and i think matisse can teach me.

i'm looking at towels and sheets and pillows and bowls and glasses.  my representations of course do not resemble those things when i'm done, but i'm fascinated by the patterns and shapes around me.  

and mostly i love knowing that i don't have to stop.  i can just keep going.  keep sitting at my table in the morning sunlight listening to birds and cats and coffee dripping into my cup.  

and KEEP GOING.  keep going.  keep going.

today when i drove out to the beach and had my taxes by my quirky wonderful tax fellow of the last ten years...he said, "isn't it great to be alive?  isn't life amazing?  we're on a planet that is whizzing through space...going i don't know how many miles per hour...and"  

i didn't want to interrupt and say, 'hold on let me get out my notebook and write all this down!'  so i'm a little fuzzy about the part after us whizzing through space, but i really understood the joy he was trying to convey.  i really really did.  the end.

yellow

our storm passed quickly and all that was left this morning were passing flotillas of clouds in deep blue sky.  it stayed cool all day, even with the sunshine.  i ♥ winters in california.  but i do dream of blizzards.  and ice skating.  and sleds.  and sleigh rides through the white countryside.  and ice fishing.  and snowy cabins.

and i did think those winter thoughts while i sliced up the meyer lemons i picked off the trees in palm springs a few weeks ago.

i worked away at the kitchen table in the sun.  slice slice slice.

...sort of followed this recipe except i used 3 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar.  i can't wait to spoon some onto my toast in the morning.  it thickened nicely and was perfectly sweet and bitter.  

i'm going to plant my dwarf meyer lemon tree in the front yard this week.  it doesn't seem to like living in a pot.  i'm hoping it will like its new home near the peach tree and give me lots of lemons to pick year after year when i'm in my dotage.  i can have my assistant push me outside when i'm 95 and sit me under the lemon tree.

further thoughts about yellow.

and dots.

and stuff.

if someone were to call me on the phone and say, "i heard about your sabbatical what big important things are you doing with your time?"  i would say without hesitation, "i'm making dots & dashes!"

because i am.

yadda yadda yadda

somewhere along the way visual journal no. 13 stopped being a visual journal and started becoming a field of white that i can squirt paint onto.   i hardly ever write in it.  i hardly ever finish anything.  i hardly ever do anything in it except experiment with color.  it's crude.  it's random.  it's happy-making.  

i hate to be so nauseatingly cheerful about my sabbatical, but the truth is i feel HIGH most of the time.  i sit in the warm sun.  i read.  i pet catboy & catgirl.  i talk to the racoons who visit my back patio.  i entertain thoughts of never ever being a working stiff again.  for shite's sake  i'm reading abraham. lincoln. vampire. hunter.  i haven't started speaking in tongues yet.  but that doesn't feel far off.  stick with me.  this is all going somewhere.  i think.

oh hi!

i brought this rough & tumble calendar journal book thing with me to palm springs.  it's strictly no-think.  

paint cut paste

BAM

these pages were already done...

here's the little book pam showed carol and i how to make in palm springs.

i'm going to use it in the exact same way i use the rough & tumble calendar version up above.

100% play, no thinking, no attachment to outcome.  fast & easy.

full tilt.

i just keep adding stuff to the pages.  strips of this or that.

sister & i decided to sketch ourselves in the giant sketchbooks pam gave us.

we're going to do a portrait a week.  each of us will choose a photo and send it to the others.  i'm going to pick only weirdos.  i like to draw peeps with character.

when i drew these i wasn't wearing my glasses and everything was kind of blurry.

i'm sure this gave me an advantage.

if you want a 27 oz. marg next time you're in palm springs look at the card below:

while you're there can you look for a striped grey cotton bra with the underwire cut out.  if you find it send it to me.  

so i can send it to my sister.

journal stacks

thank you to everyone who responded to my "state of the union" post from yesterday.  i took it down today because i don't want it recirculated and hitting the rounds of the education blogs.  if you reposted it somewhere i'd be grateful if you took it down.

your comments, emails, and suggestions were wonderful.  i really felt HEARD.

and that's all i wanted.

it means a lot.

change is afoot.  when the dust settles i'll let you know the details.

and now back to regular programming...

i was rummaging through my inspiration book last weekend and was struck by the autumn colors from the pic above.  that bed looks nap worthy.

it's been a long time since i've added anything in this book.

got me thinking about what's inspiring me lately.

colors shapes patterns cookies cookies 

you know.  the usual.

my inspiration book is not really a record of things i want to buy.  i just dig taking my own photos and combining them with commercial images & vintage paper.  making a book that feels like a magazine.

purely visual of course.

with a few irreverent notes scattered here and there.

anyway i had several of my journals outside.  snapping photos for an upcoming project.

now there's an even bigger stack on my orange chair waiting to be reshelved.  

here.  i'll show you.  

i sort of like the sculptural look of all of them piled up there.

are werewolves in the cat family?

i made a beeline home.

straight into the arms of grey goose & a visual journal.

the 100 degree temps from earlier in the week are GONE.  cooler weather is headed our way.

in the classroom today cristina asked,

miss moss are werewolves in the cat family?

i let out a big booming laugh that ricocheted off all 4 classroom walls.  then i motored over to my desk grabbed a pad of paper and wrote that down.  word for word.  then i launched into a werewolf discussion.  cause that's how we roll in the little classroom in the big city.  that's how we do it.

happy glorious merry making book reading nap taking friday!

moo

100 degree days here in LA.  whew.  i went for a dip in a pool of hexagons.

and octagons!  

i can always count on geometry to soothe my hot savage self.

in other news... i started reading this book:

which led to poking around and doing some research on the organic milk industry and finding some disturbing facts.  here is where you change the channel if you're a vegan.  many so-called, "organic" brands run their giant factory farms as inhumanely and unethically as non-organic industrial milk operations.  

i thought i would share THIS excellent resource that keeps scorecards on tons of organic milk operations.  i was looking for a dairy that either IS a small family run operation, or one that gets its milk from these type of small family farms with pastured free-roaming cows.  i'm super excited to find i have several good brands to choose from here in California.  Stremick Heritage, Clover Organic, Whole Foods (365 Organic), and Organic Valley.  just passing the information along if you're a milk drinker and interested in this sort of thing.

and if you're not.  well...MOO. 

image from harding college of ed

now i'm off to find scorecards on organic free-range chicken & egg operations.  will report my findings!

backwards & forwards

in the last year or so my visual journaling practice and my visual journal itself has changed.  somewhere along the way it went from being a book of completed collages.  each page a finished individual session.  well it went from that to...to...i don't know what.

gradually i stopped wanting or needing to write journal type entries.  now it feels more like a place to work out ideas.  maybe i want to draw some gemstones.

maybe i have a hankering to draw some chevron patterns.

maybe i want to make some maps or giant letters.

and maybe none of it has to be unified on one page like i needed it to be before.

i drift back and forth between my sketchbook and my visual journal.   this is okay with me.  i don't mean to imply i am bothered by the change.  i'm just noting it.  musing about the flow of the creative river.

and where's it's taking me.

and now...maybe i'll go draw some chicken pot pie.  yeah.  i think i'll do that!

monday at home

there is nothing like taking off your thinking cap and shelving it while you explore lines, marks, and shapes with a brush and a puddle of paint.

although you may beg to differ, i did not exchange my thinking cap for a blindfold.

i didn't!

i went inside my mind and took a picture of the last 4 days.  

i wore sunglasses because it was bright in there.

i developed the pics in the pages of my visual journal.

i did all of that.

and now it's monday

and i still have a whole day left.

plus some orange sherbet in the freezer.

plus a clean pink bowl to put it in.

but for now i'm going to go paint some more fruit cocktail colors in my visual journal.

talk amongst yourselves!

p.s.  these titles {based on YOUR latest recs} are applying for the job of Next Book:

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

Blame

The Passion

surely one of them will get hired for the job.

AND ALSO...  my sister dottie found a cute little cottage in san diego in her price range within walking distance of the beach.  she's moving in right now.

hello!

i have an idea stuck in the cog of one of my wheels.  by that i mean stuck fast.  

not budging.

i am going to draw giant letters in my sketchbook and i'm not going to stop until they're all done.  one a day.

 in my visual journal i continue doing whatever i feel like whether it makes sense or not because i am the boss of me. 

~

and tomorrow some big cheese is coming to our school to walk through our classrooms and take notes and make sure we are on track and not fooling around.  teachers need entire teams of babysitters to stay on track.  oh you didn't know that?  yeah.  it's true.  hopefully the wheels of the big classroom cart we're riding in won't go rolling off in all different directions at the exact moment when the B.C. pulls into our station.

but i'm not holding my breath.

~

when i get home i'll continue my art brain exercises, draw another letter in my sketchbook, and make a cocktail.  think about the upcoming 4 day weekend.

all new

how i was feeling:

playful

hopeful

hungry

excited

disgusted

elated

discouraged

cheerful

sleepy

happy

confused

curious

all that within the first 4-5 pages of my new visual journal.  displeased with my initial efforts i plodded on ignoring the mentally ill relatives of my mind who like to sit around and discuss my pages sometimes.  'these are warm-ups!'  i told myself.  'exercises.'  

knowing that made me feel better looser.  it's been awhile since i sat with my visual journal.  and this is a new one.  it's kind of good to mess up all the first pages.  you know...to get it over with and move on.  and when i looked back they weren't so bad after all.  i like it when that happens.  the beautiful ugly and crazy all rolled up into one.  that's the journal.  that's the one i love.

in my sketchbook i am drawing GIANT letters.

~

i was listening to israel kamakawiwo'ole.  daaaang i dig that guy.

i stopped in the middle of horsing around in my journal to make a dance video for my sister.  

i do that sometimes.

~

p.s.  will whoever emailed me about the typography book email me back because i can't find your email and i just remembered i didn't answer you.  sorry!  i try and respond to all of my emails that require an answer and can't be found by reading DFLA (or common sense), but the cracks.  they are large.  sometimes stuff falls in between.

the art of tea. and war.

this is becoming my favorite way to bind a book.  simple, handsome.

i'm drinking a jar of white coconut creme tea (from Art of Tea) every day.

iced in my biggest glass.

 because the aroma and flavor is exquisite.  subtle & light.

when i read through the comments on yesterday's post i felt like i had my very own verizon team.  full of support & wise words.

i feel lucky to have you.  sure do.

  the school district i work for is a giant lumbering dysfunctional demoralizing institution.  a big dirty broken-down machine with a lot of hostile broken-down people on power-trips at the controls.  flipping switches.  changing channels.  experts at being experts.

if i retire early in 5 years it won't because of the kids.  it will be because of the adults.

having said that i do have a real wild bunch on my hands this year.  a totally preventable situation had some care been taken not to move all the severe first grade behavior problems into one classroom.  mine.

at my school, teachers are not involved in classroom organization.  we're not smart enough apparently.

 have you heard of oppositional defiant disorder?  it's living in my classroom.

whatever.

i have sun tzu on my side.  the art of war to the rescue again!

Carefully study the well-being of your men, and do not overtax them.  Concentrate your energy and hoard your strength.  Keep your army continually on the move, and devise unfathomable plans.

also i am researching a 1 year leave of absence when this school year is over. unpaid.  but an entire year to experiment.  that's worth a lot.

 

dear elisabeth gjessing this used to be your book

all weekend my brain was on overdrive.  thinking thinking thinking

and while i thought i punched holes, sewed in signatures, rounded corners.

kissed pink cat paw pads.

i am NOT a follow-your-bliss kind of person {when it comes to employment.}  i turn away from cliche slogans that include the word soul/dream/manifest/universe.  yadda yadda yadda all that stuff leaves a sacharrine taste in my mouth and a tinny sound in my ears.  too canned.  too trite.  too disneylandesque.  too simplistic.  too everything.  for me.  the world according to mary ann doesn't operate like a wish factory.  there's chaos, and coincidence, mess, and beauty, and wonder, coolness & heat, unpredictability, richness, things that don't happen for a reason.  

except it's my own story starring me and i'm writing the script.  

so while i was rounding corners i was also contemplating the possible route my bliss might take me if i were to follow it.  

 imagining what would happen if i were to paddle my little boat way out in the middle of deep water.  lay on my back in that dark sea and stare at a sky embroidered with possibility.

then take my compass and head off in a totally new direction. an enormous ship's log under my arm of course...  to record everything.

change my mind.  change my course.

so that's what i thought about this weekend.  it's what i'm still thinking about.

close closer closest

sunday's luxuries.  they are g o o d.

mental horse blinders on.  not thinking of tomorrow.  

only of this one wild & precious day.

tell the wolves i'm home. because i am.

a date with my sketchbook.  i am not above painting bright aqua around everything i do from now on.  i think it's called for.

exhibit no.1  my yet to be bound, visual journal no. 13.  waiting for me to plug in 3 episodes of true blood and punch holes and get stitchy.

this was supposed to be my travel journal bag for the norway journal. even though i had not been drinking when i stitched this together, i made it 4 sizes too big.  perfect for the budapest journal.  don't make fun of my flowery trim tie.  just don't.  

i was too lazy to dig for something more suitable.  besides it has a certain folksy hungarian chutzpah right?  

i finished The Chaperone and have not a single good thing to say about it.  I'm shocked that it received so many rave reviews.  I found it to be poorly written in a crazy 3rd person POV that i didn't like one bit.  3/4 of the way through the book sort of ends and then the 3rd person narration speeds up and in the space of a few pages 10, 15, 20, 30 years pass.  huh?  i will admit i liked the IDEA of the story and the main character Cora, but the writing just annoyed me.

so i started Tell The Wolves I'm Home {one of your recommendations!} and within a page of beginning...

i settled deeply into an extremely satisfying story.  with no awkward writing style to ruin things for me.  whew.

plus doesn't the front cover just thrill you?  love. it.  thank you elizabeth!

my sister dottie is moving to san diego and i couldn't be happier!    she is looking to rent a cute little place in the HILLCREST neighborhood for under $1000 buckeroos.  if you have a lead on a place, do let me know!  she is open to hearing about other neighborhoods so if you're from san diego do tell all. 

for your information

this calendar is 12 x 18.  to make it into a journal i kept the spiral in the middle and folded the long pages towards the center.  this made my journal 12 x 9.  with me so far?

some of the pages had already been cut up and repurposed - i'm constantly reusing this paper, in fact there are some of these calendar paper pages in my norwegian travel journal...i'll point some of those out when i get back to posting pics of that.  

i stitched extra scraps on those shortened pages.  hope this makes sense.  it's the best explanation i can give due to summer brain.  scuse!

i went to town painting up pam's stamps and sticking them everywhere {see the arrows in the top pic too!}.

i tried watercolor and runny paint.  yum.  they also look good if you use a regular stamp pad.  but since i like to do things in an irregular way i just used paint.

temporary journal 1 on top of temporary journal 2.  temporarily.

i have a lot of completed visual journals, but for some reason i've only ever numbered the hardback ones. in my mind the rest are called temporary.  don't ask me why.  i don't have the answer.  the categorizing department of my brain does, but it's not talking to me today.  sorry!

pam made the word "journal" on her presto zappo super sonic cutting machine called...a silhouette something or other.  she drew the word then the computer cutting machine thingy cut it out.

for your information i have a machine like that too!  it's called my hands and exacto.  i don't quite get that nice smooth finish, but whaddayagonnado?

i am happily absorbed in The Chaperone.  the part about the orphan trains made me have to get a kleenex and dab at my eyes.  poor little kiddos.  stuck on trains and sent west. 

my sister dottie is moving to san diego and i couldn't be happier!  for the first time in over 20 years i'll have another moss within a couple of hours.  she is looking to rent a cute little place in the HILLCREST neighborhood for under $1000 buckeroos.  if you have a lead on a place, do let me know!

what i'm doing

i should have been in my classroom today setting things up.  but i wasn't.  i was here.  making a new "temporary" visual journal.  my paper order isn't here yet {fabriano hotpress 140 lb. from dick blick}.  so i put off classroom duties by a day.   but let's face it manual labor, clean-up, and reassembling a classroom is just not as fun as sitting at my art table and listening to music and painting and cutting and pasting and stapling.  and all that.  but since school DOES start on tuesday i guess i'll haul my reluctant arse to school, roll up my sleeves and begin.  

since i finished the other temporary journal i rummaged around and got out one of my old Snow & Graham calendars and started folding.  it's pretty easy to imagine how a great big calendar with super thick pages and cool graphics can be turned into a journal.

 i started reading THE CHAPERONE.   i found it over on cornflower, thanks to loretta for mentioning them on her blog a few posts back.  i started GONE GIRL and something about it disagreed with me.  so i unstarted it.  while i was briefly in between books i satisfied my reading thirst over at loretta's.  she is a dazzling story teller.  

thanks for the book recs!  you always come through.  they look really good and i'm anxious to dive into a big fat stack of them.  i have half a dozen samples on my kindle ready for my reading taste buds to assess.

 before i forget!!!

my sister, dottie, is moving to san diego and i couldn't be happier!  for the first time in over 20 years i'll have another moss within a couple of hours.  she is looking to rent a cute little place in the HILLCREST neighborhood for under $1000 buckeroos.  if you have a lead on a place, do let me know and i'll pass the info along.  

hello there

i brought back some aqua paper napkins from norway...with a spray of flowers.  that combination of colors = magical splendor.  i sketched then painted it in my book.

then i painted stripes and triangles.  because this pleases me very much.  

 my love story with neon continues.  and no one is happier about it then me.  no one. 

the idea of sitting at my art table and painting a million neon pink patterened scraps is NOT out of the question.  it just isn't.