Since I wrote it anyway: Gallery Night 2008

Because of glitches & groans computerwise, the November issue of Good Times of West Texas Magazine did not make it to print. (insert frowny face here) But since Gallery Night is coming up next weekend - here's the article I wrote about it anyway!

Art Walk-ing 2008 in Alpine Texas

The crisp late fall air whispers down Holland Avenue welcoming artists of every shade to Alpine’s 15th Annual Art Walk this November. Expression is in high demand over the two-day experience also known as Gallery Night.

Stores will be open until 10:00 pm Friday November 21st and Saturday November 22nd along with the many galleries that line this main thoroughfare, encouraging folks to step inside to enjoy the warmth and take in all they have to offer. Find Christmas ornaments to decorate your tree or serene designs painted onto plates for serving dinner. Admire and purchase a subdued black and white print of the familiar and evocative West Texas thunderstorm rolling across the mesquite covered mountains. Brightly decorated tabletops will catch your eye with sparkling handmade jewelry displayed next to a rack of cozy scarves or carved walking sticks.

With over twenty official locations for music, live exhibits, videos, food, and art means there will be plenty to satiate all your senses. Pick up a copy of the Alpine Avalanche newspaper on Thursday the 20th for a complete guide to all locales, where the artists will be hobnobbing, and a map to help you find your way from the fajitas to the stage.

This year the festivities welcome Honored Artist Tom Curry who designed this year’s Gallery Night painting and will be showing his works in The Alpine Studio on Murphy Street. Tom and his wife Susan moved to Alpine in 1993 and he’s since developed a varied art career. Along with the bigger, newer paintings Tom calls “Texas Chic with regional flair” will be prints, cards and reworked oils. His portfolio also includes magazine editorials and illustrations for seven children’s books, so don’t be surprised at anything you may see on the gallery walls!

When your tummy starts growling just follow your nose to find the grilling and food stands in the Hecho y Mano open-air art and food market in Arbolitos Park near the Union Pacific train depot. Here you’ll find fajitas, gorditas, burgers, hot chocolate, and many other locally made culinary indulgences. Taking a cue from the diversity of the evening, no two food stands will be offering the same fare, to encourage a wide variety of savory options.

Thank Mark Pollack of Trans-Pecos Guitars for his role as Musical Director in lining up such a distinct and entertaining list of musicians for the performance stage in the Kiowa Plaza parking lot. Beginning at 6:00 pm on Friday this is the place to catch The Doodling Hog Wallops and Matt Skinner, Terra Peters, Crain Coffee and Grupo de la Paz as nightfall sets in. Saturday evening the parking lot will again become a dance floor as Matt Skinner, Terra Peters and The Derailers take to the open-air stage under starry skies.

Kiowa Gallery owner Keri Arzt is quite proud of how Gallery Night has grown, commenting that “it has taken on a life of it’s own. Over the 15 years we’ve watched it grow, and the people come together and the energy is great!” An economic boost for the area because of all the people who come in to ‘find’ new art, the Gallery Night has also developed into a non-profit organization that gives back. There are scholarships to Sul Ross State University and money goes to schools in the tri-county area for art programs.

This is really a great weekend for the entire area to come together in so many ways. Curry admits, “I look forward to seeing friends I haven’t seen in awhile. Everyone comes out, a great time to see everyone at once and catch up, see what’s new.”

Yes, Gallery Night weekend is a wonderful time to see what’s new!

For more information please contact Keri Arzt at Kiowa Gallery at 432.837.3067 or visit www.alpinegallerynight.com for the studios, restaurants, offices and stores participating in this year’s event.

If you find yourself aiming that direction, say hi!

new horizons

Rob & I are working on a couple of projects together, and both can be found --> over there under my profile. Technically we're not ready to launch completely, but we're working on them.

Holidays are looming and work is crazy. So, you know, normal stress levels. We're all trying to balance a few things out with this much going on, but I'm excited for the direction we're headed in, so yea!

Leave a note, here, or over on Bunnyfly alley, or the motorcycle & massage spot and let us know what you think as we go along!

this title is yet to be determined

Here I go again, trying to type in a title for a post I'm barely beginning to formulate.

I don't work that way. I should know this by now. Really. I should.

It's one of those things, that my brain starts somewhere in the middle, or the end, and works backwards or outwards or whatever, filling in the puzzle gaps along the way. All those writing assignments in school where we had to turn in a title and outline and synopsis like weeks before the actual writing thingy was due - well, that sucked for me, because I never had a title until I was done. More often, after the reprimands & bad grades for "not completing work on time", I just made shit up. Whatever, it worked to appease the teacher who wanted a title & outline on her desk by a certain day. I figured out it didn't really matter if I changed it later after the real stuff was written.

That's how I do things. It's how I roll, baby.

That has very little to do with what I want to write about, though.

Today is the day the world holds a collective breath to see who is going to be head stormtrooper, puppet, poombah of these United States. Lots o' hype leading up to this circus, we're all tired of it.

I voted for Obama/Biden. Do I need to explain? No. I don't need to. I'll spare the stuff that you don't need to know about me or care about anyway and just say that I want to be able to look forward, not backward. I believe every person on this earth has a right to love and be loved, no matter their skin color or sexuality. I believe that women deserve far better in so many situations and am thankful a man like Joe Biden has stood up for those rights. I believe the man that Barack Obama is shines through in the way he treats his wife and family over the rest of the political dancing. The things like taxes and the war and the 'promises' do not matter as much to me as the ability to keep calm, make decisions based on how they will affect his own family as well as others instead of the quick-temper reaction that does more harm than good, a quick-temper reaction that I know all too well in my family.

I'm ready for the hope to move forward and make changes.

Personally.

Not just as a nation.

Personally.

So I bought (at least I think I did, it takes '24 hours to process') a domain name. But it's not the name we wanted, because the one we wanted is already taken by someone else. grumble. We're creating ideas & developing these lil' guys and their stories and having fun, and we want to share this with others.

But I know enough basic html to make a mess, and I'm good at picking and gleaning from other codes to figure a few things out, now I'm freaking out over the "How the hell do other people do this web building stuff?". Because I'm hard-headed (no kidding, really?) and I want to figure it out and do it on my own. Because I figure I'm capable and should know how to do this, so why don't I?

I also jumped on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon again this year after not doing it last year (something about driving back & forth from Florida & no regular internet connection & job hunting being a priority at the time, but whatever. excuses, excuses). I have maybe 600 words towards that 80k total by the end of November, and I'm using it as a chance to push myself and develop a few things.

One is the bunnyflies stories with Rob. One is the command of customer service stuff with Amber. One is an article on the boot camps that daddy & Papa Earl do for the museum. One is a piece of fiction that has been rolling around for awhile.

The best advice for NaNoWriMo is to just write - clean it up and edit later, like in December. So what if I'm using four different things to gain that word count, I'm trying to make it happen and learn about myself as a writer along the way.

There will always be some level of crazy going on. Election or not. Economy or not. Seasonal or not. Relationship or not. But I still have words to put to paper, I still have things I jump into the middle of and feel my way out of. And I'm looking forward to the day I can show off my stuff and be proud of it, because I learned something along the way to making it happen.

internal selves

The artist in me creates. That's what she's good at. Give her a stage and tell her to make it look real, and she will. Give her a bunch of paints, and she'll go to painting something. Crayons, chalk on the sidewalk, markers, any form of color expression.

But the creative self has limited concepts about business, she just knows it would be nice to sell her stuff someday. So she needs the logical me to kick in.

The logical self who says "You have to sign your work."
"You have to build a portfolio."
"You really should submit to more shows."
"You need to keep track of your receipts for your supplies, you can use that on your taxes."

So creative self sits there, listens to logical self, and then turns around and skips away. Sometimes, when she's feeling particularly feisty, she pushes logical self out the window, then goes about painting things.

Logical self feels put out that creative self isn't listening, that she's being impudent and selfish, and that logical self has to set the rules and be the one in charge.

Creative self doesn't really care, she didn't appoint logical self to be the one who decides, but she's not gonna fight it, because she doesn't want to be in charge either. She wants to paint, and draw, and write, and make the world a pretty place.

Thus logical self and creative self have "differences of opinion", and decide to leave each other alone for awhile. Neither writes or calls. Creative self doesn't, because she's thrown herself into her work, and while she respects logical self and her thoughts and ideas, she won't bow down to them.. Logical self doesn't call because she thinks she's right, and wants creative self to admit it first, so she'd rather let her stew for awhile and learn her lesson.

Eventually though, creative self admits she wants logical self around for balance, and logical self admits her world pretty much sucks without color and art and creative self around to liven the place up.

Originally published Nov 2005

So? I'm snarky.

All the political talk has me agitated just as much as religion talk usually does. But I'm good with what I think & believe. I know where I stand and why. I have my reasons, you have yours.

Allright then.

So this whole 'socialist' movement that Palin keeps pushing about Obama's platform - well... here's what I have to say about that:



I mean, I talk on the phone, a lot, and I text, a lot, and I twitter, some, and I blog, some, and I facebook and myspace a bit... so I'm pretty social, right? I mean, aren't we all?

*Pimpin' over at cafepress - get it on a sticker or a t-shirt. make a tongue in cheek comment of your own.

reminders

trying to figure out the words but tonight I'm not finding them the way I want to. so instead I'm giving you pictures of things I find pretty. or inspiring. or fascinating.



it's been crazy stressful. I'm looking for bright spots and highlights and the good stuff. somewhere. anywhere.



thankfully I've been stumbling across a few things that make me smile. I pick up a project in progress to look it over or flip through a magazine to see something shiny & nice. or the bonus is finding a friend blogging again and seeing his post with something that reminds me I was there for friends before, that things can be ok, and that I am not alone.



working on some wings tomorrow... maybe I can fly too.



(thank you James)

I've changed my fingerprints by making art*

So that canvas I stretched myself, that five foot by three foot one, the one where I didn't quite measure the corner cuts right and it looked a little, well, 'off'?

I did something with it today.



In a couple of hours I threw the paint down and sang along to the music in my ipod. I started out with a paintbrush, but after about, oh, say two minutes, the paintbrush was shoved into my ponytail and forgotten until about an hour ago.

Finger painting is what I went with. Dipped my fingers in the light pink and the wine red and the cream white and the magenta and the ocean blue and the peach and the apple red. Dipped and scooped paint and smeared across the canvas. Blending colors and smooshing edges.

I was in the zone. Grooving. I was making colors move and I love it. I love that zone. Totally in the groove. *happy sigh* That is a feeling I want to hug and squeeze and love and adore forever.

As for the painting... anyone have a 5x3ish space on their wall they want to fill with a giant heart? Let me know.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Umm, since I was fingerpainting approximately 15 square feet of canvas with my bare fingers, I, umm, abraded several layers of skin off my first two fingers by rubbing them across the canvas. Crazy. Thankfully I already love Burt's Bees Res-Q Ointment, so I've smeared the green stuff on and am learning to type with my pinky!