Alizarine

Treasure

I can sum up February in two words: antibiotics and Treasure.

Antibiotics: Bun is urinary infection-free after we struggled to find antibiotics that didn't make her sick. The first was a brutal regime of 56 pills that made her sick every time we successfully got them in her. We switched to a second type--28 doses of a pink liquid in a rather hilarious cherry flavor (because everyone knows cats love stuff that is cherry flavored). This delightful concoction caused Bun to drool and foam uncontrollably for ten to fifteen minutes after Jeff squirted some down her throat, during which time I followed her around with a billowing handful of paper towels, sopping up the drool as she hustled from one room to another. Thanks to all who donated to Bun's medical fund and even sent her valentines. Jeff and I were blown away by your kindness and generosity.

Between my drool cleanup sessions, I painted and painted. This was the main reason why I haven't updated the blog in a while. I became obsessed with my unusual and challenging still life. It's another cluster of jewelry along with other items including an old photo of me as a baby. My mom put it in my birthday card back in late Janurary. I whimsically added the photo to my still life setup and loved the idea of painting a tiny girl surrounded by objects she would eventually own. I spent the first couple of days painting my baby self. My head is about the size of a nickel. I'm in my parents' dining room holding one of Dad's college books. I had trouble sleeping during this first week of painting--I found myself repeatedly waking up at 4:00 aching to get back to work on it.

Next I added most of my turquoise bracelet (I wore it everyday during my early teaching years), some coral beads, and an antique dragon that might be made of ivory, but I'm not sure. I like how the orange-red beads resemble fire shooting from its mouth. In real life the dragon is about an inch and a half tall. The painted version is about five times larger in this 20"x26" watercolor.

During one productive week, I finished the dragon and a lot of fussy jewelry in the lower left corner, including an antique orange bead necklace that was nothing but trouble! On our first Christmas together, Jeff gave me the swirly silver charm on the right.

I selected the jewelry pieces mainly because I liked the way they looked together, and the setup came together shockingly quickly. Some of the stories behind the jewelry are meaningful, and some are not. For example, one morning I was on my way to school when I noticed the beginnings of a wardrobe malfunction and needed something to pin myself together. I popped into a drugstore and bought the above purple pin for $4.95. It may have been cheap, but it took an entire day to complete. The orange beads run through the bottom half of the painting. They had many diamond-shaped facets and were difficult but fascinating to paint. I loved producing every bead in this painting, but the many connecty things here were a chore.

Not wishing to annoy my Facebook friends with daily in-progress photos where I had covered maybe a couple of square inches, I limited myself to Friday-only updates. The above photo shows some new objects: a sparkly gold charm that is the focal point of a statement necklace, most of a turquoise ring that is too heavy to wear while painting, and a perfume compact of a leaf with a dragonfly on it. Because the gold charm was so impossible, I couldn't make myself work on it all day, so during the afternoons I painted fun stuff. The dragonfly/leaf and the circular gold compact in the lower-left corner were gifts from my friend David, who is a makeup artist at Estee Lauder in Bergdorff Goodman, NYC. I bought the ring in Santa Fe, and the gold necklace is from some catalog or other.

The next week I finished the turquoise ring and dragonfly/leaf compact (that took a lot longer than I thought it would). Then I worked on the space above those two things. I referred to this area as "the little garbage."

Finally I painted the silver Eddington necklace, which I thought acted as a kind of fun signature, a pearl, and some more beads. Note the tiny chain draped over that red bead. Why didn't I think to hide it when I put this still life together? Those links were so impossibly small, even on a large-ish painting.

Last week I took care of the little items in the lower right corner, including a raspberry-shaped earring composed of small garnets. Most of the items here are resting on foil, except for those on the right side. You can see where the foil ends and the table begins. (If you click on the picture above, you can see the details more easily.)

I adore Venice and was happy to find the above matchbox at a local antique store. It shows the Ca' d'Oro ("Golden House") and was painted in a jazzy style that I had fun mimicking. The lettering and skinny black lines made me so nervous that I kissed my right hand after I finished them. I devoted the last day of painting to the turquoise chunks in the top right corner and tightening up the gold floral piece in the center.

For a while the working title of this painting was Treasure Chest, awesomely suggested by Jeff. A couple of weeks ago we decided to shorten it to Treasure. I liked that idea because it can be a noun and a verb. I'm so happy with the painting and think this could be a great new way for me to create portraits--a photograph of the subject surrounded by beloved objects--and I want to do more.

Prints of this brand new painting can be found here!

And I've put Treasure on tons of merchandise...

...and you can find it here!

Representation!

Good things are happening in my art world! Last week UGallery took me under their massive, cuddly wing, and that is where you can buy my original paintings now (not prints, not merchandise--I'm talking about the actual piece of paper with the actual paint on it).

UGallery is an online art gallery that's received positive reviews from CNN, The Economist, InStyle, USAToday and others. If you search for "buy art" on Google, it's right up there near the top if not the very top. I had to apply to be accepted, and I waited and wondered for over a week before I received a happy email and phone call. They accepted all of the paintings I offered, and the gallery manager answered all of my questions in a friendly, welcome-to-the-family kind of way. I'm currently being featured on the site's front page along with other artists with new work ("A Forest of New Art") and on the UGallery blog in a short article introducing artists new to the site. You can also view my art and profile here.

Unlike my art website, UGallery receives lots of traffic from people who are serious about buying art, and I want those eyes on my work. UGallery is currently--like, it ends today--having a 20% off sale, their biggest event of the year, so please check them out.

Anyway, I'm happy to have my work up at UGallery--wish me luck there!

I also have a couple of paintings at Cureeo, including Planets and Foil, above. Cureeo is smaller and more boutique-y than UGallery. They said no to everything I offered up for sale except for Planets and that second portrait I painted of Mabel with the little-kid background. So I don't really understand Cureeo's selection process other than the fact that the work they seem to go for is a bit more avant garde than mine, but it's nice to be included there in some way.

We'll see how things go at both of these online art galleries! I can continue to sell my paintings independently, so feel free to contact me personally if you want an original. Last week my friend and former colleague Dave bought Apple Blossoms for his wife Sandra (don't worry; she was in on this) from me on the day before it was about to appear on UGallery--thanks Dave! Nothing makes my day like a sale.

In other good art news, The Graduates (above) won an Award of Excellence at the Illinois Watercolor Society's annual members' show. After Best of Show, three Excellence awards are up for grabs, followed by some honorable mentions and merchandise awards.

People who won awards included (l-r) Carmelo Schifano, me!, Sylvia Aruffo, Sally Konley, Bret Steinhaus, Tom Herzberg, Robert Krajecki, and Rochelle Weiner.

So this was huge for me, and Jeff and I were very happy that we made the long drive up to Oak Brook for the Thursday night opening earlier this month. I provided a boatload of cookies for the opening. If you'd like to see my painting along with forty or so other watercolors, please stop by the beautiful Mayslake Peabody Estate in Oak Brook before the show closes on December 5.

Finally, please *like* my art page on Facebook--I'm currently 8 likes away from 500. I regularly post in-progress photos of my paintings and let you know about print/merchandise sales. Thank you!

New York City Part 4

Sorry for the long wait between posts! Among other things, Jeff and I were busy with a flooring project during the past couple of weeks, and it ate up my afternoons. But it's finished, it looks amazing, and it is one of something like five blogs I need to write.

So! Back to New York City with Jeff, Mel, and me. As you can tell from the photo above, we spent our last vacation day at the Museum of Modern Art, where Mel caught me interacting with a man painted on a mirror. My expression probably explains why I had to wait until age 39 to get married.

But first we needed to try the best bagels in New York at a place called Ess-A-Bagel. So much time has passed since we ate these, but boy did my brain imprint a taste-memory that will make every bagel I eat in the future seem inferior. Because they will be inferior. These were perfection: not rubbery at all, but yielding and warm with a perfectly crisp exterior. Once again we ate them while standing on the sidewalk like a buncha hobos.

I also discovered that several years of walking on Dr. Scholl's gel insoles will cause them to disintegrate, so I bought some more and, and to be even more of a hobo, I did this whole boot-takeoff-insole-switcheroo bit while squatting in the entrance of a drugstore.

It was an unseasonably warm and humid morning, and as we walked toward MoMA, I took off my jacket. The dress I wore came in a fuzzy mystery fabric that seemed to promote active sweating. My ponytail became its usual awful black frizz pom-pom. So I was miserable but attempted to take on the devil-may-care attitude of the female sculptures we saw frolicking in the middle of a busy intersection.

Once we arrived at MoMA, we were disappointed to discover a giant line of people waiting to enter. We joined their ranks and prepared ourselves for boredom. Museum workers patrolled the line and said that some of the blockbuster paintings were not on display, and also people who downloaded the MoMA app and used it to pay online would get to skip the line and go inside. Jeff didn't have to be told twice--he got to work downloading and paying, and whoooooosh, we swooped inside like a trio of VIPs.

That museum worker was right about some of the museum's pieces being unavailable. It seemed like 75% of the things I wanted to see (1900-1950) were gone, but their gallery tags were still in place as if to mock me. This was a shame because those paintings are in my art teacher wheelhouse, and I was all set to bombard young Mel with interesting painting tidbits all morning long. Unfortunately we were treated to a mere handful of masterpieces (such as the fantastic Rousseau and Starry Night, above) followed by a dollop of Pop, a whole lot of Minimalism, and some Abstract Expressionism. I bemoaned this, but Mel had a grand time anyway.

Andy Warhol's Gold Marilyn, a woman by Willem de Kooning, and my tribute to my sister Poof. :)

I told Mel about Rodin's portrait of Balzac--she said it was one of her favorite things in the museum. And I love the photo she took of a Jackson Pollock painting viewed from the side.

We had lunch at Tina's Cuban Cuisine, which was relatively nearby, and Jeff took this photo of the straightest leg in the city.

The place was packed, and we sat in a kind of so-what dining room with what seemed like fluorescent lighting--it made me feel like I was back in a school cafeteria (PTSD!). We shared everything, including a Cuban sandwich and some ham croquettes. Jeff and I were hoping that these would match the ones we had in Spain, and while they were crispy-creamy-tasty...yeah, sorry.

These little guys were fun: empanadas with chicken filling, a Twinkie-looking item that I can't remember, and a red ball of mashed potatoes surrounding some kind of ground beef situation. I'm pretty sure I had a mango (?) shake. Sorry so vague--it's been over a month!

After lunch we headed to the Hirschl and Adler gallery on 5th Avenue. Sara, a friend of mine from grad school, told me that her husband Peter had a small show there, and I was curious to study his exquisite oil paintings in person--I'd only seen them online. The above photo doesn't do them justice--here's an example of his work.

Gorgeous and Hopperesque! Peter is my age, and I couldn't help feeling like I was so far behind him in terms of art production. He was fortunate to have been born into an artistic family and has painted professionally for his entire adult life, whereas I've only been at it for two and a half years. But this is nothing new: I feel insecure pretty much every time I walk into any gallery at all. I'm such a newbie!

And then in an adjoining room: enormous watercolors by Alexander Creswell. This artist counts among his patrons THE QUEEN OF FREAKING ENGLAND. He is so good, you guys! Included in his show was a series of giant (4 feet across, maybe?) paintings of Venice at night with fireworks, and they were color-drenched and masterful, with a sort of effortlessness that only supremely confident painters can pull off.

I was in awe, intimidated, and in love with these, and I wanted to go home and paint paint paint. I walked back into Pete's room, and yes, please just let me go home and paint. I start to feel not right if I go too long without painting. It's kind of like my need for chocolate. Speaking of...

We bought some fancy-ass desserts and hot chocolate at the Francois Payard Bakery (ground floor of The Plaza hotel).

We were feeling glamorous (at least I was) as we sat at a tall table and savored macarons and other gorgeous creations. A woman of a certain age stopped by as Jeff and I were digging into that shiny chocolate dome, and she exclaimed, "What is THAT?" We told her where she could find one. It was almost as fabulous as it looks--there was something hazelnutty going on inside, if I remember correctly.

And then Jeff's phone buzzed. A text from Southwest Airlines told us that our flight home had been canceled. Whut.

Jeff was a hero as per usual and got on the phone with the airline, and after about a half hour, we were booked on a new, slightly earlier flight. GO JEFF. He said that Southwest did everything right and were actually surprisingly soothing about the whole thing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around, working our way back to the hotel. Along the way Mel took some photos of Bergdorf Goodman's windows--they were a purple tribute to fashion over the past 111 years.

Above and beyond, Bergdorf Goodman!

Our last meal in New York was at a Cambodian sandwich shop called Num Pang. It was close to our hotel and, like all of the restaurants we visited on our trip, vetted by Jeff weeks in advance. Mel and I shared a meatball sandwich while Jeff abstained, claiming he was still full from lunch. Num Pang was decorated with fun graffiti, and we stood at a little bar and inhaled the sandwich and a couple of refreshing tea concoctions.

Soon enough we were on our way back to Laguardia, where the Southwest chaos meant that we had nowhere to sit once we reached our gate. Actually I found one seat, which Jeff and Mel insisted I take while they sat on the floor, during which time Mel took the above self-portrait. As you can see, she was still full of energy and happiness.

I'll spare you the description of the flight home, our hotel shuttle that decided to not pick us up because our flight was cancelled but then after an angry call from Jeff and an hour of waiting, they came to get us after all, and then the two-hour drive home through the absolute middle of nowhere and the bag of Tato Skins I ate to stay awake and didn't exactly share.

If you wanted Tato Skins so much maybe you should have bought some for yourself, Jeffray.

We dropped Mel off and were reunited with our confused cats at around 1:30 a.m. Everyone was fed, watered, and adored. Cat boxes were cleaned out, and my wonderful husband and I fell into deep, dark comas for the rest of the night.

In conclusion, New York is awesome. You should go.

New York City Part 2

Oh, New York.

Jeff and I have been watching the coverage of Hurricane Sandy's devastation from the safety of our home in Illinois. It's so hard to wrap our minds around the images we've seen, especially when we were there just four weeks ago. To all of our friends in the northeast: you're in our thoughts, and we hope things return to normal for you soon. And we love New York very much.

So...I'm going to continue writing about our time there with Mel. The first part is here in case you missed it, but this is the condensed version: we arrived on a Sunday morning and walked all over the place the entire day, visting the Frick and Central Park and gorging on sweets and pizza along the way.

Jeff's credit card point accumulatin' fu allowed us to spend the rest of our time at the Grand Hyatt New York. It's next to the Grand Central Terminal and boasts a sprawling, impressive lobby starring two enormous, slightly elongated white heads that we thought were alternately freaky and soothing. We left our luggage in our new room and set off on foot to meet my friend David at a little deli near the Apple store and Bergdorf Goodman.

David works as a makeup artist for Estee Lauder at Bergdorf Goodman, and he is a fan of Beauty Broadcast, my sister's YouTube channel. He Internet-met me through that, and last year he was kind enough to send Poof, Mom and me custom-engraved lipsticks from Estee Lauder. We've become Facebook friends as well and have amazed each other with arcane pop cultural references and various wisecracks. I was excited to meet him in person.

If you've never met an Internet friend in real life, you're missing out because it is an experience unlike any other. You understand the way your friend's mind works, but you've never seen them move around in space as a three-dimensional being. So as you marvel at your friend's actual person-ness, you're able to jump right in wherever it was you left off when the two of you were online.

And this was the case with David. He was smart, sweet, down-to-earth, and a million laughs. Jeff, Mel, and I immediately recognized him as a member of Our Tribe, and an instant lovefest commenced between the four of us. David is originally from central Illinois, so we have that in common, too. He was just the best. I mean, look at me grinning like an idiot up there. I know this sounds cheesy, but when he gave us goodbye hugs, it felt like he represented the entire city, and we parted ways filled with goodwill for the people of New York.

(PS David weathered the storm by watching a marathon of scary movies in his Brooklyn home. He's just fine.)

Up next: an obligatory trip to the top of the Empire State Building. We stood in line (or do you prefer on line? because I don't) for about an hour. The line wound through one room after another, and as soon as we worked our way through one, we'd get our hopes up that it was finally elevator time, only to face another room filled with more line.

The noon-time view from the 86th floor was tremendous and worth the wait, of course, and we took it in from all four sides. Stunning and worth the wait!

We also took the photo that's at the top of this post--please note that my hair is threatening to take over my entire head. It's been about six months since I've had it cut, and while we were on the trip I gave up on trying to tame it. The wind (and later, the humidity) caused me to tweet and Facebook the following:

(David responded: "I think of this moment EVERY TIME it rains in New York!!! We share the same thoughts!")

The observation deck was a mob scene, and Mel began experiencing some mild agoraphobia. We headed back down in search of sustenance. Jeff had planned to take us to Ippudo for the best ramen in town. This involved a mile-long walk (I'm guessing) south (also kind of guessing; I have no sense of direction). Along the way Mel and I spotted the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and begged for an ice cream pit stop. Jeff, who hadn't seen the truck, agreed in a hurry.

From what I could tell, the BGICT sells normal ice cream novelties (I guess--no ice cream trucks come to our town) along with some exclusive ideas such as Mel's waffle cone that I'm holding for her. They coated the cone's interior with Nutella.

Jeff and I shared a Salty Pimp, which is vanilla soft serve drizzled with dulce de leche, sprinkled with sea salt, and dipped in chocolate. Look at it stalking Melissa! A while later, we saw a photo online of Anthony Bourdain devouring a Salty Pimp, too.

We weren't eating as much as we were feeding. And then off we went in search of more food.

Ippudo! It took us a while to find its hidden entrance, but once we were inside, we were treated to a very special meal in a rowdy but cool atmosphere.

I liked the ramen-under-glass counter near the front of the store. The cooks yelled whenever new customers entered, and small parties were seated together at a communal table. Jeff, Mel, and I somehow scored a posh booth.

Mel was wearing the cutest ensemble that day: vintage Batman shirt tucked into a yellow pencil skirt, knee high socks, Doc Martens. I wore my usual dress and big necklace, and Jeff had on his classic black shirt/black jeans combo.

We shared an appetizer of pork rolls (right) and a two kinds of ramen (one is on the left). The ramen was perfectly cooked and topped with tender pork and an egg. The rolls were phenomenal and stole the show in my opinion, with spicy pork and, if I remember correctly, some cabbage. The roll itself was so light, soft, and squishy that it didn't even seem like food. Mel and I talked about its texture for days to come. What was going on with it? How was it made? We don't know.

After lunch we walked around the Village and saw a mural of pets that made me miss Bun, who was being cared for by her grandparents (thanks Mom and Dad!). Jeff wanted to visit another place that specialized in Belgian fries--that's all they make--but ONCE AGAIN they were not up to Jeff's par. We didn't even finish them. Repeat: we did not eat something that was fried.

Jeff, care to explain?

Belgian fries (frites) are a completely different experience than American fries. If you travel in Belgium, you'll find them in upscale restaurants and on the street, often arriving in a paper cone and accompanied with homemade mayonnaise.

If you want to know how to make Belgian fries, this is the best resource that I know. It's tricky and to do it right, you need to use the proper potato and fry in a mixture of duck fat and oil.

But when done right, GAH! They're fried twice (and sometimes thrice;-))--first in lower heat to cook the inside, then in higher heat to crisp the outside, and this creates a fry that is almost completely creamy, not crumbly, on the inside, protected by a salty crust. Heavenly. Game-changing. Haunting.

I've found quite a few places in the U.S. that serve Belgian fries, but with one exception, I've never had a fry that came close to a true Belgian fry. But that exception was on this trip.

But that exception was not this place, Pommes Frites.

I'd been to Pommes Frites before and enjoyed the fries, though they weren't quite the fry I sought. However this time, while ordering, I overheard that it had changed owners. The first bite confirmed it was not for the best. The fries were burnt and bland. Do not recommend.

Afternoon shadows were closing in on us, so we took a subway down to the financial district. Jeff wanted to see the gorgeous new Gehry building and the One World Trade Center under construction, and he took the photos above, which I thought were beautiful. I love the way he composes his shots.

As we entered Battery Park, we saw a sculpture that had formerly been installed near the Twin Towers and was damaged during 9/11. Its theme was world peace, and it was so touching to see that it had survived that awful day. The piece was more poignant and meaningful due to the ordeal it had endured.

We sat on benches and looked out at the Statue of Liberty for a while--such a lovely day--before we headed back to our hotel via the subway.

Grand Central Terminal is huge, with a large open area that reminded me of Chicago's Union Station. The vaulted ceiling is blue with gold constellations.

In an attempt to broaden our horizons, we ate at a German pub called Bierhaus. Oktoberfest had just begun, and the place was crowded and very loud. Monday Night Football was on the various televisions, polka music played, and we could barely hear ourselves speak. Melissa is used to this kind of party/bar atmosphere, but Jeff and I aren't. At least I'm not anymore--minus the beer, it reminded me of a junior high school cafeteria. PTSD, ahoy!

Jeff and Mel ordered some special-seeming beers and I had a sparkling apple cider. We shared a platter of meats and some German potato salad. The food was just so-so and appeared to be nothing more than some rolled up cold cuts (I have a love-hate relationship with that term) and a warm hot dog. This was the most disappointing meal of the trip, but we still had a good time.

We stopped by Baked by Melissa (how could we not?) on the way back to the hotel and each of us had a microcupcake. They were delicious one-biters, and mine was so good it made me mad that it was so tiny. We took a pit stop at our cool-looking room before heading to the Hyatt's 16th floor.

Jeff had jumped through some kind of hoop that allowed us access to a special lounge where nonstop snacks and beverages were available. We had it all to ourselves and, exhausted, we lounged on the outdoor furniture and admired New York at night. I took a photo of a shimmery Chrysler Building reflected on another building. I felt so fortunate to be able to spend time with Jeff and Mel in such a beautiful city.

New York City Part 1

Jeff and I took Melissa (his daughter) to New York a few weeks ago. This was Mel's first visit, but Jeff and I had been there multiple times. Mel had been putting in untold hours cooking at a restaurant in downtown Champaign--one of those deals where people keep quitting but no one gets hired to replace them, so the remaining crew has to work nightmare shifts for weeks on end. Mel was seriously exhausted, but you can't tell it in the photo above because (a) she is beautiful at all times, and (b) she was positively joyous at the prospect of escaping her restaurant captors for almost a whole week.

We took a late Saturday afternoon drive up to Chicago to our hotel near Midway. Our flight was at 6:00 the next morning. The sun set on an congregation of windmills--they really are a sight to behold in such a flat landscape--and a full moon rose in the east.

Near our hotel was a Five Guys. Mel had never tried one of their burgers and was duly impressed (just look at that cheese oozage). We were all starving, so that made the food even better. Back at the hotel, Mel and I laughed at the lobby's truly awful Helpful Waiter sculpture, whose bulbous ass greeted all parking lot visitors. We slept for a few hours before our phone alarms sounded at 3:15. We were out the door by 4:00, shuttled to the airport by 4:30, and hustled through security at 5:00.

We decided to get some breakfast before finding our gate. Our only food options at that hour were Gold Coast Dogs and something called Pegasus, where Mel had a breakfast sandwich that she does not recommend. But as for the hot dogs, I will never not want one of them. Breakfast of champions. We flew on Southwest for the first time (loved it) and watched the sun rise extra quickly as we headed east. We were in NYC by 9:00 and had a full Sunday itinerary ahead of us.

Happily, we were able to check in early at our hotel (the Westin on 42nd Street). Jeff and I are crazy about their yummy beds. I also happen to like the way all Westin lobbies smell great. And outside our window: the beautiful Chrysler Building!

Jeff, who managed to pay for our hotel and flights with points, wanted to introduce Mel to New York via walks to various landmarks and restaurants. We only hit a couple of museums on this trip. I thought this was wise because the first time I went to NYC it was one nonstop museum slog, something like six in two days, and while I loved them all, I came home with only a cursory feel for the city itself.

That morning Mel took photos of Grand Central Terminal, the New York Public Library, St. Patrick's Cathedral (very much under construction), and Rockefeller Center, among others. She was wowed by the windows at THE Sax Fifth Avenue and Louis Vuitton.

The Louis Vuitton windows featured an eye-popping installation by dot-obsessed Japanese artist Yaioi Kusama.

The weather couldn't have been more beautiful--this was the first time I'd been there in the fall. Perfect jacket weather! Mel and Jeff took the bulk of the photos you'll see in these New York posts. "If I have to write about this, you guys have to take the pictures," I told them. If you're a fan of the show, it's impossible not to hum the 30 Rock theme song while standing in front of it.

That Sunday morning's walk made me particularly happy because every half hour or so we ate something sweet. Near 30 Rock: the Bouchon Bakery, home of the incredible macarons I enjoyed with Poof when we were in New York last year.

I swear I have not stopped thinking about those macarons, and I will be so bold as to say that they were better than any I had in Paris. I tried a summer berry macaron (the big purplish one in the middle), the same flavor I'd lost my mind over last year, and it was just as amazing as I'd remembered. I gave Jeff and Mel little--little!! mine!! grr!!--bites and we shared a very good baguette while doing some people-watching.

One advantage of having a third person with us: for the first time ever, we now have vacation photos of the two of us together, and they're not the usual self-portraits-holding-camera-at-arm's-length, either. Thank you, Mel, and I apologize in advance for any unappetizing mushiness you readers may see. Above: Jeff is telling me about the good old days of vaudeville, probably.

Ack!! The mushiness! Make it stop!

Next up: Momofuku's Milk Bar, home of the Crack Pie, the Compost Cookie, and the cereal milk milkshake. This place has a cookbook I've had on my Amazon wish list for over a year, but no one will buy it for me, and that's probably for the best.

There's something disturbing--and I have to think it's intentionally disturbing--about this place. We got a subversive, druggy vibe from it. It's the kind of bakery Lou Reed and Andy Warhol would come up with.

SONG TIME

 

The treats came prepackaged in a way that reminded me of the McDonald's fried cherry pies of yesteryear. There was no seating at the Milk Bar, so we sat on a window ledge and tore into our treats like a bunch of junkies. Pictured: the cereal milk milkshake, which tasted exactly like cereal milk because that's what it's made of. Jeff's holding the candy bar pie, and I've got the crack pie. Not pictured: the compost cookie, which we saved for later. The crack pie is like a pecan pie without the pecans, and it has an oatmeal cookie crust. Very sweet and delicious. If that was the crack pie, the candy bar pie ought to be called the meth pie. It has a chocolate cookie crust, housemade nougat, a thick, gooey layer of toffee, and a pretzel smothered in chocolate ganache. We talked about it for days. Somebody had better get me that cookbook; that's all I'm saying.

Shiny building, historic building, building from some movie...hey, how about some pizza?

Jeff led us to Angelo's Coal Oven Pizzeria, where we shared a small margherita pizza. I was swooning over the sauce. Gah, I want some so badly right now! Why do I have to go all the way to New York for this, why? I can't write about this pizza. It was perfect in every way and it's making me sad.

After lunch we explored Central Park. Jeff and Mel gamboled up an impressive rock overlooking a pond while I rested my feet. Conservative estimate: we walked at least 40,000 steps that day, no joke, and my boots were feeling gravity's pull. Did you enjoy my use of the word gamboled up there, by the way? Because here's exactly what I thought when they scampered up that rock: Look at those two, gamboling like a couple of goats. Then they strutted back down like Richard Pryor in Stir Crazy.

 

At some point Jeff checked his phone to see how much the Frick (one of my favorites: a mansion turned into an all-killer-no-filler art museum) cost, and he learned that, amazingly, the Frick was free on Sundays from 11:00 to 1:00. It was 12:45. We RAN to the Frick as Mel and I shrieked, "Frick! What the Frick!" etc. We got in by the skin of our teeth and saved 54 dollars. Was it crowded? You bet.

But we still managed to enjoy such hard-hitters as Holbein's Sir Thomas More, Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy, a late Rembrandt self-portrait, and many more, but not too many more. This is a nice, bite-sized museum that won't monopolize your entire afternoon.

It was raining when we left, but it was only a passing shower. We took shelter under an arbor in Central Park and ate the compost cookie, which was a "kitchen sink" kind of thing that included potato chips. Unfortunately, the chips didn't have as much of a presence as I thought they might, so that was a little anticlimactic.

We explored the park some more. If you click on this photo and look closely, you'll notice a cluster of frat boys in Speedos beneath the green banner on the right. In what must have been a hazing ritual, they came up to people and sang a capella choruses of pop songs at passersby. "You don't know-oh-oh! You don't know you're beautiful!" and so on. We got out of there...

...but not before I got a shot of Melissa at Strawberry Fields. This photo was taken during the nanosecond that Baby Boomers were not swarming around it.

More walking, more buildings, more photos, and eventually we approached Columbus Circle. Jeff had a lead on a Belgian waffle food truck. I've mentioned this before, but four years ago Jeff went to Belgium on business, and while he was there he had the best frites of his life and street-food waffles topped with Nutella, ice cream, and so on. He can't get over those, either. And I like waffles as much as the next guy, but I never understood what the big deal was...until we hit that food truck and it showed me what's what.

Unbelievable. That thing you see above is a liege waffle, which means it has a thin crust of caramelized sugar. These are tricky to make, apparently, but so special. Warm, gooey, slightly crunchy, complex--an absolute winner. I saw the shot on the right as I was sifting through these photos the other day, and it knocked the wind out of me.

But wait, there's more! We shared a single serving-sized cup of gelato at Grom (which Jeff and I had enjoyed in Florence and Paris). I demonstrated the unique stretchiness of gelato for Mel. Achingly good. The fact that we had shared everything that day made us a lot less bloated than we would have been otherwise, I'm telling you.

We walked down Broadway as late afternoon approached--remember, we had been up since 3:00--and prepared to hit our final food stop of the day, Don Antonio, whose claim to fame is a pizza with a crust that is deep fried before it is topped and baked in a smoky wood oven. We ordered one of those along with a fresh mozzarella and prosciutto appetizer. Mel very sweetly said that dinner was on her. How fabulous of her!

The pizza's crust was indeed incredible, with a crunchy-chewy texture, but I've never had a smokier pizza, except maybe that time when Dad put a frozen pizza on the grill to see what it would do. This felt like I was eating bacon, not pizza, and bacon is terrific but I wanted pizza more. So this place took a back seat to Angelo's from earlier in the day, but needless to say, we ate the hell out of that pizza anyway.

After supper we waddled back toward our hotel, and the Empire State Building came into view for the first time. Jeff created the above self-portrait in an homage to the final episode of this season's Louie, where SPOILER ALERT he flips off the Ed Sullivan theater and yells "F--- you, David Letterman!" I have loved Dave for thirty years, so I do not approve of this photo at all, but that was one stellar Louie episode, and I'm sure Dave got a kick out of it, too. Finally, we passed Grand Central Terminal en route to our yummy, yummy beds.

Heh, I told myself that I was going to keep this short, as several weeks have passed since our trip. Fail! The rest of these will be shorter. Probably. I hope.

Ruby Liberty Dragonfly

Brand new and extra-sparkly, here is my latest watercolor. It's the reason why you haven't been seeing painting posts from me over the past couple of months. This is a handful of my favorite jewelry on a piece of crumpled foil. It's loaded with sentimental value and...work. So much work!

Let's take a walk through it. But wait--don't have time to read? Please buy a print of it here! That's right, I'm putting a print link at the top this time. I really want you to have one.

Mom would recognize this--it's part of her Italian mosaic necklace that she let me wear when I was in second grade and most of my life. She officially gave it to me as a wedding present. When I was a kid, I used to study it when I was bored and wonder about the person who put those tiny pieces together.

The entire jumble of jewelry was around five inches across, but after I drew it on my watercolor paper, this mosaic alone was bigger than my face. It was also the first thing I painted after completing this monster commission, and I was giddy to be painting something new.

I added more items over the next few days. I bought the blue Murano glass earring from a street vendor in Rome eleven years ago. I think I paid about $12 for the set, and I wear them a lot. Next to it is a brooch I bought for Mom while I was in Venice. She let me borrow it a few years ago and I really should give it back to her. Its floral mosaic design is similar to the antique pendant I painted first. About half of the things in this painting are Italian in origin. The rest are antiques, cheap stuff from Etsy and Claire's, and a Navajo bracelet.

All of these pieces of jewelry are in the background of the painting, so to give it some depth I attempted to soften every edge. Things get especially blurry on the right side. Later on I surrounded the three floating blue blobs with golden, pearl-like balls similar to the ones you see around the more finished-looking blue blob.

The orange/pink/gold object on the left is a glass earring that reminds me of a disco ball. I loved the dark metal thing attached to it. My parents gave those to me for Christmas last year. They're a bit too heavy for my ears, so I don't wear them as much as I'd like (I don't want to become one of those women with deflated, stretched-out ear lobes.) Painting this earring took two days. I listened to Jimi Hendrix as I finished it, specifically his 15-minute version of Voodoo Chile over and over, and when I put my paintbrush down, I truly felt like a voodoo chile.

 

The ruby ring is an antique of unknown origin (I think it may have belonged to my great-grandmother). Most of the triangular prongs that hold the ruby in place have snapped off, so I had to invent them, but I kept the one at 3 o'clock the way it was--gone. It's too small for any of my fingers now except for my pinkies, but it's not really a pinkie kind of ring. I used to wear it on my right ring finger about 25 years ago and felt like Elizabeth Taylor because it is one big honking ruby. I'd love to have it reset and wear it again.

I added a gold wedding band that somehow found its way into my jewelry box, and to the right is part of a bracelet made with silver dollars and turquoise (most of it is obscured).

The ring is old, thin and scratched, and I wear it on my right hand a lot. I needed something to hold the now-finished ruby ring in place, and I had fun painting the colorful reflections. It felt bizarre to add so much red and purple to a gold ring, but I think it works.

This is a close-up of the silver dollar. The bracelet is Navajo. Sometimes they use coins in their jewelry, and the coins on this one were formed into dome shapes. The coin contains some of my trickiest wet-into-wet work, as I attempted to reflect the light and the other jewelry in a soft, blurry way.

Here's the dragonfly before I completed work on the wings. I bought this necklace at Macy's about 7 years ago during some post-breakup retail therapy. The dragonfly is silver in real life, but the warm light I had shining on it made it appear more golden, and it also warmed up the pearly-green wings on the right side.

And the crazy jewelry just keeps on comin'. Occupying the lower-left quadrant: a necklace Jeff bought for me when we were in Murano, an island near Venice. The artisans of Murano specialize in art glass, and this necklace features grape-sized metallic gold and blue beads. They reminded me of tiny globes, and since Jeff and I love to travel, I thought they were perfect and I really really wanted them. Jeff was sweet enough to indulge me. The necklace became a sort of nest for the rest of the jewelry.

After reaching a certain point in a painting, I can get kind of tired of taking daily photos of it. It's frustrating to remind myself that, yes, I've come a long way, but no, it won't be finished anytime soon. And so I tackle a new, small chunk each day, put the painting away, and do it again the next day without getting too precious about it. I just do the work.

This approach helped me complete the second disco ball-like earring above the dragonfly's wing, a rhinestone stud earring near the lower right, shadowy beads in the center, and a snowflake pendant on the right side. (I am crazy about the colors in that snowflake.) You can also see the silver dollar bracelet's wrist bands above that.

I finished it yesterday afternoon. I've had a lousy week otherwise--an excrutiating meeting with an elderly artist who just assumed I was Jeff's trophy wife, a medical test that will most likely result in me having to take more medical tests, and a buyer who decided he didn't want to pay for this painting after all (anybody want it?). And now I have this new painting that I think is beautiful, but as Elvis Costello said in a song I think about a lot when I'm down, What shall we do with all this useless beauty?

 

Well Elvis, we're going to make copies of it and attempt to sell them, and we're going to try to sell the original as well (contact me or leave a comment if interested in the original). My prints are identical to the originals, and you can get them in a wide variety of sizes, framed or unframed, on different kinds of paper and even on canvas. Nothing brightens my day like a sale, as awful and crass as that sounds, but sales help me continue to create these crazy things. Consider my print store this blog's tip jar. Please and thank you.

Also please give me a "like" on my Facebook art page. I update that with in-progress photos as I work on new projects, in case you'd like to watch those develop in real-time. Sorry for the begging, and thanks again.

Small Waters 2012

On Friday Jeff and I drove about 2.5 hours north to Chicago (specifically the Oak Park Art League) for the opening of the Illinois Watercolor Society's Small Waters show. My Mushrooms painting was accepted for this national juried exhibition of small-scale watercolors.

Earlier in the week IWS director Tony Armendariz called me and asked if I was planning to attend the opening. Jeff and I hadn't really given the matter much thought, as we were still wiped out from Los Angeles (it takes us a while to recover from travel). But when Tony calls to ask this question, it's usually followed with, "...because you won an honorable mention" or something like that. At least that's happened to me once before, and calling winning artists has become Tony's standard operating procedure.

So I looked over at a nodding Jeff and said, "Yeah! I think we'll come!" before Tony could tell me why he wanted us there: he needed somebody to help out with the treats. I said sure--I love making cookies for art shows and was happy to lend a hand. Tony added that the show's juror hadn't picked out the show's award winners yet, but if I'd won anything, he'd give me a call Thursday night. Cool. I started planning to make a double batch of sugar cookies while Jeff searched for hotels.

The last-minute hotel possibilities were not good. Oak Park is a pricey area, and public transportation was going to be sketchy, especially if we decided to stay in one of the more affordable but distant hotels. Driving up there would mean a $50 gas (and major time) commitment. Add the cost of food and whatever else to an overnight stay, and we were looking at a $200 price tag to see one of my small paintings surrounded by 39 other small paintings, all of which we were already able to view here. So we decided to tell Tony that we wouldn't be coming, which I felt bad about doing, but that's the way it goes when you're a downstate painter in an upstate art world.

Then Wednesday morning we had a change of heart, and Jeff was feeling bad about me missing a show. What if we drove up to Chicago early Friday afternoon, did some low-key activities, attended the opening, and drove back home that night? Let's do that! I contacted Tony again, told him we were coming to the show after all, and that he could once again count on me to make cookies.

On Thursday I rocked out a double batch of cookies (various animals and fruits). It's a stupidly long process, but I worked as fast as I could in a hazy, assembly-line blur. I didn't even bother to photograph them. I figured that I had produced maybe 50 or 60 cookies, but I had in fact made over 100.

Thursday night came and went without a "you won something" call from Tony. This was not a big surprise, but it would have been an awesome way to end the day, given all the cookie-fueled good karma I thought I might have been attracting.

We took off for Chicago at around lunchtime yesterday, just as a severe thunderstorm rolled through the area. I was entranced by the big shelf cloud you see rolling across the horizon; for about ten minutes, it looked like we lived in a state with mountains. This storm produced downpours and lots of spectacular cloud-to-ground lightning, but it was out of our hair once we exited Champaign County.

Once in Chicago, Jeff wanted to try the Belgian fries at the French Market, which is an indoor marketplace featuring gorgeous produce and artisanal foods. I thought the fries were great, and talk about a generous portion (this was the smaller size!), but as usual they did not match the legendary fries Jeff had when he was in Actual Belgium: not thick enough, and not creamy inside, apparently. We tried two other European specialties while we were at the French Market. The gelato was too firm and the macarons were too dry. Ain't no pleasing us! We ate the hell out of everything we bought, of course.

While in Oak Park we toured Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. Our charming guide provided exactly the right amount of information, if you know what I mean. Sometimes tours like this are exhausting academicfests. This was just a breezy little tour. The home and studio were quirky, strange, and beautiful.

After that we had some time to kill, so we found a Five Guys and shared the same kind of burger we had in L.A. It was terrifyingly great. Thus fortified, we drove to the show.

Also arriving early to the show were Tony (above), his lovely wife Virginia, IWS assistant director Carole Hennessy, artist Irma Pocius, and Oak Park Art League member Ted Strandt (also above--he called someone to let us in the building). We set up the treats and looked at the paintings.

Irma (center) was adorable, and she and I talked about art for quite a while. Carole (above, in blue), Jeff, and I had a wonderful conversation about some of the TV shows we love: Friday Night Lights, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, and, incredibly, Justified. Carole is the first person we've met who even knows about this show. We recently convinced my parents to watch Justified, and they flipped over it. You people who are getting over Breaking Bad's cliffhanger last week: give Justified a try.

My mushrooms were in the center of a long wall devoted primarily to plants. The space eventually became crowded with a surprising number of people, so I was glad I took a few photos early.

Within minutes of meeting him, Irma told Jeff he looked like George Clooney, and there was much swooning over the cuteness of Jeff, much to his embarrassment.

I was forced to pose with my painting, which was flanked by two intimidatingly exquisite floral paintings by Janet Doll and Cherie Hauptman. I can't get used to taking photos like this--they remind me of school pictures for some reason, and I always look uncomfortable.

My painting's frame was something we had been storing, unused, in our guest bedroom--it just happened to be the right size for the mushrooms. Jeff thinks the frame may be valuable, but the back was kind of beat up, and it looked like a kid had written his name on it. I loved the warm color and the tiny dark holes in the wood because they mimicked the speckles on the mushrooms.

But knowing that my painting was not one of the ten winners made me feel sorry for it. It was a good painting, but looking around I saw five, then ten, then over two dozen other paintings seemed like winners. Loose, painterly watercolors made me question why I had to be so damned tight. Abstract expressionist pieces made me miss that imaginative way of working. En plein air landscapes seemed to ooze an integrity that made my mushrooms appear twee and overworked. And yet I thought I hadn't worked hard enough when I studied paintings that were more realistic than mine. I felt like such a novice when I saw work by well-established art professors and painters much older than me who had been working their entire lives.

Jeff saw me gazing at my painting with an "oh you poor thing" expression on my face and asked me what I thought. It was hard to put into words, and I'm not a mother so I really have no idea if this is a fair comparison, but I felt like I was watching a beloved child doing his best in a competition where he was clearly outclassed. And I felt proud of my child for trying, but I knew we were going to leave disappointed and had a long ride home ahead of us.

This is just the way it goes when it comes to art competitions. I'm used to it now, believe me. But the straight-A student in me can't help feeling frustrated sometimes. It's also hard when loved ones travel long distances to see shows like this, and you don't want them to be disappointed in any way. Humble me is honored to simply be included, but awful Tracy Flick me also wants to win at least occasionally.

And then you have to remember that this is art, and the judges' decisions are their own and completely subjective, blah blah blah. In conclusion, art shows are emotional roller coasters, and they're not for sensitive people, i.e. artists.

At least the cookies were a hit. People were taking photos of them and telling me how cute they were.

The evening wore on, and shy Jeff and I actually mingled with people, even strangers. About an hour into the show, Tony and Carole got ready to present ten awards. Judge Suzanne Hetzel made a few remarks, saying that she tried to pick winners who attempted to take watercolor as far as it could go. "Some of the artists are here, and they don't know they've won," Tony mentioned. Argh! A twist! Another fun chance for my hopes to be dashed!

Irma won an honorable mention, and a few other artists in attendance were named after her. Finally Tony reached the top awards (third, second, and first place), and HOLY SMOKES I WON THIRD PLACE YOU GUYS.

*my mind exploded*

People clapped, I got a certificate and prize money (!), and Jeff gave me a kiss.

After the awards presentation, I shook a lot of hands and thanked Sue very much for choosing my painting, and she said something about loving the composition and colors, and Jeff thinks she said "it was obvious," but I don't remember that because my mind had exploded and I think Jeff's had too, a little.

Eager to get home before midnight, we said goodbye to Tony and Virginia, who were happy for me. We took an empty cookie container and left the rest of the cookies behind before leaping and skipping into the night air and out to the car. What a great night.

Thanks as always for reading! If you would like to purchase a print of Mushrooms, please click here, and you can always find prints of everything else here. I love receiving compliments about my work, but it means so much to me when people put some money in my tip jar. :)

Los Angeles Part 4

Friday was Jeff's birthday and our final day in Los Angeles, and we had decided to play it by ear. Still wiped out by the previous two days, we slept in and felt content to lounge in our room, eating cookie butter and waiting for our 5 p.m. appointment with Brian at the frame shop. We thought about visiting the Getty, but as far as Jeff could tell, it was pretty far-flung and unreachable by bus. This seemed elitist and cruel of the Getty, and as I began to settle in for a delicious day of resentful sloth, Jeff discovered that no, wait, we could get there by a combination of long bus rides after all. Okay, The Getty, this had better be worth it.

Our bus lumbered slowly north along the interminable Sepulveda Boulevard, stopping every fifteen yards or so. After about an hour of that, we switched buses at UCLA and continued north. The route took us on a hilly, serpentine tour of Bel Air, where we saw many gates, dense hedges, lush vegetation/shade, and other signs of extreme wealth including glimpses of mansions. This was lots of fun to see, but the bus ride was so profoundly bumpy that I was forced to clutch my breasts with both hands to keep them in my dress. "Be still, my wee ones!" I said to them as an amused (Jazzy) Jeff looked on. So ladies, here's a travel tip you won't find anywhere else: wear a sports bra if you have to take a bus through Bel Air. Once we left Bel Air, the bus unceremoniously deposited us in the midst of a construction site. We could see the Getty's gleaming white edifice at the top of a hill about a mile away.

"I think we're gonna have to walk up there," Jeff said, and I emitted a heartbroken cry of betrayal. We trudged through one of those covered walkways common to urban construction areas, and when we emerged--hooray! A TRAM!

Let's all go up on the tram together, thanks to this video I just found!

 

We had been told that the Getty would be an oasis, and it certainly was. The cars, the noise, the buses, and the sprawl were replaced with mondernistic architecture, Zen gardens, panoramic views, and oh yeah, some art.

Herb Ritts photography (yay) and Gustave Klimt drawings (double yay) were that day's special exhibits along with the museum's permanent collection, and, unbelievably, everything was free.

That's right, Art Institute of Chicago: some museums are free.

(My iPhone's case looks like a paint set, and I enjoyed the quizzical looks I received when I tried to take photos.)

This garden was a zig-zaggy maze of beautiful flowers, trees, succulents, and water features. I could imagine plenty of people coming to the Getty solely to escape the rest of Los Angeles and enjoy the architecture and gardens.

Above is part of the Getty as seen from that garden.

We thought these gigantic planters were ingenius and wondered how many years it took the plants to grow up through the centers before spilling out the tops.

It a treat to see Klimt's drawings. I wrote an independent study honors art history paper about him when I was in college--like many post-adolescent art girls, I was dazzled by his glamourous, richly-patterend paintings from the early 20th century. Many of those paintings are in Vienna, and I've only seen reproductions.

Above is one of his very fine academic studies from early in his career. His lines were razor sharp and frighteningly confident. (That black-and-white-on-toned-paper technique is one of my favorite ways to draw.)

Drawings that would inspire his dreamlike later work were also featured.

I was especially touched to view drawings that found their way into finished paintings, such as the above study for Klimt's Medicine. I left with a better understanding of his process and the way his mind worked.

"I'm not familiar with Herb Ritts," Jeff told me.

"Oh yes you are," I said as we entered his "L.A. Style" exhibit.

Photographer of supermodels, celebrities, athletes, and beyond-perfect anonymous male and female bodies, Herb Ritts is responsible for many iconic images of the 1980s and 90s. Skin is rarely photographed this lovingly. I remember seeing his above cluster of women in Vogue when I was in grad school. Unlike the overly-photoshopped pictures of models you see today, Herb Ritts' women never made me feel inadequate. They made me happy that creatures like that were walking the earth.

And then, perhaps in an attempt to remind us that art is more than just naked bodies, the permanent collection included THIS.

"Oh Jeff..." I said, tears in my eyes.

I've written about Vincent Van Gogh's Irises before, but this item bears repeating:

 

The Getty was such a lovely experience, and if you're going to be in Los Angeles, I urge you to do whatever it takes to get there, even if that means riding multiple breast-jangling buses. For a couple of hours, we felt like we could breathe again.

And then it was back to our construction zone bus stop. We arrived about 30 seconds before a bus arrived, but for whatever reason the bus driver blew right by us and a handful of other people. We fumed for half an hour.

Somebody had tagged the curb by my feet with "STATE," and this reminded me of Coach Taylor's whiteboard on Friday Night Lights, S05 E02, an episode to which I cannot link easily. But you people who watched that show: you know what I'm talking about, and I took it as a vote of confidence.

Does it go without saying that the ride back to the hotel was soul-destroying, and that once we were there it was nearly mid-afternoon, and after we'd had just enough time to freshen up and attempt to print boarding passes using the hotel's Pliocene-era computer, we had to turn around and get on two more buses to return to the frame shop, and that was also lousy? And before we hit the frame shop, we walked pretty far out of our way to try Beligian fries (Jeff's holy grail) that were, as usual, not everything they should have been?

It does go without saying any of that? Good. Let's consider ourselves at the frame shop. It's 5:15.

I was flustered and sweaty from our mile of sprint-walking in the afternoon heat. Luckily Brian wasn't there yet. I positioned myself beneath the Sherman Gallery's ceiling air conditioning outlet and fanned myself like crazy with a pamphlet. I was happy to meet Mike, my gallery worker and email pen pal for over a month, who came out with the painting, beautifully framed and wrapped in plastic. He had done such a speedy, great job with it, and again this cost me hundreds of dollars less than if I'd gone to the shop's many competitors. Check out these guys if you need to frame something in L.A. I took a photo and enjoyed a few final moments with my--soon to be Brian's--painting.

Brian appeared at around 5:30 in his SUV. I'd made sure that he had a vehicle big enough to transport the painting. It was wonderful to finally meet the man with whom I had exchanged nearly 300 emails (no joke) during the course of this project.

Brian took us out to dinner at Fig restaurant in Santa Monica. Fig is a young, hip place that--let's all say it together (especially you, Caroline)--Jeff had researched on the internet. Birthday boy had the beet risotto...

...which he loved, and our pal Brian...

(hi Brian)

...enjoyed a nice-looking plate of fish (halibut?).

The gentlemen did not take any photos of me, probably because I was a blur of tornado-like eating action. That was the best chopped salad of all time.

Unfortunately, Fig was packed and very loud, so we almost had to shout our conversation. But we still had fun talking with Brian about his upcoming wedding, the house he and Katherine had recently purchased in Colorado Springs, and our misadventures on Match.com, where we had all eventually found love.

Brian was supportive and enthusiastic as I completed this painting--I couldn't have asked for a better client. I'm lucky that he had discovered my work while searching online for portrait artists last year. He is also a true romantic and obviously in love with Katherine. I wished I could have met her in person, too, because she sounds amazing! Brian told me my painting was phenomenal, and he knew she would love it. He dropped us off at our hotel--what luxury to be in an actual car for a change!--and we wished him a happy wedding and marriage. Brian said, "I hope we'll be even half as happy as you two." D'awww. See what I mean? Great guy.

Mission accomplished, we went to bed early in anticipation of our 4:00 a.m. wake-up time.

That wake-up time came about as quickly as this new paragraph did. We took a speedy cab ride to the airport at 5:00 and were waiting at our gate at 5:20, a new record for us. Repeat: from hotel to gate in 20 minutes. Most of that time was spent curbside where we checked the gun case. This time it contained Jeff's extra shoes, cookie butter, and a bottle of Belgian beer he had purchased at Trader Joe's.

Baggage check man: I'm going to have to open that. What's inside the case?

Jeff: Alcohol, shoes, and peanut butter [It was just easier to call it that.--K].

BCM: [quizzical, smiling look] You don't need to open it. [waves us through]

Jeff: [a minute or two later, to me] It's like they want us to get out!

Me: It's like an apology.

(I will never stop loving the Pac Man-shaped fields Texas. I'm guessing that was Texas, anyway.)

We flew from LAX to Dallas/Ft.Worth to Chicago to Champaign. Nothing much happened on our flights, except for a Dallas passenger whose eye-watering halitosis had a radius of about six feet. As the day wore on, Jeff and I became slap-happy, laughing our heads off over signs like this one.

Jeff: "Caution! Do not trip over tiny hat!"

Me: "Beware of smashed sombrero!" "Extra dangerous if you have no hands or feet!"

Each layover lasted at least a few hours, so by the time we were back home, it was 9:00 p.m. A very long day of travel!

Three joyous cats met us at the door. Each had many needs to meet and many things to tell us. Bun walked around nervously for about an hour before finally settling down, satisfied that we weren't going anywhere else for a while.

That was pretty mean of me to show the painting wrapped in plastic up there, wasn't it? All will be revealed in my next post! Please *like* the heck out of my Facebook watercolor page, and I'll see you soon. :)

Los Angeles Part 3

On Thursday, our first full day in L.A., we took a bus to Hollywood. The weather was cloudy, misty, and cool. In other words, it was ideal for me.

The bus ride was easily 45 minutes long. I was impressed with the overall condition of the buses: clean and new-seeming, all had digital signs and computer-generated voices that announced upcoming stops. The bus voice that morning was Generic Affectless Male, but as the bus lurched onto Hollywood Boulevard, he perked up. "Now approaching: HOLLYWOOD!!Boulevard and La Brea." "Now approaching: HOLLYWOOD!!Boulevard and Vine." We got a tiny laugh out of it, anyway.

Jeff and I exited the bus and I found myself standing on Sammy Davis Jr.'s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The star was directly across the street from the Pantages Theater, which we had come to see. The Pantages Theater is an art deco movie palace, and its lobby is the setting for my portrait of Brian and Katherine. Their first date was at the theater. YES I CAN paint that theater!

The theater was busy setting up for The Book of Mormon, a musical I would love to see, but we were a couple of weeks early for that. I asked one of the workers at the box office if I could peek inside the lobby, as I had painted a watercolor of it recently, but she said, "Sorry! We can't even get in there ourselves." I figured as much. Too bad, but understandable. I took a few shots around the box office.

The ceiling of the lobby features a chandelier suspended from a complex structure like this one. Just amazing craftsmanship.

Every conceivable surface in the lobby was decorated, and the box office area definitely gave us a taste of that. Speaking of taste, how about some breakfast?

We ate at The Waffle, a place on Sunset Blvd that Jeff had researched. We ordered some waffles and waited at an outdoor table for our food. Which looked like this:

Um, that is a red velvet waffle with cream cheese frosting, and believe me, I annihilated that thing. Jeff had a waffle topped with a brown sugar and pecan concoction that tasted like a liquified sticky bun. The food could not have been tastier. The weather cleared dramatically while we ate.

We walked down the Hollywood Walk of Fame, pointing out stars to each other (including Godzilla)...

...and getting accosted at every turn by bus tour huckster guys.

The above mural decorates one of the buildings on a cross-street. It looks alright from a distance, but when I got close to it the painter in me wanted to improve--is there any way I can say this *without* sounding like a jerk?--just about all the faces and bodies. Especially the noses. I'M SORRY.

Kind of fun encountering this place!

This part of Hollywood Blvd was loaded with people dressed up like movie characters and superheroes looking for photo opportunities, including maybe six gone-to-seed Spider-Men trudging about in the noonday sun. While I took photos, Jeff observed a fanfic fantasy: a Johnny Depp Willy Wonka "pointed to the package" of a Matt Smith Dr. Who. He also heard someone call a Catwoman a bitch "but in a friendly way."

We caught a couple of buses en route to our next destination, enduring the requisite, tiresome waits for each one. Then we realized that we had forgotten to see the Breaking Bad art show. We had read about it the week before our trip, and for us this show was unmissable. We hopped off the bus in the vicinity of Beverly Hills, shared an iced tea, and regrouped.

Man-with-a-plan Jeff figured out which buses we'd need to take to get to the art show using his iPhone. It proved indispensible many times during our visit. Yesterday one of my L.A. friends on Facebook said she couldn't believe we managed to use public transportion in this part of the city, describing it as an all-caps BOONDOGGLE. She deserves a Nobel prize for word choice. So thank you and way to go, Jeff, for getting us through the BOONDOGGLE. Let's take another look at Mr. Capable (photo by me, Ms. No-Sense-Of-Direction).

We reached the show by early afternoon. Along the way I snapped a photo of an L.A. business typical of the ones we saw while on buses.

If you study the center of that photo, you'll see a mural that (if you removed the lavender shapes) looks almost exactly like my much-loved Fine Line Design, an art project I did for years with my high school students.

The awesome, often hilarious (and free!) Breaking Bad show was at Gallery 1988 on Melrose. This was a small space that even during a weekday afternoon managed to be filled with young-ish fans. I'm going to post a lot of photos of the artwork now. If you don't watch Breaking Bad, I apologize, and also what's wrong with you?

Lab installation.

A tour-de-force.

DING DING DING! Jeff's favorite.

Too much!

Adorable.

Wow. (Hard to take photos without reflections.)

A watercolor! Ohhh the physical need to paint some BB fan art--it hurt!

Heh! Go Mike!

Masterful.

Oh Jesse. Oh Saul.

I was so glad we turned around and saw this, and so was Jeff. We walked out exhilarated.

And then we had a choice: we could take three or so buses back to the hotel, hang around for an hour, and then take a couple of buses back to the sushi place in Culver City where we had reservations later that night, or we could just go to the sushi place and have a late, late lunch. We opted to do the latter. Bus, bus, walk to the sushi place.

Except the sushi place was closed and wouldn't open for three hours. We were near a small park, a Trader Joe's, a Mexican restaurant, and not much else. We decided to hang around that area until sushi time. We bought a baguette and a jar of cookie butter and had an impomptu picnic under a tree. I've been curious about Trader Joe's cookie butter for months, but the nearest store is in Chicago. I was thrilled to finally try this stuff, and it was a revelation. Imagine the texture of Nutella, but it tastes kind of like gingersnap cookies. Smooth, smooth spreadable cookies. Incredible. We couldn't believe how good it was as we sat on the roots of a big tree, ripping off pieces of bread, plunging them into the cookie butter, and watching the world go by. We were having a summah, in the words of Howard Kremer (a necessary reference I doubt people will recognize, but it's so right on).

Later on we loitered over drinks and guacamole at the Mexican restaurant, wandered around the area finding nothing to do, and called Mom to see how the cats were doing. (They were just fine.)

The expensive sushi experience at K-Zo was "EH, but fun" as I wrote in my little notebook. We went omakase that night, which is where you ask the sushi chef to make whatever he wants, and you eat it until you're full. Our chef was a sweet young man who served us barracuda, prawns, fatty tuna, halibut, crab, and salmon, among other things. Insipired by watching Anthony Bourdain eat it many times on his show and proclaim it a miracle food that tastes like the sea and, like, GOD, we tried uni (sea urchin roe but kind of not, look it up) for the first time.

 

(ff to :47 to see what I'm talking about.)

Our uni tasted like the sea, all right, but in a way that we can only describe as troubling. And at $10 each for essentially one bite of uni, it was insanely troubling. Looking back on the sushi experience, it was special and an adventure, but oh man, another Five Guys burger would have been twice as satsifying for a fraction of the price.

The chilly breeze (accomanied by a strong and inexplicable stank that smelled like a pig farm) coming off the unseen but nearby ocean made us shiver. We waited an unprecedented amount of time for the first of two buses back to the hotel, where we were more than ready to collapse into bed.

Thanks again or reading! More soon! Please *like* my watercolor page on Facebook! Happy Labor Day!

Los Angeles Part 2

Champaign's Willard airport is not exactly a bustling travel hub, and its surrounding countryside is so perfectly flat that I'd imagine a pilot could land a plane anywhere within a 75-mile radius of the airport with no problems. Nearly all of Willard's flights are half-hour commutes to and from Chicago. Our plane took off on Wednesday morning at the same time that the "kids may enter the building" bell rang on the first day of school at Unity High School, where I used to teach. Even though over two years have passed since I was a teacher, I still keep track of this kind of thing. As our plane rose into the sky, I was able to see Unity, a beehive of activity, and I felt profoundly free.

 

Before we knew it, we were in Chicago. Our flight from O'Hare to LAX was uneventful, and after we passed the Mississippi River, I managed to sleep a little. I woke up and looked out at the amazing southwestern landscape peeking through the clouds. This eventually morphed into the massive sprawl of Los Angeles: its warehouses, neighborhoods, rooftops, and main arteries were a bland shade of greige. "I feel like the Joads," Jeff joked. No bumpkin, Jeff had visited L.A. something like twenty times for work, and it was his least favorite west coast travel destination. I was willing to give it a chance, but from my window seat I wondered where the trees were and knew my pale skin was in deep trouble. A stoned-sounding female voice in my head told me, "This is El Ay," and from that moment on this song plagued me.

 

I don't have a problem with Sheryl Crow. She has a few songs that I like, and she's faced some terrifying health issues with aplomb. But I do have a problem with her breakthrough hit All I Wanna Do. Here's why:

• The cloying strings/synths that begin the song seem to sigh "aww Sheryl" in an obsequious way that seems old-timey to me.
• Beyond the poor grammar, the "this ain't no" spoken section that also begins the song is unoriginal (Talking Heads did it better), and it clashes with her "apropos of nothing" line: who says "ain't" and "apropos" in the same breath?
• My classes listened to the radio in the mid-90s when this song was popular. It put my teeth on edge when I'd hear 15 year-old girls softly singing along to this drunk slacker manifesto, especially the line "I like a good beer buzz early in the morning" because some of them really seemed to mean it. I also hated the repeated references to bottles of Bud.

So that song was in my head for most of the trip. It was just the worst.

LAX was smaller than I thought it would be, and I was prepared to spend a nervous hour at the baggage carousel waiting for my painting in a gun case to arrive, and then what if it had been lost? Then what would we do? Luckily it was the first item to hit the carousel, and we were out of there in no time.

Determined to use public transportation while we were in Los Angeles, we took a bus to another bus to a sort of bus depot about a half mile from our hotel (the Four Points Sheraton) in Culver City. A passenger on one of the buses saw our gun case and asked what kind of musical instrument was inside. Jeff got a kick out of that: in the Midwest we're hunters/murderers, and in L.A. we're musicians.

The above map shows the three spots in L.A. that we needed to visit that day: the airport, Culver City, and Marina del Ray (home of the frame shop). And look at how convenient that cluster of blue circles seems: the hotel is just up the street from the airport, and the frame shop was a mere hop, skip, and a jump to the west.

Except no.

That map came with no mileage legend probably because Los Angeles doesn't want its visitors to become clinically depressed. Jeff knew that the city was enormous, but I had no idea. L.A. is a behemoth of a city that reminded me of the final frames of this.

 

Miles and miles separated my map's cluster of blue circles, and for the next 72 hours Jeff and I were at the mercy of the L.A. Metropolitan Transit Authority's buses. Three different bus systems criss-crossed the areas we explored, none of which shared universal metro cards.

I consider the photo below to be the signature image of our little vacation:

The following film illustrates how we spent the bulk of our time out west. Disclaimer: the film makes it seem like L.A. is crawling with buses that magically appear every few seconds. This is untrue. If you want to experience what it's really like out there, hit pause after each bus and wait 30 minutes before you hit play again. It would also help if during those 30 minutes you stood outside under direct sunlight, because that way you'll get an even better taste of L.A.

 

On a positive note, I found the people of Los Angeles, including (and especially) the people on buses, to be altogther endearing. I saw examples of kindness on virtually every ride: new mothers were helped with strollers, strangers talked to each other about books, a rider called out "that was nice of you" when the bus driver pulled over to pick up someone who was late to the bus stop, etc. I saw people complaining to each other when passengers didn't say thank you. All races and lifestyles mixed peacefully. It was a joy to behold.

And even this guy seemed fun in his own way.

High, aging hippies were uniquely charming. One man noticed a zebra on a TV monitor playing some kind of bus news program. He pointed at it and chuckled knowingly, "Huh huh!...zebra." Another dude blatantly smoked marijuana at a bus stop and offered a hit to a man in a wheelchair. Later on the bus, he sat beside a similarly wasted woman, and I couldn't help overhearing this exchange:

Man: Wanna see something funny?

Woman: Yeah.

Man: [opens backpack, finds beaten-up spiral notebook, flips through it until he lands on a picture torn from an animal calendar that looks almost exactly like this:

 

Woman: [cracks up]

Man: [cracks up] I just thought that was funny!

We eventually made our way to the Sherman Gallery and dropped off my painting to Andy, a young, capable-seeming man who was a colleague of Mike, my main email contact for the shop (it was his day off). The shop was busy but had a casual, laid-back vibe that was typical of everywhere we went in L.A. Relieved that the painting was safe at the framers, we did what you're supposed to do when you arrive in Los Angeles.

We shared an In-N-Out burger and some "animal style" fries. The burger was like a Big Mac if the people who make Big Macs actually tried, and the fries were topped with thousand island dressing and minced, grilled onions. I wasn't a big fan of the fries, which were not fresh from the fryer, but the half-burger hit the spot. We had noticed a Five Guys burger place near our hotel, so we decided to hit that on the way back and share another burger.

We walked to Venice Beach (a long, long walk directly into the sun that left me with a burn on my chest and shoulders even though I used sunscreen). The beach was beautiful, though. We walked barefoot on the sand, and I shrieked with delight when the waves hit my toes.

We strolled along a couple of blocks of Venice Beach's touristy shops that sold sunglasses, hats, junk food, and medical marijuana. We did not buy any pot, as we do not do drugs, but I found some great $10 sunglasses to replace the ones I broke earlier this summer. For one brief, shining moment, All I Wanna Do left my mind and was replaced with this song, a favorite of mine for twenty years.

 

Exhausted after our day of travel, we broke down and took a cab back to the hotel. Our driver played international smooth jazz hits, such as Julio Inglesias' take on My Way and Sade's Smooth Operator. Along the way I enjoyed the different kinds of palm trees, including my favorites, the bushy ones (below):

They remind me of the guy on the right:

Second hamburger time!

Above: a Five Guys cheeseburger styled by Jeff. Simply put, it wiped the floor with In-N-Out. We shared it, and it was the best fast food burger I've ever had, made even better because I was exhausted and starving. It haunts us. I can hardly bear to look at the photo or talk about the experience today. This lovely soul does a much better job than I could.

 

So that concludes my long-winded account of our first day in L.A. Thanks for reading--more to come!

And if you've read this far, I'd like to ask you to do me a favor: please *like* my Facebook art page. I tried my best to make it likeable. In the photos section you'll see lots of paintings, sketches, photos from art shows, and random observations from me. Click here!