motion will never stop turning the night into the day

...is the name of this:


i started this one at least a year and 1/2 ago... as always, pencil first, followed by fine-tip pens and finally a bit o marker and some watercolor pencils (which are wonderful for how portable they are... i've successfully finished stuff w/ watercolor pencils + wine/spit/beer/juice before, lol). i have a bad habit of starting an idea, putting it down on paper, abandoning it for a year or more, then re-discovering it and finally bringing it to a finish. i dunno why. probably cause i over-analyze it to death right after i sketch it and then it takes that long for me to forget how much i initially criticized it, thus allowing me to see it with new eyes and to at long last bring it to an end. meh. but i'm happy that it's finished now :)

on a (not-so-little) side note... yesterday i received a text msg from someone (i don't even know who - the # wasn't saved in my phone) informing me that i had ranked as runner up to the knoxville metro pulse's annual "best local artist" category. when i read that... i PHYSICALLY GAVE BIRTH to kittens. this makes me so happy!!!!!!! but how did it even happen?! i don't feel like i self-promote/show my art/toot-my-horn AT ALL. the only all-me show i ever had was thanks to a friend of mine (craig) who was living in and running a gallery-type space at the time. he literally sat down on top of me (which scared the poo out of me cause i wasn't paying attention to anything around me!) while i was sitting on a bench in market square, doodling in mah sketchbook... and DEMANDED to know when i would show @ host, LOL. i agreed to a date that would give me a couple of months to prepare. and in the end, it turned out so much better than i ever could've anticipated! i helped craig re-paint the entire interior of the gallery, even going so far as to paint a mural across the ENTIRE floor (a couple of creatures we dubbed the "froodles", a male/female imaginary sea-creature duo). craig managed to enlist the help of so many amazing people to aid the transformation, even bringing in our own infamous k-town tagger, MESKO (whose true identity i will never divulge) to lay down my whole design across the floor, to later be tweaked/polished by me, craig, and my mom :)

here's the floor:


the show started @ 7pm on a friday, had free (mediterranean- but worth what it cost) refreshments and three musical acts throughout the evening. most of the time, it was so packed that no one even noticed the floor and you had to squeeze side-ways through the crowd, lol! it was wonderful. ^_^

so this show is the only thing i can think of that may have been worthy enough to stick in peoples' minds?? but it might be the show and the random pieces i show/sell here and there (that are few and far between)... or the things i do for free and for fun for people i know... or for the fact that my home away from home used to be a booth in the back of sidestreet tavern, resplendant with sketchbook, pens and a glass of red wine. i ended up doing a lot of random drawings for drunk people, because it was SO FUNNY :)
i dunno... these things probably have far less to do with it than the fact that i worked at SV for 3.5 years, and am now celebrating my 1 year anniversary with Natural Alternatives. at each job, i was in the midst of MANY MANY MANY co-workers, all of whom i try to get to know and work harmoniously with. and my art is very important to me and i end up talking about it a lot. sooo i guess there are a lot of people i am very friendly with who know my first and last my name? LOL! it's ok... i know that the metro pulse is a "popularity contest"... NOT a measure of true "greatness" or talent. but in the meantime, this has been a magnificent inspiration. or actually, it makes me worry about how much time i SHOULD be spending on my art. and it makes me over-analyze my stuff even more. but, ehhhhh... whoooo cares? i do it for me and that's all that matters. and i'm NOT gonna quit my day job. cause i'd probably go mad, LOL.

yeah. so i'm gonna quit thinking about all this crap and worrying about it (too much) and listen to a little music and goof off on the 'net before bed... good night :)

azubah

first things first... i can't start out explaining about my intentions for an art blog without including some ART in it, lol.

here is my most recent piece, entitled "azubah"

pen, ink, & watercolor pencils

comments and criticism are VERY welcome :)

osaka sunburn

ahhhh... so i spoke with my friend at work about my flickr dilemma and he graciously helped me out with what was (of course) a very "duh" moment. thanks, ethan :)

and now... on to my day-off adventure with patrick...

patty and i serendipitously decided to embark upon a journey to one of the new(er) oriental food markets in town, "sunrise market". patrick and i have been very very very good friends for close to 10 years now, and there is no one in this world i have met who shares this particular level of uber-dorkiness with me.


in the car the revelry had already begun... i dug out an old cd mix from our high school days and as we sang our way down kingston pike, we couldn't help but get a little silly.


...so i'm wondering... when you cook up over a pound of severed chicken's feet, do you eat the bones and talons, too? it's too bad this doesn't look appetizing AT ALL... less than three bucks for over a pound of "meat product" is pretty dang frugal.


that's right, it says "edible pork blood". there were a LOT of these. what do you DO with pork blood?




limp bamboo


...for when ye got a hankerin' for boobie chips... reach for SUPER TITI 33! now in NEW garlic flavor!!


oooo... jellyfish head. really? something about the description ("acid pungent taste") just gives me the willies.


...because EVERYBODY needs some spicy cock!


these ridonkulously adorable packages caught our eye... jelly-like fruit-flavored cubes made from young coconut meat? YESSS! we decided to buy some to take home and invent a new mixed alcoholic beverage.

all in all we left the sunrise food market with far too many varieties of dumpling, an adorable new 6-inch bamboo steamer ($7.99), three varieties of jelly-cube thing, a can of grass jelly softdrink, and a very greeeen bottle of aloe beverage, complete with little transparent chunks of aloe floating through it. next, we made our way to the grocery store for chicken and stuff... patty had offered to make us some deleeshus cheeken deener :)


on the way to the grocery store, patty enjoyed an afternoon snack.


by the way, zombies eat lips. just f.y.i.

back at the house, we gathered some glasses, tequila, our curious japanese ingredients, popped in a sci-fi anime with lots of silly boobies and proceeded with our alcoholic experimentation.




mmm... look at these jelly cuuubes. the official name is "jubes" and the flavor was "pandan"... i have no i dea what sort of fruit that is, but i sure do like it. :)
(in the background is one of my three awesome kitties, dex.)


here you can see how neat and transparent they are... and how cute the packaging is :)


to start, we did just a few of the cubes in each glass with a bit of the liquid it was packaged in (which was super tasty and fruity) and drizzled a fair amount of clear tequila over them.


next we cracked open the aloe juice... my god, WHY did i go so long without trying this?? it was soooooo delicious... and fresh... and it smelled so GOOOOD! patty and i both agreed that it reminded of something from our childhoods... but we couldn't quite figure out what.


maybe patty liked it a little TOO much, i dunno.

so we added the delicious aloe beverage to our strange concotion, gave each glass a good stir and discovered that we had created a magnificently futuristic-looking, fresh-tasting, tequila-packed cocktail. it was fuckin' gooood. and you could barely taste the tequila (which is amazing, because it contained a LOT, lol). but what to call it? it was full of such a strange variety of ingredients... mexican tequila, japanese aloe juice, and space-age kawaii coconut cubes flavored with oriental fruit. i *think* we decided on "osaka sunburn"... invoking the heat of mexico, the beaches of southern japan, and the need for soothing aloe when ye get a little too sunkissed. i dunno... we were gettin' a little tipsy at that point, so the name may be silly but i sure do like it :)


oh, and we made tasty dumplings, too! in the new steamer, of course :)

...next, we watched grey gardens (the new, HBO based off of the original documentary from the 70's. my GOD, was that some good acting!). later, patty made a delicious, peanut encrusted chicken for dinner and patty, andy (my love), and I ate as we watched "the witches of eastwick". then we drank more tasties, of course!

every day off should be this good :)

grrrrrr...

...so i am attempting to move forward with the blog-ness of this blog. yesterday, my friend patrick and i had a lovely day-off adventure that i was documenting all-the-while with pictures. it was recommended to me to use flickr to host said pictures so that i may be able to post them onto my blog. i made my flickr account, uploaded all the pics i wanted, went to the first one and clicked "blog this" and my progress comes to a screetching halt b/c when i try to allow access between gmail/blogger/flickr i receive a lovely pale yellow ERROR icon with and exclamation point in it, informing me that "The Blogger account you chose does not have any weblogs associated with it".
*sigh*
i have no idea what this means. because when i go to my gmail settings, i see that i have successfully "allowed" blogger access. but for whatever reason, flickr is not recognizing this? ack! and poo-doo! i'm really quite frustrated now, because this has taken up nearly my entire morning and i have jack-squat to show for it.
fuuuuuck. i'm-a go take a shower now and get ready for work...
:P

sticking my toe in the water

hello and welcome to my first blog/brain drivel

i will be documenting an internal project that has been nagging at me for a while and has poked at me enough that i am now forced to take it on, mano a mano. more and more i have been feeling like my attempts in the artistic sense have been collectively disjointed and without any vision or cohesive intention. how do you establish an artistic style? is it usually something that occurs on its' own? or do i already have one and this is all maybe just in my head?

i won't try to be clever, i won't try to be cool... i'll just be honest and will regularly document my attempts at artistic consistency. maybe i'll throw in some miscellanea of the aural/visual/tactile type just to spice it up and keep this whole artistic self-discovery thing from getting boring.

cheers, and here's to hoping i keep up with this :)