I bought a house, a place to live and die in. First, I tore up all the carpet and spent weeks dissolving and scraping black mastic (a gum adhesive) from the cement, which I then hand-buffed with a random orbital sander up to a 120 finish. Second, I put furniture in it such that I might sleep and work.
This is my home. Now that the stucco work is finished, it is all pink.
The blue Toyota that brought me here is lost, rollover and junked hitting steel guardrails five blocks from my home at the time, on Richmond. I survived with only bruising, and bought a little Jeep for $10,000 in cash from a man I met in the Sprouts parking lot. That was four months ago.
Here, I took a spontaneous trip on I-25 South to Belén, NM, 35 miles outside of Albuquerque. I live elsewhere now, my own home, near Juan Tabo and the East-West highway. If you take I-40 west for a while, you join up with I-25, and you can either go up or down.
I only took the main road through town, detoured down a paved road that dead-ended at a cattle ranch. Mesa Rd.?
Just a road, but my favorite kind of sky. I drove home as the sun was setting. The main town thoroughfare curved so deeply the sun was on all sides of me. Take I-25 north for a time, then head east towards home.
...With a handful of new work and a slightly larger other-hand-ful of stories and questions about how I ended up here, in Albuquerque, a place where I have fallen in love in at least three different ways.
Travelogue forthcoming; for now, please take a look at these painting-drawings, and these little experiments and collabs, in "Flat" and "Tries."
:)
Yours,
from New Mexico
Ballooned and muscled bodies, possibly my own. Body fantasies.
Self-portrait as Future Bodybuilder / Strong Woman
Pastel (Bruised) Ass
In an earlier post, I mentioned that Brooklyn's Urban Glass offers lower "experimental" rates in their hotshop...I signed up for a three-hour Sunday block and had a wonderful time with old friend/AMAZING glassblower Jon Wang, trying things out and attempting to aggravate some old, stiff muscle memory.
Urban shares the building with an arts center and a café, with a wonderful first-floor exhibition space....
Today was, actually, my first personal blow time in about three years. I taught introductory glass in Texas, and earned a little gratis blowtime at another studio across town by volunteering some walk-in events, but never found (or made) time or the budget to book productive shop time for myself.
So, today, even though my stepped rondelle ended up looking more like a lumpy hat, and I constantly made clumsy mistakes (like slamming my piece into the gloryhole door), it felt so AWESOME to have this time for myself (plus a couple of breaks for Jon so he could switch from assisting me to practicing goblet-making)....
Here is the final count of finished pieces percolating in the annealer, a collection of milky/cummy-hued vessels and flats.
I love planning out elaborate pieces on gridded paper, some beyond my current skill level, some dead simple blanks for later kilnwork, and some simply nonsensical tableaux of glass vessels and invented equipment. Click to enlarge.
P.S., today is Father's Day...here is one of my favorite pictures of the pops, looking through a glass. He hates it, but I think it's wonderful, so...sorry, dad!
