Alice's laundromat.

Long time no post.  I got inspired to keep writing here thanks to one comment, and also how I'm kinda ignoring anything that isn't Paint lately.  No pictures of new work, due to camera loss, but rest assured I've got turquoise, cadmium, violet and ochre all up my arms on a regular basis.  And I'm moving into a place with a studio soon, with another artist, this should be beneficial all around, to say the very least.

I feel I'm passing through the looking glass at the moment, it's gray and comfortable on this side, and on the other is my real life, waiting to swell and ask a lot of me.  It's about frelling time I moved to a bigger place.... 

I chew-chewse Pavel Tchelitchew

It'll be interressin' to see how many people get to this page by Googling "Pavel Tchelitchew".  Anyone banking on NONE?  Bueller?  Anyone?  Shirley? No, I doubt it.

Not for lack of being awesome, of course.  Pavel's awesomeness, that is.  Here's where I'm supposed to expound like a good an informed blogger who's wise to all things art historical, but the truth his he's entirely new to me, and that's definitely the point!  For class we have to make some laughably non-thinking project on anyone who's drawn anything at all in the last 200 years, and fortunately I found this guy among all the articles.  Caught my attention immediately with a tree that is not a tree....

Yes, that's more like it, and what do I know about the guy?

He's Russian, influenced by macabre Romanticism, has a very popular painting at the Tate, lived from 1989-1957 (died young at 59), not terribly well-known, worked on set design for ballet, had a few shows in Paris and London and the MoMA, had a thing for astronomy, alchemy, childhood motifs and interior/exterior body landscaping (sublime veins and the like)... and I think I'm in love, you guys, at least for today.  

What I will eat, and what I will never eat, also ---- Art Cards for Sale Now!

So with the craft fair gone and in the dust of fond and slightly rained-on memories past, I have a few things to enjoy in the afterwards.  I have a cookie with my portrait on it, c/o Amber PB and her table boasting beards and bird-earrings and (of course) sugar cookies painted in food dye with pictures of people on them.  They even had vegan ones, which is how I can nibble on myself without qualm as you see here!

In other recent news I printed and packaged and beautifully presented the full set of 12 art cards that I was selling at the show, except now I'm including with each one a handmade envelope made from pages of an old Neal's Yard Bakery Whole Foods Cookbook.  Because essentially the recipes are terrible and hilarious and the ink drawing of mushrooms and cucumbers are actually pretty gorgeous.  

I don't feel bad, I feel like I rescued these poor recipes from any chance they may have had at getting made and eaten, and exalted them to the proper status of treasure/spectacle that they deserve.

I mean, Kombu Surprise, you guys.  Kombu.  Surprise.  I am in awe.

Meanwhile, Get'Yer Hot Fresh [insert delectable adjective here] Art Prints + Recipe Envelope Right Here!

hurray!

Presents! Kindness made material you guys.

I'm not sure why I get blessed so much sometimes.  Wether it's my inclination to count blessings or that I simply do just get showered with good things on a regular basis (and I also might be easily amused)...

At any rate, I found a rather precious envelope leaning against my door last week.  I was having a terrible morning - no spark and no fire in the gut - and had finally dragged myself out the front door to find this package marked "Contents: Art Paper".  Are there sweeter words?  Immediate fire back in the belly!

It came to me from the very kind (really, astonishingly kind) artist I'd met on Flickr - Catherine L. Mommsen.  She not only sent me a huge stack of the creamiest, most luscious papers (Fabriano and Portofine among them), she also tucked in a handmade card with one of her beautiful drawings on the front.  I do so love her art... there's a fineness, a tranquility, a sense of the religious unknown, and a kind of worldly dreamscape to it.  

So amazing, Catherine.  You are my art hero!  I have to get cracking on drawing on this wonderful new paper, I think. 

Also, while at the Boom-Chix-Boom art sale (more on that next post), I traded art for some buttons made by Kirsten McCrea of Papirmasse - a lovely service for anyone who needs more gorgeousness and whimsy in their life.  Basically for $60 you get 12 signed and editioned (and killer) prints throughout the year - now doesn't that sound much better than some quick-to-be-obsolete and full-of-ads magazine subscription?  Yes, I thought so.

the March issue makes me want to listen to rousing icy synthesizer music and eat snow...

oh yeah, one more thing (BOOM CHIX A BOOM)

While at La Centrale and enjoying Pantheon Petro, I picked up a little flyer, oh a little flyer indeed...........

With my name on it!  Shit gosh I guess that means I really have to sit there and sell postcards and little zine-type things now all weekend.  Shucks.  Who knew?  I mean, I did, but I didn't realize I'd be named on something official or nothin'.  (Colour me pleased.  And come see some performances and buy some stuff if you can!)  /shameless plug.  :)

4296 st-Laurent

514-871-0268

lacentrale.org

Pantheon Petro @ Galerie La Centrale Powerhouse

Amazing what we do with our lives.  Perhaps even more amazing to hear about the story when you can understand french a little better.  But it was an satisfyingly technicoloured artist talk @ La Centrale nonetheless!

Dominique Petrin, former member of tribally-petrochemical-punk-revival band Les Georges Leningrad has basically grown up out of her 20s and has started using her silk-screening skills of band poster madness for good and not delicious evil.  (well, it's all relative).  A whole gallery plastered with jungle bright rips and prints and wrinkled triangle eyes and macaw birds and eggs puking ribbons to the floor = Dominique's personal forest and an altar to her own religion.  If I got the translation right!  

I remember hearing about Les Georges Leningrad (Montreal local of course) a few years ago, I'm not sure when they broke up or whatever, but I'm glad I got the heads up just now to go listen to them because they will eat your head with jungle thrash.  So so so very good.

Download LGL- Sangue Puro here!

(she did all the cover art for the band, and many many posters I wish I'd been able to take pictures of, they were twisted and gorgeous.  Some for Deerhoof and Add N to X, too.)

The gallery has become a jungle, chaos.
A petrochemical place.
A timeless space, dangerous, violently stimulating.
In this space, which I call forest, women have built an altar; this is where they pay respects to what we will call the “inaccessible”, symbolized by the stone.
A ritual will take place at night, a paper-made voodoo, sort of.
We do not know if it is black or if it is white.
Jean Cocteau transpires the supernatural; it inspires me. 
There is in papier-mâché all the magic that children possess naturally.
On the other hand, silk screening allows ephemeral universes filled with mystery to emerge.
Anyway, mystery is a fleeting gasp.

- D. P.

PANTHÉON PÉTRO 
DOMINIQUE PÉTRIN

Exhibit 
August 21 to September 20
Opening 
Friday, August 21, 7pm
Artist talk 
Saturday, August 22, 3pm
Performance as part of Viva ! 
September 20, 9pm

Idle thoughts, special guest appearances...

One of the things I love most of all about drawing is the unexpected nature of it.  

Start working more often in cafés?  Surprise musical guests will start showing up in your hair.  Or sushi might come to life if you happen to be idling next to a fish market (and call me a bad vegan but I love that salty smell of ocean and deep-sea creature).

Also café-born:  In the midst of a particularly perfect morning listening to french chanteuses and battling the august heat waves with a shaded window seat and a humble cup of joe,  I managed to distill two Very Important Thoughts I wasn't able to put into words before, regarding the way I work.

No. 1 : The act of drawing can be a litmus test for personal Truth.

When the lines become genius, impassioned, something more than I expected at the outset - I pay special attention to whatever I'm thinking about at the time.  It's usually important.  Okay, it's always important.  Or it's very very zen.  Is that not important?

No. 2 : Dream deja vu is a good sign of properly tapped intuition.

Just what it says.  It's pretty common for me to get little flashes of a previous night's dream while I work and I think now that just means I'm being subconscious enough.  

Obviously these insights won't apply to everyone's art!  But if you work in a pretty free-conscious style you might understand this I bet.