Now's your chance to say thank you for throwing your shoe!

We don't condone shoe throwing, but we prefer it to war.

gingerly gathered and delicately arranged expensive beans of ornate design and mysterious origin

I have had two days of not having to produce anything or meet any deadlines. Excellent.
The Buswater art show in Charleston was, I thought, nearly the best group showing of work I've seen since I moved down here. It was great to see work in person from so many artists who (mostly) live and work here.
Jamie Miller (linky) and Todd Griffith (linky) put on the show. It was a comfortably relaxed good time with lots of wine and smiling faces.

I dug this work by Stacy Leech

and Rob Cleland

and I liked Betty Gay's resin molds so much that I bought three of them. They're like adorable little inedible petit fours.

I was going to give them away as gifts, but now I want to keep them. I just don't know where they can hang without being assaulted by my cat. She is awful. She urinated on me this morning. Anyway...
I didn't get photographs of a lot of the pieces I liked, including Jamie Miller's paintings and Heidi Richardson Evans's digital collages (linky!) and Vasilia Scouras's collages, which my dad couldn't stop talking about. I should have bought him one, heh. I am amazed by the sphere of everyone's creative pursuits that participated in the show.
I was uncharacteristically satisfied with 3/4 of the pieces I showed. yay! Some bits and pieces of visual vocabulary I've been working with for some time now are finally starting to resolve themselves and come together. So I may finally put them to bed soon, and move on.
Chicken & Cake; Feather & Bomb:

Fish & Bomb:


I need better quality pictures.

We played a show at Taylor Books, which went well I think, aside from this guy that always shows up and loudly solicits us with right-wing politics. We opened up for The Hellblinki Sextet on Wednesday at The Blue Parrot. They put on an amazing show, and I only wish more people had showed up to hear them--Listen! I thought we played well, but sometimes the creeky old traditional music doesn't go over with drunk Charlestonians. And then there was the even-creepier right-wing dude that solicited us for posed group shots of the band, and then got pissed when we didn't oblige.
We seem to attract a lot of right-wing folks, which is perfectly fine, but if I have to listen to that crap one more time...
I digress.
There's a new Vietnamese place in South Charleston! linky. The pho with meat is awesome, and although there's no vegetarian items listed on the menu, they'll make you something w/o meat if you ask. And it will be delicious, yes!

Supposedly there's a Jamaican place coming soon. Go get you some coconut juice.

Mental cobweb dusting blog post update.

The past five months have been chock full of fantastic. I went to Clifftop and wound up in a documentary about the festival by John Nakashima while playing fiddle with Chad. Still looking for video of that online somewhere...
I painted a mural on the Habitat for Humanity Restore
And it was voted #1 by the folks who came out to the unveiling. yay! I got some cash and a hefty gift certificate to the restore. how in the world will i spend it? wacky chandeliers? sacks of old cutlery for to make jewelry with? oh boy.
I visited an old friend in Pocahontas County, where we hiked through some fields & picked apples for pressing into juice. We took the fruit to a farm where folks were taking turns working a late 19th century press that had been restored by the farmer's grandpa in the 1920's. The juice was better than anything there ever was.

Aaaand I continued a collage/illustration series from where I left off in college:

There's another giant picture pages post on the way to document the fantastic Buswater show, music playing, and vietnamese food eating.

Love,
A

Cabbage!

The sight of this cabbage is ehxhilerating!



and again :)