It's that time of year again to dream up another Day of the Dead piece for Studio Maureen and the Next Door Gallery Fall Show.  This is last years poor skeleton which has lost it's blood and is confounded by it.  I think the mood is suppose to be a bit more festive - a celebration of traveling souls.  13 days left before my deadline and for the life of me I cannot think.  My most recent death experience was my fathers.  Perhaps if I make a suggestion before sleeping he'll come and reveal the puuuuurfect image.  "Show Them This"  So check in for tomorrows response or just come to the gallery and see the show.

info@studiomaureen.com 

MANDELBROT SET

I'm still trying to figure out what it all means but it showed up in a field back a few years.  This is one of the fabulous attributes of computers as this represents a series of mathematical equations in fractal geometry.  A demonstration for understanding the cosmos and the microcosmos - they are one in the same.

The crop circles season is over and the thrill of waking up to altered consciousness personified.  The rest of the year will be spent breaking down their essence and understanding their perfect geometry.  Some of the dialog is very esoteric but there are so many links to fascinating concepts not to mention interesting people.  Apparently it's not just the shapes but their specific placements, sequences,  and directional pointings that line up to dramatic effects.  There are those who shudder at the obvious hoaxes - bastardized imitations - and wish for a clear playing field so that who ever and what ever the messages can be more easily deciphered.  We are experiencing larger that life supernatural events - introductions into our psyche that our world is not just what is known.  The vail of the other worldly is opening up and what that will do to alter existence is intriguing to ponder.

One of one hundred and twenty five landscapes painted for a huge housing development in San Jose CA.  Just when I thought I was in the midst of my brilliant career the economy dives.  It's not enough to have talent in this business.  One needs a good marketing campaign and promoter.  At least now I have a personal trainer (a gift from my brilliant friend KK) and one area of my life will have guidance.  I feel like Tom Hanks on his desolate island.  It's going to take some rowing to get out there and hopefully I drift into the shipping lanes. 

And this is my mother as always enjoying her grandbabies.   At ted.com you can listen to Jill Bolte Taylor talk about her stroke experience.  If language is destroyed in your brain you instantly enter nirvana.  For eight years Mom sat in a hospital bed and I was so saddened to leave her - having so many people in her life and she alone.  BUT apparently she had the essence of God in her every breath.  Words became a distraction - at least JBT has come back from the silence to share that with us.  

She rests under a big beautiful pine with an evening breeze that  comes all the way from the coast.  And near a cowboy who I'm certain she's made an acquaintance.  Anybody that knows me knows I too have fondness for cowboys.

Here I am making a tree shrine for Bob Mitchell  just hours after I heard of his death.   I copied photos of every person I had ever met at his pool side desert resort of Jacumba.  Slid the images into baggies and tied them to the tree with green ribbons.  Like the Tree of Life this one is symbolic - blowing in the constant wind - all of us waving goodbye.  Bob had the gift of gathering in the tribes, people from all over.  Some on motorbikes, some in planes.  Some from LA, some from Arizona.  Some as far away as Washington and England.  If an event was going down it was not to be missed.   Blissful days in bathing suits, tequila poured liberally.  And always the voice of Bob in the background yarning out his stories.  I swear that man must have been 480 for all the things he had done.  

Martin was just saying today that the town is just a dirt bowl without Bob.  And Baze too!  There's a shrine for him out there too.  Two larger than life men who left an obvious void in their wake.  I for one don't like it when the fun runs out.  My Dad always said just to be grateful for those wonderful experiences and on top of that Paul of France says we can't live in the past because that will deny us a beautiful future.  I'm hoping the best is yet to come for every dang one of us.

In a whirl of chaos.

Finding Center

Karla & Jill after a beautiful noshing/drinking episode, in the heat of the day, on the shady side of the street, at the 33rd parallel, on the third planet from our sun.

Princess Penelope in her pounded pearls at the Cafe Chloe splendid  luncheon of last Sunday.

Wiped out the Rose as usual - having to keep up appearances. 

Except of coarse 9.11

9.9.9 *  A Time Like No Other

A patch of my favorites.

Ley Lines - feel the vibe.  Meridians of Mother Earth.

This is my idea of what ley lines spiraling through San Diego could look like.  Would make a fantastic ferris wheel at least.  

I fly in my dreams and in the afterlife I hope to fly all over the world.  Probably a couple of times because the views are always different whether you are coming or going.  Not to mention seasons and time of day.  SD does not always look so pretty - but come sundown it pretty much looks fabulous.

This is a business card I designed for my Dad.  We had a good laugh when we realized there was no room for a name or contact info for people who would want his services.  He really did do an exorcism once for an Indian tribe in the Valley and twas reported a success.  

He died on Christmas Day last year and my friend Ann says that everyone who dies on that day goes straight to heaven - cut right to the front of the line.  This photo represents one of his earlier careers as a life guard.  One of my fondest memories as a kid was watching him swing out on a rope over the Trinity River, twisting his body into an upside down position at the furthest reaches of the pendulum and then letting go - doing a perfect swan dive into the very deepest end.  Like he'd done it a thousand times.  I hope he's swan diving all over heaven and impressing the hell out of all the occupants.   

Plaza de Toros de Guadalupe is an actual bull ring I found next to a winery east of Ensenada.  I lived with it for many years before adding the toy bullfighters (a gift from David Baze) and shots of tequilla.  I simply turned it into a serving tray.  The raining roses are for the Virgin.  She gives her blessings to clean hearted fun.  Salud!

Weekend at Casa Del Zorro in Borrego Springs.  It's simple, it's hot but it's quiet, swimming pools every where and at night The Milky Way for those of you who forgot we even had one.  From horizon to horizon a blaze of stars that almost throws you off balance.  Sometimes it's nice to get disoriented.  Then get grounded again.  Dish up another plate of chips and salsa.

Romancing the Spa - a series of 5 x 5's that illustrate the desert life with palms, pools, cocktails and cockaroos. Mariachies are a nice touch and an outdoor tub is loads of fun.  Jello shooters, mellons, ice cream sundays, and diving boards.  Mix it all up and you have happiness ala fresca gorgeoso.  

You can say things like that if you're a gringa.  It's kind of expected.  

San Diego is a desert after all.  The water is imported to feed the trees.  Half the county is sand with gila monsters, scorpions and Boarder Patrol Helicopters.  Nobody is going to Tijuana anymore.  You can see the lights from my roof top and on occasion an accordion playing off in the distance.  A fiesta somewhere. A beer guzzling get down celebration of life cause it's too short not to.

Living on a fault line - the big red one on the right in a barrio considered by Real Estate Agents to be tainted.  Seven minutes out of downtown, canyon views, large pepper trees.  One badly scorched.  It's been a piece of heaven for 22 years.  

Being Cancerian I'm like a crab stepping sideways, wedging into the rocks, hanging on when the tides are high, watching the world go by.  A change of scenery might do me good.  Better yet - a brilliant contract, or a vision supernatural, a visitation, a winning set of numbers, a brilliant roll in the hay, a fountain of youth, a rain of frogs, a shooting star, a gut wrenching laugh, an invitation, an apology, a tender kiss goodnight.  

Focus on the beautiful in a world that not always is.  A storm is making its way up the Sea of Cortez and will be the balm that calms the raging flames of LA.  

A lovely book NOVEMBER GRASS eloquently portrays the east county of San Diego after a long summer and rainless skies.  A young girl herds her cattle further afield along the dusty roads and Oaks.  She knows them all by name and although she is grown she cannot imagine ever leaving.  Not for love of a man as love for stones and trees and familiar paths could ever be left behind until she finds that it can.

I am under attack by two less than 10 year olds that live next door.  The other day as I was pulling weeds in my back garden they started saying really mean things and when they started throwing rocks at my house I put my foot down.  Tonight I came home to evidence of a fire.  It's just my back fence and their shed that burned to the ground but it could have been the entire block.  This is fire season in southern California and I am so ready to drag their shitty little asses out of bed and play a video of burn victims and homes lost and displaced families camping out  and then throw buckets of water at their faces.  Hello - arsonists in training.  I'd put them in jail in a heart beat if I could.   Are parents liable for criminal acts of children?  Have the flood gates of insanity been  let loose in my neighborhood?  

Not all is enchanting in Encanto this summers evening.

"I understand how scarlet can differ from crimson.... because I know that the smell of an orange is not the smell of a grapefruit.  I can also conceive that colors have shades and guess what shades are.  In smell and taste there are varieties not broad enough to be fundamental; so I call them shades... the force of association drives me to say that white is exalted and pure, green is exuberant, red suggests love or shame or strength.  Without the color or its equivalent, life to me would be dark, barren, a vast blackness."

Helen Keller

My second cousin eighth removed????

I just say to people - I wasn't in the will.

I'm the little chubby one in the front.  Eventually there is an even dozen.  We use to flash our hands at strangers at gas stations when they would look into our van and try counting.  Just give them the two high fives.  We were raised in the great San Jauquin Valley but our favorite stomping grounds were in Humbolt County - north among the big trees and the Trinity River.  Everyone scattered in adulthood.  All the grandchildren hardly know each other.  I would not want to grow up without this treasured sense of belonging somewhere.  These are my people and they are all fascinating stories in themselves.

I am fascinated with earth drawings.  These two fellas are out in the desert just below Jacumba which is in my county.  There age is anywhere from 450 to 2000 years.  It is speculated they were sites for sacred rituals and tribal dancing.  This is something we need to bring back in our society.  Burning Man (which is happening right now) comes close.  A gathering of the tribes.  Imagine a day of ceremonial dressing, drumming and a long night of dancing under the stars.  That has got to be cathartic.  We have little that is sacred in our lives outside of christenings, weddings, funerals and coronations.   

I was part of a tribe once.  It's a heathy experience to flow as one unit, create habits that become universal to your life.  Rhythms of meals and play.  Yeah that's it - I want more play time.  Let's go build something. 

Here's Natasia lying down maybe contemplating what I'm doing.  It's coffee break / I mean tea time in England right now.  Cheerio!

Harlequin Cabinet

Painting furniture has not been a lucrative venture.

I get easily sidetracked from what I love to do most.

In the book Art & Fear it states that artists of our time are not shored up like in the days of the Renaissance when the church commissioned mass amounts of work from frescos to sculptures to plaza mosaics.  The National Endowment wants cutting edge head trip art.  Van Gogh had his brother, Christo has his Jeanne Claude.  If I mass produced a popular widget I could get on with the business of painting.  Just like in music a painter needs a front man.  Work on their press packet, stylize their hair, make them appear unusual.  Keep stockpiles of quality wines and fruit to instill an atmosphere of abundance and confidence.  Intercept clients who want a discount.  Tell people I'm utterly busy even if I'm sitting on my hands.  

It's nearly time for the bars to close - a way of measuring time.  It's interesting to think that just about everybody is lying down right now all across America.  A suspended state that's over in the blink of an eye.  The night is a commonality that's hardly ever talked about.  Sleep is a zone of absolute faith in that you really have to trust that somebody is looking out for you while you check out for hours.  I have a friend who sleeps in prison.  He probably relishes his dreams - the views are infinitely more varied and colorful.  If a person has no imagination he can still dream.  Does a blind person still see sparks of color when the eyes are rubbed?

Goodnight all you sleeping peoples.

A pretty skirt gladly displayed.

Whip Cream Contemplated at 1:01 am.