boo ...

little.e.beck.artist went to a halloween party ... she tried on the horse that she wore a few years ago when she was a cowgirl ... it didn't fit ... she grew, the horse did not .... so she's wearing a costume from out of the halloween box ...

i did not take this picture, but i love it dearly because boy.beck.artist looks so scared ... and dixie the dog does not .... 

for years i wouldn't let my kids be creepy for halloween .... i hate creepy ... i hate gross even more .... but when the twins, boy.beck.artist and girl.beck.artist were in fifth grade, they ganged up on me ... enough of the baby costumes, mom ... they wanted to be a zombie and a ghoul ... complete with hoods and fright masks ... i relented ... they were creepy .... it was fine ... i was fine ... the world still sailed around the sun ....and now, there's my baby recycling one of the costumes ..... she would never have picked creepy on her own, but since it was in the halloween box and the horse didn't fit, the child that i could always count on to be a fariy or a princess or a ladybug or a good witch is all creepified .... they all grow up ... hopefully she'll still share her candy ....

halloween house 2

i know that halloween is a popular holiday now a days ... particularly compared to when i was a kid .... didn't we just carve a pumpkin? i don't think we had a box of decorations for halloween like we did for  christmas and easter ... life is so commercial and i bought right into it when i started my own home twenty plus years ago ... i have dedicated decoration boxes for valentine's, easter, 4th of july , halloween and christmas ... i have a tiny bit of thanksgiving/fall stuff that stays in the halloween box ....

see the four little pumpkins up there above my stove? that's how i like to decorate .... here's something you don't know about me ... i don 't love halloween ... i don't love the ghouliness of it ... i don't like witches and skeletons and zombies and scary stuff ... i love pumpkins though ... i love all things orange ... so the pumpkininess i'm good with ... in my house, no witches, no monsters, no creepy things ....

 boy.beck.artist made that pumpkin pig on the left above .... about ten years ago ....

 there's my dining room with the fall decorations ... i'll keep the table like that through thanksgiving probably ... oh ... the back right, on the buffet? big orange bowl... do you see that ... there's what i like about halloween ... the candy ... that's my trick or treat candy bowl ....

what do you like about halloween?
if we're going to be very specific, my favorite part of halloween is how happy the kids are dressed up ... and reese's peanut butter cups ....

halloween house ....

one year, when i was working very hard at being an artist, my new year's resolution was to paint 100 paintings in a year ... i think i ended up painting 140ish ... and selling almost 100 .... in that era (as opposed to the economic recession AND older kids make you much busier era) i used to put each new painting on the mantle to try them out ... here's  a flickr set of the mantle metamorphosis .... so i'd study them a while .... now i just have one up there permanently .. the stuff around it changes, but the pictures been there more than two years .... 

 now we are ready for halloween .....

 we have more than our share of pumpkins ... most of those are from a dollar store run a dozen years ago ... got them for some game i was leading at the kids' school .... this year for the fifth grade party i've signed up to help with we are doing mummy relays ... the only party supply i'm in charge of is toilet paper ... that kinda cracks me up ....

 here's a picture of my front door ....

this is the first year that we've dressed up our pumpkins ... pumpkin witch, pumpkin pirate, and pumpkin zombie in chains .... from three different costumes, three different years, three different kids ...

yes ...

has anyone noticed that i have posted every day for the last 14 ... that's two weeks ... that makes up for the weeks and months of summer when my blog languished in inactivity ... and got all dusty .... maybe makes up for it? a little ?

no new art to show you today ... but, the show i had a week or so ago went great ... i sold my most recent painting ... this one:

and i sold lots of my smaller ones .... and one other bigger one ... that i'm not sure i've ever even taken a picture of ... i can't find it on flickr or in my iphoto cache .... i'm far behind in showing you my pottery ... so i'll try and snap some pics of that next .... and i'm due to finish a few things for various commitments, so once i get on them, i'll show you those too ... ok then .... happy day to you and yours ....

... kindness ...

so .... apparently on my wood series , i have a kindness theme running through them .... and i didn't even know it til i started to blog them .... this is about 8 inches square ... vintage rural map on playwood ....

i think i need to research aesop ... was he really a guy ... or is he a bunch of stories and sayings attributed to a single name? and why only a single name ... is he like cher? prince? madonna? most people have more than one name ...

no act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted .... aesop ...

that sounds like it could be a mother theresa quote too ... she was a one name kinda gal til she had the mother added on ...

... be ....

this is about 4 inches wide and 14 inches tall .... there's a sawed out bit at the top .... it's a piece of plywood that jesse at lowe's cut up for me .... he didn't make the divot ... it was there when i brought it to him ...

be kind
be careful
be happy
be helpful
be honest

i've put these words on quite a few paintings and collages ... but never on a piece of wood before ... they usually sell quickly ... i think the words resonate with people .... hopefully even with imperfect reclaimed wood, someone will want it ....

... be kind ....

i was talking to a friend about values ... really we were talking about the poor values taught on tv .. even on little kid shows there are just disaster people who are portrayed as funny .... whiney is funny ... mean is funny .... disobeying your parents is funny ... girls are supposed to be pretty ... boys are supposed to be tough ... all things that don't ring true at all ....

i said, just to cut through all the junk, i try to teach my kids to be nice ... nothing is as important to me as that ... be nice, kids ... be kind .... it will get you out of some jams ... someone comes up and is being confrontational? just be nice ... it should diffuse the not nice ... so .. be kind ... be kind to me, be kind to each other, be kind to your pals, be kind to people you don't know ... that kind of covers everyone then, right? be kind ...

number two on my list of expectations for my kids? be smart ... but i didn't make a collage, a sign or a painting of that .... work hard, learn stuff, be curious about stuff, read a lot ... be smart ...

i recently read an article ... it said the vast majority of japanese parents say they want their children to be successful .... the vast majority of american parents want their children to be happy ....

i want my children to be nice .... in the long run, i suppose it will make them happy too ....

what's most important to you?

... love deeply ....

so jesse at lowe's runs the big ole saw contraption that can cut giant boards ... is that a band saw? a circular saw? a cabinet saw? i'll have to ask jesse when i go back ... anyway, i had this sheet of ply wood i needed cutting up so i just took it to him and said i'd like this cut into different sized bits .. can you do this ... i don't want regular sizes or really even any the same, so just zip zip zip and you''ll be done ... he couldn't do it ... he whipped out his tape measure and gave me multitudes of perfect squares .....only on the last row of his cutting did i say can i have some that aren't squares? so .. mostly squares ... alas, i try to go outside my box with the wood, and unknowingly he tucks me right back into my box of safe squareness ... i believe that the last 200 or so canvases that i have bought have ALL been square ... square i am ....

love deeply .. pretend it's not a square for me ....

hahahahahahahahahahaha....

this is done on a smidge small piece of two by four... and it's probably almost four inches tall and a bit more than two inches wide ... a tiny little reminder to laugh .... at yourself ... at your kids ... at your dog ....at a book or tv show ... jolly frivolity laughter ... laugh more ...

... unlocked ....

 this is a 24 inch square canvas ... it is very textured ... with gesso ... what tool you ask? well ... to get all that texture i used the most fab tool ... a plastic bag ... a target bag to be more specific ...

i fell in love with the texture and then just wanted to keep it all rough and yummy like that .... so i just had it sit around in my studion for a while so i could watch it (it didn't do anything or change a bit) ... so after some admiring i decided to go simple ...

three little iconic bits to tell a story .... two of them all sleek and slick in contrast to my background .... one of them a pop of red ... big pop of color ....

let's call it a metaphor ... what's it mean to you?

... miracles ....

 there are no miracles for those who don't have faith in them .... that's a french proverb ....

i think it ties right in with optimism ... if you think something grand is going to happen, isn't there a better chance that it will than if you were a pessimist sad sack and thought it could never happen?

are you an optimist? do you believe in miracles?

masterpiece ....

this is from ephesians ... you are god's masterpiece ....i try to keep that in my head ... well, not so much about me, but more about other people ... particularly other people that are bugging me ... to try and have a little grace ....

my kids go to a church school .. oh ... went ... two of them have moved on ... but, in a lower grade, it was back to school night and all the parents were sitting in the fourth grade desks ... listening to the teacher talk about the daily routine in her classroom and what they were going to learn ... then she asked if we had questions ... one mom said, what's your classroom management system or really, what do you do when my son is being badly behaved ... that sweet, sweet, sweet teacher said ... well, the first think i do when a child is being unruly is remember that he or she is created in god's image and one of god's masterpieces of creation .... that usually makes whatever they were doing not so bad .....

even if you don't have ephesians2.10 in your faith , cutting someone some slack seems like a good idea ....