an encouraging nod

Not only was my artwork chosen for the cover of this show program, it was also selected out of 46 pieces to participate in a year long tour to northern communities. The piece you see above is part of a tryptic (a group of 3 drawings) that form one piece.

entry to 'An Uncertain Climate'

This painting will be on display in PG from April 19th until the 27th. The show focuses on artist reaction to the changing climate in our world. This piece called 'Munificence' is about the rape of the earth at the expense of the future.

landscape I painted in Wells BC

My immediate response to the changing colours, diversified by the pine beetle killed trees, intensified by the sun.

smokin' in the boys room?

I used to put it off as long as I could; going to relieve myself in the high school girls washroom. Most of the time it was a cancer pit of second hand smoke and the last place I ever wanted to be. I've been told the boys room was also a location where young men could participate in unapproved activities. Just as some things continue to change, so others never do. My son came home with an interesting tale about the boys room at the middle school where he attends. Apparently there was an empty box of liquor chocolates on the back of a toilet seat around Christmas time, and I imagined several young boys wandering around the school "feelin' real naughty". It struck a humorous cord for me. How much liquor is in one of those boxes anyway? I would think the most you could come out with would be a stomach ache.

quarter moon

This was the view out my truck window as we sped down the highway. When this couple on a bike passed us, we were in for a surprise! The things you see when you don't have a camera!

rattling around

One day the 'Dad-guy' came to me and said that he heard something rattling around in his head. It seemed to be a real source of distress for him. Several days later he came home with ear-waxing candles and asked me to light him up like a birthday cake. If you have ever used these, you know what I am talking about. The pointy end of the hollow 'candle' slides into your ear. You lay on your side with the candle upright and your helper lights it. As it burns, it creates a suction in your ear which pulls the wax out of said ear, and into the hollow chamber of the candle. For those who like to 'see' what came out, you just cut the candle open, as I did in the photo on the left and have a look. Yes indeed, there has been no more complaining about the rattling sound in this house.

well, well

Water, well, pump it up, clear, cold, useful.
Suddenly without, no doubt a hardship that strains the most patient one.
Count the days, when will he raise that precious cold fluid from the ground.
If I'm not around, I've gone to town to fetch it, pail, by pail.

You guessed it, we've been without water, off and on for over a week. It began with silt coming through our lines, blocking every screen on every hose, on every appliance. The big kid and I went out to our snow-infested front yard and began to dig out the well access. It took Kevin several days of replacing hardware, replumbing, reorganizing, repressurizing, but finally yesterday we had a reliable flow of water to the house again. It would seem though that the well is a wee bit short on water. Not entirely unusual right before the thaw, but this is lower than usual. After several heartfelt prayers, it began to rain last night and rained until about 3am. Yep, the well level is up for now. Hopefully that will be enough to hold us over until water flows free once again.

the size of it all

Here are a couple of photos to show you how much snow we have. The bottom right hand corner is the shed that collapsed. The shots of the dad-guy and the big-kid are taken in the front yard where dad-guy moved all the snow away with a bobcat.

too much of a good thing

I am feeling a slight twing of guilt as I sit here composing this post. The dad-guy is currently outside digging snow off of our shed which collapsed 2 days ago. We have had an incredible amount of snow! 2 days ago a small amount of white precipitation floated, lazily from the sky. It was that last flake, it caused the feat of engineering which formed our tent shed to finally collapse. Dad-guy has spent most of his weekends moving snow around, trying to prevent such a tragedy, even to the point of renting a bobcat to push the 8 feet high mounds of snow away from our house. Should spring come in like a lion, he reasoned, we could be floating away. How disappointing to now have to rescue and perform triage on the various pieces of equipment that were stored is the collapsed shed. Weather is a force that cannot be predicted or controlled, perhaps that is why it has been a popular topic of conversation for as far back as humans go.

Poem

I wanted to post one of my son's poems. His writing is humerous, with a bit of a serious twist.

The humuncus

Humuncus, humuncus how I hate thee if only you would leave me in peace.
Get out; get out, out of my head no more chanting, no more teasing,
Don’t pull on my strings, stop looking through my eyes
This is why we hate the humuncus,
He leaves me; but will you be next???

guilty conscience

I had the funniest thing happen last night. I was awake and couldn't sleep so I headed downstairs for a drink of water. Halfway down the stairs I heard a 'ka-thunk', tinkle, tinkle. Looking in the livingroom I see our small dog, Bandit, at 2 in the morning sitting next to the leather chair, trying to look innocent. I could almost hear him saying, "yep, yep, yep, just sittin' here at 2 in the morning, thats what I do when you are asleep." I promptly put a laundry basket on the leather chair, and tried not to laugh. His conscience was active, even though he was in a deep sleep, the sound of my feet coming was all he needed to bolt him into action.

the front

In reference to my gum-chewed hair cut, A few of you said you needed to see the front of me, so here I am. Keep in mind that my hair has now been growing for 2.5 weeks since my cut. So you can imagine how short it was. The painting next to me is one I finished a few weeks ago of a building in Wells, BC.

fowl air

New Scientist Tech reported in February of '06 that a new media artist and her students were designing a small electronic device to act as a homemade cell phone which pigeons could wear on their backs. These cell phones would send information on air quality to a blog via text messaging each time the pigeons fly. The information and photos captured by a tiny camera would be on displayed for all to see. Beatriz da Costa of the University of California is one of a number of artists who are combining art and science.

everyone does it...once

This morning my sleepy 8 year old daughter came out of her room rubbing her eyes. I was excited to see her as I had been away the previous night, but my happiness turned to shock when I saw her bangs. It appeared she had taken the scissors to them last night after her bath. The Dad guy, hadn't really noticed the night before and just put her to bed. Well, I stated in a shocked voice: "what did you do to your hair?" She replied, "nothing", and began to cry and clutch her tummy. After a sympathetic discussion about how most kids try to cut their hair at least once, I tried to fix her creative cut. She now has quite the set of micro-bangs. At the end of it all, one questions still remains in my mind. How could the Dad guy have missed seeing that?

sketches

sketches by me for a tryptic I'm working on. Emotional packages, tied up, bound, one cannot penetrate, to see what is inside.