The Clothespin Referee

2012-01-04T07:06:00.001-08:00

Have always wanted to stay up late enough or wake up early enough to see a meteor shower, and last night I finally did. I woke up at 2:00 am to make sure I was ready for a 2:30 peak. Earlier in the evening, I asked my 10 year old son Benjamin if he wanted me to wake him up for it. He seemed excited about it at the time, but when I woke him up, he rolled over and asked if I could video tape it. I has second thoughts about waking him up on a school night so that was probably for the best. However, The truth was, I wasn't sure if I could video tape it or not, because I wasn't certain what I was going to be looking at.

After checking to make sure there were no clouds and putting on my heaviest jacket to warm me from the cold weather that was in the teens, I went out into the back yard and stood and looked up at the sky. Again, I wasn't sure what I was looking for, and I didn't know what direction to look to find what I didn't know I was going to see. I did a slow 360 degree turn with one eye towards the sky and one eye looking out for anything anything that could be generally sneaking up on me in the dark. Then right about when I got to what I thought was the little dipper a quick flash shot across the sky above where I was looking. I wasn't sure at first, but then I saw a second one and knew it wasn't just my eyes. I never knew "shooting stars" were that fast, but the can travel as fast as 90,000 mph and be as small as a grain of sand. One of the highlights was a smal cluster of about five that seemed to be traveling together. Meteor showers occur when earth passes through debris that trails off from a comet. They happen a couple times a year and get their names from the constellations that they seem to emanate from. This particulare meteor shower was the Quadrantid meteor shower and is names after a constellation that is no longer used.

I am setting my calendar alarm to remind me of the next ones in April and may, because it was definitely worth getting up to see and hopefully it won't be so cold.

2011-08-16T17:13:00.000-07:00

The Elephant House
or what I did on my summer vacation. We went to Cape Cod, MA this year for vacation on relative short notice, and then drove up to Boston. I always try to incorporate at least one art related activity anywhere I go. My research told my that Edward Gorey's house was on Cape Cod, so I put it on my wish list and crossed my fingers and. It turned out the Yarmouth was not to far from the whale watching boat tour we took on a somewhat rainy day.

Initially, only my ten year old son went in with me even though he didn't quite understand the word "macabre". Only to leave after joining an already in progress tour when he realized he would have to be quiet and was not allowed to touch anything.

I first became aware of Edward Gorey while helping construct a set for the the play "Gorey Stories" when I lived in Erie, PA during the 90's. His work is all black and white done with old fashioned dip well pens including simply drawn characters in front of elaborate Edwardian backdrops that seemed to have more thought and effort directed into drawing wall paper patterns and furniture. muc of the rest of my summer reading has been about Edward Gorey, and as always, I am interested to see how the lives of artists that I admire, mirror my own. The emphasis being placed on a deep need for solitude as part of the creative process with an bit of humor mixed in.

Speaking of solitude, I went to visit Walden Pond on this trip. I had heard tales of development surrounding the pond and expected to see Condominiums lining the shore. Massachusetts does an excellent job of making you think that there is nothing other than trees in the state. Likewise, Walden had somewhat pristine shores minus the shallow swimming designated area buoys. I could have spent a great deal of time there in quiet contemplation...but I have a family. Some of whom are bent on throwing rocks in any body of water bigger than a swimming pool. Also, Walden was not made for strollers or conversation or explaining

2011-06-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

If you don't Buy The Seattle Seahawks Jerseys they try to sell in Pennsylvania:
Then they won't offer them any more.

I normally only see Philadelphia Eagles or Pittsburgh Steelers Jersey for sale in my area, but imagine my surprise when, out of the corner of my eye, there were, what appeared to be, a rack of Eagles jerseys gone wrong. Matt Hasslebeck and Lofa Tatupu Jerseys, Oh My! And with me being a Seahawks fan for some 25 years now, I had to hold back tears. I have often dreamed of walking in to a store and seeing such a thing. In fact a few months ago I had asked my son , who visits Washington state, every other year if such a magical flora of Seahawks Paraphernalia existed whenever he walked into a store, and imagined what that might be like. And to unexpectedly see it right here in Pennsylvania in front of my very eyes, I can cross that off of my bucket list, and imagine that somewhere in a Walmart in Tacoma Washington, some Eagles fan has just happened upon a rack of Michael Vick Jerseys

2011-02-11T17:35:00.000-08:00

Thriftin'

One thing that people shopping in a thrift store probably do not need is travel luggage. Unless they are traveling in a time machine to a time to when these suitcase were in style.

But then again, why should anyone care how cool the container that you are using to carry your clothes is. Especially if you've got no place to go. Stuff a big steamer trunk in the overhead. It's like I always said; poor people don't die in plane crashes.

Oh, an btw, I go to thrift shops, but I rarely buy anything. But every now and then they have something cool that makes it worth stopping in

2011-02-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Just finished bottling 24 bottles of Rhubarb wine from 2009. I thought I let this go for too long in the in bulk storage but it turned out pretty good. Also of note are the 42 bottles of Appfelwein that are bottled, primed with sugar and will be carbonated in about three weeks. Bottling is the part of this hobby that is really a pain, but I love to look at them all lined up after its done

2011-02-01T09:30:00.000-08:00

Ready to Kick some Butt

This is a photo from an uncontacted tribe somewhere in Brazil that is dangerously close to coming into contact with some rain forest munchin back hoe.

What amazes me about them is that they are being photographed from a plane or helicopter(neither of which they know anything about). They are looking up at something flying overhead that they have no idea about and rather than run, they grab their bows, arrows and spears with the intent of kicking it's ass, or eating it for dinner. I would be in the hut hiding and crying.

Then I took a longer look at the guy on the far right and found it difficult to believe that they have never come into contact with any humans other than immediate local tribes. Clearly he has been influenced by Marvel Comic Superhero webslinger Spiderman. Down to the red belt and booties. You can compare that to the only image of Spiderman that I could find standing up which was of a little kid in a Halloween costume. Try to find a picture of Spiderman where he is not in a squatted or swinging position. You can't do it

2010-12-18T17:51:00.000-08:00

How did I get here?

I went to college and majored in Business. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with that degree, when I graduated, but I had a pretty good idea of what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to be in sales. So in the ensuing seventeen years since I graduated from college, I have only spent 16 of them as a salesman, not including periods of unemployment.

Sales is my vocation. That is what I do for a living. But, I always wanted to be an artist. For as long as I can remember, although, I do remember a period of wanting to be a stuntman and can’t account for that in chronological in detail. Why doesn’t someone who wants to be an artist go to art school? Answer: Because he is pragmatic. That is a fancy way of saying practical. A practical person realizes that they can always draw stuff and goes to business school to have something useful to fall on. A dreamer goes to art school in spite of the unlikelihood of making a living and slim chance that they will ever produce work that someone will buy.

Somehow, even though it’s not what I set out to do, I ended up an artist who does quirky pieces of art in an oil pastel medium who sells them at art festivals. I can say for sure that he artist part was something that I aspired to, but the rest was quite random. It’s like I Knew that I wanted to be on the beach, but what beach and what washed up on the beach was an intersection o random events.

I do quirky pieces because the first job that I had after I graduated with an MBA was doing art with a silk screen company that did T-shirts. I was initially hired to build the business and do art sometimes, but an unforeseen tax liability on behalf of the owner soon had me cleaning silk screens, folding printed shirts and sometimes doing art. Every now and then, the full time artist on staff would do a line drawing of a specific, absurd, potential moment in time that seemed so random it always made me laugh and overwhelmingly clever. The theme of these pieces revolved around corn. I remember one having Ernie from the “My Three Sons” television show growing up to become a door to door corn salesman with a balding overweight bespectacled aged Ernie in a Hawaiian shirt holding up a peeled piece of corn. So I thank Mark Weber for pointing me in the direction of the absurd.

I had a friend come to visit who bought some oil pastels when we went to an art supply store. She forgot to take them with her and they sat around for two years before I decided to play with them. I didn’t like the line control and the way they smeared at first, but I accidentally scratched one of the pieces that I worked on and the color underneath it came through in such a brilliant manner. Thank you Anita for so much more than that.

I only knew that if you had some art, you should try to get into some galleries. How wrong was I? A gallery is a place to drink wine and eat cheese. If you want to sell art, you have to do something else. I was friends with a couple who were starting to do art festivals outside of my area. At the time I thought you would e just as likely to sell locally as you would in any other area. Derrick and Tanya Johnson introduced me to the Idea of art festivals. My Father and his craft festivals put gave me the hardware to be successful with, and Susan pushed me to be a part of a festival crowd that I could be successful with.

I thank you all

2010-11-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

I have a show this Friday at the "Williamsport Frame shop" I will be featuring some of my new 2010 work. Although it was at all of the festivals this summer, it has not been seen in town. I haven't had a "hanging in a gallery" show in a while so I am looking forward to it. They are usually a lot of fun even for an introvert like me. I still need to do some framing, which is never on my list of fun things to do

2010-10-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

Thank God...the new Website is finally up. Late 2007 was the last time I updated it and it has been hanging over me since early 2008 to redo it.

I wanted to give it a new feel and I'm not sure I did that. It does have a new look on the home page and new headers for each of the subsequent pages, but it's mostly the same overall design.

I took off the "non narrative" and "limited edition" pages and added a "New 2010" page. I won't have to update that until next fall when the 2011 festival season is over. I also added a page that has the galleries and frames shops that I am inn now.

October November and the beginning of December are the months when the site gets the most traffic. I suppose that is because of Christmas, so I'm glad to be getting it up right now.

Now, I am going to go do some art

2010-10-17T09:51:00.000-07:00

I saw this bumper sticker when I was driving around for work last week and it reminded me to tell you that you should get rid of your TV. I have to admit that I am a hypocrite telling you to do that, but I am in a relationship where I have to compromise..... and having a Television is one of mine.

In 2002-2003 we were revisiting a war in Iraq for the second time and I was upset by what I was seeing on the television. So I called up my cable provider and told them to drop me. Or else, I forgot to pay my bill and just didn't bother to have my TV reconnected when I paid it. Either way I didn't have TV for about 4 years. Instead of coming home from work and watching TV until I went to bed, I started doing things that I enjoyed. I started doing more art and a whole new life opened up to me. I put some of those pieces on Ebay and people started buying them. That gave me the confidence to start doing art festivals, which I have now been doing for the last seven years now. I paid off a bunch of debt with the proceeds from those festivals. and now this past year I have been putting my art in "arty" gift shops. I am in about 30 places in 18 different states.

I view television as paying someone to come into your house to tell you that you are not good enough or that what you own is of no value. That person is teaching your children how to misbehave and the keeping you preoccupied enough that you can't teach your children what is appropriate or giving them the attention that they need and deserve

You should kill your TV.

2010-10-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

I always carry a voice recorder around with me wherever I go. When get an idea, I want to capture it as quickly as possible because if I don't, my mind keeps wandering and pretty soon I forget what that great idea was. Sometimes, I can retrace my thought process to get it back, but when I can't It often bothers me for the rest of the day. So, today when I couldn't find my voice recorder, that frustration was multiplied by 50 which represented the amount of ideas that I lost. I remember seeing it this morning, and thought it was the last thing that I grabbed before I walked out the door. I looked in my laptop bag 3 times, checked every inch of my car four times and drove home at lunch to see if it dropped on the floor or ground when I left.

Of the 50 ideas, there were probably only 5 that would have gotten used. That is the ratio: one good idea to every ten that I have. loosing the voice recorder or the 5 usable ideas didn't bother me as much as the thought of someone else finding it, in particular someone that I know finding it and hearing those other 45 ideas that would never have made it on public display. I don't restrict the thoughts that I record. For most of them, I would have just been embarrassed because they were stupid. But, some of them could be raw, obscene, and possibly even offensive.

In truth, those unexpressed ideas are probably some of the ones that are more worthy of being explored, and probably a lot of great art lies within them. Maybe someday I'll be comfortable standing in front of them in a gallery, but, right now, when I am afraid of a neighbor or my child listening to what comes out of my head in my own voice, I'm just going to be glad I found that recorder on the nightstand where I put t last night

2010-09-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

I am in about 25 different stores in 14 or so states, and have been doing quite well with sales relative to the busy seasons of the stores that I am in. I am expecting big things for this upcoming holiday season, but i imagine that every one else who sells something is also. The festivals were all a little bit down from the year before which is surprising because I would have thought that 2009 would have been the most difficult year. Summer 2010 was super hot, and I now believe that rain is preferable to sweltering heat. The festivals that I have done in the past were pretty good, but the new ones were a struggle, even to get someone in the tent.

I have always wanted to do some shows in the late fall early winter, but setting up an indoor display, seems to be the biggest hindrance. I have an outdoor booth, but I have to rethink what I do during the summer festivals to accommodate the indoor shows. I am finally starting to have some ideas for that but they are irrelevant until I actually go to an indoor show and see how they operate.

I am considering doing some of the wholesale shows this February, but I am not sure of the effectiveness and expense relative to what I have been doing. Does it make sense to spend $1800 to bring on x amount of stores when I could probably add that same amount just by making calls for 1/100th the cost.

2010-03-12T16:23:00.000-08:00

I have been calling galleries/arty gift shops that feature artwork that is in the same genre as mine since the beginning of they year. My goal was to get in one retail location per week, and that had been going well until I started calling farther away from Pennsylvania. I don't know why that is, but I am redoubling my efforts back to calling the places that are closer to me.

The sales from those galleries have been positive for just beginning so I am encouraged by that. I have been learning a lot about the business of wholesaling form some of the people who have had the time to speak with me in detail. Everything is a process and I have been learning accordingly. I am very excited about the potential.

2010-01-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

I typically don't ever male resolutions, and this year was no different. But, as of late, there has been a resolve and a building determination to to move the business of my art forward. The galleries and gift shops that have been in have not performed to my expectations or the experience that I have at the festivals. When you in a new retail location, you are subject to the whims of the owner, as to where you will be placed in the store. Those decisions are made based on the saleability, and profitability of other items that have an established record. I have been on the floor in a basket, in an upstairs room and still to this day, I am under the counter at one of the locations that bought some of my work outright that he is going to "get to" someday. I have decided to try and take back some of that control over the issue of placement by helping the retail locations by providing point of purchase displays. I have purchased Corrugated display bins that are just big enough to hold about 25 of my prints at waist level for people to flip through like they do at the festivals. It also offers signage so that I can feature the "think" sign that has drawn a lot of people into my tent. I am going to put a bio in at the back of the bin so people can get more information about me and my art if interested. My intent is to start distributing them on a regional basis, with a bin in each lager town or city that has a seemingly supportive art base. So far I have approached one gallery which was my first choice in that region and have had success. I will be in Uncle Eli's on East Beaver Avenue, in State College, PA

2009-11-20T10:26:00.000-08:00

Website

I meant to update my Website before Christmas...back in 2007. Of all the functions necessary to operating an art business (the least of which is time is spent doing art) I think I hate updating the website the most. Evidence the fact that I have done lots of framing (and I really hate framing) since 2007.

Still...it looms.

2009-11-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

Shelf Life

It was my intention to do this piece done a long time ago (like back in January) It is my take on a popular Sheppard Ferry piece that was used in some Obama's campaign posters.

It was meant to be a put out during the honeymoon period that President Obama would experience when he first took office. During a time when he could do no wrong (at least to some people) I would say that this particular piece may have had a shelf life that expired at the end of this summer. I still believe he is doing a godd job, but there is no longer the euphoria, that would have prompted one to eat their veggies just because Barak Obama said so.

2009-11-07T08:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I am somewhat moved into my art studio, and I am loving it. I wish the studio was a located a little closer to my house, but it is actually closer to my work-a day job. that may make it easier to come and spend my lunch hour being creative.

This has been something that I have wanted for a long time. Being the pragmatist that I am, I consider this a bit indulgent, but never-the-less, am rewarding myself for the success I have been having with my art, and the paying off of some debt obligations.

Part of the experience for me is loosing myself in the art, while I am doing it. The rest of the world melts away. I have not been there for a long time. I was today, for a while, but the next time I am here, I'll have to remember to turn off the phone.

2009-09-27T16:17:00.000-07:00

So,... this blog account has been in existence for at least two years now, but this will be the first post. Sure I have plenty to say, but I haven't said any of it here. Yet! But that's all about to change. Right now!

Do people still read blogs?