Cookie Monster

Cookie Monster

by | Art, Food, Studio | 18 comments

Oh my sweetums, I am recovering, RECOVERING, from Open Studios…by killing myself with COOKIES.

But they are very GOOD cookies. Filled with things like butter, eggs and flour. Walnuts!!! And oatmeal! Raisins! Cranberries! And CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!

And I’m storing them for safe keeping in my tummy. Tomorrow they will meander over to my hiney where they will stay until I put on a Village People CD and dance them off.

Unless I exploded before that. BOOM!!! Because there’s only so much sugar and carbs a belly can hold until they take on qualities similar to that of military grade weapons. And if the rumblings are any indication, I’m reaching critical mass right now.

If I survive the night, if the house doesn’t fall down around our ears while we sleep, I. Will. Repent.

But that’s tomorrow. Let me tell you about Open Studios. Which was today and last weekend.

Well, it was my first OS in years and years and YEARS. And it was a pretty good one.  Sold a couple of big ticket paintings as well as some little stuff.

Dunes by Susan Lobb Porter

'Dunes' by Susan Lobb Porter

'Summer' by Susan Lobb Porter

'Summer' by Susan Lobb Porter

Crappy photo alert for ‘Summer’. Sorry about that, the good photo is in the other computer and I’m too bloated with cookies to properly fetch it for you.

Back to OS…I raised some money for the local animal shelter with some prints. Met some nice people, got a couple pages of names for my list. In between customers I experimented with my new printer. Found the perfect paper to reproduce my encaustic paintings. Perfection. Absolute Perfection. I would tell you except the notes are out in the studio and I’m not running out there right now. You’ll have to trust me on this. The encaustic is reproduced so well you’ll want to EAT them. I’ll be posting more info on those prints on my FB page. If you haven’t like my FaceBook page yet, oh my goodness, do it RIGHT NOW so you won’t miss out on all the excitement.

Oh, speaking of my FaceBook page, October 15 is the date for the ‘Red Door Challenge’. A couple weeks ago I posted a photo for anyone and everyone to use as inspiration for a painting. If you’ve done anything be sure to post it on my FB page wall (link up above). I’ll be posting my own creation as well. Be sure to share on your own wall, tag and all that stuff. I would love to get lots of people to take part in this.

And be sure to keep your eye out for the next challenge!

 

Exhale

by | Art, Life, Studio

Exhale mode, sweetums. Great. Big. Exhale.

Ahhhhhhhh…

Open Studios Tour is coming up! Oh, indeed it is, first two weekends of October. This is where I plug the event and tell you if you live anywhere in the western hemisphere northern California, and do not come, I will personally TP your house!

Trust me, I learned from the best, having raised my very own delinquent. Had FirstBorn paid as much attention to his grades as he did the price of toilet paper, he’d be a BRAIN SURGEON by now.

But back to the Studio Tour…. Got a little more than three weeks to get things in order. I’m not worried about the art, got paintings coming out my ears right now. Seriously. Lots of art. But of course I’ll probably get in a frenzy the week before and crank out paint my bum off.

It’s the housekeeping that has me a wee bit, umm… well, see for yourself.

The exterior of the new! improved! Studio Grande is still a construction zone. Tar paper and stucco screen are waiting for the stones to go up. And they will, at least on the front, in the next couple of weeks. Mr. Spouse does stonework but for this, for rock and brick that gets walked under, for this we’re hiring a real mason. YAY!!! I’ll be posting photos of the process, and a conversation or two about all the amazing arty things you can do with cement. Meanwhile you can see some of Grant Weiss’ work here.

I spent the afternoon dealing with construction debris. Bagging up what I could. And then I decided to get a start on the patio I plan on putting in just a little uphill from the wall of windows.

See this? One dead oak and a bunch of construction stuff. Well, by the first weekend in October it will ALL be gone. And if the gods of patio construction are with me, there may even be a patio! At least a clear, level place to put a couple of chairs.

And look! It wasn’t all about garbage bags and recycling cardboard. I got a couple bins of stomped-on-squished-down-tight kindling for winter.

OMG!!! I just remembered I bought some chocolate chocolate chip ice cream to reward my sweaty labor.

OMG! OMG! OMG! I’m outta here. It’s been real but I believe I hear someone calling my name. From the freezer. But I’ll be back in a couple of days. And I’m sure there’ll be some more photos.