mojito mojo

So cool.  This weekend is our 27th anniversary and we will be at the VA Beach Boardwalk show.  The cool part is that my son and his wife are coming down to VA to hook up with us for a few nights.  We are right ON the beach in our hotel and for the show.  I really worked my ass off to finish "feelin' mojito?" in time to take along.  Why a mojito, you ask?  Those of you that know me will think it is weird because I don't even drink...  I mean its rare.  I saw a bill board and it just got me thinking.  Anyway, one of my daughter's friends is a bartender and I asked him if I could get away with a drink umbrella in a mojito.  I guess it is safe to say that Ernest Hemingway would not approve but I did the umbrella anyway.  It's art, yo.   

SO much fun in the tub

He's hot. He's steamy. He's SO much fun in the tub.  Love this guy.  I had a Mr. Bubble shirt that was my fave for years.  I guess seeing the can of Mr. Bubble foam soap in my bathroom everyday has kept this at the top of my "to-do" list.  The "foam" letters are sandblasted white glass so they look pretty darn real in person.  Billet work in pastel?  Yup, it happened.  Just plain happiness here, can't stop smiling!

one sexy bath

Somewhere in Maryland there is a guy who is pretty happy taking showers.  Even though I finished my part of his bath back in September, the rest of the project got held up till just recently.  I am so happy to get this photo and can't wait till my site is redone so I can get it up there too.  This is almost everything I love about glass.  Stripes, bubbles, blues, a bit of green.  This blue column was fairly pivotal in my recent decision to make all my work mosaicked.  It was one of those things that just became one of the aha moments.

Midd-West mayhem

Just finished the video for the the Midd-West residency that ended last week. Please forward these links to 800 or so of your friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1ur69idglA
Good fun! I used music from One.man.And -the band that Kaleo is drumming for right now. I also finished the video for Juniata. I was waiting for a photo of the mosaic installed but never got it, so....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkQFrDOBklA&feature=relmfu This one just has generic pinnacle program generated music. When I watch these, I have to smile. Ahhh...back in my studio tomorrow.

hey now, you're an all star

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me. I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. This smashmouth song was absolutely lodged in my brain for a while. "Hey Now (you're an all star)" is a roll of everything that has been happening for me. My recent decision to refuse to decide between mosaic and fused glass, plus I had just broken a few favorite works...all jumbled up with thoughts about recycled glass. The fused/mosaic combinations that I made last year are some of my favorite works. So, the converse idea has been with me for a while. I briefly thought about doing a high heel but it is so not me. I had Shaundi in yellow Converse high tops when she was just a tot and I clearly remember a hot pink pair she outgrew, handing them down to me before they got stolen from me by Kaleo. This piece is us for sure. It's my blues and greens, a little spot of graffiti and diamond plate, my stripes, my bubbles. I really love the recycled. There is a ring at the top right from a bottle I found in our neighborhood while walking my four legged kids. It has writing pressed into the glass that reads, "Federal law forbids sale or reuse of this bottle." BAH HA HA HA HA HA HA! Some of the rings are from an antique water bottle that we kept change in till Shaundi broke it. And the sneaker? I'm so happy with that, I'm even going to have my site redone around it. Yup! Just that tile took about 2 1/2 weeks with most of that work going in the trash. Its all good.

coming up for air

So totally swamped. I will have the whole skinny on this shortly. For now, here are two "fast and dirty" photos of our progress in Middleburg. This is a result of THREE DAYS of these kids' work, no kidding! First day I spent just explaining how to cut glass...eight times. Every period we start over and each kid takes the time to try it out so the first day nothing was adhered. I can't freaking wait to see this done. Saturday and Sunday I can work on my sneaker mosaic.

OK, here is how I know I have it good. We played the lottery for this weekend's 500 big ones. If we win, the above paragraph will still acurately state my intentions for the next two weeks. No shit! That's my life. I'll hire help around the house so I can WORK MORE!

everyone can give

Yup! Don't need money. Everybody has something they can give. And in doing so, the one you'll help the most is yourself, for sure. When a friend of mine landed this awesome project, he wasn't given a whole ton of money to accomplish it. He asked me to get involved. What he needed were some table tops and he wanted them to be game boards for kids to play on. These are two of the 4 boards that will end up in a play area that is part of Baltimore's Operation Oliver. If you look, you can see my pink camera in the shadow of the iridescent black glass. The bottom is the same glass as the top but sometimes it will flash color and sometimes it will be black.

In short, Operation Oliver is a war veteran's mission to save Oliver Street and bring it back to what it was...maybe even better. Of late, this section had been so deteriorated that it was what the HBO series, "The Wire," is based on. http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/iraq-afghanistan-war-vets-save-us-city-15283191 I definitely had my kismet ON with this work because I wound up meeting an accomplished mosaic artist from Baltimore. Yeah, and she was willing to help! You'll be able to see Jo Alexander's work and mine installed this summer. Take your checkers.