Lessons from the Flood

What I have learned after finding our office flooded last Monday, due to a fire in the office above ours...

1. The combination of wet carpet, walls, ceiling, furniture and paper smells TERRIBLE.
2. Backing up your data regularly really does give you peace of mind.
3. I find it difficult to work without paper clips nearby, and to a lesser degree, manila file folders.
4. I love having my own office, though temporary.
5. I love this view:

Why I Love the Calvary Waffle Shop

1. The anticipation of it only being open during Lent
2. Waffles
3. Spaghetti
4. Fish Pudding
5. Dessert
6. The mural that covers one whole wall
7. Overhearing other people's conversations at the shared tables
8. Running into people I know

Movies I Watched While I Was Sick Over the Weekend

1. The Wedding - a melodramatic, possibly made-for-tv-movie on the Oxygen network. What can I say? I felt too bad to go back to sleep or to try to find something better, and Regis Philbin had the day off of Live with Regis & Kelly.

2. The Station Agent

3. Nanny McPhee

4. Part of The Towering Inferno. We turned it off after a few minutes because the "American Movie Classics" channel does not show movies in letterbox format. Criminal.

5. Beyond the Sea

6. Amelie

Auxiliary List:
Movies That are Not Just Good, but Extra-Good Due to their High Color Saturation:
1. Moulin Rouge
2. Nanny McPhee
3. Amelie

Art/Artists in the Media Last Week

1. New public art blog

2. Memphis Flyer's "Hotties Issue" - featured adorable local artist David Mah.


3. Borrowing Artbutcher's "There is Art in There Somewhere," also featured in the Hotties Issue was "Señor Dreamy" from Las Tortugas Deli Mexicana (1215 S Germantown Rd and worth the drive for the food if not for Señor Dreamy)


4. On the show "30 Rock" Isabella Rossellini mentioned paintings by Otto Dix. I just love it when artists are randomly mentioned in popular culture - it is like validation for all artists - like in high school when you realize that a popular person knows your name. Also, recently on "Gilmore Girls" the artist Kiki Smith was not only mentioned, but one of the characters received a Kiki Smith print as a gift. The print now has a recurring if only-noticed-by-me-in-the-background role in the show.

5. Fantastic interview of local artist, and one of my former teachers, Richard Knowles. Read the interview by Fredric Koeppel here while you can.


6. Friday night on "Best Week Ever," one of my two favorite shows, they mentioned an artist named Keith Urban who was being sued by singer Keith Urban for using keithurban.com. Not the most interesting mention of an artist in the media, but hey it's something.

7. On my other favorite show, "CBS Sunday Morning," they did a great interview with one of my favorite artists, the acclaimed and masterly painter Alex Katz. See more on the interview here.

Southern Graphics Council Traveling Print Exhibition @ Marshall Arts

Good stuff from this show. Please excuse the crappy photos - I was embarrassed about taking pictures at an art opening.

1. April Katz, Myriad Anomalies, lithograph


2. Lisa Bigalke, Kettle Moraine, reductive relief/silkscreen


3. Melissa Harshman, Perfection Salad, serigraph


4. Beej Nierengarten-Smith, Ship of the Sky II, photolithography, chine colle from 19th c - glass slides

Lingering Aches and Pains from Tuesday Night Rollerderby Practice

1. Blister on the underside of my right big toe due primarily to the "Pyramid of Pain": 3 laps, 6 laps, 9 laps, 12 laps, 9 laps, 6 laps, 3 laps. That is a lot of pushing off with my right big toe.
2. Slight stiffness in my right knee due to odd, unexpected fall (all the other ones were normal and expected - seriously), complicated by the fact that I irritated the back of same knee at Sunday morning practice.
3. Sore shoulders. Why? I don't know - they are always sore after practice.
4. Bruised hand. My wristguards give me bruises. (Mom, if you are reading this, I want you to know that I wear 2 wristguards on each hand for extra safety!)
5. Red, itchy eyes. I guess I will attribute that to wearing contacts, though I don't think the red itchiness should have lasted this long. Maybe one of those little rollerderby kids gave me pinkeye. If I find out who did it I'm totally kicking his mom's ass!

Now Playing in my Jeep

1. Van Morrison, A Period of Transition
2. Billy Joel, Glass Houses
3. Billy Joel, The Stranger
4. The Beatles, Rubber Soul
5. The Beatles, The White Album
6. Van Morrison, Veedon Fleece
7. Van Morrison, Hard Nose the Highway

Art 2006: Part 1

I realize that February is a little late for year-end wrap-ups, but so much other list-worthy stuff happened in January that I didn't have time for this list, which is a list of most of the art that I saw last year.

1. The Red Show, Perry Nicole Fine Art. This one was good because I was in it - ha! I kid, I kid. It was good because a lot of artists were in it, all of us with some element of red in our artwork. Mine, of course, were shoes.



2. Susan Maakestad Lecture and Exhibit, Rhodes College. Susan is an awesome painter, and fun to listen to. Here are some of my notes from her lecture:



3. Sedrick E. Huckaby in Frequency, The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York. I am singling out one artist from this show - Sedrick Huckaby - because if I could have crawled into his painting, A Love Supreme (Summer), and lived there forever, I would have done it. It was a perfect blend of abstract and detailed areas making up one huge realistic image of quilts hanging on a clothes line.



(This is a photo of kids sitting in front of the painting at the show. I borrowed the photo from here.)

4. Frick Collection, New York. This was the first time I had been there, and I found the staff very unpleasant. They had some nice Goyas and Rembrandts.

5. Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was the second time I had been to MOMA since it had been remodeled, and I went with T, so I didn't quite get to explore it like I like to. But we saw some nice pieces:
Wilhelm Lehmbruck's Standing Youth
Daniel F. Cudzik's Beverage Can with Non-Removable Pull-Tab Opener ("Stay-On Tab") - that was just a Coke can in the design section, but I thought the title was funny.
Vija Celmins lithograph Ocean Study. They had redone the contemporary galleries since the last time I had been there, with an apparent focus on THE UGLIEST STUFF THEY COULD FIND IN THEIR COLLECTION. Except for this quiet little jewel that I noticed the last time I was there.