Archive for January, 2007

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Published
by
robayre
on January 31, 2007
in Uncategorized
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Yay, I finally made it back to the gym this morning, after being away for almost two months. I’m excited to get back into my morning routines.

Also, for some reason it seems my comments are down. I don’t understand because I am still getting spam comments, but when real people try to leave me a message it comes up saying “error: invalid email address”. Thanks Erin, Rosa, and Chris for notifying me. Hope too many people haven’t been turned away. I think Matt should be able to fix it, being the computer wiz that he is.

more paintings

Published
by
robayre
on January 30, 2007
in Art, General Updates and cool links
. 0 Comments

 

  

Here is a page from my sketchbook with more artomat pieces. On the right are the innitial collages with all the corresponding paintings on the left. 

I’m kinda bummed, I just got an email from flickr saying that starting march 13 I have to merge my account with a yahoo account. Most current accounts are all attached to yahoo accounts now anyway, but because I started with flickr back in the day before yahoo bought it I had an “old skool” account. Literally. When I sign in, there is a place for yahoo members and a place for “old skool” members and that was where I signed in. It made me feel special. Now I have to join the masses. Enough complaining.

I wanted to share a couple things I’ve been enjoying lately.

I signed up with swap-bot. check out the site to see swaps you can sign up for OR you can even start your own. One that I’ve recently signed up for is a Altered book swap, where each person buys a book they want altered, writes instructions inside the cover and then sends it on it’s way. Each person will get to alter each others and to me the most exciting part is getting to see all the books along the way. The long list of swap categories include such things as books, yarn, music, crafts, letters, etc.

With my ipod dead I’ve been listening to librivox Why buy an audiobook when it might be read aloud to you for free under public domain. With the release of Jenny’s new website and line of jewelry, inspired by the book “The Secret Garden” I decided to listen to it as it was a favorite from my childhood as well. And what with all the gardening talk lately I had to buy myself a copy of “You Grow Girl”. I don’t even have a plot to garden in but I am looking forward to spring and maybe this year actually walk the walk and garden at my parents house, or maybe with gail at her parents house, hmmmm?

artomat pieces

Published
by
robayre
on January 29, 2007
in Art and General Updates
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Changing a flat in zero windchill is not fun. I am so thankful to Matt who did most of the hardwork while I watched, lol. Today it is snowing big fluffy snowflakes. I am finally feeling that we’ve had a real winter, well enough of a real winter to actually look forward to spring.

 

Today I’m sharing a sample of what I’ve been working on for my next artomat series. I knew I wanted to continue contributing to Artomat, It is just such a great organization, but I really struggled with what the theme for my next installment should be. Last series I just painted images that caught my eye for various reasons, but most paintings were of a thing. Meaning: a painting of “a pitcher” or “a garden gnome” etc. It was hard for me to finish that series because I could only paint something that really inspired me and those types of images come around sparingly. Plus there was always the idea that a few of the images that I painted were pictures I found other places. Often I cropped and altered them, but still it felt bad painting someone else’s photo, whether it came from a magazine or some random place on the internet. I’d been finding a few photos here and there and just wishing that I could paint it, but not wanting to paint someone else’s images.

At the same time I had not done any of my mail-art collage pieces and was feeling a little blocked. Afraid to even begin because I thought figured anything I made would never live up to previous pieces that I really loved. Plus it hurt a lot when they would get lost in the mail. I told myself I needed just jump back into it and I thought I could just start making some unimportant collages in my sketchbook to get warmed up.

 

 

For a long time I wrestled with the idea of combining the collage and painting onto my miniature canvases. But I was afraid of the collage part separating from the canvas while in the box, and I haven’t done much collage on canvas. I want the final pieces to be good quality not falling apart. My brother made this awesome piece one time where his teacher assigned him to take different magazine images and create a composition with foreground, middle and background and recreate it in oil pastel. So with all these ideas floating in my head, I finally put together such a simple idea, to paint collages that I make in my sketchbook. This way I don’t feel so bad using small parts of images that capture my interest AND I am getting back into collage as well as getting to paint. These paintings are much higher quality, take more time to paint and friends have told me they look photorealistic. I am very proud of this series and could see sticking with this theme through a couple series.

Published
by
robayre
on January 27, 2007
in Uncategorized
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I’m finding it hard to make time to work on my artomat pieces, it’s a real bummer.

Last night going over to my friends Al and Elinors’ house, I turned around in a neighbors driveway to park on the street and someone had put a homemade tire spike in the driveway. I blew out a tire and had to file a police report. Erin had just used their driveway in the same way 10 minutes before i got there, I wonder if they were tired of people using their driveway to turn around in and so they ran out after her and threw the spike there. Plus when the police talked to them they didn’t come out at all, to open the door to the police, step out on the porch or even come out and check their property for any further pranks that might have been intended for them. Also, the guy told the police that he wondered if it could have been debris from some housework he had been doing. But the police officer knew that it was the spike was made with only the intention of popping someones tires. It was like a 2×4 with a piece on the back to angle it and screws pointing upward at the angle. Plus it was freshly painted dark over the screws and wood so that one wouldn’t see it.

People are jerks.

mourning

Published
by
robayre
on January 25, 2007
in Uncategorized
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Today I was looking back at some of the posts I missed on The Fart Party and came upon this one, which seemed relevant to my current circumstances. I just love julias comic!

Although I did find out that for less than the price I paid for my 40 gig model I can get an 80 gig, twice the space! Only, I would hope that for 80 gigs it would last longer than 4 years, which is also twice the length that my 40 gig lasted.

A possible death in the household?

Published
by
robayre
on January 24, 2007
in Uncategorized
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I say possible, because I am still holding hope…

I have been working on Macs for about 15 years, egads! Since I was a freshman in high school taking Graphic Arts I & II. At home I have always had a pc. Everyone has them and it’s simple, easy and cheep to get software. As a designer though, everyone knows Macs are superior for art and design. I would love a mac at home if 1. I could afford one and 2. I could afford any programs to go on it after I got it. I say all this just to lay groundwork, to inform you that I am not a person to follow the footsteps of the latest craze.

At any rate, I’ve always been a huge music fan. I’ve bought over 400 CDs. Between my sister and I, our collections probably rival music masters’ collections. I had my first walkman probably as soon as my sister handed an old one down to me. I remember when she bought me my first CD player walkman, I truly thought I was the richest and luckiest person in the world, back in the day when the low end cost about $100. I could now listen to CDs in the car, while walking or even while I was at work (so as not to annoy my coworkers further with anymore pixies, judybats or smoking popes).

Of course my sister got an ipod first, a currently archaic model, it actually has buttons across the top (gasp!). But it serves its purpose and that is what we need, we’re music listeners, not bandwagon jumpers. Despite that, I am a snob and it kind of sickens me when I see people using their white ear buds to listen to their ipods, especially in inappropriate public places such as the grocery store. I wonder to myself, “did they used to shop at the grocery store with their CD player? No, they did not.” Now they are only wearing it while picking up some toilet paper because, they think, it makes them look so cool.

 

Anyway, the next year I got my ipod with “art is life” etched into the back. This morning I left for work, 75% full on a 40 gig model. This ipod, with its rubber iskin protecting it from its many tumbles and jolts has served me faithfully for 2 years. Why, why, why cruel world did my ipod suddenly die while resting safely on the desk at work, mid song. I was not too alarmed at first, I’ve had to reset her on occasion but on this particular occurrence she responded not with returning to normalcy but with a sick faced ipod icon. Eeep! After following all apples instructions the sick face icon has not gone away and has only begun to be accompanied with a death rattle (a beeping and clicking sound). According to the apple site, this icon means hardware problems which is a bad, bad thing.

My sister said “time to get a new ipod.” but I am so sad. Of course the new ones are all skinnier with even more room for more songs, and they’re all “look at me, I have a pretty color screen”. I am just hoping that tonight after I go to sleep the ipod fairy will come down from heaven and sprinkle her mp3 fairy dust and fix whatever ails my ipod.

Sadly, I think this is the longest post I have ever posted to this blog. How shallow does it make me seem?

P.S. I will never say never, but iphone=stupid. I can’t ever imagine wanting my phone to be my mp3 player.

Write someone you know

Published
by
robayre
on January 23, 2007
in cool links
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I think this deserves mention, as I love mail. P-Mail, I found via boingboing.

P-mail (Paper-Based E-Mail). “Print, Compatible with Pens, Pencils…” also “Like e-mail - only slower”

Off to work, it’s only tuesday?

Let Them Sing It For You

Published
by
robayre
on January 21, 2007
in cool links
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Matt sent me a link to this. You type in what you want it to say and it puts words pulled from popular songs together to say your message. Lots of fun.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Published
by
robayre
on January 20, 2007
in General Updates
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We saw Pan’s Labyrinth last night.  If you haven’t seen previews or the website check it out. I might have built the movie up too much in my head beforehand, but I still enjoyed it. It was very dark and graphic. I think some of the violent parts might have been due to a cultural difference? Here we are used to movies cutting immediately before something graphic occurs and we are left with our imagination to fill in what was implied would occur. Also, some of the scary characters would scare children from restless sleep into adulthood. It scared me, I think I just about squeezed Matt’s hand right off.

Writer/Director/Producer Guillermo Del Toro’s sketchbook is viewable on the website and it’s worth checking out.

Now I have a free weekend, for once, and hope to get a lot of artwork done. It’s funny how unless I am sharing what I work on online, I feel like I am not being as productive as I could be. I have been really busy with my artomat paintings and this and that project but I just haven’t been able to post pictures, sorry.

Oh, and it is almost like a real winter this week. It has been pretty consistently in 20s and we’ve had an accumulation of of snow over the week. We might go sledding this sometime in the next couple days :)

Published
by
robayre
on January 13, 2007
in General Updates
. 0 Comments

“i’m getting there. i really am. every year that goes by i feel i know less and less about most things, but understand more and more about myself. in many ways i feel like i am being prepared for some bigger work, as though i’m going to be tested on a much bigger scale in the future and these are just the preliminaries. at some point i am going to be stepping out on some bigger limbs and jumping off.”

I just love this quote that Keri Smith wrote today. It is exactly how I’ve felt since I was in high school. It is also why I can’t wait to get older and older and I never look back at younger days and wish to return those times.

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