MaryQuiteContrary

New Orleans

I just got back from a short trip to New Orleans and Florida with "Juicebox". We had a great time getting out of texass for a bit, and I miss NOLA so much, the good and the bad. There are so many memories for me tied to those streets of some past life I lived for 3 or so years. They are still so much a part of me. We stayed at a gorgeous hotel on St. Charles right in front of City Hall and ate at some of my favourite old haunts. It was really quiet in the city and the cold front kept us inside much of the time.
We drove the beautiful I-90 between Nola and Biloxi along the beach. Hurricane Ike literally destroyed all the old mansions on the shorefront ...wiped them clean. It's rather tragic. I picked up some broken shells and played in the sand, put my feet in the cold Atlantic very quickly and left.

This whole trip I was busy hand wireing all the antique bottles. I estimate that there will be 200+ tiny hanging bottles on my new improved Mandorla Aureola installation. They need some new Lightning inside. As soon as Papr gets back, I'm really gonna go at that piece hard and build flying buttresses, a new huge backdrop and 2 more hanging gaslight bowls....for the love of compound chopsaws and beautiful southern architecture.

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plastic spoons and crowns

I have been meaning to gift all of my silverware chandlers to GAGA. I really enjoyed making them, and they keep asking about them.
They went well with my recently destroyed mirror ball ponys...Some teenage kids raided the Forest, ripped down and played kickball with a 50-60lb. mirror covered plastic pony. They also got to my Temple. Untill the Forest reopens I may not be putting stuff down there for awhile...or at least till I can take a picture first;)
I'm currently reading Art & Fear Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking. The title really caught my eye. I've never really before run into an artistic blockage, I'm always tinkering with something...I cant help it. But last year, after Art Outside, really threw some amazing roadblocks and in my way. It's not the destruction or having no audience for what I make, (although I'm feeling a little artistically isolated). I'm constantly producing, good or bad ....whatever. But "That Art Feeling" was gone after too many heavy hitting failures. My Muse had gone on vacation to California or something, leaving me at home. My only relief was staying busy... constantly. busy. always. Yet it wasn't helping my sanity.
here's a quote from Art & Fear...
"For most artists, hitting a dry spell in their artmaking would be a serious blow; for a few it would amount to annihilation. Some artists identify so closely with their own work that were they to cease producing, they fear they would be nothing--that they would cease existing...
"Some avoid this self-imposed abyss by becoming stupendously productive, churning out work in quantities that surprise even close friends...
"Still, there must be many fates worse than the inability to stop producing art ...Annihilation is an existential fear: the common--but sharply overdrawn--fear that some part of you dies when you stop making art. And it's true. Non-artists may not understand that, but artists themselves (especially those who are stuck) understand it all too well. The depth of your need to make things establishes the level of risk in not making them."
I really need somthin good this year...and God, I'm really looking forward to Lightning in a Bottle...
But for now, I had a tin can breakthrough, and some rock wireing inspiration due to Miss Shelly's "Craft Night Upstairs" last night... I'm out to sort and wire some antique bottles

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