Hello Goodbye

I have a new cyberplace.  I haven't moved in my stuff or decorated, so I won't invite you over yet. But a virtual housewarming party is in the works. As a goodbye to Creative Laundry, I'm putting up a post I wrote last year. It was never published because it's a two parter, (part 2 to follow). In the second part I feel obliged to retell one of the most embarrassing events from my past, when I was drunk, alone, tragically lost in the mountains. Am I lying? Maybe, you'll just have to read to find out.

Thanks for sticking around good people, it's been a true pleasure. I'll see you on the other side.

ESCAPE FROM SUBURBIA: Part 1

The Year: 1970. Nixon was president. The Beatles were a band. The war in Vietnam was raging on and Elvis Presley still had hit songs on the billboard chart.


That's me in the white sweater. Notice the perfectly manicured lawn, the gleaming white fence that serves no purpose other than to stake out our space of middle class paradise. Notice my stiff, uncomfortable pose. Yeah, even back then, I knew something was wrong with this place...
SUBURBIA.

Okay, so I wasn't yet thinking about Peak oil, about the Walmartification of the world, I was probably thinking, "hey look! my shoes are red!", but not too long after I begin making the many futile attempts to escape suburbia. Like a homing pigeon, some force reluctantly pulls me back to these green lawns and gaping garage houses.

First Attempt: 1972.

Television had already infiltrated my brain and this is the family I really wanted to belong to, not my lower middle class immigrant family. A few months after my 5th birthday I would try to run away from home. Don't let my look of idiotic vacancy fool you, I was a schemer. I convinced my best friend we HAD to run away, which was hard to justify since we both had perfectly happy lives at home.

Being the closet drama queen, I knew we had to do it right - with props. Kerchiefs were tied to the ends of sticks, hobo style and were filled with cheezwiz sandwiches. We left and started our journey. I don't know how long we walked, but my friend got scared and started crying after realizing we were lost. A nice lady walked us home and I tried to put on a brave front, but began sobbing with guilt as I ran into my house. I apologized to my mother for all the worry I caused her, but she just looked at me, confused, she hadn't even realized I left the house. Infuriated, I got busy making more plans of escape.

2nd attempt: 1979.

My escape plans were thwarted over the course of 7 years by insufferable things like play and happy childhood. Luckily, I was back on track with terrifying prepubescent angst by the time I was 11.

I had experienced my first big international trip - an hour and a half family drive to the JC Penny's department store in Buffalo, New York. It was America! It was dirty and gritty and exotic. I felt like I was in an episode of Hill Street Blues. I loved it. I needed more city fixes.

Here I am around that time with my flippy hair. A picture of innocence? not really. My new plan of escape was quite involved. I convinced my new BFF to skip school and take the greyhound bus with me to the BIG city of Toronto. We saved our allowance for weeks. I had practiced my mom's and her dad's signature well enough to fake some notes of absence to hand in the day after our adventure. I studied the bus schedule and fine tuned all the details until the plan was a green light.

The plan started out smoothly, until my best friend panicked and headed back to school. I had worked too hard, come too far to give in to fear. So I went to Toronto alone, sweetly dodging strangers questions of why I wasn't in school. When I got off the bus in downtown Toronto, the plan ended. I had no idea what to do. I become paranoid I would be seen by relatives so I didn't venture out more than a block from the bus station. I waited, fearful and impatient, for hours until it was time to get back on the bus and be safely home in suburbia.

1984:

I'm 17. Here I am with an over accessorized neckline during the last torturous year of high school. Finally having recovered from my last dismal attempt at escape, I try again. I set my sights bigger, this time... New York City. A part time waitressing job has given me enough money to pay for the 12 hour bus trip to the Big Apple. I lie to my mother, telling her many of us are going but really it is just me and my quirky male friend. We have little money, so we stay at a seedy hotel near Times Square.

In the mid 80's Times Square is a cesspool of peep shows, hookers and drugs. New York is exciting, but I'm underage, broke and clueless. We find an old movie theatre showing a midnight screening of Chinatown before wandering around the next day. My friend goes to MOMA, stupid me passes and I wander around and go wait for him....once again, at the greyhound bus station....wanting to go home.

1986: I've decided to delay university, just work, travel, ESCAPE. I want to go to Peru or Indonesia. Terrible with money and impatient, I look at my bank account and realize I have enough money to get myself as far as Calgary. So I go, stay with my friend who lives in a Calgary SUBURB. My quirky male friend meets me, we decide to go as far away as we can in Canada and end up in Whitehorse, again via a greyhound bus.



After a short surreal stay, my friend and I part ways and I head to Vancouver to visit another old friend. British Columbia feels strange to me, wild and remote. Part of it feels like a prehistoric world of mountains, giant trees and ferns from the Triassic age. In BC, the forest slugs look like dachshund puppies shaved bare and dipped in melted butter. Nature is strange and intimidating here. On the bus ride from Whitehorse to Vancouver, I begin to feel that maybe I will finally and truly escape suburbia....

to be continued...

Escape from Suburbia: Part 2 - lost in the mountains...

Oh... Hi There!

Jeepers. It's been a while. While I do some housekeeping, disinfecting my dormant blog from all the spam it's gotten lately, I'll let the dogs speak for me....

Illustration Friday - Fearless

I photographed this one in 6 different settings and still couldn't get it to look right. I drew/painted this today while sitting alone on Mother's Day, nursing a whopper of a cold that's finally letting up. The man and the kids went to grandmas and I drew and watched an extraordinary amount of  TV and had toast for dinner. Stupid cold. It also prevented me from making it to the opening of the Artspacific show  this week. My painting Unravel won an award.  (yay). I'm pushing that black cloud away, starting to feel much better, all will be well tomorrow.

New Work

Above is a montage of new paintings for sale in my Etsy shop, Luule. I resurrected the store and have decided to try it as a place for selling small work. There is also an artists run gallery gift shop I'm looking into. These paintings look so much better in person and I like the idea of them hanging in a bricks and mortar store. I've discovered a gloss varnish that I love that gives a rich, shiny patina to my paintings that I wish was visible in my online images.

I also have 2 pieces in the ArtSpacific show in Delta that opens on May 3rd and runs until the 26th. I was happy my work was accepted and liked the pieces I entered, but seeing my pieces on the wall does remind me that size does matter. I'm itching to go big. I'm hoping to complete a big piece for an upcoming show which I'm not going to name because being accepted into it is tough and unlikely, but trying will be a good challenge for me.

Now I must sleep and when I wake up, I plan to spend some time loitering on all your blogs, something long overdue, paint ravens and try to avoid snacking on the girl guide cookies I was coerced into buying.

The Suburban Naturalist

Artist pal, Andrea gave me a book for my birthday called Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt. I know, I know, more bird/crow talk. But this book is more than just about crows. It's also a contemplation of how we view nature in man made places. Haupt writes, "Too often, nature is romanticized as the place out there, the place with all the sparkly trees in the Sierra Club calendar, the place we visit with a knapsack and a Clif Bar, where we stand in awe of the beauty and refresh our spirits..... In my urban ecosystem, I drive around a corner and a crow leaps into flight from the grassy parking strip. We startle each other. If nature is Out There, she asks, what am I?".

This book resonates with me because much of what she writes reflects how I feel. In the early days of this blog when only one person was reading, (Andrea, a stranger then, one of my real life best friends now), I wrote about parking my minivan and reluctantly exploring my surroundings that were walking distance from my house. In the bowels of same and more same suburbia, I soon noticed crows were the most interesting things to watch on these quiet streets. The more I observed them, the more I became aware of how intelligent they were and became interested in learning more about them. Wanting to paint crows (and other birds), is a natural progression (bugs may actually be next).

Being open to our surroundings, even if they appear mundane or we'd rather be somewhere else (like New York, Paris or walking in the Alaskan wilderness) tends to give us a greater appreciation of our place. I don't grumble about living here as I once did. Adopting the curiosity of a naturalist has made the tiny details of my world interesting.

Having said that, I don't hold a romantic view of nature either. I used to, back in my 20's, with a desire to drop out of society, live off the land, connect with nature and be free man. I was always disappointed to discover the majority of people I met like that smoked pot all day, wore goaty smelling Ecuadorian sweaters (no offense to the people of Ecuador and their knitwear) and were generally kind of....lazy? militant conformist for the clique of nonconformity? The back to nature attitude is nice in theory and all but of course, truly back to nature also means incredible hardship and labour, possible starvation, illness and no escape back to mom and dad's comfortable house when things get hard. Even Thoreau didn't REALLY rough it, modern historian Richard Zacks wrote,

"Thoreau's 'Walden, or Life in the Woods' deserves its status as a great American book but let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar. While living the simple life in the woods, Thoreau walked into nearby Concord, Mass., almost every day. And his mom, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodie baskets filled with meals, pies and doughnuts every Saturday. The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their tree-house in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of the jungle."

Art Find Fridays

Josh Keyes paints images of wildlife making the genre relevant with jolting surrealism. I love his work. It's highly illustrative, disturbing, beautiful and wrong, that to me is a juicy mix for some interesting art.

"Island"
30"x40" acrylic on panel
2009

"Burst I"
30"x80" acrylic on panel
2009

Paula started the idea of posting art finds on Fridays. Check out her find this week.

Down by the River

Train Passing

Ellen Sereda

I'm still painting feathered creatures. I got a new camera last year, an entry level SLR. I'm not a materialistic person, but I have an attachment to this camera that borders on unhealthy. I love it so much, I think my kids feel in competition with it. They do however, think it's hysterically funny that I would rather give up all my clothes and be naked than give up my camera. I think I'm serious when I tell them that. The only thing that I've discovered that bothers me about my new camera, is that it didn't automatically make me a great photographer.

After shooting about 1000 pictures these past two weeks, I got maybe 15 good shots. I was so frustrated by my ineptitude, I blamed my surroundings instead of myself. I told myself I was hanging out too much in beautiful places. All these lakes and mountain vistas, I've been oversaturated by beauty, maybe I needed something grittier, more urban. I don't have anything urban in my commuter suburb town, but there is a run down area, by the train tracks and the river. When I told my husband I was going there to take pictures, he said with a smirk (and probably a little truth) , "watch out for the Hell's Angels".

My first time I went down by the river was years ago, just before Christmas. I received some kind of government cheque in the mail, wrong person, wrong address. Working in social services at the time, I assumed it was a welfare cheque. I felt terrible about the mistake and imagining some poor man with no money before Christmas and the hassle he would have to go through to get another cheque, I decided to hand deliver the cheque myself (I was naive and didn't know you weren't allowed to do that at the time).

I was surprised when I found the address on the map. I knew there was a shake and shingle mill and some run down businesses but I didn't think anybody lived by the river. When I got there, I discovered, nestled among a few industrial type shops were several houses. They were decrepit shacks that looked like they should have been condemned. I found the address and noticed two men in a wrecked car on the lawn, obviously strung out on drugs. I pegged it for a crack house and wanted to turn around but didn't because... I'm sort of stupid and a little determined sometimes.

As I was trying to muster up some nerve to get out of my car, a man walked out of the house, a big, mean and scary looking biker dude. I thought, oh God, look at him! he's killed people! I just know it, this is it, I'M GOING TO DIE TODAY. Nobody will hear my screams and oh, how convienient, there's the river! They don't even have to drive, they can just walk over and throw in my cold, lifeless, dead body.

The man didn't speak, he just stared at me suspiciously . I croaked out a weak "Hi, uh, are you _________? "

He nodded.

"Oh, well, ha, umm...I guess I got your mail by mistake, I thought you might need it" and screamed silently to myself, "PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!"

He took it, said nothing and left. As I drove away, calming myself down, I started to think, "I know that man from somewhere" but I couldn't place where it was I had seen him.

Several weeks later, passing by a lottery kiosk in a store where I often shopped, there he was. It was a picture of him that had been hanging there for about a year. He had the same suspicious, unsmiling expression as he held up a nice fat cheque in his hand. He had bought a winning ticket at the kiosk and won the lottery, a six figure sum.

What the hell was he doing living in that falling apart shack by the river, getting government cheques? I'll never know.

The riverfront is slowly changing. One day, probably sooner than later, the shacks and old shops will be gone and there will be ice cream kiosks, cafes and tourist shops where you can buy Indian dreamcatchers made by authentic white suburban housewives doing piecework while watching The View. People will take leisurely strolls down there with their families and their dachshunds and toy poodles. Until then, here are some of the pictures I took last week. The robin I painted above was there, looking a bit rough around the edges. But that's to be expected, he lives down by the river.

The Jays are Back in Town

While I plod away at this raven painting, some other paintings and drawings, finish my website and do all the other stuff in my life that needs my attention, I'll leave you with the sweet sounds of spring in my backyard. Steller's jays have begun nest building. My husband shot this 17 second (spectacularly uneventful) video 2 years ago when their fledglings where hopping about in our yard. Beautiful birds, but bold and noisy. The sound they make, right outside my bedroom window, fills me with fantasies of slingshots and BB guns. Nooooo, I would never, of course, but they do make crow caws sound like the Vienna Boys Choir.

Some of you may have seen this artist profiled on the popular website, My Love for You is a Stampede of Horses.

Kate MccGwire, creates sculptures with various organic mediums. Her pigeon feathered organic sculptures are full of grotesque beauty, fascinating yet disturbing.

It's okay to be a bird nerd.

Great Horned Owl
12"x12" Acrylic
Ellen Sereda

It took me about 2 weeks to paint this picture. It was tedious and required concentrated effort or I would lose my place in all the pattern. For some unknown masochistic reason, I threw out the art school rules and painted it with the thinnest, tiniest brush I own, putting on 6 layers of acrylic glazes to get the depth I was after. It felt like art self flagellation in the beginning. As though I was punishing myself for my crappy attention span and increasingly poor ability to focus.

Somewhere about 2/3 of the way through, everything changed. I settled into a rhythm and concentration was easy. I also didn't care about the outcome, the process was so engaging and meditative, I was in the zone applying paint, brush stoke after brush stoke. I let myself go in the process of slowly rendering the illusion of something real with paint. It felt such like a healthy refuge from the sometimes chaotic busyness of life. A direct contrast from the speed and distractive nature of phones, email and social networking sites (FACEBOOK). To get a fascinating and sometimes sobering look into digital media and the effect it's having on our lives, check out Frontline:Digital Nation (you can watch it online). You blogging, facebooking, tweeting people need to see it.

I also had to give myself permission to paint the owl for no other reason than I like them. I'm guilty of that annoying characteristic of Canadians - apologizing. I had a nagging little voice inside me say, "Sorry, I'm going to paint this owl because I'm a bird nerd, oh, sorry for that too. This owl's name is Hagrid, a young great horned owl and is part of the Birds of Prey program at the Vancouver Zoo and my daughter got to hold it! Sorry for boring you with the details and getting so excited. But it was a special day. Okay. I'll stop now. Sorry"

I'm over that now, I've been busy painting many other feathered creatures I've snagged photos of recently, which I hope to post soon. I'm unapologetically going to paint what I want, which was what I was doing before anyway, just feeling guilty about it, for no sensible reason whatsoever . Neurotic, I know. If you have the same problem as me about being self depreciating about your art, read this, and get over it. Now, must get back to put the finishing touches on a house finch. Later, good people.

I'm sorry, but I can't help myself...

I live in a commuter suburb about an hour outside Vancouver. The Olympics are here and although I am well aware that it's a fascist, corporate, money sucking event that hurts almost every city that hosts the games, I can't help myself.... I got the fevah. *bites hand*.

Stephen Colbert is in town and will be taping his show here for part of this week (you can read why here). I'm failing to make my family understand the importance of this and why we must get up super early and catch the train to Vancouver. Stephen Colbert to me is like the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana to an 8 year old girl, except I act all cool like and contain my screaming to inside my head. Both my daughters, age 8 and 10, reminded me that they neither like the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana... so there. And in all truthiness, my love of sleeping in will probably win over any celebrity fan love.

I suppose another reason I should hang my head in shame over my Olympic fever, is that arts and culture funding was drastically cut in the Provincial budget to help pay for the Olympics. The gallery where I participated in a show last month, like every non commercial gallery in the province, is desperately trying to find ways to survive. I suppose the not for profits will have to be better capitalists and find innovative ways to sell, sell, sell to public tastes. In some cases that might not be bad, in other cases, it will be, as the bigger venues, might have to cater to watered down, mainstream interests to generate the revenue to stay afloat. Mc-art for the Mc-masses.

During the Olympics though, arts in Vancouver are heavily involved, both in public art displays and events. My sister is in town and gave a great, hilarious performance in Fear of Flight, a theatre event for the Cultural Olympiad. I'm hoping to see as much as possible, but that will probably be a harder sell than dragging my kids to see Stephen Colbert.

I.F.

Wilderness

for Illustration Friday
and the final page of the traveling sketchbook
(You can click on the image to see it larger)

Thenthitive Artith

Musically this won't rank on any play list of mine, but it is silly and relevant.

I'm forcing myself to be less sensitive (okay, less misanthropic is what I really mean, ahem) and get out of my hermetic shell lately, first by getting 8 inches of my hair chopped off. It's not as though I was attached to my long hair as much as I don't like strangers touching my head. But getting the haircut was actually endurable, pleasant even. The hair stylist was a guy and we talked about how "terrible it is that in new Xbox game 'Modern Warfare', the violence is so realistic you can see brains splattered on windshields and stuff". No girly talk. Phew. But he did show me the proper way to style my hair, which I immediately forgot because there is no compartment in my brain designated to store fashion/hair information.

Next thing I did was enter a local juried art show. It's an annual show in our city gallery I've been meaning to enter for 10 years, but never pay attention to the deadline. It's the earliest (and simplest) goal for this year for art making and art showing. I won some sort of award for this piece.

I don't know which award, I have to go to opening night to find out. My reclusive self would rather not, but my ego will be pushing me out the door. I'll go and take pictures and try to be more entertaining. In the meantime, I suggest you go read Chris Rywalt's (author of NYC Art) hilarious post on some of the inane art making and art criticism in the NYC art scene.

Santa Claus and Killer Bunnies

This picture is from Awkward Family Photos, a hilarious and addictive site, go take a look.

Several years ago while shopping for Christmas gifts for underprivileged children in my town, my 3 three year old daughter made the inevitable logical connection and asked, "but Mommy why do we have to buy them presents, why doesn't Santa just bring them toys?" I hesitated for a moment, then gently told her the truth. I hate lying to my kids. Also, growing up in an Estonian household, the whole Santa myth is alien to me. We celebrated everything on Christmas Eve. Having Santa show up while you're nibbling your Estonian Christmas Eve dinner of blood sausage, head cheese and beet potato salad would be a tough trick to pull off (but a good distraction given the menu, bleh).

I've come across parents who seem to want to keep the belief in a magic fat old guy alive up until their kids are filling out their college applications. Many of those same parents have instilled a belief in their children of really goofy things, like the Easter bunny. I listened incredulously to a 7 year old and her parents talk about the giant rabbit that comes down from the mountains on Easter morning to bring her chocolate. Now that is f*cked. Because if that's the kind of weirdness we're having our kids believe, this could be equally just as true.....

Yes, more crows

"Unravel"
acrylic and aluminum
Ellen Sereda

It took a week, but I was able to finish the painting I mentioned in the last post. I think I spent as much time carving in the lines of the fossils at the bottom and the cityscape as I did painting the rest of the piece.

Focusing my spare moments on art has made me almost completely non verbal online. Actually, who am I kidding. It makes me non verbal in my day to day life as well. I just walk around mumbling and forget to comb my hair and button up my coat on cold days. It is good I have kids to bring me back to reality with their constant daily needs and chatter.

I did catch a recent video on TED highlighting Edward Burtynksy's photographic series on the landscape of oil. These jaw dropping images do remind me I should park (or do away with) my stupid minivan. Who says art doesn't have some real life impact.

The Last Day

Today is the last day of daily posting. I was a bit of a slacker. I managed 24 out of 30 posts. Looking back I realize that makes up over half my posts this entire year. It was a quiet year.

Today was a sad day too. It marks the end of my beloved road kill coat.

Road Kill Coat
R.I.P 2009

Road kill coat's tragic end came after hugging one of these things, a sweaty one.

I'm not really a horse person, so I don't know what overcame me. I think it was because the horse was sweet and patient and good to my daughter during her riding lessons and deserved hugging. I was cruelly punished for my loving gesture because road kill coat smells horrible now. I have no problem walking around looking scruffy, but smelling like Sasquatch's stinky lair is where I draw the line.

I so wanted to conclude this month with a spectacular post but I've been plagued with a migraine most of the day. I did get a little painting in. This is an early stage work in progress, some blocked in paint and the chalk lines are still visible. I'm figuring this one out as I go. I'm thinking it will end up being a fairly surrealistic painting.

In a few hours the busy holiday month begins. Nothing better to kick off the chaos with this holiday classic, Tom Waits', Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis. Love it. (thanks Tracy).

The Little Post

After watching this charming video I want to fill up the rest of my sketchbook with hand drawn pop ups. Listen to this lovely song, Lisa Hannigan's Lille...

A Dog Day

My dog Gracie is 13 today. I'm dedicating this post to her and to my friend Andrea, artist and dog lover whose hand injury has left her temporarily unable to paint. So to all dog lovers, lovers of dog art, here's a few links to keep you busy.

Photos of People Taking Photos of My Dog. I really can't explain my love of this site, because the title is the only thing this blog is about. Homer, a french bulldog, likes to sit and sleep in the window of his owner's gallery in Chicago. Passerby's take pictures of Homer and Homer's owner takes pictures of them. And that's it, but I like it.

Dog Art Today is where I found the above link. It's packed full of interesting gems of art, historical and contemporary references relating to dogs, but also so much more.

The Secrets Inside Your Dog's Mind is a fascinating article from TIME about dog behaviour and the evolution of the relationship between humans and dogs.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends tomorrow. I'm using this holiday, completely unrelated to me, as an excuse to take the day off from the computer. Yes, I'm a daily blogger dropout. A 30"x40" canvas that has been painted over 3 times is staring at me accusingly, saying, "Paint me or get a job at Walmart!". Obviously, I'm projecting, and possibly I'm getting a bit INSANE and need a cyber break of at least one day. See you soon.

The Little Blue Pill of Distraction

Bleh. I struggled with writing a serious post today, but deleted it. It was triggered after hearing of the Pope's meeting this week with 250 artists from around the world. Some of his comments in his letter to the artists made me contemplate that often stated, romantic, (and IMO inaccurate) ideal of beauty as truth. What I originally wrote was: " Life is a complex balance of opposites, no growth without decay, no light without dark and a those who futilely attempt to block out suffering in their lives usually experience very little joy as well. Most of the best art reflects the entirety of human experience, not shying away from the ugly or depraved. Believing art has some kind of moral responsibility to depict, beautiful utopian ideals is usually voiced most often by those who have the greatest attachment to dogma"

Kinda smartypants of me eh?

So, aaaaanywaaaaays, as I was trying to think through my thoughts and type something coherent, the puppy was being noisy chewing on a plastic bottle, my kids were talking and the TV was blaring the local news. Then a Viagra commercial came on. It's part of a cute, cheeky ad campaign for Viagra where an older man confesses how Viagra cured him and his wife from their antiquing addiction. After the commercial ended, my daughter said, "So Viagra helps you break habits? So, if we have habits we want to stop, like biting our nails, we should take Viagra!".

Ummm....

Post over.

Wine, Chocolate and Road Kill Fashion

Here's an excerpt from an email I got today from a company wanting me to advertise some sales promotion on my blog:

"Hi Ellen,
We all love to play dress up. Who doesn’t love to express their style – one day you’re the sexy-city fashionista walking in 4-inch Stuart Weitzman stilettos and the next you’re the sporty-chic girl, complete with your PUMA yoga pants."

Wow, they have me and my readers pegged. Except they left out the predominant fashion statement I like to express- "look at me! my clothes don't stink and the holes are smaller than 1 inch, I'm stylin'!" *arms out and twirling*

Not much more than a year ago, I got my first request to do a product review on this blog. If I had said yes, I would have gotten a freebie, so I admit, I DID hesitate a little before ignoring it. That was the good old days, (a year ago on the interwebs qualifies as the good old days). Now, I get a dozen emails asking me to promote products and sales, but nuthin' in it for me. The audacity of these people, not even offering me a key chain with their logo on it. Sheesh. I don't know if I can be bought, not enough have tried. It's possible my integrity is a bit fluid. ARE YOU LISTENING? MAKERS OF BLU RAY PLAYERS?

No,I'm better than that, (ahem) but the fashion related email did give me a good laugh. It was also timely, because the weather has cooled, which means I get to wear my old, fake fur trimmed winter coat I love so much. The coat which has the ability to make my so very kind, non judgmental husband groan and say, "please, pleeeaaase, get yourself a new coat".

Ah my coat, so many compliments when I first wore it those many years ago, I looked like a Russian mafia wife. Umm, that's good, I think(?), then it became worn and tattered. Last year it looked like road kill, and this year it has gained the distinction of looking like really OLD road kill. Here, it is,in context, (picture may not be to scale) -

I proudly wore my coat to the winery this weekend. I went farm shopping and not far from me, what feels like the middle of nowhere is an organic vineyard that makes some nice wine. A little cottage winemaker in what looks like a little cottage.

The shop and tasting area is tiny, but was packed with 30 something year olds, clad in black wool with poetically arranged scarves, all looking as if they just spent a day perusing art in Soho. I was just followed around by the owners dogs. Because of my coat.

Next I went to this wonderful place, The Clayburn Store, a gourmet food shop and tea room in a building built in 1912 (which is old for this area of the world) in historic Clayburn Village.

I bought what is considered the worlds best chocolate. It is amazing. I was going to gift it to someone but oh, will you look at that, too late.

This chocolate is about revenge, perfectionism, and baseball uniforms for Venezuelan cacao farmers. Food artistry and great food writing at its best. Now, I'm off to savour a glass of wine with a tiny piece of chocolate and go paint ravens.

To end this post I wanted to link to some relevant art. Typing in a search for 'Road kill art' or 'artists who use dead animals', left me dizzy with the multitudes of art that does includes dead critters. It also makes me want to take a shower with a quart of bleach. Dead animals as subject and using them in art is nothing new. One artist I found that I do like is Marian Drew and her photographic images reframing the traditional European still life paintings of dead animals. Her work is sad and hauntingly beautiful.

I Enjoy a Good Cup of Coffee too, but.....

Harvey, you're an a*s, make your own effin' coffee.....

And here's a compilation of all the degrading commercial clips from Folgers of the 50's. Insane. My mother had to listen to this during daytime TV. I have a whole new respect for her.