Road trip, close to home

Yesterday was pretty close to perfect. I don't say this lightly. I know that I'm generally pretty cheery here, but believe me, it's not all sunlight and flowers, all the time.

But yesterday. Good. Flowing. Relaxed. Happy.

And a road trip, of sorts. Close to home, but it felt like miles away.

Art, gardens, families with whole picnic spreads, and snippets of conversations overheard, in several different languages; a mother duck with her ducklings, following; dogs on leashes; children, not.

It felt...European. Something about giving the people grand, exquisite places to spend time in, and the people rising to the surroundings. (I feel the same way about the National Mall.)

And from such an unlikely source. I can't really figure it out, quite. But I'm glad it is so.

For yesterday was nearly perfect. And this place had a lot to do with it.

We brought three different cameras, and took hundreds of pictures. Most of these are Callie's.
You can see them full size, here.

And look for a new photo project by Tim; (as soon as I can find the cord to that camera.) He's really on to something good.

Enjoy Monday! Thanks for reading.
tt

Friday Happiness :: Thirteen things

I'm loving today:

::sun streaming in the windows.

::the dog we're babysitting for the week, sleeping at my feet now.

::sneaking pink and red m&ms from the girls valentines.

::this movie, especially this, and the last four minutes.

::feeling well rested for the first time in weeks.

::listening to Al Green non-stop. All of it the same, all of it great.

::my first ever homemade biscotti, from here, a success.

::little encaustic paintings from tangled sky studio; find them here.

::friends who give wine as payment for babysitting a dog.

::books from the library; this one, The Houses of Greenwich Village, and this one about Georgia Keeffe's cutivated persona in photographs. There's a picture of her at thirty, that I just can't stop looking at.

::sneak peeks at design*sponge. Maybe just a little bit addicted to this, actually.

::little girls (not mine!) in coats and party dresses, playing in the park outside my window.

::loving that spring is coming. Soon-ish.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

Next

Tim's had the idea that eyebuzz launch a zine, and we are running with it. Fortunately for us, we have so many talented friends who are game, so we're getting it off the ground pretty easily.

The first zine I'd ever come across, I found in a gallery on a road trip to Beacon last fall, when I picked up a copy of Kate Bingaman-Burt's Obsessive Consumption. It struck a cord with me then. Now it seems like necessary therapy for all of us. Check it out. No pun intended.

What's funny to me (in a funny,interesting slice of self discovery, sort of way), is that when Tim first proposed this idea to me, it didn't even occur to me that I wouldn't be a part of it. That I wouldn't have something to add. Something to say. (Well, I guess I always have something to say...)

But what's interesting about that, to me at least, is that perhaps not only has my definition of artist changed or developed over the last two years, but that my definition of me has, too.

Here's to a slice of self discovery. I'll let you know how the zine's developing. If you've got some suggestions, or some submissions, you know where to find us.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

The Creative Class

Now it's the little one's turn to be very, very sick. So I only have a minute or two.

But I wanted to mention that Brian Lehrer had an excellent show yesterday about funding for the arts, and if you have the time you can listen to it here.

Lots of interesting, intelligent discussion, but it all boils down to: let's stop viewing the arts as a charity case and start treating artists and "art workers" as a vital sector of the economy.

I suppose my role at the gallery places me in the latter group, although the semantic proximity of that term to "sex workers" is a little unsettling. No matter, though, because the most accurate term for me right now would be "home healthcare aide".

May all of you stay warm and healthy this week. Thanks for reading.

tt

The Milkweed Project

The milkweed plant dies down. Underground, however, the
roots are living and next spring, the plant will send up new shoots and
the cycle will begin anew.

(Exploring milk weed seeds; here.)

I've joined in on a collaborative art project which will bring together the work of hundreds of artists, crafters, and now, at least one mediocre-but-eager-knitter, to create what surely will be a beautiful, ethereal piece of fiber art. Learn more about it, join in, or simply follow it's progress here.

I had forgotten about it, until I received an e-mail update on the project today. It was exactly what I needed to get my head out of this February funk which is encroaching on my general outlook.

I've had this organic white cotton yarn, bought just 'cause sometime last year, waiting for the right thing to come along and save it from becoming expensive household twine. We've already used it to hang ornaments. To make stick stars. To exercise the cat.

Now it will realize the destiny it so deserves.

Seems, also, that milkweed is the perfect metaphor for finding beauty and hope in nature's slumber; this February funk.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

Sparky liked ice skating, too

It's still dark out, and the snow is falling quickly, almost like rain would fall. It's early, and the kids are still asleep. This almost never happens in this house, in which a single creaky footstep awakens someone, if only the noisy cat. There are seven deer outside of my window right now, and one has stopped and looked up, as if my quiet typing is alarming him. And the most miraculous thing about this morning is that it is snowing, and the schools are still going to be open today.
~~~~~~
Tim began writing a comic strip named Three Feet in 2001. It had three little girls as the characters, although it wasn't really a "kids" strip. The humor was all Tim, aimed at us grown-ups, for whatever being a grown-up is worth, when it comes to humor.

If you knew the kids, you could easily recognize who was based on whom, but the strips didn't really so much come from what they did, as from who they are.

A little while into drawing Three Feet, he added two more characters. Two more little girls. It was a big day for my kids when he first wrote them in.

I am always impressed by three things about Tim's cartooning:

1) he is an excellent draw-er. He says he's not so great, and that anyone can learn. But I know better. He's way good.

2) he is an excellent writer. Now, I say this in light of the fact that I know he can't spell to save his life, and has a shady understanding of the rules of grammar. But I think the writing on the strip may just be his strong point. He's very smart, and astute at "getting" people and situations.
3) he's obsessed by it. He is always thinking of ideas for the next strip, he is always sketching out little scenes and story-boards. Sometimes, while he's lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep, I hear him chuckle, and I know he just thought up a cartoon.

A year or so ago, he started a new strip, Milton 5.o. The kid characters from Three Feet show up occasionally, but it's mostly about a duck (Milton), and a robot, named CPU. If I was pressed to explain, I would say that they are Tim's two alter-egos. But no one asked me.

We've sent the strips in to the syndicates a few times...we're just about ready to send them again. So far, no takers. But we did get a really nice handwritten note from one editor. So that's something. And Three Feet is published monthly in our local (very local) paper.

Anyway. Just in case anyone is wondering what those cartoons are in the picture today. And I promise, if you can just bear with the narcissus bulb pictures for one more day, I'll have gotten it out of my system.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

The Tuesday before the Tuesday

I am so touched by the enthusiasm that we are getting from people about our upcoming show. I wish I could come up with the right caliber thank you to Jen for the pieces she's created for us.

And now Molly is joining us by sending her Obama finger puppet to watch over the show. Her encouraging words about what we're doing are spurring me on.

If you've kept up with us a bit, you might know that in the past we've had some... slow openings. But I feel like we're on the crest of a wave with this, and that people do care, and will come.

In any event, we are excited, and...well, you'll come, won't you? And maybe, bring a date or something.

Hope to see you there. Thanks for reading.

tt

The View

from eyebuzz. Fourth in a series.


I got lucky with these birds. I walked out front, and hit the right button just as they were all taking flight. I stood out there periodically for the rest of the afternoon, and never got them to do this again at the instant I was ready. They had their own agenda, which did not include me.

This couple were exceedingly interesting, and interested in the gallery. It made my whole day worthwhile. They had more to say about art, and commerce, and psychology, than a shelf of books. They promised to come back, and I'm hoping they do.

I've never opened the back door, before today. There's a whole other view from there. I've lived here my whole life, and Tarrytown keeps showing me different corners of herself.

My view, today. Thanks for reading.
tt

And you may ask yourself...

Well, how did I get here?

All day long the lyrics to the Talking Heads kept pushing themselves into my brain. Frankly, I'm mostly relieved that this has replaced this.

But still...when I focused on what I was humming, I realized that "letting the days go by..." was getting to me.

December 31st.

As I said here in the nascent days of eyeblog, I feel much more invigorated, energized and ripe for reform at the start of school, than at the start of the new year. And anything which at this stage of the game involves my kids wanting to stay up way past my bedtime is not going to score points with me.

But still...one can't help but to pause and reflect. I feel that both in our home life and our "gallery" life, this year was one of moving forward and hitting our stride. A lot of the fits and starts that we went through began to smooth out, and our hard work pay off, and, perhaps most significantly, we began to recognize that things are working.

I am not too proud (or too delusional) to tell you that it has been hard, and that things don't always work so well around here.

But still...here we are. The kids are growing beautifully, and faster than we can buy them pants and shoes. The gallery has a small but solid roster of artists we are honored to show. We have come up for air enough to appreciate having both a family and a business that we love (if, indeed, with differing intensity!)

Sometime this summer, I was looking around the internet for information about the new place we were going to in Maine, and I stumbled upon something I was completely unfamiliar with: a blog. That blog happened to be Swallowfield, and it was like nothing I'd ever seen.

I went on from there, following links to other blogs, until my head was spinning with images and information I couldn't help but feel both envious of and encouraged by. I shot off an e-mail to Tim, the gist of which was "honey, we need to get inspired". If there were all these amazing people out there making art and living life with so much passion, humor, and beauty, why were we so bogged down? We had the raw materials, now we just needed some oomph.

Well...we got it. And what happened in this fall's election, and what is about to happen January 20, was a big part of that, for us.

It is with this energy and excitement that we are putting on The Obama Show: Group Thought. We will feature work that is in some way inspired by not only our next president himself, but by what this election means personally-to us, and to each of the artists in the show. As I've mentioned here before, we're thrilled to have Jennifer Judd-Mcgee contributing, as well as Rob Larson, (our own) Tim Thayer, and others, including for the first time at eyebuzz, a video installation.

So, here we are, at the end of the year, at the start of something new, looking forward. My wish to all of you is that you find some inspiration this year, too, in whatever it is that you love.

Looking forward. I couldn't ask for more. Thanks for reading.

tt

Monday in New York

For a girl (there I go again) who doesn't get out much, I found myself at the Union Square Greenmarket again today.

I am truly blessed with good friends from (sadly) out-of-town, who seem to enjoy coming up to New York and taking their poor friend Tara out to fabulous lunches, and generally imbuing my existence with a little luxury (and more than a little wine).

We spent some time walking around before we settled in happily at Union Square Cafe. Madison Square Park had an installation of tree huts that you can see here, and read about here, and here.

I found my eye again and again drawn towards the Empire State Building. I grew up coming into the city way more often than I do now, yet I don't remember ever being in or up to the top of the Empire State. I don't know the reason, but we seemed to practically frequent the World Trade Center. Maybe it was the TKTS outpost that was there. Maybe it was a more modern landmark to show off to the stream of overseas visitors who were a constant in my parents' house. Maybe it was easier to park.

In any event, we've been watching a lot of Elf. Judge me if you want, but I still laugh in all sorts of places with this one. In the scene where Bob Newhart shows Buddy the snow globe of NYC, and points to where his "real" father works, Tim remarked that they must have had to go with the Empire State Building, because what else is left? Of course there is the Chrysler Building, we New Yorkers know that, but it has never become the household name that the Empire State is, or, the Twin Towers were.

When I left my dear friends at their hotel and was making my way uptown, I stopped to take one last picture of the building, to show Anna where Mommy had been all day. I anticipated all sorts of questions about whether Elf was there. I was looking forward to sprinkling a little fairy dust about how I went in to the city to give Santa her Christmas list.

What I didn't anticipate was the crowd I was among, arching backward, pointing cameras and phones and blackberrys at a skyscraper, looking to capture one of the great icons of New York, still standing.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

One night in Hudson

We did the usual Warren Avenue walk, Spotty Dog beer fest, Baba Louie's romantic organic pizza dinner (for three).

This time, though, we stayed for nighttime. Christmas decorations, and after-dark lights.



And a gallery opening; such beautiful work...work I would take home and hang, and be happy to have in my house and my life, everyday. Maybe it's hard to make much of these paintings online. You have to see them in person. They are wonderful; complex and soothing at the same time.

I found this years-old post about the artist on a now-defunct blog, and I love the quote about how and why to buy art.

Then the long, windy road home to our little house, poised on the edge of December, already sparkling with little white lights.

More about that, tomorrow. Thanks for reading.
tt

Friday Happiness

Today I am:

Feeling at ease as the weekend stretches out before me.

Looking forward to Third Friday tonight, and bringing the girls to the grand opening of the hot dog shop in town.

Loving that in our town, this passes as a big event.

Admiring Tim's painting, both noun and verb.

Drawing encouragement for our January show* from this. Proud to know people demonstrating for this.

Anticipating the party we're going to Saturday night. You wouldn't guess it from looking at me most days, but I do love to put on lipstick and talk to grown-ups sometimes.

Savoring this morning just a minute or two longer. Then time to get going. The weekend is here!

Enjoy yours. Thanks for reading.
tt

*Teaser # 2. More about this soon.

The mighty brush, the mighty loaf

Tim has started painting again, in anticipation of a show we have in mind to open in the new year, around, let's say...January 20th. More about that later, though.

It makes me proud and happy to see Tim back at painting. He has a lot of creative energy, which he puts into drawing the cartoon, and gardening, and building things around the house. But watching him work through a painting is really magical, inspiring.

No more so though,than this:

We started baking bread again last night, encouraged by Beth's bread this weekend and by the ease of the recipe she used. Not that ease is a deal-breaker, when it comes to bread. I'd go through all sorts of hoops to get that perfect, crusty, chewy, tasty loaf.

But no need, apparently. This loaf was so...magical...that we started another one right away, for tonight (it takes 18 hours to rise). And so on, and so on.

A loaf a day. That's the plan.

Tim's trying to work out some equation for how much each loaf will cost-surely less than a dollar?-but honestly, who cares when it's this good?

All I know, is we're not playing The Man's game anymore, bread-wise.

More tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

tt

Only in New York

I don't get into "the city" much, even though it is only 28 miles and 35 minutes by train away. I did actually live there (for about eighteen months), and work there (for about thirteen years), but I do not consider myself a "New Yorker" (much to my mother's regret).

I didn't realize just how removed from it all I have become until I spent the day in on Saturday. I really did feel like a visitor, a tourist almost, and certainly felt wide-eyed and full of wonder.

I'm not too proud a blogger to tell you that I've been sitting here paralyzed for about an hour trying to decide which pictures to post. Also, I have some things on my mind I'd like to write about, which have nothing to do with any of these photos, so I've decided that I'm just going to post a whole bunch of them and I'll get back later once I've gathered my thoughts.

We did go to MoMA. Here's proof.

But that didn't really work out so well, as it was super-crowded, and it turns out that the Tweens Tour isn't so engrossing for...um...tweens. At some point not too far into it, one of them (mine) asked if we "could go to the Gap after?"

So we moved on rather quickly, not to shop(yet), but to EAT.

The tweens liked this, quite a bit. Here is their comments card: Nice butter.

Then, feeling a little buzzed from all of that...cheese...we decided to take a quick run down to ABC Carpet and Home. You can not imagine how much the tweens enjoyed that. Not kidding.

They were mostly agog at price tags. I felt I had found the museum for me. It's all as visually spectacular, and just as unattainable.

And then we saw this:

I suppose we can only call this "The Obama Chair."

Moving on from the six floors of fabulousness, to the Union Square Market in the rain, I went into a sort of produce-induced trance. Miles from any sort of farm, but it is truly gorgeous.

And I loved this: Oh! So that's where greener pastures lie...


I'm saving my favorite picture for tomorrow's post. It won't have anything to do with the text, but it's very pretty.

Are you still there? Thanks for looking. Thanks for reading.

tt

Friday Happiness

Glad today that the week is over, even if it was the best of all possible weeks, in one sense. Still, it was stressful, and the weather was (is) draggy, damp. I feel like things are rotting underfoot. We need some of last week's crispness again.

Lots of art this weekend:

The Joan Miro exhibit at MOMA, with my twelve year old, for a special family program aimed at "tweens" (what a silly word though, right?)

An opening reception up in Hudson at John Davis Gallery which I would love to go to. Sort of a busman's holiday, I suppose. Probably won't make it up there Saturday night, but it will make a great Sunday drive.

Hudson Crafts Collective show at Umami, in Croton-on-Hudson, on Sunday from 1-5.

Plus lots of eyebuzz work for Tim and me this weekend, going through artist submissions, setting the 2009 calendar of exhibits, designing & ordering cards and posters for the next couple of shows. Nice work, if you can get it.

Glad for a break from the weekday rush, for a chance to dwell on what just happened, to raise a glass or two in celebration, and gather my thoughts for the road ahead.

Happy Friday. Thanks for reading.

tt

My cup runneth over.

Monday. And the bittersweet is out.

Monday, and I received two extraordinary gifts from two friends on an ordinary Monday.

From Rebecca, home from her half-marathon in New Hampshire: in this lovely seed-bag, with this lovely ribbon,

were these incredibly beautiful papers with my beloved bittersweet in graphic awesomeness.

From Beth, from outside the Met, and just like the long-admired one in her kitchen:

this painting was waiting for me in my kitchen when I came home...

...from cutting the first bittersweet {risking life and limb to do so, if you recognize the setting!}

{but for a good cause...}

Monday presents. Thank you to my friends.

Thankful for my friends. Thanks for reading.

tt