Optical illusion

My sheep pictures are snugly hung in the Providence Optical gallery in Providence, Rhode Island (that would be like another country for you European readers). I think you can even see one of the paintings, up on the second floor, through the window just above the One Way sign. The show opening was last night and people actually showed up! (as evidenced by the legs shown below.)

Here are my paintings standing up under close inspection (Pamela didn't even notice that the label on the Greyface Dartmoor is starting to peel off because I painted over it to dim its whiteness after I glued it on. Whew!):

And here I am with my good buddy Taleen below, the curator for this show who has been my friend since back in the J. Crew days. And I by "back" I mean back before they sold bronzed leopard cardigans and when the models actually combed their hair.

Taleen's mysterious encaustic painting called Fossil is on the wall behind us. I am still thinking about that one!

The flock is gathered

I have gathered my herd and will be shepherding them to Providence soon. (I am not trying to be clever, it just really seems like there's no other way to say it.)

I mentioned to my boss that I was staying home from work today to finish my sheep paintings. He said, "You are making more than one? Don't all sheep look the same?" I said "Actually, no, they don't!"

Baa baa black sheep

I am making progress with my sheep project. It's much slower going than I would have thought! My crack-like sunflower seed addiction is definitely not helping.

I took a break this afternoon and saw my "Little Sister" R. today. We went to the Roslindale Open Studios, which was surprisingly rewarding in some weird way. When I was driving her back home, I asked her what her favorite artist or favorite artwork was. She said "the guy who made furniture". This surprised me, because she was mostly flipping through the stacks of photos while we were at that house, which was shared by a photographer and a furniture maker. I was the one asking the guy how he inlays tiny strips of wood into his tables - she was showing me the photos she liked. We looked at many photos together, but only one chair, so I thought she wasn't interested or paying much attention to his work.

My favorite was the 83-year old man with the neck brace on who took her by the hand and brought her to another room to show her his easel and his palette and how to take cheap brushes and cut them into whatever shape you need while stuffed birds and stone buddhas gazed down at us.

Just goes to show you, you never know what a kid is paying attention to or what is making an impression on them. Maybe it was just that the furniture maker had apple cider and Oreos for the taking.

My mother is always surprised by what I remember from when I was a kid. It's never what she remembers. Right mom?