ladypajama

I just read this book. The art was very inspiring. The story was not something I would usually like, but I liked it anyway.

So good.

I am taking part of the sketchbook project .  My good friend Nathan Carter did it last year, and it was so inspiring to see his work that I wanted to do it to.  I think in away it wasn’t the project itself but the fact that I want my art to be as awesome as his.  I envy his talent.  I have been having issues lately where I am just not loving my art as much as I usually do.  The reason I make art is that when I draw something, I usually love it.  Like ridiculously love it.  It will be a distorted human form with a retarded looking animal and I’ll be like, “Look what I made!”  And I will love it.  Seriously love it.  And so when I make art, and I don’t like what I am doing, I just don’t see the point.  You know what I mean?  Why do it at all?  But the reason my art is sucking is because I am not fucking around with it as much.  I need to do it all the time.  And I need to play with it.  And I need to not care if it sucks.  I just need to do it.

Anyway, so here I am doing my own sketchbook, and I was really hating it at first.  Just thinking, “God, I am going to end up sending this in and is just going to be pages of suck.”  but then I started working on my calendar.  Every year I make a wall calendar that I give out for xmas gifts and sell at craft fairs and on the internets.  Working on it has just been sucking.  I need to stay focused on it to be able to get it done in time, but I am just having super bad hate when it comes to working on it.  So I have been turning to the sketchbook to scribble it out.  And things in there have been getting better as a result.   Kinda weird how that works.

I was fucking off, reading the internet and stuffing my face when Spencer showed up.  He was part drunk, part tired.  He was coming to my house to take a nap.  But since I was there he didn’t want to sleep anymore.  We started talking about art and some of the projects I am working on.  He was telling me how he used to draw things, but now he didn’t and that he needed something or someone to get him to do it.  “You need motivation,” I told him.  “Yeah, maybe,” he replied.  But you can tell that he is at that point in his life where he hasn’t decided what path to take yet.  It is that mid twenties just out of college condition where you ask yourself almost every day, “what next?”  And poor Spencer doesn’t have the answer.  And I didn’t have an answer either.  So I told him about how I wanted to make moveable paper dolls.  I showed him an artist on etsy that has a few.   And I told him I have been wanting to make them for years, but for some reason I just have a mental block on making them.

And then I had a bright idea.  Lets make moveable dolls right now.  I got out some cardstock and some sharpees.  I could not decide what to draw.  What animal?  What person?  What monster?  I sat paralysed in the moment of decision making.  What do I make?  Then I looked over at Spencer and it seemed obvious, a Spencer Doll.

I told him I was going to make a Spencer Doll.  “Just don’t make it with a beer in its hand,” he didn’t demand, or ask, it was more of a plee.  More like he was saying don’t write my fate for me.  Don’t help me choose the path of beer and nothingness.  So I didn’t.  Not that I would anyway, because I am hoping that I will be able to sell it to kids.

The guitar was an afterthought.  I copied it from Aaron.  He came home half way through our crafting adventure and said, “I want to make a Spencer doll too!”  Aaron’s had a beer and guitar in Spencer’s paper hands.

And so here it is.  It doesn’t even really look like Spencer.  And you probably don’t even know who Spencer is.  But it is awesome, and you know you want one.

please visit my etsy store to purchase one of your own.

So my printer ran out of ink just as I was printing the text for my July issue of Blah Blah Blah.  So as promised in my zine I am putting all the text here.

June5

I have been sick the last week.  I also worked the last 4 days.  So basically that means I would wake up go to work, work, come home from work, go directly to bed.  I wish I wasn’t employed right now, but i don’t want to quit.  I just wish I didn’t have to work when I don’t feel like it.  But, it is good. I can definitely use the money.  I shouldn’t complain.  It is just so hard trying to do all the little things I normally do.  I have like four hours of energy a day.  And today I woke up wide awake at 7:30 am.  It is cleaning today, and we aren’t doing it until 3pm.  So the chances that I am totally whiped out by then is just huge.  But maybe i can pull off a nap or something.   It is sunshiney again which is good.  it improves everyone’s mood, and I can feel it improve mine.  I don’t know if it is the vitamin d I might get during my 15 minutes in the sun or if it is my ability to feel the collective unconscience.

I have a ton of art projects to work on.  And I really need to clean my studio.  I think that maybe I need to add like 30 minutes to art time when I can that is just focused on cleaning.  I really need to go through all my materials and consolidate, or toss, or sell.  I need to make my studio more open.  right now I have two desks up against the windows and two desks pushed together in the middle of the floor to make an island work station.  I want to eventually get rid of the island.  And sort of consolidate a bunch of stuff along the wall, because we will have to move the zine library out of the bedroom to put the crib in there.  So many little things.

I really really really do not want to get rid of any of my art stuff.  And I get all depressed when I think about it.  But where would i put it.  I want the attic to come open so that we can rent it, but I also question the ability to pay for it.

June 23rd

Today it is stuffy and hot in my apt.  It was warm yesterday and looks like today will be the same.  And I didn’t open any windows last night except my bedroom one.  So it is stuffy and hot in here.  I should find the fan and plug it in.  But I probably won’t.  I want to hang out with someone today.  My friends don’t seem to exist anymore.  Maybe I’ll just treat myself to lunch at Butterfly Herbs.  maybe I’ll take the bike out for the first time of the season.  Of course I should work on my huge list of things to do.  But some times nurturing the spirit is more important than getting little things done.  Much of my list is calling people.  So maybe I won’t take the bike and call everyone on my walk.

I went on a road trip in the middle of the month.  It was good for me.  Just Josh Wagner and I, watching the road dissappear under his mighty truck.  My spirit was lifted.  There were a few things that sucked.  Like eating at my favorite ethiopian restaurant and getting sick because they use soy in their food.  Or having an allergy attack at Joel and Craigs house.  But mostly it was just all good stuff.  Seeing Alyssa in Portland.  Going to the chinese garden’s in Portland.  Going to Christian’s wedding reception in Olympia.  Going to the japanese garden’s in Seattle.  Going on a picnic with so many people I know in Seattle.

Luckly the week before we left I had started feeling better.  The whole month before that I was so sick all the time that doing anything was misserable.  I have been feeling good lately as well except for a chronically runny nose.  My nurse lady said I could drink as much coffee as i want, so that makes my whole fucking life better.  And I don’t care if she is wrong.  Because if one thing can bring me so much joy, then I doubt it is really going to be all that bad for the baby.

June 26th

it is hard to believe that June is almost over already.  But I feel like I say that at the end of every month.  Hell at the end of every day, the end of every week.  Time just flies faster and faster just like all the old people told us when we were little.

I have actually been feeling much better lately.  Cross your fingers it holds.  I am still a little tired, and I have a cronic runny nose.  But in general I am feeling much better.  I worked morning shifts the last two days, and unlike previously when I would return home and go to bed, I actually did stuff after work.  On friday I made dinner and went to Flippers with Aaron.  And yesterday Aaron and I went to the movies.  Of course I did have a bit of a nap yesterday.   I didn’t want to fall asleep I just did and then waking up from it was so hard that it made me cry.

Also yesterday I bought gluten free granola.  In the gluten free world, oats have always been a big controversy.  It has been decided that the oats themselves have no gluten in them, they are just usually grown with wheat, processed with wheat and what not, so as long as you get the certified gluten free oats you should be ok.  I have still always avoided them.  For one, I heard that they were still bad way back when.  And two, they were expensive.  Well, after the super huge availability of them, I realized that if they were actually “still bad”  then they wouldn’t be so widely consumed.  So when I saw some gluten free granola on a super sale.  I said “why not!!!”  and bought some.   So freaking good.  Although I think it might have contributed to my nap.

Gosh now I want to eat a bowl of it right now.  Should i not have my usual breakfast of peanut butter sandwich.  Will the granola make me sleepy?  I guess there is only one way to find out.

Note:  I don’t seem to have any adverse affects from eating the oats, except for the usual affect of them expanding in your stomach, and you feel insanely full until you don’t anymore and then you feel ridiculously hungry.  Just like old times.

July 3rd

On Wednesday we caught a mouse.  In our minds there was this hope that that was it.  The end of the mouse problem.  But this morning we caught another one.  Both on sticky traps, which are the least humane meanest traps.  But the most effective.  I am sort of ruthless when something is endangering my health.  So I don’t mind them.  Aaron doesn’t like them.  Now we just have a few traditional traps out.  But I definitely think I am going to buy some more sticky ones.  I feel like it is a battle.  Me against them.  Of course I still haven’t cleaned my studio and my closet.  So much crap.  So much work.  There really is more for me to do than I could ever even start to get done.  I need to take it one thing at a time.  I ask myself.  What is my biggest priority right now.  Right now it is to get my zine out.  And to search for cheap plane tickets to New York for the end of the summer.

Today we are going to dinner at our friends Pam and Steve’s.  It will be an excellent day.

click on it

In July 2008, I was still part of a zine collaborative here in Missoula called Slumgullion.  Debby Florence was the creator and main organizer of the group.  We had just started renting a space at the newly opened ZACC building and Debby wanted to do a 24 hour zine challenge event.  I was all about it.  But unfortunately the event ended up being on a weekend I was leaving town.  So I decided to go the Slumgullion space the weekend before and make my zine, with out having a crowd around.  I brought a box full of ephemera and art supplies, and on a little table in the middle of the room, I spent six hours making a 24 page zine.

Despite being asked to put the originals into an art show, and sell them.  I decided I couldn’t do that because I would not be able to make more color copies of the zine in the future.  Now three years later.  I have decided that I will stop production of color copies of the zine and sell all of the originals.  This is sort of a big deal for me.  This is probably my favorite zine that i have ever made.  The idea of taking it apart and selling the pieces is a little disturbing, but I also feel that it necessary.   It is time to move on.

So my plan is to post a page a week on my etsy store.

Link to first page posted.

Link to color copy of zine.

Link to black and white version of zine.

I was digging through a notebook and found a writing exercise I did this summer.  I was impressed by it and decided to type it up.

Growing Song

faces denote the places
growing song

and I may be wrong
but I can feel your face
peeling back
scrunching back
I can feel your face
becoming a different face

the places we have been
all of them denote
a different melody
a different way of being
a different message
a different meaning

and in the song we all
have our own interpretation
whether it is philosophical
or rhythmic
whether it is mental
or physical

you dance about the room
and I wonder about
the placement
of a certain adjective
Does it change anything?

your face
my face
are they becoming one
in wonderment

thinking and knowing
so different
yet so similar

and I can’t help
but wonder
when my idea
will become your dance
and vice a versa
and we will roll
smiling
dancing
thinking
into the future.

written 8/24/10

This is my most recent monthly zine.  I make a small eight page zine every month and send it out via snail mail.  I just began my sixth year.  Pretty crazy.  I have so many back issues that I don’t even have an idea of how many I have made.  It started as a weekly (that was crazy intense) then went to a biweekly for years and then in March 2009 I changed it to a monthly.

If you are interested in subscribing, send me an email at ladypajama@gmail.com

This website does not look anything like i want it to yet.  But it is a start.  I am learning little bit by little bit.

I am so much more focused on my art right now.  I am working on getting everything ready for the holiday season.  I am doing to holiday bazaars.  One, is on first friday and in a bar.  should be fun, if I don’t let  myself get to sloppy.  The second is the MADE fair and is totally a big deal.  It gets lots of traffic.  I wish I would have had more time to sew things or silk screen things.  I guess there is still time.  but my main focus is getting my calendar done.  I have only made it to may so far.

My mind likes to wander to all the amazing possibilities while i am writing.  Like I was just thinking.  It wouldn’t be to hard to come up with a stuffed animal pattern, and throw 10 – 15 of them together before then.  hmmm.  we shall see.

alright, I am going to try to make this website look a little better.  Wish me luck!

when I get this all figured out it will be oh so lovely.