BENEFITS OF BIKING

Health you say? Maybe, but it's dangerous riding a bike around the Atlanta streets.
I keep it close to my hood so it's not to bad.
The best benefit as of late is this chair and this Donnie and Marie footlocker.



Found while riding bike on bulk trash pickup day in East Point.
I ran the chair photo through Photo Shop cause it was a bad photo and I couldn't fix it and didn't feel like taking another one.

FROM MOBILES LAGNIAPPE NEWSPAPER

"I’ve got no use for regret. One thing an ancient man like me can tell you is that it’s all part of life. You make mistakes, you learn. If you’re smart, you don’t make the same mistakes again. And if you’re me, you’ll make the same ones three or four times. But it’s all part of being human, and that’s a beautiful thing.” — Male, 79

my office

This is the front end of my work shop. Often folks pull up and ask if the restaurant is open? "No" I tell them "and get out of my backyard". I just happen to have a SPORTSMAN GRILL sign hanging in my back yard, right outside my work shop. Inside my shop I have a mess. I'm currently making 4 pieces of art for a new restaurant. It is a sushi restaurant so the paintings need to fit. I was given a crude xerox of a photo of a door at at Japanese restaurants that looked like an umbrella. You know like a huge version of the paper umbrellas in your foo foo drinks at the beach resorts. I was asked if I could do some kind of umbrella type thing around 6' in diameter. Sure I could. Could I give them an example of what I would do? Sure I could.
So I gave them this. By the way "them" is the architect firm Peace Designs. They are doing the design for this sushi restaurant.
Anyway I did this small sample of my idea for the umbrellas with different paints and papers for collage.


It is hard to see, but I have collaged different papers for the umbrella. Some of it is Japanese newspaper, some is silver leaf, some is different color tissue paper. I dripped paint for the seams of the umbrella.
These guys also wanted to have me reproduce the back side of a Japanese playing card. This is the image they gave me.



This is what I did. It was small about 2' square. They (peace design) liked it and wanted it to be 6ft X 3.5ft. No problem I told them.


So this is what the "office" is looking like right now. It's a mess.



I bought about 10 Japanese newspapers. I used those to collage two of the umbrellas. For the third umbrella I used the yellow paper with the red print from the sample above. I spent about six hours on each just applying the paper. Some of it I tore into pieces about 2 inches. Some I cut into pieces about twice that size. I then glued each piece down to plywood.

This is what they are looking like right now. Stand by for the finished product.

DON'T MESS WITH LIL' LADY aka STACEY

You can tell by the timing of my last two post Mardi Gras is long gone for 2011. It was a great year. All the right people came to town, except one Chef who was really missed. All went well, we had some folks march with the Fish for their first time, we had some guy from Hawaii show up with his dog. Everyone fell in love with Kola and his handler. Hope they come back next year.

Next year? It's gonna be our 20th parade. It's gonna be special and I'm sure painless. We expelled all the pain this year.

Expelling pain, that's the last thing I remember.

Last thing I remember Stacey was chasing some guy out the back door of our cottage.
The guy just walked in the back door looked around, called out "HELLO" and helped himself to my bottle of Ketel One. Stacey caught him on the back stoop and he was lucky I was there to stop her from beating his ass. She was mad. And scared. Don't mess with mad and scared.

That's the last thing I remember.

No wait, the last thing I remember is falling in my moms backyard and landing on my nose. Nothing but my face and the pea gravel walkway. That sucked. And it hurt. You don't want to mess with sucked and hurt.

That's the last thing I remember.

No wait, the last thing I remember is riding on a KOR float on Mardi Gras day wondering where the hell Jeff was.

That's the last thing I remember.

BUILDING THE 2011 MYSTIC FISH

This year Stacey and I trimmed off parts of last years fish and built off of the remainder.
You can see the side fins are from last year by the left over paint job. A good part of the body was left in tact to build off of. This years idea was just to build a pretty, symmetrical fish.
The symmetrical part went well til I got to the ass end of the fish and then......
Oh well, this years fish had a big fat ass. But, she was pretty. And yes, those are nerf footballs cut in half for the eyes.

MARDI GRAS 2011

The 2011 Mardi Gras season is underway. It began for Stacey and me Feb. 11 at the Osirus Ball where I was elected President of the U.S.
It was their 30th. 30 and Dirty was their theme this year. The Osirus Ball is the best. Always fun and entertaining. We had a table right up front and that give one a really good view of the tableau. Of coarse it was all about Dirty. Dirty Laundry, Dirty Martini, Dirty Politics ect.

We have also enjoyed a few parades and the Juno Ball. The Juno was good fun also. Lots of dancing. They had two good bands, one old school and one playing the latest dance hits.

The Mystic Fish are set to roll out their 19th parade. The float committee has been hard at work.
The food committee has been hard at work. Everything is in order and it's sure to be another great weekend for the Fish. The Mystic Fish are a very eclectic group with folks coming from all over the United States to participate. The Mystic Fish are by far the greatest Mardi Gras Krewe in the world. Here's a peek at this years Fish Float.

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

If you really want to get to know someone there are a few ways to go about it.
You can play golf with said person, travel to a foreign country with that person, or donate art to said persons fav charity. I have used all three ways to learn about a person and all three ways work.

Recently I had a lady ask me to donate a painting to an organization she is part of for a fund raiser. She even ask me to paint a particular subject for the event. She even went so far as to give me photos of veggies to work from. I told her I would try and paint a picture of vegetables as she wished, but I told her I did not think veggies would work so well with my painting style. I also told her not to worry I would have a painting ready and I would make sure it got them in time for her event as I had for the last 4 years.

Well I must say the veggies worked out well and I really like the painting. This is it.



So I took the veggie painting and a pig painting to the event site and let them pick which painting they would want for their fund raiser. Of course they picked the pig painting cause everyone in Atlanta is watching Kevin Gillespie cook pork all the way to a TOP CHEF championship. Pig is really hot right now and I knew they would want the pig. Here is a photo of said pig. Called it SOUTHSIDE. Clever huh.



Then I sent an email asking the nice lady who ask me to donate a painting for fund raiser if I would be comped 2 tickets to fund raiser event as I had been for the last 4 years. Here is where I learned what this nice lady who ask me to donate painting really thought of me and my art work.

In the nice ladies attempt to find out if I would be comped two tickets to the fund raiser I was cc'd in, I'm sure by accident, on an very insightful exchange of emails.

Did you decide on this? How should we respond….either way is fine. He really delayed on all this and the painting will probably not bring in much so if we say we are sold out at this time I am just fine with that.

Sorry…thought you got this…each artist gets 1 comp ticket and one ticket to buy for $50, but we are sold out, so he can only get his one comp ticket at this point.?

Some nice lady huh?
As Mr. Janky would say "OH WELL"