California knows how to party..

Although I am Celtics girl in my heart, I will always have love for my second home California. Ashkahn Shahparnia just designed a special Laker's edition California Love t-shirt. Nice and bright just in time for the Summer time. You can also get it as a print too. Bumpin and grindin like a slow jam, it's West side...

clare von cupcake..

clare von cupcake has a whole ton of art up and ready for your viewing pleasure tomorrow night at brown bear in sf. i love clare's 'good luck' pieces a whole lot. and her feathers. and her cars. you can see all of the work she's been working real hard on at her flickr page. clare's a real card, she's got a great sense of humor. i love her captions on her photos and the way she writes in her blog. she not only talks about art she's working on but her beautifulbicycle's rack and other such lovely things like her drawings ofjemaine from flight of the conchords. sigh. clare is also a fellowspeaker of abbrevenese (lol, totes, jk, etc). she actually rocks an lol tattoo. (which makes me kind of love her.)

Brooks Shane Salzwedel..

The layered, cloudy intensity that abounds in Brooks Salzwedel's work is incredible. Brooks recently sent me images of new work that you see here. His combination of shapes both from the natural and man made world leave me completely impressed. Numerous cranes among clouds hovering above an island seem to only make sense in his beautifully murky worlds. Be sure to check out how he has reinterpreted tin boxes. Crazy. See the tins and more of his work at Black Maria's Gallery site.

growing new piece buy alison sommers..

when i was a little girl, i would get lost in my mom's humongous art history book. often times i would find myself at the hieronymous bosch images. i would spend hours looking and pretending i was in the paintings running w/ the plum headed naked peeps. ha! well, what do you want, i was an inner city latch key kid...my imagination was my bff.

i think, perhaps that is why i absolutely love allison sommers' work. i get lost looking at all the little details and story lines of her wonderfully, intricate gouache paintings. take a look at her latest painting above. there so much to look at and apply meaning and wonder to. just look at that little guy. i just want to hug him and help him grab those berries.

allison tells a bit about the painting on her blog:

"streeetch for that berry, buddy...so, the rats are back once againin my paintings, this time providing moral support for difficult times.(puberty all alone in the woods is, after all, a most difficult time). i've heard it [sic] tell that the aukle birds nearby provide very little supportand only clean crumbs off his face if he's very, very still."

O My Organization an auspicious beginning

O boy do I have a story for you.First of all, welcome to O My Organization Week here on O My Family, a week in which I hope to at least do a little something (or maybe a few little somethings) to keep my life in check and then at the end I invite you to join me. Sound good? M’kay good.This, friends (even those I haven’t met yet), is one of my cupboards. The cereal/boxed mixes/nuts/soy sauce/raisin/crouton cupboard, to be exact.(This picture has a little surprise in it. Can you find it?)Y’all have one of these, too, right? TELL ME YOU HAVE ONE TOO.That cupboard, you know the one, that spills over every time you open it? The one with all of the uncategorized foods shoved in? The one with the unruly cereal bags wreaking havoc on your sanity?!?Yes, that one. I decided to kick off O My Organization Week by giving said cupboard a nice swift kick in the cluttered pants. You ready? First item of business: them cereal bags.I have been talking for a long time about getting storage containers for our cereal because, well see above for exhibit A, and also we buy our cereal in bulk so (16 year old me would never have thought I would have an occasion to say this:) I need a good way to keep my bulk grains organized.Well if that last statement doesn’t betray me as a Costco shopper, I don’t know what does (Ok, maybe the absurd number of dinner rolls on my counter). Costco, always good for 36 eggs or 5lbs of gummy bears, was also the location of my most recent organizational find: a set of 3 cereal snapware containers!How perfect is that?! We usually have about 2 types of cold cereal at a given time (Cheerios and other) and OBaby and I eat oatmeal together every morning, so 3 would be the ideal number of containers for us. I was thrilled to find them (and for only $10 with instant rebate!).So thrilled in fact, that I got home and began purging my cupboard to make a blank slate for my pretty new cereal containers.This is where O My Organization Week and I had a little falling out. A falling otherwise known as Allison Forgot to Measure the Height of Her Cupboard Before Purchasing the Cereal Containers.O the shame.This organized gig? Apparently it’s hard. Or so I’m learning. Mostly out of determination to have a good post for you guys but partially out of pride at not wanting to be outsmarted by BPA-free plastic, I brainstormed alternatives. The best one I could come up with was to move the drawer/shelf down one notch so that the containers would fit, except the shelf under this one has too many tall items for that to be possible, so I decided to flop top shelves with an other cabinet and lower that one because it is above canned goods and although some of them are stacked and therefore too tall, there’s enough space out in the pantry for those stacked cans which would make it possible to lower that drawer.(Aren’t you just so glad it’s organization week?!?! Forget baby knee chub, let’s talk bulk grains! and canned goods! and shelf settings!)I’m sorry. That was my sarcastic/negative side sneaking out. I really didn’t mean that. This week is going to be great.Really.Anyway, so the cereal/boxed mixes/nuts/soy sauce/raisin/crouton shelf was now to switch with the pasta/quinoa/bread crumbs/unopened Parmesan cheese (?!) shelf and we were going to have ourselves a tidy little contained cereal situation.(Those pesky stacked cans were soonly taken care of.)This is me so! proud! that I am going to such great lengths for organization that I am even willing to move shelves. Yay me! Yay O My Organization Week! Yay bulk grains!And this is me after realizing that this shelf is actually skinnier than the other one by several inches and therefore will not fit the 3 cereal containers side-by-side.I think this is what they call organizational planning failure.After hitting my head a few more times against that drawer, I  mumbled a couple of unsavory words, got up, and left the kitchen in absolute disarray (one might even say, unorganized?) and fled to my room for a good pillow screaming.O yes, friends. This week is going to be great.PS: DanO, seeing my distress, put everything back on the shelves as it was before to be tackled another day.Until next time, BPA-free plastic and bulk grains. Until next time.Organization Tip: Measure first. O for Pete’s sake, measure first.

opening photos of maria forde's show at n+p..

Andrew, co-proprietor of Needles + Pens just posted opening shots of Maria Forde's show Advice Portraits. Check 'em out here. (for those of you that are Jawbreaker fans, you may appreciate the below portrait.)Will get a load of what a peach Maria is? SO cute.

Corey Arnold Fish-Work..

Corey Arnold's show Fish-Work opened this past Friday at Fecal Face Dot Gallery. I really need to swing by to check out the photographs in person. They look incredible. I love that he couples wit with the seriousness of the ocean. Not all of these are in the show...but I had to include that bottom photograph, because it rules so hard.

You can purchase the above print here.

Images from Fecal Face.com and Richard Heller Gallery.

studio visit with tony bevilacqua..

This past Friday I was fortunate enough to meet up with Tony Bevilacqua and his fiancé Alicia Cornwell at their home in Jamaica Plain (a part of Boston, which also happens to be my home town and where I currently live now). Tony and Alicia own the company Chromalab, they re-purpose found furniture and accessories into colorful, way cool restored and rejuvenated pieces. If I were a design blog, believe me I would have taken tons of photos of their home, as it's AMAZING. So many cool pieces abound...many lamps and chairs, cabinets, etc from their company. I highly encourage you to check them out.

So I came to their house to check out Tony's work. Previously, I had posted about him in February and I thought it would be rad to do a studio/home tour with him and Alicia so you could get a better look at his work and workspace...It is by far the cleanest studio I have ever been in! Plus the inspiring things all over the place? Wow. Oh and how could I forget to mention the best part? Maddie, the friendliest cat I have ever met. Be sure to check out Tony's etsy shop too.

Chris Warren cd, designed by Tony.

The hostess with the mostes; Maddie.

BABY TIME!!!!!!!!!

My water broke at 6 o’clock this morning!! I was pretty excited to get one more good night of sleep…

We stayed in bed until about 8..

Got up.. showered got ready.. and Aaron is dropping the dog off at his parents house right now!

I’m just finishing getting stuff together..

The contractions are like every 2-5 minutes but really short.. only about 20-30 seconds and not too painful. I can talk and walk through them.

Everyone send good thoughts for a fast labor!!! :)

God doesnt want me to be skinny.

He wants me to be His.He wants me to love him more than anything else on earth (even girl scout cookies).He wants my attention.He wants me to love what he has given me (even my generous hind parts).He wants me to care for what he has given me.He wants me to trust Him.He wants me to know the freedom that is in Christ.(even freedom from food-guilt)(even freedom from what the scale says)(even freedom from low self-esteem)He wants me to know that He made me for more.(even more than feeling like a prisoner in my own body)(even more than trying to be skinny)My weight loss journey is not about being skinny. It is not about how I look. It is not about a number on a scale or on my clothing tag or on the weights I lift or even on a BMI calculator.It is about who I am.It is about being disciplined. It is about the search for true satisfaction (and realizing that it’s not at the bottom of the brownie pan). It is about learning what’s a need and what’s a want. It is about leaning into these heart struggles, these soul struggles and getting to the root of them.If I get to my goal weight and am still carrying around the same extra spiritual baggage, then I’m doing it wrong. Because let’s face it: if I’m not filled with the joy God has given me now, today, I will not be filled with that joy just because my pants are two sizes smaller.God doesn’t want me to be skinny. He wants me to be His.:: :: :: :: :: ::My Journey to Health:April 6, 2012: 161lbsMarch 31, 2012: 163lbsFebruary 29, 2012: 166lbsJanuary 30, 2012: 174lbsDecember 30, 2011, 187 lbs26 lbs lost!:: :: :: :: :: ::How am I losing that weight, you ask? Medifast!! If you use the coupon code, OFAMILY56, and sign up for Medifast Advantage, when you order $250+, you’ll receive 56 free Medifast Meals and free shipping! (More details at the bottom of this post.)Disclosure: I receive free product in order to evaluate and comment on my experiences on the Medifast Nursing Mothers Program. I will only ever tell you how I actually feel about this experience and the Medifast products. Pinky swearsies. I am supposed to tell you that the Medifast Program is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or illness and that any medical improvements noted while on the program are related to weight loss in general, and not to Medifast products or programs. K, you got that? Good. There will be a quiz later.

our first and failed attempt potty training part 1

So help me, if one more person tells me that my son is too young for me “to be trying to potty train him”, my head is going to explode into 87 bajillion tiny pieces.I am not the one wanting to potty train. Please believe me, I did not initiate this. Sure, I bought some potties from Ikea and a book or two about how big boys put their poop and pee into the potty, but that’s about it.And then one day he started telling me before he needed to poop.For the most part, we use cloth diapers (although this summer we have earned a whopping D- in that department, road trips, vacations, and general laziness, then whoops! Will you look at that? We just went through an entire Costco case of ‘sposies. ::hangs head::) which I think has helped a lot in the self-initiation of potty training. A soiled cloth diaper is just not as comfortable as a soiled disposable diaper and I think OBoy caught on to what was up down there because of that.Alright, so the poop thing happened here an there, but really my arms are full of baby these days, so I wasn’t really chomping at the potty training bit. Until one time, when OBoy told me he had to poop and I ignored him.::lalala fingers in my ears I don’t have time for this right now thankyouverymuch::Until he had to just put it in his diaper out of necessity.O, the mother guilt. My kiddo had figured out that he doesn’t want to put his poop in his diaper and I was not proud or encouraging or helpful. Oooooo, the guilt.And so it was that after feeling like a right proper wench for doing what I did, I decided that OBoy deserves better. He deserves for me to help him learn what he wants to know. He deserves to be encouraged and supported.{{Even about pooping.}}To test the waters, I checked out a book from the library called “How to Potty Train your Kid in One Day”. HA. HAhahahahah. One day. I read it with a few truckloads of salt grains, because if there’s anything parenting has taught me it’s that the books are FULL OF IT, especially the ones that make promises. But it WAS helpful for breaking up all of the skills involved in training – pulling down and up pants and undies, washing and drying hands, wiping, flushing, etc. – things I’d never really considered. It’s just all about getting the P&P where it needs to go, right? I also read an extensive article online about the “three day” potty training method. This one was more my style, so we made plans to do that soon, but in the time being, we began to work on those skills.We started having OBoy wipe himself when we were changing his diaper. We started letting him flush after we went potty. We started having him pull up and down his pants. We spent a LOT of time talking about diapers and potties and undies and where things are supposed to go. I bought a couple kiddo books and checked out others from the library about big boy potties.Then, one Saturday two weeks ago we finally dove into the potty training deep end.And it sucked.Like, really, really sucked.We followed the three day training model where you basically put potties all around the house (no, seriously, we own 5 potties for such a time as this), take off the kiddo’s pants and diaper, and WATCH HIM. Watch him watch him watch him while pumping him full of liquids, liquids, and salty snacks so he’ll drink more liquids. Then, when he starts to go, you rush him to the nearest potty and try to get some in it. Eventually he comes to associate what he now sees happening with the feeling that it’s about to happen. Sounds like a hoot, right?{just drawing with chalk… pants-less}So it’s 9am and we’re drinking and watching, drinking and watching. Then it’s 10. Drinking, watching, snacking, drinking. Then it’s noon. Watching, drinking… you get it. Then it’s 1:00 and we admit defeat, put a diaper on him, and lay him down for nap.ONE O’CLOCK! NO POOP OR PEE IN A 4 HOUR PERIOD, and a very well hydrated 4 hour period no less. DanO and I followed that kid around like secret service agents and nothing. Not a drop.He did of course, soak his way clear through his naptime diaper, though. {{Surprise!}}DanO and I were so beyond frustrated. How are we supposed to be reinforcing something so that he learns it when it only happens once in a blue moon? Frustrated parents do not good potty trainers make, so we threw in the towel. We did! We said forget this, he can be in diapers until he’s 10 or figures it out on his own because it’s not worth the amount of anxiety and frustration that we just felt.To be continued…{{because really, no one wants to read 1,000 words about potty training in one sitting, plus my “poop” quota for the day has been met and exceeded.}}

Process Inspiration Allison Sommers..

******This week's Process/Inspiration brings us Allison Sommers. The world she has created is magnificent. Filled with adorably, grotesque beings who are sometimes dressed in lederhosen or beasts with teeth of razors and a sparkle in their eye and there always seems to be meat like objects strewn about within Allison's work. Sounds bizarre, and it is for sure but she creates her painted universe with such ease and fine technique, it's impossible to not fall head over heels into it. Covering both process and inspiration, Allison shares with us a painting in progress for her upcoming solo show, Schlaraffenland at Thinkspace. Comment section is open to engage with the lovely lady.******

I figured I would start by showing a recent painting I've been working on, Temple Monkeys, from start to not yet finished. First, it started with a tiny drawing that amused me...

...working on the lineart.  I typically free-hand the enlargement tokeep it dynamic. When I trace or grid drawings, they tend to lose someof their strength, get a little awkward...

On to the background and filling in the guts behind the little Pugg-y fellows. I wanted to keep the viscera within a somewhat limited palette, so they're mostly comprised of a few premixed colors. You can see a bit of my thumbnail color study in the above pic.

On to the first pugg. At this stage, there's a lot of blending involved, which is where gouache can be a little dodgy. It's tedious.

And to his eyes. I did a study painting earlier to work out the technique.

Colorblocking the second fellow. Especially with darker colors, I find it's easier to blend big areas of solid color like this, mooshing them back and forth with increasingly soft brushes until I'm happy with it.

Working the highlights in before painting the hair on top saves me a bit of time-- it's definitely quicker to do this with a little blending rather than working it up with individual hairs.

Second fellow is getting some eyes, and more definition in his hair. I'm still working on this one, so you'll have to wait until my May show to see the finished product.

So, here's where I work. These are the tools I use on a regular basis. The brushes in the fold of my rag are the 'active' brushes, the ones to the right are superfluous, and the ones below those are worn-out but still useful for hard blending and texturing and whatnot. There are watercolor pencils for extra color boosts, tortillians for blending them in, x-acto knives to pick out foozles that fall in the paint, an eraser shield for... shielding erasing. The note on my laptop says "ONE THING," which I tape over the touch pad when I'm having issues keeping myself focused.

Here's the mess to the left of me. The tray holds my various...jars... clean water jar, the trash water jar which always smells likeeggs, and the ones upside down are the colors I keep forunderpainting.  There are all the brand-new brushes, and the crapbrushes I use for frisket. The jar tops hold large batches of colorI've mixed together-- that teal on top, for instance, is the mastercolor for my long-necked fellows.I use those Audubon books for reference, and to the right of them aremy last few sketchbooks, to which I refer back for painting ideas.

These are my color studies from paintings past-- I posted about these a while ago on my blog.I love these.  They make me want to have a dollhouse so I can hang themon the wall. There are repeated paintings because I was trying out(read: fighting with) different colorways.

A few recent sketchbook spreads:

Lately I've been attempting to work larger, and as a means of not totally botching the composition I've been using these grids. Perhaps only one or two of the grid squares end up making it to the painting stage, but they're at least good thought experiments.

So, onto the 'inspiration' part-- I've been feeling particularly inspired by children's books lately, so instead of boring folks with an exhaustive survey of the contents of my bookshelf, I'll limit myself...

My partner introduced me to Mecki a few years ago, and this book in particular is a delight.  It also happens to illustrate Schlaraffenland, which is the subject of my next show, so I'll stay mum until then.

One of the illustrators that had a large impact on my childhood is Ed Emberley. I don't even think I was much attracted to the way in which he draws--I've always loved extremely detailed work, and his is spare andsimple-- but his how-to drawing books illuminate the alchemy ofdrawing. Each drawing has an inventory of how many lines and dots andwhatnot are used to compose each object-- it's a funny, literal way ofdrawing that really amused me as a child.

My partner introduced me to Ali Mitgutsch,whose work reminds me a little of Martin Handford's, except with lessdirect narrative.  You really have to 'walk around' in the paintings tograsp all that's going on, and they're really charming.  I've alwaysbeen partial to that sort of nose-to-book absorption, and I like to doit a bit with my own work-- I find it intoxicating.

Ok, non-children's book bonus.My mother had (past tense, because they were secreted out of her bookshelves to live with me) a collection of B. Kliban books that were mysterious and hilarious to me when I was little, mostly because he has a puerile sense of humor that I was too young to get. I knew they were naughty, though. I think they altered my brain wiring in some way, and as I look over the books I can definitely see his impact on my work. I've been particularly thinking about him during the Temple Monkeys piece, where more than one of the viscera bloobers ended up looking like weird genitals.

Ah, I nearly forgot: I do share the studio. Here is Ludwig.

Right, then, that's enough from me. I'll be hard at work for my May show, Schlaraffenland, at Thinkspace, so if you're interested please do check my blog, for updates in the interim. Thanks so much to Meighan for the opportunity!