Lots of Weird Turmoil, a Change of Pace, but Always the Art

This blog looks remarkably sad right now, but a series of unfortunate events beset me sometime between December 9th and April of this year - in no particular order

1) user error meant I ended up deleting a chunk of photos which I used both in this and the art.aliciaraya.com blog - this is what happens when a person relies too much on Google +

2) a house fire the day after my birthday meant that the hard drive where the photos were stored, as well as the paintings themselves, not to mention the stuff we need to live day to day, ended up a bit sooty though blessedly undamaged, and now is all housed in a storage disaster area

3) a weird winter frost made our car drive off a cliff and, aside from almost losing life & limb, we almost lost a vehicle. Blessedly, neither of the above was the case.It was not fun times though. From what I hear, many people had ice/winter misadventures this year

4) the various venues where we were doing our art selling, throughout 2014, dried up or went away - and that includes Hot Springs. Meanwhile while this was occurring Jimbo & I transitioned to making a living off writing, which all became a convenient segue that the writing came in just as the art was heading out. I made a halfhearted effort to create & promote an Etsy site, but my heart & talents do not reside in the promoting realm, so I was happy to let it go. One of the last places we sold was the Marshall Farmer's Market, and even though I still am in charge of the website upkeep, the distance has made us not sell again there this season.


Some good things too, though:

1) as stated, we were able to successfully produce various writing pieces for a project of Guardian Media, Contributoria, thanks to reader support. Our very textual, political, and informative output can be found here and here

2) a wonderful patron came to visit us a couple of months before the fire and bought ten of our larger pieces. This is a wonderful art collector who used to be established in Asheville but has been living in Portland for some time.

3) we have found a wonderful new home in a commune situation in Bat Cave NC where I have once again found an opportunity to explore nature, gardening, etc.

4) in spite of having been the world's worst promoter, I have received interest from the internet in viewing the Turner project!! Very exciting, just to hear from a new friend of art, and to know that there's hope and life for a project I had placed in the back burner, though not completely abandoned.

5) in a wonderful full circle/closure to living in Marshall, Elizabeth Topper, the artist who bought some raw wood from us a couple of times & the first time right at the time of this Turner painting project, came the very week we were vacating the blighted property at Riddle Farm Rd/Hwy 25/70 for good, and purchased more raw materials.

We still have lots and lots of the coolest wood on earth for sale, of all shapes, sizes, and for all purposes. We are storing the raw wood with a friend in Madison County, but will most likely soon consolidate it all towards a storage unit somewhere

6) I have had the opportunity to work on two barn quilt successfully already - these are those lovely quilt blocks one sees on the outsides of buildings now & again. Am successfully finishing my 2nd commission of these. The fun thing re working with these is that they are very geometrical, therefore all the creativity functions in terms of colour combinations. I also like that a predetermined set of lines, and established patterns speak to a larger quilt canon. This is my convoluted way of saying "I enjoy working on these, y'all!"

As can be seen, I am still in the drawing phase. This one will be 2x2, and I've yet to hit on a colour scheme, but I hope it ends up as lively and interesting as the other one.

I am charging $250 for this, and I have found that my prices are very competitive because I do not place a limit on colours or patterns available. If anyone is interested in having their own quilt barn - or in buying wood, as mentioned earlier - please leave a comment.

One of the last times Jimbo and I had an opportunity to set up as Marshall Artists (which is the rubric under which we had been operating, as many in Hot Springs and West Asheville know) was at a recent fun event organized by Move to Amend & REAL Cooperative, called the Corporate Person Birthday party - we made one princely sale though, probably more importantly, we got to share our vision and message with plenty of likeminded folk. Some pictures to follow (until I manage to delete my G+ folder again, ha ha)

minding the booth

a very interesting bus

happy birthday corporate personhood!

Jimbo with his epic hair!!

that interesting GMO car I've been seeing around town for years

So, in the end, it has been a fun & interesting time. Hope that everyone's doing great, and would love to hear from some folks!