. . . had lotsa fun

painting this piece. It's about 44 x 44" and although it looks crooked in the picture, it's not. . . that's just my photography and the fact that the canvas kept falling down around me as I tried to tape it to the wall. Anyway, there are lots of layers, marks, splashes, circles. . . just really letting go and seeing where it all took me. I used the brayer on this, too. And, just for good measure and because it felt good to do so, I had a piece of twine that I had embedded into another canvas, covered it with white gesso, and then removed it, and I flung this twine onto this canvas in random places.


In other news: my mother called last night to tell me that "Osage City is on fire". . . I made her explain what she meant. Apparently several buildings were damaged and/or destroyed by a fire in my hometown, and she, along with apparently everyone else in town, went to watch the fire. All the buildings in the "downtown" area are old and usually they have not been repaired or restored, but rather covered in lovely vertical sheets of metal siding. Or just left to do whatever old buildings do. So it's a wonder that the entire downtown didn't go up in flames. There's not much left of it anyway. But it's sad. . . the entire block that included my dad's store back in the day was razed a few years back, because the last building on the block just fell down. The city decided that the rest of the block was just minutes away from collapse, so now there's nothing where there used to be a bowling alley (movie theater before that), grocery store, doctor's office and bakery. See video here.



And perhaps you read my previous post on the status of the lovely junkyard on I-35 just south of Kansas City. A 20-acre veritable treasure trove for photographs of rusted piles of junk. And an eyesore. The State has moved in and started crushing everything in sight and hauling it off. I'm sad. . . I thought that mess would be there for a long time for me to take pictures. According to the paper, however, there are armed guards there now, keeping sightseers away. And apparently other people saw the treasure in that pile of junk, too. Historical automobile buffs are sad about the demise of the junkyard, too. The owner and the state got into a pissing contest over the area, and of course the state won.


And finally: I put Joe and Betsy into the shower last night with plastic bowls, measuring cups and a can of shaving cream. They would have stayed in there for hours playing. And they created some of the coolest contemporary abstract art with the shaving cream on the doors of the shower. I only wish I could have run downstairs and picked up the camera to record the masterpieces.