The link below is a button on an elevator. You push it and it takes you to the top floor where you’ll find our art on display. But don’t make eye contact on the way up. The people in this building are weird.
Thank you to everyone who wrote to me this past week with compliments about our book, “The Traveler.” I received so many responses that I’m afraid I wasn’t able to write back to everyone, but I do appreciate all of the advice and encouragement that was sent. And while I’m on a “thank you” rampage, thanks to all of you for reading these ridiculous newsletters, for buying the fruit of our labor, and for letting us work from home. It’s been almost five years since I’ve punched a time clock, and I have you to thank. You are much appreciated.
See you next week.
-Dylan
Here’s the link to our art, but you knew that already…
Anyway, Jo played with carving some lino blocks for the first time this week, and I worked out a way to add bolts and wing nuts to a cloth doll without making it look like Frankenstein. The results were a new look for some block printed dolls, and a set of wings that can be positioned and tightened in place. It’s always fun to look at something from a new point of view. . . like the Dead Poet Society boys standing on their desks for their teacher, Mork. Or whoever.
Many of you have seen all the birds we’ve made with fork feet, so you can imagine I’ve bent my share of forks. So this week I just kept bending a fork until I was holding a miniature guitar stand in my hands. You would have thought from the look of pride on my face that I had just invented the wheel. Those little guitar stands, along with some miniature guitars and banjos, will be showing up soon on our poor, neglected space over on etsy.com.
That’s all for tonight, Oh Captain, My Captain.
Nanu Nanu
-Dylan
It’s the Time Life sneaker phone!
Here’s a link to our latest batch, and there will be more ornament prints listed on Tuesday…
Another honor bestowed upon us this week was having a picture of our Frida Kahlo doll published in a book! Here’s a link to amazon where the book is now available.
Mexican Popular Art
We’re on page 101, which is appropriate since we live right off of historic highway 101 here on the Oregon coast.
Jo and her mom went for a little one night get-away at a place up in the mountains with rustic cabins and natural hot springs to soak in. Apparently, Jo is about as good at packing as our 12 year old son. There was several feet of snow on the ground up there, and Jo only brought her sandals. Tired of walking on two wet popsicle feet, Jo took the extra garbage bags out of the trash can and tied them around her feet before slipping back on her sandals. What a hobo. I wonder if she wrapped a sandwich up in a newspaper for the trip.
-Dylan
Here’s what we made this week…
1. It’s heavy.
B. We couldn’t all agree on a movie.
Thirdly. I fell asleep at 7:30 PM.
I thought I was going to lay down for a half hour nap, but I woke up at midnight to a silent house. So I’ll probably be up until at least 4 AM and walk around like a zombie all day. Aren’t naps refreshing?
We had two mornings this week with snow on the ground. Every time is snows here on the Oregon coast, people say, “It’s so weird. It never snows here.” Well, we’ve lived here for almost five years now, and it’s snowed every year so far. I think global warming may be effecting people’s memory as well.
Well, friends, it’s almost 3 AM. Should I get heavily caffeinated and try to push through, or lay down with a flashlight and make shadow puppets until sleep overtakes me?
-Dylan
The other dark cloud I mentioned is building the giant man eating plant with Jo for our daughter’s school production of Little Shop of Horrors. It’s ten feet in length so far, including the slide that takes the actors through the mouth and safely backstage. I shouldn’t call it a dark cloud really, but it’s the type of thing that’s more enjoyable looking back upon after all the obstacles have been overcome. I will, of course, share pictures when it is completed. But for now, here’s a couple pictures of the model I built to explain my harebrained scheme to the drama class.
-Dylan
“So how long do we have?”
“Well, your lease agreement is just month to month, so…”
So…Jo and I decided not to look at it as a problem, but as an opportunity. We toyed with the idea of moving out of town. An eBay business is easy to relocate. All we need is internet service and a post office. We could go anywhere in the world. But it made more sense to stay in town and not uproot the kids. Jo and I spent the rest of that day searching in town for a place to live. By the end of the day we had found it, and even acquired the kid’s enthusiastic stamp of approval on it. We move in on April 26th.
Now, we have less than two weeks to pack everything we own, AND finish that giant man eating plant for our daughter’s play. So this means that we won’t be making anything new for our auctions next week. We will, however, be having a eBay garage sale next week for a lot of our old art pieces and some general knickknacks that are surfacing as we disassemble the house. No one needs this much stuff. It’s a miracle that our house didn’t sink into the sand.
-Dylan
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
So much has happened this week that I hardly have the energy left to write it out. But I’ll try. Ever since we got the call saying that our landlords had sold our house, we have been in constant motion. We attacked each dark corner and closet with such ruthlessness that a 14 foot moving truck had to be rented just to get the rejected items to the dump. And every time we boxed up a tool or any other insignificant item, we then would immediately have a need for that item in building the giant plant for our daughter’s play.
Building that plant, which is nearly done, has been an enormous undertaking on its own. We first imagined Jo sculpting the head out of giant blocks of Styrofoam, which wash up and remain in the secluded areas of the bay. They are generally used for floating docks, which eventually get torn apart by floods. I spent several hours on my own taking the canoe out to these spots to hunt for it. While tromping through a marshy area, the mud swallowed up my lower half and tried to keep me there. Luckily, I managed to get free, and even fish my boots out of the hole.
The Styrofoam didn’t work out. You can kind of tell when your on the wrong path if you’re willing to listen to that little voice in your head. We eventually cut giant Rubbermaid garbage cans into the basic head shape, and Jo covered that with packing paper, and about 20 pounds of masking tape. The next two layers were paper mache, and the paint will go on tomorrow.
So there’s an account of a small fraction of this week. Oh yeah, I had a birthday in there too. We didn’t have time to work on any art, so we’ve listed some old art that has just been sitting on our shelves for years. I’ll be listing more art pulled from the cartbeforethehorse time capsule on Tuesday. Hopefully we’ll have some new items to list on Sunday.
I usually try to slip a couple of jokes in these newsletters. Sorry. I guess I’m spent. Wait, hold on.
Knock knock. . .
You’re supposed to say “who’s there.”
If you’re not going to play along then just forget it.
-Dylan
Did you miss me?
Here’s the link to our auctions. We sill have some moving sale items that will end on Wednesday, and we now have a couple of new pieces that will start Tuesday night and end on Sunday.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
So. . .I’m sitting in an empty house typing on my computer, which sits stubbornly on a folding table in the corner refusing to go to its new home. The move to the new house went smoothly. We had a lot of help from friends and family, which made life easy. We ordered too many subs to feed all those volunteer workers, so it’s been subs for breakfast and subs for lunch since then. Getting all the utilities hooked up to the new house has been challenging, since Jo’s paperwork curse has followed us. Our new street was renamed not long ago, so most of the time on the phone with the utility companies has been spent trying to prove that our house exists and is in their jurisdiction. I can’t begin to tell you the whole story about getting internet access through the cable company, but the fact that I’m writing this at the old house should give you a clue.
I still need to show you pictures of the giant, man-eating plant we made, but I’ll have to save that for when all of my electronic gear is in one place.
Until then. . .
-Dylan
Jo hates when I say “holy smokes.”
Anyway, here’s our single, solitary listing, and there’s more to come on Tuesday.
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZcartbeforethehorse
Our daughter’s play is amazing! They’ve performed “Little Shop of Horrors” for three consecutive nights now, and there is one more performance to go next week. The plant Jo and I made to swallow the actors was a big hit. Here’s a link to a picture that appeared in the local paper. I’ll try to share some better pictures later, but this one is handy right now.
Our new house is built on a hill, so you enter on the second floor. If you didn’t go downstairs, you’d assume that we’ve been living here for a year or more. There’s art on the walls and everything is in its place. Downstairs is cooler like a basement, and organized about as well as one. We’re still living out of boxes down there, but at least we have this upper level facade to trick visitors.
Our cat went around the new house and yard in a state of extreme alertness, staying low and using caution at every unfamiliar turn. But her stay here was brief. She has been fighting kidney disease for over a year now. Her kidneys finally failed, making her very sick very quickly. We had her put to sleep on Friday while Jo held her and I scratched behind her ears. Much of the painting Jo has done in the last few years was done with that cat perched on her shoulder, and I rarely fell asleep to any sound besides purring. She will be missed.
-Dylan