New Art! Love it!

Look at the fabulousness I just got in the mail, from an up-and-coming artist whose work I just love - SO AWESOME!!  Auntie Paula is happy!  Thank you SO MUCH!

Julie Speidel's sculptures

Good morning my most favorite small humans!

I am in a most excellent mood this morning because I am almost on vacation!  Yay!  So I won't be writing next week, but will get back to you after that.  How are you?  How are the first weeks of summer going? 

Next week Uncle Patrick and I are going Bigfoot hunting (not really, we just like to say that – we're really just going camping) in Washington State.  So I chose a fabulous sculptor from the Pacific Northwest for this weeks artist.  Her name is Julie Speidel and she became a sculptor in part because she first tried to be a jewelry maker but she failed at it, so decided to become a sculptor and mostly taught herself.  I'm always a fan of people who fail, pick themselves back up, try something new and accomplish fabulous things!  Julie has been called the "greatest living woman Northwest sculptor" which cracks me up, because there are so many limitors on that.  It's like saying she's the greatest sculptor in the world..if you only look at a small part of the US, and only look at women, and only women who are alive right now.  And what does it matter if a sculptor is a man or a woman?  She's just an awesome sculptor, regardless of whether she has girl or boy personal bits.  People are silly.

But here are some pictures of her work, with really is terrific and interesting and fun to look at.

In the first one, in the background is Mt. Rainier…in just a few days I will be standing at the foot of that very same mountain!  According to the weather on the internet it's 70 degrees at the bottom of the mountain today, but there is snow at the top – which is kind of cool.  I have a picture from a long time ago of me and your great grandpa Orville, from a time we went to visit him in Colorado in July and we drove up into the mountains and I made a (tiny) snowman.  Snow in the summer is awesome!

I think the second one is my favorite, though. Which do you like best?

In any case, know that I love you and think that you're awesome!

Hugs and Kisses,

Auntie Paula

 

 

 

 

Auntie Paula with the soccer armadillo

Ha!  Auntie Paula looks like I am slightly afraid of the armadillo man.  This is my standard “I do not particularly like having my picture taken” face – it amuses me very much how often I look like this in photos!

 

 

 

Suzanne Valadon and the very ugly couch

So, my favorite small people, it is now summer break, yes?  Tell Auntie Paula what you did yesterday.  I remember summer break days being so amazing…but then again, the last time I had one was a long, long time ago, so maybe my memory has gone faulty!

 

Today at work we had a fun event to celebrate the start of the World Cup Soccer tournament, which my company is a sponsor of.  I got to have my picture taken with the mascot, who I think is an armadillo.  I don’t have the photo back yet, but will send it when I do!  I also got to kick soccer balls (mine go nice and straight but I wasn’t able to get them up off the ground to go through a hole to win a prize) and I ran a race against my co-workers (this is also not one of my talents, but it was pretty fun).  Definitely better than my normal lunch hour!

 

 

For this week’s artist I chose Suzanne Valadon.  Not necessarily because she’s a great artist, but because she’s just pretty awesome.  Her most well known piece is probably “reclining nude” which is, as the name suggests, a naked lady… but she’s on a really ugly couch.  It was a bit scandalous in its’ time, especially for a woman to be painting a naked lady…but all I can think is “Dang, that is one UGLY couch”.  I do like her flower paintings, though – lots of bright color and busy patterns.

 

 

BUT…in addition to being an artist, Suzanne was also painted by some of the most famous artists of her time (she lived in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s).

This is her, painted by Toulouse-Lautrec (the first two) and Renoir (the second two).  I love them all, but the dancing one is my favorite; look at that amazing dress!!

    

Suzanne was a free spirit; she wore a corsage made of carrots instead of flowers, kept a goat at her studio to "eat up her bad drawings", and fed caviar (really expensive, fancy fish eggs) to her "good Catholic" cats on Fridays (Catholic people don’t eat meat on Fridays).  So she was definitely an eccentric person, she had very interesting friends, and I think she was pretty awesome!

That’s it for now, know that I love you and think that you are also totally awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula

Banksy

Ahhh…my loveliest of ladies….how are you today?  Princess Eva, I hope this finds you feeling much better, and Miss Shannon (who will always be a princess to her Auntie Paula, but I worry that you’re getting too old to like being called Princess...you can let me know on that one.  I promise you that when you are an ancient 38 like me, you will delight in it, as long as it comes from someone who loves you.  But from 10 to 25 or so, it may be annoying and I’m willing to respect that).

 

I have returned to NJ and the spectacularly interesting world of obsolete inventory and income statement adjustments.  Sigh.  The high point of my day today was seeing that your GramE has posted her first entry on a blog I made just for her.  It’s not like this one, but I think it’s going to turn out to be very cool.  You should ask her about it, if you’re so inclined.

 

So….a new artist for my lovely nieces.  This week, I choose Banksy (mostly because I’m finding myself desperately short on time and already know a lot about this one AND have a fun picture ready to go).  Banksy is actually a graffiti artist, which makes him somewhat extra interesting.  He usually paints on walls with stencils he makes himself, and most of the time what he’s doing is somewhat-or-a-lot illegal. 

 

In the one on the right below, he took a very ugly wall, and painted a hole in it that you can see a beach through, then painted kids with buckets and shovels coming out of it.  I think that’s super beautiful.  I like that his work is available to anyone who walks by the street where he painted it – it’s not usually sold in some snooty gallery (although sometimes it is) – and everyone can enjoy it.  I think his choices are sometimes very funny.  But then I think how I would feel if it was my business or house or cage (he’s painted things inside enclosures at Zoo’s a few times) that he decided to paint on, and then I think he’s kind of a jerk.

 

At one point he made a replica of Stonehenge (it’s a famous grouping of big rocks – very cool and strange)…but when Banksy did it, he made it out of public toilets instead of rocks.  This amuses me greatly – I am far too old to think toilets are funny, but I don’t care.  Toilets ARE funny.

 

  

 

This is me, doing a replication of a painting of his called “Choose your weapon” (I’m the person on the right – I made the photo in my basement), which includes a dog which is a replication of another artists work.  This also amuses me. 

 

So that’s all I’ve got.  Hope you’re feeling fabulous and enjoying your last week of school!

Know that I love you and think that you’re awesome.

Hugs and kisses,

Auntie Paula