Frida Kahlo Doll on Etsy

My lil’ Frida is up over at Etsy. I hate to part with her but she need to be seen.

I am going to make a few Fridas all different and unique. She’s endlessly fascinating to me.

Button eyes look good on her.

I’m growing and ever lengthening list of future doll subjects:

For the Soft Boys: Joey Ramone, Keith Richards, Robyn Hitchcock, Iggy Pop, Angus Young, Pete Townshend.

Other women artists: Yayoi Kusama, Georgia O’keeffe, Natalia Fabia, Liz McGrath and Camille Rose Garcia, another girl child raised in the shadow of Disneyland.

I want to do Conan O’Brien, Miss Lady Bunny, Oh, so many more. I can’t stop.

I started this morning early as usual. As I rode the exercycle I could see the beautiful hand dyed cotton yarn recently purchased from etsian colesier.

It is a wonderful color or colors, really. It will be the hair for the custom doll I am working on right now.

Thoughts of a combination of colors that have some meaning to me spun out of this colored cotton.

I have for decades now had extremely vague memories of a palate of black, turquoise, pink and yellowish green. I see the colors in a longish patch. It seems to be related to a specific memory that will not reveal itself. I just see a patchwork of these colors. There is a feeling, a good feeling connected to the colors. It’s something beautiful.

Maybe I was in a home with lovely tropical themed barkcloth drapes. The style they had in the 50s.

Here are a pile of barkcloth samples from the blog design musing.

Maybe all these years I’ve been visited by the memory of drapes. See the material with the black background?

I can’t imagine that anything so stylish would be found in my grandparents’ home or my great grandmother’s. They were more low key style wise but maybe.

The memory may just pop back fully into my head someday. That would be interesting.

Slow for Reading

I am working. Even though I am my own boss I stay focused. In fact I probably need to chill just a little bit in the pilgrimish work ethic department. I never let myself sit around and watch a film or read a book when I am committed to a project. I should be creating.

There are books that once they get their hooks in me I’m done. Daniel Pinchbeck’s Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism is the most interesting book I’ve read in a long time.

I am very interested in the relationship between outer organic substance, spirit energies and the human mind and physiognomy.

I have envisioned funky places I call comfort stations existing in the future, after we have moved away from corporate pharmaceutical solutions to our angst and have turned to a more permanent wholistic, spirit-oriented cures.

There are probably places like this now, somewhere out there.

But wouldn’t it be swell to just stop in for a day to cleanse your third eye from time to time? Little doses to expand our consciousness, to remind us that everything is everything, to instill in us the proper respect for the earth, the stars and one another?

Read a bit of a food diary Pinchbeck did for NYMag.com

Barbra There for Historical Moment

This whole cinematic, pre-Oscar film viewing year had been great. I got to see more movies than ever before thanks to Anderson Prime 11 and the swiftness with which movies are moving to DVD.

There were great performances to experience. Monique kicked ass. Meryl was wildly amazing and amusing in both her films. Everything about Bright Star was sublime.Colin Firth was perfect in Tom Ford’s debut, A Single Man. Jeremy Renner delivered.

There were amazing things to see. A Serious Man was darkly, ridiculously but hilariously pessimistic even if you didn’t get to breath or laugh until it was over. Those Coen Bros are deeply disturbed geniuses.

Avatar was eye popping, though for a film that thinks it is about peace and respect for nature, this one was WAY TOO VIOLENT and WAR MONGERING!

District Nine was so ugly I couldn’t take more than 20 minutes of it. Yeah, I admit it. I go to the movies for visual pleasure. I can take and, really, I love sad movies just don’t serve me extended disgusting. Even if you have a good point. Like endless war scenes, in a fantasy setting or not, I can’t take it. So that means Peter Jackson is down in my book as one of my least fave directors. I hated the endless fricking war scenes in all the Lord of the Rings, hated Golem. I know I am supposed to find them repulsive but I just can’t tolerate that much sludge.

But, let me veer back toward my original destination. The possibility that a woman would take home the Best Directing Oscar was enough to bring the fabulous Barbra Streisand to the show. There was the icing on my Academy Awards cake. And then Kathyrn Bigelow made history with Barbra doing the honors. So very cool.

Clothes for Keith

The Keith doll now has an outfit.

I labored over a ruffled  silk shirt Friday and Saturday only to abandon it as a bad investment of time. Nothing makes me feel all thumbs like trying to do fine detail sewing by hand. I do enjoy it but my hands felt like those of a clumsy giant.

I decided to let the Keith doll be bare chested with an Indian scarf, hip belts and a long jacket open in front.

The small silver chain on the purple or mulberry belt has tiny stars.

I have yet to make Keith’s handcuff bracelet. Once I get the bracelet done I will have to roll the jacket sleeves up a bit.

It is a beautiful sunny day here in Redding. Appropriate for the observance of my high, holy day.

The Academy Awards are only hours away.

I sympathize with all who may be deprived of this indulgent celebration by the evil corporate f%$#s at Disney and Cablevision. Revolt subscribers. HDTV and internets provide a way out.

Reading through Salon this morning I visited past reviews of movie critic, Stephanie Zacharek. I just want to say that she took the lazy way out while reviewing A Single Man. Designer this, tasteful that. What I perceived as a beautiful sensual, emotionally rich film she saw as a cold dish served up by a perfectionist clothing designer.

People, get over your designer hang ups. Tom Ford is an artist. Judge him appropriately according to the type of work he is doing. Take the Project Runway blinders off of your face and be with the film as if you knew nothing about Tom Ford. Be open and fair.

That is my beef for the day.

Keith Richards Rag Doll

He’s the man who made the mold into which hordes of young rockers have poured themselves.

For decades young men have come along to take up the flag the human riff created.

He’s passionate, deeply loyal and proud to be what he is.

If you were to start now and take a long stroll through the Rolling Stones catalogue, stopping to really listen to Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street, you would be blown away by the power of Keith Richards.

Most people assume, because he’s an in-your-face front man, that Mick Jagger wrote those great songs. Not so. Almost all the best, beautiful, deep material comes from Keith’s heart and soul. Whether songs filled with romantic longing, hard core rocking force or something in between, it’s Keith.

The second Soft Boy, Keith, moves me every time I hear You Got the Silver or Wild Horses, or Happy, I am filled with powerful emotion.

And so what better inspiration for the second Soft Boy.

It was super fun doing the hair. I embroidered kohl around his brown eyes.

I wanted to make his lips full yet pale.

I’m still pondering what kind of shirt I’ll make for rag doll Keith but I’ve got his stretchy striped pants ready.

I managed to find a pair of  tiny handcuffs with which to recreate Keith’s hand cuff bracelet.

The shop clerk over at the Beadman on Park Marina Drive was kind enough to sell the last pair like these little charms.

These cuffs  are free moving and can be lined up opposite one another so that I can hook jump rings and chain to them to fit around the doll wrist.

They had them in gold tone but I needed silver. On all their other silvertone models the cuffs were soldered in place. I needed these badly. Where else would I get tiny hand cuffs in Redding?

Fantabulous great picture and Keith quotes over  at Blue_Lena.

“You’ve got the sun, you’ve got the moon and you’ve got the Rolling Stones.”

Amen, my man.

I’ll get to Robyn Hitchcock, soon. Just need to find the right white-silver soft yarn for his great head of hair.

Too Early Crazy

Up way too early to day. I’ll be dragging later and I have tons of errands to attend but I need my quiet time.

You’d think getting up at 5:30 a.m. would do the trick but not so that last two mornings. There were responsibilities to attend to the minute I opened my eyes.

This morning 4:15 sounds perfectly good for rising.

This is a photograph of a folk art, hand cut and carved bearded man. He is surrounded by punch stars. There are two types of leaves carved into the outer frame section and a banner below the portrait that reads “The Light of the World.”

I call him DeWayne Jesus. I think it’s supposed to be that Jesus. You know who I’m talking about. Don’t you hate it when you’re kinda out there and you think up some really good stuff and then, like after lots of years, people get it all twisted and use really messed up versions of your good ideas to do really crappy things?

When you look at the whole piece it really looks like Lynda Barry’s work. Here’s a cool article about books that are art and comics focused from Salon.com.

This picture of a very young and cool Lynda Barry is from Alan Blangy. Great stuff in his ” My brush with Lynda Barry”.

Barry has been an inspiration to me since I found her work while living in Seattle in the early 80s.  I have all her books because she is for reals and manages to be so honest, is determined to make art from life even when it sucks and she makes you feel good about yourself, too.

Want to see my world’s smallest dried chili?

Tom Ford Dreams

Loved A Single Man. Tom Ford’s film made me feel like I had eaten an exotic psychedelic mushroom. Wonderful, beautifully bittersweet.

I left the theater feeling deeply moved and psychically altered. Tom Ford gave me a truly cinematic experience.

Colin Firth was dreamy.

The best films, are like dreaming while awake. So many films today are not operating on full cinematic cylinders. The are distorting or ignoring rich cinematic elements. I think would-be filmmakers should give themselves a more inclusive education.

They should understand the part sensuality plays. They should strive to trigger the sense memory in evocative ways. Too many films rely on shock and are overblown. So many lack subtlety and end up noisy messes.

Tom Ford created a beautiful, sensual, magnificently human film that makes you feel something, deeply,  tastefully, without too many words, without obvious, overworked cues that so many filmmakers dump into their films like a rain of sledge hammers.

A Single Man is rich,  subtle, funny and filmically stylish. It has a particular, very interesting sense of itself.

Tom Ford, please make more films.

The Sweetest Ramone

I have finally finished my Joey doll. The first Soft Boy. Thanks, Robyn Hitchcock and dear Moises.

I will have a hard time parting with him. He is so sweet and cute and cuddly and he has great hair.

I left off Joey’s glasses because  after his trip to heaven he’s all brand new and can see just fine. I want to have each of my rag dolls coming from a fresh innocent place no matter what their stylee thing  may be  saying.

I have him done up in casual soft clothes, a stretchy striped T-shirt made from oft washed cotton jersey and some stretchy black jeans.

Joey has beautiful pale pink lips, embroidered with love.

He’s taller than most of the other dolls. It’s kind of hard to tell in the photos.

He has a little belly. I love him. He’s special.

Prime 11 Comes Through

I am so very, very stoked! Prime 11 has come through again this year to allow me to see the film I have most been looking forward to this Academy Award season — A Single Man.

I delighted in the Fresh Air interviews with first, director, Tom Ford and then lead actor, Colin Firth. Both so bright and such creative people.

We had the added pleasure of watching the lovely Julianne Moore work with Firth.

I will go into this film knowing the aesthetic considerations are handled by an artist, that the acting was done intelligently and that it deals with subject matter that is very meaningful to me. What more could I ask?

The film will be shown only this week, through Thursday, so get down to Anderson and catch it.

We have a week, too, until the big event.  Reading about films and viewing them in the weeks leading up to the Academy Awards is the equivalent of  high, holy days for me.

No offense to anyone’s religious sensibilities.

I really love movies.

Just as dreaming is a strange and wonderful alternate reality for me, film comes as close as we will get to that experience while conscious, and not in a chemically altered state.

Of the many films I’ve seen this season, my favorites, so far, are Jane Campion’s Bright Star, a sloow, beautiful poetic film sadly overlooked for all big awards, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker,  Pete Docter and Bob Peterson’s Up, John Lee Hancock’s heart wrenching,The Blind Side and the Coen Bros’ A Serious Man.

I loved James Cameron’s Avatar for the the visuals, for the nod to pagan spirituality and detested all the war gore.

I expect to love Ford’s A Single Man. I’ll let you know.