Frankensteinia

Just found a fabulous blog, Frankensteinia, which tracks all things Frankenstein (you probably would have figured that out on your own but maybe you haven’t had your morning cuppa yet so I thought I’d spell it out for you).

I knew I was about to lose at least an hour when I saw this post about a fantasy craft book “Things to Make and Do with Boris Karloff.”

How I wish this was real!  But then I’d never get anything done — too busy making finger puppets.  (When I first saw it I almost immediately opened up an eBay and Alibris window to try and track it down.  Sigh.)  Micha Michelle, who dreamed this up, is some kind of mad genius.

Double Drawin’

Workin' Hard or Hardly Workin' ?

So yesterday my buddy Marc “Island Boy” Sanchez came over so we could have a big Art Day here in the studio and knock out some sweet stuff for Clam Lynch’s “CUT THE CRAP” show at 63 Bluxome St. Gallery –

We were just gonna work through the afternoon but we got so into it we just couldn’t stop, took a break for dinner, and kept rolling right into the night.  Here’s a little sneak peak of Marc’s sexy Yeti — this is now a full color painting on a lovely wooden oval, but I stupidly forgot to take a snap of the finished product.  (We were pretty punchy by the evening’s end…)

Lounging Yeti -- on a bear skin rug no less!

And I hunched over the table drawing a Sly Fox and a Wize Owl (yup, I’m still lost in the woodz).  Here’s some “in progress” shots…

And the finished drawings, getting mounted and cleaned up for framing…

And finally popped into their fab little vintage “Black Forest” frames.  These drawings usually sell for about $500, but this show as a $200 price cap so you guessed it — they’re going to be insanely underpriced $200 each, framed.  My holiday gift to anybody out there who’s craving a hip hop woodland creature.

HAWT!

This is a one-day event only, don’t miss it!  Support local artists and snag some great art at crazy prices!  And if you’re struggling with holiday gift ideas for your bestest pals, I’ve still got some button sets, postcard books (personalized and signed!), a very few jigsaw puzzles and a few other odds and ends.  If you’re in the ‘hood, stop by and load up!  (And yes, I’ll do mail order too if you’re non local, even though the P.O. is Hell On Earth already — because that’s how much I care.)

Happy T-Day!

Any day I can fire up the fire orange Kitchen Aid mixer is a good day.

Sorry I haven’t had time to post proper for a couple days — been gettin’ my bake on.  Knocked out three pies, my favorite of which is pictured here — the “chocolate ganache w/ toasted pecans in a toffee butter crust” or CGTPTBC.  People ask for it by name:  ”Gimme a slice of that CGTBUHG, the CHQWB… the CMKRS… oh hell just gimme a piece of that damn chocolate pie!”

Very important to taste test at this point. And every point along the way.

Anything that requires you to melt down several bars of Valrhona chocolate is high on my list of Awesome Things To Do.  This is a couple bars of their Dark Bitter Sweet, 70-something %, with a little bit of cream mixed in to create a ganache.  I’m pretty sure “ganache” is French for “euphoria inducing mixture.”

Happy as a kid making mud pies...

And the finished product — TA DA!

Go ahead, lick the screen -- you know you want to!

I also put in some of of this — the Dolfin bar, which is outstanding (and comes in a nifty little package like an old fashioned tobacco pouch, as if they know I want to just carry it with me at all times, ready to break off a little nibble).

Happy belated T-Day everybody!  Back to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as I recoup. (Burp!)

P.S.  I’ve already gotten a couple emails about the kitchen decor.  What? Doesn’t everyone have blood dripping down their kitchen cabinets?  Truth is I’ve decided to leave all the Halloween stuff up till New Years — I’m going to make tiny red Santa hats for all the bats, skeletons and monsters.  And yes, I’m serious.  You’ll see.

LA LA LA…

Okay, finally found the cable for my camera and was able to download photos (supplemented with several from the incomparable Lee Jordan).

I was happy to see that Los Angeles really rolled out the red carpet for Lisa Petrucci and I, there was definitely a buzz in the air and I could feel the excitement building as it got closer to the time for our Double Trouble book signing…

How sweet is that?  (Lee, how did you pull that off?  You’re not just a publicist, you’re a magician!)  Miss Kitty and I made a pit stop to the roof deck of the Standard Hotel for a quick libation and to admire the sunset.

Aren’t those red pods completely groovy?  Inside they have white terry cloth covered waterbeds, totally delish after a dip in the pool, and usually crawling with groping drunks after dark.  (I hope they wash the covers daily.  Kitty and I have seen some goings on in those pods, let me tell you.)

Somebody hoist me outta this thing!

I’ve never felt quite the same about topiary animals ever since reading “The Shining” (they didn’t have a silly hedge maze in the novel).  That damn book scared me so much when I read it as a kid that the actual, physical book itself started to freak me out — I’d have to pile other books on top of it at night when I went to sleep.  To, you know, keep it pinned down and closed while I slept.

Then it was off to La Luz for the signing — but we couldn’t leave the Standard without giving the folks a quick musical treat, so Kitty and I hit the organ for a brief medley of catchy Icelandic folk/old school punk mash-ups.  You haven’t lived till you’ve heard us warble  ”I Wanna Be Your Dog/Lofsöngur.”

Oh no, we couldn't, well... maybe just one more!

And then it was showtime!  Billy Shire was kind enough to host us at La Luz de Jesus, and Lee Jordan did a fabulous job getting the word out far and wide, so we actually had a decent turn-out, which was muy fantastico.

Billy, book-ended by broads

Apparently even Billy got the “totes rock the red and black!” memo. Old and new faces showed up — wait, none of you have old faces (there go all my friends, stomping off into the distance).  G showed up so we could take our annual photo of me peering over his back:

And yes that is my painting tattooed on his fine flesh canvas.

If you’ve ever been in Wacko you know it’s just about damn near impossible to get out of that place without dropping a couple hundred bucks.  They’ve got an epic and drool-worthy selection of books and miles of tchotchkes n’ do-dads and decorative items and art, art, art.  G scored this awesome, verrrrry classy item:

Don't be hatin' -- you know you want one too.

And then it was down to business — the business of having a great time!  I swear Lisa and didn’t actually coordinate our outfits (very un-girly of us, I know) but check us out.  (She did tell me she was going to do “hair up” since I was likely to be “hair down” so we wouldn’t look like twins.)

We even, briefly, had a little line of people waiting to get their stuff signed.  (I think they were actually all there to see Lisa, but I gabbed with anybody within gabbing distance.)

And big, big props to Lee — when I originally suggested to Lisa that we should do a signing together in LA, she talked to Lee and he made it happen!

And we signed and signed and signed and signed and… you get the idea…

Someone admired my black nails and I admitted that I’d done them in the airport, waiting for my flight that afternoon.  And that I’d also done my toes.  Which prompted G to say “Why not just give yourself a bikini wax while you’re at it?”

I think these four, wholesome gals could sell you just about anything.  (Let the caption contest begin…)

And if you were pining, wishing you could make it down there to score one of our button sets, well let me tell you that this is your lucky day — I have a couple left.  They’re a numbered edition, signed by both of us, for just $10.  (Only 32 shopping days left till Christmas!)  Just drop me a line.

Up next, Liz McGrath’s opening at BSFA, Andrew Brandou’s awesome studio, ghetto fish with The Pizz, and the Long Beach Swap Meet!

Home Sweet Home

Back from LA, and as soon as I download the camera (I swear my camera cable snakes off and slithers under the couch as soon as I turn my head) I’ll post a little travelogue of the uber-fabulous Double Trouble signing with Lisa Petrucci in LA.  Here’s a quick snap from the roof of the Standard Hotel, in the groovy “pods” by the swimming pool.  (They have very gushy round water beds in them — shortly after this photo was taken I tumbled backwards into the pod and had quite the struggle getting out again.  Stupid pencil skirt!)

In the meantime, check out this terrific wall installation!  Long time readers know I love it when someone sends a snap of the art in their homes, something I rarely if ever get to see.  (Once it departs my studio or the gallery, where it ends up is often a complete mystery.  They’re like bad children that leave home and never write.)  Beth Steiner was kind enough to send this picture:

What we’re looking at is one of my “Nutz” plates surrounded by images from “On Tender Hooks” and even an original b/w ink drawing!   It’s like a glossy little shrine and seeing it just completely made my month.  (She said the print from the deluxe Limited Edition of the book is in another room.)

I am so feeling the love.

Double Trouble for Friday the 13th!

If you’re in the LA area, make sure you come and see Lisa Petrucci and I for our Double Trouble book signing at La Luz de Jesus, Friday the 13th at 6pm. She’ll be signing sizzlin’ copies of “Kick Ass Cuties” and I’ll be scribbling in “On Tender Hooks” .  As a special treat for anyone who can make it down, we’ve created a special-to-this-event very Limited Edition Button Set!  Six 1″ pins on a custom card that will be signed and numbered by both of us.  Talk about kick ass!

I Heart My Button Maker

The sets will have three designs each by Lisa and myself and were lovingly hand assembled by moi over the last couple of nights.

Button-y Goodness!

After about a hundred buttons I get what I call “Dented Thumb” from putting in the pin backs…

Fortunately it's not permanent

You know you want to snatch up one of these sets!  Wait till you see ‘em all pinned on their fancy signed and numbered custom color printed cards!

Lisa Petrucci & Isabel Samaras’ Double Book Signing

Friday, Nov. 13th, 6:00 – 9:00pm

La Luz de Jesus Gallery, 4633 Hollywood Blvd., LA, CA

Black Wednesday

It is a black, black, BLACK day my friends.

1860's Civil War Mourning Dress, from http://19thcenturyartofmourning.com

If I had it laying about, this is the outfit I’d be wearing this week.  Those of you on Facebook already know — I knocked my godforsaken external hard drive off a shelf, it fell about a foot, the reader head ground the disc as it was spinning and that’s it — at least a solid year of work, but much worse, ALL the photographs (family, travels, everything) just went up in smoke.  And no, it wasn’t backed up because I am catastrophically dopey.

Sent the drive off to a data recovery place (everyone I talked to said it needed to be opened in a “clean room” with little guys in white booties running around in a dust and static free zone), and they just called and said “There is nothing recoverable on here.”  Which just BLEW MY MIND.  Nothing?  This is the place people send laptops that fall out of helicopters over burning oil fields in Kuwait!  They can recover stuff from a drive that’s been sitting in the belly of an alligator in swamp sludge for a month!  In my worst nightmares I thought “I bet I lost all the Halloween party photos, dammit!”  Or maybe, if I really let my thoughts go down a dark path — “What if I lost the entire summer and fall???”  It literally never occurred to me that all of it might be toasted.

Absolutely had to get out of the house or I was going to stick my head in the oven, so Nico and I went for a little creek hike.  At one point he almost fell in when he jumped onto a big boulder than wasn’t as rock solid as it looked.  He scraped his hand a bit, and I said “Hey, better than being in the creek!” (because it’s my job to provide annoying perspective at times like this) and he said “Yeah, or being in the creek with the boulder on top of you and both your eyes poked out!”  (Clearly it’s his job to provide really bracing, gorey perspective to any situation.)

So yeah, lost a year or more of photos, but at least I’m not laying in a creek bed with a boulder on my chest and my eyes poked out.  I think that’s a real “glass half full” situation right there.  And as I keep trying to tell myself:  I didn’t lose the people in the photographs, we’re all still here, and my hard drive didn’t get wiped — I still have the memories of all those trips and events.  But fuck, I am really, really sad.

If anybody out there has any photos of me and mine from 2009, I’d love to see ‘em.  If you were at Comic-con, my opening at the Shooting Gallery, NY in Sept., ANYWHERE that any of us were this year, I’d love to try to re-build that chunk of our history with your help.  Send any historical scraps to:  isamaras@mac.com

And the second you’re done with that — go back everything up.  And then back it up again!  Think about offsite storage so when California tumbles into the sea you can swim to shore and download your data from some storage facility in a missile silo in the midwest.

Seriously, go back up all your stuff right now.

Super Burners

"The Mona Lisa"

If you’re in the Bay Area this Saturday there’s some pretty cool FREE stuff going on over at the Shooting Gallery — a Stencil Workshop (spray paint provided by Montana) and you can bring t-shirts and stencils from home or create stencils there and work on a giant wood panel they’re installing in the alley beside the gallery.  That fun will be followed by a Street Art Lecture with Apex, Vulcan and Neonski talking about their signature “Super Burner” murals (some of which have as many as 500 colors in them).

All the deets are right here.

&%^$#@!!!

I've been doing this face for two days now...

Well I was going to post some great pics from Halloween but I dropped my external drive, where all my photos for the least several years live, and it’s totally bunk now, has to be shipped off to a hideously expensive data recovery place.  AAAAARGH!  I’ve taken my head out of the oven (at least temporarily) and if the Gods of Computers are willing, they will recover the images (aaaaaall the images, which are not backed up, I know, I know, bad bad bad) and I’ll be able to post something… eventually.  (Along with the huge backlog of other stuff I’ve been meaning to post pictures of, like APE, etc.  Sigh…)  Say a little prayer for my drive!

Your Child Is A Jackass

Nobody had heard of Groucho Marx.  No, it’s not a lost “Twilight Zone” episode, it’s what we experienced at the Halloween-Sooper-Dooper-Store in Berkeley.  This has got to be one of the 7 signs of the Apocalypse.  We were looking for a pair of classic “Groucho Glasses” only to discover that none of the three salespeople or the store manager had ever heard of Groucho, the Marx Brothers or even just “Groucho Glasses.”  The only specs in their computer inventory were Nerd Glasses with thick lenses and tape in the middle (thanks, I already own a prescription pair).  Nobody knows the Marx Brothers anymore?  Great, now I’ve got something besides global warming to fret about.

Educational Moment: these are "Groucho Glasses" and this is Groucho Marx

The other surprise was in the kiddie costume isle.  No, not the endless variations on Lil’Ho’s (Skanky the Witch!  Slutty the Cat!  Floozy the Fairy!).  Sadly those have been around long enough that they’ve lost their shock value.  What got my jaw dropping was actually in the boy’s costume section — it was a Toilet Costume.  (I guess if nothing else he’s armed and ready to t.p. someone’s house.) Unlike the model-perfect children pictured on the other packages, this poor kid was a sort of proto-geek with big silver braces.

I hope his modeling money went into a therapy fund.

Now if I had a nickel for every time my kid said “pee,” “fart” or “poo” I’d be a very rich, very annoyed gal.  (If I had a penny for every time he said “dong” I’d be a millionaire.)  But even he doesn’t want to dress as a toilet.  Was this costume-as-punishment?  Later at home I looked it up online where the text explained “Child toilet costume is also perfect for every potty mouth kid — Use as a modern day Dunce cap.” Yup, definitely start saving up for those therapy bills now.

Right next to that was an inflatable costume of an upside down donkey, with the smiling kid’s head protruding out of the donkey’s ass.  That’s right – it’s a Jackass Costume! They claim the costume is “surprisingly comfortable” but how comfortable is that kid going to be as the endless butt of donkey-butt jokes all night?

It IS surprising that it's comfortable....

Another family that should start a therapy fund.  (“No gifts this year, just donate to our account with Dr. Davenport again.”)  Somebody must be buying ‘em, or they wouldn’t bother to make the things, but I’m at a loss as to who would buy either of these or why. (“Well I really wanted to be Darth Vader but I guess a toilet would be okay…”)

I’m still working on my costume.  There will be silver, and big boots.  (And no, it’s not one of those fancy automatic coin-operated French public toilets.)