Victoria's Suescum's Happy Trees in the Jungle

"Joyful Jungle August 9 - 31, 2017 AnArte Gallery in The Collection 7959 Broadway #404 San Antonio, TX 78209 (210) 826-5674 Opening on Wednesday, August 9, 2017 6:00-8:00 p.m. Tuesday - Friday 11-6 Saturday 12-5** FREE ADMISSION

Victoria's artist statement and news about other shows in which her beautiful pieces are featured:

The upcoming exhibit titled “Joyful Jungle” work will feature “Happy Trees” blooming with recycled plastics which have been cut, melted, punctured, spray painted and flocked to provide them with a rich surface treatment. Bright colors and sensual surfaces draw one’s attention, and the jewel like quality of each blossom invites closer inspection. The paint drips and swirls in an amalgam of delicious colors, velvety flocking contrasts with smooth plastic, heat makes tendrils of plastic curl.

The Happy Trees are celebrated in 4x3 foot oil on canvas paintings which are also brightly colored. The paint is creamy. The trees stand against Jungle backgrounds in raspberry, turquoise, orange and lemony green.

In Joyful Jungle I remain true to my interest in mixing low/ high art, non-traditional art materials and found plastics. Work in Joyful Jungle builds upon earlier pieces such as can be viewed at the Centro de Artes in an exhibit curated by Kathy Vargas titled “A Woman’s Place…” which features a gigantic 9x24 foot work on paper with a surface which contrasts monochrome pigments in surprising combinations of light and shadow, opacity and gloss. Four pieces from my study of street signage (again, low art) are included in a second exhibit at the Centro de Artes curated by Diana Molina titled “Icons & Symbols of the Borderlands." Here works on paper set images found on neighborhood store fronts in a fine art context. The subjects incude raspberry raspas, aguas frescas and paletas.

"A Woman's Place" is open till August 20, 2017
"Icons & Symbols of the Borderlands" is open till December 17.2017
Centro de Artes at Market Square, San Antonio, TX
Tuesday-Sunday 11-6
210-206-ARTS

A retrospective of my work is on exhibit at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center until August 2.

My work is also on view at the McNay Museum of Art("To See is to Have") and at the Weston Centre ("LoneStar presents...") in San Antonio, TX

Looking Up

This morning I didn't quite make it through the entire hour of dancing, but almost.  NIA is an excellent exercise regimen, my class led by Jan Jarboe Russell at the Synergy Studio. About fifteen women dance on the shiny floor to different routines each class, today's being Sanctuary.

After NIA,  I copied this poem by St. Augustine on the NIA bulletin board:

I praise the dance,

for it frees people from the heaviness of matter

and binds the isolated to community.

I praise the dance, which demands everything:

health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul.

Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people,

who are in constant danger of becoming all brain,

will, or feeling.

Dancing demands a whole person,

one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life,

who is not obsessed by lust for people and things

and the demon of isolation in his own ego.

Dancing demands a freed person,

one who vibrates with the equipoise of all his powers.

I praise the dance.

O man, learn to dance,

or else the angels in heaven will not know

what to do with you.

St. Augustine


Later, Elizabeth, my physical therapist, inspired me to make dietary changes and shared yummy-looking recipes, including the following:

Baked Avocado Breakfast:

1 organic Hass avocado, cut in half with seed removed

2 organic farm eggs

1/2 t. Mexican seasoning or equal parts cumin powder, garlic powder, oregano and chili powder

1/4 cup organic shredded cheddar cheese

Fine sea salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425. Place the avocados in a baking dish and stabalize them with a little foil. Crack one egg into each empty pit of your avocado halves.

Season with a bit of salt and pepper. Sprinkle half the seasoning on each avocado half. Top each with cheese and bake for 10 to 15 minutes.  If you like, serve with salsa.

Ring Around The Collar

These commercials ran for years:  Ring Around The Collar--each featuring a wife looking pitifully chagrined when a parrot or a chorus of children screeched, "Ring around the collar, ring around the collar!"

"You've tried soaking them out, spraying them out, scrubbing them out," the male voiceover says to the women, as if giving them credit for all their hard work on their husbands' collars.  The pathetic sadness of the women's faces relaxes for a minute--they're getting credit from an invisible man for their strenuous attempts with their husbands' not-quite-perfectly cleaned white collars. The solution? Wisk!

Wisk rinses all that grime out of the collars and all that shame out of their wives, easy peasy. Until they get the solution, however, they are shamed by parrots, kids, neighbors, and others.  Some of the earlier commercials even used the words, "Shame on you."

Until this morning, when I checked out a few retro Wisk commercials, I couldn't remember the product being advertised, only the embarrassed faces of the women.

These--like so many television women--were part of the corps of role models for girls growing up in the Fifties, the Wisk Women the worst of the bunch.  What we saw on the 1950s screen helped lay down the foundation of our attitudes about our gender and what we could do.  If we were very very good, we could get our husband's collars presentable!

Avuncular Walter Cronkite reported the news.  Voiceovers were always male. In the culture at the time, almost all voices of authority were male voices. Church leaders, doctors, lawyers, legislators, judges, all men back then.

While there were a few women in some of those roles, they weren't featured on television or in the books we learned to read by.  Mother and Father had distinctly different roles in Dick and Jane. Father did real work in the real world, Mother baked cakes and dressed up for shopping trips into "the city." Father drove, Mother was passenger.

As always, I begin my day with NPR, and often end the day with snippets from  CNN or MSNBC.  In the realms of news, women are now as visible and outspoken as men, thank goodness!  Girls today will not grow up with gender-limiting stereotypes.  And they won't give a hoot about collars!

Joyful News!

Joy Hein is the first place winner in the Kerrville Arts and Cultural Center's juried show, running now through August 20th!

I asked her if I could post pictures and information for you all and this is her own description of the painting that won:

My HAPPY BEAR painting was created as the last page of a book I've written and illustrated titled HUNGRY BEAR, GRRRRRRRRR…  It's a book to show our endangered, keystone spiece, Grizzly Bears diets are only 10% protein.  That includes protein filled insects which are their favorite along with sweet, ripe berries. Each illustration in my book is filled with hidden animals who want the same food Hungry Bear needs.  I painted wild bearberries, buffalo-berries, crowberries, elderberries, huckleberries, raspberries and strawberries. Can you find the hidden Cedar Waxwings in the elderberries?

I also hand-painted the frame.

I know those of you who know Joy will be as delighted to hear this news as I am!  I look forward to seeing the show after my Virginia trip!

Here are some photos of Joy, the winning person, and the HAPPY BEAR, the winning painting--though she has two other beautiful paintings in the show as well:

Joy's birthday is August 6th--what a happy way to celebrate!

Great Big Happy Bear Hug Congratulations to you, Joy!

Prosperity Smoothie

Recently, my mama gave me some extra money to play with, and play I am!

I started by scraping the popcorn ceiling in the living room, then one thing led to another, and before I knew it I was in the middle of a summer-long project of changing my entire house.  It's been one of those sky's-the-limit projects in my world.

I told Kate, "I love this temporary prosperity!  I could get use to this."  She cautioned me to avoid the word, temporary.

But it's got me thinking about the word, prosperity.  It's all relative.  If you have it all the time, maybe you take it for granted?  I like it this way.  It's been, as Carlene said, very much like building a quilt--a patch of this, a patch of that, until the overall effect matches the idea in my mind.

Due to the coming and going of fibro, I can't actually do all the things I could do ten years ago, but I have Edward, who's loyal and competent and funny.  Even he can't do some things--due to a hernia--but last week when Will and my kind neighbor hauled in my new dining table, he thanked them both for "helping Miss Linda."  I provide lunch, take naps, run to the store when he needs something, and he hammers, drills, paints and climbs on ladders, none of which I'm inclined to do.

I wanted a couple of projects painted with chalk paint.  Edward was dubious.  "This isn't the way you paint with real paint," he said.  "It's time-consuming and odd how you do the strokes."  But in the end, he did a great job of painting and waxing and the pieces look great.

Yesterday Kara came over and brought in a new mosaic floor lamp from my car. When she arrived, I had a red multi-colored rug under the new table, but everything else was blue and turquoise and white.  Sometimes you need a second pair of eyes to see things clearly.  She wisely suggested we take out the rug and keep the room in cool blues.  It was amazing to see how the room was altered by that one change!  (I knew that one or the other had to go--the rug or the curtains.)

I looked in my trunk and found several table cloths I'd had for years, all in tones of blue. I chose two from which I will make kitchen curtains.  As it happens, the colors we are drawn to keep showing up, and when the time is right, they find harmony together.

I've hauled home enough curtains to wrap my entire house five times over, and taken back all but the blue and turquoise ones from Anthropologie. I've shipped back about seven area rugs--and Edward has wrapped them all tight in plastic for their journeys back to Wayfair and Houzz.

Two more rugs on the way--these the final choices; the backsplash installed--and the project will be complete.   I'm going to miss the process, but I'm ready to settle in and enjoy the peacefulness wrought by all these changes.

Kara made me a smoothie yesterday.  She was telling me about the one she enjoys and I happened to have every single ingredient, even frozen bananas.

Here's the recipe:

A handful of greens
some almond milk
A handful of almonds, another of unsweetened coconut
banana and blueberries.

It was yummy!  After I drank one, she put the blender jar in the freezer--I'd never thought to do that!  Now all I have to do to have another meal is to turn on the blender and let it whirr!

Healthy Options #2

My physical therapist highly recommended this site, so I'm just putting it out there (as I begin to look at it) in case anyone is interested.....

https://draxe.com

Hot City

Yesterday, my car's thermometer said 108 at 6:30!

This extreme heat keeps us all close to home--venturing out early, being home by ten, then waiting out the peak heat of the day to leave again.

So this morning, my plan was to stay home all day, but I got a text from Kate announcing porch visiting time, so I popped over at nine for kombucha and conversation.  Kate's porch is a gathering place for interesting women, no appointment required, no agenda.  Kate and her new neighbor and friend, Ann, talked me into buying a fit bit like they both wear to track sleep, heartbeat, exercise, and a whole bunch of other things.  Mine arrives on Tuesday, turquoise of course.

On my way home, driving through that stretch of antique shops on Blanco at the roundabout, a turquoise something caught my eye.  I stopped to check out the new shop on the corner: 1812 Blanco.

Marc, the owner, calls it THE MARCANTILE--to incorporate his name. One side is a neat little antique shop with kitchen wares, books, costume jewelry, and other things, everything artfully displayed.   The other side is a coffee shop.

They serve lunch and breakfast sandwiches (every day but Mondays and Tuesdays) and have a little patio out back as well as a small space indoors for drinking tea, eating muffins, or having yourself a bowl of organic salad with homemade chicken or tuna salad.  I didn't try out the food today, but I will.  It's open most days until about four.

The farmer's market at the Quarry is back on Sundays, by the way.  It was too hot to stop in today, but I'm glad it's back.  That, along with the big one on weekends at the Pearl, are two of San Antonio's special happenings.

I'm excited about my upcoming trip to Virginia.  Will's family and I are going to spend five days with Day's family, leaving on Friday.

Sunday, July 30

Carlene and I started today--the 15th anniversary of my daddy's death at 80,--talking about how much he left us and how we still feel him showing up from time to time, cheering us on.

Carlene is wearing the birthday skirt and blouse I gave her (for her early 92nd August birthday) to church.  Lloyd would be saying: "Doesn't she look pretty?"  I think he said that every Sunday of their years together!

Even though he only got to meet one of his great-grandchildren (Jackson as a baby), they've all heard so many Granddaddy stories that they must feel they know him.  Will said that they told Granddaddy stories around the campfire in Colorado!

Sometimes even now, at 39, Will will ask me (regarding a career or real estate decision), "What do you think Granddaddy would say?" Those two had a very close relationship, and Will always ran decisions by him. If Granddaddy gave the thumbs up, Will was all in.

When I shared these Colorado pictures with Carlene this morning, she said, "That's my version of immortality!  As a daddy, he's just like Lloyd."

Singing to his kids, teaching them to fish and love nature, joking with and hugging them all the time--these pictures are deja vu for me and Carlene.

Friday, July 28

This Friday turned out to be a good day!  After table delivery and nap, the fibro began to lessen considerably.  I did my first Face Time today--with Miss Precious who lost her first tooth today.

Before my nap, Edward made great progress on the backsplash and is coming back tomorrow or Monday to finish.

Still trying to decide:
The curtains, the rug, or both

I got to see lots of pictures from their trip to Colorado.

What was your favorite thing? I asked.

The Aliens Museum, she said.

Next summer--I'm going to Colorado!

We're having triple-digit temps every single day

and not a drop of rain.

This is the hottest summer on record--105 tomorrow!

Conway Twitty in the surrey with the fringe on top
in Colorado

Picnic skirt

I'd brought this ruffle skirt back from New Mexico, intending to save it for part of her Christmas present--but couldn't resist giving it to her early to wear on our vacation to Virginia next week.

When she sat down and spread it all out, she said, "I could have a picnic on myself!"

She loved it!

Will and Elena came over this morning so that Will could pick up my new dining table at Old El Paso.  My neighbor Curran helped us move it in--it's very heavy--a round 54 inch table.  Now I can have more than four, so I can have dinner guests if I ever get back in the cooking mood.

I moved the David Marsh table I've always loved )in spite of it being cramped when family come over) into the casita.

The fibro is not letting up, so I'm going out to the casita to take a nap while Edward installs my new backsplash.

Here's the table while it was still in the store: