Wayward Southern Belle

Jung and Crop Circles

2011-09-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

Some of my readers may remember that my husband sent me on a trip to England to view crop circles for my 40th birthday. I love the geometry, artistry, and mystery of these formations. One of my recent collages, "Born Again" is on the cover of a newly released book by psychologist Gary Bobroff, Jung, Crop Circles & the Re-Emergence of the Archetypal Feminine. I'm honored that he chose my piece, and I love the association of my work with this subject.

If you're interested in this subject Reality Sandwich is offering a crop circle intensive featuring Gary Bobroff, Daniel Pinchbeck, John Martineau, Nancy Talbott, Jeffrey Wilson, Suzanne Taylor, and more.

There and Back Again

2011-08-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

My family and I have just moved back to Austin after almost 6 years in Los Angeles. We returned to Austin during the hottest summer on record, and it's made adjusting back to our former home challenging. We left LA for one reason: cost of living. Although we love Austin, we had made a nice life for ourselves in LA, and when you have an eight year old child moving is never a great idea unless it's absolutely necessary. But the reality in this horrible economy is that it's tough for an artist and and writer to make ends meet in a huge city unless you both have regular, well-paying work, preferably with benefits. Since that seemed unattainable for me in LA, we loaded all our worldly possessions into a 26 ft Penske truck, and we drove across the desert in August on some crazy reverse dust-bowl trek.

Now I'm finishing unpacking the last few boxes, my son is starting school and going through the awkward moves of making new friends, and my husband is mourning what we just left behind. We've moved many times, but this move feels more draining, thick with uncertainty and remorse. The overwhelming heat does nothing to ease our uncertainty, but old friends take the sting out and welcome us warmly.

Today I am unpacking my art studio and trying to get everything tidy and ordered (never an easy task for me despite a Virgo moon). My Kickstarter project to raise money for a large format, archival printer was successfully funded! I've just received my lovely Epson R2880 printer in the mail, and I'm getting ready to take it for a spin. My plan is to make affordable prints of many of my paintings to sell on Etsy. I know if won't make me rich, but I enjoy the idea of low-cost works of art. I'll be printing the rewards for the contributors to my Kickstarter project first, and I'm relieved to have such a specific goal. It can be very challenging to get back into the creative process after some time away.

My studio is a nice little room converted from the old garage with tiled floors and a very high ceiling. It's a bit tight because of my flat flies, but I think it will work well for me. I'm looking forward to creating many provocative and beautiful works while I'm here.

Hello, Again.

2011-06-07T14:20:00.000-07:00

I know it seems as if I abandoned this blog, but I'm back! Here's what's been going on.

I've been busy with some art projects (like this one pictured above called Born Again), and most recently I've launched a Kickstarter project (someday-my-prints-will-come) to raise money for a large format printer to make prints of my paintings and collages! My plan is to print high quality, archival prints to sell on Etsy among other places. The project is open for pledges until June 30th! Please contribute if you can. I'm offering prints, homemade cookies, and original art works as rewards.

In January, I completed 2 commissioned works for the Hyatt Hotel in Atlanta. The theme was music, and they provided the color scheme. The best part was that they wanted it in the style of a painting I'd already completed, called Burst! Here are images of the final works as well as Burst, at the bottom. It was a quick turn around.

Recently, two of my collages were selected for a four star hotel in London called St Ermin's. The gallery I worked with, Soho Myriad, made high resolution scans of the collages and printed them onto larger canvases. Here's a photo of one of those works.

Finally, I had the great joy of doing a large scale (large for me!) commission for friend's of ours living in Virginia. It was 4'x 6' and made of acrylic and collage. The painting has a lot of Buddhist symbolism and includes representations of the chakras. I worked closely with our friends on the content and color. It was really a joy to make it, and I was very pleased with how it turned out (see below).

That's my whirlwind update! I'll post soon about the progress of my Kickstarter project and what art I'm working on now.

What She Saw

2010-02-02T15:54:00.000-08:00

As promised, here's the ochre painting I've been working on. I intended to include an earlier photo so you can see the process, but I seemed to have thrown out that one. You can see it a couple of posts earlier under "Peculiar Transformation." I'm not convinced this painting is finished yet, mostly because I didn't struggle enough with it. I find the paintings where I struggle and fight the painting at some point in the process before finally pushing through the conflict or frustration are usually much richer and more interesting.

The title of this painting is What She Saw. I usually come up with a title about 1/3 of the way into my work. I know my general subject before I begin, but the specifics change as I work on it. If I were to have the whole thing too planned out before I began, then I would become bored

with the process and bored with the results, too. The process of making the piece contributes it's own special aspect to the work.

My recent work has been inspired by 18th C textile design. Usually I look to drawings of silk fabric designs. I love the organic movement and the playful and strange forms. Most of these 18 C designs are on grid paper since they are to be a fabric pattern. I use that grid in my work to play with the space and suggest layers of meaning. Sometimes the grid flip flops over the shapes creating an ambiguous space within the painting, sometimes the grid moves the eye to one area or other blending together in some areas, and sometimes the grid offers a geometric opposition to the organic, earthy forms, suggesting structure, artifice, or creation.

I then play with the organic forms, adding imagery that I find myself drawn to most of which is related to sacred geometry. Simple geometric forms like concentric circles appear often in my

paintings creating bull's eyes and referring to mysterious ancient rock art found world wide and still found in Aboriginal art in Australia. Crop circles, those strange and beautiful land art works which appear overnight in the southern English countryside every summer, are a particular obsession of mine. The geometry and symbolism of their forms are masterful and provocative. They suggest a huge mystery and give our culture a much needed push into the realms of the esoteric and unknown shoving us firmly out of our comfort zones. I also like to make use of map symbols and other prominent universal symbols. I use all these images to suggest a narrative and hint at a story, leaving plenty to the imagination of the viewer.

Once I've got my own peculiar landscape going I consider adding small, usually linear, figurative elements. Recently, I've been using children. I think this is because I want to project a sense of innocence - or innocence lost in some cases. My work in the last 2 years explores matters of the spirit and what we do and do not know as a society. What are my beliefs? Are we alone? What about all the seemingly "normal" people who have extraordinary experiences with things that do not fit into polite societal norms? Why is it ok to believe that earth was created in 7 days, but you're crazy if you think we've been visited by aliens? For most of my adult life I have lived in a society obsessed with stuff - things - accumulating things, buying things, keeping things, displaying things. Is that changing? I wonder how I can change my own habits and impart different values to my son?

I suppose in a way these works document my search for the divine, for the ultimate. I'm drawn to the symbolism of ancient cultures and contemporary crop circles because that sacred geometry seems indicative of something eternal and mysterious. And in the daily grind of life, I crave that mystery... that magic.

Branded - a Good Thing

2010-01-31T16:55:00.000-08:00

I've struggled for years to promote my art. I've gotten included in a show here or there and even had a solo show in Chicago back before motherhood took precedence. Galleries rarely take on unproven artists and do the full-on promotion of their careers, so you're on your own. Some galleries even expect the artist to pay for the promotion materials!

But I have never been able to crack the nut of successul fine art marketing. I hate selling myself, as my husband will attest, shaking his head in exasperation and frustration. I see artists who have jumped on the new tech bandwagon and are using the Internet as a way to brand themselves and create an audience. Etsy is the mass version of this. But of course, even Etsy or Twitter will not help you if you don't work the system and know how to sell yourself. What's a shy southern girl to do?

Well, a girl could take Greg Spalenka's Artist As Brand workshop! Greg has a twenty six year journey illustrating for America’s most prominent publishers of books, magazines, and newspapers. In addition to gallery exhibitions, Spalenka has created or aligned with companies to manufacture limited editions of his art, as books, printed items, music, jewelry, and other products. As a concept designer he has worked on five feature CG animated and live action films, most recently the third Narnia film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (December 2010 release). Spalenka also teaches, lectures and conducts workshops at colleges, universities, art institutions around the country and abroad. Currently he is focused on presenting Artist As Brand™ workshops, finishing his first written, illustrated novel (2010) and release of a second musical CD, Moonsaba (2010). See one of Greg's artworks above, "Messenger".

This guy is BUSY! And I figure he could teach me and thing or two. Right now, his lovely wife

Roxana of Illuminated Perfumes (fabulous all natural chemical-free perfumes!) is having an Etsy Artist and Feature Giveaway on her blog. Greg has decided to give two things away, which means there will be two winners:

1. A Goddess Postcard set from his Etsy shop, winner chooses set #1 or #2.
2. A FREE pass to one of his ArtistAsBrand™ workshop during 2010 (a value $500 !!!)

Contest ends Jan 31st! So sign up NOW!!!

Peculiar Transformation

2010-01-06T14:49:00.000-08:00

I was advised years ago by our wise friend and internet guru Ben to start a blog to document my artistic process. I knew it was terrific advice, but I could barely garner the energy to make the art, much less document the process. Well several years later my energy level is hardly better, but now that I've read so many other folks' blogs about making the stuff they're making I feel more confident that I can try this on myself. If nothing else, then it will be an interesting experiment for myself to review how my paintings progress especially since I'm probably the only one reading this.

This is a peculiar time for my work. After several years of working in acrylic and collage, I'm switching back to oils. I love oils. There is nothing else like them. Golden and Liquitex have a thousand different jars and tubes of goo and pastes you can add to acrylics to make them more like oils, but it's like margarine to butter. Nothing is quite like real butter. Nothing.

The other reason my work feels peculiar to me right now is because of my self-imposed artistic skitzophrenia. Since graduate school, that time in my art-making life when I was forced to meticulously explain every single decision I made in every piece of art for 2 years, my work has been very conscientiously constructed. I might even call it a bit uptight. Prior to grad school my paintings were very emotive and juicy, playing with the color and the texture of paint, inspired by the organic micro/macro worlds of Terry Winters, and throbbing with passion and feeling. Now they are very controlled. This is not to say that one is better than the other, but the fact that the two are so different is, well, peculiar. An example of one of my acrylic and collage works is to your left ("Sign" 2008), as well as at the top of this post ("Transformation", 2009). An example

of Terry Winter's work is to the right.

Recently, I became inspired to paint some small landscapes of the view of downtown LA from our back deck. I have not endeavored to paint landscapes for about 20 years (so long ago that I don't even have an image to show you as an example), so this is very surprising to me. Even my visually (not literally) and artistically impaired husband Neal commented

on the unexpected subject matter and treatment. I'm not sure where this is going, but I'm attempting to go with my gut a little more,

a lesson that I'm trying to learn and apply to my entire life this year.

At the same time, I am beginning an oil painting that is in keeping with my more considered recent work except that it is in oil and there will be no collaged elements. I'm curious to see how the two different approaches will effect one another, and I plan to keep a visual diary on this blog. You can see the very very early versions of one of each of these new paintings to your left. The small landscape is on top with the first of many layers of oil paint blocking out the shapes, and the textile-inspired floral painting is on the bottom with a large grid and some organic elements beginning to form. Stay tuned for more!

A Rare Visit from the Clean-Freak Fairy

2009-12-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas has come and gone and that means that the change from one year to the next fast approaches. This is one of the rare times of year that I find myself possessed by the clean-freak fairy. I wish that I were one of those super organized and tidy folks who knows instinctively how best to sort the mountains of stuff that appear in my house and does it in the most lovely of ways, someone like Nicole Balch from Making it Lovely. Unfortunately, I'm not. I make piles. Then I make piles on top of my piles. The only positive to this madness is that my brain gets a workout when I have to play a game of matching to remember where I last saw that item I need. I'm quite good!

Unlike my more tidy husband who believes that "clean" means out of site and crammed into a drawer, hidden in a closet, or shoved into a file cabinet, when I do finally get my sloppy, disorganized self into cleaning mode, it means days of organizing and creating an even bigger mess in order to end up with an organized and tidy room. Just sorting through those piles is a Herculean task. The process is cathartic, and I feel fantastic when I'm done. The trick is keeping it that way. I try to set up systems, and they'll last a few days maybe even a couple of weeks. But inevitably I'll be swept up into some creative frenzy trying to work through a few paintings and to finish, wrap, and mail several pieces of jewelry all the while paying bills, keeping track of

school activities and requests, making shopping lists, sorting coupons, etc. Beads will scatter, paint will dry where it should not, ribbon remnants will miss the trash can, bills and mail will accumulate into piles that quickly become little hills on my work surface, and all too soon I'm overwhelmed by my own mess.

I loathe to admit what is very obvious to my dismayed husband (and mother). I do not juggle several responsibilities at once very well. I can do it, but just not well and certainly not with style. If I'm making delicious Top Chef worthy dinners, then it's because I'm not painting much. If I'm adding new earrings to my Etsy site then dinner is most likely in the freezer along with the car keys and the hamster. And if I'm working on new paintings, then expect multiple baskets of mountain-sized laundry and be thankful the dogs are fed and E has fresh food in his lunch box. Paying bills becomes a search and rescue operation as I struggle to locate the papers in an angry ocean of esoteric books,

tubes of vintage beads, month-old To-Do lists, and mugs of moldy caffeine. Sometimes I feel the nagging thought that maybe I'm falling short as a mom and wife because I struggle and often fail to juggle these things that moms are supposed to be good at juggling. It's not easy admitting these short comings to myself - or my husband - but it feels good accepting my limitations, and maybe, just maybe I can find a way to work with them and keep things a little more control this year. Eh, who am I kidding?

Blarg

2009-11-19T14:40:00.000-08:00

Sickness. Sick dog, sick boy, sick me. Until balance is restored in the kingdom posting will be inconsistent. I am trying various spells and potions as I write this, so hopefully all will be well

soon. This would be a great time for my fairy godmother to show up.

My sincerest apologies.

And then we ate a Boston Terrier...

2009-11-03T08:14:00.000-08:00

My son' birthday is actually on Halloween, but this year we had his birthday party on November 1st. It's tradition in our family for me to make the birthday cake. E chooses what he wants, and he insists it must always include candy corn. Last year I made Smiley Bone with Bartleby. The year before it was a large sperm whale eating a rubber squid. I've done the orange hungry hippo, a great white shark, and Frankenstein and black cat cupcakes. I compound my challenge by insisting on using this yummy boxed icing by Dr. Oetker, to which

you add a stick of butter and some warm water. I hate all the crap in the tubs of icing you get at a typical grocery store. Dr Oetker's icing is delicious and fresh, but it's also challenging to work with, as it gets rather soft at room temperature and the chocolate flavor begins to resemble baby poo. Mmm...

My process for making his cakes begins with a quick drawing. This year, E insisted on a cake shaped like the face of one of our Boston Terriers named Shaq (before I get any sport's jabs let me clarify that he's a rescue dog who came with the name). After doing a little drawing I then consider how many and what shape cakes I need to make the image. In this case I decided on 2 round 9" cakes, and one large 9" x 13" cake. The round ones would be the basic face, and the rectangle would be cut into larger jowls and mouth pieces and ears. These decisions would have worked better had our cheap rental-house oven not been totally crooked and my 2 round cakes turned our more lopsided than a botched boob job. Still, I was planning on stacking them, so I could put them high side to low side and get a more or less even face. Lucky for me Bostons are pretty silly looking in real life, so a little unevenness simply adds to the realism.

I then use wax paper over the cakes and draw what extensions I need with a marker on the paper. For this design it included the ears and bottom jaw, and the neck with a collar. I cut the shapes out of the wax paper and place them on the rectangle cake. Then I cut the cake with a knife, cutting around the paper shapes. I assemble the entire thing on a cutting board and put one messy layer of icing over the whole cake. Then I place the entire cake in the fridge for about 20 minutes to cool and harden the icing a bit. After that I do a second layer of icing and repeat the chill in the fridge. I continue this way until I have the look I want. Then I added licorice string, candy corn and M&Ms for details. (I found bags of the skinny licorice string at Cost Plus World Market in their Halloween section.)

The kids at the party ran around playing various games and cavorting for about 2 hours. We all sang "Happy Birthday" to E. He blew out his candles. And then we ate a Boston Terrier...with gusto!

Happy Halloween and warm Samhain Blessings

2009-10-31T08:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! Samhain Blessing!

Around this household, Halloween is a huge celebration because it's also my son E's birthday. He was "supposed" to have been born October 18th (Libra), but hubby N said one-too-many-

times, "Wouldn't it be soooo cooool for him to have a Halloween birthday?!!" Not-so-little E came out 13 days late (Scorpio) at 9.8lbs. I don't dare go into the gory details despite this being the perfect day for such things. After months of refusing to consider any other name than "Moses" for baby E, N began frantically begging me for "Edgar Allen Pollack" since the middle and last names were already set. After the Halloween I'd been through, I held my ground. I would choose the name, and it was not going to be a ploy for a chuckle (no offense, Mr. Poe).

This weekend is E's 48 hrs of sugar-addled insanity and gift-getting debauchery. As you can imagine, he's happier than a dog rolling on a dead skunk. Tomorrow is the party, and I'm spending today carving our pumpkin (see the picture above of me and my pumpkin) and making the birthday cake. I always make the cake, it's a family tradition. We've had Smiley Bone and Bartleby, a sperm whale eating a squid, an orange Hungry Hippo, a great white shark, etc., and this year we'll eat a large Boston Terrier head with a candy corn collar. I'll post photos on Monday so you can see if I pull it off or not.

But first I have to make a birthday breakfast! Tennessee Nana sent E some Loveless Motel Buttermilk Biscuit mix for his birthday! E wanted some duck cracklins with them, but he'll just have to settle for applewood smoked bacon this morning, poor kid. I hope everyone has a treat-filled Halloween and a blessed Samhain.

Rag & Roll

2009-10-28T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday the family went to the Halloween Festival at E's school, and being late October in the part of Los Angeles that's not near the ocean, it was hotter than butter on a Loveless Motel buttermilk biscuit. I volunteered to help with the Ragdoll Booth and N manned the front gate. E ran around like a dopey puppy, eating everything in site and running through the Haunted House about 60 times.

The Ragdoll booth had a slow start, but by the time my shift was

finished, business was picking up. It's no surprise that girls found this more appealing than most boys, but what did surprise me was how many moms were drawn to this craft. It's more challenging than you'd guess to make a truly awesome doll, and my feeble attempts paled compared to my most talented shift-pal Mary. She made scarecrows, ninjas, cute little skirted girls, adorable ghosts etc.. Mine all looked simply disheveled, like some depression era craft gone very wrong. But it's a great use of old sheets or shirts you don't use any longer, and a cute activity for a rainy day, so here are the instructions:

Cut different colored rags into strips about 2' long and about .5" wide. You'll need about 10 of these strips per doll. Feel free to go a little longer for a longer "skirt" or "legs" or add a few extras for a bigger doll. You'll also need about 5-7 smaller strips about 5" long, or use ribbons.
Lay the 10 strips parallel and together so that they share a common middle point. There should be even amounts of fabric on either side of the middle point.
Use a short strip to tie the long strips together at the middle point. This will form the top of the head, and the tails of this short strip may form a bow, hair, or can be tucked under for a more subtle look.
Fold both halves of the long strips down and together from the tied short strip. You will then tie another short strip around the "neck" thus forming the head. Manipulate the rags to form a face, or at least to have the strips you'd like showing facing outwards. Again, the short rag may be ties in a bow, scarf, or tie, or simply tucked into the chest area later.
Pull three strips from each opposite side below the neck tie. Now using another short tie and tie the remaining rags together at a "waist" with a short tie. Fashion a wide belt, bow or simply tie and tuck.
Braid each of the two sets of 3 rags together to form the two arms, one on each side of the "torso". You may tie off the "hands" with short rags or simply tie the 3 strands together in a knot.
If you are making a skirted gal, then you're done! If you want pants, then tie 2 more shorties at the "knees" and 2 more at the "feet".
Trim any unwanted dangles.

And now you have your very own Ragdoll!

Foggy Headed Breakdown

2009-10-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

It's an allergy day. I felt the mushy brained effects coming on last night when I collapsed for a nap on my bed just after dinner. Because of my brain fog, I'll wait to post about the adorable rag dolls from my son's school Halloween Festival until tomorrow. I'll make sure to include directions so you can make one yourself! And they are unisex, so boys, get your rags ready!

Perhaps my allergies have flared up because of my 3 hour errand at the local nursery yesterday? I was supposed to pick up a few sale herbs and then go to the grocery store. But I never made it beyond the nursery, which explains the odd assortment of things in my son's lunch today. Ehm.

I would gladly have left the shop with the entire shelf of those adorable "Nooks and Crannies" ground covering, several exotic hanging ferns, a few more orchids (that I would promptly and unintentionally have killed) various and assorted pots, containers, and baskets, and every variation of thyme, basil, and mint. But hubby would have been madder than a snake that married a garden hose had I spent that much money!

So instead I selected Berggarten sage and winter savory to go join the parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and tarragon already growing in the herb garden. Also I picked up a flat of Bright Lights Swiss Chard to plant. I'd love to grow more veggies, but our house is shaded by an enormous Chinese Elm. This is fantastic for energy bills and general beauty, but terrible for leaf clean-up (as they have million ands millions of tiny leaves)and sunny gardening spots. As a result, my garden box gets only partial sun. The herbs seem to do pretty well, though winter will slow their growth, but the veggies I've tried to grow have turned out more worthless than tits on a boar. I'll keep you posted on the chard.

I also came home from the garden center with a very small houseplant mysteriously called "fern" with no other details. It does not look like a standard fern, but has spiky leaves that are more random and unpredictable. Hopefully I have not just described a small, sickly standard fern but instead have discovered some exotic and rare beauty that was tucked away behind the money plants and buckets of bamboo shoots. I picked up another fern with adorable little round leaves called a Lemon Button (pictured left). And finally, I brought home a purple African Violet to partner with the other one I already have kicking-some-ass in my bathroom window sill.

It's nothing fancy, but it brings me some happiness. On my crop circle journey this August I had the pleasure of meeting Pat Welsh, Southern Cali's Queen of Gardening. I fantasize of having a garden worthy of her advice one day. At the moment that's gonna require a stand off with the Chinese Elm, and in my whimsical, shire-inspired, dorky, head-full-of-fairies little world, the trees are always right. Maybe the next house?

Wake & Bake

2009-10-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year when my son's charter school - a cauldron of progressive teaching and therefore measly means - throws it's fall fundraising festival. This year's event will be a Halloween Festival, and I'm going to be working in the rag-doll-making booth and making goodies for the bake sale. I'll post photos of the rag dolls over the weekend, as they are adorable, and will appeal to any craft-addicted person. For now, I'm all about the baking.

Last year I made accessorized rice crispy bars and became a little too obsessed with wrapping each on in wax paper with pretty color coordinated ribbons and cute menu signs. What was I thinking?! I noticed many left at the end of the festival. Perhaps selling the baked good depends partly on actually seeing the baked good? To be fair, I was guilted into not using plastic wrap by the school's Green Committee which discouraged using anything disposable. I'm not actually sure if waxed paper is any better than plastic wrap, but superficially I thought it might pass the "green test."

So now I have to decide do I once again wrap in wax paper and risk having my delicious baked good passed over and precious money not depositted in the school's coffers? Or do I say, "Screw the Green Committee! I'm shrink wrapping!" I'll let you know what I decide.

This year I'll be making standard chocolate chip and M&M cookies, as well as scrumptuous Graham Cracker Chewy Bars. I made these last week for N, and he was happier than a coon dog on a bare leg. I originally printed out the recipe from the LA Times, but I made some of my own edits to the original:

CRUST

3 C crushed graham crackers (preferably the "natural" ones like Mi-Del)

1.5 sticks of unsalted butter, room temp (always use quality fresh butter when baking)

1/3C sucanat (unrefined cane sugar) or 1/4C sugar

2T whole wheat flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, beat all ingredients until moist and well blended. Press the mixture firmly and evenly into the bottom of a 13" x 9" baking pan. Bake until golden brown, about 10-15 min.

TOPPING

2 1/2 C brown sugar

4 extra lg eggs

2/3C graham cracker crumbs

1T vanilla extract

3/4 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp baking powder

1C pecans, chopped (or a little more)

1C dark chocolate chunks (for baking)

In a large bowl mix brown sugar and eggs to blend. Whisk in graham cracker crumbs, vanilla, spices, salt, and baking powder until well blended. Stir in chocolate chunks and pecans.

Spread the mixture over baked crust and return to 350 degree oven until the topping is golden brown on top and jiggles slightly when tapped, 20-25 min. Cool pan on cooling rack.

Sprinkle a light layer of powdered sugar on top, if desired. Cut into 24 bars and (wait for it) wrap in plastic and keep at room temperature. Take that, Green Committee!

Try not to shove more than one bar in your mouth at a time, as that would appear beastly and piggish.

Howdy!

2009-10-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hey ya'll! Welcome to my brand-spanking-new blog. I'm not sure what the hell I'm doing, and I'm hung over to boot! But I'll muddle through an introduction of sorts.

The title for this blog comes from a personal add I put in The Chicago Reader some 12 years ago that resulted in the snagging of my husband. Perhaps one day I'll treat you to the entire add, but for now, we'll stick to the lead in, "Wayward Southern Belle". I was born and raised in The South, and I still love much about it: scrumptious food, Bluegrass, thunderstorms, accents, good manners, rolling green hills, thank you notes, Loveless biscuits, the fiddle, crisp gin & tonics, groom's cakes, the banjo, pork, etc.. Though I no longer live amongst the wasps and hillbillies of my childhood, I'm still in many ways southern to the bone. As I age ever so gracefully, I must admit - and even embrace - the fact that many of my interests fall decidedly outside the acceptable limits of southern decorum.

These days I'm a artist living with my husband, son, and two Boston Terriers in a huge, strange, sunny city on the Left Coast. My art combines textile design, crop circles, female bondage, sacred geometry, mythology and various other odds and ends and may be seen here. In addition, I make

jewelry from vintage and new, glass and stone beads, and this may be seen at Etsy shop Gruvkitty. I'll post sometimes about my creative process. It's not easy making art in a time

when the economy bites and society thinks art education should be optional. Add an eccentric writer husband named N and a rambunctious 7 yr old named E to the mix, and life gets tougher than a boiled owl.

In addition to these creative activities, I love to cook, to bake, and to try my hand at many crafty endeavors. I'm notorious in my house for beginning messy projects but not always completing them - or cleaning them up. My best friend Lyn, another wayward southern belle who still resides in the chosen land, is the craftiest lady I know with the most wonderful taste in everything. I'll talk here about my attempted endeavors, as well as some of her beautiful ones. You can show off your own beauties, or we can giggle together at the uglies. My most recent project is this Halloween wreath, which I actually finished! I have to give credit where it's due. I got the idea from a very talented young woman's Etsy shop KnockKnocking.

My son's 7th birthday is Halloween, so it's something of a super-holiday in our house. I always make his cake, so I'll be documenting my endeavors here. This year he wants a Boston Terrier face, and the cake must always include candy corn (his choice - I really can't stand those nasty little nuggets!).

So come on by. We can talk about all these things and I'll throw in some paganism, crop circles, and ufo's to stir things up a bit.

Welcome! Ya'll come back, now! Ya hear?