january! and here we are here and there. for one, lovinganvil is here:

lovinganvil rings in the 2012 maine magazine wedding issue

nice spread, si?  you can find the rings pictured here and here.

and then.  good lord.  here we are again.  nice toothy grin…as always.  you know.

portland magaine, at the relaunch of the portland maine art museum gift shop

and miss cv is here! ¡los corrals doing the thing!

xoxo
coco

fear of calendars. gil corral. 2003

I painted this piece in 2003.  It has to do with my observation of how tied in,  and to some extent, beholden our culture is to the calendar — time stuff, clock stuff.  I’m always amazed at how most of our civilization just falls inline with this time measurement thing, rarely questioning it, and even more infrequently, transcending it.  I get the larger natural rythmn of things: tides, day, night, seasons…all that.  I just don’t get “morning commute” for your “work week” when everyone and their grandmother react to their alarm clocks roughly around the same time.  Make and drink the proverbial same pot of coffee, bump car asses with our neighbors as we all pull out of our driveways at the same time, then collectively race to our time ruled workplace or other time structure.  I often wonder what the birds on the telephone wires think as they watch our insipid ritual — like we’re the ones on exhibit in a zoo.

Calendar year: time passing, economics, insurance, future, 401k, birthday, birthday parties, meetings, past, appointments, goals, future, past, funeral, funding, forecast, past, obligations, future, holidays, getting older, botox, birth, life insurance policy, resolution, retirement, agenda, goals, future, past.

Fear of Calendars is painted on a partly collaged October 2003 desk calendar.  A desk calendar I doodled on during my work week/ desk/sales job.
Somewhere on this page was the date Elliott Smith committed suicide, or died, totally bumming me out.  There also dates with dentist / therapy appointments, deadlines, product codes, etc.

The painting’s focal point is a man kneeling worshiping the Aztec Mayan calendar, which is painted and superimposed over the collaged desk calendar. I also included a box of Animal Crackers in the painting.

I was not aware of the 2012 Mayan prophecy when I painted this — again, I was interested in exploring the idea of this powerful ruler of human life..time.

As I sat back and reflected on this painting January 1st, 2012, I couldn’t help but feel that this piece of work has a frequency also aligned with the 2012 prophecy.  It’s an interesting circumstance of converging concepts (sorry about the three c’s).  My observation of the expansive experience of life somehow being widdled down to a square on a graph with a number on it, incrementaly attempting to make all moments understandable, accounted for, and reducing the possibility of surprise.

January 1, 2012 took partial ownership of this painting, in its own way.  A way I hadn’t conceived of or attempted to express, so I really don’t have any words to try to explain this other component.  I don’t know.  It’s relevance may seem obvious, but it’s inception contained only part of its story.  I find this interesting, I am also curious as to how much more of a story it will unveil.

fear of calendars can be found here

in the studio

puzzlepuzzlepuzzle

nice!  that was fun to type.  2012.

and it’s been a while since i’ve posted…the holiday season came up fast, and passed by fast, and here we are on the other side.  whatever that means.  i am feeling like i needed more time to just sit and be still and bathe in the awesomeness that is miss cv and gil.  and our friends/family.  maybe since 2011 was such a freaked out year, i needed more repair time.  whatever the reason.

so today is the first day officially back at it.  before i tackle posting a bunch of new necklaces and roach clips to etsy, i needed (ahem) to finish the frame of my christmas puzzle.  it’s not quite as indulgently angsty as last year’s, but still has lots of vague pattern in which to get lost for a bit.  i can’t find the last piece of the frame…i have to let it go for now.  it’ll turn up.

happy new year and here’s to all sorts of good stuff y mas y mas.

xoxo
coco

the weekend’s activities at bandaloop for prelude was totally a good time.  talented, lovely people, fabulous and relaxed atmosphere.  and a cocktail mystery solved, to boot.

about three years ago i was sitting in pastis with gil, miss cv, armando, and some of his fashion cohorts.  at some point i was sipping on a lovely elixir of this and that, and was moved enough to ask the folks pouring for the recipe.  i remember the answer was delivered in a mix of english and spanish, most of which i comprehended.

except for one stumbling block.

there are two scraps of paper from the conversation.  on one, the recipe written by me.  the other, the recipe written by the bar tender.  mine actually is mostly in spanish, copying what he dictated to me.  his is pretty much all in english, and with a penmanship so distinctly un-american. european/central american/asian – heck, even canadian folk seem to have a flourish of the pen that is somehow squeeze out of us or never put into us who have gone through the u.s.a. school system.

but i digress.  in both written recipes, it’s the same word that i can’t get.  colvados.  callaedos, calyedos…and it seemed really important.

well, it’s the smart cookies at bandaloop that figured it out. (and vida that came up with the brilliant idea of googling what we did know to see if we could force a match.)

calvados
st germain
simply syrup
fresh lemon

voila.  i recommend it highly!  as it turns out, we did not have calvados but it was remedied by madly shaking a fresh apple with regular brandy.  BRILLIANT.

…so on the recipe that i’ve had, and been packing around with me for over two years, suddenly has gone missing now as i write this post.  it’s ok, i guess.  i’m not a stickler for ratios, which was written down.  on that little piece of paper.  that is now not in my wallet.  where it’s always been.

xoxo
coco

thank you, bandaloop, that was a lot of fun.

finishing up for tomorrow

you know, i’ve moved my studio into the hallway, gil’s painting studio is now in our dining room.  it’s just too hard to heat the barn during the winter.  and i don’t want any resistance to getting work done.  so.  so there it is.  it’s come full circle — studios in the living space.  just like college.

sort of.

cozy, warm and easily accessible.

tomorrow we’ll be at bandaloop from 11-2 – in kennebunkport.  this is SUCH a lovely time with lovely people.  and lovely snacks and LOVELY drinks.  they keep me well martini’d.  so you know.  it’s awesome.

xoxo
coco

we'll be there!

hey kids!

we’re just doing one out-of-the-studio event this year and this is it!  and it’s this weekend!  ack!!  i better get back to my bench!

hope to see you there!  we’ll also be taking custom orders for holiday gift giving!!

xoxo
coco

each hour i’ll put a huge farrah ring on sale. and maybe some other things, too.  it might not be exactly on the hour…i’ll do my best to get to the computer on time.  scouts honor.

so i’ll post the sale item on twitter and our facebook page — AWESOME.  and there are new items on deck, too.  ALL WEEK lots of good things to introduce.  i’m so psyched!

xoxo
coco

i might be having more fun with this than miss cv

hey kids!

it’s the kickoff!  i’m sortof ready.  i think.  doesn’t matter if i am or i’m not.  the holidays are here!  and nothing like this time of year with our cutest littlest.  !  we came across a pine tree abundant with mini pinecones on a recent walk.  cv and i picked lots and squirreled them by the handfuls into gil’s pockets.  because, you know.  his pockets seemed optimum for holding mini pinecones.

then i remembered making pinecone garlands with my mom.  watercoloring them and stringing them together.  so that’s something we’re working on today.  it’s awesome.

in honor of today’s festive activity, use the code PINECONE for free shipping at lovinganvil.etsy.com  and hogfarmstudios.etsy.com

xoxo
coco

merry clayton

morose morose morose. with a touch of the dramatic. if you don’t have the stomach for either, prolly should stop reading now.

three things have mired in my mind lately. and i am my mother’s daughter. not the best at conversational transitions. tend to blurt things out and easily lose the connection between subjects. i mean, it usually makes sense in my head the relationship between things, but quickly fuzzes out when i try to articulate how i made the jump. maybe it’s just more of a sense or a internal rhyme than an actual linear connection. sure. i’ll go with that.

our …uhm…. smartphones were a very appreciated addition to our roadtrip of the past few months. we could research anything. i mean, sure, finding campsites, hotels, restaurants, the cheapest gas in the area…but also all kinds of more interesting or educational things like the trail of tears, the rust belt, little big horn, and one of the most pressing questions of our trip, “where the hell and why the hell are there alligator/crocodiles in oklahoma?”

and because they were researched and discussed at the moment of wonder, the information really seemed to adhere. which is wonderful. and the goal of learning. bonus.

so we’re driving through south dakota on our way to a koa outside of sioux falls. the folks there were very nice. nevertheless, i do not recommend this koa. but that’s not the point of this writing. we’re driving and cv is in the back with raja and lily, watching ponyo, and gimme shelter comes on the radio and it’s wonderful. really really insane and encompassing. and we had a good signal for the whole song so gil and i turned up the volume and just let it wash over us. and it ends and we’re looking at the big open road and start to wonder who, and i mean who in the world, sang with mick jaggar because man, she was gripping. quickly the answer is found via wikipedia and i’m reading aloud their entry on gimme shelter and merry clayton.

At about 2:59 into the song, Clayton’s voice cracks twice from the strain of her powerful singing; once during the second refrain, on the word “shot” from the last line, and then again during the first line of the third and final refrain, on the word “murder”, after which Jagger can be heard saying “Whoo!” in response to Clayton’s emotional delivery. She suffered a miscarriage upon returning home, apparently due to the strain involved in reaching the highest notes.^[3]

it crosses my mind frequently, that piece of information. it makes me …feel something near sadness. a bit of awe. an ache for sure.

raja seemed to be enlivened by our road trip. robust and spry. it seemed like he caught a little cold shortly after we got home and then passed away almost a week ago today. he was so peacefully lying on his side amid all of gil’s paints and paintbrushes when we found him. so eerie and still. it was absolutely him, but so hard to process seeing someone you know as absolutely animate so absolutely inanimate. it shocked me. he looked so large in death. strong. and peaceful. it’s amazing how healthy he looked, maybe because he was completely relaxed. it struck me hard. it crosses my mind frequently, the image of him lying there in the sun.

so the third element that keeps crossing my mind. … i wrote this post yesterday and it really picked up speed.  and solidified.  i saw the connection between these elements, clear as day.  it felt really good.  it felt good to write it and good to read it and observe its creation and the clarification became its own entity.  but it was quite dark and deep and all of that which this might not be the best venue.

so.  so you know.  i’ll stop here.

treat me to a sipping shot of corralejo, and we can wax poetic on the     whole     ball    of   wax.

xoxo
coco