Starting To Play Catch-Up... Catch Me If You Can.

Printmaking class this semester has been wonderful and nightmarish, all rolled into one... My lino-cut prints were enjoyable; then came my woodcut print, which was utterly time consuming (it was all created with one singular block of wood that I had to re-cut over and over again) but BEHOLD the birth of my Clockwork Dodo:

My favorite one is in the school art gallery right now. But here are the rest...




And I framed one. It's happy now.


Then I began the SCRATCHING of my hunk of plexiglass, which became a mass of tentacles and cowfish:

Which then turned into seven prints. Here are six of them:


Aaaand here is a close-up:


It was when we began these prints that my OCD kicked in and I HATE the inking process of intaglio/drypoint because it is SO MESSY! It's really hard to keep the prints clean. Drives me nuts.

We moved on to copper plates and acid baths and holy hell MESSY messy MESSY!
Here's my dirty 'lil slug:


And my nasty little snail:


And my faint little jungle pill-bug:

I need to get into the studio this week to print out some better ones for my final portfolio.

Here is the first run/proof of my crow who sprouted a set of antlers:
(He has since grown an aquatint moon behind him, which will be seen when I get some printed out this week.)

And here is the monoprint I worked on this last Saturday - it's basically a 16"x16" piece of plexiglass that is sitting there with a ton of oily wet ink (that I painstakingly painted on), and a few minutes after I took this picture I smushed it onto a damp piece of paper and ran it through the press... I'll take pictures of it later. It's drying at school.

My poor dodo skeleton is 'bout to get stuck by that bitch Alice... evil girl!

And of course I need to include Tallulah; I think my batty baby's ears reached their peak and now they're a bit floppy:


But holy cow she is still rocking my world with her cuteness!

Last Leg of the Tour

We stopped by this crazy place - it's called Stewart's Petrified Wood - you can't miss it. It's got rusted-out school buses, huge metal dinosaurs, and mannequins that bugged the hell out of my husband - I didn't realize that mannequins freaked him out, but I also have never seen him experience mannequins in the wild before...

You learn something new every day... even after being together for 20 years.



We looked at a lot of fossils before realizing that there really weren't any native fossils in Arizona - they were pretty much all imported from other states and countries. So we ended up buying a hunk of petrified wood and I was happy...


Shane was happy it only set him back $40, unlike the $300 fossil he was looking at. See, sometimes I AM more frugal than my husband!


Stewart and his wife are old and crazy and live in a house behind the store - it is in the middle of NOWHERE. I shoulda taken a picture of them - they were characters!

When you walk in the door, he hands you ostrich egg recipes - oh yeah, did I mention that they have about 50 ostriches living in their parking lot??



You could feed the ostriches - I woulda loved to but the kids were protesting the wierdness and stayed in the car (with the A/C on, thank you very much) so we cut our visit short...


That's my husband, Shane, "The Ostrich Whisperer."
He is available for parties.

Meteor Crater of DOOOOOOoooooooM!

On our drive home from Arizona, we decided to stop off at a few touristy places... There is a whole lotta NUTHIN' for most of the drive...

We decided not to stop at 'Two Guns' - but Shane thought that it would be a bad-ass place to live.


We DID get suckered into 'Meteor Crater.'


Once you commit to the Meteor Crater exit off the freeway, you get screwed. It's a long, winding road, but you can see the hump of the crater off in the distance:


Since we were only supposed to be driving home, I had nasty hotel-swimming-pool-hair from the night before and no make-up - I wasn't expecting the photo ops this day, dammit!


Once again the boys are THRILLED. And we didn't know that the viewing of Meteor Crater would set us back $15 a head - The Grand Canyon was only $25 per carload for a weeks pass! Dayum. But we. Were. Committed.


It obviously doesn't get tons of visitors...


OOooooh Photo Op!


Then we had to go check out the American Astronaut Wall Of Fame!


I was excited to find...


My Uncle! He's the one and only Story Musgrave - he's flown in 6 NASA space missions, including commanding the initial repair mission for the Hubble telescope - he's the only astronaut to have flown on all 5 Space Shuttles, and was the last of the Apollo astronauts to retire... yes, he is a bad-ass!!


Enough astronaut-love... I could see why the entrance fee was so steep to get in - the facilities were really impressive! It was like a small 'science center' -




WOOOO! It's the crater!



They had an indoor photo op, designed to make it look like you're at the base of the crater - I have the ability to line up the illusion:

Those crazy meteor stealers!
Shane does not have the ability to line up the illusion:


Shane can do 'Blue Steel' in front of the real crater - it was a billion degrees outside...


Marching around the crater...


Aaaaand I got stung by a bee! OW!

It was prolly an Alien Meteor Bee.
Stone, observing the grandeur of la crater...


My kids need to wear sunglasses. But they never do.

They prefer squinting.


SQUINT!


We're standing in this cool little photo op here:


Shane's turn! The kids were DONE.


Tallulah was stuck in the bag the whole time, as dogs were not legal inside of Meteor Crater... I think she sometimes looks like a fetal pig as she sleeps...


Ahhh, my baby chihuahua... how you make me swoon!

As does my Fabulous Family...

LameAssMotherFuckingBlogger. That's ME!

YES I am the fucking crappiest blogger ever. I frustrate myself A LOT but there is always something complicating my life...

This semester, it's the STRESS I am feeling over what school to transfer to... I'm going to be able to graduate with an AA in Fine Arts/Art Studio next semester, and I was UNAWARE that it is apparently NOT OKAY to get your BFA and MFA at the same school. I was just planning on going to the University of New Mexico and then trying to get my master's there as well. I was told this tidbit for the first time ever by a member of faculty. Fuckity. I'm looking at Santa Fe schools now, but DAMN I wanted to stay in town.

THIS is the first real stumbling block I've hit as an Old Lady Attending College; if I was a kid without responsibilities, I could pick up and move to a dream-school for my master's... Alas, I'm a mom and my husband is in the military and I DON'T HAVE A LOT OF SAY ABOUT WHERE WE LIVE!! Whatever.

Continuing our little vacation pictorial, I highly recommend Sedona, Arizona.


The town itself is pretty quaint, but it's a bit touristy.


The boys were thrilled, obviously.
Stone tried to talk me into buying him a walking stick, but I was pretty sure it would have been less for walking and more for hitting shit. NO THANKS.


I did buy the boys stupid 'rubber band pistols.' Not the brightest purchase for me to make.

I spent the rest of the trip avoiding blue rings of death zinging through the air.



Coolest part of Sedona was Slide Rock State Park. You park your car, then it's about a 10 minute hike to the river.



Lots of photo ops. Pretty rocks abounding!!

The park's name pretty much describes what you do there - it's a big river with smooth rocks that you can SLIDE down!





Shane and Tully enjoyed the cliff jumping the most - this was about a 10-12' jump:



Jumping part was off to the right in the picture below - check out the hottie, too:

I always feel ginormous in a bathing suit, but then there are always women there, bigger and braver than I. I actually am pretty leggy, If I could learn to love my legs...

I was chilling with my big pile o towels, and my baby/bat/puppy.



Oh how I love my teeny Tallulah!



I loves my human kidlets, too; they are looking pretty handsome lately...




As we leave Slide Rock, we must have the required "Valency Being A Spaz" shots...





And how about a couple of "My Chihuahua Is So Tiny, She Fits In My Bra Cup" pictures:



Chihuahuas fucking rock.

My Grand Life

I gave up all of my control-freakish-ness and let Shane plan a family vacation - 3 days in Arizona. We hit the Grand Canyon, Sedona and even got to hit Meteor Crater!

It was pretty excellent... The Grand Canyon really. is. the. shit. It was the best 4th of July ever!

There is no way to capture in a picture how immense and breath-taking this place is.


Crow's feet, anyone?



We literally took over 800 pictures...

I love this tree.





It started out sunny, but then a storm rolled in - gusty blustery winds. I did a WHOLE LOT OF YELLING.



"GET OFF THE RAILING! GET AWAY FROM THE EDGE!"



They never listen...


'Hair-stache' is evidence of the wind.



Ugh.


I do like how the back of my hair looks. I never see it. Go figure.



Dude on the wall behind me appears to be shitting feathers. Or maybe it's a Navajo flatulence symbol?



I try to look bad-ass...

But,
I can admit I was pretty fucking scared!









Yeah, that's a puppy nesting in my tits.







Still scared. There are a lot of "Crouching Valency" shots. These were pretty sheer drop-offs... no sneaky ledge a few feet down to save your ass.
Oh, yeah... Stone finally let me cut all of his hair off! His idea, I didn't force him... but I think he's ready to grow it out again already.

I just like being able to see his handsome face :)