blackberry baby

butterfly scooter love

feed sack dresses

the great depression is so visually interesting. feed sack dresses! flour sack undies! cardboard insulation! flattened tin can roofs! dugouts! canned veg! people were so resourceful.

chirrip chirrip

we went to the fair

my notes on the renegade craft fair, which took place over the weekend:

finally, GICLEES

i got some giclee prints made! i’ve already popped them in the shop, CLICK CLICK.

they’re the first ones i’ve ever ordered of my work. i guess i’ve always been nervous about quality and having to package everything up myself (this is why i like thumbtackpress for my alice prints!). they turned out really well — they’re printed on kind of a rough stock that looks watercolorpapery, and the colors are accurate so far as i can tell.

oh yeah, if there’s something you’re interested in getting a print of that’s not listed, let me know and i’ll see what i can do.

lauren & alexa woodward at the velo rouge

we have had traveling musicians, their Danes, and their vanagon around the last couple days. our old pal lauren a.k.a. linky (a gentle giant) has come through town on tour with alexa woodward. lauren plays the washboard, and alexa plays the banjo and they sing together. it is beautiful!

why does the virgin have 8 arms?

MAHARIA

esther was telling us about how in 19th century california, men from india were marrying mexican women. there were laws against brown people marrying white people*, but indian-mexican marriage was ok. they had similar material cultures (chilis, rotis, household altars, etc.) so one would think it would work out beautifully. but sometimes it didn’t, and we were picturing a terrible argument starting with “honey, why does the virgin have eight arms?”

*‘These marriages were more than a matter of individual choice, however, for the fact was that miscegenation laws prohibited marriages across racial lines in California until 1948 [<---OMG!! --ed.]. Most California county clerks saw the Punjabi men as colored, or “brown,” the word they used most often on the marriage license to describe the men’s race. Thus the women the Punjabis married also had to be perceived as “brown,” and that generally meant women of Mexican ancestry.’

origami paper planes

wheeeee! it’s sunny in san francisco. could it be possible that i don’t need the heater on when i go to bed tonight? here are some celebratory origami paper planes. the original is for sale, click here for the listing.

postcards: moths, daisies, trike!

i got some postcards made of a couple tea paintings! 3 for $5, one to keep and two to send. click on the pictures above to go to their listings.

i’m hoping to do a few more of these in the near future, and maybe a few mixed sets. look at those hip rounded corners!!! eheh. man, i wonder if in 50 years that will stylistically mark them as turn of the century etsy postcards.

the backs look like this:

mutantly delicious!

(click through to the etsy listing for biggerer)

i like the colors in this print a lot. there is something very satisfying to me about the combination of navy blue, green, yellow and red (the red is a bit more stable and dark than in the picture). i wonder if anybody will want this one, though? it is a bit on the creepy side of my usual creepy-cute.

julia pastrana: singer, dancer, & bearded lady

for my beards series… let’s not forget the ladies, eh?

Julia Pastrana
Charles Darwin described her thusly: “a remarkably fine woman – she had a thick and masculine beard.” a charming person and graceful dancer with a beautiful voice, julia toured the world as a bearded lady in the mid-1800s.

2nd edition!

plummy evening-colored nocturnal now for sale.

these came about because i’m making some greeting cards out of three of my gocco pictures for the museum of craft and folk art store(!!!) here in san francisco. i finished printing up their nocturnal order and the screen was still happy, so i ended up printing a bunch of 2nd editions. i’ll probably put up some cards for sale on etsy once i figure out packaging stuff.

two more sets of cards to go! i’ll probably print up some mutant strawberries next, though. but i’m still working on what colors should go on what layer. you know, the usual gocco confusion.

moths — done!

i like it. time to mail! good bye little moths!

spanish moon moth, malaysian moon moth, luna moth, hyalophora euryalus, io moth, and the very rare and mysterious japonica origamii moths.

moths and fascinators

almost done! these were taken yesterday, today i was outlining. hmm… i wonder if people would be interested in a smallish moon moths tea painting.

of course there is time to stop and mess with a fascinator.

moth delivers a message / unexplained on your collar / a simple excuse

think think think.

mutants!

i ate a strawberry that had a nose the other day, and it made me have a think on a new print.

looking at hordes of these on flickr gives one a strange squicky feeling.

the wild man under the french spaceship

mini raves on the rue du gros caillou

i have been thinking about paris because steve’s brother has been in paris for weeks and will be there more weeks and i am jalouse. here is a little story from summer 2000:

another beard: emperor norton

hmmmm, this may be a mite difficult to turn into a gocco print. simplify, simplify!

Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, with canine companions Bummer and Lazarus.

norton was this awesome san franciscan who, during the 1800s, went a little crazy and declared himself emperor of the united states and protector of mexico. people back then were totally into it! he wore a blue suit with gold epaulets and they would salute him in the streets. he printed his own currency, which tourists would buy and use in local restaurants. he declared that calling san francisco “frisco” (“which has no linguistic or other warrant”) was a high misdemeanor punishable by a fine of $25. he also made some prescient decrees which eventually came to be: that there should be a suspension bridge built from oakland to goat island to san francisco, and that there should be a tunnel built under the bay.