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Yum.

The LRS Artathon was so delicious, dazzling, fun and fulfilling. I painted(canvases and bodies), sculpted, danced, snuggled, met awesome artists, gaped at gorgeous/hilarious performances, savoured scrumptious Kim snacks and generally foxed and frolicked the night away.

Two major bodypaintings emerged-the first was truly a first, Jim bound Sophia in a terribly sacriligious and sexy crucifixion-like suspension. So, I painted her while she hung from the ceiling! It was intense and despite my nefarious tendency to enjoy the squeals(nobody squeals like Sophie) she made as the cold paint went on, the experience underlined my serious lack of topness. Still waiting on the pretty, pretty pics from the folks who took ‘em.

The second was one of my very favorite moments, Rita and I’d crashed out in the warm heights of the DJ loft around 4am… We woke up all snugglyhappy a little before 8, to early morning sounds of sleepy conversations, grinned happily at each other, hopped down the ladder, gathered my paints and took over the main stage for a lovely, dreamy Fire and Water bodypainting session while Donn played guitar and sang us accompaniment.

So luscious.

Thank you Rita, lovely Rita. And thank you, succulent Sophia and Jim and Kim(damn that mango salsa was the bomb!) and Lucy and Cher and Courtnee(so good to see you radiant and blooming) and Kerry and Clayton… To all the wonderful people I shared precious, inspired moments with and of course to Jeff-our rockin’ chieftain!

Bummed I missed the closing ceremony, but I had a nice goofy sunday evening at home with silly, awesome kids and I just felt so juiced and ‘xhausted at the same time. A particularly delightful feeling of tired and wired and just so GODDAMN HAPPY to know you’re all out there doing your wacky, wild, wonderful thing.

More salacious dreams of fire and water here.

I shoveled three tons of kid-packed topsoil today.

Finally, the Clearwater parking lot is no longer buried under a giant mound of earth. As I was exhaustedly hefting the last few barrows of dirt, a small girl in a pretty white pinafore came up and hollered at me, face all squinched up to project the loudest condemnation possible: ‘You’re the meanest person in the whole world!’

She no happy at the loss of the mountain they’d been playing on all year. I told her that was pretty rough considering I was the one who brought them all that joyous dirt in the first place.

Perhaps the wisdom of this sunk in(or more likely, her attention span is no larger than she is), because she was soon happily questioning me about the plants I’m going to plant.

Matt the bus driver unwittingly saved my battered self esteem by strolling by not long after and comparing me to Milarepa. Not to mention offering to sweep the parking lot the next day, ‘cuz I’d already ‘done the work of twelve men’.

Ah, appreciation. Does wonders for the weary.

Now if the little heathens would just stay off the nice, freshly fluffed soil ’til I get a chance to plant it…

Fat chance.

Sam and I made this mandala of stones to celebrate earth day tonight in the beautiful little rock and glass sculpture park that graces our humble ‘burb.

Then we ate lots of yummy desserts.

And threw some tasty bits in the blackberry brambles behind the park, as an offering to Momma Earth. I’m sure the rats and squirrels will be happy to serve as her priestly mouthpieces and accept the sacred morsels of baklava, macaroon and lemon bar.

Thank you, Earth. I love you so, your strong roots and beautiful rocks, your swift streams and luscious waterfalls, for your soft green moss and rich dark soil. For sand and clay and snow to play with, to frolic in, to sculpt. For plants and gardens, fruit trees and wild beasts. My eternal gratitude for sustaining and nourishing us foolish humans, even as we proliferate and perpetrate past all sense or justice or even sanity.

Thank you for being there every time I fall, exhausted, heart-broken, depleted and lost, into your leafy lap and every time I leap, excited and coursing with energy and life, bouncing with joy, dancing and sparkling with creativity, renewal and purpose.

May I serve you as you have me. May these hands, this heart, mind, body and soul nurture, protect, encourage, delight, celebrate and sustain you.

So mote it be.

WOOOHOOOO! I can’t wait!

The Little Red Studio Art A Thon is my favorite LRS event of the year-So psyched to paint, sculpt, dance, bodypaint and wang dang doodle all night long!

Here’s what our Illustrious Leader Jeff says:

Next up is the Art A Thon.

The party starts at 9PM this Saturday night. Its $20. No host wine bar as usual. Lots of great complimentary nosch. At midnight we will have a silly ceremony to officiate the art making. Dancing until we drop to several of LRS’s rock’en DJ’s. There will be no admission charge after midnight. There will also be a massage station. Wow!

Art making all night and all day Sunday until 7PM when we will have a little closing ceremony followed by an infomal art show/sale until we drop.

Kim is offering a pancake breakfast for a Pay-what-you-can basis Sunday morning.

Espresso drinks will be $2 for everyone but free for artists of all stripes from midnight to noon on Sunday.

The gallery has been cleaned and re-painted and the walls left blank. I will be curating a show of art throughout the event. I want to include photos, drawings, paintings, sculptures, ass prints whatever. Only “art” that is made during the art a thon. The gallery will be open as much as possible throughout the event.

And most important of all, get your clay, your paint, your film, your tiara and tutu or whatever you need to make art of all kinds ready for this marathon of art making. The idea for this event is based on the idea that the muse of art speaks more freely when the personality of the artist is too tired to get in the way. Let’s see what happens!

I am personally very jazzed for this event. Last year I was able to bond with our new space and many of the troupe members new and old. I also made some fantastic art. This year the place is even nicer, there are more spaces to create in and there are lots of new people who I am hoping will be there to share the time, space and energy with.

Love,
Jeff

I completely agree with him-it was a luscious experience last year and I’m sooooo looking forward to it.

Love what he says about the muse speaking more freely when the personality of the artist is too tired to get in the way.

If you’re in, or near Seattle, don’t miss it!!!

xoxoxoxox,
Zan

I pried myself away from my mad painting frenzy for a sweet weekend tryst with the Ice King.

We wandered beaches, defied hail and snow, scrambled up rocky rooty cliffs, stood giant driftwood snags on end,

worshipped gnarled trees, majestic waterfalls, tangled roots, each other… Rolled kegs around all weekend, wandered through scarey shopping malls vainly searching for tubs, made a water-catching frame

to hold his gorgeous ice mask, movie-snuggled, sang, danced, partied, ate sushi and gigantic omelets, discovered that his new bedframe squeaks like a pirate ship in a hurricane.. and abandoned it for a sunny, mossy, snowy mountainside.

Oh, and since someone forgot to mention that the party was a masquerade, I haphazardly cobbled together a mask out of a crabshell and other beach flotsam.. Fortunately, they had mask blanks available at the party.

Aaaarh! Good times, excellent inspiration..

-Back to work now, much twisty turny rooty dryadic goodness to paint!

Oh, more pics flickring here.

Lurking about in the forest at the Islandwood Environpalooza festival last weekend was a blast! My mom was a bird(no surprise there), Maris most becomingly,

became an owl and Sam and I were frisky, growly foxes-

-playing king/queen o’ every rock and stump in the place.

It was a hoot(ow-sorry), prowling past festival-goers on the forest trails, skulking behind stumps and haunting the gorgeous tree house in the marshes.

What a lovely place!

More pics of wild things and ferry foxes here.

I was strolling at Carkeek park the other day, foraging for nettles-

-and enjoying the blessed warm spring sun when I chanced upon an incredibly rare and lucky opportunity to witness the ever elusive sandicorn timidly emerging from it’s beach cavern.

Fortunately, like a good blogger, I had my trusty camera with me and was able to get a number of shots of the extraordinary, trepidatious beast. As you can see, it’s using it’s chameleon-like powers to obfuscate it’s outlines and blend in with the sand.

More sandicorn.

I
spy
a
little
eye…

Control is futile. Resistance, inevitable.

I’m reading Shunryu Suzuki’s ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’. It’s delightfully, intensely, simply rife with paradox.

I love his talk on control, this is my favorite excerpt:

‘You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in it’s wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: First let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.’

It’s a bit of a long walk back from Sam’s schoolbus dropoff, but ’twas a gorgeous sunshining sort of day, so walk we did.. He even did a grand job of it, not collapsing-

-in his usual dramatic fashion until I stopped a few blocks from home to photograph a spectacularly lumpish cherry tree.

You’ll be glad to hear we made it home, despite the alien spaceship landing site cleverly disguised as a roundabout construction circle-fortunately my son is an expert at such egregious alien subterfuge and so we were able to nonchalantly circumnavigate the spurious construction and thus avoid becoming an extraterrestrial’s extra credit science project.

Phew! I can’t imagine what they’d think of the human race if they took us as typical examples!

Of course, if they were a scouting force for an invasion, perhaps it would have dissuaded them-when Sam started randomly exploding.