Happy Halloween

The concept development of my next narrative painting continues ... slowly. Maybe I'm putting too much thought into it. But even so, I still have to build the canvas for it. That's my project for tomorrow. Then it has to be gessoed and toned, so it'll be another week to ten days before it'll be ready for paint. So there's still time to muck around with the concept, add and subtract things until I'm thoroughly confused, and generally screw it all up. And you thought being an artist was a cakewalk.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll hang a show of works by Cotton Mill artists in our local coffee/sandwich shop, the Clingman Cafe. We'll have five painters: John Mac Kah, Ruthanne Kah, Genie Maples, Christine Dougherty, and myself, plus a fiber artist (Barbara Zaretsky) and Eileen and Marty Black, potters. This show will be up for a month. The Clingman Cafe is a great little place for lunch, coffee, snacks, even beer, so stop in and give it a try. My favorite is the Thunderbird sandwich (smoked turkey, bacon, swiss, chipotle mayo, pepporoncini relish and Dijon mustard on grilled sourdough - yum!).

I bade farewell to an old friend today. My Krups espresso machine finally bit the dust after 14 years of daily service. Yes, it was a sad day. I thought its lifespan was actually pretty remarkable in this day and age of cheapo Chinese crap, but it was very well made. So now I have a new Krups espresso machine sitting on the kitchen counter. It begins its own 14-year stint tomorrow morning.

The fall leaf season is pretty much over. The tulip poplars and birches have lost all their leaves, the beeches and maples have lost almost all of theirs, and the oaks are just turning brown. My grass is still green where it's not covered with leaves. In another two or three weeks, I'll mow it for the last time and turn all those leaves into mulch. Then it'll be a long, almost 6-month stretch before the trees start turning green again in mid April. It's the Brown Season.

It's also baseball, football, and basketball season. I'm sitting here watching the World Series game ... not that I'm a big baseball fan ... and there's a football game on another channel, and the frickin' basketball season has already kicked off. This is just plain wrong. It should be illegal for more than two major-league pro ball seasons to be underway at the same time. Basketball should not even think of starting until the Series is over. I'm rooting for San Francisco. I've got a good friend who lives in the San Francisco area (plus one for the Giants) while the Rangers used to be owned by George Bush (minus one for the Rangers). Janis is rooting for the Rangers ... she says she likes cowboys, but I've been telling her these guys are just ballplayers ... to no avail.

And I am SICK TO DEATH of political ads!