I’ve spent the last 2+ months working on some custom paintings for my LiveJournal friend Dorothy. I’m very honored that she trusted me with this!

The Fam, 17×17

Dorothy and her bestie

The boys (Dorothy’s sons and her best friend Kay’s son)

These were so much fun to do, thank you Dorothy!

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Recently, this really great girl named Barbie contacted me through Etsy and inquired about some custom portraits.  She ended up being one of the friendliest people I’ve interacted with through there and she even said that I’m too cool for Pittsburgh so of course that made her sparkle in my book. Because I am, you know. Too cool for Pittsburgh. Although living in Pittsburgh, that doesn’t take much. But still!

Anyhow, she wanted a 20″ x 20″ portrait of her daughters as octopi. This was daunting for two reasons: I’d never painted anything that large before  (my default is small, smaller, smallest), and her daughters are adorable and doing justice to them was intimidating.

It took a few weeks, but I finished it and she ended up, thankfully, loving it. Customs scare the SHIT out of me. The end result is so rewarding, but I’m so tightly wound that I panic the whole time that it won’t be good enough.

I’ve also been working on three separate ones for my LiveJournal friend Dorothy and she’s been sending me really encouraging emails, so even though I put stress on myself, in the end, it’s worth it to know I’m making people happy.  Deep down that’s a pretty cool thing for me, even though everyone is convinced I’m heartless.

Plus, I get to meet awesome people.

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Oh hay, someone should buy me.

The original of this painting sold back in January to someone local. She wanted to meet in person rather than have me ship it, and I’m really, truly, honest to god not good at that. But I met her anyway one night at a gas station down the street from FedEx (RIP to that job) and it was exactly the recipe for awkward situation that I imagined it to be. The gas station was in a shady area and I totally raped the underneath of my car by driving over a medium that I couldn’t see, and as if that didn’t have my heart in aerobics, our art transaction totally looked like a drug deal. The really awkward part came after she paid me and we both just stood there and I’m thinking, “Oh god, please don’t ask me to get coffee or sometime, please let’s just rip this band-aid off and go our separate ways” and probably I was being paranoid but I thought I saw her body start to do that forward-lurch shoulder-scrunch routine that people do right before going in for a hug, so I interrupted by saying “Thanks!” for the fortieth time and that was that.

And I remember driving home that night thinking that if it really had been drugs, I’d have had so much more money in my wallet right then. After that, I just felt really depressed and while I can’t remember the rest of this with 100% accuracy, I’m willing to bet I went home, drank a ton of wine and cut myself a little a la Degrassi’s Ellie Nash before watching MTV reality shows.

Nice lady, though. Too bad she had to meet up with a paranoid socially retarded freak.

I’ve always felt that if this painting could have it’s own musical theme, it would be “Empty” by B! Machine (only my favorite synthpop musician EVER).

 

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The sun was beating down on them that day like a space-hung magnifying glass search-lighting for human ants. On dehydration’s horizon, a collective of construction workers toiled at a work site, beleaguered with dry mouths and Sahara-strong hallucinations of sparkling oasis.

Manfred was the first to experience a slack in his perseverance. “If we don’t take a break, we’re all going to melt,” he assured the crew. “Or worse,” he mumbled, stealing a glance at Anthony’s sun-beaten face and quaking knees.

“He’s right, you know,” Lenny wheezed, stabbing his shovel into the cracked soil, which a summer-long drought had turned into an uncanny semblance of over-baked chocolate chip cookies, sheet-form. “And we’re running out of water, to boot.”

The others needn’t be told more than once, and a symphony of metal clunking ground resounded through the site; brows were mopped in tandem; chests heaved in exhausting unison.

“The b-boss’s not going to be pleased when h-he sees we’re not w-working,” Anthony panicked, anxiety bringing forth the stutter of a five-year-old’s first day of school.

“I wouldn’t worry about that old prick,” Carlos laughed.  “Found his body slunched over back behind the scaffolding; been dead at least six hours.

” And with that, he doled out what little aqua remained in the boss’s confiscated Hello Kitty SIGG water bottle.

*********************

A few weeks ago at the flea market, Alisha alerted me to two of these wonderfully gaudy frames, knowing that I would squeal while simulataneously holding my hand palm-up, the universal sign for “Gimme money, Daddy.” Or, in my case, “Remember when I had sex with you? Pay up, Henry.” And he did, too, but not without some grumbling and heavy sighing.

Inside the frames were identical uggified prints of a floral arrangement oil painting. It screamed “1970s, holla!!” and while I love kitsch, I had my own ideas for those frames.

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Both were painted over that night.

“Caesura” was the first one I did, and it sold last Monday to this awesome repeat customer of mine who has an uncanny ability of sending me an email full of compliments every time I’m feeling down on my art. So while I was sad to have to send off “Caesura,” I was glad it was going to a nice home. Bye bye, “Caesura.”

Caesura. Caesura. I just like typing it and hearing my brain-voice whisper it seductively. Caesura.

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Do you use Bloglovin’? Well, now you can follow my blog with bloglovin.

Also, here’s my new bestie Mozart.

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If you ask her teachers, they will turn taciturn, set their lips in a firm, well-practiced smile and gargle the nerves congesting their throats before feeding you one of the templates they’ve memorized from their Teachers Handbook.

“Prudence never disrupted the class.”
“Prudence always turned in her dittos in a timely fashion.”
“Prudence excelled in cursive and time tables.”

Because you wouldn’t expect them to tell you that Prudence killed frogs on the playground, ate flies between heels of moldy potato bread, and sat in the darkened cubby speaking softly in what was originally thought to be Latin but turned out to be some variant of Appalachian tongues.

Still, Prudence managed to maintain a small clique of friends. Most townsfolk say that these girls only fraternized with the Goosterjuice girl because she had a fancy doll collection and an older brother who mowed the grass without a shirt on and had a predilection for younger tarts who would let him do another kind of mowing, though most of the girls weren’t yet tainted enough by accidental exposure to pornography to know quite what that meant until they were already pinned down on sharp blades of grass, the kinds that cut right through flesh if you try to stroke them, crying as the buttons on their homemade blouses pop off like some kind of Japanese firecrackers.

But they all inevitably walked away from that soiled sex patch behind the water tower feeling as though they were in love with that Goosterjuice boy.

Prudence knew what her friends were doing when they excused themselves from her bedroom, saying they had to attend to matters concerning their bowels, and it disgusted her. Intercourse in general disgusted her, ever since she found out her real daddy was the ringmaster of a traveling carnival who tricked her mother into sleeping with him by promising her the coveted spot atop a sequined elephant, but when she woke up the next morning, the caravan was gone and she was left on the side of the road with her virginity and $34 stolen from her fanny pack. Her mother never told her this story, but she knew it to be true because she heard the man previously thought to be her father speaking about it in slurred and abasing tones during one of his midnight poker games.

Most people who lived in that town would tell you that she was only disgusted about sex because no one ever wanted to have it with her, that she was a hemaphrodite.

Gradually, Prudence’s after-school social hours petered out and she was resigned to spend her evenings sitting cross-legged on her embroidered bedspread, reading dusty tomes about interior decorating which she found the year before at an estate sale at the home of the town’s first gay man who was driven away by the Church.

Her parents, too caught up in the intricate art of slave trading, didn’t seem to notice that their daughter wasn’t getting invited to keggers and seances.

Until the smell happened.

Prudence’s mother was the one to discover it. The acrid aroma trailed from Prudence’s room and wafted down into the sitting room, where it raped her mother’s nasal cavity with the powerful punch of rot.

Following the stench to Prudence’s room, she was quickly distracted by a visual assault.

Using crude strokes, Prudence had colored over the floral wallpaper her mother had spent weeks choosing, splashed right over it with a carmine hue that seemed to have chunks of gelatin suspended in some of the heavier streaks. The smell of death emanated.

“Do you like it, Momma? It’s like they’re menstruating. My walls, that is. Don’t touch, Momma. It’s fresh. Doesn’t it smell lovely?”

Her mother stood with one clammy hand on the doorknob, the other covered her mouth and pinched her nostrils, in tandem. Speechless. Agog. Some say she probably didn’t know what was coming until it was too late, that all Prudence had to do was utter a few indecipherable syllables that would make snakes hiss from fifteen miles away. But most people call bullshit on that and believe that the only tongue-lashing going on in that room, on that night, was by the hand of a cleaver-wielding twelve-year-old who was tired of hearing her mother making bank by seducing the milkman and the postman and the dogcatcher in her bedroom with the tapestry-covered windows and the locked door, but the sounds her mother made right before stuffing the wads of bills into her garter belt echoed through the vents and were delivered right behind Prudence’s bed, like a smutty package of wet moans and testicular slappings tied with a bow formed of lecherous grunts and infidelity.

And once it was all said and done, a trunk containing her art supplies was discovered under her bed. Brushes fashioned from the hair of her classmates, the ones who spread their legs, whose parents had reported them missing in the last week. Mason jars sloshed to the brim with hemoglobin. Her mother’s hair, still attached to her scalp, twisted and tangled into hematic ropes. It was determined that these grisly Type O locks helped finish the paint job on the west wall.

The rest of the pieces, the body parts? They were stuffed in garment bags and hung heavily from a brass rod in the closet. A rogue eyeball was found in Prudence’s jewelry box, speared onto the twirling ballerina, who no longer twirled so much now under the weight of the optical orb, but more so staggered along in an arching path to the tune of Greensleeves. It was determined to be the eyeball of Cadie Caldwell, Prudence’s classmate who was obsessed with becoming a flapper and gave Father McNeilly a handjob after confession last summer.

Prudence’s daddy, the one who wasn’t really her daddy, all he said to the police was, “I never knew Prudence had any interest in painting. And she’s not my real daughter, by the way.”

The only person who knew what truly happened was Prudence, but in all the seventy years she sat in prison, all she’d ever do was flash those butter-brick teeth of hers and say, “Ain’t see a damn thing wrong with wantin’ a little rouge to my walls.”

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The bus was late that day. Something about major roadways being cordoned off due to a parade for amputees. There would later be a riot, instigated by the albinos who were tired of being the least celebrated minority in the city of Fuglyfoot.

But that’s a story that cannot be easily told without the use of obscenities and slurs that would make Satan himself shrink back into the shadows.

But the issue of the bus tardiness, this was no good for Maureen Hucklecrack, who had to be at court in fifteen minutes, else her philandering ex-husband would turn over evidence that would prove she moonlighted as a sort of Heidi Fleiss with midget clientele. And who knows what Maureen would have to resort to without that coitus-derived income. Probably would have to sell her Dolly Parton TV tray collection and stop getting Botex in the back of the corner fish market.

On the next wire, George Stockingcock’s anxiety level rose as he glanced at his watch and realized that he was already twenty-two minutes late for his prostrate exam.

This made him feel a nervous diarrhea-burn in his lower stomach for a split second, until he created a Plan B, in which the mulatto phlebotomist he was seeing on the sly could maybe pull on her latex dominatrix gloves (to camouflage her liver spots) and conduct her own posterior prod-fest.

Clutching rigidly on an upper wire, Amy Slityourthroat was livid. The night before, she had caught her boyfriend of THREE MONTHS listening to the Used with some other girl. Some other girl who didn’t even paint her nails black and had the audacity to wear clothes from Hollister. Hollister, for Christ’s sake! She should go date a surfer and stay the hell away from my stuffed-in-dirty-skinny-jeans boyfriend, Amy thought erratically. And now the bus she takes every Wednesday to her anger management class was LATE. But she was too busy drawing a blueprint for murder to notice.

And then there was Lester Copafeel. Lester had been perched on the same wire for fifteen months, ever since his mother abandoned him for being mute. No one was sure if he was waiting for a bus, or for anything at all, really.

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I want to go back to filling this blog thing with content. Or whatever the fuck it was that I used to fill this space with. Trust me. But through a fucked-up twist of fate, the job that I thought I was being reoffered has been taken away from me because apparently I have an alter ego that smokes pot. So I have been slamming ass trying to get shit done so that I can perhaps make enough loot to tide me over until my next opportunity to hopefully pass a drug test.

So I have been biding my time with custom work. My favorite of late is a family portrait I painted as a surprise for one of my repeat customers. Her husband contacted me on the sly, sent me a few photos and gave me a list of their interests and I went from there. It was stressful, yes – custom orders always give me heart palpitations but the end result is what keeps me coming back for more.  This one ended up going real smoothly once I got started.

I got the seal of approval from the husband, so I’ve started breathing properly again since Sunday.

In other Etsy endeavors, I had started a shop a year ago with the intent to move my holiday cards there. Mainly I wanted to keep them separate from my art so as not to scare away the “normal” people who are there for the art, but even then I guess my companion stories are enough to black list me from “regular” Etsy shoppers. But really, I wanted them to be on their own so that my main shop didn’t get too variety store-esque.

In between multiple viewings of “Degrassi Goes Hollywood” (OMFG JAY HOGARTTTT!) & freaking out in a near-empty theater after midnight with one Janna Hazelbitch Hustwit to the spastic images of “Demons Among Us,” I sat in front of the computer in 90+ degree heat, redesigning my old serial killer cards. I am finally starting to feel content with them, especially the Lizzie Borden one which always fell flat with me.

I got to go for a really great power walk in my favorite cemetery on Sunday. There is something sadistic living inside me, possibly the devil, that makes me crave exercising underneath a sweltering sun and face-melting humidity. I LOVE IT. And it gave me a chance to really give the new not-yet-released Used album a good, honest listen and I fucking swear it is so near perfection that I would like to purchase it five times when it comes out at the end of August. It’s one of those albums where nearly every song makes me blush because I feel that deeply connected to it, as though Bert has written about something that I might have some experience in. It’s just one of those very relatable albums. You should go get it when it comes out. I think it’s the best material they’ve produced to date.

Listening to it, out there in that cemetery, it made me ache, yet feel really calm within myself for the first time in months. Like when you let out a deep sigh and realize that you were practically holding your breath for what seems like an entire lifetime?

And now I just feel really content.

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The last giveaway I had was the bathroom plaque contest I did way back in March or April, so I feel as though the time is nigh to rectify the fact that my blog is re-virginating itself to giveaways.

Since my pendants are brand new, I figured this would be a good way to maybe stir the buzz-pot and generate some excitement, because I (and mostly Henry) worked hard on them. And wearing art is pretty hot. I think Perez Hilton just dropped a blog joint about that. I even heard one of those Gossip Girl broads is starting a collection.

Hurry before one of those prissy celebutantes uses one of their six-inch Louboutin heels to grind this trend into the Red Bull-littered sidewalk outside of the Chateau Marmont  faster than the Uggs faux-pas of 2003. Oh wait, they’re still wearing those things. Scarves in summer? Oh. Sorry, Kate Hudson.

Rules:

1.  Check out the pendants in my shop to see if you even really want to win one. Keep in mind that we are continuously making more and there are plenty of different designs about to be served up. I’m just waiting for Henry to ding that bell.

2. If you still are dreaming of being A Very Big Winner, leave a comment saying something along the lines of “Hi I would like to enter, and I think you have pretty eyeballs.” Or you could omit that last part if schmoozing makes you diarrhea-prone.  And please be sure to leave a valid email address where you can be reached.

3. Spread the word! If you retweet this on Twitter, post it on Facebook, link back to it from your blog, come back and let me know in another comment. Now, my math is pretty rusty, but I DO BELIEVE that gives you a BETTER chance of The Big Win.

4. The winning comment will be chosen using the generator on Random.org next Sunday, August 23rd at 9pm est. Winner chooses which pendant they want. (A few more examples can be found here.)

I like feeling like Santa Claus. The end.

 

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The Conversation: $12 + shipping.

Size:(approx) 23 x 16.5 x 2mm (whatever the fuck that means)
Material: Zinc Alloy Metal (Lead Free & Nickel Free)
Chains unavailable at this time.

If there is one thing I have learned over the past few weeks, it’s that I am not a jeweler. Henry apparently is, though, thank god. I picked out the paintings I wanted to use, I ordered the supplies, and then I did a whole lot fo hovering while Henry did all the resin-working. Even before he started mixing that shit, I already knew that I didn’t have enough patience to do it  myself. We went through several bad batches, but after a little tweaking (and a whole of tantrums on my end), Henry finally got it just right and now he’s a smooth resin operator. I’m pretty sure I heard him talking in his sleep about all the things he wants to coat with resin, and Lady Gaga’s penis was one.

Sigmund: $12 + shipping

Size:(approx) 23 x 16.5 x 2mm (whatever the fuck that means)
Material: Zinc Alloy Metal (Lead Free & Nickel Free)
Chains unavailable at this time.

But don’t go thinking I didn’t play a part in this project, because I attached those little jump rings on the tops of the pendants ALL BY MYSELF. With NO TOOLS.

The above pendants are listed on Etsy already, and the ones below are currently made and ready to go as well. If there’s one you’d like to have, either pictured below or something you’ve seen in my shop, let me know and we’ll work something out!

My blog might be lacking in content and entertainment value for a little longer because I’m putting all my focus on these pendants, a few custom pieces, and revamping my serial killer Christmas cards (I’m really, really excited about this!).

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There was something about the way the sunset ensconced Gilbert’s head in a fiery halo that made Maryannsuellen think of the stained glass in her church, and how she was always afraid that the colored panes would come crashing down around her; the crudely created depiction of The Crucifixion vivisecting her, unfurling her skin into flesh ribbons which the paramedics would likely chuck out the back of the ambulance for sport as they barrelled past Feck Farm, leaving the local pigs to feed on skin suey. 

Maryannsuellen gave a little chest pop to ping the paranoia pressure away and hugged Gilbert a little tighter, a bit more desperate than she tended to embrace someone. Just in case.

Gilbert scraped her from himself and laughed nervously. “Maryannsuellen, please.” With one last uncomfortable chuckle, Gilbert saw himself out of Maryannsuellen’s brownstone and began his walk home.

A Newport hanging from his bottom lip, and a cowlick in his bangs, Gilbert rummaged in his slacks for his lighter. Realizing he must have left it on Maryannsuellen’s night stand after their post-coital smoke (which he mostly partook in to combat the awful glaze of funk she left on his tongue), Gilbert made an impromptu stop at Calvin’s Corner Club for Cheap Crap. He didn’t typically patronize this particular store of convenience, as it was located at a crossroads known for amateur ninja violence. He saw it on the news nearly every night. But he really wanted a cigarette, and also to possibly see what kind of naughty rags they had behind the counter.

So Gilbert really shouldn’t have been surprised when, getting no further than the threshhold of the store, his carotid artery was stabbed by a Kohga ninja throwing star.

The next morning, Maryannsuellen read about Gilbert’s murder in the paper. She was still sobbing in her grits hours later when her cat began rubbing against her ankles, a hint that he would like to be eating his lunch now, please.

Snapping out of it, Maryannsuellen’s gaze lifted from her now-congealed grits to the scratched Zippo laying on the crest of piled porno rags from Calvin’s and the bills for her oxygen tank.

She picked it up, twirled it around between her thumb and forefinger and ran a ragged fingernail along the etchings left by too many meetings with the asphalt. “At least I’ll always have this small part of him,” Maryannsuellen said fondly of the stranger she brought home the previous afternoon from the furry convention.  And the impatient beckoning of her 3 o’clock john distracted her from any more thoughts about Gilbert.

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One of my return customers asked if I could make a monster Abraham Lincoln painting for her husband’s birthday and I think it was the most fun I’ve had so far since I started my Etsy shop 2 years ago.

Mostly because I’m a Lincoln-lover, too.

And then Janna was all, “When I get my own classroom, you can paint all the Presidents for me!

“

“NOT FOR FREE, I WON’T” I yelled after I slapped her with a rotting blowfish.

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My name is Francis and I am an exotic fixture at a bumpin’ little place called The Wet Fish, just started there last week after graduating high school.

At first, I could not master the art of pole dancing, but things there have been progressively getting better. You know what they say: One does not give up just because of a little Indian brush burn to the crotch.

So I tried and tried and tried again until finally one of the seasoned pole charmers, Snapper, came to my aid and clasped her hands around my waist to add support while I gyrated and spiraled down the pole. Her fingers were yellowed from years of smoking Pall Malls’ that reminded me of my grandmama, who was also in the business back in the day. That gave me hope and a sense of familiarity.

We are not allowed to go topless because one night there was a suited man seated in the corner and the sight of topless women triggered something innately homicidal that he never knew he had in him, and he sliced a dancer open with a broken beer bottle. Ernie, the manager, made a new rule that requires us to wear pasties. I use pepperoni to cover up. It’s all part of my routine: I saunter onto stage with a piping hot pizza from Geno’s and seductively pull off two discs of pepperoni and slap them over my nipples, letting the attached cheese ooze down my chest like draping ornamental chains. It makes me feel like a Vegas showgirl. The guys seem to really like it because the scalding of my flesh makes me yell out in pain. Plus, it distracts them from my club foot. And the fact that it is hard to hoist my thick body up off the floor when I do my pole routine.

The other night when I was writhing around the peanut-shelled floor, shimmying in the direction of a rotund man in overalls and hoping for a tip greater than a can of sardines, I kept catching the scent of Dorito’s and seaweed salad. The biting tang seemed to get stronger every time I would do one of my signature leg lifts. The room cleared out rather quickly, except for one gangly old man who tipped me two dollars, a Chuck E. Cheese token and a recipe from the back of a Campbell’s Soup label, reasoning that my odor reminded him of his mama’s cookin’.

It wasn’t until after my show that I realized the scent was emanating from the sanitary napkin that I had left adhered to my underwear for over a week.

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Leaving Penelope’s shipwreck, Poppy paused. “Am I missing some stockings?” she asked, studying her swishing tentacles.

Paige scoped out her friend’s goods. “Yes, it appears you certainly are missing some stockings.” Glancing down at her own gyrating stems, she went on to say, “And it appears I’m flashing some bareness as well.”

Paige and Poppy looked at each other and rolled their eyes in unison. Every time they spent the night at Penelope’s, they always wound up with AWOL undergarments.

“I know Penelope’s parents have been hurting for money, but this is just ridiculous,” Poppy steamed. “She must have enough of our stuff to photograph her own lingerie catalogue by now.

“

They turned in their wake and buoyed back over to Penelope’s. As they cornered her in her room, Penelope’s father floated down the hallway wearing Poppy’s bra and, on two of his chubby tentacles, Paige’s stockings were pulled up taut.

One already had a runner.

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(Evidently I’m into oceanic shit these days, but these things are just very cathartic to paint.)

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Deborah and Dolores were best friends. They braided each other’s tentacles on their wedding days, sedated each other during child birth, and held a joint murder party down behind the sunken pirate ship when they found out their husbands were cheating with the electric eel twins.

They probably would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for Deborah, who floated back to town with the fishing spear still strangleheld by three of her tentacles, looking like a crime scene Christmas tree, tinsel’d with the slimy entrails of her husband and crowned with the pierced eyeball of Dolores’s.

And then there was Dolores, her eyes darting so rapidly that she lost her ability to float without crashing into rocks and ricocheting off bottomfeeders. They tried to have a normal lunch together, like two upstanding citizens, but when the hostess informed them that there was a twenty minute wait and asked for the name of their party, Dolores blurted out “GUILTY” just as Deborah noticed that she was still wearing a ski mask flecked with brain matter.

Some might say that being in a stuck in a surf stockade would be the worst thing since the creation of American Idol, but for Dolores and Deborah, knowing that their husbands would never again dangle their dongs to other women was worth every luxury they would no longer know.

Besides, they realized that all those years of checking each other for lumps had sparked a latent romance, and you better believe they took advantage of all their newfound privacy and phallic pieces of igneous sea rock.

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