Bits and Pieces

No, I'm not still sulking over Martha's loss to the pickup-driving nude model. And neither am I over-bemoaning the opportunity for corporations to assume control over even more of our non-corporate world now that their purse strings can be totally untied to elect whoever or pass whatever serves their beastly interests. Nope. Not me. I'm keeping my mouth shut.

(These are not my lips. Matter of fact, they look kinda like Martha's lips.)

While not talking, I've been spending my time getting my computer cleaned of viruses that I picked up this morning when I was searching online for articles about the history of encaustic. I spent about four hours tonight chatting with the McAfee wiz in India who used Ice Sword software to cut out 9 pop-ups and 2 trojans that invaded my computer in less than two minutes this morning. BEWARE of these pop-ups that claim to be anti-virus software and scream at you that your computer is under attack. (Yes, it is under attack from you, you rotten bastard!) I knew it was fake because I already have McAfee installed and I went right there to stop the nonsense. The question is, why didn't McAfee see these things before I did?

Anyway, for a mere $89.95 and four hours of my time, I was able to watch while Unnikrishnan from McAfee took over my screen and cleaned out all the garbage those things put into my beautiful new computer in the mere two minutes before they were quarantined. If I hadn't caught them when I did and got McAfee to quarantine them, they would have proliferated throughout the whole hard drive. Scary and the first time it's happened to me. So be on the alert about this - but I guess it goes on all the time, just never before to me.

Today was a pretty good day in the studio although I have nothing to post here. I finished my 24"x24" piece for the New England Wax Exquisite Corpse project. This should be something to see when it all comes together. If nothing else, it will be really big.

Then I finished two painting that have been kicking around the studio for months. I worked on and abandoned them last summer, but I didn't strip everything down because there were things I liked about parts of them. They hung on my wall all these months until last week when I decided to give them a go again. I could not decide what to do with them last week no matter how I tried and I painted and scraped until I made myself crazy. Today I just picked up a brush and finished them both within half an hour. Crazy! I'll post pictures next week.

Just for something fun to look at - not mine, obviously, but Matisse's Red Studio.

After that success, I decided to tackle another project that I've had in mind for some time - to build a piece in a drawer taken from one of my mother's end tables. I had already worked on strengthening the drawer to get it ready, but what I had in mind turned into the worst kind of amateurish craft project when I tried to make it happen. Nope. Not gonna work. But not to worry, I have another idea to use the aged book covers that are inspiring this effort. There's always another way and maybe Plan B will work out better.