Xphile

Xphile
Originally uploaded by la5sol

its been twelve days since i posted last. and true to my word i have been sketching a lot more, filling up pages with color in a newly prepped day journal and have been working on juggling languages with deftness and ease. i found word games in french and spanish and i have been trying to decompress a bit by playing in spare moments. the image is from 'les mots' , but of course it doesn't have the room on my ipheezy to squeeze in my favorite of all time "jose chung's from outer space." Roswell! Roswell!

the blogging has been neglected of late and for the life of me i can't seem to think of the why and where did august go? i was extremely lucky that during the month we had more than adequate cloud cover, meaning Happy Mami, Happy Nina, and Happy Gigi! looking through most of my sketchbooks, (which serve as a hard copy of real life) i did a bit of walking with the girls, mostly along a stretch of bayside that faces the island of alameda and the skyline of sf, which is aptly named 'shoreline park'. did more cooking than usual, which means the painting of postcards and such diminished drastically. so it will be good to get back into that habit. did some drawing. sent out the mail art. saw more family than i have in the last few years. just about wrapped up another journal/collage book, "les mots" with the exception of some outlining paint to bring some rather fractured pieces/pages some cohesiveness. and received my new sketchbook project sketchbook and have been keeping it right here next to the computer so that i may, sketch in it, every, every moment so that it gets filled up sooner rather than later. the collage posted with this entry is one that i did a while back on a piece of cardboard with scraps from the recycle bin and a foil piece from a pellegrino limonata can. ummmm, pellegrino mi amore!

purple haze

cleveland sage?
Originally uploaded by la5sol

never really heard the song but know of the title, i did hear of cover of the song in one of my all-time favorites "born in east LA" where Rudy is playing guitar for tourists in TJ for change to pay off a coyote to take him back to, you guessed it, ELA. Whittier Blvd, Taco Village, Morales Shower Doors, and Garfield Ave. Pico Rivera and the Pomona Fwy. Soto St. Chickens in backyards and churros outside of la misa on sundays. And the everpresentthumpthumpthump of a heavy duty bass and WAR blasting from the cherried out buicks with chain link steering wheels.

mission blvd

mission blvd
Originally uploaded by la5sol

this year has been all about family stuff for me. so much so that it seems that not a week goes by that i am not engaged with immediate or extended family in one way or another. this weekend was no different. i needed to go see my father on saturday and then go to my uncle's birthday on sunday. since the little monsters are a handful, i doubled back the next day in a sense. while driving both days, i was reminded how much things have changed, and conversely, how thins have remained untouched.
Roads and thoroughfares- big changes. the old farm roads that i knew are being demolished to make way for new overpasses to avoid the inevitable accidents on the two lane hiway.
Farms and crops-unchanged. the smell of broccoli and the sight of row upon row of strawberries and culled through lettuce fields grabs hold of my heart no matter how long i'm away, and twist in an odd fashion. for as much as i hated it here and couldn't wait to go to the "big city", the earth has a hold on me and experiencing the surroundings via the senses calls the long forgotten to be reintegrated.
livestock-still abundant, the cows, the goats, the horses, the ranch dogs that keep pace with your car and bark furiously until you reach the next property always makes me smile.
the picture of this post brought a laugh and smile to my face and heralded my trip back to the fields and hills. it was like a vision from my past announcing my immediate future. have a lovely day.

sabiduria

sabiduria
Originally uploaded by la5sol

oooh, not a good shot. but it will do for the sake of the general idea. so, the impetus for this is integration and fitting pieces together to make a coherent whole- ---it was something i have been doing over and over again as a main design for about a week now. one of the things that happens to me when i draw and doodle on paper is that i draw in theme cycles, that is, if i draw unconsciously, things appear by themselves most of the time and i've learned to go with it (a tour through my photostream will show previous cycles, eyes, circles, squares, waves,e t c ) and now when i look through older stuff, i can remember the theme from specific dates (eyes 2004-2006, squares 2008 late fall, etc.) does this happen to others? i wonder.

Mail art received

Outgoing
Originally uploaded by la5sol

this week i've been a little, yes, just a little, lazy in regard to the blogosphere. call it crazy, but i know that the countless millions will not be showing up in front of my home with torches and pitchforks demanding in loud unreasonable voices if i fail to post. hence, the sloth, the lethargy, the definite ohwhogivesanish if i don't post. but i did get some nice mail art this week. and btw the picture and the post don't match. that's my outgoing mail in the photo. however, i got some good stuff from alexandre in guaralhos, sp and from test tower in washington and stickers from spence in canada. nifty!

collage brut

Journal page
Originally uploaded by la5sol

my style of collage is an ever-changing technique, but for the most part it is based on found words and scraps of my own art work or paintings. sometimes i like to fill the page for a spill over effect, and other times, like this example here, i play with the empty space around the main image. collage in some of my journals aren't finished for quite a time, i go back and add and take off and cover with paint or more words or images. i use color to bring it together loosely or in some cases, wait to see what develops on the page.