I am getting ready to house & feed 14 people for Christmas.... art making & blogging will resume on the 30th!. Happy Holidays!

A great post at Ed Winkleman's yesterday.... an a generous response to an artist who obviously was off their meds.

I was very sad to hear that 31Grand, the Lower East Side gallery that showed my work this year in "The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter" will be closing its doors this week. They had an amazing roster of artists: their vision will be sorely missed. Some of the gallery's artists have followed Heather Stephens to her new post at the Black & White Gallery.

"Artists Clawing Back Control From Dealers" at The Art Newspaper today, and some responses at Art World Salon.

Looking for Maintenance-Free Art.....

Yesterday was spent tending to dress forms... prepping, packing, running out to buy a spray bottle for the distilled water that will need to be sprayed on them to remove wrinkles once they are hung (no one ever thinks to return those bottles.... I need to start ordering them by the case), and checking the fan that needs to be shipped to make Summer Night Breeze Dress "flutter". Today I go over the dresses with a fine-toothed comb, tightening pearls that might be loose, checking for spots, etc. My computer crashed a while back, and while I archive pretty frequently, the installation directions for these dresses did not make it to the backup file, so they will all have to be retyped.

Paintings occasionally need a touch up, but fiber is really incredible in terms of maintenance from show to show. Even drawings that are behind glass occasionally pick up specks that need to be removed from the mat, etc. What is immune? Video?

Very busy here....been preparing & packing up huge boxes of dress forms to go to the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art for a 3-person show called "Dress Code". Most of the Psychological Clothing series will be there, including The Defense Mechanism Coat, on loan from the Belger Family Foundation. The purses will be absent, as they are promised to a show in Michigan.

I am delighted that I have been invited to participate in a show called "Narrative Threads", that will open at the Lyons Wier Ortt Contemporary Art Gallery in New York on Jan 9. It should be a great exhibition of contemporary fiber-based work, featuring several folks from last year's "Pricked" show at MAD. They made a special request of us for the invite, so I am trying to get that done today, as well as getting these boxes out.

Just got my first look at this book cover. Published by EPO, it will hit the bookstores on Saturday.....
(click to enlarge). The authors:

Hilde VAN DEN BULCKE is media studies professor and chairman of the department of Communication Sciences of the University of Antwerp. She is co-author of Cultural Globalization and Local Identity, Amerikanisering van de Europese media (1994), The Media Book (2002) en De publieke televisie in Vlaanderen, Americanization of the European media (1994), The Media Book (2002) and Public television in Flanders. Een geschiedenis (2007). A history (2007). In addition, she participates in civil debate about the media, including through its monthly column "Media Watcher" in The Standard.

Tambuyzer Sil is a researcher at the Department of Communication Sciences of the University of Antwerp and works as a journalist. He wrote the article, Inter alia, Do-it-yourself celebrities and the virtual road to fame (2008). He makes educational records for Cinemagie culture and writes reviews for the young www.gobots.be website.

Not sure how I feel about finding this in my Google alerts this morning......

Been feeling pretty poopy lately, but this perked me right up:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Nailed 'Em - Radical Knitting

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

I just finished a piece on red velvet, and I am now working this one and planning two more. It might cure me of my velvet fetish once and for all.

In response to the current state of the art market, see Compound Editions. Ouch, the "missed you in Miami" one hurt.

A NY Times article by Marci Alboher on making artistic careers lucrative.

The Great Reorganization

So, yesterday, thanks to my new assistant Libby, I was able to go from miscellaneous stacks of hundreds of xeroxed reviews (making a pile between 4-5 ft high if put together) to a new chronological filing system, including the original of each review in a plastic sleeve in the front of each folder.
Here is the aftermath, there is still a bit more to do:
I am back to working on this drawing
and a new embroidered piece.

Today is the first day with my new assistant, Libby. Also back to embroidering for me. Pics of new embroidery tonight. Snuck out to see "Synecdoche, NY" yesterday... it was fantastic, and I need to see it again soon.