OK, new post time, and this one is really important to me.
I have a chance to actually realise my dream of having my own gallery! Not just my own work, but the work of others who don't regularly get the chance to show. Tattoo art, graphic art, horror art...all kinds of amazing work that tends to make local gallery owners cringe.
I think it's time people got the message: "fine art" is not just landscapes, still-lifes and portraits!
The bad news....I am broke as a joke. LOL!
The good news....through my friends in Hellblinki and This Way to the Egress I discovered an AWESOME program for the arts called "Kickstarter". Folks, this site is fantastic! It's entire purpose is to raise capital for individuals, or groups, that are trying to achieve something new in the arts. Documentary filmmakers, writers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians....it's brilliant! With funding for the arts being cut at every turn, a program like this is perfectly timed.
It doesn't rely on grants, loans or any other type of payback funding. No interest rates, or killer fees.
This program relys on people. The artist's friends, family and peers, even complete strangers with a big heart towards the arts. These people become one's project backers, and as such receive a reward from the artist that goes along with the theme of the project. A piece of art, secret MP3, t-shirt...etc.
.....which brings me to my main reason for this post (ya had to know it was coming!).
Aside from letting all you fine folks know about Kickstarter, which has a TON of great projects that need backing, I would love to introduce y'all to MY pet project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103311768/bringing-an-edgy-cool-gallery-to-new-hope
Now here's how this works. I have a monetary goal of $2,000. and an end date of Halloween around 6pm. IF I reach my goal on time, I get the money for my project and all my backers get their chosen rewards.
If I DON'T reach my goal in time, well I get nothing and my backers keep their cash but get no rewards.
Now, the space I'm supposed to be getting is tiny but really cool....and needs a metric ton of work to be useable.LOL!
It used to be a little diner, so it needs: a new floor, a new back wall, all new wiring and lighting, new plumbing, paint, a new door.....all that stuff. So reaching that goal in time is REALLY important to me. It's the only way I'm ever going to be able to afford to fix the place up.
SO....on that note....HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!
PLEASE consider being a patron for the arts! (You can back for as little as $1 all the way up to $500 or more. Heck, if all my facebook friends backed for $2. a piece I'll hit my goal in a flash!!
I'll post updates as they happen, but for now I'll back away from the keyboard slowly and wait.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2103311768/bringing-an-edgy-cool-gallery-to-new-hope
One sideshow at a time....
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Heat!!!!
Just a quick update for all my plant people.
This weather has really altered my ideas about porch planting! Lol!
Through constant insane watering, everything is still alive and producing....but everything but the hot peppers is suffering.
Going from constant rain and madly fluctuating temperatures to intense heat and DRY DRY DRY is really taking a toll. As with everyone else, my tomatoes are refusing to ripen, and my berries are frying no matter the water levels.
The sun out here has never been an issue until this summer. We really only get morning sun, and yet that has been enough to beat the holy handgrenades out of us!
I'm already making plans for next season that do NOT include about half of what I planted this year.
I have some pretty solid ideas about pot size as well.
Bigger pots CAN mean more produce, but they also need much more water and nearly constant attention. *sigh*
By the by.....anyone have an Eco way to get rid of knot weed in my pots!?!?! Arrrrggh!!!
Here's a shot of our newest feature, a really cool fountain!
And one of the damages...
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
This weather has really altered my ideas about porch planting! Lol!
Through constant insane watering, everything is still alive and producing....but everything but the hot peppers is suffering.
Going from constant rain and madly fluctuating temperatures to intense heat and DRY DRY DRY is really taking a toll. As with everyone else, my tomatoes are refusing to ripen, and my berries are frying no matter the water levels.
The sun out here has never been an issue until this summer. We really only get morning sun, and yet that has been enough to beat the holy handgrenades out of us!
I'm already making plans for next season that do NOT include about half of what I planted this year.
I have some pretty solid ideas about pot size as well.
Bigger pots CAN mean more produce, but they also need much more water and nearly constant attention. *sigh*
By the by.....anyone have an Eco way to get rid of knot weed in my pots!?!?! Arrrrggh!!!
Here's a shot of our newest feature, a really cool fountain!
And one of the damages...
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, June 23, 2011
More Fun Than Humans Should Have....
....but I AM willing to share!!!!!
As some of you may or may not have noticed, I've been pimping this amazing event coming up tomorrow night! This is my LAST push to inform everyone of the mayhem and merriment they will be missing!
This Way To The Egress is having a record release bash for their first full length CD : The Delicious Cabaret!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now if you've ever seen this band live you'll know why I'm working so hard. Never has a band so cool been so underground! They have sexy burlesque girls (and hot 'boy-lesque' boys as well!), fire performers, side show madness , carnival games and AMAZING music....and that's just their REGULAR show! This should be the show of all shows!
Check out all the info on their facebook page , And I've added some of my fave bits from youtube to whet your appetite!
It's from 8pm on at the old Asbury Park Lanes bowling alley....which has been redone as a rockabilly haven club/bowling alley, with the party kicking off at the Asbury Park Carousel with a fire show and old fashioned circus style parade from there to the venue! New Jersey is sooooo spoiled!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMl-oJ6al1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0we1Canin6E
As well as the magnificent aforementioned band (MAD hugs to Sarah, Taylor and Matt!!), Hellblinki all the way from Asheville NC and Amour Obscur from NY are ALSO playing, and adding their own special brand of macabre sexiness and dark awesomness to the party!
So I know this is sort of a short bit, and really just pimping my head off, but I'd love to have just a giant group of all my crazy friends to enjoy this event with!
JOIN US!!!! LOL!
As some of you may or may not have noticed, I've been pimping this amazing event coming up tomorrow night! This is my LAST push to inform everyone of the mayhem and merriment they will be missing!
This Way To The Egress is having a record release bash for their first full length CD : The Delicious Cabaret!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now if you've ever seen this band live you'll know why I'm working so hard. Never has a band so cool been so underground! They have sexy burlesque girls (and hot 'boy-lesque' boys as well!), fire performers, side show madness , carnival games and AMAZING music....and that's just their REGULAR show! This should be the show of all shows!
Check out all the info on their facebook page , And I've added some of my fave bits from youtube to whet your appetite!
It's from 8pm on at the old Asbury Park Lanes bowling alley....which has been redone as a rockabilly haven club/bowling alley, with the party kicking off at the Asbury Park Carousel with a fire show and old fashioned circus style parade from there to the venue! New Jersey is sooooo spoiled!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMl-oJ6al1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0we1Canin6E
As well as the magnificent aforementioned band (MAD hugs to Sarah, Taylor and Matt!!), Hellblinki all the way from Asheville NC and Amour Obscur from NY are ALSO playing, and adding their own special brand of macabre sexiness and dark awesomness to the party!
So I know this is sort of a short bit, and really just pimping my head off, but I'd love to have just a giant group of all my crazy friends to enjoy this event with!
JOIN US!!!! LOL!
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
See....I'm NOT dead! :P
Well here we are at the end of a loooooong, weird road.
My experiment was about 75% successful, and I've learned some very important things.
Like ......
: Starbucks isn't the devil, but neither is Whole Foods entirely angelic.
: America doesn't grow grapes for food. ( we do...but it's nearly impossible to find 'grown in the USA' grapes in any east coast market.)
: The US government frowns on home growers. (How messed up is THAT?!?!?! Remember the concept of the 'victory garden'? That USED to be us...)
: Fresh, organic versions of food TASTE BETTER.
: HFCS is really hard to avoid, but REALLY worth avoiding. (Yes, sugar is sugar as far as your body knows....BUT the process for obtaining HFCS is ridiculously bad for humans.)
: You CAN buy Eco, sustainable, responsible products at roughly the same price as all the bad stuff, you just have to WORK at it.
: TRADING IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
: And lastly, for now, trying to eat locally in the summer and fall is awesome and easy....in the winter and spring...not so much.
So herein is my last post of the year long personal challenge.
Got up yesterday morning and went out to my little porch to water
the garden. Looking around at the variety of food coming in made me smile from ear to ear. I had proven to myself that not only could I grow my own food, organically and with NO GMO seeds or seedlings, I could figure out how to grow almost any fruit or veg IN POTS!Here's the rundown as far as June 8th:
Sweet peas
Cukes
Tomatoes (3 varieties)
Hot peppers (9 varieties...so far)
Basil, Rosemary, Peppermint, Lemongrass, Aloe, Sunflowers,
Blackberries, Strawberries (2 varieties), Raspberries, Blueberries (2 varieties),
Silver Mound Wormwood (yay Absinthe!), Nasturtium
Dwarf fruit trees: Macintosh apple, Sweet Cherry.......
Not to mention the non edibles in there.
The sweet peas were a bit of a coup tho, as I was told by EVERYONE that you just can't transplant peas from starter pots. They're too delicate and won't survive the root shock. BAH! BAH! I say!
I pulled the first 10 fat pods yesterday and MAN are they sweet! Mind you, 15 plants does not a great pea haul produce....but what we got was worth the hassles. ( if anyone is interested in HOW I pulled this off, let me know and I'll add it in the comments.)
So I am living proof that you can have a great, organic garden on a teeny little porch with just a little work, research and ingenuity. :)
(BTW: The shelves in the pics were made from old plastic milk crates and wood slats we found in the flea market dump pile. Cool no?)
As far as the locavore thing goes, I have discovered both a secret locavore club that meets once a month in different eateries for locally sourced dinners (it's sadly rather exclusive and therefore expensive,) and a not so secret group started by a friend of mine (Go Katie girl!!) recently!
Pot luck style in fact! I missed the first dinner due to bad schedule overlap, but I plan to attend ALL the rest!
And while the local Goodwill turned out to be a total bust, I have found that the flea markets around here are more than adequate as far as not buying new stuff goes. Sometimes even FREE stuff!
Almost all our porch furnishings are 'trash picked' pieces that are totally fine and useful, but were headed for the garbage stream. Sad actually. But now they have fresh paint and new lives!
The trading thing is going really well too. I had to ditch the Ning site as it was NOT drawing well, but facebook is amazing for it!
**OH!! If any of you out there are local to me, and have chickens for eggs....I WANNA TRADE!!!!**
In fact, let me know if you have homemade foods, crafts or whatever to trade! I'm a great conduit!
** I also need a wooden drying rack for clothes. The kind that folds up.**
In the near future I think I'll use this blog to post trade wants and haves, great hand/home made and eco products from different sources others may not know, and of COURSE goings on in the Steampunk and 'friends with bands' worlds.
SPEAKING OF THAT......FOLLOW THIS LINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (you will NOT regret it!)
Hopefully I'll see you ALL there! This is NOT a show you want to miss! Fire acts, burlesque (the real kind) carnival games, bowling (??) and MAD great music! BE THERE!
Till next time folks,
Keep strange!
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Lost track of week numbers...but it's a lot...
Hello greenies, crafties and anyone else crazy enough to keep tabs on this blog even though I am the LEAST reliable blogger in the world!
Sorry for all the lag time...but there's a lot going on in the world...AND in my world.
Not going to bore you with all that tho, so lets just jump in shall we?
So after WEEKS ON END of snow, sleet and freezing rain, here we are in the depths of February and I have all the windows open and even got some outdoor work done!
It's about 60 degrees out there folks, and you better believe I'm loving it! I have NO idea why I keep moving north, when I am SO not fond of cold! FEH!
I'm not getting my hopes up, there's at least 6 more weeks of crap coming, but after a cursory examination of the garden, I'm feeling pretty good.
Aside from probably having to remove more millet than anyone has a right to due to winter bird feeding habits, I think most of my more permanent babies are going to make it. YAY!
That DOES mean scavenging for new pots and such very soon, but it also says a great deal about the tenacity of container gardens.
The plans for this spring are slightly less diverse, yet slightly more ambitious.
I want to make my own rain barrel. The blueprints on instructables.com are super simple, all I have to do is find a 50 gal barrel that was used for eco fertilizer. That's going to be a hit or miss I think. But If I hit the greenhouses and garden centers around here I have a decent chance.
I also plan on adding a bit of privacy to one side of the porch using wood posts, sheer fabric and rope. It will only be up till fall, but with the wind up here I need to really secure it all. I'll post pics of both of these projects as they progress.
As for food, the usual multiple varieties of tomato, pepper and berries will be doubled this year, and I'm not going to wast materials on the plants I have had no luck with in previous years. I have a plan for corn, but I need to find JUST the right container. Peas and beans and a long pot of carrots will round things out nicely.
The big idea this year, is to trade my produce for other foods. I think I have an in for eggs, now I need to check into bread and cheese.
If I can get a really good crop going I think I can trade with a few of the other gardeners locally for things I won't have, like potatos, squash, brussles sprouts and the like.
Anyone out there who would like to get in on the trade circle, we also trade for honey, jams, salsas etc. As long as they're organic. Let me know if you want in, and I think we can get a really active collective going!
Trade = freedom y'all!
I'm going to try to post again next week....but you all know how I can be....shiny things distract me. LOL!
See you all soon!
Sorry for all the lag time...but there's a lot going on in the world...AND in my world.
Not going to bore you with all that tho, so lets just jump in shall we?
So after WEEKS ON END of snow, sleet and freezing rain, here we are in the depths of February and I have all the windows open and even got some outdoor work done!
It's about 60 degrees out there folks, and you better believe I'm loving it! I have NO idea why I keep moving north, when I am SO not fond of cold! FEH!
I'm not getting my hopes up, there's at least 6 more weeks of crap coming, but after a cursory examination of the garden, I'm feeling pretty good.
Aside from probably having to remove more millet than anyone has a right to due to winter bird feeding habits, I think most of my more permanent babies are going to make it. YAY!
That DOES mean scavenging for new pots and such very soon, but it also says a great deal about the tenacity of container gardens.
The plans for this spring are slightly less diverse, yet slightly more ambitious.
I want to make my own rain barrel. The blueprints on instructables.com are super simple, all I have to do is find a 50 gal barrel that was used for eco fertilizer. That's going to be a hit or miss I think. But If I hit the greenhouses and garden centers around here I have a decent chance.
I also plan on adding a bit of privacy to one side of the porch using wood posts, sheer fabric and rope. It will only be up till fall, but with the wind up here I need to really secure it all. I'll post pics of both of these projects as they progress.
As for food, the usual multiple varieties of tomato, pepper and berries will be doubled this year, and I'm not going to wast materials on the plants I have had no luck with in previous years. I have a plan for corn, but I need to find JUST the right container. Peas and beans and a long pot of carrots will round things out nicely.
The big idea this year, is to trade my produce for other foods. I think I have an in for eggs, now I need to check into bread and cheese.
If I can get a really good crop going I think I can trade with a few of the other gardeners locally for things I won't have, like potatos, squash, brussles sprouts and the like.
Anyone out there who would like to get in on the trade circle, we also trade for honey, jams, salsas etc. As long as they're organic. Let me know if you want in, and I think we can get a really active collective going!
Trade = freedom y'all!
I'm going to try to post again next week....but you all know how I can be....shiny things distract me. LOL!
See you all soon!
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