Tramp Stamp?

Unbelievable as it may be, I actually read about somebody who referred to tattoos as these. Tramp stamps. I didn't know whether I felt appalled or just wanted to bust out laughing. Although I'm 48 years old, I consider myself fairly hip and open minded to what is going on in the world around me. I don't like to close myself up socially when it comes to the trends that are popular with the younger generations. Tattoos have become the norm. They are permanent expressions of art, spirituality, passions and emotions. And I will admit that I am really glad to see this. As an artist I can respect the profession of the tattoo artist much as I respect the person who choses to engrave their bodies with blood for a permanent piece of something that is meaningful to them. I chose to have my first tattoo after a major surgery I had back in 2007 and I will admit that I LOVE IT. Everytime I catch a glimpse of it in a mirror as I walk past, I can't help but stare. I didn't decide to get a tattoo because it's "cool." I did it because I've always admired the art of the tattoo and it has now become mainstream and acceptable to have multiple tattoos on our bodies. I didn't think I still had to deal with small mentalities who would look at my tattoo and judge me to be a person of low character based solely on my tattoo. Tramp stamp? You've gotta be kidding me!

Back to Art - Upcoming Shows

In June I will be attending two events.

June 19th will be the "For the heART of Animals" fundraiser event at the Farm and Ranch Museum from 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. in Las Cruces, NM. I will be there selling arte and supporting a worthy cause. Proceeds will benefit the Humane Society of Southern New Mexico (HSSNM), Spay Neuter Action Program (SNAP) and Safe Haven Animal Sanctuary (SHAS). Please come and support this worthy cause!

"Pride" day takes place on Saturday June 27th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Pioneer Women's Park, Las Cruces. This event is in it's 3rd year and each year brings more visitors. This year they will have 70+ vendors with over 1,000+ attendees expected! So along with supporting a great cause, it's just a blast to be here! I look forward to this event every year!

In July I will be attending two more events!

On July 18th & 19th, 2009 at the Santa Ana Star Casino in the Santa Ana Pueblo, NM is the 2nd annual "Arte De Muertos" show. This promises to be a well attended event with over 80 artists from the southwest featuring all type of hand crafted treasures! I expect this show to be a great selling opportunity for all who participate. If you're an artist who is interested in attending, please check the website out and contact Hank Estrada for more information.

And last but certainly not least is the Hispanic Contemporary Market in Santa Fe on July 25th and 26th, 2009. I'll post more on this event as it draws near. But this is another of my favorite shows to vend. It is a festive event that brings in a colorful crowd of Northern New Mexicans and art collectors from all over the world!

And that is what is currently on my plate. So although I've only been back from San Antonio for one week now, my studio is currently filled with projects in the making and future projects.

Breathing a Sigh of Relief!

The shows are finally over! Well at least until June. But for the next week I am just taking it easy. April 4^th and 5^th was the Dia de Los Muertos show in Bernalillo (a small burb just outside Albquerque). That was the type of show I love despite very small booth spaces and difficult set-ups. We had a huge customer turnout thanks to great publicity. I met some new faces in the art world and managed to bring home some excellent swag. Geez I LOVE artists who trade! Let’s see, my daughter came home with some adorable FloresOriginals bottlecap jewelry (thank you Carolyn!), and I’m the one who came home with the muthaload of stuff! A beautiful senorita handbag from The Fancy Chola (Christina!), a ceramic Catrina doll of Frida and her monkey from Masks y Mas, a stunning pair of silver Oaxacan earrings, prints of Muerto art from the incredibly talented artist Magda, and a stash of cash thanks to a near complete sell-out weekend!

Although sell-out shows are wonderful, they also mean one thing. Time to go back to work! So we drove the 250+ miles home after the show and as soon as I got home, I locked myself up in the garage and started back to work for the San Antonio show on April 18^th and 19^th. Fortunately I have a very tolerant and understanding husband who realizes that when I’m in “art mode” it’s best to just leave me be and check to make sure I’m still breathing every few hours. I managed to finish up a few more paintings and some lower priced items within the following week. It took me two days to pack our trailer just the way I wanted it packed. Sometimes I amaze myself at how very anal I can be when I’m working and I really feel sorry for anyone who is within shouting distance.

We hit San Antonio on April 16^th, set up our booth on April 17^th and then were bombarded with flooding rains, thunder, lightening and wind for the first day of the show on that Saturday. Guuuuureat. All I’m thinking is Good God how am I going to pay for this trip if I can't even make my four hundred dollar booth fee! But then as the southwest often does, the weather did a complete turnabout and Sunday was beautiful. I donned my beautiful handmade custom skirt by GenniMcMahon and went to work. Sales were pretty good though not stellar. But no complaints, it was a successful show and I think I’ve just become spoiled with having too many sell-outs. Jeje

We did end up spending an extra couple of days in San Antonio to go see the sights and experience the town during “Fiesta!” It really is a lovely city and the people were so nice. I ate wonderful mole at the restaurant Mi Tierra several times and went crazy over the tons of fresh pan dulce they had at their bakery! We met up with my dear amigita Toria and her charming fiancé RD and had dinner with them at the ultra-hip and ultra-delicious Rosario’s. Can you say hands-down-the-best-shrimp-tacos-I-have-ever-had? Yeah, but I can’t say that I even thought about Weight Watchers for the duration of our trip. We also managed to squeeze in a visit to trendy Austin where we shopped down Congress St. in some of the coolest stores ever including Tesoros (a wonderland of gads and gads of imported treasures)! Authentic New York style (well, about as authentic as you can get in Austin TX) thin crust pizza topped off the day.

So that’s where I’ve been for the past month. And it’s so GOOD to be home again! There’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye, but it will have to wait for another day. Life goes on and that pile of laundry behind me is just getting bigger. Packing suitcases is so much more fun than unpacking them! Outta here. Have a great day everyone! Oh yeah, a few pics below.

Pan Dulce and the Irish Mexican Cowgirl

My Dark Princess Getting Ideas for her Pan Dulce Jewelry

Mi Familia at Mi Tierra (I don't know who those other people are)

Fat Mexican Cowgirl in the beautiful Genni McMahon original skirt. I love it! Again the FMC with mi arte.

Where I want to live on Lemon Drop Martinis and Shrimp Tacos *sigh*

Suggestions Needed!

I'm looking for clever ideas here so if you have any, throw 'em down this way. Okay for my shows I usually like to have freebies for the kids. Usually it's a bowl of candy but sometimes it's a bowl of bracelets. Now they're just cheap little stretchy bracelets with plastic beads & skulls but hey I like to make them if I have the time. It's fun to watch kids as their eyes light up when you tell them to pick one out for free. Kids are cool like that. What is totally NOT cool is the fact that the adults will help themselves too! I mean c'mon...they are plastic for cripesake! But it happens all the time. So how do I post something tasteful (yes, tasteful for tacky adults) but still make it crystal clear that these are for the KIDS? Help!

Countdown & So Busy!

With two shows coming up in the next three weeks, it seems like all I do is paint and sleep. Ha! I only wish. I still have to do everything else in between the painting and sleeping. But here are two boxes I've been working on. This is a much larger size box than I normally work on, so there was actually a lot of painting involved for these ones. They took a lot longer than I had expected and I'm going to have to ask a higher price for them. I dunno. Would anyone pay $200 for a box? Guess I'll find out.


Sometimes I get bored painting the same old stuff so I like to throw something in that's a bit different. It's usually a copycat of something like this cute little Octopus Girl that is similar to a painting in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion. I've always dug on the artwork in the haunted mansion...it's fun and a bit warped. Although I was a bit disturbed to realize that she actually looks like a Brats Doll. I didn't like her so much after that.


I've been working on decoupaging a lot of my original art prints. The originals for all of these prints were sold last year, but I love to still use them in my decoupaged plaques & candles too. I just don't believe in keeping any of my own artwork. I have tons of art from artists that I admire, but not one piece of my own art hangs in my home. Weird, huh?


These are my sacred heart/amor eterno boxes and are my original design. Using a blend of polymer clay, textured paints & lots of highlighting & darkening effects, I've come up with these boxes & plaques that are totally unique. I'm hoping they'll sell as well as they always do! I need to pay the mortgage next month. jeje


And then of course there are mermaid mirrors, Catrina paintings (only this one isn't Catrina...she's Miss Sunny and her dog Daisybones). Daisy was the name of my first dog. She was a handmedown beagle and as sweet natured as her name. Despite a flatulence problem. Miss Sunny's dress is based on Sunny Baudelaire's dress from A Series of Unfortunate Events. I love the costumes in that movie and had a plan to make a whole series of paintings using variations of those costumes...but well...I just ran out of time.


This nicho de Guadalupe was a commission piece and was recently delivered to California to a very happy customer. It is always a big sigh of relief when a commission piece is finished and the customer is pleased with the outcome. It's not really my preference to do commissions but it's sometimes a necessary evil. The only time I'll really turn down is a commission is if the customer is asking me to do something really off the wall like a Tuscan landscape or a rosy cheeked cherub (yeah I've been asked to paint those!). Come on...if you can't see that bleached white bones and death grins are my thing, then I've gotta say uh...sorry no...I'm simply swamped with orders!

Fortunately I've been so busy that I haven't had much time for eating. Go figure that one! Well except late at night when my stomach is making so much noise that I swear if I look down at it I will see something alive and moving in there. I've lost a steady 2.5 lbs. a week for the past three weeks in a row. I wish I could say it's noticeable and everyone is saying "Wow Pam you look great are you losing weight?" But nope. I just have to be patient with my stubborn 48 year old hysterectomized body. In any case, I feel pretty darn good. And we're going out to eat tonight at Pei Wei in El Paso! Owned by PFChangs but so much cheaper...same food less bucks...my kinda place. I plan on eating 25 of my allotted 32 WW points tonight on one bowl of Dan Dan noodles with spicy chicken. Geez I've missed chinese food! And then I'm dropping off my husband and the little squirt at the Walk with the Dinosaurs show while me and my eldest beauty are headed to the mall for a little splurge spending at Torrid. Yeah man...life is good!

It's Showtime!

My custom made skirt is finished! It is simply fabulous and the pictures do it no justice! I commissioned my friend & seamstress artist extraordinaire Guenevere McMahon to make a unique article of clothing that I can wear to my art shows and using a blend of vintage & batik printed fabrics, she has created a bright colorful and one-of-a-kind wearable work of art. Check out the appliqued sacred heart details...it's so me!
If you have the time, please check out her etsy shop. All of her items are handmade with incredible attention to detail. The purses & bags are completely her design and you won't find anything else like them. Thank you Gen!

Here are a few new works for San Antonio. I have been so busy working for the Bernalillo show creating my lower end decoupage items, but I've felt a strong urge to paint nuestra Senora. So here are a few:
The first one is my traditional Dolorosa in black in gold. The second one I was really pleased with how unique this retablo it came out. Here I have all the components of her dress painted as separate pieces throughout the retablo. The last retablo has a bit of inspiration from spanish colonial styled retablos with lots of vines and pomegranates.

And on a personal note...I've lost 24 lbs. since starting Weight Watchers on January 18th! Sometimes it's so overwhelming thinking about how far I have to go...but I realize that I just have to put it into perspective and take it day by day. Learning how to pace myself has been hard. I have up and down days...last night was a really tough one but I managed to stay on program. I'm still on program today but I've wanted to stray off. The one thing that keeps me from doing that...is the fear that I might not get back on program if I do. I might be able to get back on program immediately, or it might take me years. I wish I could say that it was about self control, but I don't believe that self control has a thing to do with weight problems. Food is an addiction. It's not a choice despite what many people believe. Nobody wants to be fat. It's true that I choose to make bad food choices, but I feel that I am drawn to make those choices by a physical/emotional need. It's no different than being an alcoholic or a drug addict. And in some ways it's a lot more painful. Society tends to be more forgiving to the drug/alcohol addict, but fat people are scorned and looked down upon because our addiction is much more visible. Trying to stay on program is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Skeletons

In the past several years that I've been painting, I have found that I am repeatedly being drawn to Day of the Dead themed paintings aka skeleton art. I used to do a variety of subjects, all inspired by my Mexican culture background, but I find that painting calaveras (skeletons) are my very favorite thing to do. When I paint them it just makes me happy and I find myself looking forward to the expression that will eventually emerge on that little skull head. Weird I know. I've had a lot of people ask me why I enjoy painting skeletons so much and honestly, the answer is a lot more deep than I care to share with anyone. So since blogs are for spillin' yer guts out all over the virtual world wide web, here goes.
Skeletons are non judgemental. Skeletons will never win beauty pageants. They are not sorted out by class according to their body size, skin color, gender or sexual orientation. Skeletons are dead and the trivial things that mattered in life, (money & beauty) just don't matter anymore. Skeletons just wanna have a good time.
I live in a world where I am too often judged because of the way I look. My weight has been a deciding factor on my quality as a human being to many people I've come across. I have had to endure horrid insults and comments thrown at me by an insensitive and intolerant society for most of my life. On the day after I came home from burying my brother, I had a stranger at the market ask me "Hey do you want a diet pizza?" as he walked away laughing at his clever little joke on the fat girl. I wish I had been numb enough to have not felt anything.
So how do I respond the next time somebody asks me why I paint skeletons as all those reasons go through my head? This is how. I look up and smile ever so sweetly and say "I paint skeletons because they're fun!"