Looking Up

Coming to the end of a school year and already I'm looking forward to next year's possibilities.

awkward silence

After not writing all the various things I've thought about writing I'm not sure what to write.

Quote from Life in the Colonies by Jan Swafford

"Artists generally refer to their work as a job, but the reality is that few artists of any kind make a living at it. Most of us are not pretentious enough to speak of it as a calling, but that's what it amounts to. We do it because there's nothing we'd rather do, because we're good at it, because we're wired up that way. There are far too many artists in the world, far more than the market can bear. The reason is that art is one of the greatest things in the world to do. In a perverse but typical corollary, the gods have decreed that art will therefore be one of the worst professions in the world to get by in."

~from Slate article Life in the Colonies by Jan Swafford

Together Again

I haven't watched any of the Muppet Movies since The Muppets Take Manhatten (1984). I guess I felt like all the new stuff (Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island, etc.) wasn't really the Muppets anymore, after all, Jim Henson was no longer the hand or voice behind Kermit or many of his other creations.

When I saw the previews for the newest movie The Muppets, I didn't know what to think. There was a part of me that just wished they'd leave The Muppets alone and let them simply live in our memory. Then I heard the music...

Song with humor, songs with heart, Celo's "Forget You" performed by chickens, it made me curious.

So last night we went to see the new movie and for the first time in many years I realized my Muppets lived again!

It's amazing that 20 years after Jim Henson's sudden death his art lives on through the people who knew him as well as those who grew up influenced by him to make us laugh, cry and sing out loud in the movie theater.

so on the art side of things...

So on the art side of things I've helping form a new art co-op and along the way am expanding my circle of artists here in McAllen. It's been really good. For the first time in years some of my UTPA pieces have seen the light of day and are getting sold! Even the stuff that isn't selling is getting noticed and talked about.

Mary Williams one of the artists in the co-op wrote about me for her blog. Check it out. There was even a piece about our co-op in the paper yesterday. I wish there was an online article to link to. I'll post a picture later.