Something Out There

I'm in the process of creating a new art piece. I'm not really supposed to discuss it yet, as it's going to be unveiled as part of a community art project by an art group I belong to. Let me just say it involves aliens. UFO type space aliens. I always love sneaking the greys into cartoons and onto T-shirts. My particular aliens are telepathic clueless outsiders. Ready to abduct, but often not really sure how to go about it. New Hampshire has a very rich UFO history. Lots of sightings. Some famous. Lots of material to inspire cartoons. I even belonged to MUFON for a while to get ideas. Great conferences with fascinating guest speakers. I'm not sure why but the NH MUFON is now inactive. Here's a link to other chapters: http://www.mufon.com/


And some more alien cartoons:

And, finally, the first alien T-shirt I did. Very popular at the conferences:

By the way, I still have a few of these left in XXL!

A Sunday Kind of Love

Every Sunday I get the NY Times. It's too expensive to get it on a daily basis here in NH so during the week I look at it online. And, the first thing I do is turn to the Styles section (after looking at Bill Cunningham's street photos) I turn to the "Modern Love" column. It's addictive! Who knows what story will be there this week? One of lost love, heartbreak, or heartwarming. Sometimes it's unbearably sad like the one by a mother whose daughter died from an illness. I had to immediately call Nico and boohoo about that one. Then there are funny stories, too. You can see a lot of them online here: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/features/style/fashionandstyle/columns/modernlove/index.html

Grab a cup of coffee, pull up a comfy chair to the computer and get lost in love.

Alice in Fiction Land

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" have been two of my favorite books since I learned to read, and even before. I've also always been fascinated by the story of Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell. Recently, John and I were perusing Bald Face Books in Dover, NH, and I found a great biography of Lewis Carroll. And I just finished reading "Alice I Have Been" by Melanie Benjamin, a beautifully written fictionalized story of Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson. Ms. Benjamin attempts to fill in the gaps of what is known about their relationship which she does quite believably as well as capturing the steamy Victorian atmosphere of secrets and repression making this one of those books you can't put down, and a great companion read with the bio.

Of course, reading these books made me want to immerse myself even more into the story so I found some great sites where you can read even more about the Liddell sisters, plus see the photographs :http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice1e.html

This one is a classic:

There was also a dark,dreamy film made in the 80's called "Dreamchild" written by Dennis Potter with Carroll creatures by Jim Henson. Ian Holm plays Dodgson, kind of an unusual choice when you think about it, but he manages to make him a believably haunted character. I'm not so sure about the Tim Burton version which looks pretty creepy...but, then, it IS in 3D, so how can I resist?

Launching My New Spiffy Updated and Classy Website!

For the longest time I've been planning to update my site, but often things get in the way, such as:

1. cartooning

2. Library work

3. artstream projects

4. movies
5. reading many, many books
6. walking like a runner (see Leslie Sansone)

and, of course,

7. shopping!

Finally friend of friends Steve Winterton came up and we actually plotted out the new site.
Instead of the crazy quilt home page it is now streamlined and minimalist. Hooray! And all the news will go here, and if there's not much new... then I can blab about books and movies and cat photos and LOST and other important things and post drawings and cartoons. So, to wrap up this first post, here is a delighful new photo of Big Eric: