How To Make a Can of Soup

Our victim.

At the Art Bank, the gallery I show at, we've normally had a First Friday gallery walk to participate in.  This is great! Really! First Fridays have become quite the event. The problem is, a lot of establishments are now doing something on First Friday, so we are finding that people that go to one event, may not necessarily make it to ours in that same time frame. This is a bummer. And we are going to solve this bummer problem with a hearty can of soup. Here's how:

First, you randomly ask a friend, in the middle of a text conversation on a different topic, if she has a barrel she needs to get rid of. And, amazingly, she says yes. (Thanks, Shirley!) She will even bring the barrel to you. Once you have acquired the barrel, you check it over, making sure the bottom is sound, and that it will fit in your car.

It's green inside!

Once you get it into your car, and into your home, you drag it back outside and coat the entire insides of it with a nice dark spray paint, to hide any icky marks or anything. In my case, I used dark green because I had a can sitting around and I don't often use dark green, so if it wasn't used for this, it was just going to continue sitting there. While you're at it, you can spray the rims of the barrel silver, to freshen them up. Make sure you do this step outside and wear a mask, because apparently spraying the insides of a barrel results in you getting particles all over you, your arm hairs even feel sticky and weird, and the cloud of aerosol just comes right back at your face. So try to lean away when spraying.

Those lines were really hard!

Then you drag the thing up to the Art Bank to be completed while you're the Attending artist for the day. You also take a roll of brown packaging paper and some paint and an Andy Warhol Campbell's soup can. Start by measuring out and painting the background.

Let that dry and add some lettering. Ok, so this doesn't say Campbell's and there are circles instead of yellow fluer d'lis, (excuse my French), but you know what? I'm calling this artistic liberty. And I don't want to get sued by the Warhol estate.

Our label.

Now for the fun part. We get to get a little high (because it was cold and icky outside and I didn't want to ventilate properly. You may do as you please). I used spray adhesive to stick the new label to the barrel. It seemed to work best if I sprayed both the paper AND the barrel and waited a second to stick them together and smooth out the wrinkles. I added a nice clear coat for some shine and Boo-yah! One big can of soup.

That's one big can o' soup! Mmm Yummy!

Now for the why. Why? Because we decided to host a Second Friday as well as our normal First Friday. It even operates under the same, user-friendly hours! 6-9pm! But for Second Friday, we will be more interactive. We will have artist demonstrations, more time to chat one-on-one with our patrons, and will partner up with a charity each month, as a way of connecting with the community. November's Second Friday will have a canned food drive for HVAF, the Hoosier Veterans Assistance Foundation, which helps homeless vets in Indianapolis. Being that Second Friday is two days before Veterans Day, this is fitting. And that big giant can of soup just became a giant receptacle for food donations. Doing it the art way. Boo-yah!

ART Soup. With Special Ingredients

Birthdays, Masterpieces and a Space Dog

"60 Years of Peppers"

"Oceans Tridents Submarines"

First of all, I'd like to wish Jim Kirk, of Captain Jim's Sauces, a local hot sauce maker, a happy 60th birthday!  I was amazed, about a year ago, when "Captain Jim Kirk" signed my guest book at the Art Bank.  His wife, Kate, secretly bought "Oceans Tridents Submarines" from me for Jim's Christmas present, last year.  He was thrilled, declared my style to be reminiscent of 70's underground pop art, which caused me to go on a massive Google search to figure out what that was. This year, Kate commissioned me to paint a logo for Captain Jim, using their chili pepper pirate character. This was in the middle of my recovery from Ramsay-Hunt, so I used it as a welcome therapy opportunity. I'm pretty proud of the result.

"Postcard Masterpiece"

I was also dead-set on completing this painting, because I wanted/needed the art work-out so that I could be in 'shape' for the Masterpiece In A Day competition at this year's Art Squared, the Fountain Square Art Festival. This year, for me, has been nuts. ...Well, the last 2 years have been pretty nuts, but this summer has been exceptionally trying. I was crazy looking forward to MIAD, really really excited. I think I just needed the release. It was a great day, I created something I'm really proud of. It was really windy, and my aerosol finishing bit, the black lines in the painting, started to seem like not such a good idea, but I pulled it off. It's called "Postcard Masterpiece" and it's of the fountain that puts the "fountain" in Fountain Square. (It was also so windy that I was across the street and 4 doors down and I could still feel some of the spray from the fountain!).  I got to see a lot of good art friends, a posse of folks from my hometown (Kewanee, represent!), and meet some new artists, or at least new to me, folks that I hope I get to work with in the future.

After MIAD, I collected Remy and we marched in the Art Parade. She was an astronaut, a costume that got her the judges award at the Hog Days Pet Show, and I wore my Sonic the Hedgehog spiky hat and declared myself an alien. We were lined up in the parade behind a group of little kids dressed as cute little robots, with an adult playing They Might Be Giant's "Robot Parade" on an infinite loop (it was stuck in my head for 2 days) and we were in front of Family Video's float and a giant Chinese food box. Good times.

Astro-Remy

When I was a kid, my Grampa Weber would march in the Hog Days parade, dressed as a clown, repping the company he sold hog feed for, Agri-King. He would walk an invisible dog, ride my scooter, ride an adult tri-cycle, and eventually, as he got older, a riding lawnmower with a little cart on the back. Now I know why he would do something so silly: It's just fun. Why NOT do it? Remy and I weren't representing anything but neighborhood folk having fun. The weather held out, and I got to play.

In other updates, I got the final puzzle piece for my Ramsay-Hunt recovery: an eye check-up. I was really worried my eye took some damage from my inability to blink properly. It can seriously dry out your eye and change its shape. In my case, it did for the better! For now, anyway (the doc said it could revert back in a few weeks) my contact prescription has actually gone BACK as step! My eyes were hurting when I tried to return to my contacts, but that was because my current contacts were too strong! He gave me a sample on a weaker prescription, and instructed me to come back in 6 weeks, but for now, I'm glasses free! Yay!

New Stuff!

Which leads me to First Friday. It's October everybody! Besides my Masterpiece being on display at the Art Bank, all of my 16 in. x 20 in. paintings (of which there are many--I gotta stop painting in that size) are marked down from $150 to $100! Yup, a third off. You get some nifty Christmas gifts, and I get more space in my house! Also, I have fully restocked my Wee Paintings rack, and updated all of the postcards and Christmas cards (for those of you looking for some of the Star Trek themed pieces, now's your chance!)

So, despite the grey weather, come and see me tonight. Things are looking up and I'm in a great mood!