29 December 2009

"Mighty Guns" - New Collage Painting




Mighty Guns is a painting that I did for a good friend as a Christmas present. His wife asked me to paint it for one of her gifts to him. It is a 12 x 12 collage of old maps, train schedules, and book pages that all deal with Texas. I used an acrylic transfer method to get the Alamo image and lettering on the collage. I think I may explore a little more with some of the lettering and use of unique fonts in some future work. As of right now I have nothing on the table except for a few small crafty projects that my wife and I will be doing together.

28 December 2009

An Evening With The Old 97's - Sons of Hermann Hall - Dallas, Texas - December 27th, 2009

Last night a friend and I went out to Sons of Hermann Hall to watch the Old 97's play their first show of a four night special event called - An Evening With The Old 97's. As many of you know, the Old 97's are my favorite band and I was thrilled to get a chance to see them again. They put on a great show as usual! Murry and Rhett both did their solo shows before they all joined forces. It was awesome! They are trying very hard not to repeat many songs if any over the four night experience. This makes it so very enticing to get back out there again over the next few nights. Maybe, just maybe, I can sneak away.

Set list for December 27th (In Order) :

Bird in a Cage
504
Streets of Where I'm From
My Two Feet
Crash on the Barrelhead
You Belong To My Heart
The New Kid
Friends Forever
Old Familiar Steam
Busted Afternoon
I Will Remain
Iron Road
Stoned
King of the World
Miss Molly
The Easy Way
Encore:
Champaign, Illinois - Ranchero Brothers
Harold's Super Service - Ranchero Brothers
Bel Air
Ride
Curtain Calls
Timebomb

24 December 2009

White Christmas Eve in Dallas With a Tamale Dinner


Above is a picture of our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. Pork tamales, guacamole, chili, queso, black bean corn salad and a Dos Equis. As far back as I can remember, we've always had tamales on Christmas Eve. Tonight's meal was delicioso in case you were wondering. We've got 2 inches of snow on the ground as well! That's a rarity for Texas. Merry Christmas Y'all!

22 December 2009

Kim Cadmus Owens - Reading Between The Lines

Alamo - 64 x 96

Mission - 30 x 24

Lounge - 48 x 48


Cheap - 48 x 48



Pawn - 30 x 24


My seven year old son and I just got back from the Holly Johnson Gallery in the Design District in Dallas. We went to see Reading Between the Lines - the paintings of Kim Cadmus Owens that were on their last week of display. I was blown away! I had seen the work online but to see them in person was so much better and bigger!! Some of these paintings were huge! I was quite impressed and inspired. So much so I'm thinking about doing some more sign paintings soon. Above are some of the pictures I took while at the gallery. Enjoy!
You are probably wondering how I got my seven year old to come with me? I bribed him with Snuffer's after we were finished. Cheese fries win every time!

21 December 2009

McKinney 2nd Saturday - Laura Moore Fine Art Studio




Carrie and I were able to get away last weekend for a few hours to visit McKinney's downtown square. The second Saturday of each month the shops and galleries downtown stay open a little later. The place to be on these Saturday nights is Laura Moore Fine Art Studio. She brings in great local artists and always has great food and drinks for these special nights. Last weekend, we were able to meet the very talented photographer, Brian J. Magnuson and check out his new series titled Cowboys of the Grand Canyon. He had some impressive black and white photos of the cowboys from the southwest. Make sure and take a look at his work on Laura's website. We are looking forward to the upcoming openings planned next year.
Tomorrow it looks like I'm going to be able to get down to the Holly Johnson Gallery to check out an exhibit by Kim Cadmus Owens. I love her stuff and can't wait to see it in person! I'm also going to try and shoot the Holga a little bit while I'm downtown.

17 December 2009

More Gruene Hall Holga




Here are two more images from my "good roll" of B&W 120 film. I'll be on Christmas vacation starting tomorrow afternoon through January 3rd. I'm hoping to get out and burn through some more rolls over the next few weeks. I've also just finished a new collage painting which I'll post after Christmas day.

16 December 2009

Gruene Hall Holga Double Exposure #2


What fun is a Holga if you don't play around with some double exposures? Since the Holga is a camera that you have to manually advance, you can take pictures on top of each other to get really cool effects. See above. I'm actually pretty impressed with how centered I got this one!

15 December 2009

Holga Prints - Gruene Hall #1 and others

Gruene Hall on a quiet foggy morning.

Will Rogers statue at Texas Tech - overexposed....dang it!

A little blurry....but not too bad. It's still a little interesting


I had 3 rolls of film developed from my Holga camera last week. One roll turned out great, and the other two.........not so much. The roll that turned out great was a roll that I shot in early November. It was a B&W roll of 120. You may have noticed my new picture for my profile. It's my first self portrait with my Holga off of this roll. I shot some pictures of Gruene Hall and some pictures of my kids at the Dallas Arboretum on this roll. I'm really happy how they turned out! The other two rolls........well I'm not so thrilled about them. Apparently the bulb switch on the bottom of the camera was accidentally switched to the wrong setting and my shutter was open too long and caused most of my images to be washed out and blurred. I discovered the culprit on a website specializing in all things Holga. I'm really bummed because I thought I had captured some great images of the San Antonio missions, Texas Tech University, and some old neon signs. I'm using this as a learning experience and I will make sure that history doesn't repeat itself. Above are a few of my images. I've posted one from each roll. I'll post more of the good ones in the next few days.

14 December 2009

White Rock Marathon Relay

These items were some mementos I picked up for the day.

Sunday I ran on a relay team in the White Rock Marathon. The relay team was made up of five members. The first leg Jamie, ran 6.2 miles.....but he went ahead and ran the second leg with Erin who ran 4 miles. The baton was then passed on to Courtney who ran a 5 mile leg on the north side of the lake. I ran the 4th leg, which was another 5 mile leg on the lake and into Lakewood. We were anchored by Phil who took us home with a combined 26.2 mile time of 4:16. We finished 99th out of 263 teams in the Mixed Open Division. It was really a fun time. We all loaded up in the car and drove each other to the next exchange zone and picked up the previous runner. I think I am hooked. I would love to do this again next year. Fives miles was the longest distance that I had ever run and it felt pretty good. Afterwards we all celebrated at the Old Monk in Dallas with some import drafts. The picture above shows you what I had in my pocket when I got home.

10 December 2009

Junky Trinkets Turns One!


Who would have thought we would have made it this far. One year ago, on December 10th, 2008 the Junky Trinkets blog was born. This has been a great experience and fun to do. I've met so many interesting and creative people along the way. I look forward to keeping Junky Trinkets alive for another year.....stay tuned. Below is my first post ever.....how boring...what a rookie!

"Marfa Sky"
Well I thought I'd kick this blog off with one of my favorite recent paintings. I actually hated the first sky that I put in, so after about 2 years I used my artistic license and changed it. Now I am at peace with myself. It is a 24" x 24" acrylic on canvas. I'm really happy with how the colors came out.
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In current news: I'm working on some new paintings but can't share them with y'all since they are gifts. I'll post pictures after Christmas. I am also running the White Rock Marathon relay on Sunday morning. My leg is 5 miles (mile 15-20 on the east side White Rock Lake in Dallas) I've never run 5 miles but I've been training at 4 for weeks now. Wish me luck!

09 December 2009

Estate Sale Finds - Throwback Edition - PT Money Write Up

1971 - New Orleans Saints Riddell Helmet Plaque

As you heard, PT Money and I went out and did a little junkin' on Saturday morning. PT has written up a great post on the adventure. Check it out! You gotta love the big round pink bed! Where do you buy sheets for that thing anyway? We were laughing pretty hard at that one! In honor of PT writing up such a great article, I thought I'd share an estate sale find from Phil's home state team that I picked up a few years ago. It's a New Orleans Saints Riddell Helmet plaque. I picked it up for $37.50 and sold it on Ebay for $90.00. I maybe should have held on to that thing because the Saints are on fire right now and it is probably worth more. I also picked up a New York Jets one the same day for the same price but on Ebay it went for $140.00.

08 December 2009

Shrimp and Grits - Throwdown Style

The final product.....So Good!

The roux/sauce - Outstanding...you have no idea

Seasoned shrimp and creamy cheesy grits...oh mama!


After watching Bobby Flay's shrimp and grits throwdown a few months ago with Joe Barnett on the Food Network I knew I was supposed give this recipe a whirl. I don't like to brag, but I really think this is about the best thing that has ever come out of our kitchen. I owe it all to my fine public education from the great state of Texas. They provided me with the ability to read a recipe and measure ingredients, and for that I am very thankful!!!! The grits are amazing and the sauce/roux is oh so good. The shrimp are seasoned with a little kick. Carrie, my wife must have said at least 4-5 times that this was the best thing I had ever cooked....and she's not too far off. Okay, enough of the small talk. Here is a link to the recipe. This recipe has officially made the junkytrinket food hall of fame. It is very easy to make and takes only about 15 minutes or so. Happy cooking.

07 December 2009

Weekend Estate Sale Goodies


I hit some estate sales Saturday morning with a friend of mine Phil otherwise known as PT Money. We managed to visit about 9 sales before noon with the help of a nice mapped out plan. Going on Saturdays is tough because usually all the good stuff is gone on Thursday or Friday....but some of us have to work on those days. We still managed to find a few mini treasures along the way though. Here is the run down for me. I picked up an old STOP sign for $5. I'm drawn to cheap metal signs. I got a 1985 Oxford Navy Swatch watch for $6. I've always liked Swatches. Then I picked up some old Dallas street maps for $1.50. Finally, I picked up a shoebox of reference material from a local watercolor artist for $2. While digging through the box at home I discovered some original sketches on tracing paper....pretty cool! I believe PT Money is gonna blog about his experiences and finds in the upcoming days so make sure you keep an eye out for that. It was a good trip and it was great to get back out on the estate sale circuit.
Saturday night I made shrimp and grits for the first time and it was incredible. I'll post the details next time.....Oh mama!

04 December 2009

Texas Signs in Ballinger, Texas

Texas Grill
Texas Grill - full sign with chef

Texas Theater sign - painting possibility??


Texas Theater sign closeup

We stopped in Ballinger, Texas last week and I was able to get some nice pics of some of the local signs downtown. Ironically, they both had my favorite word on them - "Texas" I did a painting last spring of the Texas Grill sign. I also took some shots with the Holga of these signs and I'm waiting for them to get developed.....can't wait!

01 December 2009

Signs of Change in West Texas

80 MPH - Sweet! - Notice the bug guts on the windshield, they don't stand a chance at these warp speeds!

Windmills as far as the eye can see south of Sweetwater, Texas.
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On our drive from Lubbock to New Braunfels we encountered some new Texas sights. The first was thousands of windmills. The landscape was engulfed by them. It kind of ruins the landscape if you ask me...but heck I guess it's a free source of power. I wish I had some land to lease out up there. The next sight was an 80 MPH speed limit sign.....who knew that I-10 between Junction and Comfort was 80 MPH? Can I get reimbursed for my speeding ticket I got back in college on this road?

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