I received word a few weeks ago that a few of my paintings were selected for this year's Frisco Art In The Atrium Show.  I'm really excited to be a part of the show again.  Last year was my first year to enter and it is really a great opportunity for local artists to showcase their work.  The opening reception is Wednesday, November 10th from 7-9 PM at the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center - City Hall and Public Library in Frisco Square. I would love for all of my Frisco/Dallas friends to stop by and say hey.  There is going to be a great collection of local artwork in the show.  It should be good! The show will run through August of 2011.  Come check it out!

A co-worker brought me back a postcard from the Manitou Gallery on her trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It has an image of Storm from Z.Z. Wei on it.  I truly can't stop staring at it.  It sits on my desk for constant inspiration.  Make sure and check out Z.Z. Wei's stuff here.  The skies and clouds really do it for me!

I just finished this new piece on Monday.  It's a little different from a lot of my previous stuff.  I wanted to try some new things and incorporate some of my collections and estate sale finds.  I got my inspiration from Dolan Geiman right here.  I bought the old US puzzle at an estate sale this summer.  We took all the states and made magnets out of them for our fridge.  It's a great way for our kids to learn their US geography.  The puzzle background was starting to come apart and I was about to trash it when I saw Dolan's piece.  That is when I got the idea to make something similar.  I dumped out a few large jars of matchbooks I've been collecting since college and went through them to find some of my favorite spots and some of the most colorful ones.  I attached them to the puzzle background, painted and weathered the silhouette and then screwed the two pieces together leaving a little space in between.  I had fun doing this and I really like the outcome.  It's a great way to display some of these great matchbook covers.

Today the greatness of Old 97's is out with a brand new album, The Grand Theatre Volume One !  I've been listening to it all week via a live stream on KXT 91.7.  It is awesome!  Impress your friends and get on board the train.  The Grand Theatre Vol. 2 will be out in May.  It's good to be an Old 97's fan! Oh mama!!
Buy it here

Last night we went to check out Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses play at House of Blues in Dallas.  This makes the fourth time I've seen him play in the past year and a half. Here is an older post. This was my first time to ever see a show at the HoB. I must say it was a pretty cool place. I didn't really get to see too much of the building since it was packed.  There is tons of cool art on the walls that I wished I could have explored but I wasn't about to fight the crowd and lose my spot.  I won't go into all the details but I will say that it was a great show and Bingham definitely did not disappoint......as usual.  The place was packed, it was loud, a couple fights broke out....you know, the typical stuff. You gotta bring your A game to a RB show.  It's rowdy.  He played a good mix of songs from his three albums and the crowd pretty much sang along with all them.  Here is a little snippet of video goodness I shot. Awesome!

Busy weekend... here is the the lowdown and links:

Rodney Parker and 50 Peso Reward on Friday night.  Real good band! Check them out!

The Frisco Discovery Center grand opening - Had a great time checking out all the great artwork.
Here are a few of my friends that had booths:
Carolyn Nelson
Misty Foster
Jane Damon
Barbara J. Mason
T. Scott Stromberg

We took in a Twisted Root burger on Sunday before Cottonwood.  It was delicious!  Sorry no pics, I was too busy eating!  I went with the chipolte, guacamole, cheddar, and fried onion string burger....it was money!

Finished off the weekend at Cottonwood and had some great visits with some of my friends:
Jennifer Cavan
Brice McCasland
Jerry Brem

I discovered Tulia Trigg's work a few weeks ago on Junkculture. Which if you don't follow, YOU SHOULD!  I was really impressed with her work and I loved the fact that she uses old paper like I do in her collages.  The ones that really caught my attention were the collages made of QSL radio cards.  I'm a sucker for cool fonts, text, and old type.  I love it!  When I read up a little more on Julia, I found out that she only scans or photographs her old paper ephemera as not to destroy the originals.  All her work was digital.  What?  I have some old QSL radio cards from the 30's and 40's stashed away as well....because I just do...I collect stuff.   I still think I like gluing and painting my collages down the old school way. I want to try and incorporate more of these cards into the backgrounds of my paintings or collages.

Here is a picture of my new painting Hole In My Wall.  It's 20 x 20 on gallery wrapped canvas.  The background is an old 1960's Dallas street map.  It will be one of my pieces that will be on display at the VAGF's Discovery Member Show at the Frisco Discovery Center.

I have been getting a lot of good feedback over the last year on my mixed media painting - Her Sleepy Town.  It was piece that I did for the 2009 Art in the Atrium show in the Frisco City Hall and Library complex.  I was kind of hoping that the city would purchase it for their permanent collection....but I never heard anything from them.  I guess having it displayed on the Frisco Discovery Center makes up for it.  A few weeks ago I decided to have some giclee prints run.  They turned out great!  I purposely sized them to fit perfectly in a large 20 x 20 IKEA Ribba frame.  I'll put them in the Etsy shop in the coming days.  Maybe some locals might like a little inexpensive piece of Frisco inspired art!

My computer workspace

After posting a studio shot last Saturday I got to thinking about some of the studios that inspire me.  Let's start with Dolan Geiman's space. Wow!  Now that is awesome!  There is also another blog that focuses on artist's work spaces.  They haven't updated their site in a while but there is plenty of old stuff to keep you occupied. It's called On My Desk.  I think after checking these sites out you will really get inspired!

Junky Trinkets Headquarters

I haven't done a Studio Saturday post in well over a year.  Some of you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. So here's a brief rundown: when I started blogging I used to do a weekly post on Saturdays to keep everyone up to speed with what was going on the studio/collectibles room. Clutter is usually what is going on!  I know how much I love seeing other artist's workspaces on blogs and so forth...so I thought I'd post a current pic of the recently cleaned studio.  This is where it all goes down in the world of Junky Trinkets.  Older pics here.

Here is a new piece I started yesterday.  I'm using the same techniques I used for Sweet Home 11. I took one of my photos, cropped it, filtered in in Photoshop, and drew in on a 1960's street map of Dallas.  I'm going to glue it down to a 20 x 20 canvas and paint it with acrylics and oil pastels. The Lakewood Landing is my brother's favorite hangout down in Dallas.  It's a pretty cool place.  I hope to finish this one over the weekend.

I finished up my newest painting yesterday.  It is a black painting of the Texan Motel sign in Raton, New Mexico. It is from a photograph I took this summer on our way back to Texas from Colorado.  I painted it on a 1960's Texas road map.  The title of the painting is "Sweet Home 11".  This is a Texas town and highway mile number that I didn't paint over on the center post of the sign.  Sometimes the ideas for titles of my paintings just pop out at me. Once I saw that on the post, I knew I couldn't paint over it and that it would be the title of the painting.  The painting measures 20 x 20 and is on gallery wrapped canvas with a 1.5" edge.  I'm planning on doing a few more pieces in this style with some of my sign pictures that I have taken.

Don't forget to get out and buy or download the new Ryan Bingham album for $3.99 today only right here: Junky Star   I've only heard two songs off of it so far and they are both great!  Impress your friends with your knowledge of quality Americana music.  I can't wait until October 7th when he plays House of Blues in Dallas.  This album purchase will be a nice way to kiss August goodbye!

A few Saturday mornings ago I flip on the TV and 20 minutes later, I'm sucked in.  Yes, I'm a sucker for infomercials.  I don't know how many times I've almost bought P90X or the kit to make riches in real estate.  This particular morning was different.  It was an all in one screen printing machine called the YUDU.  I thought to myself - now this is what I need!  I held off and researched it for over a week.  There are tons of people that love it and many that have had issues.  I have also read up on hacks and alterations to the machine to save money.  Last Sunday I bit the bullet and went to Michael's and bought one on sale.  I also ordered equipment to spread liquid emulsion instead of using the YUDU emulsion sheets which can be expensive.  I am going to continue to dissect this process before I try it out.  I have big plans to make my own t-shirts.  I will certainly keep everyone posted on the process.  I'm pretty dang excited!

Here is my other collage painting that I'm working on. The main images are acrylic transfers.  I've pretty much just done the background.  I still need to paint and enhance....but I'm not completely set on the direction I want to take....I hate creative block!

Here is an image of my new work in progress.  I collaged some old paper onto a 12 x 12 canvas and then I did an acrylic transfer of an altered version of one of my Holga photos.  I am still going to add a little color and try and distress it a little more.  I really like where this is headed.  I've prepped another canvas for the same process, so I'll show that one later.

I took the kids down to North Park Center a few days ago to see Dolan Geiman do a silk screen exhibition and check out his handmade window displays at the Fossil store.  Dolan has a new partnership with Fossil and their Long Live Vintage campaign.  He was asked to design the store front windows in Dallas and New York City.  The kids loved checking out the silk screening process and we all thought the window displays were cool too.  They even got some original silk screened postcards.  They were super excited.  It's always fun to meet someone that inspires you.  You can like him here.

This 20 x 20 painting has just been in the studio staring at me for months...it was crying out!! Today I gave it what it wanted....a little life!  It is now happy with me.  My rule is...until it's signed, it's not finished!  I still haven't signed or titled it yet!

It's amazing what I can accomplish when I make the time for it!  I buckled down yesterday and knocked this sucker out.  The painting is acrylic on a 15 x 30 canvas.  All I have left to do is varnish it and put a poplar wood border around it.....and of course name it - that takes me a while sometimes. I'm pretty happy with the outcome.  I had been wanting to do a sign with Rio Grande on it for a while.  Now my slate is clean.....I'm thinking some sort of collage painting may be next on the agenda.