We are experiencing technical difficulties . . . Please stand by.

Some pieces go together relatively easily.
Some require a little swearing.

Luckily I do most of it




a) in my head

b) at myself





Like when I was mounting words on my l-o-n-g piece and dropped a letter "U" glue side down on the matboard.

In the wrong-wrongity-wrong place!

Ever tried to clean glue off the wrong place on a very expensive double matboard that your piece is already mounted on?

Like I said -- there was swearing.

But I have yet to find a word so bad that it magically removes glue. If any of you know of such a word, please send it to me.

My work is full of unfortunate mishaps. Sometimes they make it better. Sometimes they are the only thing I can see on the piece no matter how well it turns out.

Once I complained to my art school daughter that the reason I hate drawing is that nothing ever comes out the way it looks in my mind.


No matter how hard I try, the lines on the paper are not the same lines I see in my head.

She, as usual, had a great answer, assuring me that:

"Nothing any artist ever makes looks the same way it does in their mind. If it did, they would quit trying to make it. Which means they would quit making art. Because all artists are basically just trying over and over again to make something actually look the way they see it."

Such comfort!

It made me wonder what the artist who came up with this magazine craft in 1951 intended it to look like . . .

The Old Woman Who Lived in the Squash (with garlic breasts)

Because I've made some clunkers in my time, but seriously. These would be very cute (and you might actually send a picture to Grandma!) if your six-year-old made them.
But a two page spread in a magazine?
Do you know how hard I had to work for that?

Scary Veggie-Clown Guy

Don't try this at home.

Okay, Tricky Cowboy tugs at my heartstrings a little

No matter how much extra zucchini you have.

Creepy Couple, smoking at the Farmer's Market


Anyway, it wasn't the only time Lindsay's come to my aid with a bit of sage advice or a wonder product they only tell you about when you get the $100,000.00 degree.



She once brought me a secret art school eraser that has one abrasive end which works like magic on things like matboard. For instance, one memorably bad day, I flung 3 big blobs of brown paint (%#&@!!) on the mat of a just-mounted piece two days before a show . . .

(not a good day to be hanging around my studio, BTW.)

AND THE MAGIC ABRASIVE ERASER GOT IT OFF! Hardly noticeable at all, except by me (I held my breath until the piece sold . . . but come to think of it, I pretty much do that on every piece for one reason or another.)

I thought the magic eraser was going to come to my aid today, but unfortunately, it couldn't undo this boo-boo.

But luckily I was in the magazine business for 8 years regularly performing feats of impossible and ridiculous craft magic in a deadline pressure cooker! So it only took me 4 hours of tap dancing in my studio to come up with a workable solution.

Let the breath holding begin . . .