Somethng about a man in an apron...

...even today, with so many famous male chefs, putting an apron on a man makes them take on a new persona. Some get a little silly and vamp. Others are embarrassed...here is an architect in the Hamptons with his dog. Meanwhile, when we put a tie on a woman, does it do the same thing?

A Moment Frozen in Time...

Student Painting...

One of my current painting student's oil painting of his high school in China....! I love it.

Saint Patrick's Day

So my son's name is Patrick. So I married a 100% Irish man who speaks Gaelic. So we visited the olde sod many times and traveled around the country. But the fact is they do not celebrate this holiday very much. Hardly at all.

Today in the East Village, there were droves of people in various headbands, hats, t-shirts, green pants, glitter and more. They were loud and happy and probably drunk. It has become an excuse to drink and cut classes.

When I was living in Chicago, Mayor Daley (the first one), had dye put in the Chicago River to make it green. True story. How unecological is that, I wonder?

I will say the Irish are charming and I could listen to most of them read the phone book and be happy. But today is not a big deal and we need to realize it is more of an American holiday,

Kitsch Bathroom...

Turned a slimy bathroom into a black, pink and rhinestone bathroom for a charity show house event in Milford a couple of years ago. We had to pick a person--dead or alive--and work around their personalities.

I chose Bette Midler, because I knew it would allow me to glue huge rhinestones on toilet plunger, and what could be better?

"The Threesome"

New painting... in four sections....

Wrapped Trees....

For years I have been documenting wrapped trees and bushes--especially fig trees. Here is a photograph I took in New Jersey of a line of trees that remind me of soldiers in a row...

Max (in Apron)

Just one of the "Men in Aprons" series... Max (Pierre's nephew)

admires himself in the mirror. I love his reflection...This was taken in apartment 3-F--Pierre's first apartment in Randall House--back in the day. Max now lives in California, but as happens in divorces, we have not stayed in touch.

Thinking about...

..,past relationships--marriages even. Mistakes I made...what I didn't see or overlooked...who I was then and who I am now. Why does wisdom take so long to kick in for some people? I am trying hard to not have regrets. Is that possible, though? I am content with so much in my life and discontent with, well, just a few things! Should I deny this? Toltec wisdom is some help--don't take anything personally, never assume, listen to and be your word(s), and always do your best. What about being content? If you are 100% feeling it, should you fake it? No. So the messy journey continues...

Reflectons in Florence...

Find the architecture in the puddles...love painting puddles, love looking at the sky in them...love photographing them...

New Book Soon to be Born....

This is the subject I am presenting at the National Art Education Association Conference in New Orleans later this month. It's a book I wrote

that contains design teaching problems for elementary and middle school students, with some humor and fun to get the creative juices flowing. With luck, it will be out this fall!

Study of...

Sometimes we don't look at things closely enough. If we do, we see things others don't. And one of the jobs of an artist is to point the way. What you see here may not be what caught my eye, but no matter. I made you look (the child's gleeful shout) and my work is done for the moment.

What is in the eye of the beholder....?

This is a detail of a vintage shirt....of bananas. Hmmmmmm. What do you see?

Babies--(Drawing by Julia Schmitt Healy)

Read a tweet by a woman who has decided she doesn't ever want kids. Never ever. She was an only child, never around babies, see herself as spoiled, etc. Well, that is one person who shouldn't have kids--unwanted kids are everywhere. The question is, how do you get people who haven't thought about what having kids means start thinking? I have to say I'm somewhat weary of sob stories about unemployed 22-year old single women with three or four kids wondering what they are going to do?

In my mind, it always boils down to education. You can't change someone's family circumstances, but you can educate early and give kids the information they need to make smarter choices in their lives. And you have to target the parents, as well. The world is not what it was in the 1950's with Mom at home with milk and cookies. It is messy. Education can't clean up the mess entirely, but it can neaten things a bit.

Masks on my curved office wall...

I find them compelling, scary, disturbing, silly and impossible not to buy. I don't so much like to wear them and I frighten easily if other people wear them, but on a wall? They make me very happy.

Stuffed Watercolor of the Past--"Squeeze My Muscle"

This is treated muslin, painted in watercolor and trapuntoed from the back to make it three-dimensional. There is a squeak toy in the bicep and, when you squeeze it, it makes that sound that only squeak toys can (think dog toy). When it was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, a museum guard told me someone laughed so hard, she wet her pants in front of it and they had to get a custodian. True or not, it's a great story.

I have always been interested in popular culture--especially since I grew up an outsider in my born-again (hypocritical) family. Muscle men back in the day were really a part of the underworld. There were also homosexual overtones, I think, in some quarters.

The attraction for me was this idea that you could shape and form your own body, like an artist might in her studio. Body culture as we know it today, did not exist. So the idea of body-building, tattoos and scarification were of interest. Piercing had not yet caught my radar, and it still creeps me out a bit, because I can't take my eyes off the piercing and move to other parts of the face. I get stuck. So these are the meandering thoughts of the day...

How to Know How to Live Your Life and Thoughts on a Mean Father

So an article I read this morning in the WSJ (a gift from my conservative sister who is trying to counteract the lies and  slime I read in the NYT), says we should ask ourselves 3 questions. The first is the lottery question: If you had enough money to do anything you wanted and didn't have to worry, what would you do? The second is, if your doctor told you you have only five to ten years to live, what would you do? And the third is, fi you only had today to live, what would you regret? What have you left undone?

For me, the first is easy. Hire about ten people to help me make my ideas. Keep my Port Jervis house/studio. Buy an apartment in the city with an elevator. And, travel more and get a subscription to a few opera houses. Help others, of course, but that's something I try to do now...

The second scenario is hiring only a couple of people. and not buying an apartment, and leaving out the travel and the opera subscriptions.

The third rests on my lack of success/organization etc. vis a vis my art. I have had children and tried to do a good job. I have loved people deeply and continue to do so. But I sometimes let the art, which is and has always been important to me slide a bit. Fear. Lack of confidence. Stuff from childhood.

On that last thought: It is sad, but  how can one ever completely recover from having a father that said many times "You are eating my food!" as way to complain about one's lack of obedience?

"Happy Family"--Hand-Colored Solar Plate Print by Julia Schmitt Healy

Mummy Drawing--Mixed Media

Poem for Now

My life is a tear down:
Knotty pine, out-of-date den with small windows
ready for the wrecking ball.
Shag carpet--stained and musty from age,
wallpaper that once was cheery, now peeling sepia daisies.
Atomic formica, linoleum--real--not vinyl
and a pink bathroom, chipped, cracked and cracking
with a rust stain here and there.
Soon to be a foot print
filled with the rubble of the past,
surrounded by an untended garden.
Ready for something new, something massive.

The Potentate--(Photograph) by Julia Schmitt Healy

In the shower this morning....