Frustrating day (with cool visual results!)

After a very productive and depressing day yesterday, all I could do is paint those, no energy or willingness to communicant, write e-mails, comment on blogs or deal with anything that involve life or other people.

On top of that, I got a nice e-mail from a fellow Etsian who noticed that in one website that sells the paints I'm using for those, the description of the product say that though non toxic and stands in some toy and product standards, it's not recommended to use those on surfaces that touch food.
I know that person meant well, but it is quite a blow to me. Since neither the packaging or the description in the manufacturer say anything about this, I decided to keep making and selling those, but I did put that information on the listing on Etsy.

I hope they'll still sell and that people will still use them.

check it out!

What do you this? too much information? too little? should I just take the whole paragraph off and forget about it?

Being an Artist

A whole day of working hard as an artist without making any art.

Well that's not entirely true, I did draw for about an hour while Ned was at the gym, The rest of the day though, from about 4:00PM to 1:30AM was spend in working at being an artist without making any art. I feel like I just run a marathon, and at the end of it, got hit by a truck.

This is what was achieved:

1) Sending an e-mail to an Etsy customer requesting money, then getting the money though paypal, packing the order, writing a note adding a small bonus drawing, going to the post office to send it.

2) Writing a letter to one of the women we meat in Ned's portfolio powerhouse review. We just couldn't get through to her by e-mail, so, as a last resort, I wrote her a letter, and send it to her office, hopefully, it'll find her, though she works in a very big company, and probably have people going over her letters and only bring in what's important.

3) writing a thank you letter to a wonderful woman in the Vespine gallery where I had my show, I feel so bad about not attending to this before, but finally it was done.

4) receiving a newsletter from the Lower East Side PrintShop about applications for their residence program, and deciding that unless I do it right away I'll loose my nerves, so, dumping everything else, I started choosing art work, shooting and scanning what I couldn't find elsewhere, filling forms, modifing my resume and artist statement (it needed to be not more then 1000 letters, it was 1071), changing files names, burning CD and trying to figure out who I can use as 2 references, which is hard since I didn't go to art school in the USA and so teachers are out of the question, so eventually, I wrote and asked the Vespine Gallery woman and another person who I appriciate and worked with. I put their names in the submission before I heard from them, I hope it's going to be OK, I hate having to ask for favores and I feel really bad about this somehow.

5) following a link on their site to some artist and from there to some gallery and from there ot some artist portfolio sites, I decided ot apply for that one as well, so again, resume, statement, images bla bla bla....

6) get the images form the Vespine show from Ned's computer to my computer. Tomorrow I will start color correcting them and prepering them for a Blurb book, I want ot take it with me when we go to LA and possible show it to some galleries.

My brain feels fried and I'm so tired, and all I want is ot make some drawings to remind myself why am I trying to get all this done instead of getting a certificate to do people's nail for a living...

Kelly Krantz on LoucheLink

Kelly is the Tattoo artist who did my new tattoo a last weekend. He also did the one we got when we got married, the raven. He's a really quite guy and sort of shy, but he's a super professional tattoo artist with a lot of respect to other people's designs and a cool style of his own.

Read the interview here.

Realcycle

Ever since my tutorial was published in apartment therapy I've been spending a lot more time on this site. It usually start with me checking to see if I'm on the lead and then pressing some beautiful images to see what that's all about.

The site is really cool on a whole, and have a lot of beautiful photos of all stuff related to home in different categories (apartments, children, kitchen, home-office and green) the photos are always beautiful and it's a nice calm way to pass some time in the morning or evening when my brain just needs a break.

However, I just completed one of those tours and feel like screaming at someone. I know what I'm going to say isn't new or original, but I'm a little pissed off, so I'm going to say it here.

When the green trend started, a lot of advertisers and people in marketing felt baffled by it, how can you make money of a trend that calls for shopping less, and not replacing everything you own every 6 month?! There were a lot of different approaches to this, most of which basically preach to maintaining the same wasteful lifestyle but having a green marker or stamp on everything so you can feel benevolent and hip while still not changing or damaging your life style. I feel that the re-nest part of Apartment therapy is very much in this spirit. There are a lot of seemingly cool stuff that looks beautiful but that is portrayed as ecological while in fact, not only isn't but probably damaging to the environment more then just keeping to your regular life style.

From this morning, 2 entries really bummed me out, one was a review of a designer that uses other object such as a shopping cart, a bathtub and a washing machine drum to make really awesome looking furniture, good design?! for sure. Ecological?! not at all! cause first of all, the shopping cart and bathtub and washing machine drum are new and so what's the difference between making a chair our of wood then out of a brand new shopping cart?! and second of all, he ship those things across the world from England, in a special delivery.
If you like this design so much you have to have it, go for it, if you are trying to be more ecological, just stick to the chair you have for the next 10 years or so, and when it breaks beyond repair, go on craigslist in your area, or a thrift shop to buy a second hand chair, or find a manufacturare in your area, or damn - even Ikea which sends 10,000 chairs at once. All those options are more ecologically valid then having a special sofa made out of a bathtub and send across the glob!

The second thing that grated my nerves was a 10 things to do with a pillow case article. Again, getting something new and modifing it might be great fun and yeild great results, but isn't ecological at all. The notion of putting handles or cutting holes in a pillow case to preduce a shopping bag or a grament bag is to me, very silly. Also, if you are so incline as to make your own bags, a trip to a fabric store will yild more materialst for bags without all the special packaging material that comes with buying one pillow case.
How about this for an idea?! buy a pillow case and use it... as a pillow case, use it for as long as it last, own just one of those per person in the family instead of hording them in a bulking cabinet.
If you want to be extra green about it, you can take the shopping bag the case came in and re-use that as a shopping bag or a garbage bag.

Yes, it's a lot less attractive and would not take beautiful pictures to put on cool design website, but if you do want to go green, and make that a priority in your life, it means, sometime, not living in a magazine but in reality.

Instinct

This is a part of a 3 drawing series i made today for "Illustration Friday" the word of the week was "instinct" It made me think of the owl tattoo I got last week and how all my Tattoos aside of one are of Animals, because I feel they represent best different state of minds and massages I want to bring into my life.

The series shows the same model (Sierra) in 3 different state of minds, each followed by an animalistic inspiration of the moment.

Relaxing

In the past couple of days, I was really assertive, I've wrote back to some people Ned and I met in the PowerHouse portfolio review, I submitted my art to a Gallery and 3 stores (2 Form answered received back), I communicated with a guy that have a site for New York photographers and got accepted to it (though haven't uploaded anything yet), and send Ned's presentation to an online French magazine.

Somehow, though I'm pretty sick and very tired, I was able ot do all those things, and though it wasn't fun, it was very productive and also, very empowering not to be paralyzed by having to face the notion of communication and knowing that I might get rejected.

However, tonight was spend in not even completing and Etsy order but just making stuff for myself, I designed those cups in my mind last week when I was in State Collage and couldn't fall asleep, and so it was really nice to finally let them take shape in life and not just in my brain.

Pasta Primavera (well, sort of...)

We've been eating really bad lately, between being busy and being more social and the trip to PA (Pizza, ice cream and the most amazing Pirogies ever) I was afraid that unless I start eating some fresh fruits and vegetables, I'm going to get scurvy for sure, and also, have a heart attack.
So today, I decided to eat some healthy low-fat fresh something, and since I'm feeling more then a bit sick, it had to be a quick cooking easy to make one as well.

This came out so nice I'm sure I'm going to make it again. It's super healthy, contain no bad ingredients at all, and very low fat - And tasty!
Ingredients (for 2 hungry people):

Half a pack of pasta (I used whole wheat angel hair, it cooks fast and good for you)
About 1/2 a cup of baby carrots
About 1/2 a cup of cherry tomato
About 1/2 a cup of chopped broccoli
A lemon
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 of jalapeno pepper or some chili flakes
Capers (just a few, about a tea spoon or so.
olive oil




How to make it:

Put a pot for the pasta on the stove and boil water in it, once the water are boiling, put the pasta in (I personally don't ad oil or salt to the water, honestly, I can't tell the taste in flavor and don't want to ad any extra salt or oil to the food).

While the pasta is cooking, chop the broccoli & carrots (I like them on the chunkier side) and slice the cherry tomatoes in half. Peal the Garlic and slice it to little bits, and do the same with the Jalapeno.

In a fraying pan, toss the garlic in a little olive oil (I use a table spoon, but a little more will make it taste better) until it's starting to brown (and your kitchen smells amazing) then ad the jalapeno, carrots and Broccoli. stir and check on the pasta, if it's cooked by now, strain it and let it sit for a bit, if not, continue cooking it.



After about 5 minutes, add the tomato, and about 1/3 cup of water, then squeeze the lemon into the pan, let it simmer for a minute or two, then ad the capers, stir again, and turn the stove off.


That's it really, easiest pasta sauce (or really, vegetable mixture or whatever) it took me longer to type this recipe then make it. The whole thing took about 10 minutes or so, and was really good!



Variation:
As I was making it, I was thinking of what else will taste good in this and so, feel free to ad any or all of those ingredients:
Olives, walnuts, roasted pine nuts, a dash of heavy cream, white wine, Parmesan cheese, eggplants, artichoke hearts, sundries tomatos

Of course, then it's all becoming a little less healthy and a lot more decacent.

Enjoy!

Apartment therapy competition

Yay! my apartment therapy tutorial got in the competition, I'm so excited! there are still 2 weeks left so I'm sure by then there are going to be a lot more competitors, but right now there are only me and one other person in the re-nest category. I'm trying to raise my hopes too high, but I'm really excited about this.

If you don't mind signing up, please vote for me! I would love to win this!

What i did today

Because i feel so bad about not getting to a million things I wanted to do, I'm going to write down everything I did do. Maybe seeing it in writing would make me feel like less of a slacker...

1) Went to the restaurant supply stores and got a new batch of cups, saucers, espresso cups, tapas plates and a couple of other things I can't remember. Then, realizing I'm really far of from where I need to meet Ned, I lugged it all from Houston street to Union square - it was so heavy! my arms are still sore.

2) Went to the art store to get Ned some scratchboard and left with scratchboard and also a huge role of beautiful watercolor paper.

3) wrapped all the gifts I got for both my sister (it sounds like a small thing, but I didn't send a package in a while and there were at least 20 things in there to wrap), then wrote each of them a letter.

4) Wrote a letter to a Friend who lives in England.

5) finished retouching the photos of Sierra from last Friday's shoot, then resized and posted them on Flickr.

6) Submitted my art work to 3 awesome stores, one in LA, one in Brooklyn and one in San Fransisco.

7) Helped Ned book our tickets to LA in April, for the opening of the grafuck book exhibition, Ned's got a piece in the book and show!

8) Promoted Ned's new erotic story in twitter and facebook.

And just to make myself feel worse, this is what I didn't do:

1) Folded the laundry.

2) packed the sake set that sold yesterday.

3) joined photodrifting - a NY photography site that accepted me.

4) made a dragonfly tea cup and another Gone with the wind tea set for people waiting for them.

5) Started working on the new site.

6) Started designing my new site.

7) did any drawing.

8) Made stuff and put them on Etsy.

9) answered a bunch of e-mails.


Damn! Not enough hours in the day...

Celebrate

A couple of days ago, Ned and I shot a model, she was telling us about making a beautiful Valentine's for her boyfriend, it was made in the shape of hands and when you open the card, there's a pop up human heart. Then she dumped him 3 days before Valentine's, it just wasn't working for her.

I don't like Valentine's, it seem a stupid tradition of mostly shopping and feeling obliged to show emotions in a very artificial way. I much rather celebrate my love ot Ned every day then dedicate just one day out of the year to it.

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Saying that, we did have a super romantic Valentine's - we weren't really planning on celebrating, but somehow, we ended up getting drunk having super passionate sex on the photo shoot backdrop, while taking pictures, catching a couple of rats who took over the kitchen (which doesn't sound like a romantic thing, buy somehow it was) making art, and getting new matching tattoos (of owls!)

State Collage PA

We drove to state collage today, returning merchandise Ned's mom took for a trunk show in New York. Ned's father is on a 3rd day of chemo and they couldn't take it back themselves as they usually do.

Ned hates coming here, he's got a lot of bad memories about this place and feel bad about not calling his grandfather or uncle and meeting family while we are here. I love coming here, it's so different then our everyday life, I like staying at this strange motel and watching the view as we drive. A short 2 days trip always makes me feel like I was away from home for years and I come back with many cool ideas and new appreciation for my life in Brooklyn.

We got here at about 5:00. Dropped of the many bags of clothes and went to pack our bag in the hotel. The building was surrounded with policeman and firetrucks, there was a fire in the laundry room and they were putting it out, a couple of photographers were also on the scene taking pictures.

Me and Ned walked around for a bit, then had dinner and ice cream and walked around in some odd outlet store, which Ned remembered by a different name.
We came back to the hotel, Ned took a bath, I read him his e-mails and took pictures. Then he fell asleep.

I have my computer and my MP3 player, and a book and a sketchbook, basically almost everything I have at home to do and entertain myself, but still being in this strange room, without my stuff and without Ned makes me feel very lonely. And very much wanting a drink...

Passing Time

This winter we've been spending so much time at home and having a pretty regular day routine, most if it would be within 2 or 4 blocks from the apartment and includes me and Ned spending a lot of time together and making a lot of art and stuff.

Yesterday we had a big meeting that require spending most of the day out, then today, we had to drop of a CD at a modeling agency, Ned went to therapy, and I went to buy my sister a birthday present, then we surprisingly met a friend and went out for lunch.
After that we rushed to the upper east side to pick up Ned's parent's car which we said we'll take to have the oil changed.

We dropped it of in some garage in Brooklyn that works till midnight and found ourselves having some really bad coffee and some really tasty doughnut at dunkin' doughnut, which is my favorite junk food. It felt like that was the first moment that day I got to sit down.

We set there for an hour, listening so some old guy bitching about Madonna, her husband, tattoo artists, celebrities, famous people who don't act nice, sports and how he can't smokes cigars in public anymore and just waiting.

I don't get to just pass time like that a lot. I don't like waiting, but after all this long day, it was actually nice to do nothing.

Francesco Ercolini on Louchelink

What I really like about Francesco's photography is that it feels like his life is an endless cool chaotic party.

I don't know if this is so, but I just love visiting his life though his pictures and seeing how, though people look different in different places, the feelings and the enjoyment they experience is universal.

Plus, I think it's super cool that his portraits of dogs are at least as funny, quirky and respectful as the ones of people.

Read interview here:
www.louchelink.com/

PowerHouse

We are taking Ned's portfolio to be reviewed by "powerhouse" publisher tomorrow.

We've been editing photos and making choices all week, now almost everything is done (we still need to make a couple of CDs)

We've talked a lot this week about what we want, about our accomplishments from the past year, about the future.

At first it felt like we are coming to this meeting very empty handed, being that Ned hasn't done a lot of commercial photography in the past few years, then thinking about the amount of views we had on our websites, the involvement in different web based project and other things, we started to feel better about the whole thing.

It was nice to understand that basically, we were doing everything right, building a reputation, reaching out to the public, and sharpening our skills, now all we need to do is find a way to connect with some art buyers and learn to make money.

Also, this made me realize something really important about my own art. I really couldn't care less of what happened to it after I'm done making them.

I want to sell art so I can go on making art and not have to work in an office or something, I also love selling art cause it makes me feel appreciated and loved. However, I don't care at all if I sell it to a magazine to use as illustrations, or find an art gallery that show and sell it to collectors, or publish it in a book that's sold in a bookstore or whatever.
Really, if I could find some eccentric patron who would buy all my paintings cause he want to use them as toilet paper I couldn't be happier.

A tale of 2 cities

I always feel very odd when people ask me where I'm from or where I live. I guess both New York and Tel Aviv are perceived by me as home, even though I haven't visited Tel Aviv for almost a year now.

A couple of days ago, Sharona, the queen of the Etsy Israeli team asked me to participate in a collaborative activity with her team, the assignment was to create one of the letters for their new blog's banner. I made the S in the word ETSY not ISRAEL.

It made me feel so good to be included in an activity that's going on in Israel!

SAD in the Bathroom

I'm so sick and tired of feeling so anxious every single morning. It doesn't matter when I'm opening my eyes, it feels like those days I just wake up so fucking fragile, as if every drift of wind or any type of any emotional exertion would just make me fall into pieces.

So I numb my brain with reading the news, with listening to an audio book, building a brier of words between me and my own feelings.

Or I drink a lot of coffee, or I have a small Whiskey and water before I even brush my teeth, or I get dressed really fast, or I sit around naked and look through a million photos on Flickr just to swamp my mind with anything except my own feelings. Or I read the same page in a book over and over again without really letting the words in.

It's snowing out today, it looks beautiful, but it doesn't even pile on the ground.

It just feels like nothing good will happened before spring, and it just feel like spring will never get here and that I'm never going to feel warm again.

I broke my hairbrush today, it fall on the floor of the bathroom. I never even liked it so much, but it was one of the things I brought from Israel with me. It feels like I'm loosing my place over there, like I'm being forgotten, like I'm forgetting.

My cousin wrote me last week, she had a new baby, she send me photos, I didn't even know she was pregnant, I've been so out of communication with everyone over there. It's all just too hard and too painful.

Every e-mail seem to be hard to write, beyond possible even, even the short ones that are just "your package will be send tomorrow" or "I'm too tired to write right now I'll write you a proper e-mail next week".

Last month I only made one phone call, I think I only answer one as well, the more time passes the hardest communication become.

When I was a kid I wanted to be like Greta Garbo or Salinger, I wanted to live in a castle somewhere remote, and never go out, only make drawings and read books and not see or talk to people.
I wonder if I already became that person.
I'm not famous, but I'm probably one of the hardest people I know to reach.

Nothing seem real, everything seem too real.

Data (cause information is fun!)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a long entry about information I gathered from Google Analytics about my store. I've had information coming in for a little over 2 weeks now and though it might be interesting to cross views and sales and treasuries.

First of all, I had a most amazing Etsy month, I was featured in a bunch of treasuries that made front page! Which was really great. I used the etsy front pager group on Flickr to find when I was on the front page and crossed it with the views. I was featured on the front page 8 times since January 14! how cool is that!
The thing I've noticed about Front page is that it can generate a lot of views or very little, I got any number between 1,135 views on a treasury day and 208. I think it depend on ow long the treasury was up more then about the hour it was put up in (though I can't be sure).

Also, though I'm sure views and sales are connected in general, being on the front page or having a big views day, didn't immediately implied sales, and my best sale days which which was January 25 and January 30 (with 4 and 6 sales) were not really great views days at all. (about 150 and 300 views).

As for view sources, which I always find interesting:

I had over 50% direct traffic hits, I'm not quite sure how Google Analytics calculate this and whether Etsy front page are calculated in this or not, I can't really see how else so many people will know to find my shop.

I'm really surprised at how many people got to my store through a google search. I'm also aware of the fact that google analytic have a strong motive to make it seem like a larger source of hits then it might be, a lot of the search words don't seem relevant to the items in my store at all, and i'm pretty baffled at how a search for "can you fuse pmc to other metal" or " graphic of pussywillow" or "you and your little brother indianapolis" led to my page. Still the strongest and most popular search words were "Etsy" and Etsy.com" I have no idea how far you need ot go on google to get to my shop, but it's cool that a search for Etsy leads ot my store.

It's really cool to find out a bunch of blogs or site that people got to my store though, though pretty frustrating cause when I check the sites I often can't find what it is that people press to get to my site.

It's also interesting to know that a lot of time a coment I left in someone's blog yilded a lot more traffic to the store then an etry I wrote in my blog, that a lot of time being a part and reacting ot someone else's content is more productive then producing content as far as views goes. (it goes really well with the whoel notion of being a good listener being more important in communication and marketing then being a good speaker).

Unlike my other sites on GA, which get very accurate data, I somehow feel that the Etsy store being a part of the much larger Etsy site makes he data I recive from GA really confusing and inaccurate. It's more of a feeling then anything else, but still, it's pretty frustrating.

One very interesting piece of information - I had only 36% new visitor, which means that 64% of the people visited my store more then once, which I find really really cool and very encouraging.
Also, the avrage time on site is 2.40 minutes, which is a lot! really, compare to mosto f my other sites it's really impressive.

I am really happy to be able to have this info, however, I wish it was working better!

Over all, I had an amazing Etsy month, I sold 30 items and made almost 1,000$. I also passed the 300 sales milestone and started this months with 303 sales! also, I crossed the 2000 heart mark and have 2230 hearts now! Horay!

I'd be really happy if I make it to 340 sales by the end of February.