Happy Halloween!

Alicia Tormey encaustics at Pacini Lubel Gallery

I've recently been reintroduced to Alicia Tormey's work. I loved it before and her recent evolution is very exciting. Her new show, opening at Pacini Lubel Gallery November 5th, is called "Second Nature". A great title as her encaustics on wood are nature enhanced to a higher power. Her abstractions are landscape reminiscent but on varying planes of existence, simultaneously macro and micro. And simultaneously above and below water and sky and earth. Scale and place are wonderfully nebulous and I find myself hungrily searching each image for additional mind bending. And this is just from dropping into her studio while she was in progress. I'm eager to see the full body of work at the opening. Pacini Lubel Gallery, November 5th 2008.

Cloth Frisbee contains lead pellets!

We found a cloth frisbee in the park and threw it around for a bit for our dog. It didn't take him long to start chewing it. He tore open the weighted hem and out came a string of little pellets. They looked suspicious so I used a lead testing kit to see if they contained lead. The testing pack says: "If it's read, it's lead!"

This is the frisbee after a few minutes of chewing. To the right are the string of pellets and the lead testing kit.


This is one pellet peeking out of the hem after that chewing.


This is a string of pellets still sheathed in the plastic hem. I can't tell if at any time the pellets are fully covered by plastic. The seam wasn't closing on this one.


My trusty lead testing kit prior to use and the string of pellets.



Following instructions I break the capsule inside the kit to let the yellow fluid flow into the brush at the end.


It then instructs, "rub 30 seconds onto item".




"If it's red, it's lead"
After only 4 seconds, the brush is bright red. The pellets contain lead. The test only indicates a presence of lead, not how much. We will be disposing of the toy. The brand name was unreadable when we found it.

EJP Creations Blog -writing beautiful things

EJP Creations has featured my "Steampunk Monk" sculpture on her blog. That's what inititally brought me to read about "Her Work and Her Musings". Once there I feasted on her visual selections and verbally delish enticements of other artists' works. Equally intriguing is her own work, delicate and dangerous wearables. Explore!