On the Horizon...

Daily Affirmations

Lori Nix

Amazing photos by Lori Nix (the pieces are photographed miniatures)

Creepy Sweet

With the weather as nice as it is, i'm looking for plants to fill up the inside and make it look like the outside. While scouring Etsy for terrariums I came across this one by LBrandt:

HOW YOU DOIN'?

A How You Doin' Tutorial by the Queen of all Media

Lost Things

TOW XMAS III

Woah...Ricky Swallow....

I love finding new sculptors that blow my mind...and this guy is amazing!

Bronze Balloons by Ricky Swallow...


These are insanely amazing...Beautiful wood carvings by Ricky Swallow.

Love this...

Beauty in unexpected places always makes me smile...

Sculpture Dad

I like to say that Ron Mueck is my sculpture dad...meaning that if anyone in the worldwide sculpture community were to take me under their wing and give me fatherly advice, I'd like it to be him. This is why:

Girl-crushery

From UrbanDictionary.com:

girl crush: feelings of admiration and adoration which a girl has for another girl, without wanting to shag said girl. a nonsexual attraction, usually based on veneration at some level.

I suppose everyone has their girl crushes, sometimes one each for various aspects of life, ie music, fashion, art, overall life...

My current art girl crush is Melissa Dixson, a New York City taxidermist. I first saw Melissa's taxidermy on Etsy and then again later, when I saw her blog while google searching for images of taxidermy. I obsessively read her blog as far back as my brain could stand.

My reasoning for girl crushery is first, who doesn't love a girl who does taxidermy? Thats so bad-ass. I love taxidermy, collect skulls, sculpt dead animals and I have a deerhead hanging in my kitchen that looks at me while I eat oatmeal...but could I actually do the deed of cutting into an animal and stuffing him(or her) back to life? Probably not, as I am a bit wussish about guts and whatnot. That doesn't stop me from taking photos every time I see a dead bird or hanging out in the Wagner Institute drawing the oldest crustiest taxidermy I think I've ever seen, but it does makes me respect/jealous of someone who isn't a animal guts wuss like myself.

Secondly, she seems to have great taste based on the random art and style bits that end up on her blog.

Thirdly, she seems nice...she doesn't just go out and slaughter animals for the stuffing. She makes sure she gets each one in a sustainable way.

Finally, she did a taxidermied fawn as Bambi, which was especially appealing, given my Bambi obsession of early last year, which hasn't really gone away...(Case in point - I am using Flower (the skunk) as the "model" for the skunk piece I'm currently working on....Justin says I can't use an animation as a model. I say he can kiss my bootie, I'm doin' it.)

Anyway, all this talk makes me curious to know who the other ladies girl crushes are..(Aub, I know a few of yours!) La, Aub, Laura...spill yo' girl crush beans!

AC helping Haiti

Ms. Aubrie Costello, is donating 50% of all art sales to help relief efforts in Haiti. Please check out her website at www.aubriecostello.com for details.

The Theatre, 2008

Bring it back...

Today I saw a tweet by Art in the Age about John Paul Thurlow and the drawings of magazine covers he's been doing:

This is an attempt to remake cover art for every great magazine I own (+ a few record covers soon). Covers is an hommage to the creative men and women who produce such disposable perfection.

With each Cover I take a perfect mass-produced object and turn it into a fucked up one-off. Don't expect perfection here, that's not the way I see beauty in the world.

For 2010 I'm planning the Covers 1 -100 book (limited edition of 100, numbered and signed), a new site, and an exhibition. If you think that sounds interesting let me know...

I love the idea of taking something so commercial and spending so much time making it your own.

Merry Xmas...

I hope everyone got what they really wanted...(which is obviously this:)

Merry xmas!
xoxo
Darla

That time of year...

Every year the ladies of The Other Woman exchange gifts in a pollyanna fashion...and every year I worry about what is the perfect thing to get for whoever it is that I'm buying for, which usually involves me going crazy for weeks. Not so this year! We haven't even picked names yet and I already found the perfect gift for whoever I get...see as different as we all are, we also all have the same streak of fancy lady sauciness running through us and I think this gift appeals to that. Heck, if I wasn't broke I would've just gotten one for each of us I think its so perfectly The Other Woman! Now after all this hype, I hope it lives up to all I've made it out to be...we wil see...

The Other Woman: Unwrapped

Please join the ladies of the Other Woman and the fellas of Trinity Framing on Friday, December 11th for an evening of art and holiday cheer. Check out the window display containing new works by Aubrie Costello, Darla Jackson, Laura Graham and Laura McKinley and browse all of the great framing options offered by Trinity. Art makes a great gift, and beautifully framed art makes an even better one!

We hope to see you there! Festive refreshments will be served.

Friday, December 11th, 6:00-9:00pm

The Other Woman: Unwrapped!
Trinity Framing
701 South 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
215-351-1600

www.trinityframing.com
www.theotherwomancollective.com

Regretsy

Regretsy.com: a new found source of entertainment at the expense of those less artistically fortunate.

"So, let’s see. There’s a black satin headband, and a burgundy bow, and a gold and white charm, and what else what else . . oh yeah, A GIANT FUCKING BIRD GLUED TO YOUR HEAD"

"Okay, what happened here? It looks like her tits caught fire and she tried to put it out with her purse."

"You know, it’s unnerving enough that there’s someone out there, painstakingly making polymer replicas of your cooter. But it really gets weird in the description:

After purchasing, send me a convo describing your vagina: the shape of your inner and outer labia, colors, how much or how little your inner labia extend out from your outer labia, how well hidden your clitoris is, is it heavily hooded, or can you see it fairly easily?

Yeah, I don’t think so. If I’m going to spend that much time online talking to a stranger about my pussy, I better be playing with myself."

The Vagina Monologue...

As I sat here last night, wrapping presents for our upcoming window installation at Trinity Framing I was laughing about how wrapping boxes first in pink paper and then covering them with tan paper made me think they were like a bunch of weird vaginas...and that our window was going to be a bunch of framed art popping out of vaginas...and I wondered if that was a good or bad thing...undertones of sexuality seem to find their way into everything we do as a collective so I feel like its normal for us...and hell I just saw a commercial the other day that used boobs and an ass to advertise workout shoes, so how far off are accidental vagina presents advertising frames, really? Anyway, stop by to see the window after November 22nd. Trinity Framing, 3rd and Bainbridge Streets...

Yo back when...

Someone sent me a link to this article on Animal Mummies and its amazing to me how much time and care and ceremony went into handling the dead...even their animals were mummified and given fancy final resting places...it acts as a reminder of what jerks we are nowadays...

Oh baby baby...

As life would have it, I just so happened to give birth to little Ms. Olivia Rae Jackson Grant on Friday, October 23 at 4:15am. She came into the world as I like to say "quick like a bunny" via an amazingly fast and wonderful home birth. She weighed 6lbs 5oz at birth and is 19 1/2 inches long. She's a total doll and I couldn't have wished for a more wonderful little lady.