Back from Sacto

I'm back from a visit to my buddy Gioia's in Sacramento. I spent four days in our State capitol, eating organic veggies, strolling the streets, making jewelry, looking at art and generally having an awesome time. Right now I'm listening to one of the four CD's of tremendous music and Gioia and her husband Eric collated for me. I'm a happy girl.

Gioia was my first roomate at CCAC and we've been closest friends ever since. I love hanging out with her. She's just bursting with great ideas for everything and generally exudes creativity. A very revitalizing person. One of her projects is Pink Week, which is an annual holiday established by herself to celebrate the color pink. She has also started to design and make the most fun and cool jewelry I've ever seen...with shrinky-dink! I haven't really touched shrinky dinks since my Colorforms days. Gioia opened my eyes and let me run free with her art supplies to create some jewelry.

Hopefully soon she will have a website for her line of jewelry, which is sparkle motion. The name is taken from a quote from the movie Donnie Darko. ("Sometimes I really doubt your commitment to sparkle motion.") I will bug her for you...this weekend she is in Reno competing in the Scrabble tourney.

Wish her good vibes!

Anyway.

She brought me to a couple of cool galleries downtown. One was Toyroom, and the other is called Exploding Head. I loved both of them. Sacramento has a lot going on artwise at the moment. Their public art has always been really cool. I took pictures of a Robert Arneson public art installation downtown. Unfortunately I forgot to find the title and other germane info for it. I figured it would be all over the web since it's such a neat piece. Next time. Robert Arneson was the favorite teacher of my ceramics teacher, Arthur Gonzalez.

For my mom, I took pictures of Gioia's yard. I always admire anyone who can keep anything alive. I love all the colors in the space. Gioia met me when I was coming out of my "grey period" in terms of dress. She taught me that color was not a bad thing.

Next is the pink ukelele I got for her in Hawaii. She and her husband are both composing and recording experimental music (with a friend whose name has dropped from my memory banks.) so I had to get this. Plus, it's pink.

Next is the coolest chair in the world. I got to sit in it.

Featured next are the shrinkies in process. Then some pics of jewlery I created with Gioia's guidence. She taught me how to put in jump rings, findings, etc. I still have to finish the bracelet. The creatures are part of my personal pantheon. I draw them a lot on my pottery and also have marionettes I made of them hanging in my kitchen. I'll take a picture and post soon.

The last picture is for Gioia! Here's the pic we forgot to take in Sacto. I'm wearing her newest invention, a necklace of cable strung with small pieces of felt. These are small bits left over from her brilliant thesis project "Felt-O". She saved all the cuttings and is full of jewelry ideas for them. I love mine. Shout out to my neighbor John for taking the pic.

If you want any info about Gioia's upcoming craft show appearance, email me at mpkartist@yahoo.com, and I'll pass along your info.

I'm ready to jump into my own stuff, and I'm getting ready to teach again. More on this in another post as this one is already quite long.

MPK