A Pasadena Exchange

20"x20" oil on canvas • This is number two of three of my pieces that will be in the Contemporary Masters exhibit.

• PHONE: I really, really wanted to paint an old wall mounted phone, not this one in particular, but one of the old heavy types that may also be used as a club in self-defense (or in self-offense for that matter—depends on your family). This beauty popped up on eBay and it is the only thing I ever truly went after on that cruel site with a "must get it" attitude. It is a cool phone—a Kellogg Red Bar—and a cousin to the table model I painted earlier.

• PAINTING: Don't really know what to say about it other than blacks are fun to paint. I do not include a black on my palette; rather I build them with two to six pigments. Black is just black when it comes out of a tube, but a mixed black brings with it surprises and accidents and rich beautiful hues. Under mix it, and it can be even more wonderful and varied.

• CONCEPT: You may have noticed that yesterday's painting was of a building in Pasadena. This painting happens to have a Pasadena phone number on it, hence the name, "A Pasadena Exchange." You might see a theme developing here. The parameters of the show are that the pieces show the beauty(?) of the San Gabriel Valley. So I, of course, chose an old abandoned building(s) and this phone, that I wanted to paint no matter what the theme. Pasadena's old exchanges were SYcamore (79) and I think ELgin (35). The area I grew up in was CItrus, but that is another memory I have successfully blocked, so let's not go there. Using the Mayor of Pasadena's direct line in the painting would have been really cool, but the dang city hall doesn't use the old exchange anymore—traitors. So, I settled for the phone number of The Bunny Museum (www.thebunnymuseum.com). Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. You may see three ads for the museum (ads that creep The Spousal Unit out) on the website Funny or Die (www.funnyordie.com). Whoever thought Frodo Baggins could be so creepy?

• EXHIBIT: The exhibit's artist reception will be on March 10th, but bizarrely enough, it is private. The exhibit lasts from March 9th to July 29th. Also, the museum participates in the famed Pasadena "Art Night" (www.artnightpasadena.org) event on March 9th—the first night the exhibition will be open to the public.

• ME BEING RUDE: I was going to include more particulars, but this post is entirely too long and I feel like I need a nap after typing it. I also resorted to using bullets—which is just obnoxious.
Posted March 2, 2012