Corner View - My Dream

I don't remember when it began but for as long as I can remember I've been the go to person for artistic renderings. Need a sign? Susie can make you one.


Need a forty foot mural for a school house in a Bedouin village? Susie can whip one up. Or two. (or five).



Then when I was in business school I had this dream that I could maybe work as an artist (when I got a 65 on my first finance exam). I painted a bunch of funny little figures one weekend and brought them to a wacky little folk art gallery downtown and the owner said she'd display them. She sold every one and gave me 60% of the proceeds. So I built a website and told everyone I knew and we had a little "gala opening".


And I sold enough of those little guys to pay for my husband and me to bike from Budapest to Prague through Vienna for a month after I graduated (but only enough to sleep in a tent).

Then I reproduced a bunch and made them into cards and prints and invitations and what not. Sold some of those too.


But I started getting sick of those little guys. And had some little guys of my own. And by then I had a business school job and a mortgage and some school loans and I kind of lost sight of my dream. Until my friend asked me to paint her ketubah* and that's when I suddenly woke up.


Good morning! I started painting again. A lot. Different things. That's when I remembered my dream. I forgot about all of those reasons why my dream was impossible and started living my dream.

For more corner views visit Dana, who's hosting this week while Jane is globe trotting...

*traditional Jewish marriage contract

More than meets the eye

The other day my son got a package in the mail - a belated birthday gift from a buddy of his. I had forgotten that a week before the child's mom had asked me what my son wanted for his birthday and after I begged her to please not buy him anything because I had just bought him a bunch of new toys and still he prefers to play with my camera, cell phone and hairdryer, she insisted to know what he wanted. So against my better judgment I told her that he seemed interested in his cousin's Transformers. Those vehicular robotic toys that are supposedly saving the world from the Force of Evil. Well don't be fooled. It's the Transformers themselves that are the Force of Evil. Here's what went down.

My mom actually bought him a Transformer for his birthday. We had both seen him play with his cousin's and thought he'd like one of his own. I picked it up for her in hell at the toy store. I got him a car and it said on the package that it was level 2 (easy) for age 4+. And it's not that I underestimate his fine motor skills or his mechanical intelligence - he's the one that figured out I have speaker phone on my cell, after all. But I had a suspicion, after having watched him try to play games marked for his age, that he would fiddle with it for a few moments and then get annoyed that it's a piece of junk and doesn't snap nicely back together. And I would have to show him how to do it. And that would suck for me because I have no interest in vehicular robots even if they are trying to save the universe. Once again, I was right. After he ripped it apart and saw all of the robotic innards underneath, he wanted it to be a car again. Here mommy. So I put it back together and thank God I picked the level 2 because it was plenty challenging. I failed to mention this important distinction when suggesting a Transformer to this friend. So she sends him a Transformer that is level THREE, age 5+. Two of them actually. The horror. The horror.

The first one is a motorcycle. He hasn't been holding it for more than ten seconds before it is transformed into a sinewy many-tentacled thing with one wheel here and the other stuck onto some other limb and I am thinking, George Jesus, how am I ever going to get this monster back together again. After a few minutes of jangling it around he hands it over. Here mommy. Now it's my turn to "play" with it. Cleansing breath.

For the next HOUR I am sitting on the couch trying to snap this mother effing piece of Made in China injection molded garbage back into a motorcycle. I actually start to feel sweat collect around my brow. Meanwhile, my two kids have now taken to playing with the handful of packing peanuts that came with the package. In the middle of what feels to me like a nationally televised Rubik's cube-a-thon (I suffer from performance anxiety) I look up and my kids have turned the packing peanuts into a winter wonderland. I am not exaggerating. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this event but rest assured the entire living room floor, spilling into the hallway, kitchen and dining room, was covered in Styrofoam bits. And my motorcycle is still undone. And there's a blizzard in my home.

I rise to the occasion. Of course! I say, children of your father, you go and have yourselves a snow ball circus for the next twenty minutes while I bash this robo-cycle thing into my head repeatedly and then we'll reconnoiter and clean up this giant mess.

And that's exactly what we did. I managed to turn the Transformer into something that resembles a motorcycle while my kids laughed hysterically pulling pieces of Styrofoam out of my daughter's hair and netherlands. It was a scene. And after, we swept like mad and my kids ran in every direction screaming "she's going to get us" while I vacuumed. My floor has never been this clean.

Anyway, heed this important advice. Transformers are NOT for five-year-olds. My husband is a 37-year-old mechanical engineer and he can't even put one back together. Do yourself a favor and get your kids some packing peanuts. The environmental kind that turn into compost or whatever. This blog may self-destruct.

Broiler Man

Every week we get closer to the ideal weekday afternoon. My issue lately is less about occupying my son and more about getting my daughter down to nap early enough so she wakes up early enough that she can then fall back asleep at 8:00. This is no small feat. This is also not what I'm writing about today.

My son is slowly coming to terms with my request that he engage in thirty minutes of unstructured free play while I get some work done. He is not that good at this when it's being asked of him. He is great at this when he should be getting ready for school. So we're working on a schedule that feels right to him. A few minutes for a snack together. Half an hour for a game or puzzle. Half an hour of free time. Hour project (cooking dinner or baking a dessert, gardening, art project, watching a movie...). By then my daughter is awake and they can entertain each other for the remainder of the day.

Yesterday we tried out free time and after playing with a toy for about thirty seconds he asked if he could use the phone. I have come to terms with his interest in phones so I allow him to call a few people. First he calls his dad and they have a lovely chat. Then he calls his grandma and tells her about school and this and that. Then he calls our friend Heidi. And finally my Aunt Marcia.

Among other things, my son is obsessed with Aunt Marcia. Now I would understand if he had spent any significant amount of time with her because she's terrific. But he has spent maybe seven hours total of his whole life with this woman (she lives in New York). At some point early on she let him use her red Motorola phone and that was it. He now only has eyes for Aunt Marcia and her phone (which is now a pink Samsung - even better).

So he calls her and I overhear this part of the conversation.

Guess what I'm going to be for Halloween.
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A broiler!
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A broiler!
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I said, a broiler! Like the bottom of the oven!
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Where you put the food that you want to burn because there's fire there? And you pull out the bottom part and put something in like a vegetable and then it gets burned and Aba peels off the skin? A broiler.
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Yes.
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Well, I don't know where I can buy a broiler costume, but my mommy can make it. She can sew.
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If she can't make it then I'm going to be a shark.

At some point last week he became interested in the broiler and has asked several times to watch when we turn it on so that he can see the flame light up. It has completely captured his imagination. And while I would love for him to just wave his crazy flag and stroll around the neighborhood as a broiler for Halloween, I really can't figure out how to make that come together. I mean, I'm taking a sewing class, not a welding class. It does sort of sound like a Batman rival. The Broiler! Mwah ha ha ha....I'm so trademarking that.

Corner View - LOVE

Time for another corner view and this week it's all about the L word which in our case stands for LAWNMOWER. That's right. And what comes after capital L but capital M which stands for Monday. And why do we LOVE Mondays so much in our household, despite the fact that we have to wake up for school and work and dress two squirrely kids and make lunches and hustle out of the house when we'd rather be lounging around in our pajamas for an extra day of weekend? Because of the guy who mows the lawn at the school across the street. Our corner view is literally of an elementary school yard and my kids LOVE nothing more than to wait and watch for Mr. Lawnmower to pull up in his humongous lawn mowing monstrosity and cruise back and forth making nice patterns in the grass. He always comes on Mondays and my kids always greet him with a wave and a shout (but only if they're fully dressed and done with breakfast. That's the part I love). He never hears them because he's wearing industrial grade ear muffs to dull the deafening noise but he always smiles and waves and my kids adore him.

To see some more LOVE go here.

From the Mishmish archive

This one is an oldie but a goodie. It's a piece I painted in 1998. I was living in Tel Aviv at the time. I think I was also unemployed. And my boyfriend lived in another city. And my bike had just been stolen. I shared an apartment with two Israeli women who were frantically studying for the Israeli Bar exam so always had classmates over and were always shouting. It was hot as hell and sticky like a wet cat. We had an air conditioning unit that was in the living room but we never used it because we were cheap. And the cool air didn't really reach into the bedrooms anyway. Plus my room was more like a converted balcony so it had horrible insulation and we referred to it as the swamp. I used to put my whole sheet in the shower before bed and then bring it dripping into the bedroom to put over me so that I could cool down. It would be dry by morning. And petrified in the shape of two boobs and two feet. Good times. I didn't have a computer back then so I passed the time watching CNN, walking to the beach, painting and wishing I had friends. With all of that in mind it's kind of curious that this piece is so cheery. Maybe it will bring you some cheer too. Look for it soon on ETSY.

Mish Mash

I'm having a kind of identity crisis. When I started this blog more than two years ago with two daily visitors, I was not really in artist mode. I was on maternity leave actually and feeling like a bad mom for never having kept a baby book to record all of those precious details like the color of baby's poop on day 137. More specifically I was in my head a lot since my only interaction was with a sleeping baby for seven hours a day (don't feel bad - I got to watch seasons 1-3 of LOST on DVD. Just what I needed) but I needed somewhere to write down all of that head junk. I figured it would be a journal mostly and I figured other moms would feel happiness and solidarity to know that their kids weren't the only ones who took comfort from sleeping with their parents' shoes. Although I'm pretty sure I'm still the only one whose kid ever did that. The point is the blog was never about my journey as an artist.

But then came my friend's ketubah and my revelation that I love to paint and create and my realization that I didn't want to work full time while my kids were still little and the time I did spend working I wanted to enjoy. And I started to paint again. Every week. And build my website and shop and start my newsletter and outreach. And so here we are. I have this blog about being a stay/work at/from home/studio mom/artist called Inner Toddler and this creative venture called Mishmish Studio and an online store called Mishmish Market (that's the ETSY shop - Mishmish Studio was taken). Does it all fit? Are you confused? (sorry). Do I seem confused? (I am a little).

Some artists just go by their names which I considered but my name doesn't really just roll off the tongue you know? Am I thinking about this too much? Does it even matter? Frankly I can't imagine only writing about my process as an artist. I mean you would fall asleep at your monitor. I would too. I'm falling asleep right now just thinking about it. Maybe I should have TWO blogs. But that would be a lot of extra work. Blogs don't need siblings.

And then sometimes I type so fast that I end up typing Inert Toddler and that makes me laugh thinking about a blog about toddlers that are inactive but then I think that's probably not funny at all and there's probably something wrong with those poor inert, toddlers. Wait, I'm losing my train of thought...

Yes, my brand. It's a mishmash at this point. I should have gone with Mishmash Studio instead of Mishmish Studio in the first place and saved us all the confusion.

Flying

Today's Illustration Friday is "flying". And that's what I am after learning yesterday that four of my pieces sold at a Judaica shop in the East Bay. This was one of them.