Alanna Spence :: artist blog

This video actually made me weep. I am forever grateful to the universe for allowing me to share my time on earth with the makers of this show. Please watch and share in my joy:

From Thutranthutran.wordpress.com:

Food Party is a (would-be) TV cooking show with a spicy saigon kitchen-witch as your hostess, a cast of unruly puppets as culinary advisors, and a cavalcade of hip-hop/sports world celebrities as surprise dinner guests. Shot on location in a technicolor cardboard kitchen, each episode will instruct you on how to prepare wild gourmet multi-course meals with ingredients you probably have on hand in your kitchen already, such as pretzel rods, cheese puffs, eggs, sugar, secret ingredients, and pizza. After all, you never know who might show up for dinner.

Visit the YouTube page for more episodes.

Whoa cool!

So, I don’t like clothes shopping. It’s usually a completely depressing experience for me, so when a season comes around that offers me clothes that actually fit me and make me feel good, I get a little crazy. And I’m sorry, I’m no clothes snob, I seem to really like Mervyn’s, go figure.

Lately, I can’t stay out of Mervyns. I have about 12 new tops and I’m pretty darn happy about it. I feel like a girl again. All through school I wore nothing but band t-shirts. I know!! How old am I? Now that I know paychecks will be coming, I thought it would be ok to spend a couple of c notes of some new clothes, because that’s the other great thing about Mervyn’s; everything is dirt cheap. Which I suppose isn’t great for the planet or humanity, but for this blissfully half-ignorant, cute clothing starved girl, it sure is swell. So thanks Mervyn’s for making me feel cute and sassy again.

Oceangal recently posted a link to this YouTube Video of two amazing dancers dancing the boogie woogie and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Whenever I start at a new job or a new class or whatnot, I sing this song in my head and it puts me at ease. Luckily my new job rocks and my first week is a breeze. We are seeing the Long Winters on July 17th at the Independent. You should go.

This lovely woman is holding the contents of Robert Plant’s Pants.

Thanks for the image, Shannon!

p.s. the reader “avidskier” something or other, I accidentally deleted your comment. I’m sorry!!!! I was clicking too fast and now I can’t get it back.

Raising the flag on Iwo Jima

Originally uploaded by Balakov

This Flickr group has loads of recreations. Check it!

For those interested, my first day at my new job was awesome and I’m a happy camper. Yay!

Today is the first installment of our new game: What’s in Robert Plant’s Pant? Today, RP has this in his pants:

This image was found on Collateral Damage.

While I was at CCA, during the breaks I would sell our books and cds for extra cash and to try and clear out our shelves a little bit. I sell our things on Amazon, it’s a prett good deal. I get more than I would just taking our stuff to a used book/music store, and I get to spread our cd collection all over the US. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve been on a mission to completely digitize our cd collection and sell everything. The amount of tome I spend every day listing, selling, wrapping, and mailing all our cds is a bit ridiculous. We have well over 1000 cds and I’m selling them at a pace of about 20 a day. In Theory, if every day were a 20 cd day, it would take me 50 days to sell them all. But you’ve got to take into account the slow days or say when I went to Santa Monica. Still in the month of June, I have sold 130 of our cds so far. Not too shabby. Boy am I sick and tired of wrapping though. Yuck! I wrap day and night. Print, print, print the invoices, cut, cut, cut the bubble wrap and butcher paper, Wrap, wrap, wrap, tape, tape, tape. Then every day, wait in line at the post office, wait wait wait. They know me well down there now. I’m the sad sap who is paying her bills after graduation by selling all her belongings. sad, sad, sap.

When we picked up our marriage license, they gave us this lovely pamphlet. I was very excited to see what information and advice they could provide me about our marriage. The first page I opened to informed me that I need to make sure I am getting enough Folic Acid in my diet. Huh? I didn’t know marriage was going to involve nutrition as well. Reading through the rest of the pamphlet and I find that when you get married, it means you are probably either pregnant or have HIV/AIDS and if you were thinking abot getting pregnant, you should know all the terrible things that could be wrong with your unborn child, even if you get all the folic acid you need! Sheesh! I’m not even married yet and the government is all in my diet and uterus and shee-it.

This is what else the pamphlet had in it:

Living a Healthy Lifestyle:

• Annual Check-ups
• Regular Exercise
• Balanced Diet
• Folic Acid in Your Diet

Domestic Violence:

• What is domestic violence?
• Cycles of domestic violence
• Effects of domestic violence
• What you should do

HIV/AIDS:

• How do you get HIV?
• The Test
• The Results
• Where do you get the test?

Family Planning:

• Planning for pregnancy
• Take care of yourself (this section has a drawing of a woman eating yogurt or something)
• Folic Acid: Every Woman, Every Day (again! with the folic acid!)
• Genetic Disorders
• Finding out if you can pass on a genetic disorder
• Genetic Counseling
• List of referral centers for genetic or prenatal testing
• Healthy choices when you are pregnant
• Infectious diseases that can harm your body
• Important tests during pregnancy
• An important test for new babies

Waiting for my man.

Originally uploaded by Alanna Spence

Waiting by city hall for tom to show up so we can get our marriage
license!

Watch Lou Ree and John Cale wait for their man in 1972.

New bags

Originally uploaded by Alanna Spence

Two down today. Makin bags for out of town wedding guests.

Sewing madness

Originally uploaded by Alanna Spence

I went to the sewing vacuum place out on geary yesterday to get a new
bobin case. I had to wait for a while so I took a look at all their
sewing machines for sale. Man, I want a fancy sewing machine so bad.
There are some crazy machines out there. Double thread, fancy
embroidery, button hole makers, digital displays. I want it all. I must
wait though. There are student loans and weddings to pay. Back to my
trusty old new home models from the early 90s. The machine that never
dies, it just likes to compalin sometimes.

I have a secret fantasy about reuniting lost pets with their owners. I think I’ve daydreamed about starting a sort of private detective agency for lost pets many, many times in my life. I’m obsessed with lost pet posters, I have a huge collection of them.

So today, when I heard a screaming kitten in our backyard, I rushed out to rescue her. I had seen a heartbreakingly cute poster of a similar lost kitten a couple weeks back and I thought this might be the same kitten. So I brought her home, gave her some water and started looking around. She hadn’t been reported to the SPCA so I walked down to the local pet store and asked if anyone had reported a missing kitten. No reports so I picked up a little bit of cat food and headed home to start my poster campaign. I posted a few fliers around the block and went home to calm the kitty. She is so damn cute. Just minutes later my phone rang and a frantic woman called about the cat. Turns out they had only had her for about a week and last night she had slipped out the bathroom window of their 3rd floor apartment. She’s been missing since last night and they have been worried sick. She is none the worse for wear, with a little goose and green pea kitty food in her. I get to be a little hero for the day and everybody’s happy. Yay for kitten rescue! Her name is Rena and she is edible.

As if I don’t have enough to do already, Carolyn Wang has rallied the troops at our studios at Yosemite Place to do a big open studios this year. As usual I volunteered for things I shouldn’t have. For the last week, I’ve been trying to wrangle up images for this full page ad that will go in the guide. I wish I was a better designer but I suppose trying to fit that many images into a page is a challenge for the best designer. So oh well, I hit it with my best shot. I also registered yosemitestudios.com so I can add even more things to my to do list. Now it’s time to drop off the ad. More about Open Studios as things progress.

Starting June 27th at Swarm Gallery
Mills MFA: Michael Hall + Ethan Worden
Project Space: Trisha Grover
June 27 - July 27, 2008

From the Swarm website:

“JUNCTION, a two-person exhibition featuring new works by Michael Hall and Ethan Worden, represents the creative paths and unrevealed futures of each emerging artist, coming together in the gallery setting. Each working with disparate themes, the two artists pull together polarized ideas within their work. Michael Hall’s oil paintings explore concepts of control and protection and the difficulties encountered in achieving a balance between the two. Ethan Worden plays with the associations we make with objects. He manipulates scale and configuration to jostle these connections and loosen the ties between the stories we assign to an object and the object itself.”

The Shooting Gallery
New Works by
Greg Gossel
Until July 11th, 2008

Jack Hanley Gallery
Alicia McCarthy
June 07 - 28 2008

Receiver Gallery
Matt Furie and Jay Howell
Return to Innocence
June 7th — July 25th

I seem to have gotten rid of whatever satanic being had invaded my digestive system, my head has stopped pounding, and things are looking up. I sold my laptop today, I got a job last week that starts on June 30th, and I got most of the pressing wedding stuff done. Tom had brought this up and I think it is true, once we get married, life is going to seem a lot easier. It’s not a lot of extra work, but it’s enough doing all the planning and prep for this. But I gotta say, we took on some extra big wedding projects. Tom is mixing an album that he has been writing and I am trying to get together a cookbook now that I’ve realized a full scale novel is too much to take on right now. And then there’s those other little projects like sewing my own dress and sewing all our guests presents. Yeah..

Anyway, like I said, calm waters. I’m beginning to see the light.

OK, life is grand but man, I need a break. I feel terrible. My tummy hates me right now. I went down to Half Moon Bay this morning and did wedding stuff like found a flourist and picked a beer and dropped off checks. Now I have 12 cds to wrap and ship, a laptop to show to a potential buyer, and a full page ad design that is due tomorrow even though I don’t have all the assetts yet. I feel pukey.

I went to a job interview today. The position seemed like a really good fit for me right now. So I hope they liked me. I felt like I needed to do some talking so I started babbling about school, why I went back, and what it was like being out of school. I ended up telling them that I felt like I was wearing a chicken suit that no one could see but me. Probably not the best thing to say in an interview. I’m sure they think I’m totally nuts now. I suppose its best to go into a new job having dispelled any assumptions of sanity or anything boring like that. Then they won’t get caught off guard or anything when they discover you like to strut around the office squacking like a flightless bird every once in a while. I hope they like chickens there. My potential new boss said: “From now on, I’m going to imagine you in a chicken suit”. I think the interview went well. Fingers crossed.

I took a little tour of coffee places in Santa Monica today. For second breakfast, Jason and I stopped by Caffe Luxxe for a couple of caps and some pastries. The foam on the cap was soft and luxurious. It was so nice to have a decent cup. I rarely get to anywhere good in SF for cappuccino. And having visited Rome, I’m sorta spoiled for the good stuff now. Once you go Roman, you never look back.

After Caffe Luxxe I dropped off Jason at the Google and headed over to the Funnel Mill where they take their beans very seriously. I told the woman behind the counter I needed to send my friend Bradley there. She said they haven’t been advertising because they don’t want to attract the wrong crowd. She proudly announced that they don’t use syrups. All the flavors in their store are natural, as they should be. They had some crazy bunson burner contraptions for making a scorch-free, perfectly percolated cup and if I had money in my account I might have even bought one. Just because they look so amazing.

Yesterday when I dropped Jason off at the Google, he invited me in to taste some coffee brewed on the world’s fanciest drip coffee maker which was invented by two Stanford grads. They had set out to invent the world’s best espresso maker but discovered the world has plenty of great espresso makers but is lacking in a truly great drop coffee maker. You pour fresh ground beans into a big, round hole, set how long you want your coffee to steep for, 50 seconds being the default, and set your amount. Jason picked a 10oz cup for me which in honestly was so much because the coffee is so ritch. After you push all your buttons, you hit go and the well fills with hot water, then after 50 seconds a little elevator rises up, pushing the coffee grounds above the water, then you get to squeegee the grounds into another big well where they go to heaven. The resulting coffee is rich, creamy and delicious.

We don’t much sleep around these parts with a 3 year old who is always riding the cat bus and a 3 month old who hasn’t figured out that mommie is nicer when she sleeps. So I really like coffee right now. Yum, coffee.