Ocean Holiday

Allyson and I have been enjoying the warm weather in Va Beach and Nags Head with family. It has been crazy with weather in the 60s and 70s. Spending time getting some R&R after a tough semester. 2 weeks left of this break and we are going to enjoy these days off. Happy New Year to all!

yo carrots yo break!

Its winter break! We are done grading and are happy to be off. Now what? Well we picked the last carrots from our garden, I went to the dentist and had my first ever cavities filled, and I really like watching Dr. Who.

Heres a pic of our carrots (check out the two-legged one!), the cat trying to kill me and a new drawing from a show I am in in Berlin.

Time to hibernate for a while!

xo,
Allyson

Thankful for...

Hello All. Its Thanksgiving day. Tonight we go to bed in Charlottesville, but we woke up in Virginia Beach! Our thanksgiving day consisted of waking up, going on a little walk, petting kittens, going to the beach, Jeremy surfing, Allyson taking pictures with a mini camera (think keychain), going home, eating cheese and crackers, feeding all the cats we were house-sitting for at Mom's, going back to the beach, driving Home home, and then at 8:30pm watching Jeremy whip up Thanksgiving dinner in 20 minutes. I am not kidding. You can tell that he had some years in as a short order cook. And it was not a slouchy TDay dinner either... Here's our menu: Baked Rockfish with ginger, cooked Cauliflower (from our garden!), japanese sweet potato, homemade stuffing (he made stuffing in 10 minutes), hot spiced apple cider, and I made apple crisp while he was doing that. Seriously the man is a cooking machine. I couldn't believe it. He also unloaded the dishwasher while he was doing all of this. If I wasn't already married to him I would totally marry him.

What else... well this week we welcomed some time off. Next week is the last week of classes so it was a good chance to regroup before the craziness. Of course, we didn't totally relax until a few days in. We had a shipping deadline for Cinders who is taking work of ours to Art Aqua in Miami. So I was away from home and trying to finish art and get it shipped while also trying to vacation. Jeremy was also making work with me, which is nothing new except for the fact that he had a huge wound on his head! Earlier that day while surfing, his board came back and clocked him in the eye. He came out of the water and like a trooper got some ice and just kept on doing stuff. I was worried, I thought I might have to cut him like Rocky. Whew. We also went to Nag's Head for a couple days this week. That was nice, but VA Beach was nicer! It was just so warm everywhere, its hard to believe that we live in the same state, its at least 20 degrees colder in Cville & Hburg.

Surfing was good this week. Jeremy got to surf 3 days in a row at VA Beach. Winter is the best time for bigger waves here and he had some nice bigger waves and some sweet knee-high peelers. It was so clear and blue and nice. I got in on the first day and dorked around in my wetsuit. It feels like such a luxury to be able to get into the water when its cold. I had fun. We saw dolphins...the usual ocean magic stuff. I didn't get in the other two days because I have a wounded knee and getting into my wetsuit was hard! Its so pathetic. We were on a dune in Nags Head looking at the ocean and I was crouched down searching for shells. I leaned over the wrong way on the dune and my knee made three distinct popping noises, then I cussed a whole lot. This is probably not good...

Anyhow. here is a list of things we are thankful for this Thanksgiving 2008:
eachother, our home, our garden, our cat, our families, our friends, the ocean, our jobs & health insurance,and some other things I can't think of off of the top of my head right now.

Hope everyone is safe, warm, and full of good food!

xo,

Allyson

HALLOWEEN BOO O O O J!

Hey it is Halloween and I have to say this was a pretty good evening. Usually Halloween is kind of weird at times. Like you are having fun and something alway fucked up happens. Anyhow Allyson and I dressed up like lion tamers to hand out candy. This served a dual purpose: to keep the cat from escaping when the door opens and shuts and the whip/cat toy to entertain her and to have a half-assed costume for Halloween. I made this make shift Jack-o-lantern out of a vase that I drew on with a sharpie and stuck a flash light underneath. This was slightly lame, but served us to allow the trick or treaters to know we are home. Once we were pretty much out of candy we (Me, Allyson, and TD) went next door to our neighbor's house where they were having a neighborhood party. It was crazy! Our neighbor, Pat goes all out on Halloween with amazing creepy moving statues, food that looks like body parts, and a small graveyard in the front yard. They are so cool. I feel like a lot of their friends thought we were weird... but our neighbors were totally sweet to us as usual. (It may have been Allyson's fake moustache!) After that we went to Chipotle. Anyone wearing a costume (or part of a costume) made out of tin foil got a free burrito. So people were passing out their extra bits and handing them out to people in line once they got their food. We were able to get our veggie burritos for Free! I made a beret, Allyson made another moustache propped up with a straw, and TD had a tiara. We also met a really nice lady in line. We gave her some of our tin foil so everyone ate for free! Once we were done eating Allyson gave TD a haircut and put in her one last bid to get him to go & early vote! Pretty nice Halloween. Especially compared to other years, like when we were in graduate school in Chapel Hill and we were getting ready for an art show so we couldn't go out like everyone else. While we were driving from the art building to the art lab (about one mile) somebody bombarded our car with a paintball gun and scared the living shit out of us, almost causing us to crash our car. Yeah... this was better.

Other than our eventful Friday, this is our first real weekend off together in a while and it is a welcome change from our busy month of October. Our garden is slowly closing down and we are in the composting and harvesting mode. We turned our beans and tomato greens into the soil, ripped out the dead squash plants and planted a few low-maintenance winter plants. It is getting too cold to spend a lot of time out there and its getting REALLY cold at night so only certain tough plants can survive. We currently have radishes, carrots, cabbage, beet sprouts, spinach, chard, cauliflower, lettuce, and brussel sprouts going. But this is the time of year where you have to throw your hands up and just say, "whatever grows, grows". Everything slows down- but many of those plants like cold weather so we will just have to see what we get. We have turned our attention indoors to organizing the house, growing a few things inside as an experiment, and most importantly paying attention to each other. That garden was a harsh mistress! I am posting some pictures of our first radishes and carrot. They are not quite ready but one of the Taylor's is impatient (Can you guess who she is?)

Anyhow... Happy Halloween! And don't forget to vote!!! (for Obama)

New Prints!

Hey everybody! Jeremy has just finished two awesome new prints. (He has a third on the way!) The first one, "Pnoom" is silkscreen with a hand-stained background (Japanese Seaweed) and the second piece"Brujeria" is all silkscreen. If you want one of your very own, these pieces can be found at Cinders in Brooklyn and Thanky in Richmond. I love them! Hope everybody is doing well.
xo,
Allyson

Grow Local

Hi all. It is the middle of October, Midterms are over, the show in NY is up. I had the flu really badly most of the time I was in NYC, so I don't exactly remember the whole trip. I am proud of the show but glad that it us up and done. And now I am starting to feel some relief from stress!

One major source of stress relief has been our garden. I am posting some updated pics and you can see that things have grown a lot! We currently have a lot of things growing in our garden: radishes, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, green beans, chives, beets, broccoli, carrots, squash, potatoes, and Swiss chard. (there is still the occasional tomato...but the first frost we expect this weekend will put a stop to that.) This garden has been a surprise hit. when we first planted it we were not sure if it would work out okay... the soil is hard and predominately clay and we had a hot drought followed by flooding rain... not exactly friendly conditions for seedlings... but it turned itself around and we have been having fun eating and sharing our food.

I have found in the last few years that gardening is one of the things that makes me the most happy in this world. There is something so great about going out the garden with Jeremy (and sometimes Fricky) and planting, or tending to the growing plants, or harvesting (the most fun part). I am so happy that all of this art show/midterm craziness is over with for the fall. I have been neglecting some important things in a blind effort to get work done. Things like: my health, my husband, my cat, exercising, sleeping well... It is time to harvest the garden and get some priorities straight. It is safe to say that I will be taking a much needed studio break and seeking out some fun and relaxation.

hope everyone is enjoying fall and hugging someone near.

xo,
Allyson

Do Little

Hey All,

My new show at Cinders opens on October 10th. It is called "Do Little". I am uploading the postcard images and will post some in-progress studio images and the press release as soon as I can. If you are in NYC come by and say hello. The show runs until November 9th.

Got one!

Well, we finally caught a ground hog... not sure if this little buddy was the destroyer or not but he sure was cute! We relocated him to a woodland wonderland that is not our yard and he immediately started digging a new hole. Jeremy fed him apples and pears and he just ate and ate. It is impossible to stay mad at these dudes. I am not sure we will try to catch one again, it was sort of traumatic. The groundhog was fine, but while he was in the cage he was so upset and it felt really bad to be responsible for his misery... it was very temporary though.

Update!!!

Well, first things first. It is booger season. As a first hand victim of this tragic seasonal epidemic I will tell you that our students all have colds and flus and what evers and they are contagious. So wash your hands and keep your boogers to yourself. I know I am. :)

And now for an update on Mr. Groundhog: We seem to have deterred him from eating all of our stuff for now. The last victim was the green beans. I was furious. He mowed off the top 8 inches of foliage from each plant. Luckily he didn't seem interested in the actual beans themselves! So after that, Jeremy and I got a floppy fence (they supposedly will not climb anything unstable... not big risk-takers apparently.) and we put out a nasty mixture of cloves,cayenne, cinnamon, and mint castile soap to make him unhappy with our smell. We also put out a jar of pee and a bunch of hair from Jeremy's newest haircut. Our veggies are just starting to come out and our neighbors told us horror stories about their squash being eaten down to nubs... so we are trying anything we can to keep him away. So far so good. (I am getting bruises on my knuckles from knocking on wood...) We are going to have green beans and baby squash from the garden for dinner tonight!

We also went to sugar hollow and made drawings on rocks with charcoal that we found from a fire!

Last but certainly not least, we have a new family member to tell you about. This weekend we adopted a kitten from Jeremy's Mom. His name is Edwin Batman Taylor. He is the best. Since we started going back to work, Fricky has been really lonely so I am glad she will have a friend! He has to get neutered (ouch!) and will come home October 17th. We are super excited!

Oh and after tending all 4 vines, we managed to have one surviving watermelon! Cantaloupe were much, much easier to grow.

Allyson

GARDEN FALL 08

Oh Boy this garden is like a wicked stepsister, but she is pulling through, and we can still bro down as long as the groundhogs stay away and the rain stops for little while. I never thought I would say this after the summer months of drought, but I guess Fall is really here. So today our lovely garden was getting chomped on by our local ground hog who lives under our neighbors shed. We did not see him but saw the evidence. We found three of our healthy cauliflower plants gnawed almost to the stump. So we decided to grab some of our landlords old tomato cages which have pretty small holes around all of the cabbage and cauliflower (and thought this would deter the furry dudes). we thought the squash leaves would be spikey and less appetizing. Anyhow I come out later in the afternoon to bust this gigantic ground hog gnawing on the same cauliflower plants INSIDE of the tomato cage. I was amazed he could fit through the small holes, but low an behold they can. So I yelled "you get out of my garden" ...and then the groundhog scurried away, but he was trapped in this cage...so he knocked it over and did a hamster wheel maneuver and then ran out of the cage. It was hilarious and sad. This garden has had a lot of problems from things like stray cats shitting in the garden to aphids eating our tomatoes... not to mention the drought in mid summer that killed a batch of seedings and the fall rain which is finally blighting our late tomatoes. With the cold weather we will be lucky if these half dead tomato plants ,that have lots of tomatoes, will have the opportunity to ripen. We are also getting accustomed to the mountainous clay soil that dries out fast when dry and stays really wet when wet. No in between. We are also combating dead soil in our landlords garden space. This space is probably imbued with all types of weird chemicals (from years past) to resist pests and weeds. So trying to grow without chemicals and to reverse the environment is tough. On a lighter note we found some of our supposed "dead seedlings" finally came up and we have some late blooming carrots that are showing up and are growing in between our almost matured squash. We are hoping they can grow in harmony...hopefully there will be no survival of the fittest and we will harvest the carrots and squash together in peace.

PS. We harvested some green beans, a tomato, and some chives. They became part of a rulin' soup we had for dinner.

Ol Blue Eye

Studio Sale & Installation

Here are some photos from our recent studio sale at The Bridge. It was a super fun time and we are so grateful for our friends in the Charlottesville community for coming out! We also had a special guest stray dog show up who will be up for adoption at the Charlottesville SPCA starting next Wednesday! He has one blue eye! Thanks everybody and happy fall.

xo,

A&J

Harvest Time Already

School starts on the 25th and my new job orientation starts this week. I guess summer is over?! Not really... considering how much we go to the beach on weekends in September so Jeremy can throw himself into some hurricane waves and enjoy the off-season goodness. That being said, yesterday we saw some leaves turning, TURNING! in Charlottesville. Bummer. I started to freak out, it was only 70 yesterday, the leaves are turning, I swear I could smell fall. Don't get me wrong, I love fall. Even in Wisconsin fall was probably my favorite season. But we are in Virginia! Its still August. Anyhow, it IS the wonderful time of the late summer where our garden in VA Beach is very productive and I am posting some pictures of the literal 'fruits' of our labor (yes, i am a dork). So now, all two of you who may read this, go out and enjoy the summer while it is still rocking.
xo,Allyson