Sebastian Gives Zoe the Voice of a Nightingale

There is a story in The Golden Legend about Saint Sebastian miraculously giving a mute woman, Zoe, her voice back. I've thought about it, and decided to make Sebastian  recording the song of nightingales on a wax cylinder recording to give to Zoe.
I first learned about wax cylinder recording through They Might Be Giants' wax cylinder recording I Can Hear You from the album Factory Showroom.

Fabian

Fabian, work in progress. I was inspired by the story of St. Fabian, a bird landed on his head, and he was chosen to be pope. I was also thinking a lot of this picture of King Charles of Sweden, this mummified head with a hole in it.

My husband was walking by and said I was painting Music Jail . This picture is from the video "Music Jail Parts 1 and 2" by They Might Be Giants.

I guess it might be all these things!

They Might Be Giants. Day of the Dead. Jacobean Hand Embroidery

How our hand embroidered pillow looks now that I've got it all put together. It looks very much at home on our green velvety mid-century rocker next to my hand knit red lace shawl. It's a nice corner for reading, or just thinking things over.

They Might Be Giants Embroidery Project

The lettering is all freehand, so I wasn't quite sure how good it was going to look. I filled the red chain stitch outline in with yellow french knots. Lots of french knots. It looks all right.

They Might Be Giants! Free! Live! Album!

When I picked up Nanobots a few months ago, I was unprepared for the household mania for They Might Be Giants which I unleashed. I like to put a They Might Be Giants album on while I'm working. I like to NOT know the lyrics, so while it's roiling around in the background, every once in a while a phrase or lyric that I hadn't noticed before will float up like a bubble. I listened to Stone Cold Coup d' Etat probably a dozen times before I heard the Tennyson quote, so then it was like an extra present!

Now we have five They Might Be Giants albums, and my kids have taken them over. (But not the kid's albums, I offered to buy them, but they feel children's albums would be beneath them.) From the albums we have, they are busy making their own mixes. We only get about four radio stations, and three of them country music stations, which just makes me feel sad and embarrassed for humanity, mostly. I'm really really grateful, since we live in a cultural desert, that my kids have found music that they really like. That makes them curious and excites their imaginations. They are older children, seven and ten, so they get a great deal of the humor. They love wordplay. We have conversations about how the lyrics, being elliptical or oblique, seem to make the songs more expansive, and seem to suggest many different things all at once. My younger son demands that we play They Might Be Giants at dinner, and would sit with all the CDs stacked at his plate, so he can peruse them over his meal; but I won't let him because he will get food on them. He may be the only seven year old that knows what duende is, but can't put his shirt on frontwards.

If you, like me, have let a quarter century elapse before giving They Might Be Giants a try, you can rectify this at no charge. They Might Be Giants are giving away every song on their first album recorded live on tour in 2013, which is a really swell thing to do.

They Might Be Giants entire first album recorded live on the 2013 tour! - See more at: http://www.theymightbegiants.com/firstalbumlive/#sthash.xsbfMdug.dpuf

They Might Be Giants First Album Live

Above is my cover of the cover art on They Might Be Giant's first album, originally created by Rodney Alan Greenblat.  I've been working on it during lunch for the last few days. Acrylic on paper, 12" x 24". I will probably give it to my boys to put in their room when it's done. Below is one of my short people, reading me the songs on Album Raises New and Troubling Questions.

Museum for the Blind

Finished up Museum for the Blind. It's at My Good Babushka.

And just for fun, during my lunch break on two days, I made these two miniature portraits of John Flansburgh and John Linnell. We’ve all been on a They Might Be Giants kick for the last few months at this house. These are on bamboo tile. They are 1.5″ x 3/4″. I really like Victorian portrait miniatures, and I wanted to do portraits in that style, as small as I can.

John Singer Sargent said something to the effect that a portrait is a painting with something a little wrong with the mouth. I thought these were pretty fair likenesses, and when one crumples up the source image and puts it in the wastebasket, the likeness becomes even better!

I’m always looking for different materials to paint on. I tried plaster cameos, but they are too brittle. I found a package of bamboo tiles and they work pretty well if you sand them down. These have two holes drilled down through them vertically, so they can be wired and added to jewelry. I have varnished them and handed them over to my spouse. He’s the jewelry guy. I’m sure he’ll come up with something.

Museum for the Blind, Miniature Portrait of John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants

I started working on my painting. I especially like that bird on the left that looks like The Doubtful Guest by Edward Gorey. Then I got bored of all the birds, I made a sandwich, and did a miniature portrait of John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants on a sanded down bamboo tile. 1.5" x .75". It will have to be varnished and threaded with a a wire. I'll hand it over to mi esposo and he will be able to put it on a fetching chainmaille necklace. Now more birds.

Still Life with Coffee

Working on my Still Life with Coffee. I didn't know what to put on the paper for the newsprint. I was playing They Might Be Giants album, Nanobots, so I wrote out the lyrics as I heard them, then smudged them a bit to make them indistinct. I left "They Might Be Giants" intact in the corner, though. mmmm. Coffee and They Might Be Giants. If I had coffee right now, and was listening to They Might Be Giants, that would be pretty good.

You should get Nanobots, too, you'll like it.

And you should look at Still Life with Coffee at My Good Babushka.

Jacobean, Day of the Dead, TMBG Embroidery and Something New

 Work in progress here for my Jacobean, Day of the Dead, They Might Be Giants embroidery.
Also, I've started planning a new embroidery project I'll call the Abecedarian of Demise.
A is for Asphyxia.

Jacobean, Day of the Dead, They Might Be Giants Embroidery

I have done a whole bunch of Day of the Dead Embroideries. I wanted to do another one, a bigger one, that had a musical theme. I also wanted it to be more contemporary and less Mexican folk art. I've been listening to a lot of They Might Be Giants.  I just started listening to They Might Be Giants and I like them a lot. In fact, I was hoping I would get some new (to me) They Might Be Giants for Mother’s Day, but instead, my offspring decided to give me the flu. But I digress. Even as skeletons, I think they make fairly identifiable characters. I like that the pink bunny moon can serve as my signature, since my shop totem for My Good Babushka is the little babushka-wearing rabbit. I also love, love, love my little blue moth with skull wings.
Below are some of my other Day of the Dead hand embroidered pieces available at My Good Babushka.