Art-o-Mats

Does your city have an Art-o-mat? There are about 90 of them in the United States. Atlanta used to have one at a Whole Foods but it disappeared without notice. The only one I am likely to encounter now is the one at Sam Flax in Orlando Florida. Art-o-mats are retired cigarette machines; thats right, in case you didn't notice there are no vending machines for cigarettes anymore. When you insert 5 dollars in quarters you get to pull the knob and receive an original work of art wrapped in cellophane and about the size of a pack of cigs.

I love this for so many reasons. The recycling of the machines themselves for starters. These old mid- century designs are still very cool with their funky peg legs, chromey looking hardware and old school advertising designs. Check out this page of machines. I love the idea of looking in the windows, making a selection and pulling the knob and having something new to unwrap and examine. You cant really know what's inside, you gotta hope the packaging is a solid clue.

I've been thinking about submitting a design for Art-o-Mat, which would clearly be a labor of love and just for the sheer novelty of it. Of course, I would enjoy figuring out how to make something unique and desirable and designing equally as cool packaging for it.

You know who is an Art-o-Mat artist? Alicia Griswold, who does the judging of Haiku Monday when I host. Here is her piece:

Alicia's is pretty sophisticated with the plexi cover bolted on. Some are just little canvases with paintings, others are photography and there's a lot of collagey works. Some of them are awful and I would be very disappointed to have chosen wrong and end up with some of the weak work I've seen. But here are two that I really like:

Joane Lipinski

Wendy Krabbe

Here is a short news story on the Art-o-mat:

What do you think? Would you buy art from a vending machine? Have you ever seen an Art-o-mat? Should I do a photography piece or a little painting? (There are a lot of both already) Maybe the "Creaturas" I used to make as my guerilla art: those little fetishes that I would leave in the trees at the park or on a table at a cafe. Why did I do that?  Just so that whoever found it would have a little mystery for the day. Same thing with the Art-o-mat. It is not something you do for money. To make these fetishes  for an Art-o-mat, Id have to make a mold first for the skulls. Or else, it would be way too much time. But Ive got plenty of sticks, feathers and alpaca fur to git-r-done.

A bit labor intensive for this project

I don't know. But I'm pretty sure I am going to submit something to Art-o-mat this fall. Maybe a tiny accordion book. Maybe a tiny wooden folk art chicken. Maybe some cool gift tags or something to be used and not just kept. What would you pull a knob for?

The Kahlo Challenge

A few weeks ago, Troll sent me a heads up about a contest called the "Kahlo Challenge" sponsored by Bohemia beer. Wanna take a guess as to when I started this piece? Yep. This morning. I finished and just uploaded it to the Bohemia site with 5 hours to spare before deadline. Thats pretty good for me.

I really enjoyed making the piece and hope I win one of the prizes. No matter what though, it was good to follow through and take a shot at 10K (or 5K for second, 2K for third).

details:

Best. Treat. Ever.

V gave me an electric ice cream maker and boy have I given it a workout. I've made peach, vanilla, strawberry, cookies and cream and coffee ice cream. I've made frozen yogurt, various granitas and frozen drinks with it. But I hit upon the best frozen treat ever when I changed a recipe I thought was too heavy and I'd like to share it with you. Everybody that has tried this says it is the best ice-cream sandwich they have ever tasted - and because they are petite; about 3.5", they aren't too fattening.

You start with this classic custard recipe. (The recipes that require cooking are the best- without the custard base, the ice cream doesn't hold that creamy easily scooped out consistency after freezing)

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups whipping cream
• 2 cups half-and-half cream
• 2 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract

Cook the first five ingredients over medium heat stirring constantly. It needs to reach about 160˚ and then chilled in a bath of ice and water. The consistency should coat a spoon. Now add the vanilla, and put it in the fridge overnight or for a few hours.

I made ice cream with this recipe and thought it was too sweet and too heavy. So I took half of it and added an equal part of half and half. Next I added a few drops of coconut extract. With half the sugar and half the fat, the ice cream was still tasty and creamy but not too sweet and full of flavor. I tried to use coco loco coconut milk but it was WAY too oily and sweet. Extract works better.

Put the mixture into the ice cream maker and when it gets to where it has nice peaks and shapes you are ready to make ice cream sandwiches. Don't let it hard freeze or it won't spread right.

Get some Famous Chocolate Wafers. They are on the baking isle. 

Take one and get a spoonful of the ice cream and plop it in the center. Don't let it get too big because when you put the other cookie on top, you want to press lightly so the ice cream spreads out to the edges. As you make them, put them in the freezer on a plate uncovered. 

When building the sandwiches, if too much ice cream eeeks out of the side just take a spoon and run it around the edges and it looks really tidy. 

When they are nice and solid - like 10 minutes - individually wrap each sandwich in either parchment paper affixed with a sticker or wrap them in plastic bags. If you leave them on a plate, the cookie will stick. You know how the cake part of an ice cream sandwich gets kind of soft? Well, being with the ice cream makes these cookies soft so they need to be packaged. 

That little hint of coconut gives it a tropical vibe and enhances the chocolate. It's just a pretty and easy treat that has impressed everyone that has tried it.

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Haiku Monday players may recall that Moi won the chicken haiku challenge. The prize was a custom made folk art piece based on the winning haiku. I finally did the painting. Here is the winning haiku again:

Faithful feathered friend—

chopped, plucked, garlic-stuffed. Sunday's

sacrificial lamb.

I chose to focus on Moi's observation of chicken as the defacto sunday dinner. And I was thinking about all the ways she indicated it could be, er, processed. Then I started thinking about the charts that show cuts of meat and thought about the ways a chicken was used. So I ended up with a kind of silly butcher's chart for a chicken. Moi - I hope you like it. Its not pretty, but I hope its at least funny. If you don't like it, you can always use it as firewood. Oh and congratulations on yet another haiku win.

Field Trip: Chattahoochee Fish Hatchery

I spent most of my day in the Chattahoochee National Forest yesterday. With the temperatures in the 90's it was a cool respite under shady greens with flickering sunlight dancing through the leaves. I took the forest road out to the fish hatchery and was blown away by the scope of the project. They are hatching our native Brook Trout, Brown Trout (a European native) and Rainbow Trout from out west. There were about 24 long pools of fish and a building with smaller pools for the tiny rainbows. Outside of the hatchery, you could find fish in the Toccoa river very easily, and of course, there were plenty of fishers  there just pulling them out of the water constantly.

This hatchery is slated to be closed after 2012. The reason? The budget. The financial sector of this country has bankrupted the nation and while a tiny percent has made a fortune on top of their already obscene fortune through fraud and corruption, their debts must be paid. And so we lose the hatchery.

Driving back to Chickory through the Skeenah gap area I was on the verge of weeping at the beauty of the valleys, still green though we've had little rain. Fields had been cut and the hay was rolled dotting the landscape with their familiar cylindrical shape. The mountains, gentle and ancient, were very blue and the clouds bright and rising high until finally releasing the much needed water in the afternoon along with dime-sized hail. It was the first real rain I've seen in two weeks and it was the perfect endnote to a perfect day.

I can't believe I live here. Whatever I was doing before, I only thought I was living. Now I know what it is to be really alive and connected to the source of life. It is a privilege to live in a landscape that is still relatively wild and so breathtakingly beautiful. But it is fragile, just like the tiny fish, so it must never be taken for granted. Being present and awake in each moment is a discipline that must be cultivated and nurtured, so that I am worthy of this life.

Grass