With Live Journal being down due to a server move and Twitter being testy, I thought I’d write here instead.

A few moments ago, I put up a new page called “Art For Sale” (original, I know), where I’ll be listing pieces that are available for purchase. Currently there are three pieces up on there: “Untitled Fuck Up“, “Emo” and “<3“, the latter two being commissions gone very very wrong.

See, my Live Journal “friend”, Stephanie, commissioned me to do both “Emo” and “<3″ and then gave me excuses regularly for 5 weeks after I completed them, ranging from computer problems (yet she was able to make long posts and manage 50+ comments on those posts from her SideKick…hmmm…), to work problems, to PayPal problems, and then, after saying she was going to Western Union me the funds from Wal*Mart “in about an hour”, (twice!) she disappeared off the face of the earth and I haven’t heard from her in a week. We’ve tried e-mailing her, calling her and sending text messages but they’ve all gone unanswered and I’m sick and tired of chasing down a “friend” for payment, so fuck her, they’re now available for anyone who wants them.

The big rub of this situation and why I keep putting “friend” in quotes, is that she knew I was counting on this sale to outfit myself for Touched By Fire and for Steph the Geek’s wedding, two very important, stressful events, yet she dicked me around left, right and center anyway. Then disappeared without a word.

I’m sure I’ll get some “understandable” excuse when she eventually resurfaces, but for right now, I’m pretty pissed off. We went into debt, which we simply couldn’t afford to do, especially so close to Christmas, because she never paid me and I’m sorry, but that pisses me off. That’s not the actions of a “friend”, you don’t pull this shit for almost 6 weeks.

The second she commissioned the paintings, I started working on them and didn’t stop until they were finished. I held up my end of the deal and she just…didn’t. She worse than didn’t, she made me stress and fret and freak out and that’s just not cool.

So, if you would like to purchase what she didn’t, feel free to check out the “Art For Sale” page and let me know! I could definitely use the cash!

These days I’m not doing a whole lot. Gail Cutler, who I met at Touched By Fire and wrote about a few days ago, did end up e-mailing me and commissioning me to recreated “Dream” in honour of her daughter Rebecca, so I’ve been working on that during the last few days.

(”Rebecca’s Dream” in progress. 12 x 12 mixed media on canvas)

Speaking of Touched By Fire, I don’t think I sold “Mania in the Key of Psychosis“, or at least when friends went to see it in person on Saturday, they told me it didn’t have a red “sold” sticker, so I’m assuming I didn’t, so expect that to show up on the “Art For Sale” page eventually as well.

And with that, I think I’m off too find food before I get back to working on “Rebecca’s Dream”. Hope you’re all having a wonderful day!

I met this very nice girl named Lorette last night and she wrote about the event on her blog. Check it out, there’s pictures!

Us crazies gotta stick together. ;o)

I am exhausted and already the high from last night is being replaced with a low due to the grey sky and the fact that I’m carrying around all this extra weight from the hell that is psychiatric medications. My lack of sleep hasn’t helped matters either. :o/

So when we got to Touched By Fire, I was met with a throng of people telling me how much they loved my work and that I already had some “fans” waiting to meet me. These “fans” turned out to be Gail and Norm Cutler of Chicago, who were very disappointed that “Dream” was already sold because they felt a special connection to it.

It’s kind of a long story, but here goes:

Touched By Fire began in memory of a girl named Rebecca Burghardt, who was an artist with bipolar disorder and who ultimately took her own life. The show is put on by Rebecca’s father, The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario and a financial company called Raymond James. Well, as it turns out, Gail and Norm Cutler also had a daughter named Rebecca, who also had bipolar disorder, who was also an artist and who also took her own life to end her suffering. They hold a show much like Touched By Fire in Chicago every year, called Rebecca’s Dream and the two families found each other via the internet. The Toronto Rebecca’s father was a guest at the Chicago event last week, and the Cutlers came to Touched By Fire last night.

Gail Cutler saw my “Dream” painting and was reminded of her daughter, even moreso when she read the description of the pieces, that they (Hope and Dream) were the first pieces I’d created after having my psychotic break. I felt bad that I couldn’t sell them to her because she was obviously still so pained by her daughter’s loss, but I did offer to do a commission for them and gave her my card. After reading about their Rebecca on their website, I think I may start on creating a painting called “Rebecca’s Dream”, just because I could relate to her story and feel fortunate in that, that so could have been my story so many times.

Gail spent a good 5 minutes encouraging me to keep creating, that she felt art was my path and that I should never give up no matter what. That made me feel good.

Over the course of the night, we ate hors d’oeuvres, one of which were these BITCHIN’ roast beef/asparagus wraps that I would have eaten a whole trayful of myself. They were cold, but cooked mini spears of asparagus, wrapped with amazing sliced roast beef and skewered, with some kind of steak sauce drizzled on top. OMG I can’t stop thinking about them. There were also california rolls (yuck) and chicken satay skewers (also yuck), as well as cheese, crackers, guacamole (yuck) and these neat kettle chip-like things to dip into it. There were a few other things too, but I didn’t know what they were so I didn’t have any. It was also an open bar, which normally I’d be all about, but I had enough Ativan in me to fell a horse, so I stuck to Pepsi.

So many people kept coming up to me and saying how much they liked “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”, one lady was from an art gallery, the name of which I forget now. Most of the people saying they liked that piece were the 20-ish year old girls handing out the food and all of these cute little punk rock girls with spiky shaved hair-dos.

Near the end of the night, this man came up to me and introduced himself as Bob and he wanted to know all about me, my illness, how I’m feeling now and everything there was to know about “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”. We were in the middle of the room talking and I was trying to explain things about the painting by pointing and he asked, “would you go over there and show me?” so we went over there and I explained the whole thing to him. And the weird thing was that he was hanging on my every word and genuinely interested in where my mind was when I created it, I’ve never had a conversation like that before in my life and I doubt I will again.

He said that he would love to buy it, but as is the problem with something so big and pink and full of tampons, he wouldn’t know where to hang it. He said he was thinking about buying it for his 16 year old daughter, but we agreed that it would probably be a weird piece for a father to give a daughter.

Then he said, “Could I just give you a donation?” and he pulled out his money clip. “If I just gave you,” flipping through his bills, “$100 just for painting this and to help you continue to paint, would you accept it?”

I was stunned and didn’t really know what to say or what the protocol was, so I just said yes and gave him a hug and boom, I was $100 richer. It was pretty surreal and I’m still dumbfounded by the conversation and donation and just the whole event, really.

The other art at the show was interesting. There were definitely pieces I liked and some I didn’t so much. I’d link you to the pieces I really liked, but they won’t be on the website until after the show. The lady whose piece won was really neat, I think it was painted on muslin over a canvas and there was another one that won gallery space downtown that I absolutely loved called “No End in Sight” by Diana Portokalidis that I wish I could show you all. Another I really loved was a tryptich (sp?) called “Obsessive Compulsive” by Kimberly H. Denny that you really had to see in person for the full effect. It was really powerful stuff and I hope some of you can actually make it to the show to see them.

Another artist whose work was there was Joey DAMMIT! who, from what I can gather, is sort of a Toronto art celebrity. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to him because he was always surrounded by people, but I really liked his work, it was sort of collage meets Andy Warhol and…I just liked it.

There was an awkward moment when we were coming back into the hotel from having a smoke (I know, I know) where this girl, who was wearing an artist nametag that I couldn’t read under her coat, told me that she meant to find me to say that she loved “Mania”. I didn’t really know what to say to her and I kinda flaked out, so if that was you I’m SO sorry, it was an overwhelming night for an agoraphobe like me.

Finally, the night began to wind down and I started hitting my “people threshold” and Blake & I decided to go home.

During the course of the night, I talked to about 20 different people and handed out a good 30 business cards. One woman came up to me near the end of the night and suggested that I sell my paintings with the sparkles at some of the fancy boutiques for children at The Beaches in Toronto, which is actually something I think I’m going to look into because it would be a good venue for some of my stuff.

So, all in all, it was a good night and I can’t wait to maybe do it again next year!

Oh also, there were 380 entries for the show but only 42 artists got in. o_O I had no idea…

This week I finished a new piece, trying to use art as therapy for quitting smoking (again).

This one’s called “Death to Smoking” and is going to hang on my studio wall to remind me of how idiotic and dangerous smoking really is so hopefully I’ll think twice about doing it again.

As far as actually quitting smoking (again)…it’s been up and down. I can seem to go 3 days without smoking and be mostly okay, but it’s that third day that kills me. I think if I can get over that hump, I’ll be fine, but so far I haven’t been able to. :o/ I read Allen Carr’s book again and I know how stupid I’m being and yesterday when we were at Wal*Mart I saw two women smoking and realized just how trashy people look when they’re doing it, so I’m aware of all this, it’s just beating the nicotine-craving monster inside me I’m having a hard time dealing with.

I know I’ll get there, I did it before, things just kinda suck right now. I know I just have to keep at it and keep BUSY, and hopefully the next few days will be distracting enough to help me get through 3 days without breaking down.

Thursday is the Touched By Fire art show and Saturday is Steph the Geek’s wedding, so hopefully those will be good distractions rather than stressful events that’ll have me wanting to smoke more. *fingers crossed*

And with that, I’m off to bed so I can start tomorrow nicotne-free.

If you’ve been following my Live Journal lately, you’ll know that I fucked up the following painting when it came time to varnish it. I was using Krylon’s new “triple thick” product, which I believe to be oil-based, and it bled into the girl’s apron, causing it to look dirty. Then, just to piss me off, the spray ran out on my second coat and I was forced to buy a can of no-name brand polyurethane gloss varnish from the local hardware store for a ridiculous price.

The finish is beautiful and glass-like, but her apron still has that damn stain that will stay there forever. Because of this, I can no longer sell the painting for the $250 I had planned. In fact, now I don’t really know what to do with it. If I leave it hanging on my studio wall it’s just going to piss me off and truthfully, I kind of need the money from the sale.

So here’s pictures of the painting I just took. Truthfully, I think it looks really awesome, and it looks even better in person. People tell me the “stain” just adds to the dementia of the piece and if you think that too, feel free to make me an offer over $60 ($40 materials + $20 shipping) and whoever makes the best offer by, let’s say…Monday, November 17th, gets the painting. (Originally I was going to put it up on eBay, but honestly, I hate eBay, it’s too confusing for me.)

…Or it can just stay on my wall forever and piss me off, that’s okay too, I guess.

The trees are textured using this stuff by DecoArt called “texturizing medium”, which is basically gel medium with sand in it.

Apologies for the glare, as I said, I used super glossy varnish.

Each and every blade of grass was hand-painted by yours truly.

The fire is accented with gold glitter and looks really amazing under the glossy finish.

The piece is untitled and is 18 x 24 on canvas, mixed media but mostly acrylic paint and assorted acrylic mediums. So, if you’re interested, make me an offer over $60(US) at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com and the highest “bidder” gets it.

Oh! And I actually remembered to sign it before I varnished it! Hooray for small miracles. ;o)

*sigh* There is so much to say and I don’t even know where to start. So let’s start by jumping on the Obama bandwagon…

Is anyone else completely glued to CNN? (Or your 24 hour news channel of choice.) The US election has me totally captivated and not that it matters because I’m Canadian and don’t get a vote, I will say that I’m an Obama supporter and I it kills me some of the stuff people are choosing to believe about the man. He’s a socialist? No. Canada’s a fairly socialist country and I don’t see anything in his plans that are even close to what we have here. A Muslim? Well, he’s not, but so what if he was? The last I checked, you folks down south had that whole “freedom of religion” thing going for you, so why should that even matter? There’s nothing that says the President of the United States has to be a Christian. I wonder what people would say if he were Jewish? He’s a Marxist? Honestly, I’m not even really sure what that is and I’m betting the majority of Americans don’t know either. Regardless, from what I’ve been told by people smarter than me, he’s not.

Something interesting happened when I went to vote in Canada’s big election last month and I was kind of shocked by it. When Blake and I were standing in line for me to take my turn at the “voting cardboard” (voting machines? pffffft. We vote with a pencil and a paper ballot behind a piece of cardboard akin to what one would use for a science fair project!) there was this guy in front of us who was probably voting for the first time. I’d peg him at between 18 and 20. He overheard Blake tell one of the ladies at the polling station that he was American and thus, not voting and then he overheard me pointing out another lady who was counting a pad of unmarked ballots, showing him how ours are really simple (make “X” here, with 3 or 4 choices), compared to Blake’s crazy-assed absentee ballot for the American general election.

The kid in front of us thought this was funny and he said something like, “For you Americans it should be easier, all you have to choose from is an old guy and a black guy,” but the way he said “old” and “black”, it was like both of those things were negatives.

Now this was a month ago and it’s still stuck in my mind. I was floored by the fact that someone so young would have that kind of attitude, but then again, I probably shouldn’t be surprised living in a Conservative riding, in a town of farmers with a population of 1700. Still, it kinda broke my heart a little to hear this Canadian kid spew such an “ist” view. Until that moment, I just kind of assumed that Canadians, being as liberal as we generally are, were all, well, more open-minded and good natured than that.

Seeing that, or rather hearing it, made me imagine just how bad the attitudes must be in certain places in the US right now.

People may disagree with me on my choice of candidate - or rather Blake’s, since he’s the one who voted for him- and that’s fine, but I truly wish good things for the American people, I love them, and I really believe that Barack Obama is going to provide the US with all the good things they deserve. I’m actually a little bit jealous that we don’t have such charismatic, progressive politicians with good ideas for real change in my own country. I believe that Obama’s going to do good by my friends to the south and I’m going to be genuinely happy for our neighours should he win the presidency.

Y’all have had a really rough 8 years under President Bush and I have hope that Barack Obama will be able to relieve some of the stresses that’s put upon your country. More than that, I think he’s going to progress the US in a good direction, an innovative direction, that will repair the country’s reputation globally and make the US a country to emulate.

Like I said, I’m jealous. I wish our leaders in Ottawa would drink Obama’s Kool-Aid.

I’m probably not the only one, but I keep having nightmares about Barack Obama being assassinated at one of his outdoor rallies or during his presidential acceptable speech. Every time I see him on TV, especially when he’s outside, I’m always looking behind him for the guy who’s got the gun or I’m expecting “pink mist” at any moment. Morbid, I know, but you have to admit that it’s a possibility.

Aaaaaaaaaaand that’s enough about politics that don’t even really affect me.

This afternoon I got my acceptance package from Touched By Fire and I had a slight freak out because “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” (pictured left) needs to be made hangable and with it being so big and heavy, I wasn’t sure that was possible. Blake assured me that it was, however, and brought home a hanging kit made specifically for large, heavy pieces.

The other thing making me freak out is that they want me to mail my art to them, at my expense, and I have NO fucking money whatsoever. I have $200 coming in from a commission, but I need that to buy something to WEAR to the event, which is going to end up doing double-duty by being my outfit for Steph the Geek’s wedding a couple of days later. My lowest estimate to ship “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” is at least $70, plus the cost to ship “Hope” and “Dream” as well would be another $20 - and those two are sold, so I wouldn’t even recoup my shipping costs by selling them. Luckily Blake has offered to drive them down to the office of The Mood Disorders Association in Toronto for me next week, because we figure a tank of gas and half a day’s driving will cost less than shipping everything.

In my Touched By Fire acceptance package, there was an invitation to a pre-event gathering the night of the gala event, that starts at 6:30pm and then the show opens (by invitation only) at 7:30pm-11pm. When I read the invitations to these two things, I immediately had to take an Ativan. I am terrified of this thing. I looked at the slide show from last year’s event and there were all of these strange people there, most were middle-aged (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and they were all eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping win or champaigne and the whole thing just didn’t look like my scene AT ALL. Not that I really HAVE a scene, but if I did, it wouldn’t be that.

And then there’s the fact that it’s a juried show and I’m terrified of winning. Well, that’s not completely true, I think it would be cool to win, but the idea of all these people looking at me and like, maybe having my picture taken for the newspaper, that shit’s totally scary to me and if anything makes me not go, that’ll be it.

Oddly enough, I did my tarot tonight and for “Hopes and Fears” I got the Six of Wands, which says: “The Six of Wands augurs public acclaim or acknowledgment of some kind. This might take the form of a promotion, a qualification, or the recognition of some piece of creative work.

How fucking fitting, huh?

The other thing in the package that made me sweat a little bit is that they want you to write a blurb on each piece. The instructions say: “Touched By Fire is a testament to the creativity, passion and resilience of artists with mood disorders. What can you tell us about this art and hot it was influenced or impacted by your experience with a mood disorder? This statement will accompany your work on display.” EEEEEEEK! I am the WORDIEST motherfucker in the whole entire world, I don’t know if I can write a simple blurb on any of them, let alone “Mania in the Key of Psychosis”. This is my project for the weekend though, I have to get it done before Blake drops the pieces off at their offices.

For anyone in the Toronto area wondering if they can go to the show and see my paintings in person, it’s open to the public Friday, November 14th and Saturday, November 15th, I’m assuming all day. It’s at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto at 1214 Queen Street West.

As for an outfit to go to the event (and also Steph’s wedding), Blake and I are going to hit the Goodwill and Salvation Army to see if we can’t find some discarded babydoll dresses from the 90’s, to create something like they have on the Free People website, an amazing online shop full of ridiculously expensive clothes that I’d kill to actually own. Hopefully we can find something that’ll work.

In other news…on Saturday we welcomed a new pet to our family! His name is Lucky, he’s a 2-year-old husky/golden retriever mix and I already love him so very much.

After some initial uncontrollable humping due to the hormones from his neutering, he and Hoover Dog are getting along great. Unfortunately this is not the case with Pixel Cat who has been missing for the past 48 hours. :o( Blake took her to the vet on Wednesday for her yearly vaccinations and when he tried to get her out of the car when they got home, she bolted and we’ve seen very little of her ever since. Once last night, at around 11pm, we saw her under the carport and then tonight around the same time, we heard her scamper across the roof, so we know she’s a live and well, she’s just boycotting our house likely because we had the audacity to bring another dog into the family and took her to the vet for needles all in the same week. She’s very unhappy with us. We figure she’ll have to come in eventually. It’s getting very cold outside and she’s gotta eat sometime.

Lucky is going to be my “emotional support animal” as I undergo immersion therapy for my agoraphobia. he’s going to need a little bit of training before I can go out with him, but we’ll get there. He walks well on a leash, likes to stick close to you and is good in the car, which were the qualities we were looking for. He’s happy, he’s healthy, he’s a total sweetheart and I can’t even imagine what kind of idiots would just give him away. His surrender papers were a fucking joke, he was surrendered due to “destructive behaviour” from separation anxiety, but we can’t even get him to play with a chew toy or eat a dog biscuit and the most he’s done is barked when left alone, so I think they just didn’t want to look after him anymore. They also claimed he was a rescue, which is bullshit. No rescue in the world would adopt out a 2-year-old INTACT dog.

Well, it’s getting late and I have to get to bed soon. I’m going to go outside and call the cat for a bit, maybe she’ll come inside for the night, and then I’m going to bed. I had so much more to say but I’m exhausted and on a ridiculous amount of drugs (due to endometriosis) at the moment and I’m afraid that if I kept writing, I would stop making sense.

Something I *did* want to mention however, is that a friend of mine has set up an RSS feed for this site on Live Journal, so that every time I write a blog post here, it automatically shows up on your friends list over there. If interested, here’s the link. I do ask, however, that if you’re going to comment on anything I’ve written, you do so here and not on the syndication feed, because I’m not reading comments on that and won’t see them!

Also, if you’d like to follow me on regular old Live Journal, which gets updated much more often than this site, you can do so here.

And finally, all day I’m a Twittering fool, so if you’re interested in the minutiae of my day, you can follow me there too! I’m everywhere, baby!

And with that, I’m going to bed.

PS. I dyed my hair tonight and it turned out brassy. :o(

PPS. I’ve been playing a lot of Spore lately. If you want to add me to your buddy list, you can do so by searching for “Sunnybananas”!

Fall is not a good time of year for me and it appears the annual melancholy has begun to set in earlier this time around. My brain doesn’t work, I can’t think properly, I’m frustrated, upset and agitated most of the time, feeling useless and depressed.

It doesn’t help that, yet again, we were turned down for debt reduction from those who hold my student loans, despite the fact that I have a well documented mental illness and on paper, after bills, we are left with around $400 per month to feed 4 people and 2 pets, as well as pay for gas for Blake to get to and from work and that’s with only paying the minimum on our $3000 credit card debt, debt that’s been incurred due to the pressures of these student loans that theoretically, I should be exempt from paying but they have been dicking us around for YEARS instead. (Losing our documents, claiming documents haven’t been received, forgetting to send out forms, claiming certain forms have been lost in the mail, telling us to fax certain things and then saying we weren’t supposed to fax them at all, but mail them, etc etc etc…then turning us down for debt reduction despite numerous letters from my healthcare providers and hard math that says flat out, we cannot afford this on one income.)

Anyway…I’m agitated for a million reasons, and this being my site, I reserve the right to list them here.

Our lawn hasn’t been mown since roughly the end of July because our lawn mower bit the dust. Our 3-year old-lawn mower that would probably still be running just fine if it hadn’t been doing double duty all this time, as our neighbour has borrowed it pretty much every weekend since moving in here 3 years ago. So, it’s a 3-year-old lawn mower with 6 years worth of wear & tear on it and it died. No good deed goes unpunished, right? It’s like that time we gave someone’s car a boost and the wind caught our hood and bent it backwards. We can’t afford to eat, let alone a new one and I worry constantly about how our house looks from the curb with all of these weeds and this overgrown lawn badly in need of a mow and I also worry about getting a citation from the town. Our original plan was to try and find a lawn company to mow it and fix it all up before the end of the month, but that would cost between $60-100 (we’re assuming, no one’s called to get an actual quote that I know of) and we just don’t have it, so I guess my only option is to sit here and fret and make myself sick about it until the snow covers it up and we’ll deal with it in the spring. If someone from the town comes to the door to cite us, I’ll probably snap and lose it on them.

Also, speaking of my neighbours and our house looking like shit…Blake’s mom brought us up Blake’s old futon, which was better than our current couch. The week that happened, we had Blake’s mom’s SUV at our disposal, as well as my mother’s van and could have taken our old couch to the dump, but no, my neighbour’s daughter, who was moving into a new place, wanted our old couch for people to sit on when they were smoking in her garage. I told Blake this was a bad idea, that we should say that she had until the end of the week to pick it up or else we’d be using one of our mothers’ vehicles to take it to the dump, because I had a feeling that this goddamn couch was going to sit under my carport making it look like trash indefinitely. And lo & behold, it’s been like, 3 weeks and it’s still sitting out there looking like shit and making me go out of my fucking mind because between the state of the lawn and this godawful stained, floral abomination sitting amongst the unkempt recycling, fall leaves and garbage cans all at the front of our house, we look like we belong in a run-down trailer park somewhere. It’s probably going to snow before this shit is taken care of and that’s completely unacceptable to me. The goddamn thing is pretty much right in front of our “front door”, you have to squeeze between it and the BBQ to get inside.

It’s easy to say “well go out there and do something about it yourself”, but I can’t even leave my own house to tend to my own garden because I’m afraid of people looking at and/or talking to me. I do not want the whole world watching me attempt to rearrange furniture under my carport and quite fucking frankly, I shouldn’t have to because this situation shouldn’t have fucking happened to begin with.

…

The brakes on the car went 2 weeks ago. That took $320 out of October’s $400 food, gas & Halloween costume budget. School trip permission slips came home for both kids, which totaled around $45 and it wasn’t easy to say “no” when our town’s annual Fall Fair happened.  We couldn’t afford Thanksgiving dinner, so we didn’t have one. Our friend Alex brought us some of her family’s leftovers though, so at least I did get a little taste of turkey but I still felt like shit that I couldn’t cook a turkey of our own and share it with them, which was the original plan.

Our house has been filled with visitors during the past several weeks and this has not been a good thing. My step-mom is already asking Blake & I what we’re doing for Xmas and Xmas is the last thing I even want to even think about right now because if I let my mind go there, I’ll probably end up in the hospital for a suicide attempt. I fucking hate Xmas on a good year and this has not been a good year and I’ve been at the end of my rope for quite some time. (For those who are inevitably going to ask, my wishlist is here, the kids’ incomplete wishlist is here.)

In November my friend Steph is having a wedding. I say she’s “having a wedding” as opposed to “getting married” because she’s already married, but they never had a wedding. Long story short, he’s from the US and she’s from Canada, so this is the “official” wedding in Canada for her family and friends. This shouldn’t be a big deal but it is.

First of all, I’m agoraphobic and have social anxiety. A wedding is really not my thing. However, I love Steph and I want to be at her wedding, so I’m doing everything in my power to go - although admittedly, there’s a very good chance that as the last minute I won’t be able to. That’s neither here nor there, though.

Steph invited our entire family to the wedding, which I was excited about because it’s being held at Casa Loma, which is an honest to god castle that I thought the kids would get a huge kick out of. I also know there are going to be other kids there. Well, we can’t afford to clothe our kids for a wedding, so Alex is going to be staying home with them instead. Furthermore, the sad truth is that over the spring & summer, I gained a lot of weight due to the medication I was on, called Risperidone, for biploar disorder and it got to the point where literally the only thing I had to wear was pajamas I’d worn when I was pregnant with Wes. Luckily I have a good, generous online friend who helped me figure out my current sizes and sent me a couple of pairs of jeans and some t-shirts so I could leave the house if I wanted to, so I’d at least have the option and that was great. Unfortunately, I have nothing appropriate for a wedding because all of my “fancy” clothes are a size 0 and I’m….temporarily not a size 0.

In August my shrink put me on a new drug called Ziprasidone (Geodon/Zeldox), which appears to be the “right” drug and as my body’s gotten used to it I’ve just now begun to lose some of the weight I gained on the heinous Risperidone, but there’s no way I’m going to be back to my old self by the middle of November for Steph’s wedding, so buying an outfit is unavoidable if I’m to attend. Not only does this cause financial distress, but also social distress as this now involves going to a mall, probably with kids, probably on a weekend and the reality is that that scenario makes me want to die. Plus there’s the cost of gas to GET to the wedding, which is a small sum, and of course the gift, which I’m embarrassed to be stressing about but I am.

There’s also the matter of my hair, which is also embarrassing to even be writing about but I’m going to anyway. Last year I dyed my hair flaming red as it was growing out from being shaved and that turned out to be a huge mistake because red, as some of you may know, is a total pain in the ass to maintain (especially when you’re blonde) and very hard to strip out (especially when you’re a porous blonde). Long story short, I ended up having to visit a hair salon twice, at $70 a pop, to have my hair turned into a shade found in nature and I vowed (for the millionth time) to never dye my hair by myself again because I screw it up 90% of the time.  Well, getting my hair done professionally before this wedding is a financial impossibility, so a journey to the drug store’s blonde-in-a-bottle aisle is unavoidable and I guess I’ll wear my hair in a ponytail or something because I can’t afford to even get it cut. (As an aside, if anyone can recommend a GOOD brand of drugstore hair dye, particularly in a cool blonde shade, that would be great. I used to use Feria, but it doesn’t seem to matter which brand I use, I end up with yellow hair.)

Blah blah blah. Flat out, we cannot afford to go to this wedding and I hope Steph understands if we can’t. I know Steph would rather have us there than receive a gift, that’s just the kind of person she is, but it’s not looking like I can go and hold my head up high at the same time, so there’s a very good chance we won’t go at all. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t and YES, if we don’t go, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life and feel like a total fuckwad. I’m cringing at the thought of Steph even reading this post, so Steph, if you ARE reading, don’t tell me.

I’m so so so frustrated that this site still looks like a piece of shit after deciding to revamp it many many months ago. It’s been “my job” to create a background image and a banner and between my computer dying and losing all my fonts as a result and just a complete lack of inspiration, it hasn’t happened. It drives me insane that this site is like, the first impression all of these new people are getting of me and it is SO not even remotely close to my standards, it’s embarrassing. It distresses me greatly. I wish I knew CSS, I wish I knew how to make WordPress do the things I want it to do, but I don’t and neither does Blake and he doesn’t have a ton of time (or - what’s the word - “motivation”) so progress has been slow and frustrating.

I’m trying so fucking hard to get my shit together and this site, my “web presence”, is a big part of that because it helps me understand who I am (and that’s been pretty “up on the air” for a while now) and it’s killing me for things to be in the state they’re in. Fortunately, a friend of mine just hooked me up with Photoshop for the PC so at least now there’s a point in trying to rebuild my font collection and get graphics for this site completed. He also hooked me up with an older version of Word, so there’s the possibility of new zines in the future too…(except for that pesky printer problem of mine that I can’t afford to deal with right now either).

And finally: art. This is eating me alive from the inside out and at this point, I’m completely paralyzed by fear and uncertainty and I’ve stopped creating altogether due to an utter lack of self-esteem.

I was doing good, I was taking my Suzi Blu art class and had a million ideas and completed some paintings, a few sketches for future paintings and felt, temporarily, like I was “me” again and back on track. But then business and money and justifying my time and all of this stupid shit got in the way and now I’m stuck again.

I’m extremely uncomfortable with selling my art. Don’t get me wrong, I like and need the money, and really, it’s just going to collect dust in this house anyway so it might as well be on other people’s walls, but it makes me feel sick to my stomach trying to attach monetary value to anything I do. The fact of the matter is, I think I’m shit and thus, everything I do is shit and when someone says “no, that’s not shit”, I believe them for a second but then I worry that if I believe them all the way and price accordingly, no one will agree with them and make me feel shittier than I did before.

That said, I’m putting “Ennui” and “Beloved” up for sale:

(More pics.)

(More pics.)

They are 12 x 12 on canvas and $150 US + $10.00 s/h/PayPal fees = $160 US total each. If anyone’s interested, e-mail me at Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com for instructions on how to send payment. First come, first served. If you think I’m crazy for charging that much, well…so be it, but that’s how much “Hope” & “Dream” went for so that’s what I’m going by.

SOLD!! SOLD!! SOLD!! HOORAY!!!

Originally I wanted to wait and sell these two AFTER I’d gotten pics of them that were good enough to make prints out of, but I have no one to help me and I can’t figure out how to do it myself (plus I don’t have the means to front the money for prints anyway) and if I’m going to continue making art and I dunno, exist, the money needs to start coming in now.

And this brings me to Touched By Fire, the art show I submitted to last month. I’m on their online gallery, but I haven’t heard anything from them either way about the actual gala event. Since I’m on their online gallery and I recall reading something about how accepted works wouldn’t appear on their website, I’m assuming I was rejected and part of me is relieved that I won’t have to go (can’t afford the gas to get there anyway! + y’know, social phobia…) and the other part of me feels like shit that I was (probably) rejected for a remedial art show. BUT, I guess it’s only October 16th and the show isn’t for another month so maybe I’m jumping the gun in my assumptions.

Anyway it’s fall, I feel like shit, I hope I die in my sleep so this shit will end and that’s all I’ve got to say.

/wrist

Trailer for a documentary on the D.I.Y/handmade scene, coming out next year:

More Info

“Hope”

(SOLD)

More pics @ Live Journal

“Dream”

(SOLD)

More pics @ Live Journal

“Ennui”

More pics @ Live Journal

All are 12 x 12 on canvas. Mixed media.

Sooooooo a couple of days ago, my friend Heather told me of this art show thing called “Touched By Fire“, which is an online art gallery specifically for people with mood disorders, sponsored by like, the Mood Disorder Association of Ontario or something like that. Along with the online gallery, they have an actual art show in November and she figured I’d be interested.

So I went to the site and looked at everything and saw that they’d actually EXTENDED the call for entries for the show to THIS COMING FRIDAY. Well, that was too soon for me to paint anything new, so I asked the buyer of “Hope” and “Dream” if she’d mind if I submitted those two for showing and she said that was cool, so figuring this whole thing was too karmic to pass up, yesterday morning I did.

Then I got thinking about the theme of the show and decided I should submit the painting I made when I was psychotic, which I’ve been calling “Camp Tampon” all these years that most of you have seen before. I mean, I figured if there was ever a time and place to show it and maybe even sell it, Touched By Fire was probably it.

So yesterday I dragged it out of the bedroom - the thing’s 30 x 36 and weighs a ton (truthfully, I’m not even sure how to hang it so I never have) - and set it up on my easel to dust it and fix some things that had come loose in the last couple of years, as it was moved around a lot during its lifetime. Then I sprayed it with a final coat of Krylon in a few places and then Madison helped me drag it out onto the driveway so I could take better pictures of it for submission.

What sucks is that they only allow you to submit one picture per piece, so this is the one I submitted, which kind of sucks because it doesn’t really do the complexity of the piece justice. I mean, this sucker is manic chaos on canvas:

The contrast between that piece and everything else I’ve ever painted, I think, perfectly illustrates how my thought process was so fucked when I was manic, which I was when I started the painting and by the time I was finished, I was in the throes of psychosis. In fact, I deemed in “done” approximately 4 hours before the ambulance came to take me away. This painting started it all.

For the sake of the show and to better illustrate what the painting is about (since they don’t give you a place to explain), I renamed it “Mania in the Key of Psychosis” when I submitted it and I put a price tag of $500 on it because….why the hell not? It’s been sitting in my house for almost 3 years collecting dust and truthfully, I don’t even want to part with it and while I doubt anyone would buy it anyway, that’s how much it’ll cost for me to part with it. Also, there’s like, easily $200 worth of materials in there, if only in the gems alone. (Yes, you heard me, GEMS.)

This is a Herkimer diamond, bottom middle of the painting:

Beside the Herkimer diamond is Hello Kitty and *real* aquamarine growing on another piece of rock:

Why I put these in the painting, I have no idea. I was out of my head. I suspect it was because they were gifts and the thing that made me finally snap and go over the edge was my birthday. That’s why the painting is full of wax and sparkly star confetti and birthday candles.

This is a….well, it’s a very very racist “Black Americana” salt shaker, holding a key. If I hadn’t done that to him, I could have sold him on eBay for about $150, they’re super collectible. This one was my great grandma’s:

Here’s the pepper shaker he’s supposed to be holding (bottom right of the painting):

I cut up my driver’s licence and threw that in too, probably due to frustration at being suddenly afraid to drive and isolated as a result:

Something about the tampons…I wasn’t scheduled for my period when this was all happening. There is no doubt that my mania/psychosis was partly fueled by PMS because for the first 3 days I was in the hospital (that I barely remember) I literally laid in bed, in kind of a yoga pose and bled all over their sheets, kind of out of defiance, like “fine, I’m just gonna sit here and bleed then”. My shrink has since told me that there’s a link between mania, psychosis and estrogen and it’s probably not a coincidence that this all culminated the way it did. And by tampons in the painting, my brain somehow knew that this was part of it, but I didn’t.

Another piece of my licence, with my signature:

A button, which some of you have probably seen before. It says, “Well Aren’t We Just a Ray of Fucking Sunshine?” I think Ditsy gave this to me:

A cigarette butt and pills I painted pink, but which exploded with the moisture. There are also moonflower seeds in there (bottom left of the painting):

Tampon, baby Jesus, sunglasses:

Unhappy face. My psyche knew something was wrong, but the rest of me didn’t. In fact it was like there were two of me and one was trapped inside:

A box with paint, an eyedropper, more tampons, string and barrettes:

A box lid full of painted nails, cigarette butt upper left corner:

Same thing, different angle:

Other materials used: acrylic paint/paint bottles, burnt match sticks, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (top left), bubble wrap (bottom), string/thread/various fibres, a jar full of scented candle wax, a compact, a Coke can, dried baby’s breath, a toothbrush, o.b. tampon wrappers…and so much more.

So yeah. That’s what crazy looks like. Every tiny piece of….ephemera….I put in there meant something at the time, but a lot of the meaning is lost now, as I don’t remember everything from that period.

I have a huge bag of pills that I’ve amassed over the last 18 months, leftovers from the stuff my shrink’s made me try and I debated adding all of those to the piece, but in the end I decided not to alter it from its original state except to reattach a few of the paint bottles that had fallen down just because of their own weight and only being originally stuck there by paint and varnish.

Anyway, I’m really curious to see what these Touched By Fire people are going to think of it, especially in contrast with the other two pieces I submitted and in light of the whole theme of the show.

If accepted, I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to the actual show. I mean, it’s in Toronto and yes, we would be physically able to get there and everything but I looked at the pictures from last year’s event and there were like, 300 people all crammed into the space and I dunno if I can deal with that. I don’t think is mandatory to go to the show or anything, but there is a really big part of me hoping my stuff gets rejected so I for sure don’t have to. :o/

I guess we’ll see what happens.

(Originally posted on Live Journal, last week.)