What I really do.

I noticed while re-reading my CV that I don't show any work any more, and I noticed while not making any art, that I don't make any art any more. Here is a brief list of things that I do while not making art.

• living with my wife Christa and our kids in my painting studio


• overhauling swamp coolers when Christa says they're making a wee'-eeink, wee'-eeink sound


• pretending to put out fires in fire school


• pretending to run the town as a member of the town council


• google-searching trivial topics like St. Florian (see below)


• learning more about the Lusitania disaster from my six-year-old than I ever learned in AP European History


• looking for things in the garage


• drinking ice water (the hot season has started)


• stirring heaps of lush compost

The quality of the compost is a result of all the fruit and coffee grounds we churn through at the Bed and Breakfast. This is the primary entry for the what-I-do-instead-of-making-art list. Since moving in in 2004, we've trimmed, caulked, painted, plumbed, or otherwise torn through five bathrooms, two kitchens, two kids' rooms; refinished floors, painted fascia while hanging from a climbing rope, and run three miles of irrigation tubing. I've also killed four adolescent cottonwood trees, nine black locusts, ruined a lawn, and forklifted a wild bee colony away in the hollow core of an enormous tree trunk. They moved back after a couple of months.

Rumor has it that Bluff honey tastes extra good because of the tamarisk pollen. If you come to town, buy some honey from Comb Ridge Coffee and have a Mocha Dugway (my favorite local pun).