Day 27: 2012 The Traveling Chicken and her blog

What seems like many months ago, a project was started.  The Traveling Chicken.  If you've been following the saga, and quite a saga it's been, you know that I've been waiting for a replacement chicken.  She arrived a day ago.  I spent all day today, literally, painting the Little Chicken so that I could send her on her way.  It's been about 3-4-5 months since I've painted anything and boy......the techniques do not come back easily!

Here are my attempts.  I'm going to post the last one as my addition to the blog and tomorrow? I'll pack her up and send her on to Ann Feldman of Illinois who has plans to take the Traveling Chicken across the border into Canada and paint the Chicken as she enjoys her next adventure.  After that she will be sent to (in no order) to either:

 

sandy sandy (that's her actual name) who lives in new jersey.

k.s. stitt, who lives here in southern california

 

All 3 of these painters commented on the Traveling Chicken via the blog.  If you have any interest in joining in on this fun, slow moving challenge, speak up via the comment section on the blog and we'll "vet" you and add you to the list of painters.

 

The Chicken and I spent a morning over a cup of coffee, discussing how she would best appear, minus her jet lag from her most recent trip.

 

And the paintings:

 

Bon Voyage Little Chicken

Enjoy your travels and tell us all about

the artists you meet along the way.

We're waiting to hear.

Day 26: 2012 - Karin Jurick's fabulous paintings

Note: Sometimes you have to click on the link at the bottom of my blog post in order to see the whole post....sometimes just a portion of it actually shows up.  Yesterday's post was an example of that: only a partial post showed up. Very misleading.


For years now (maybe 3?) I've followed Karin Jurick's painting work.  I got started paying attention to her because she used to post a painting challenge on her blog "Different Strokes From Different Folks" that was portrait centered. And then she did the fantabulous portrait challenge where everyone (there were 158 of us if I remember correctly) painted each other.  I then mounted a reverse challenge where all of us painted a portrait of Karin.  That was so much fun and I was able to keep our challenge a secret from Karin until all most the very end when someone emailed Karin to ask where she should send the painting she had painted of her.  Oh well.  Karin was taken by surprise, which was the point of the whole thank you paint out!  

That's a way too long introduction of Karin Jurick.  She's a fabulous painter, usually painting on small canvases 4x4, 6x6, using big brushes.



 Her gestural paintings are phenomenal. Her portraits are fabulous.  Her paintings of people sitting on the beach in Florida are almost surreal they're so great. 





And she always paints people in museums.....juxtaposing what the museum visitors are doing with the actual painting.  They're wonderful too.



Spend some time reading her different blogs and just fall in love with how good she is!

Today's blog post from her is a man's face.  From her blogsite "Bust-Ed".  Karin searches the internet for jail "booking photos".  There are myriad thousands of these photos available and she never identifies anything about the person other than their face.  Check out today's face:

And then I started clicking around and ended up in Karin's Picasa (photo) account that contains all the faces.  Wow!  Enjoy! 

Her blog where she displays and talks about the photos:

http://100facesbusted.blogspot.com/

Originally she painted a face a day, 100 faces, 100 days.  She now paints maybe one face a week because she's painting so many other things and has so many shows to paint for.

I just continue to love her work, love reading her blog, love seeing how hard work, doing a painting a day, pays off.  Enjoy.

Day 25: 2012 - Little Chicken and Stayin' Alive

Little Chicken Arrived!! Whoopee! and thanks again to the Tiger Stores of Denmark via England where a really nice person searched their stock, found the Little Chicken and put her in the mail to California so that she could resume her journey around the world being painted by "soon-to-be-famous-paintresses".  Or so we hope.  I've given a huge thanks on my blog, on Facebook and personally. So thank you once again Tiger Stores for service above and beyond anyone's expectations! It was a thrill to have someone answer my email and it was a thrill to open my "packet" yesterday and find the Little Chicken safely nestled in scads and scads of plastic bubble wrap......takin' no chances was that wonderful person in England who sent her to me.

And in the next two days I VIL paint that Little Chick. And get her on her way.  I think that she will be escorted by her whole entourage though, mama and the siblings, El Pollo Azul.......someone's gotta keep that girl out of trouble.

Enough.

Received an email today with something that always makes me smile. I don't know how many times I've seen this video and I just adore it!  Watch. Smile. Remember.

Day 24: 2012....still waiting for the chicken and something different to do

An interesting project:

The Blind Self Portrait

Could be something fun to try while I await the little English chicken's arrival so that I can continue the Traveling Chicken Project.

Day 23: 2012 The Traveling Chicken - part five

A world wide painting project started several months ago!!

The travels & adventures of a small, ceramic chicken

as it makes it way around the art world.

http://travel-chicken.blogspot.com/

Once upon a time, a small, ceramic chicken was purchased at the British version of the U.S.'s Dollar Store, Tiger England, by Azra Iqbal who was looking for small things to use in her still life paintings.  She painted the following painting and then thought how much fun it would be to send this little chicken on a worldwide adventure, traveling to different countries, meeting different painters.

So she contacted her friend  Karla Uphoff who lives in Illinois and asked if she'd like to paint the little chicken.  Enthusiastic response by Karla and the little chicken was put in the mail to Illinois.  Karla's normally an oil painter but decided to paint the chicken for Easter Sunday in watercolor.

And then Karla contacted Nancie Johnson of New Jersey and the chicken was shipped off, wrapped in its original red tissue paper for the journey.

Nancie said: When this little chicken arrived, I ran all over the house (and yard), posing this little chick everywhere. It was in the flower bed, on the bird bath, in various locations in the house. And I took photos in each - but nothing worked the way I wanted it to. The chick looked lost amongst the larger than life leaves in my photos - zooming in to get the little chick center stage made the leaves in the garden look like imposing alien creatures!

So I simply sat down and looked at the chick for a while. And I noticed how unusual the chicken actually was - from the markings on its body to the unusual beak and tail. And then I wondered what a flock of live chickens would think of this little one?

My painting is the outcome of that thought & question. Titled "One of the Flock?" shows the puzzled chicks looking at the little chicken with confusion. The little chick has no qualms about its identity - it knows who it is. So it just sits as the others simply guess.

The little chicken has been safely packaged and mailed to Jill Polsby in California, who has agreed to do the 4th installment of the The Traveling Chicken challenge. I wonder how far and wide this little chick with travel!?!

And then Jill Polsby, Pasadena, CA received the Traveling Chicken.  Her life was a bit crazy at the moment so she asked her internet friend Nancy Goldman of Orange County, California to step in, and step in she did.  She did an outrageous thing to this little jet-lagged, mind agog, little bird.  She took her out for a day by the pool, showing off our gorgeous Southern California winter weather!

She then sent the little chicken back to Jill in Pasadena where the Traveling Chicken threw a hissy fit.  She wanted more of the sun. She wanted more of travels. She didn't want to be in this staid old town.  She found the Greyhound Bus Station and took herself to Ensenada, Baja Mexico, a wild party town south of the border.  And, like every other tourist, she found Hussong's Cantina

where she proceeded to have a wild, wild time like all tourists do and she ended up very smashed on beer.

She had met some crazy men at Hussong's. The blue rooster (El Pollo Azul) ** had some crazy moves) and she had some great fun dancing and singing to the Mariachi music!

With her one call home to her momma in England......

Momma sent bus fare and money for the psychiatrist to put her broken body back into shape.

The psychiatrist tried, but the little chicken was so frazzled, her mind so bent by that Mexican frolic, that her edges couldn't be smoothed.

 

Jill did paint one picture of the frazzled chicken before the psychiatrist got his hands on her.

And then the truth must out!  Little Chicken actually was smashed by our incredible U.S. postal system, smashed to smithereens in her original red tissue paper packaging which had survived crossing the Atlantic Ocean, crossing the United States, moving within the state of California. 

While studying the pieces of the chicken to try to glue her back together (obviously nothing Jill should try to do to earn a living), there was a upc code discovered on the bottom side of the chicken which, with research, led Jill to a Danish company, Tiger Stores, which has branches in England.

On a devil's errand, Jill wrote the company via the internet with the following request:

Fra: jill polsby [mailto:polsby@yahoo.com]
Sendt: 23. maj 2012 04:13
Til: Tahir Hussain
Emne: strange question for you, nothing to do with opening a store

I am looking for a product you had, I think in England.

A small yellow ceramic chicken with white spots

the tag is still on it

0200010020696 from what I can read

Batch 62334

It's part of a worldwide "floating" art project that's been happening via the internet. This little chicken has visited a lot of countries, safely, until she got to the United States where our "incredibly efficient" post office smashed her on her way back to my house. I've been trying to glue her back together without much success and am so in hopes that somewhere in your inventory, you'll find me another little yellow chicken with white spots.

She's about 2 inches by 2 inches, red comb, yellow tail.

I've attached a picture I took of her when she first arrived at my house.

And surprises of all surprises!!  Tiger Stores in Denmark sent my request on to the marketing manager in Great Britain.  And back by email came this fantastic letter from the Tiger Store in London!!

Hello Jill

Your email regarding locating a ceramic chicken has been passed to me in London from our parent company in Denmark! You will be pleased to know we have found one. If you can email me your full name and address I will arrange to have it sent to you.

As a way of thanks we would appreciate if you can write about the project and the circumstances you found a replacement for the broken one. If you use Facebook it would be great if you could post it on our page atwww.facebook.com/tigerengland

Kind regards

Emma Bier

Design & Marketing

I'm now awaiting the arrival of a new Traveling Chicken who shall have her own "coop" to travel in from now on, no more of the red tissue packaging.  Mom might travel with her and perhaps her muchacho, the cock of the walk, who she took up with while in Ensenada!  There are possibilities for group posings?

Stay tuned for Jill's poses of this errant chicken.  And if you might be interested in being part of the Chicken's Travels, speak up.

**El Pollo Azul, the blue rooster, is actually a sculpture by a famous Mexican artist, Juan Jose Medrano of Tonala, Jalisco and cost Jill $32.00!!  But boy, howdy, did the Little Chicken like his moves.