It's my Friday and I'll do what I want to.

Tonight was the best night.

I walked up to the Whole Foods and grabbed some chicken pesto pizza, then went over to make my own six-pack at the liquor store by my house. How cool is that? I get to try all the newest fall beers AND walk home with them. Consequently, if anyone has not tried the Pumpkin Ale from Buffalo Bill's Brewery, that stuff is good.

Anyhow, after I chilled out for awhile, I ended up finishing my series for the Jacobs Well art exhibit. This is the first time I've worked on something in conscious sequence, trying to interpret a sermon and mix it with my artwork, and it's yielded surprisingly beautiful fruit.

So far I've done a piece that represents earth, another on fire and tonight I wrapped up air. All are on wood that I had cut down at Home Depot (a GREAT story for another post), and each is about 13X17. Because of time constraints with the opera starting, I doubt I'll get to work on water before I have to hang these three on Saturday.

I realize the descriptions mean nothing without seeing the art itself, but here's the jist:

Earth: I used photos, poetry and artifacts from my past to construct a diagonal timeline starting in the bottom right hand corner and reaching up to the upper left hand side. It's pretty much chronological, and each trinket has to do with a pivotal moment where I either became more grounded or ran away from it. I used red strings to connect certain sections and look like the art was being pulled up by some sort of puppetmaster. That was a nod to the "follow the string" title of the blog and the concept I explain in my header. It's green, purple and shades of red and the paint soaked into the wood, so it looks fuzzy - like soil does after it's settled for a while.

Fire: Again, photos and miscellaneous collage, only this time they're layered over each other to look like a fire. The background is magenta, orange and yellow and most everything in the piece centers on moments of purification. I added pages of my writing from old journals and musings and was amazed to see how I've survived some pretty bad forest fires. I went back in later and added black glitter flecks to segments at the top - mirroring the way that a silversmith would melt silver then pull off the impurities that skim the surface.

Air: I formed two focal points at the bottom - one is a woman wrapped in photos and images and the other is Ba, also wrapped in images. I wanted to show how two different people could be engulfed in a multitude of things, yet stretching out through their conjoined breath is something they've created together. At the very top (where their breath merges) is the header of the Daily Nation (Kenya's national paper) fused with the Kansas City Star. It's blue, white and green.

So, if any of you are in KC, please stop by Jacobs Well on the 13th of October (between 6-9 p.m.) for the opening, or any day until the end of November to see all of our work. In all, I think there are 25 of us contributing.

Oh, and since the beer thing worked so well in the comments section the other day, maybe I'd even treat the first person there to a beverage of choice...

Today's soundtrack: Starálfur- Sigur Rós - Ágætis Byrjun