Category: Under The Trenchcoat Of Sheep Incognito

We’ve added a few new shows this year’s lineup in 2015 – because sheep like to be in new pastures occasionally.

And this year, we decided to give some Irish/Scottish/Celtic Festivals a shot – after all, sheep are historically the most important animal for all those cultures.

For the sheep, those cultures are very important as well – it keeps them in high demand wherever they go. They just keep on being the best mowers for hilly, grassy areas. The ones that produce the best tasting butter, cheese, and milk. The creatures that provide warm, fuzzy clothes and warm, fuzzy feelings around the world.

So keep checking back for the updated show schedule, because we keep adding new events as the year progresses – we just might be right around the corner with some Sheep Incognito to make ewe smile!

Of course, sometimes you might need a bit of smiley Sheep Incognito artwork between shows in your area – we have just the right thing for you: Stop by the Sheep Incognito Sheep Shop at charisma-art.com, and find prints, t-shirts, mugs, calendars, and jewelry to keep you happy until we see each other in person again.

<strong>Walls – Things That Constrain Or Liberate</strong>

We just spent a weekend in Virginia Beach – but “spent” seems the wrong word for <!–more–>
the time we were
awarded here. We gained a weekend here might be more appropriate.

We did not come to enjoy the nightlife.
We did not stop by to visit relatives.
And we did not intend to just sit by the beach and fry our white, slightly overweight, beyond youthful beautiful selves.

We came to work.

And so we did.
We set up the walls to house my paintings in my booth in a slight drizzle and wind – but once we had the walls in place, the drizzle and wind became merely a background sound that blended in with the sound of the waves.

It was peaceful, despite the blusteriness outside.

Nighttime found us in a nicer hotel – perfect beds – with Great Sheets this time! – in close walking distance from our office for the weekend.

We discovered that the walls keep out the sounds of partying teenagers, belligerent drunks, and emergency vehicles beeping through town.

As we were meeting and greeting all the lovely people during the Neptune Festival that meandered into our booth, it occurred to me, that most seem to have enclosed themselves in walls of some sort: social status to be upheld, protective walls to avoid others from seeing the real person or to protect against more pain, walls to ensure safety by keeping others out, others with walls that were pocked with hurt inflicted on them by others.

But then there were some, that walked in – those that were open to life, other humans, and emotions, and all the “dangers” interacting with other humans entails.
Their walls were either paper thin, more like rice-paper screens, or the walls were wildly decorated with wild colors – either way, they left an impression with me:

Life is so much more than what we experience in our little cubicle in life.
It pays to stand on the wobbly office chair and peer over the partition into the next person’s life – they might have a circus going on there!
Or, they might have fallen under the weight of life, and need a helping hand to get back on their feet.

As I was sitting in my cubicle for the weekend – on the boardwalk, warm breeze in my hair, warm smell of bolitas rising up through the air, up away in the distance, I saw a shimmering light, my head grew heavy and might sight grew dim, ….wait, wrong song…

Anyway: as I was in fact sitting in my cubicle at the beach, with a warm breeze in my hair, sun sparkling on the water just a few yards away, and smiling people in my booth, i realized that the lower, thinner and crumblier our personal walls are, the more we expose ourselves to the real purpose of life: living life together, seeing each others real life going on, hearing the other’s pain, reaching out to help each other past what once kept us all apart and isolated.

So, here, let me knock this panel out of my cubicle wall – welcome to an artist’s life of maaahem, incredible office locations, weird food choices, strange painting ideas, and thought processes that may be nearly impossible to follow. It’s where I live…

And, though our pyrpose here at the beach was quite different from everybody ele’s, we still enjoyed the same effects from sharing airspace here in VA Beach:
We did enjoy a lovely night-time dinner at our favorite cuban place.
We did meet more than relatives – we met friends. New ones, old ones, and some we’ve known for a long time. A lovely reunion day.

And, we did sit by the beach, and fry our flabby selves – it’s the effect of not having cubicle walls to hide behind.

Real World Artists vs. TV Reality Shows

when one travels as much as we do to earn a living, one realizes rather rapidly that there is a very small limit of things one actually needs to live with.
It is so much easier to not have to deal with lawns needing mowing, mail needing to be dealt with, utility bills to be paid, livingrooms to be vacuumed, cats to be fed, and all the other things that apparently are necessary when one has a house.

But then, on arrival back at home, one realizes that there is some comfort in having a house that is attached to the ground, that does not involve a motor blowing out, tires going flat, or septic systems needing dumping (thank heavens for city sewer systems!).

It is a constant dilemma – the freedom and rugged living conditions of the open road in contrast to the solidness of being home for the kids, the drama, and the bills.

A nice balance of the two would be perfect, but alas, that is not my lot in life, at the moment.
So when we are home, we do try to make the most of it – much of the time, we are painting, printing, embellishing, shipping, creating, doing taxes, running the teenies around to their various events, catching up with loved ones, and trying to pack all the homeowner requirements into a few days – all at the same time.
It makes for quite a bit of a systematic maaahem mostly – life is too short to be bored, it would seem.

How do other people find the time to amuse themselves about the current reality show family – the Kardashians, The Duck Dynasty, The 19 Kids and Counting Family, and on and on?

My life contains enough drama for ten reality shows – so maybe someday, the tv producers will try to get a hold of me to show what a truly glamorous artist life really is about. I could show them the scene behind the art scene – you know, the one where the studio is not a pristine, funky, clearcut, halogen lighted, sparsely decorated in swedish minimalist furniture downtown loft, but a room in my house shared by kids’ craft projects, a stack of bills, tax papers, and receipts the size of Kilimanjaro, and about 30 paintings in various stages of completion, along with a disarray of dirty brushes, four pallettes with different color schemes, stray paint rags draped on various surfaces….

Or the version where we are loading the trailer and car late into the night, to get up earlier than the sun to get on the road for a two day drive to wherever the reviews say the best/largest/funkiest/most lucrative/best visited art festival/fair/show takes place that weekend. Where we set up in rain/wind/heat/cold to brave the crowds/lack of crowds/rain/wind/heat/cold to make sales/make no sales and then reverse that whole process to start it all over again the next weekend.

The real glamour of my artist life, though, quite real, quite honest: the people we meet on the way. The connections that run deeper than just a “How are ya doin’ today?” phrases we so easily toss out into the world.
The connections that remind us that each of us are as individual as our own lives dictate us to be.

Each one of us is our own story. It makes for a very interesting ready, if we only take the time to ready each person between the lines.
Every one of us – real life drama sitcoms.

And that is a show worth watching to me – it makes me like being an artist.

So to the tv producers looking for a new reality tv show idea: come spend some time with me, I will show you the art scene that has been obscured by gallery opening H’ors d’oeuvres, little black dresses, clinking champagne glasses, and art critic reviews of carp schmiered on notebook paper that has been lauded the next “Up and Coming Young Artist”. It has nothing to do with art, artistic ability, but mainly with marketing – much like our food choices have generally become a choice of which picture we like better on the cardboard box it is packaged in.

So to the tv producers looking for the next “Up and Coming TV Reality Show” – come hang out with us – the ones that wear torn jeans to just set up our gallery in a dusty place, to bring smiles to people that are walking around in shorts and tank tops clad in camouflage on a 95ºF day to see what real art and real artists are all about.
You might find a whole different world to show the world – one where a cocktail dress is made to wipe paint brushes on, and a champagne glass might very well work better as a water jar to wash out the vibrant colors that were just applied to a canvas painted over five times.

There, you will find people that genuinely make an impact on the real world – the world of reality shows that are not on TV. With actors that are not acting, but just doing what they do best: making the world a better place by making art for the real world.

You ARE a TV Reality Show Producer? Awesome. Contact me, and I will help you uncover the “behind the scenes scenes” that will change the canvas of what the art scene is about.

Finally – Sheep Incognito hit the road again!

Forced vacations sometimes are good events – especially those that involve the Sheep Incognito flock getting stuck in Colorado….

We seem to have found possibly the best car repair shop west ofthe Mississippi in Loveland Colorado: Stan’s Auto Service not only got the RV rolling again, but they were fantastic people to work with, and, for the first time in a year, the follow-up mechanic wasn’t shaking his head in despair at what crimes to the RV his predecessor had committed…in fact, he said “that was an excellent repair job they did”.
Wow.
Miracles DO happen.

So, not only did we make it home from Colorado, we’ve also made it up to Pennsylvania for the 4th of July Westmoreland Arts & Heritage Festival, and are heading to the Plymouth, MI Art in the Park Festival for this weekend.

Maybe we’ve finally turned the page to actually getting some time to paint and create, instead of sitting in repair shop waiting areas…

We are pretty excited!