Drink Coffee, Stuff A Ballot Box...

...and overthrow a third world government. Just kidding! You will actually be helping my friend’s non-profit and a very underserved community of very bright kids. First you need a Starbucks card. You can get one for as little as $5.00 at any Starbucks (and then use if for purchases). Or you can "egift" one to yourself online. To do this, go to https://www.starbucks.com/shop/card/ and click on "egift" in the middle of the picture of the card and follow the instructions. Follow the instructions to open an account and register your card. Then, go to www.votegivegrow.com and sign in with your account info. When you log in, it brings you directly to your "local" page. On the map to the right of the page, at the top, it says "Change Region". If you click on that, you can enter a zip code, which will then bring you to your new chosen community, with voting enabled. Use the zip code is 85321. This will take you to the page on which you can vote for the International Sonoran Desert Alliance (ISDA). AND there's a button for getting a reminder about voting next week! So please, take a couple of minutes to help these people, because karma is a good thing...

- jb boyd

Big Things...

...are coming together in the panel making room. The Gray Bay panels are cut and sealed, needing only a coat of black paint on the cut edges, and the saw got it's final coat of oil ground and will be ready to go in a few days.


The oil ground is tinted with burnt sienna, which kills the obnoxious white and replaces it with a warm pink to build the paintings on.

- jb boyd

This Bucket Thinger...

...is coming up aces! And with the return of afternoon thunderstorms to the landscape, it makes for some pretty dramatic photographs.


Now the wisdom of hanging out on a ladder twenty feet above anything else for a good quarter of a mile while storm clouds gather overhead and lightning strikes in the distance could be questioned, so can the wisdom of most anything I do.


But if I get zapped, at least I was doing what I love, and had a great view to boot...

- jb boyd

This Blog Has...

...no picture. Mainly because I am one of those law abiding air travelers who actually waits for the all clear to turn on their electronic devices, and by then we were over the Pine Barrens. But next time you are flying, look at the color temperature of the ground lights. It is changing from the yellow of iridescent to the blue of compact fluorescent. The next generation will never know the yellow. Their offspring will fly through solely reflected light, because by then somebody will realize that circular globes only appease the gods, and waste the energy that should be lighting your footsteps. It all changes, which makes me pause in my defense of only painting under lights. But the main point, which I should return to (to make this an acceptable art blog post), is that art is making the visual of the now. Because it will change, and every moment is fleeting. So I choose paint, and more specifically choose the longevity of oil paint, because in 2020, 3030, or 4040 will anyone know what Betamax was, let alone Blue Ray?

And by the way, find you own art flying out of your hometown airport. The landscape of your childhood might be encompassed by a window frame, the limits of your adolescence may pass by in a trip to the restroom, and your future, well, may that be ever so lightly obscured by the clouds...

- jb boyd