Suzanna Danna

Good morning, afternoon, evening… whatever. No clue how long it will take me to write this one, but it has pretty pictures to break up the monotony… just wanted to cover the salutations for whichever time zone and or time of day this reaches you, kind reader.

Not sure if you’ve recovered from the last entry. Y’all could absolutely tell that I was phoning it in by the bottom of it couldn’t you? “Day 82983642865… Can’t remember.”

Brilliance at its best.

Anywho*, I have somewhat recovered from The June (dum , dum DUM!) and am working my way steadily through a list of “To Do”’s that rivals my last entry in length. I know. Susan, dammit… Think of the trees! Right!? Okay, fine. I’ll put that on my to do list too.

*This is totally Stacey’s favorite way to get back on track during conversation.

I also have a confession to make. I am back on the caffeine. Not hard core use or anything, but definitely something a little more serious than recreational usage.

When I don’t stop at McDonald’s to get coffee (DAMN YOU JUNE!) I drink a Dr. Pepper at work. This is bad y’all. Next thing you know I’ll be free basing mac n’ cheese or bread sticks and alfredo sauce like they are pixie stix. Mmmm pixie stix.

Mister and I go back into see our Jenny Craig woman tomorrow at like 6:20 pm. And I am so NOT looking forward to getting on the scale to see how much my love for sweetened iced coffee and bratwurst has added to my bottom line, if you know what I mean. And I totally think you do.

The ass, she is large.

But my love for buttermilk ranch and pizza isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. Nor do I want to discuss the size and dimensions of my rotund bottom.

I would like to go back in time… well, a bit anyway… to the evening we stayed over in New Orleans on the way back from Florida. We stayed at the W and everything was wonderful. And I don’t know if you remember…

Hee… oh holy fuck. Heh, oh crap. I interrupt this paragraph to tell you that I just went to lunch at a place called Sweet Tomatoes with my old boss. When we got back a lady in our department was asking how it was. Was the food good? Yadda Yadda. My old boss was telling her all about the salad bar and I heard this come out of my mouth, “And they’ll toss your salad… and I’m pretty sure there’s no extra charge.” And then I realized my faux pas while speaking to a 64 year old coworker. And then I barked laughter, walked away, regained my composure and then went back to rejoin in the conversation. She was laughing her ass off as well while my poor ex boss looked lost and confused.

Human Resources NIGHTMARE… I tell you. I shouldn’t be let out of my cage.

Now, back to the paragraph already in session.

… that Mister and I got an awesomely late check out from the W and the previous evening we had both picked out places that we wanted to visit during our time in the city. Mister picked an antique rare coin and gun collector (Cohen and Son’s Antique Guns and Coins) and lo, I did much standing and waiting and then we went to the thing I picked out.

I wanted to visit a gallery just down the street from Miaster’s Waterloo… it is called Painted Alive and it is run by an amazingly talented artist by the name of Craig Tracy. I had no idea what I was getting into when I pointed at the gorgeous advertisement in the magazine and said, “Dat.” Like all the sudden I was Polish and from Wisconsin** and all I could say was “Dat, dere… I want to go dere.”

**Love you Wisconsin. You know how much I do.

So after the Old Ass Rifle and Money Store (I say that with love… ) I basically pulled Mister down the sidewalk of Royal muttering to myself, “827, 827, 827, 827” and then there it was… on the left. I walked inside and the high ceilings and white painted brick walls were the setting for some of the most beautiful pieces of art I have ever seen.

There was a large white tiger in right side of the gallery and if you looked at the business cards on the counter you could see the process of how the work was created. Behind me was a beautiful picture of a sunflower. There were eagles, tigers, elephants, landscapes and anything you could imagine. All of them painted on the beautiful naked bodies of women.

Craig came out to meet us and said with a very casual air, “Hi, thanks for coming in. I’m the artist, so if you have any questions, please… feel free to ask.”

We stayed for hours. Craig walked us through how he put some of the works together. With the white tiger (Kobe Bryant’s wife just purchased a copy of that one a few months ago) Craig met a woman with the smallest rib cage he had seen in a long time and he showed us that her ribcage became the bridge of the white tiger’s nose and her bottom became the muzzle of the tiger.

Craig showed us some works he was putting together for a show. He took us into the back room and let us basically poke through his brain.

Out in the main room just to the right of his desk a small horizontal canvas was propped up on a black leather footstool. I was in love. I wanted the painting, but I was waffling and couldn’t figure out why. I knew I loved the whole idea of what Craig had put behind the work but I felt it was small and missing something. It was like he read my mind y’all.

He said, “I love to paint hands and feet and with this one, it was so small and the frame was an odd size that I had to cut off my favorite part of it. So when I get back from the show I have put together a piece that is the same concept but it is in four panels, and it keeps the hands and feet. Let me show you what I mean.” Craig pulled a notebook off of his desk and showed Mister and I the painting and how he saw it eventually.

It was four panels of the work I was holding in my hands, the panels were larger and there were several distinct sizes of the canvasses. I was blown away. Even though I had not seen the completed work, I wanted it. I wanted a piece that I was in love with because (this may sound odd) I believe that art isn’t something that you buy to match the shit in your house. Some people do. But people who love art will sometimes change a room to match their art. It’s like a marriage to me.

I have very few pieces of art hung in our home. There are two pieces in the guestroom that are black and white and matted in cream with brushed silver frames. One is called “Gathering Trees” and the other is “Winter”. They are both stark and amazing pictures of naked trees. No foliage, no happy birds or colored moons, orange clovers or blue diamonds. (I just totally jacked up the Lucky Charms tag line.)

In the guest bathroom I have a pair of antique renditions of butterflies, but how they would look in an entomology book as well as two Asian symbols, one says “love” the other says “happiness”.

In the dining room is a sage green cartouche, a wooden nine paneled oil painting that Mister loves and a smaller abstract that I do.

In the hallway there is a beautiful abstract diptych that Mister got me for my birthday. Remember this?

In the living room there are only two pieces. One is hanging by the door to the back yard. It is wee and very unobtrusive. It is a colored pencil drawing of the Opera House in Paris… that I happened to purchase in Paris on the fucking steps of the Opera House. It is signed and dated by the artist. Behind the couch is something else. I am totally in love with my piece I call “Hot Jazz” because it was the first piece of art that Mister and I purchased together and we bought it on the square in New Orleans a year and change before Katrina.

The only picture I have of the jazz watercolor was from when we lived in that humongous rent house that smelled like a wet dog. I (apparently) am too short to take a good photo of something without it looking totally keystoned, but eh. It was hanging above the fireplace on a brick wall. We spent more for the framing than we did for the picture. But we love it dearly, and it looks so much prettier hanging above the couch on a large expanse of colorless wall with nothing to overshadow it. It’s beautiful, my photography does not do it justice.

Back to Craig and how awesome he is.

For someone to find beauty in every shape, figure or form is rare. Craig is one of those people. He had a piece that was painted like a beautiful stained glass window on a woman who was sitting with her face demurely looking to the side. Her large breasts the perfect backdrop for natural angles and a mother earth feel. He explained almost each work to Mister and I and I kept coming back to the landscape on the woman laying on her belly. It was such a new piece that it had not been named, nor signed.

This is a picture of Craig. This is a picture of Craig PAINTING the woman whose picture will be in our home forever and ever amen.

Say hello to Craig.

The other day I sent him an email explaining that since the 14th of June all that had happened, but that meeting him and getting to know him and his work was a highlight and a very bright spot in a very dark month. He emailed me back with the picture above and the picture below. The picture below is a mock up of how the painting will look. He is putting together a few black pieced of wood to connect the four panels together. So that they are separate… but together.

Please notice the red highlights in the tree on the right and the blue highlights in the tree on the left. Genius, right? This work speaks to several things that I love, that bring me peace and make me happy. 1) Landscapes, 2) Leafless trees and 3) The human form… naked.

Oh… oh, and because he had not put this piece together yet and may do a series we will have the first one. EVER.

Hott Jazz is going to the hallway above an antique secretary from the 1920’s that was my grandmother’s.

So, I know. That’s awesome right?

We have a small print of his and another panel on the way so I will soon be immersed in wonderful color from Craig Tracy.

I am looking forward to putting my house to order, the chaos is really beginning to creep me out. It’s not like it’s a massive wreck or anything but Mister has his issues with… filing. He’s the finance guy, he takes care of all of it. I do the other stuff. And neither one of us is a good house keeper… wait, let me amend that. Neither one of us has the time or inclination to be good house keepers. With both of us working every day… we fix dinner… I do laundry… he does bills… it’s not like we have a whole lot of time for other things. Or to be honest. It is not like we want to spend the small amount of time we do have at home cleaning it.

We have tumbleweeds of dog and cat hair and there are papers everywhere around his big chair in the living room. His version of “filing”. We still have our suitcases in the hallway and have yet to fully unpack. What’s the point? He’s having surgery on Friday, I’m leaving for San Antonio on Wednesday, then for Austin a week from that Sunday, then Vegas the Saturday after that then back to San Antonio the Wednesday after I get back from Vegas.

But yet, the mess… it is making me uneasy. It is not dirty (except the animal fur, which I pick up and do this little (can NOT believe I am admitting this) paper towel on the foot around the baseboards dance). It is messy. I do not like messy. Mister has an office. We haven’t been in there in about a year because there is so much shit that is thrown in there anytime we have company. The garage is full of boxes too.

When we got home from the first trip to Florida Brookstone was having a massive sale on stuff. Air purifiers for Father’s Day. He got two. One for each of the bedrooms, and or one for where he sleeps and one for the living room. And an iBucket, which I affectionately refer to as the Fuckit Bucket.

The boxes that these wonderful toys came in? One is in the hall, one in the living room, one in the garage. The boxes for the TV, for the D-Link, for the DVD/DVR player, the boxes for everything are in the garage. Can’t we just throw them out? Why do we need the faux leather jacket that doesn’t even have a working zipper?

I say all of this to say that for the past month and a half we’ve been putting bandaids on figurative decapitations or amputations. I know that we haven’t even gotten through the emotional fallout of last month, much less the financial… so we keep blowin and going.

Another figurative (yet physical) bandaid? See below.

I haven’t lost my mind, my bowels are regular and I am productive in the office. Think it is helping?

I’ll tell you what would help. A full week off, lots of beer, friends, a bunch of movies (saw Wanted and Hancock two weekends ago… lurve), some Marlboro Light 100’s in a box and some cooler weather and I would be SO on.

Last week, Thursday, I got to have a few beers with a friend and it was awesome. I took the picture below just before I went inside.

I don’t think I look like I was put in a blender and some mythical creature hit frappe, right? Go on, tell me I’m pretty… and MEAN it. If you don't Elvira (see her in the seat next to me?) will cut you.