amo

The overwintering monarch butterflies in Santa Cruz in December 2009 and the birth of beautiful Madison Rose to friends in January 2010 provided the inspiration for the music.

Skip the vegetable peeler. This is faster and easier.

Still Life with Reflection
A.M. Otwell, 2009
14 x 11 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
Prints available at RedBubble.
Original $1200.

If you are interested in the original, please contact me via email (amo@amopage.com), as I have not had time to add this to the art for sale page and likely won’t get to it for a while.

A Pensive Moment
A.M. Otwell, 2009
14 x 11 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
Prints available at RedBubble.

This time I managed to get a digital image large enough to make a small poster available along with the other options (matted print, laminated print, greeting card, framed print, etc.). If there’s a lot of interest in this format, I’ll certainly try to go back and get suitable images of older paintings. If you are interested in a poster of a particular image, please let me know!

. . . just not a shape that is easily covered. We have had various temporary window coverings for our round window. I’ve had this idea for a while, but it took me a very long time to gather the materials and put it together.

I found (eventually) 3 old doilies that were the right size. Over the course of several days, I put each one in a freezer bag with a mixture of white glue and water and squished it to ensure complete and relatively even saturation and spread it out on waxed paper to dry. This stiffening process is permanent. If you think you might want to reverse this process later, there are reversible stiffening methods. I let each one dry completely before stiffening the next.

And then I forgot to take any more pictures. Oops. But after they were all dry and stiff, I stacked them in order of descending size and used a combination of more white glue and some haphazard sewing/ties to attach them together. The stains bothered me a bit, so I took some white paint and tried to make it all blend together by daubing white paint here and there to both cover some of the worst spots and balance the differences in hue.

And then I put it up. I’m pretty happy with the result.

This has been sitting in my camera for a while, but we eat a salad like this about once a week. The particular ingredients vary some but not as much as you might think.

Shredded cheddar cheese, bag o’ lettuce, celery, parmesan cheese, canned olives, green chiles, beets, sunflower seeds, homemade salad dressing, bell pepper, onion, boiled shredded chicken, boiled free-range eggs, and a miniscule amount of home grown grape tomatoes.

Chili Eggs
2 eggs
splash heavy cream or milk
1 teaspoon chili seasoning mix (recipe below)
2 tablespoons butter

Melt butter in frying pan. Beat eggs together with cream and seasoning. Scramble egg mixture in butter. Top with additional seasoning mix if desired, perhaps some sour cream.

I Don’t Like Vegetables Soup
1-3 cups chopped cooked meat (I usually use chicken)
3 large rutabagas, peeled and chopped
1/2 celery bunch, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
Any other leftover, in season, inexpensive, or sale vegetables (green beans, cabbage, asparagus)
6-ounce can tomato paste
Water to cover
4 tablespoons chili seasoning mix or to taste (recipe below)

This is clearly and obviously a vegetable soup. But the chili seasoning and the long cook time mute the flavors and make the vegetables more palatable for vegetable haters.

Combine all ingredients in stock pot. Simmer for 5 hours or more. This recipe is generally too large for my slow cooker, but if you have a very large slow cooker, I would imagine you could use that.

Chili Seasoning Mix
4 tablespoons minced onion or onion powder
4 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons salt
4 teaspoons dried red pepper
4 teaspoons garlic powder
4 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons oregano
1/8 teaspoon cayenne or to taste

I’m late in posting this because I had some family issues come up, but I am pleased to announce that my review of Who’s to Say What’s Home by Kim Calder was accepted for electronic publication by Rattle. I very much like the poetry they publish, and I feel honored to have the opportunity to make a small contribution to the magazine. The review is here.

Reflections
A.M. Otwell, 2009
12 x 36 inches
Acrylic on Canvas
Original $750
Prints available.