Tag: art studio

The Backyard Beasts Big Break

It was just one of those mundane and utterly uneventful night a few days back that was until 4:07am. And then all fucking Hell broke loose. My Wife had passed out in her favorite Lazy Boy Recliner around midnight or so, and I dozed off around a little before 3 am.

The Backyard Beasts had been more vocal than usual that evening which now that I think about it was some serious foreshadowing. It was the wailing, Whining, loud, and virtual nonstop barking of the Backyard Beasts that woke my very unamused Wife who then yelled about being woke up due to the son of a bitch beasts. This in turn immediately woke me up and I glanced at the clock which read 4:07 am.

My Wife was shuffling like mad around looking for a flashlight and her shoes. My shoes where near by under the coffee table so I snatched them up, put them on, turned off the alarm system, found my keys, unlocked the door, and bounded out to the front porch.

I start scanning the yard squinting like a motherfucker because we don’t have street lights being so far out in the woods. I cursed out loud for not getting a hold of a flashlight myself as I stared into the night. The I saw it. It was big solid black silhouette standing at the edge of the yard between two trees. The only reason I could see that much was thank to the aid of our neighbors rather promenade out door lights. Their lights backlit the street just enough to see the contrast between the black of night and the black of the beasts.

I yelled to my Wife that there was another Beast out here and that was exciting ours evidently though I was completely wrong. This is not uncommon here in the Woods where people let there dogs roam like free range chickens out and about at all hours doing whatever they please.

I then had a odd feeling and then it clicked. This wasn’t a neighbor’s Beast, it was one of ours, the Brother Beast. I ran down into the yard words the Beast shouting his name, and He came right over. I took hold of his collar with an steely grip of a fucking Bear trap.

My Wife had ran directly to the back gate (instead of entering from the house where the Beasts are forbidden to go) and opened it to go see what she could find the fuck out. In opening the back gate she inadvertently let out the 2nd of our pair of Beasts (their a Brother-Sister Team who are the absolutely inseparable. The Girl won’t follow her Brother so she stayed put in the yard and lamented loudly pleading with her Brother to come the fuck back already.)  The Girl then decided to go rejoin her Brother and tore off like a fucking rocket into the dead of night.

My Wife ran passed me to corral the Sister Beast as I passed her with the Brother Beast in tow. I put the Boy Beast back into the confines of the backyard, and went to help my Wife. All of a sudden I hear her proclaim allowed that she has BOTH Beasts now. I holler back that I’m going to get some leashes to tie up the Beasts while I go inspect the backyard to see where the Beast escaped from.

I searched relentlessly checking the fence, the yard, and looked for any clues such as did he go under or over the Fence? Was the back gate to the yard eft unlocked? That kind of shit. Well after inspecting the backyard I was stumped. So I did the only thing I could and that was to take the gamble. The gamble being that if I had my Wife return the Beasts to the backyard that instead of waiting for me to leave and then escaping again, but rather the Boy would be stupid enough to just go for it right in front of me. Luckily it was the latter.

The dumb bastard trotted around to the opposing side of the house, walked over to the far side of the Air Conditioner, crouched down to the ground by the section of the fence that meets the Home Office, and started to crawl under it like some solider at boot camp running a obstacle course. I hurried over, bent down, and grabbed the Beast at the base of his large tail. As I retrieved the Boy Beast from out under the fence I informed my Wife I found his way out.

I then set to work fixing the issue the best I could with what I had available at 4 fucking AM. First I used some small fence stakes to secure the bottom of the fence like doctor Frankenstein stitching up his Monster. I the placed to long and rather weighty spare wooden beams at the base to help block the dig site/zone. My Wife and I went inside to catch our breath. Then the Mournful Howling started up again. I ran out front and again spotted our Boy bouncing around gleefully in the front yard without a care in the world. I managed once again to catch hold of his collar and wrangled him back into the backyard.

I immediately went to inspect the escape site and saw he had maneuvered the beams out of the way and tore up/out damn near every fence stake. So this time we decided it be best to just section off that small 5 foot long and 3 foot wide area until morning (when I could go to Home Depot and load up on cinder blocks to line the bottom of the fence with. Dig under that you big bitch is the motto) We had a massive and heavy piece of Ply Wood left over from the construction of my Art Studio I had held onto. This was perfect for the job of blockade. It was Long enough to block the space,  tall enough neither Beast could jump or climb over or under it, and it was pretty damn heavy.

My Wife and I were on the porch winding down off our adrenaline fueled frustration when we heard deliberate scratching of claws against wood. We both ran out back again and saw that the leaning Ply Wood wasn’t going to cut it by itself as the Boy Beast was creeping through the space behind it. I went and got the previously used beams and wedged them up against the Ply Wood, but we still need more. I found some old, solid wood barn type doors left over from the previous owner and I knew they had some serious weight to them so I leaned both of them up against the ply Wood, andante again my Wife and I retired to the House.

Yet again We heard the Boy Beast testing the viability of the Ply Wood wall and for what seemed like the 5,000th time went to go evaluate the escape situation. We came to the conclusion the Ply Wood needed yet MORE securing so I went and fetched some of the mock rout iron gates that came in sections down at the Home Depot’s gardening center. I used the pieces of gate the pin the Ply Wood to the Air Conditioner, and it held fast.

Finally my Wife and I got a few more hours of sleep before waking for work. My Wife went off to work as per usual, and I fired up my Lap Top. Then after about an hour or two I heard the Girl Beast’s cry of desperation. I ran to a back window and peered out only to see that fucking son of a bitch Boy Beast standing on the dirt road behind our home office happier than a Prize Pig in shit. I went out and pretended I was giving his Sister a treat (I always give the Beasts a treat before heading out anywhere.), and just like a sucker at a used car dealer he bought it.

I then called my Wife in a foul fit of anger (and exasperation) and told her what happened, and that outside of killing them or myself had come to the end of my rope. She instructed me to house the Beasts on the front porch until she got off work. She said right after she got off she’d head over to Home Depot and pick up the cinderblocks.

I followed her lead and stashed the Beasts on the front porch for the day. I couldn’t help it though I had to see how the hell the Boy had pulled off yet another escape. I was truly surprised at what I found. The Ply Wall was perfectly still intact. After further inspection I realized the Boy Beast I climbed up and over the Air Conditioner Unit to circumvent the Ply Wood, and then simple jumped down the other side into the separated section to dig under the fence.

That evening my Wife returned home with the cinderblocks, and I went about building a Fence Bottom Cinderblock Barrier. Before I laid the cinder blocks down I used a couple sections of the mock fence as anchors. I simply slid the legs of the section of mock fence between sections of the chain link thus pinning it to the ground. The Boy Beast did try and escape again to no vail, but not due to a lack of trying. All I had to due to secure that bottom section of the fence was to tweak the cinderblock’s formation. And all is quite on the Western Front as some would be apt to say.

Thanks for Reading,

Les Sober  

The Tale of the Small Town MothMan Mural

When We moved from the Southern Swamp to the Southern Country one of the advantages of the move was there were several structures located out back behind our new home offices. There was a large one car garage which We unceremoniously designated for the usual trivial shit like  Lawn Mowers, Various garden tools, Paint cans, and for a few months 2 large puppies (who now have their own Dog House complete with Heater and Air Conditioning)

The second structure was a run of the mill silver, 10 foot high, 20 foot long, 8 foot wide, sheet metal shed supported by an internal  basic wooden frame. When We purchased the property the shithead previous owners failed to give us among many other things the keys to unlock said shed. We could see through the 4 small windows (2 per side) and do a very general assessment. From what we could see the only real issue other than getting a new lock was the plywood floor was rotten in 2 separate places and would need patching.

Once We got the shed lock changed and were able to enter the structure things looked as if the shed was worser for the wear than We had anticipated. Even if it needed more TLC than We thought it was still a viable option to be My Art Studio (Yes I paint and Draw in a variety of various mediums such as CharCoal or Oil Paints. I have recently decided that it is at this point in my life I will be pursuing Sculpting as creating a 3 dimensional project is going to be fucking awesome and intense.) The first thing I did was load it up with all my various art supplies (Canvases, Paints, Brushes, Assortment of Project Materials etc.), but the floor fix would take time, and I have NO PATIENCE, NON AT ALL. Its A Virtue I was born without and I’m totally fucking fine with that.

It took less than a day before I was wallowing in frustrated boredom and thought to myself that if I couldn’t currently use the shed I could still in the mean time decorate the outside. I drove to the local hardware store in the neighboring town and loaded up on Spray Paint big time. I had no idea what I was going to Paint on the side of the shed so first I selected which side I would do first. The rightsize of the shed made a small alleyway between it and the garage so space to work was limited. The same was true of the back of the shed even more so as our fence came in even closer proximity than the garaged and the sheds right wall. That left me with the choice of either the front or the left side of the shed to choose from. I chose the left side since it was bigger and had the best area in which to work.

I walked around the to the left side of the shed and stood there just looking at the shed without a thought in my mind waiting. It didn’t take long before an idea popped into my head MOTHMEN/MOTHMAN. Now before the first fool blurts out how much they loved the movie “The Mothman Prophecies” shut the fuck up. True it was a some what decent movie, but the Mothman is not solely limited to the Point Pleasant, West Virginia 1967 Silver Bridge Collapse that killed 46 people. The Mothman or Mothmen if you will have been seen in different areas before an impending disaster strikes such places as Chernobyl circling Reactor 4, before 9/11 in New York City, The I-35 Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and The Swine Flue Outbreak in Mexico in 2009 for instance.

Now I don’t claim to believe or not believe in such things as UFO’s, Ghost’s, Monsters or Cryptozoology but it all fun food for thought because who actually knows, and all I’m saying is I don’t know. What I do know is I utterly LOVE UNDERDOGS and to me the Mothman is just that, The Underdog of Cryptozoology. The main debate surrounding the Mothman is simply this is the Mothman coming and bringing death/doom/disaster with it OR is the Mothman a supernatural being/creature that comes to WARN US of immediate impending danger?! I hold with the latter of the two believes myself. It all added up to a quick decision that the mural I’d Spray Paint on the side of the shed would be The Mothman. (Yet myths, legends and lore interest me to no end ever fueling the fires of my undying curiosity.)

I should take a moment to add that the left side of the shed faced the street in a small neighborhood in a tiny town located along the Bible Belt. For this reason and this reason alone I wrote “Mothman” across its chest because while the Mothman was enough to turn many a head I didn’t want (nor need for that matter) for the locals to think the new guy was painting Devils or Demons on the side of his shed.

In a few days the Mothman was finished and I decided the silver background was fucking up my visual of the Mothman. I thought about background colors to use (My wife suggested blue and I should have listened, but I was thinking Navy Blue not say Sky Blue) and some how I chose Orange. On top of using Orange for the background I used a VERY DEEP AND INTENSE shade only to realize when it was all said and done the Orange background made it look more demonic than I’d liked or intended. I didn’t want to change the mural so Mothman with Orange background and all remained vigilantly watching the passerby on the road for months.

Unfortunately upon a proper inspection of the shed, the shed was found to be structurally unsound. The floor was completely shot and would need total replacement. The supporting wood infrastructure was compromised beyond belief. This was apparently due to the fact the previous owner had tried to wire up the shed with electricity themselves and fucked it up causing a fucking fire. The fire had burned a majority of the roof supports right through so if you tapped on them with a hammer they disintegrated.

I called my contractor and informed him that the shed was shot and I’d need his help tearing it down so as We could replace it. 3 or4 days later my contractor showed up with a small handful of workers who set off demolishing the rickety old shed. It only took them a few mere hours to reduce the standing structure into piles of scrap.

That evening I was talking on the phone to my Brother in the Great Northern New Yonder and he asked what was new. I told him about the failing inspection of the doomed shed and that it had been torn down and hauled off. I also told him that for a split second I thought about asking my contractor if the Mothman Mural could be salvaged, but in the end I just let it go. My Brother started laughing, not in an at me type manner, but a “He hasn’t figured it out yet” kind of way. Once he paused to catch his breath I asked him what he found so fucking amusing about the whole ordeal?! I had spent all the time and effort to paint the Mothman mural just to have it crushed and carted away in the end.  He responded by saying that if I believed the Mothman was a Warning of impending danger, then painted one on the side of the shed, and then ultimately the shed met its demise then it followed my Mothman belief to a tee.

I couldn’t help laughing because he was dead right. A dilapidated shed, a Mothman Mural painted upon it, and 4 moths later the shed and the mural are gone having been destroyed in the dismantling process.

 

Thanks For Das Read,

Les Sober  

McCoy’s Artistic Chaos

 

Les felt exhilarated and full of self righteousness as he drove as fast as humanly possible towards the freeway. Adrenaline was flowing through his veins like water through a flood gate making his skill feel electrified. His senses were all on high alert. As Less banked a right turn onto the freeway the car to fish tailed slightly. His blue tooth began to ring. Goddamnit Les thought to himself, for he knew it was one of two people. It was either his manager Mortimer, or the goddamn cops, but he’d done a good job at avoiding the police. It’s the goddamn media you can’t out run those vultures constantly circling waiting for tragedy and death to strike. Begrudgingly Les switched his blue tooth on as he felt his undying rage he possessed flare up all over again.
“What do you want?!,” demanded Les angrily.
“Les it’s Mortimer, your agent”
“I know who the hell you are Mort, I sign your goddamn paychecks. Not to mention I pay you to be my MANAGER NOT MY MOTHER. I already have one of those, and I haven’t talked to her in eight years AND COUNTING!” yelled Les at the top of his lungs now enraged that Mortimer has called him in the first place.
“Les your on the news again, thats 5 times this month alone,” Mortimer said in a slow authoritative tone like a teacher or librarian.
“FREE PRESS MORTIMER FREE GODDAMN PRESS!” screamed Les as Les’s driving began to become as erratic as his behavior. Les was preoccupied at that moment punching his steering wheel. This was not at all satisfying Les’s explosive anger. The steering wheel was thin and circular so Les’s fists of fury mostly missed it only fueling Les’s animosity.
“Yes, Les free press is good” replied Mortimer condescendingly as he lost patience for Les’s outrageously unpredictable, temper driven, theatrics.
“Les you’ve really outdone yourself this time. I mean, a hit and run Les? seriously why? Why Les do you feel compelled to create not only fine art but unyielding chaos all around you?”
“DON’T be condescending to me you pion!” Les growled, as emotion started to replace logical thought. “That scum of the Earth deserved what he got, and what he got was hit by a car. I WAS DRIVING! SO WHAT?”
“Les for Christ’s sake you tried to drown a critic in the punch bowl. Then you beat another critic of yours with a lawn jockey. NOW you top it all off with a hit and run. Please do tell why, and how this monstrosity came to be.”demanded Mortimer as he took a long draw from a bottle of Pepto Bismol which he kept in a desk drawer for when dealing specifically with Les.
“I was at my opening Deviants of Art, and Phil Edwards from the New Yorker was there. I over heard Phil telling other patrons that my art is over rated and that this was due to my lack of classical training or some shit.”explained Less occasionally stalling as his mind came up with the words faster than Les’s mouth could say them. “This pompous twit had the gaul to dare criticize my work, my work is goddamn invaluable to the art world. My point, is this Mortimer, art is SUBJECTIVE. If art is SUBJECTIVE, why then do I need CRITICS to comment, judge and condemn, my splendid works? Well, I saw that piece of filth Phil walking to his car, and I jumped into a car the valet had just brought around. I crept up behind him, lined up the front right corner of the car with the back of his leg, pounded the pedal to the metal and clipped him with the car. I wasn’t trying to kill the son of a bitch, though being dead would be his greatest accomplishment. I just clipped him to scare the shit out of him, and send him flying through the air. I figured he’d then land and roll across the asphalt. I cannot turn off the fires of my creative passions just because I’m not painting in my studio, it’s not my fault that my artist passion doesn’t translate in real life.”
“You have a good point Les BUT the way you make it leaves a lot to be desired AND NOW you tell me in spite of the already bad situation that you ALSO STOLE A CAR.,” quipped Mortimer like a peeved off parent. “Well, Les what are we going to do about this? You’ve gone to far. I already called in Art Management’s legal team.”
“Fire them for all I care I detest lawyers they’re the art critics of the legal world. Your right Mortimer I’m done with this shit, the art, the openings, the critics. I’ve decided it is time to retire.” Les said sounding rather insane.
“Retire! I don’t care. I’d live longer if you did,” responded Mortimer “But your in real trouble Les. Assault is one thing. Grand theft auto and attempted vehicular homicide is a totally different animal all together.”
“I DON’T CARE Mortimer I’m headed for the Florida Keys. The police can just TRY and locate me in a chain of 1,400 islands. I’m not a moron I’m not going to the obvious spots like KeyWest or KeyLargo or whatever. I’m going to buy one of the little unknown islands to retire to” ranted Les with growing intensity.
“Well, then it was a pleasure, of sorts anyway, working for you and while you are an artist you need to learn to control your artists passions outside of your studio.” Mortimer said in honesty
“Thanks Mortimer for putting up with all my shit and bailing me out countless times,” said Les ambivalently “It’s five o’clock somewhere and thats where you’ll find me.”