Frost on the pumpkins. Serious hard frost. So, we are officially pointing towards the cold weather. Brilliant trees, brilliant blue skies.
Bought five big $3. pumpkins and 4 $2. pumpkins from the famed Brownies farm stand south of Jacksonville on my way back from swimming at the House of Health. The Brownie empire had the pumpkins arranged by size and thus price...in the front yard...gloriously bouncing off the blue sky and rich, thick grass. We are ready to carve tonight. Tomorrow is the prep for Tburg's annual best attended holiday, Halloween...and with the biggest, scariest house in town, we try to keep up with the zealous decorators...and rarely succeed due to the scale of things here. We will put out over 50 lumieres, do some lightbulb changing in the windows of the house and get some music (I like the ponderous work from Philip Glass--R. has other ideas). We spotlight the gravestones that came with the property...and let people come in the front hall. Other than that, gummy eyeballs or juiceboxes are what we offer. I would love to offer hotdogs like an enterprising family in Pittsburgh did while I was growing up...but when you start running the numbers and the health issues that could surface, high fructose corn syrup comes to the fore. We easily get 300 kids in 3 hours. We like it as it is really nice visiting time with our neighbors and friends. People without kids come around to say hi. We may offer drinks as treats for the grownups.
Working on a series of small projects. Need to resolve another Christmas Card for a new animal client. Some logotypes for the Museum of Glass and a tee shirt. Need to get my parts and pieces together for the slide show for SU.
Octopus on the skull live from the sketchbook. Was thinking about Memento Mori and creating some lists (after looking at a german book on Andy Warhol's print editions). Warhol would do a group of pictures with an over arching theme--flowers, Mao, Nixon, the ten significant jewish people of the 20th century--and pick away at an idea through a body of work. I am thinking a list of symbols, a list of shapes, a list of epitaphs. This might be a nice go to when things get stale.