October, 2004

I'm about to celebrate my 46th birthday. I guess its about time for an update since the Bannerqueen's birth of about 6 years ago. Yes, call me a mighty lame-o at keeping up with this website stuff. Better late than never, so here goes...

Since becoming BannerQueen I have had the good fortune to meet wonderful people in the biz. In particular, JOHNNY MEAH has been a terrific source of inspiration. He is the living center of the carnival art form universe, not only in his banner art, but in his writing too. He is the real deal.

If you look around out there, it seems like there is a recent plethora of quasi sideshow banner artists doing the same kind of pop culture, pedestrian-themed twist on the old genre. But what you have to ask yourself when you look at any piece of art (as cliche as it may sound) is; "Does it have soul?" And as an artist, you might ask yourself; "Is my heart in this? Or am I a smirking poser?" So folks, don't be fooled by cheap imitations when you can get the original cheap imitation right here! OK, not so cheap, but definitely THE FINEST OF IT'S KIND!

Despite the fact that I do much (not all) of my art through commissions, my heart is certainly in it. Even my most "strictly commercial" (to quote Frank Zappa) jobs still have a yummy center.

On this path of supporting one's self with their art, I have been blessed with some interesting commissions. The most glamorous to date would have to be Bruce Springsteen and the East Street Band. That even got me a spot on TV! -Jeepers, and I don't even have TV at home. In the past couple of years my work has branched into incorporating personalized landscapes along with the tweaked out traditional sideshow framework I have been playing with. This is primarily due to my fortunate association with a wonderful woman in southern California. My most recent project: a landscape style banner for the Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, is nearing completion after around 9 months of living in my studio ... like having a baby! In terms of content and detail it is perhaps my most epic BannerQueen undertaking to date.

Oh, and since my last posting, my daughter grew up into a most lovely young woman. She now lives in Hollywood and is among other things an aspiring actress. Well why else would you live in Hollywood? I'm still in Massachusetts, but moved my studio and life from Amherst in 2000 to a little town in the foothills of the Berkshires called Ashfield. This beautiful, remote, tiny town was the birth place of (Mr. Hollywood) Cecil B. DeMille! -yes, there's a banner in the works in his honor. This place is so out there - we don't have any bank machines and cell phones don't work. It probably won't be like this for much longer, but I sure like it this way. And, just in case your wondering, my boyfriend's name is Chris, aka Professor Willy. He is the world's greatest (and only) smartist. That makes me a very lucky girlfriend. So that's all for now. I'll try not to take so long to update this site in the future.

If you have read this far ... a big fat juicy ((((((THANKS)))))) to you for looking things over so well.

Chop wood

Carry water...

Yep, that's me hard at work.

Hey, wadja mean by that???