The Daily Delaney

Here is the interview I did on the  KVUE Morning News in Austin on opening day of the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. If it seems like I'm driving the interview, that's all to the credit of Melissa, the interviewer. When I arrived that morning, I was presented with a prepared script covering what I would be talking about. It was hokey and contrived, not to mention inaccurate. The staff brought me out to the studio to sit off-camera one segment early and when I mentioned that they were acting on the wrong information, the quick-thinking anchors, Melissa Gale and Olga Campos  actually heard me and then just asked a few questions and let me talk. What you're going to see here is Melissa then recalling all the points I brought up and feeding me the right questions to get the all the info out that we had just covered off-camera. She was able to completely change her game plan two hours  into a two and a half hour broadcast that had started at 4:30 am.  God only knows what t...

Each year, I come to Austin to do the 'Dillo hoping that i have enough work to get through the show successfully and each year I wind up doing more while I'm down here. This particular year I had hoped to be able to just show up and work the show for a couple of reasons. It was a shorter show and I know from experience that sometimes  my just being there to say "hello" to the guests will make the difference between buying and browsing. So I wanted to be there more.  Also, Lindsey and Gabi are really wonderful about letting me take over their porch and set up a road studio to work in and this year they had work done all over the house and everything looks really great including the porch with new storm windows and a freshly painted floor... and I kind of wanted to make a smaller footprint for their sake... but plans don't always work. I got a bunch of new work done up North, but I was working extra gigs in Seattle right up to my leaving, so I had to set up the sho...

Greetings from the Palmer Events Center! austin hit the mid-eighties today. Armadillo Day 7 has come and gone and i'm still standing (just barely).  The word all around is that it's a good show.  Everyone involved with the show is so much happier to be in this space. It's run by the same people who run the Convention Center, but it feels like a whole different world. I guess the  biggest difference is that people actually like to come here! Attendance is up and the guests seem much happier. Last night set a record for a Monday, kids music in the daytime and The Eggmen doing Beatles covers at night. Best Monday i can remember, but the Eggmen made me decide i don't want to be behind the stage next year... if the sound from the monitors was that loud, I hope the boys were wearing earplugs! I spent today making new pieces in the daytime and working the show last night. Marcia Ball and Ruthie Foster played this evening. I couldn't get close enough to get decent shots b...

The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar is now open! We've had a great first four opening days... Good music, great sales and very good attendance. The Palmer Auditorium, our one-time-only venue is just perfect for us... big but not cold, clean but not sterile, and expansive without being intimidating. There are great food trailers across the street and we can go outside for fresh air and sunlight and be out on a beautiful plaza. You can find me in Booth T-1 behind the stage.  I'm a little sleep deprived but that's no surprise.  Here are a few shots from yesterday...  My friend and superfan Dale hysterical with his new piece "The day my therapist went 'Tilt'".  Me and John trying to come up with a suitable explanation for Mrs. John about this purchase...  Ian Maclagan (looking strangely like Dam Judi Dench) and The Bump Band  Erin from Security amazed that she got away with going backstage to tell the guys in the previous picture to shut up because...

Okay... so I missed posting yesterday (note to myself: Surprise! This is hard work!) So here's a twofer from the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar! That big piece in the center was  a big departure for me. For one thing, it's much larger than most stuff I do. It's built on the bottom side of a recycled backyard barbecue grill. It's also more of a collage than a sculpture, filled with dozens of gems and buttons and sequins and weird found stuff, even a few old pins that I thought looked cool on it. I took a while to get it right. I kept pulling it apart and rebuilding it until I was happy with it. It was about the joy of the moment of creation... just on a universal scale. I called it "Big Bang" or "Center of the Universe" or something... I'm not sure anymore because once my friend Kristina saw it, she started calling it "The Smirky Universe". And that kind of stuck with me. It must have stuck with her, too. She c...