The Daily Delaney

...no, it's not another sale... I'm really just cleaning my house today. Do you have any idea what kind of a mess I make when I'm working away in my studio? I completely trash the joint.  It looks like the Terminator came back through time with the intent of killing Liberace. It looks like a train wreck during morning rush hour for a bunch of people heading to work at Cirque du Soleil. It looks like the aftermath of a bar brawl in the middle of Pride weekend! Piles of rhinestone chain, bits of clay, bags of sequins spilled out where they'll stick to the wrong thing, boxes of stuff that I didn't find the one thing I was looking for in but maybe I'll need them in a little while. Sharpies to paint charms with, little glass beads, tiny hands, rolls of wire, action figures that look like they just got back from a tour in a combat zone. It gets really bad when I'm in between art shows and half my display stuff is packed up for the show and the other half is placed...

... here's another "Social Butterfly"! "Twilight" available here... Today was a good day to stay inside and finish projects (Seattle can't decide if it's going to have an Indian Summer or an Eastern European Winter). There were moments of sunshine interrupted by long stretches of overcast bluster. So I cleaned 400 emails out of my inbox and finished this piece, a commission from my friend Eileen -  "Let's put our heads together" This one is mounted on one of my new pin stands.  I reduced the height of the stand by almost half  and discovered that it actually emphasized the piece the way I've always wanted it to.  Finally!

So... This past Friday evening, we performed our musical, Meet The Biscottis, down at the Spirit of Washington Events Center in Renton. I always say that every time we do it in a new location, we have to reinvent the wheel. It's so true... sound changes, lighting changes, timing changes, blocking changes.  Do we have to work around waitstaff as they run food out to the tables? do we have to run it out ourselves? Do we have to compete with noise from the bar or the street outside? Script changes? Does this bit work anymore? Did that bit ever work? Why don't we try this? Does the management hate us? Does the management like us? Does the management know we're trying to do a show here?  This was our second show in this space... in August, we started working with this group (old friends from our days on the Mystery Train) and they really did a wonderful job for us... built a stage (well, actually they rented it but it was there!), set up a dance floor so we wouldn't beat o...

My Go-To Girl, my right hand in Texas since 1996 is having a Birthday today. Krickett Grimes, Mother, Friend, Nurse,  Life Support and Fake Harley... I couldn't do it without her!

Okay, so to make a long story short... my stepfather, Bob Kelly, lived in Naples, Florida. There he had a wonderful girlfriend named Phyllis. Phyllis has a daughter named Carri and Carri has a daughter named Erica. For most of Erica's life, Bob was the most stable male figure around. Helping with school projects, watching her in plays, taking her to lunch, just generally being there, acting pretty much like a grandfather... except he wasn't. Sort of like the way he was to me, like a father... but not exactly. So what is Erica to me? My stepfather's stepgranddaughter? My little sister one floor downstairs? I don't know either! But she's sweet and talented and doing plays and making music and I'm really proud of her. Here's a video of her...

  I love movies. I love a good story. I love  powerful images. I love being fooled by a clever technique and an elegant effect. I love characters that know who they are and act accordingly. I love characters that figure out it's time to change and do. I love to be surprised. I love to be touched. I love to get to the end of an improbable fable and still be able to say "Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice?". I love a guy in a rubber suit... well, most of the time... (Godzilla... yes,  Joel Schumacher's version of Batman? No). I love gunslingers and swashbucklers and classic monsters. I love slapstick and stop motion and gangsters and hardboiled private eyes. I love Billy Wilder and Howard Hawks and Busby Berkley.  I love Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff and Buster Keaton. I love Tom Hanks dancing at FAO Schwartz and Antonio Banderas dancing on top of a bar with a guitar that fires like a shotgun. I love Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, and Charlton Heston. I love Atticus Finch,...

This is a piece commissioned for a certain firefighter down in Ariziona. Recently, he took to playing the bagpipes... His wife asked me to do a piece about playing the bagpipes... and bagpipes are funny looking enough on their own. I didn't feel like I  needed to do a terribly realistic rendition of them. My work is more about how a thing feels when you're in the middle of it than how it really looks. So I decided to make the pipes part of the person. It was only when i was done that I realized how much the piece looked like my favorite film comedian...   Doesn't Harpo  look like he's plying the bagpipes here?