Not available in the gift shop, yet…

If you know my art, you know I love things in grids. A Rubik’s Cube with my images seems inevitable. I’ve seen more than a few of these art cubes in museum gift shops and yes, they are kind of kitschy. I do confess to buying a Gilbert and George cube on sale. But as their work is often in grid form, that Rubik’s Cube has my approval. And it was on sale, cheap. A few months ago I attended an art fair and where an artist had some hand-made Rubik’s Cubes. He shared his trick with me. You basically buy Rubik’s Cubes cheap and then print out your own work and replace the color squares. A certain large shipping company has great blank, adhesive labels that fit in a printer and officially are not for this purpose. And where would we be without Japantown dollar stores and knock-off Rubik’s cubes? So here it is, the 2011 Project on a Rubik’s Cube. If you’d like one, you’ll have to wait for the big Tofu museum show and always remember to exit through the gift shop.

December 23, 2011 – Snow Globes

You have to be careful with snow globes. Mom returns from Florida and you get a few as a joke. You leave them out and people assume you collect them. Suddenly you have 50 in the kitchen. Then you take them to the office and fill the windowsill with snow globes. Two years later and there are 200 of them. You even select an apartment because an old doorway has been closed off and turned into a curio shelf. More, then more.

Friends come by, they schlepped that snow globe all over Europe in a backpack or suitcase. You know they check to see that it is still there. They get dusty and they need to be refilled with water. You begin to resent them. They end up boxed up in some friends’ basement for a few years. The friends get ready to move and you go deal with them and go through the boxes. You label the boxes with a magic marker with the words - Tofu’s stuff to sell. Some Haight Street denizen sneaks into the basement/garage when the door is open and the two boxes disappear. Imagine their disappointment when they got a few hundred nearly worthless snow globes.

The collection is gone. Hurray!

December 16, 2011 – Paint by Numbers

This stage of the 2011 Project is almost at the end of the road, or to use a paint-by-numbers metaphor, nearly all of the 365 pieces have been filled in. And no, I never did paint-by-numbers as a kid. In more recent years, I received a few kits as gag gifts. There are some people who collect paint-by-numbers paintings, and I get it. There is something post-kitsch cool about them. But I resist the urge to start collecting another thing, so I only own one. I have a horse head, paint-by-numbers portrait hanging in the bathroom. I bought it at my favorite antique mall in Bakersfield – they always have a good selection.