leftovers.

for the halloween party this year, i made a small batch of zombie fingers and strung them onto a hemp thread. the stubs glow in the dark as though infected and glowing with Solanum, the virus responsible for reanimation. the blood splatters are coated in a glaze to appear still wet. life-size and cast from my own fingers, i only have two left. i will offer one each, for free, to the first two people to show interest! email me at erin@erinruiz.com, or leave a comment on my blog and i'll get back to you.
game on!

ETA: all zombie fingers are accounted for. thanks to all for playing!

hallowe'en.

it's nearing the end of my favorite month and the house is all decked out with pumpkin guts, skulls, and candles. halloween is, in my opinion, the most interesting of holidays. i squeal with delight when i start seeing fake blood, plastic machetes and swords, orange lights and horror movies on sale in the stores. i, no doubt, disappointed my mother many a time because i never took as much an interest in some of the kinder holidays, more specifically her favorite: christmas.
she once asked me why i would never draw her a nice Victorian house. i told her, matter-of-factly, that the only way i was going to draw her a "nice Victorian house" was if it was being besieged by a horde of the living dead. she never brought it up again.
i was a big comic fan, and among my favorite was "tales from the crypt." whenever moms would take us to the Paperback Place to purchase secondhand romance novels, she allowed my sister and i to get one comic each. beth would pick up a "bugs bunny" or "the who cares bears" without fail. i'd chose a "tales from the crypt" or a spiderman. now, i only have one "tales from the crypt" comic left in my collection; its pages folded and cover worn. thumbing through it after rediscovering it after the move, i wondered two things:
one, how the hell did i convince my mother to buy me this fantastic piece of morbid horror? and two, where are the others??
if you had access to HBO cable back in the early nineties, you remember the tv show with the crypt keeper. though, i'm not sure how many of you will remember the "crypt keeper" released a few songs like "deck the halls with parts of charlie" or "the crypt jam"?
if you want to deck out your computer desktop with silver screen era monster awesomeness, go here.
(last year i created a batch of dismembered toes with toe tags as party favors for some of my favorite people. this year will be no different. for now, it will remain a secret, but i will be sure to post photos of this year's eerie creations soon.)
in other creative news, i just ran across these embroidered texts and thought it such a clever idea.

deestrackshun.

(the halloween project for my birthday guests this year, as seen above, was a collection of severed toes complete with toe tags. each guest was asked to pick out a toe, which then matched to a bag of "personal effects" of the deceased (really just a bag of goodies). i recommend attempting this project for anyone wanting to plan something cool for a halloween-themed party. you can find standard toetag templates online, but if you have Photoshop, watercolors, pens and ink, you can make each toe tag look very authentic and unique. the toes are a bit trickier, though, and require more skill. i made two casts of my toe with sculpey firm, then modeled each toe with either sculpey or sculpey firm, baked them, and painted them with acrylics. they turned out looking very realistic, almost to a disturbing point, but were met with disgusted delight. thanks to shavawn for the crime scene photography.)

in other news, it's been months since i returned from the desert and yet i feel part of me was left out there(so much for Leave No Trace)-- the part that was able to concentrate and work on, basically, everything.
the pile grows of things i need to finish up and i can't manage to find the time to work on them. the websites need updated, there's a gigantic italian mirror i've been restoring for work (a project that has taken months), friends to phone, emails and letters to write, art to make.. when you compile a list of to-do's that only seems to be growing, it can be hard to get inspired to even attempt tackling one. today is my first day off, it feels, in a while so i'm going to try to accomplish some of those goals today.
wish me luck.
also, look for an upcoming group show i'll be participating in at the basement gallery opening in january, along with local favorite bill carman, erin cunningham, and ben wilson- i believe. should be promising. i will try to post sneak peek photos of my art for the show as it progresses.