Long Beach Souk

Leslie and I did the swap meet again yesterday in Long Beach. Didn't have much luck and I wasn't feeling well. The stressful week and airplane trips to Canada have left me with a cold and pretty much broke down, not to mention very depressed.

A friend who I hadn't seen in ages said that I appeared to have a black cloud surrounding my head. Oh well, can't do much about the weather, can we?

I didn't have my camera with me but I should have. Took a couple of shots with my phone anyway.

There is a freak show component to the contemporary marketplace that I find both amusing and visually and artistically rich. I know that I sound rather like a repetitive bore when I tell you that I am now a member of the epidermal minority, being one of the oddly uninked. And the merch gets weirder and weirder, but hey, what else can you say at a time when Kid Rock is poised to be our next Senator?

A dealer who was also apparently a sidewalk preacher had this cautionary sign in his booth. Found out that Drew, a dealer that I go back decades with, to Pickwick, a really pleasant fellow, passed away last month from heart trouble. Once we were the kids, now we are dropping like flies.

Cam and I have played a game for years, in whatever show we are exhibiting in, let's find the ugliest painting in the room.

Easy winner yesterday with cranial girl. Of course, our picks are usually the first things to sell.

Those of us that scour markets, estates and shops for shiny objects are a bit like our friends the crows and ravens, vying to be the corvid with the sharpest eye and beak in the murder.

I actually bought a painting too, from a nice Mexican woman. I have always been a sucker for contemporary streetscapes, knew nothing about the artist until this morning.

It was signed Andrea Dern, verso. Turns out that it was painted by Bruce Dern's wife. I found one very decent auction record on her, guess she sells a lot of prints of her flower and rose paintings. Hot diggity. Side street, St. Helena, painted in 1994.

Maybe I will throw it in auction. Never know what you will find at the market.