In Montana, when one has a warm day, one must take advantage of it. For me, a warm day is anything warmer than 32 degrees F.

Yesterday was such a day, and I spent it out in my (unheated) studio, organizing things and cutting mylar and canvas to size for painting later.

I also began experimenting with the old windows I use to frame my art. I may abandon the whole idea of using window frames to frame my art for a variety of reasons, including:

• the windows become the center of focus, not the art
• prepping them takes far too much time

I should not have to spend up to three hours on a frame getting it ready to accept art. That is time that could be better spent making art, working on marketing, being outside enjoying a hike, or any number of other, less tedious, more enjoyable things.

But I want to give the experiments a chance. I’ll write more about them as they progress.

For now, I wanted to give you a glance at my studio. Click each picture for a larger view in a new window.

So, Google’s holiday treat this year is a Google Earth countdown to Christmas. I opened the first clue today, and was dismayed to see this:

That’s right. Comic Sans. Good lord, what’s the world coming to when even Google uses this horrid font? Come on, guys.

The first gift of toys is in Beijing, China:

The toys were made using Google’s Sketch Up application. I have not been able to open any of the other clues, they keep crashing Google Earth. I’m just hoping that the rest of the clues do not use Comic Sans.