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Posts tagged as “Studio Sandi”

Studio Sandi Sells Custom Sustainable Furniture!

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So, my wife's furniture business is finally kicking off! Here's the first ad for Studio Sandi's custom sustainable furniture, made from (almost) all eco-friendly, recycled and recovered materials:

Check them out at studiosandi.com , where more information will be added soon!

-the Centaur

Pictured: An ad for Silicon Valley Open Studios, showing four pieces of art and two pieces of custom furniture, almost entirely made from recycled / sustainable materials except for the resin tops.

Twenty Years Since Our First Date

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So I dropped in to Cafe Intermezzo near Perimeter Mall to get a little editing in on SPECTRAL IRON and realized that THIS was where I and my wife went for our first date, almost exactly twenty years ago! (I think we were sitting just out of view, not far from the chair you can see at the left of frame.)

I wasn't taking pictures as regularly then and selfies certainly weren't a thing, so the closest pictures I have of Sandi were from a photo shoot we did almost a year later when she needed reference images for some paintings she was doing. Many of those are just Sandi striking odd poses that corresponded to something that she needed to draw, but I think the one above turned out quite well.

Cafe Intermezzo will always hold a place in my heart as it's one of my best late-night thinking and writing places, but the one at Perimeter has an even more special place, as it's where Sandi and I, who had met at the Chamber a few weeks before, shared our first date and our second kiss.

Here's to another twenty great years!

-the Centaur

DEBRIS DREAMS is out!

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Thinking Ink Press’s first novel, DEBRIS DREAMS by David Colby, is out now on Amazon! I’ve described the story as “The Hunger Games meets Gravity”, but to get a clearer picture, here’s the teaser:

The year: 2069 The place: Sun-Earth Lagrange Point L1, 1.5 million kilometers above the surface of the Earth The objective: Survive!

Sixteen-year-old Drusilla Zhao lives in the Hub, a space station used by the Chinese-American Alliance as a base to exploit Luna's resources. Desperate to break free of the Alliance, a terrorist group from the Moon destroys the space elevator, space's highway to Earth. In a flash, Dru's parents are dead and she is cut off from her girlfriend Sarah on Earth. The Alliance declares war against the Moon, conscripting Dru and all the youth of the Hub. Dru is forced to become a soldier fighting in the lethal vacuum of space. Can Dru survive lunar terrorist attacks and find her way home to Sarah?

I’m especially excited that this novel features a cover by my wife, Sandi Billingsley! We’re working hard to bring you the next two books in David’s series, SHATTERED SKIES and LUNA’S LAMENT, so stay tuned - but in the meantime, check out DEBRIS DREAMS!

-the Centaur

Sandi’s Latest Art Show is Today!

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Saudi’s latest art show is today in downtown San Jose at 6pm! She’ll have 25+ pieces on display highlighting all aspects of her amazing creativity. The full details:

https://www.facebook.com/events/262434390823115/

PRESENTING THE ARTWORK OF SANDI BILLINGSLEY

Please join us for an evening of Art and Wine on Friday, November 4th, 2016 from 6 to 9 p.m.

1 Almaden Blvd, Suite 800 on the 8th floor

Please RSVP with Emilie at 408.287.6500 or emilie.slawinski@ampf.com

The site is the offices of Ameriprise Financial Services, but as far as I know, this is just an art opening - a series of events hosted by them for over a decade to support the arts in San Jose. Come check it out!

-the Centaur

Beyond the Fence

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Hooray! Thinking Ink Press has a new book out, BEYOND THE FENCE, a collection of short stories by Marilyn Horn! We’ve just got the proof now, but the proof was approved, and we’ll be putting the book into distribution SOON! Also, the art’s by my wife, Sandi Billingsley, and we got a very nice print from Fracture Me of the front cover art:

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w00+!

-the Centaur

Finnegan’s Firewall Flashcard

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Wow, something awesome just happened. Our publishing company, Thinking Ink Press, independently invented the idea of a postcard short - a flash fiction story on a postcard - and a new one has just been published which really ups the ante in the genre with its postmodern take on a postmodern book, illustrated with a mashup of The Book of Kells and a Nook!

Finnegan's Firewall: Awesome art by my wife Sandi Billingsley, great design by Keiko O'Leary, cool story by David Colby, all in a postcard! Right now you need to get this in person from Thinking Ink, but we’re working on making it possible for you to check it out!

-the Centaur

Life is More Important

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So after catching up for a while on Camp Nano, I fell behind again … because I and my wife traveled back to Greenville, South Carolina to assist my mother’s rehab from knee surgery, and frankly that’ more important than any amount of word count. The good news is, she’s doing very well, and came home from the hospital yesterday … the even better news is, that my wife and my mom patched it up after eight years of not speaking to each other, a feat which I didn’t think was even possible. What a wonderful trip!

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I lost my momentum the moment I hopped on that plane, and after that it was tough to get it back when I was caring for Mom - you can see the dent in the schedule around the 20th - and getting back on track after that required a full court press. But, in the past several days, I was able to do just that, and managed to pump out 2000+ words on all of the past five days, and double that on three of those. As of tonight, I am caught up.

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As for now, there’s two days left, which I could tackle at a normal pace—though I’ll likely try to finish by Friday so that I can chill out on Saturday and have a nice relaxing weekend.

Wish me luck.

-the Centaur

Beautiful Garbage

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I blogged this before, but now the formal description of Sandi’s art show “Beautiful Garbage” is up:

http://www.kaleidgallery.com/2016/03/beautiful-garbage-by-sandi-billingsley/

KALEID Gallery presents Beautiful Garbage a new feature exhibition for the month of April by Sandi Billingsley.

The goal of this body of work is to continue awareness of the need to recycle. Working in various states, in many homes and living with clients for months at a time, I am witness to the fact that it is still rare to recycle. In fact almost every home uses disposable cookware, cups, plates and utensils for every meal. Not only is this a questionable use of gas to transport the goods, and power to make the disposable goods but it all ends up in a landfill. I would like to encourage a change in mindset from a disposable to sustainable by creating beauty out of garbage.

Exhibition dates: April 1 – April 25, 2016
88 South Fourth Street (@ San Fernando), San Jose, CA 95112
Tuesday – Saturday, noon -7pm
Free admission

It will be showing through most of April, so go check it out!

-the Centaur

Mission Success

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So Sandi’s art show was a great success! I didn’t take pictures once people really started showing up since I was talking to people nonstop until after 11pm, but we had a big crowd at Kaleid Gallery last night!

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Many of Sandi’s pieces incorporated a spiral design which is a long-running theme in her art, but the real focus of the show was sustainability - all the pieces in the show were recycled, that is, made from materials rescued from the garbage.

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Everything’s made from styrofoam, paper, and other rescued materials - even the large trompe l’oeil piece in the middle, which looks like a stone gateway looking out onto a pond, is actually made from lightweight paper.

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Sandi also had five sculptures in the show (technically seven, but two of them were hangars for other art) including Petrified Coral 1 on the far right above, which was priced at $48,000 because it was owned by a private collector - me. I enjoyed the doubletakes made by people as they saw that price and then looked for that piece - but I was quite serious about the price.

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Sandi needed the piece to fill out the show - its colorspace and spiral motif really brought things together, and it fit perfectly on the wall - but it was an anniversary gift to me, the painting was originally priced at $2400, I wouldn’t let it go for ten times that - and Kaleid Gallery would get half. So I don’t want to see it go - but if you want to cough up ~$50K for it, I’m happy to buy Kaleid Gallery some new lights and Sandi a new truck with the proceeds (after Uncle Sam takes his cut).

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Many, many people came by, and we all stayed so late the gallery eventually had to kick us out (that’s a slight lie; the last four of us chatted with the docent for half an hour after he closed the outer door). I’d call that a big success.

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She’ll be showing through the end of the month. Go check it out!

-the Centaur

Sandi at Kaleid Gallery

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At Kaleid Gallery tomorrow at First Friday in downtown San Jose, my wife Sandi will be having an art show featuring a wonderful new series of petrified coral pieces, atmospheric shapes, and enigmatic masks!

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Please drop in and see this fascinating show … and while you’re there, support your local artist and buy something!

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-the Centaur