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We want you to go to that website. Click on "Portfolio." Then, "Bio." That is where you'll see Marianne's bright and shining face. (We tried to copy and lift it here, but it wouldn't work.)
Let's start with chronological context. Marianne is still in her 20s. Holy cow. Do you know what she's already done?!?!?!
She got a business license in Newark, CA, at the age of 16 so that she could start a mural painting company with a friend. They did. They ended up painting a 50 foot mural for the city of San Bruno. Check out all their work at muralsink.com
Marianne studied at the California College of the Arts, and abroad in Marseilles. All the while, "making stuff." Jewelry. Fabric arts. Drawings. Photographs.
But what she always comes back to is painting.
While still interested in murals, this is what she's painting more of today. 
Fabulous cityscapes . . . typically in acrylic, but sometimes in oil. Marianne says she likes acrylic because it allows her to work on more than one piece at a time, skipping back and forth between paintings, moving quickly.  Because this woman is also about the business. The business of art. Getting work made, and getting it out in the world. She has committed to spending 50% of her art working time to marketing. Her website rocks. She has a great Facebook page. She tweets. Her etsy shop is awesome.
Including all these wonderful pieces . . . originals, prints, collage, and fabric arts . . . .
Oh, and she also does linocuts.
And makes jewelry.
And for all of 2010, she committed to making a fully-realized art piece a day, and chronicling it on her artproject2010 blog.
Can you tell that Bean Up The Nose Art is officially besotted with Marianne? For her amazing talent, and her drive, and her articulate visions. We hope that you will check out her site and find her work in a gallery near you. And support this wonderful woman and her gifts!!!
Thanks for playing with us here, Marianne. You most definitely rock.
Attention, folks!!!
It's time to make plans to attend Bean Up The Nose Art's Open Studios and Art Supply Garage Sale!!!
On four fabulous days -- May 7 and 8, and 14 and 15 -- Bean Up The Nose Art will be part of Marin Arts Council's spring Open Studios. YAY!!!
 We'll also be including a table (or two . . . or three . . . ) of mixed media collage art supplies that need new homes . . . .
Plan on stopping by on any of those four days, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. (But if you are looking for art supplies, come early on the first day . . . who knows how long those'll last?!?!?!)
All four days, we'll be offering lots and lots of Bean Up The Nose Art's goodies for sale.
For example . . . a fine selection of Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day cards!
Magnets!  Luggage tags!  Greeting cards for all occasions!  Business/credit card holders!  Checkbook covers!  Bookmark cards!  Find us at 256 Redwood Drive in Woodacre. There'll be several other artists out here with their own Open Studios, too (like friend and neighbor Kathy Piscioneri), so it'll be well worth a trip. Hoping to see as many of you as possible!!!! Mark your calendars . . . . * * * * ALL SALES on Sunday, May 8 (Mother's Day) will go to the Red Cross earmarked for Alabama tornado relief. Please buy generously!!!!!
Hey there! It's time for our weekly HOWDY to a new brick and mortar friend.*
This week, we give a big old Bean Up The Nose Art, "WELCOME!" to the very wonderful Antigone Books in Tucson, Arizona. (In fact, that's 411 N. 4th Ave. in Tucson, to be exact!)
Let us count the ways that this place is wonderful.
First . . . their green-ness. They are 100% solar powered. That is some commitment, folks!!!
 Second, their author- and community-oriented-ness. As one customer commented, "You know, every time I shop here, I leave feeling like a better person." Look at this turnout for the day Apolo Ohno came to the store.  Third, their awesome supply of books, gifts, cards :), bumperstickers, and all manner of other goodies.
Fifth . . . rocking owners Trudy and Kate, who've been doing this since 1986. 1986, folks! Can you imagine the love, vision and work that have gone into creating and maintaining and growing and changing this community resource?
Wishing that a road trip to Tucson was immediately possible. But since it's not, we appreciate the use of the photos from the store's website, and the great phone time that Trudy spent with us talking about the store.
Keep up the great work, Antigone Books! And thanks so much for carrying Bean Up The Nose Art's greeting cards in your store. YOU ROCK!!!!
* Chosen at random by the cool, free set-up at random.org. Check it out!!
Welcome to Part Two of our ten tips on getting ourselves unstuck. When we're creatively stalled. Because it happens :)
6. Ask questions.  Remember that we're the conduits for the creative things that want to flow through us. Respect your work by asking it questions. For instance, ask your main character, "And then what did you do?" Ask your painting which color it would like you to use next. Ask your song what key it wants to be sung in. And listen to the answers. It goes way better this way.
7. Tweet away. Get on Twitter. Follow what funny and smart people are saying, and start tweeting right along. Composing 140-character tweets exercises your creativity and writing muscles. It's a challenge to find ways to be funny, pithy and relevant in a very brief (both in time, and in word-length) space. Plus it's just darned FUN.
8. Log off.
 On-line sometimes can be too much -- input, stimulation, procrastination. Set daily internet time limits for yourself, and experiment with a whole day (or even two!) a week off-line. Give your creativity the chance to push its "reset" button, and give your ideas and visions time to sink in and marinate without on-line distraction. Just like in the olden days :) Read more about such wonderful blending of on-line and off-line time and life in this terrific book, Hamlet's Blackberry, by Bean Up The Nose Art's own Twitter friend, William Powers.
9. Commit to "pages."
 Draw. Write. Paint. Commit to doing a page a day of this for a week. Or a month. Or longer. Get your brain into this creativity commitment. To shake things up even more, try operating in a different artistic mode than you're used to. Paint if you're a writer. Write songs if you usually draw. Don't judge the product. Committing to your daily experiment is the point.
10. Change up your giving time.
 If you spend a lot of your time doing things for others -- family, friends, those in need -- try giving yourself a little more of that time. If you don't do much caretaking, try volunteering some of your time. Changing the pattern of your giving will shake things up inside -- affording you more time in which to create, or a new perspective from which to do so.
Hoping that some of these ten posted tips from Parts One and Two will strike your fancy and help you on the way the next time you're stuck. Would love folks to keep posting comments with their own tips for getting unstuck. As always, THANKS FOR PLAYING!!! Rock on!!!!
Sometimes, you just get stuck. It happens to all of us. For days or weeks or months, you're driving along happily in your creative project. And then one morning, the battery's dead. There's no juice, no spark, no energy to move the project along.
Our goal as creators, of course, is to keep things moving right along. We recharge the batteries and get our projects back on the road. Here are the first five of ten tips to help you do that. (Five more coming later this week! Stay tuned!)
1. Let yourself stink.
 There's nothing like the pressure to create perfect (or even really good) art to bind up your creative juices right up. When you get stuck, back away from "serious" and give yourself permission to create something really awful. Really. Be silly. Wreck something. Play.
2. Play inside a thesaurus.
 Treat yourself to an actual hard copy of the actual Roget's Thesaurus. Thumb through the pages. Savor the words. Get lost in all the ways one can express "azure." Get caught up in the language of numbers, time, emotion, geography. String a few random words together and feel your heart sing.
3. Grab your camera. Your digital. Your iphone. Your full-on fancy-pants photographer kind. The point is to take pictures. Do it with abandon. See something, and photograph it. See something else, and photograph it, too. Free up your eye to see and snap images and movement. Quickly. With a sense of abandon. There are no sorts of results required.
4. Go outside.  Take a hike anywhere -- in your neighborhood, on a mountain, in a city center. Clear your head of its worrisome cobwebs by breathing in and out as you're exercising in the fresh air. Look at the architecture or the trees. Listen to what people . . . or the wind . . . are saying.
5. Write them down.
 Make a habit of having a way to record your creative ideas the minute they pop into your head. And DO record them the minute they pop into your head. They LOVE it when you do that! When they see you taking them seriously, they will come back and visit you again and again. And they'll tell their friends to come visit you, too.
Check back in later this week to get five more tips. And post a comment below to let us know what methods you use to jumpstart your stalled creativity . . . . we'd love to hear!!!
Here's what we love best about art play dates with our friends:
10. Sitting outside in the sunshine.
9. Snacking on York Peppermint Patties and drinking lattes.
 8. Hearing folks share about their lives and creative endeavors.
7. Playing with glitter.  6. Glitter.
5. More glitter.
4. Finding out that your friends have awesome ideas that you never thought of for do-dadding up their pieces.  3. Checking out the fabulous finished products.
  2. Getting that warm and fuzzy feeling that making art with your friends makes any day an even better one.
1. Finding out that your friends are even more super-duper funny, artistic, kind, generous and cool than you knew before.
 Thanks to you fabulous friends who came out to the Art Day at Beach House Style on Saturday!!! Thanks for braving the wind, and for spending weekend time in art world with us. So appreciate you guys and all of your terrific jobs on your goodies!! YOU ROCK!!!
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Bean Up The Nose Art says, "HOWDY!!!" to you, our newest brick and mortar friends!
Sloat Garden Centers in . . .
Kentfield, CA (700 Sir Francis Drake) Mill Valley, CA (401 Miller Ave. and 657 E. Blithedale Ave.) San Francisco (2700 Sloat Blvd.) San Rafael (1580 Lincoln Ave.)
Antigone Books, 411 N. 4th Ave., Tucson, AZ
Garden of Enchantment, 7094 East 5th Ave., Scottsdale, AZ
And thanks to you, sweet Papier in Novato, CA, for your great re-order this week!!!
See this SUNNY, FUN place?
 It is the wonderful Beach House Style, at 779 Center Blvd., in Fairfax, CA.
And we want SUN there this Saturday, April 16, from 2 - 4 p.m.
Because, weather-permitting (please no rain please no rain please no rain), Bean Up The Nose Art is hosting a FREE ART DAY at Beach House Style!!!! Yay!!!! In celebration of spring and growth and gratitude. (And getting our taxes done. Phew.)
Designed for adults, and kids over 10, we'll be playing with paper, stamps, paper-punches, glitter and pens . . . .
 . . . to make an easy-to-do art project/gifty that you can take home with you!!!
Come on down and do-dad up one of these pretties that we've got started for you . . . .   Hoping there is no rain -- because this is an outside-only event. And hoping that we'll see you there from 2-4 p.m. YAY!!!!
Welcome to our new weekly feature . . . highlighting one new brick and mortar friend picked by random.org . . . and this week, it's . . . STELLA'S ON 21ST!!!!
Located in Portland, OR, Stella's is -- according to its very own and fabulous website -- "The Brightest Spot on NW 21st Avenue." Which seems just right:
 What a great-looking, happy place! Shop owner owner Robyn (third from left, below) describes her shop as offering "gifts to celebrate life and home." Her favorite part of the job is her chance to interact with customers and staff, all "really lovely people," who are always the bright spot of any business day.  And Buttercup the Wonder Dog is another good thing.  Stella's has been offering its community a great place to find great things for over 10 years. Way to go, Robyn and staffers! Stella's sells a whimsical mix clothing, personal accessories, home and garden items, and bath and body goodies. Robyn chooses items that have "lots of color and fun."  And items that are unique and lift us up.  Including books and cards :) Yay -- cards! Including Bean Up The Nose Art's cards.  Thanks a bunch, Robyn and everyone at Stella's on 21st. Your website is awesome. Your social media presence is top notch! (We hope people will click here and visit you on Facebook!) Bean Up The Nose Art is honored to be a part of the coolness that you bring to your community. ROCK ON!!!!
(All photos curtesy of Stella's website. Go there. It rocks.)
Bean Up The Nose Art's Twitter buddy @LisaKilian is a terrific writer. Her blog, " What Not To Do As A Writer," is a go-to for sure. Her posts are perceptive, spunky, hilarious, smart, irreverent -- and ALWAYS encouraging us to "Go for more!" in our art lives.
A recent post, " Fearing Unoriginality," explores originality in art. Lisa reports that she was collecting and editing posts from staff members at work for blogs. One staff member nervously told her about his piece, "I feel like I'm saying something important, but everyone has already said it before."
 Ain't it the truth?  Lisa's awesome rumination ( go read it! it's great!) leads to her conclusions that -- so what?!?! It's really important that you say it anyway. Because, "chances are, someone is going to like what you have to say even if they've already heard it before." Because, "(p)eople like what they like because it speaks to them in some way." And no matter what, what you have to say "still adds to the collective voice, and it still changes everything."  Totally.
Like, how many times have we seen paintings of flowers in a vase? And we still love them. Cherish them. Take photos of them and post them for others to see. Feel compelled to paint our own.  Even though this exact subject -- flowers in a vase -- has probably been painted 12,000,000 or so times. SO WHAT?!?!?!?!
And once we get over the fear and constraint and discomfort we feel in thinking we should not try because it's already been done before . . . let's also ask ourselves, "Why does that even matter?"
Because, seriously, why does it?
Where else in life do we constrain ourselves like this? Where someone's having done or seen something before means we don't cherish the opportunity to do it ourselves again? People fall in love all the time. Have children all the time. Start new jobs all the time. Travel to Paris all the time. We don't think, "I'm not going to do that, because it's been done already" about those things.
Nope.
In fact, even when WE have done those things already in life, we still -- often -- want to do them again. And again.
Because even though there really is nothing new under the sun, things FEEL new to us all the time. THANK GOODNESS.
So, we vote for taking art out of the "special" box in our heads -- where subjects have to be new, pristine, never-before-imagined. Let's get over it. We don't put that sort of limitation on ourselves in other areas in life. Why should art be any different? Let's take it out of that special, rarified, too-hard box. Let's get on with it. It does not matter that people have already painted flowers in vases. Paint your own anyway. They matter. ROCK ON!!!
Hey there, budding arts and crafts entrepreneur! Here is the second round of five tips in our posts about how to begin marketing your art. (For the first five, scroll on down two posts . . . or click here.)
6. Get yourself a t-shirt.
 Upload your art business' name and logo to a shirt-making company like Zazzle or CafePress. Buy that shirt and wear it while you're running errands. Seriously. People -- like shopkeepers! -- will read your shirt and ask you what it's about. Which is exactly how Bean Up The Nose Art got its wares placed with one of its very first brick and mortar friends.
7. Get involved with your local art group.
 Many communities have geographically-based art groups you can join at little cost. Typically, they have great resources to link you with other artists, venues that are looking for art, upcoming fairs and shows, and they often provide discounts to local art supply stores and museums. Many also have their own galleries and shows that will carry your work. Yay!
8. Get cracking on your own art garage sale.
 Advertise and have an art sale just like you would a garage sale -- held at your place, with signs posted in your neighborhood, on Craig's List, and anywhere else you'd be telling people about a garage sale. Also use the sale as an opportunity to clear your studio of items you don't use any more. Then let everyone know this is an "Art and Supply Garage Sale" and you'll get even more people to attend.
9. Get on the teaching circuit.  Pick a project from your art life that you'd like to teach in a two-hour class . . . a how-to lesson that is easy and gratifying for you to teach, and for others to learn. Pitch it to a venue where you'd like to hold the class. A home decor shop? A gift store? A frame store? A preschool? Advertise on your Facebook Business page, on your blog, and ask your social media support group to do the same for you. Have the class. Have some fun!
10. Get brave and approach brick and mortars.  Voila! Now you've got a shop on etsy.com. You've got a burgeoning social media presence. You know from your art garage sale and your teaching that people like your wares. Now go ahead and ask the owner or buyer of your relevant local shop whether she'd like to carry your products! Know the rule-of-thumb that the wholesale price you charge the shopkeeper is typically 50% of your ware's retail price (what the shopkeeper will charge customers, and what you should be charging on etsy). You can also try consignment sales.
GOOD LUCK to you!!! We here at Bean Up The Nose Art know you can do it -- because if we can, so can you :) After all . . . YOU ROCK!!!!
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That's not all. Marianne took metal shop in high school -- to the chagrin of her counselor, who told her that as the only girl in the class, she should take home economics instead. Marianne refused . . . and learned to do metal work. Sculpture. And she paved the way for her younger sister to become the SECOND girl to take metal shop. Marianne gleefully reports that now that her sister is grown up and going to have a baby, Marianne will get the acetylene torch back. 
Because this woman is also about the business. The business of art. Getting work made, and getting it out in the world. She has committed to spending 50% of her art working time to marketing. Her website rocks. She has a great Facebook page. She tweets. Her etsy shop is awesome. 
That's not all. Marianne took metal shop in high school -- to the chagrin of her counselor, who told her that as the only girl in the class, she should take home economics instead. Marianne refused . . . and learned to do metal work. Sculpture. And she paved the way for her younger sister to become the SECOND girl to take metal shop. Marianne gleefully reports that now that her sister is grown up and going to have a baby, Marianne will get the acetylene torch back. 
