Category: art

Shine A Light! Friday, Oct 14th at Portland Art Museum!

Once a year, the Portland Art Museum hosts Shine A Light, where peformance artists offer new ways of interacting with art.   This year, they are adding comedians, including Danny Felts, Whitney Streed, Jen Allen, Jimmy Newstetter, and myself, Virginia Jones.  It costs the regular $15 admission, or it’s free for members (only fifty bucks a year to join!).

There will be haircuts offered, dances performed, and beers brewed inspired by works from the collection.

  I will be leading a fictional art tour on the third floor of the Jubitz center. Focus will be on the post-1960 modern art collection.

Postscript: I had a really wonderful time telling art jokes.  I am considering recording my jokes for a podcast that can be downloaded and used in a walk-through tour. 

My friend CJ fell in love there, and got married and then divorced. I talked with a reporter who told me she would have loved to have quoted me more, but most of my jokes had the f-bomb in them.  They totally do!

It’s Getting Kinda Crowded

Photo By Roger Circle23

This amazing photograph is by the amazing Roger at Circle23 Photography.  (Please note: big chunks of his website are NSFW.)

“Dammit, Virginia” said Virginia, “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your dirty whore shoes off the coffee table?  I work hard to keep this place nice, and I could use a little help”

“Well, Virginia”, said Virginia smugly, “It’s my table.  I paid for it, and I guess I’ll ruin it if I want to.”

Virginia, meanwhile, sat whimpering in the corner, rocking back and forth and crying to herself.  “You guys!” she screamed.  “WHAT ABOUT VIRGINIA?”

All eyes turned to the coffee table.  There, six inches from Virginia’s foot, Virginia’s body sprawled across the table, one hand clutching a shot glass.  Her breath had been clouding the glass surface for the last few minutes, but the shapes of her condensed breath had been shrinking and slivering away until now, when no breath appeared.  Her lips slowly began to turn blue.

“Wait- wasn’t Virginia supposed to be watching her?”  asked Virginia.  “Where is she, anyway?”

Virginia, her finger shaking, pointed through the window, out to the sunny balcony, where Virginia was finishing a glass of Champagne, oblivious to the state of her charge.

“Well,” said Virginia, closing her magazine, “Can I have her bedroom?”

Blue-tiful Portrait by Andrea Coghlan

Listen, I know you like me, and I like you, and you wish we could be together all the time, but we can’t. This is a hard fact of life. You’ve got your job and your family, and sometimes I’m in telling jokes in a casino or a bar & grill. Enter the good people at the Coghlan mint: artist 2nd Coming made this picture of me and has made it available for the general public.

Toulouse-Lautrec Lady


In my all-consuming desire to make increasingly weirder and less accessible Halloween costumes, this year I went as a can-can dancer from Toulouse-Lautrec’s “At The Moulin-Rouge”, despite my extreme distaste for the film.

Monster Letters!


You can get your name in monster letters here! I love I-mockery at this time of year.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus

Recently Tivo recorded a film for me based on my interest in art stuff and Robert Downey, Jr., and so I watched a movie I’d never heard of called “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus. The main message that I took away from this film, loosely based on a book based on a rumor based on the photographer’s life, is

Q: How can one discover one’s own artistic voice and vision?

A. To truly discover oneself as an artist, but one must first befriend, fully shave, make love to, bear witness to the suicide of, and then wear a coat made from the hair of, a dog-faced boy.

Q. Do you mean that metaphorically? Like, broaden your horizons?

A. No. I mean it literally. Go find yourself a dog-faced boy.

Q. Okay…thanks.

It was weird, and coming from me that’s saying a lot.

Charlie Clark Portrait!

A web comic artist Charlie Clark put out an offer recently to draw ANYONE, and I said, well, I’m anyone- here is his portrait of me, only the second girl he’s drawn. I think I could probably put it in my passport. I like my nosering especially.