Happy Easter!(to those celebrating)

This is what happens when I brainstorm new ideas for paintings:

There's no doubt that the Boston Marathon will be extra special this year after the horrible events that occurred last year. It's still hard to believe that anyone would intentionally do what those bombers did, but they did...

I dealt with my grief of all of it by running, writing, doing stand-up and painting. Those sorts of things are always what I use as my therapy. :-)

Here's a painting I did last year:

It's supposed to represent the spirit of Boston.

#ThrowBackThursday

In the tradition of the throw back thursday that goes on on facebook and twitter,
I'm proud to present to you this amazing rap song I wrote in 4th grade.
Try not to be overwhelmed by my mad rap skillz! ;-)


Yo my name is Val
And I live in Saugus, MA
I got a brown house
And it is the max
Say just yesterday I was chillin in the street
When a big red beet came and ran over me
I was flat
Flat as could be
Then to my surprise I died and came back

I buy most of my art supplies at Artist and Craftsman in Saugus.
I stopped by recently to pick up a stretched canvas and saw some blocks of wood at the register.
I had never painted on wood before so I grabbed one and thought it would be fun to try painting on it. It turned out the blocks of wood were actually part of a promotion where the store was asking customers to paint a cupcake on the block of wood(after buying it) then bring it back to the store so it can be hung for about a month and be entered in a raffle.

So I did that.

Painting on wood is little different than a canvas surface. I really liked it and it was easier than I thought but I think I need to do it more often to get used to it and improve.
I'm glad I tried!

This is what I did:


Stop by the store and check it out in person if you want(it's only 4"x4"). It's hanging amongst other cool and interesting cupcake on wood paintings that other artists did.
The store is on the south bound side of route 1 in Saugus in that plaza that has a Starbucks and Skechers outlet.

Towards the end of 2013 I was asked if I would like to put my paintings up in an art gallery and said, "yes". This all happened via facebook. As a result,  I ended up having my 1st ever art opening!
It was called,  Ridonkadonkdonk!(Val Kappa's Art Show). 
Here's a picture from outside the gallery:

Just having the title of my show on the front window of the gallery was exciting enough for me but to actually have my paintings hanging there and hosting a comedy show for my opening on top of that was pretty awesome.

My show featured  26 of my paintings and stayed hanging at the gallery from 11/30/13-1/4/14. The opening got a really good turnout and I sold a few paintings. The opening was also a comedy show that I hosted that featured 4 comedy friends and went really well. I pretty much never host shows. I think before this I had literally only hosted 3 or 4 comedy shows in my comedy career. For some reason I've always either headlined: doing 45 minutes to an hour, featured: doing a half hour, or just done guest spots for 5-10 minutes for the purposes of fine tuning newer material and "just cuz".

What a fun way to end 2013!

I can now cross "have an art opening/solo art show at an art gallery" off my bucket list! ;-)

I guess I better think of some new bucket list ideas...:-)