Kathy Nida

I have this thing rolling around in my head.

Background: I actually went to college (gasp!) and have a degree in art. Yeah. I also have a couple other degrees that make it legal for me to teach science, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. Shockingly, I had to avoid my parents for some part of my college career because well, they were my parents and I was trying to figure out who I was. So I slept on somebody’s floor over Spring Break one year because the dorms were closed, and I painted in their hallway. I did not paint their actual hallway…I bought a piece of plywood and I painted on it. Actually, I think I only bought 1/2 a sheet of plywood, because it was 4 feet square. I painted it with white paint and then I drew on it with a Sharpie. (Yes, I have been drawing on white things with Sharpies for that long…I think I was 19 at the time.) I had a professor who painted in enamels and I was fascinated by the shine of them. His name was Tom Jenkins. At least, that’s what I remember his name being, although I can’t find him anywhere online, and he was definitely a known artist at the time and somewhat after (at least within the time frame of being able to search artists online). Anyway, if I could find a link, I’d put it here. I wanted to try enamels (crazy eh) so I did.

Man, they were a pain in the butt. I realized a lot of things in college:

1. I am an artist…always will be.

2. I am not a painter.

3. I will never finish this painting.

The 4-foot-square piece of plywood stayed with me via my parents’ garage, then moved with me and my new husband to San Diego, hung out in the garage, then in a “studio” of sorts (one of those add-on patios that isn’t legally part of a house and is never really sealed properly). At some point I think it got termites. Or rot…hard to say. So I photographed it. It was around this time that I actually started renting a real-live studio in downtown San Diego (cheap rent then…now it would be horribly expensive, and probably much safer). I redrew the drawing on paper (I can’t find the original, but it must be here somewhere), at about 18×24″. I was a screenprinter by then, and believe it or not, in those days, I did color mockups. Here’s the color mockup for the screenprint:

Sometime around then I also cut up the original piece of plywood and put it in the trash. I have photos somewhere. I think I realized I would never finish it in that incarnation.

I made the screenprint, although I was never really happy with it…

And it got into a number of shows and was shipped all over the US for those shows. I named the piece 4×4 Plywood, which always confused the heck out of people. I exhibited locally during ArtWalk (the old version of San Diego’s artwalk, where you went to people’s studios). The screenprint normally hangs in my laundry room, but needs to be reframed…the glue is slipping that holds it in place.

The other day, while searching my portfolios for a print I did back in yikes maybe 1995? I found the mockup and thought…hey. That would make a cool quilt.

OK, wait a minute. I’m not into repeating myself because I’ve run out of ideas. I certainly have plenty of new stuff I could make. There’s no need to make this one again. A little voice says “maybe it was always meant to be in fabric. Maybe it could be really cool. You should try it.”

I’m not giving in to the voice yet. Still thinking about it. I don’t need more projects right now.

And I found this color mockup too…

Seismically Unstable, another print in existence that was in art shows. You think shipping quilts is a pain…you should try framed art. Expensive!

And I found the original drawing to Nervous Breakdown, drawn during lunch hours at my then job as a technical editor and marketing hoohaw in response to some of my coworkers. It became a print. It has cats in it too…there’s Juni…

And Willow and probably Rusty or maybe Kiwi with the tear in her eye. Rusty and Kiwi have been dead (coyote meals) for a long time. That’s when I stopped letting the cats out.

I don’t know if I want to remake these in fabric. I don’t know if there’s a point to that. I remember a painting class when I was in college one year in Wales, the painting instructor was telling us that we would run out of ideas and we should draw everything we think of, and I argued that my brain edits half of the crap out, and he said I should draw those for later when I couldn’t come up with anything new. Huh? Dude. I still don’t have issues with that, and I’m at least 10 years older than you were when you told me that. Maybe you just sucked on the art front. About 2 weeks after my knock-down, drag-’em-out fight with him (in front of all the other painting students), he eloped and quit the job. Oops. I wonder if he’s still painting???

So I wouldn’t be making them out of any lack of ideas. This is working in a series in a really Long and Drawn-Out Fashion. Not sure I want to go there.

What is interesting is that this style I apparently have, well I’ve had it since college, maybe before, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I latch onto different symbols (although the Christmas lights and cats and lightbulbs have been there since the late 1980s), but the method of cramming as much into the picture as I can is definitely still in play. I guess I’m a mature artist now (stop laughing). Don’t worry…I won’t be turning any of these into quilts any time soon. No time to spare at the moment. But I might redraw (3rd time’s a charm!) 4×4 while I’m at the mountains next week. Maybe I’ll finally get it right after 20 plus years.