Probably Not Enough Times…

Well that was a busy weekend. I’m still tired from it. I may have been semi-productive around all the things I had to do. I dropped a quilt at a gallery for a show that opens Saturday. I went to another exhibition closing reception and then pulled all 6 of my quilts down and packed them into the car to drive home. I was there for the artist panel, which I enjoyed, but I did work through it.

Writing and sending our team’s weekly email. And then grading warmups and test corrections. I was supposed to be on a Zoom from 3-4 and totally forgot. It’s fine. Hopefully they recorded it.

It was a nice panel. I’m always up for listening to fellow feminist artists.

I cut stuff out Friday night…that’s the moon. Ironically, after the shitshow of a day I had on Friday, I found out the full moon was Saturday.

Everything makes sense now.

Saturday night, after the Man’s dad’s birthday dinner (and 3 hours of canvassing for the local school board and another 3 hours of grading).

And then last night, I stayed up late to finish.

Almost 11 1/2 hours. Ready to iron together? Well, no…it’ll take an hour to sort all the pieces into 100s for easier ironing. So that’s tonight. Am I behind my schedule? Well, yes, I usually am. Can I catch up? We’ll see. I’m buried in grading; hence the grading at an art event and every afternoon/night this weekend. Never stops. But I’m closer.

Friday night, Bowie needed to be close.

And then, so did Simba. Well, he always needs to be close.

It’s hot again here, although we got a tiny bit of rain last night…leftovers from one of the hurricanes off the coast. There’s like four of them rotating around out there, throwing shit our way, but mostly hot and muggy shit instead of decent rain.

The Man’s dad turned 89 this month, so there was a dinner for him.

Not actually in Venice unfortunately.

This is too true.

I’d like to thank my brain for all the overthinking I do when I’m trying to fall asleep. I have a couple of potentially stressful conversations that need to happen today with other adults at school. One I think will be OK. The other one is defensive as shit and there’s no way it will go well. So that’s fun. Imma try anyway because I’m a mature adult who knows she has to work well with other people. Crazy, huh?

Otherwise, there’s like two hours of staff meetings, plus reviewing PE/KE for the roller coaster project, plus grading ten tons of stuff and buying a bunch of other stuff and trying to fix the sprinklers AGAIN and packing quilts to be shipped and/or delivered. Pro: got into four shows. Con: all the packup, dropoff, and pickup. Then grading and cooking and book club (timed dinnermaking wrong, didn’t I?) and then sorting fabric. Probably more grading. Did I mention grading? Yeah. Probably not enough times.

Be an Adult

Hello Friday…before weekend of chaos. Seriously, this weekend is a shitshow. Already looking forward to next weekend. Today, kids will need to finish a unit packet and turn it in, and then actually be mature enough to evaluate their own work and progress and complete missing work. It’s babysitting hell. But I brought it on myself. I can monitor and bug the shit out of them with our monitoring app, or I can ignore that they’re all on games and Instagram and get some work done. It’s exhausting either way. Like sir, your progress report is available to your parents today and you don’t want to do anything about your F in effort? Interesting.

Meanwhile, I did test corrections at lunch yesterday and 48 kids signed up. I had every chair in the classroom full. Only 40 showed up, luckily. And now I have to grade those. That’s 2 hours probably. On top of this week’s tests, which I barely started, and the packets they’re turning in today. I couldn’t deal with any of it last night. I graded two classes of homework after my stitching Zoom. I finished my book (it was at 83%). And I cut things out for two hours. I should be able to do that.

Anyway. Here’s Wednesday night’s trimming…

I forgot to take the official setup photo last night. I even set it up but then took a photo of the dog instead. Here’s last night’s progress (taken this morning).

Starting to see progress there. Left side is done; right side isn’t. I wanted to be done this weekend. I don’t think that’s possible. Here’s the dog picture though.

The boychild is gone a lot in the next three weeks…so Simba is sad. Or he’s an old man and this was after 10:30 PM and he wants to go to bed. Me too, Simba. Me too. Oh wait, it’s morning. I can’t do that for another 15+ hours.

I’ve been going to the chiropractor, trying to get the neck and shoulders to behave. Definitely much better, but it takes up my ceramics time. So I didn’t get there all week. Pro: neck is better. Not best, just better. It’s getting warm again here. It’s not fall yet until sometime in October. Still 90 degrees plus. On top of that, we’re getting the tail end of a few hurricanes, so the humidity gets bad, and that’s worse than the temperature honestly.

Anyway. Today at work was summarized above. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’ll try to be as efficient as possible. Then chiropractor and hopefully pharmacy pickup (they’re so annoying about notifying when there’s a delay in processing…I don’t want to drive up there if it’s not ready). Then grading and housework and cooking dinner and grading some more and then cutting stuff out. Tomorrow isn’t as chaotic as Sunday, but they’re both pretty bad. My fault for getting into shows and having to take them down and having to canvass for work and all that crap.

OK, be an adult. Do adult things.

Not That…

I feel like it must be later in the week than Wednesday. I was ON all day yesterday, teaching writing and graphing. Mostly OK, but like pulling teeth in a couple classes. Certainly lets you know which classes are lacking in some skills. Good thing to know. Since the standard we’re learning about requires graphing knowledge. At least knowing which line is going up faster…or whether it’s going up or straight. Sometimes I think old people thoughts like, “Back in the day, we could actually get them to do math in science.” Not so much now.

In between the 17 meetings (school and art) and trying to get my yard under control, I have been cutting things out. But first, I sorted the fabrics I used by color…168 fabrics in this quilt.

Heavy on the earth tones. Here’s Monday night…

It never looks like much…that’s more than an hour’s worth of trimming.

Last night, I cut these two crazy mushrooms…

Very satisfying to finish. Kind of crazy to contemplate.

I stayed up too late to do another hour. I had two Zoom art meetings last night and I graded through both of them…I thought about cutting stuff out, but getting the assignments done was more pressing. I just finished the last test/packet grading cycle and another one started. We did the test Monday and the packet is due Friday. Ugh.

I have a piece that was at the Rancho Penasquitos library, traveling, currently at the La Jolla library, that will go to University City library next month. These are photos from Rancho P.

It’s the quilty one in the bottom right.

I think this is the 3rd library?

Some San Diego library patrons have been trying to ban books by checking out the ones they think are problematic and then not returning them. Dick move. This exhibit is about banned books, so it’s important that it travels.

Today I’m teaching conservation of energy…another concept that might be complicated. Certainly it’s another day where I am ON ON ON all day. Then pilates after school, figure out where I put all the greenery trashcans and put them out, maybe fill some more, cook dinner, and then I get to cut things out. Hopefully. Long day. Parents are finally on their way home, so I made the last mail trip for them. Nice to have that off my plate. Looking forward to the trimming part at least. And reading my book. It’s a good one. Not written by AI. I read enough of that all day long. One art meeting last night kept talking about what they were using AI for, and I’m like, nope. Not doing that. Not encouraging that. Not destroying the planet for THAT.

Openings & Closings: Come See My Art

There’s a bunch of these coming up locally, so I’m putting them all here.

The Feminist Image Group show Master Glitch is closing this Sunday at the Techne Art Center in Oceanside. There will be an artist panel from 2-3 PM. The closing reception is from 1-4 PM; this is your last chance to see this exhibit.

I have 6 pieces, mostly big ones, in this exhibit. I will be there at some point, probably later.

Then Saturday, October 3, from 5-9 PM, I have one piece in an Oceanside Art Museum Artist Alliance exhibit, In Flux, at the Covet Art Gallery.

The exhibit will be up for most of October if you can’t make it on October 3. I will be there at some point, probably earlier in that time frame.

The last one is a California Fibers’ exhibit, Tactile Thinking, at Hyde Gallery at Grossmont College. The opening is Tuesday, October 27, from 4-6 PM.

I will have two pieces in this exhibit. I will be at the opening.

That’s what’s local for the next month…

Participating in Art…

Rough weekend. Not as bad as next weekend. I think of a good weekend as some relaxation time with a book or some art, and a hike in the late afternoon (haven’t done that since I got back from Oregon…mostly due to heat, but lately due to life). Lots of time to wander the house, maybe water some stuff, clean up a little. Just not a lot of pressure to get things done. No deadlines looming. This was not one of those. Grades are due Tuesday (I finished those). It sucks to spend most of a weekend day on that. And that’s what happened. There’s no way to get all the planning, copying, designing, and grading done during the real work day. Or even in an hour after the kids leave. It’s frustrating. September is always a hard adjustment. We’re getting near the end of it though…so maybe I’ll adjust better in October. Ha!

My art goals this weekend included washing a few more dye paintings out and finishing the ironing to fabrics on the current quilt. I did achieve both of those things. I ironed Friday night…

This thing took forever, mostly because each little clump of mushrooms needed a new color range.

I ironed for a little bit on Saturday afternoon, after finishing grading the assignments I needed for the progress report.

The Man had a show Saturday night until midnight, so I knew I wouldn’t get time after that. And then last night, I stayed up a little late to finish all the ironing.

Almost 16 hours to iron 800+ pieces. Insane. Also, I need to organize the fabrics in color order. There’s lots of brown. Because mushrooms. Anyway, I’ll be cutting things out starting tonight. Hoping to be done by the weekend, but that may not be realistic. I do have 70 thousand Zooms this week I can trim through (slight exaggeration). This one has a deadline.

I also managed to wash out two dye paintings. No photo of that. I have two more to do and then another one that needs more dye painting. Not sure when that will happen. I have a Friday off next week (random 3-day weekend, thank you, school board). Maybe then.

Some book club friends of mine drove up to Oceanside to see the FIG exhibit there with 6 of my pieces in it. They sent me a photo…

I was in the middle of grading and it was so nice to see that. It’s one thing to tell people you make art, and another to have them just show up to see it. It was cool. By the way, the closing exhibition is this Sunday from 1-4. I’ll be there for the last bit, mostly to take stuff down.

The Man’s show Saturday night was interesting. I enjoyed the show…the venue was weird about glass on the dance floor, but they ran out of tables/seats and the bar was serving in glass?

The Man had hurt his back on the way over…but he powered through.

They do fewer shows now, so I try to go when I can. I was pretty tired though. Not so tired that I didn’t dance a bit. A lot. Maybe.

Scribble tore up a cat toy and then fell asleep on the innards.

She’s a cute baby.

I wish this were true…but it’s not.

AI is staying. It’s annoying except when it’s helpful. Like what is up with Muse wanting to help me. I don’t even know how to turn that off. I just keep Xing the box. I read a thread about AI and art and someone was saying that if we didn’t let them use AI, then they weren’t allowed to participate in making art. Um. Sigh. So many things wrong with that. Also, I could stop putting my images online, but the whole purpose of social media is to share, and I want to share my art…I just don’t want AI (or anyone really) using it to copy or make their own art. I’m not sure why that’s so hard to understand. It’s not the same as a human brain processing images it’s seen and interpreted with its life and background and turned into its own art. It’s just pulling bits and pieces and putting them together. There’s no life experience in that. And it shows.

Anyway. No AI here y’all. Shockingly. Work today though. Giving a test. Didn’t really tell them it was today. I’m OK with that though. Then a staff meeting and chiropractor. Trying to get my neck/shoulders to behave. Then hopefully cutting some stuff out. Probably need to do yardwork first…I did some of that yesterday. It finally cooled down enough and I had time during daylight (well, almost…I was stomping around in the dusky bits trying to figure sprinklers out. Was not successful). So more of that this week. Also have a fence falling down I need to deal with. I’m not sure HOW to deal with it, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.

Dreams

Y’all, the day after Back-to-School Night is always the worst. I feel like I’ve already done a whole week. Usually I’m smart and plan independent work, a low-key day, but no…we’re doing a lab. Ugh. Bad plan. So yeah. At least I’m getting better from the weird virus I had…never really manifested as a cold…just sat around and made me feel like shit for four days. And grades are due, so I’ve been trying to get through all of that and plan for next week and copy stuff for next week and go to a million meetings…I have another one this morning. Most of the issues we’re having are either learning issues that should have been dealt with by 8th grade, but teachers dropped the ball (which is so annoying) or parenting issues…please don’t let your kids do whatever they want. We’re in the middle of some particularly exhausting parental bullshit. Fun times.

So I make art all through that, because it is my sanity. On Wednesday, I started sorting fabrics for the next figure. I did iron some stuff too, but not much because I was washing out a dye painting as well. Here’s the washout, but it still needs a couple more washes…

Another one of my summer pieces that needed more washing. There’s still more.

Here’s the beginning of laying out the second figure.

I didn’t finish on Wednesday. Thursday, I got home close to 7 PM after staying all day and working. So I didn’t work at home. I had a book that was getting sucked back to the library that I needed to finish for book club (it’s 11 weeks before I can get it again), so I was trying to finish that and gave up and went and ironed for almost two hours…

I ironed all of the fleshy bits for the second figure, which rolled into a brownish-green color, but I still have all the things in and around, like the heart and the eyeball and about a million fungal things with mycelial things.

All that stuff. And another bin full of stuff. There’s a tree in there too. So I still have no clue how many I’ve ironed and how many there are to go, which is how I predict how much time is left. It’s frustrating, but it’s my fault for numbering the way I did. I pulled from the 400s to the 700s for the 2nd figure, but not ALL those pieces. So I’ll be working my way through these tonight. I’m getting close, but I’m not there yet. And the weekend is a shitshow, as always. It must be September.

Rustic Sphinx moth last night.

The cats were fascinated. It was apparently throwing itself against the screen. The Man sent photos of all four cats enthralled. Cool moth though.

OK. Lab today. Meeting this morning. Kamikaze out to a new chiropractor after school. The neck is truly a mess. I need a new pillow and don’t know what to get. Hoping they have suggestions. Plus relief. Of some sort. Grading. Figuring out dinner. Ironing. Tomorrow, a lot of the same, although the Man has a show. So hopefully I’ll get plenty of rest tonight (ha!) for that. More than getting up at 6 AM anyway. Hopefully I’ll be efficient at school today and get through some of the grading while the kids follow instructions I explained yesterday. Hopefully no fights about vaping in the bathroom (not me). The right eye is twitching. Early in the year for that. It’s fine. I have art to make, shows to enter, residencies to enter. That’s where my brain is right now. And the stuff at school doesn’t make those dreams go away.

The Alternative

Being sick sucks; being sick as a teacher sucks even more. The job is physically and mentally challenging on a good day; trying to do it when you’re feeling shaky is harder, but the alternative is writing sub plans, assuming your classroom will be a disaster and no one will get anything done, and betting on the fact that you’ll feel better tomorrow…like is THIS the worst day of this illness? Or will that be tomorrow. And it won’t matter tomorrow because it’s a lab day (not leaving that with a sub) AND back-to-school night and one teacher on your team is already going to be missing. Plus you don’t really know how you’re going to feel until you get up in the morning, and then it’s too late usually to get a sub so a bunch of random teachers will have to be in your classroom. So yeah. That’s where I’m at. Today is NOT independent work mostly. There’s a bunch of talking and excitement I’m supposed to be pushing out (with what energy?) and then lots of walking around and encouraging. Meanwhile, the honors kids are trying to work ahead on everything, because it’s how they roll. They don’t know how to just let something sit. And wait. I understand that. I want the blank papers done too y’all.

I’m still ironing…so very slowly.

Not sure why it’s so slow.

Last night’s…

I just laid out the 400s. Some of them were already ironed to flesh bits, but mostly not. I might be halfway; I might not. It’s impossible to say. I feel like I’ve done a lot and question why I am not done yet.

I washed out the dye painting that needed repainting…

Doing some crazy stuff with distilled water in the laundry room, because I think my really hard water bleaches some f the dye out.

After drying…much better.

So yeah, the dyes I mixed at the end of July are still working.

I also washed out one of the glue resist pieces…

It needed more glue removal. I think it’s good now. They’ll both go through a regular machine wash at some point.

And then I finally made it to ceramics.

I’m done underglazing. Just need to figure out when it can go in the kiln.

I have a neck that fits in that hole sitting in my damp box, ready for me to build a head. And maybe a bird. That was the original plan anyway. We’ll see how that flies. It’s nice to have progress at least.

This AI conversation…interestingly, I heard one pundit talking about how we needed to stop separating AI from the techies who built it/own it. To hold them responsible.

They designed this system to make them money, and in doing so, endangered the future of billions of humans. And the big dumb guy says all we need to control it is a smart president. Oh well.

I’m sick. Definitely worse than yesterday. Hoping the meds kick in. I’m supposed to have pilates after school and it’s too late to cancel without a penalty. I’m watching a squirrel yell at something in the neighbor’s yard. I need to be better tomorrow. Doing a lab while sick is hard. Labs are hard anyway. It’s not even set up. I need to go in this morning and try to get through that. I started yesterday and it got too complicated. I really just want to go back to bed. Too late for that. Time to bully through. Ugh. And grades are due next week, so I just grade nonstop at the moment. Also not fun. Hope it gets better…the cold at least.

Mushroom Ironing

It’s finally cooler. Still summer for us, but not in the 100s. Still running all the fans and appreciating when it cools down at night…knock on wood, so it doesn’t go away. My studio still holds onto daytime warmth, which is great in winter and not so much now, so I’m ironing with a fan on my legs so it doesn’t blow the pieces away. I feel like I’ve been ironing for days (I have). Wait. Not a lot of days actually…well, I started slow. I’m not sure I’m not still slow. It feels incredibly slow.

OK, I’m 7 1/2 hours into the ironing and I’m still in the early 300s. That said, I did iron a bunch of the 800s already. It still feels like I should be further along. Here’s Friday night…

I got all the flesh laid out and ironed…

I feel like there’s some 400s and 500s in there too. Can’t remember.

Saturday night, I managed a couple of hours…

Ironed the heart and some other stuff. Then last night…

A couple of trees, some mushrooms, some of the bits and pieces of the body that weren’t flesh-colored. Like I said, low 300s. Over 800 pieces in this thing. I usually figure 100 pieces a night, although I’m not hitting anywhere near that at the moment. Each little clump of mushrooms is a different thought of what color, how many shades of that color. So notionally, I could be done ironing Friday? Ugh but this week is painful and grades are due next Tuesday. We’ll see how that goes. Too much on my plate again.

I made time on Saturday to set this up…this is the last dye painting I did at Playa, on the last day. The flesh color washed out completely.

I checked the dyes a few weeks ago and they were still holding. The stuff that washed out had been mixed with about a thousand other things at that point. So I made a new version of the flesh color.

It won’t be that dark…I added a bunch of print paste to lighten it. But it looks much better. Now I just need to make time to wash it out. Hopefully tonight.

Bowie and Scribble come in here to investigate. I think Bowie is still looking for Kitten. He was mean to her in the end, so I locked him out for a few weeks at the end.

He does like to come in and sniff around.

It’s baby lizard season. The leaf in the background shows how tiny this one is.

Luckily it’s outside. We keep finding them inside, and I think there’s still one in my car. I’m hoping it got out. I mean, it got in.

I saw something yesterday about how the current admin is gonna let power plants pollute with impunity.

The ignorance is mind-boggling. And devastating.

OK. It’s Monday. I’m tired. What’s new? I have a parent meeting with a translator this morning, the counselor called in sick, we need to call the translator, and our current conference room doesn’t have a phone. Because the main office removed it. Because we don’t need it? WTF. In case you’re wondering about the state of education these days. I have to use my personal phone to call a translator so we can do a parent meeting in Haitian Creole. Yup. I am still teaching energy transformations and transfers. Hopefully getting to a little independent work today, because I need to grade packets…and tests…and set up for a lab later this week…and realized that Back to School Night will be in the middle of a 2-day lab, so my room will be a mess. Fun times. Two-hour staff meeting after school teaching me how to do something I already know how to do AND already do. Regularly. Also fun. Then hopefully ceramics, because I didn’t get there all last week. Frustrating. I canvassed for the local school board on Saturday, because two of ours are ignorant. Annoying. But there will be mushroom ironing at the end of the day. Not often you get to say that.

All That Flesh

The heat is finally starting to fuck off. I meant to put some artsy evocative word there, but this is more appropriate. 104 degrees. Ugh. Still in the 90s, but bearable. My studio was down to 88 degrees last night…it’s amazing the difference it makes. The heat will probably be back…it’s September and that’s what September (and sometimes October) does. It’s just hard to concentrate on work and art when it’s that hot.

So ironing progress has been slow. Some of that is the heat and some is what I’m ironing. I did a bunch of grass and mycelial network on Wednesday night.

I love this idea of everything being connected. What we do in one place affects something somewhere else. Last night, I ironed a bunch of fungi, and then started to lay out the fabrics for one of the main figures. This is a pain because they are in the 100s bin all the way to the 800s bin. So I started pulling the flesh pieces and trying to sort them from everything else and I made it into the 300s.

All this stuff is NOT flesh in those bins…

So yeah, I’m not done with that bit. I probably will be tonight, but I’d already been working for an hour and needed to go to sleep. There is a second large figure too, so I’ll have to do that one in a bit. This weekend is a shitshow though. So I don’t think I’ll get any time beyond the hour or so each night. Too much other stuff to do. Ah September, you like to kick my ass.

At school, we had two false fire alarms yesterday. Fun times. Still teaching energy, despite my lack of it personally. I had stitching last night, where I sewed down 14 circles. It was good. Ten to go. I’d like to get to ceramics after school, but I have duty and then a parent meeting, so it depends on how I feel afterwards. I’ll still have to set up my classroom for next week. Then I’m cooking tonight (ugh) and grading and ironing. Hopefully all that flesh. I have political canvassing this weekend, although no one has contacted me about where to meet (problematic)…our school board is fucked up. I can say that, because one of the members says I’m an evil Communist predator. He’s lying about all of that, so that’s what makes it fucked up. Well, that’s not the only thing. And there’s meetings and stuff I need to do…some of it is art related and some isn’t. I managed one group blogpost last weekend with an extra day. I don’t think I can pull off another group’s post…maybe I can get all the photos organized and resized and write it next weekend. We’ll see. OK. I’m tired still. I need more caffeine. And I need to go to school and set up for the reorganization of the teaching that my brain came up with at 12:41 AM when it couldn’t sleep. Thanks brain?

Ebb and Flow

Weird week. Really hot…supposed to be 105 degrees today. My studio was 91 degrees at 10:45 last night…right now, there’s a tiny coolish breeze coming in, but it’ll be gone by the time I get home again. This house just holds heat…it sucks. This is the time every year when I think about air conditioning. Because we barely slept last night…it was just too hot. Sigh. One more day of the really bad, then one just in the high 90s, and then some reasonable semblance of a fall temperature in Southern California. Low 90s sounds lovely. If you say 80s, I may swoon.

But today is still hot. And ironing fabric when it’s hot is hard. I did manage to do the small piece for the ceramic sculpture that’s been sitting around, waiting for it.

This piece is obviously not much of a rush.

Then I started ironing for the new piece. It has some really big pieces because I was trying to keep it simple.

For some definition of simple. Last night, I managed about 40 minutes of dirt before I gave up in here…

It was (still is) hot and I was tired. It was a long weekend and a long day. I’ve been taking care of my parents’ dog, and we knew she was near the end. Well, yesterday was the end. Poor Katie girl…a good long loved life.

It sucks. But it was time; she was ready. And she was a good girl.

Luna is also a good girl, but very much alive…and kinda flat.

All the cats are kinda flat. It’s hot. Looking forward to Friday’s temperatures. Sooner rather than later.

I’m unfortunately going to have to sit in the heat this evening again, trying to grade papers or iron in yucky temperatures. I could stay at school to grade for a while, but it’s not very comfortable. Can’t iron there. Anyway, hopefully I’ll be able to stand it in here for a little bit tonight, at least an hour. This one is on a deadline. Aren’t they all?

I got two pieces into Quilts = Art = Quilts, so that’s cool. I had a dearth of acceptances at the end of the last school year, so it’s nice to get into a few this fall. Appreciate the ebb and flow? Or not.

Today, I’m teaching energy…despite my lack thereof. I might need to find some stuff when I get to school. Sand. Thermometers. Ice. For a demo! Not my shirt. Although last night, as I was attempting to fall asleep, I thought putting all the ice packs under the sheets wouldn’t be so bad. Union meeting after school. Then home to swelter, grade, and iron. Maybe sleep at night, but probably it will still be too hot in here. Ice packs, y’all.