What Next?

So I’ve mentioned before that I have some other shows coming up in the next few months where I will need work, and I finally sat down with the dates and tried to figure it all out. I think I’m going to have to write an entire post on Ventura and my thought process…because I want to kick them in the butt right now…but that’s a personal issue. It is true, as I have been reminded, that I don’t need to enter every show that is presented to me. So I guess I’m all over the map right now.

I had some people express interest in the cancer cell in hand drawings I did, so I thought, “those are small.” Yeah. We know where that goes. Anyway, I traced each of them on Wonder Under the other night…

And then I trimmed the Wonder Under pieces as well, so they’re ready to be ironed onto fabric.

I honestly don’t have a plan for that at the moment. I’m buried in grading, although I got a significant chunk done in the last two days, so maybe tomorrow night is not an unreasonable plan. It’s not like it would take long. The biggest issue is what color to make those damn spiky balls of cancer nasty. Something that contrasts with the flesh tones and looks awful. Or not. I just don’t know. Sometimes things just have to roll around in my head until they make sense.

So then I looked at the next show I know is coming, which will be the end of June. We have to deliver two pieces by the weekend of June 13. Two pieces? Damn. I signed that contract and didn’t even notice TWO. So they need to be smallish. Plus I don’t think the gallery is very large. Plus we have to use recycled materials, most notably a bunch of upholstery fabrics that came down here from Los Angeles. I grabbed the most-lightweight neutrals I could find (everything else looked like fucking upholstery)…

But because they’re in those sample books, all of them have to be divested of the sticky paper. Ugh.

Tried to persuade the girlchild this was a fun project. Tried to persuade the cat to get involved. I got no takers. And they’re long skinny pieces. So there’s that. And here’s my complaint. These aren’t really used fabrics. I consider recycling using fabrics from clothing I got from a friend or my closet or the thrift shop. I actually have a ton of that in my crazy quilt stash, but they are also all fabrics that are a pain in the butt to quilt with, so I’m not really that keen on it. The other option is to use all the batik offcuts from my friend Mariah, but there are some pieces that are too big for her stuff…but I could MAKE fabric from a bunch of smaller pieces…cuz that’s not crazy at all.

Still thinking this through. However, I did tentatively already pick the two drawings for those two quilts…

And I numbered them…

And then I stayed up way too late Sunday night because I was in a mood and I had Monday off, and I traced one onto Wonder Under…

I am not crazy. I was accompanied by furry beasts…

Calli and Midnight…Calli just got more dorky as the night wore on…

Yeah. So at least that process is started. I kind of decided that however much I WANT to do a totally different big piece by Spring Break, the June deadline for those other two means I can’t do that. I need to finish these first. I was wiffle-waffling on that, but then I looked up the Ventura show.

Fuck. So here’s the deal with Ventura. We have a big space in the Ventura County government buildings. GOVERNMENT. So no nudity, no violence, no politic leanings. So I start running through my head. Hmn. I look through my big drawings. I even pick one, and then realize that it has a nipple. See, I don’t even SEE the nudity as nudity. And then I have multiple arguments in my head. Is a man with no shirt on considered a nude? Is it political to make a quilt about pollution? Can babies wearing diapers count as a nude? Is it violent to have babies flying through the air? OK, I know that sounds violent, but I was trying to come up with a new version of a gender equality quilt, the balancing act of parenthood, and I had babies up in the air, but not in a bad way. Someone was definitely gonna catch those suckers. The stuff I normally do my quilts on is chock full of political nudity with violent tendencies, I guess.

Sigh. It’s true I don’t have to be in this show, and since it’s juried and Ventura has the last word, no matter what I do, I may not be in. But I wanted to try (why? I don’t know. It’s a fucking stupid challenge.). So I started trying to draw another Earth Mother. So I drew the outline of a woman’s torso (this thing is definitely going to a second page) in pencil (I never do pencil) and then started drawing in pen over it, with the plan of covering the figure with plants and animals, so there would be no nudity…she would be wearing the clothing of the earth, water, fire, plants, and animals. Air too I guess. I could do that.

This is not easy, but here’s the start…

It may not work. But if it does…I guess I will enter it into the Ventura show, because I don’t have anything else at all that will fit in that show, I think. Nothing without police caution tape or guns or nipples or uteri or naked baby butts or polluted wastewater or coffins or underground skeletons (are they political, violent, or nude?). Hey. I could do a whole quilt of skeletons. Eh. Ventura is pissing me off.