Alone and Quiet…

Funny title for a post that starts out with an art opening where I was anything but. So yes, the opening was Saturday night and I think it went well…the piece is still hanging, so that’s a plus.

This is Empty Nest, 31″ wide x 200″ long.

At some point, one of my friends was trying to find my work (it was in the way way back, in the Education building) and someone else described it as the sexless Cyclops. I didn’t ask if the responder was male or female, but in case you didn’t know, we don’t need a uterus to have sex. And if you mean genderless, well there are ovaries and breasts, which implies at least a DNA-rendered gender. But whatever.

I have lots of pictures from the show, but not much time this morning (someone pulled a last-minute meeting AND I have a lab to prep for, which I already spent an hour at school for yesterday, but then left, because the alarm was going to go off and I thought I would have the 20 minutes I needed this morning. Never assume).

It was fun watching people experience the piece, since mine are usually on the wall. They stared, they walked around, they put their head in the hole…

Seeing it hanging and the forces upon it tells me that it should have been quilted, but I didn’t have the time or sanity left for that I think. OK, maybe the time. Definitely not the sanity.

Anyway, she’s up at Space4Art through October 10, so you should check her out if you like. This place is more about the openings then the rest of the month though. There were performances and there was music. And one piece had a little too much stress on it and might have fallen. But it was cool while it lasted. And a lot of people I knew showed up and that was also cool.

Saturday morning, I managed to pinbaste the new big quilt, which has to be done by the 28th at this point, because the photographer’s agreed to get it done in time. I found two fabrics that totally don’t go together for the backing…but they were the same weight and texture, so I don’t care. I wasn’t going to waste a good background fabric on the back of this one.

I laid the backing out and taped it to the entryway floor (after mopping it because the dog sleeps on it)…and then Kitten came and had her way with it.

I should have spent more time on the second taping down, but it was hot and I was tired, so I did it fast, possibly too fast.

I got everything laid out…

And spent an hour and a bit pinning it all down…it’s being fussy in the middle of course…

So that will be fun to quilt. And I’m fairly sure the backing wasn’t totally flat.

Oh well. I don’t deal with the quilt police. The quilting will make it lie flat.

And then I went to the opening and did life for a while…until Sunday.

And after 10 hours of work- and home-related stuff, I finally started quilting at 9 PM. Because Sundays are not mine. They are a planning nightmare. Too much to do, not enough time in which to do it.

This is slow quilting and quite meditative, which was good, because I think I’d spend too many hours alone and quiet at that point.

And though it seems that this is still alone and quiet, it’s actually art brain and it works fairly well until I finish and realize how alone and quiet I am. Sigh. The human brain is a pain in the ass.

I quilted for about 2 1/2 hours last night. If I could pull that off every night (and this week is a bitch for that…something almost every night), then I’d be done by Sunday. I don’t know if that’s really possible, but I guess I could toss it up there as a goal…

And then see if I meet it.

Meanwhile, meeting set for an hour from now and I still have to finish getting ready for the damn lab. So I’m outta here.