I’ve Got Another 100 in Me…

So my artmaking last night was packing up a quilt to ship it out to a show I can’t talk about yet…but is pretty cool. There’s a balance between the making of the art, which is usually the fun part, the relaxing part, the good-mind-waves part, and then the marketing of the art, which is posting stuff and entering shows and filling out paperwork and packing things up and driving to UPS or FedEx or whatever venue that’s local that’s miles away at a stupid drive time (that’s next week, ugh). That’s the part where I get my work out there to be seen. Which is important to me. I don’t want to be seen, but I want my art to be seen. I’m the introvert; art brain is not.

It’s my fault. I worked all day, did tutoring, made it home after the chiropractor, and kept working. Sometimes that’s the easy thing to do. I graded until 9:30. I’m not entirely sure what happened between 9:30 and 11…but I know some of it was watching the primary returns. Sigh. Well. We noticed that on the station we were watching, they had these little boxes with the faces of the ‘winners’ of each state, and you couldn’t tell them apart…little white men faces. It is what it is. It won’t matter in November if all the people who showed up to vote yesterday actually show up in November. Vote y’all. Both the man and I are apparently surrounded by people who don’t vote. And it’s not just the President, folks; it’s who replaces the next Supreme Court Justice, who decides about things for your grandchildren. It’s the people in charge of the environment and your health care and your retirement and all that stuff. It’s important. It’s your civic duty. Why are you not taking it seriously? I don’t understand. All my household voted (and I count the girlchild in that mix, even though she’s 3000 miles away and voting in a different state). You should too. It’s not even that if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain…if you don’t vote, you make it worse for the people around you. Take responsibility, educate yourself, make an intelligent decision. Vote dammit.

This is not even one of my students. She said I was smiling and then she changed her mind.

Honestly, I’m more worried about my shoulders and stabby fingers. That was at tutoring.

So this is kinda mean. We had this big hole, because the boychild got a bug up his butt and wanted to remove this stump of a plant that never stopped growing…it’s a weed. So he dug this massive hole to get it out. We also needed to plant something to block the view of the neighbor’s house back there, so I bought a bush/tree thing, and then told him he needed to dig a different hole.

Five feet further along. Where all the rocks are. But that’s where it needed to go! He’s doing it. It’s fine. The other hole will get filled up. Or get a smaller bush.

Yesterday’s prompt for #igquiltfest was a pre-Instagram make (sheesh, I have tons). I’ve been on Instagram for 10 years and blogging for 16. I used to hand-applique my art quilts. This is ancient. One of my earliest art quilts…Elvis Has Left the Building from 1995.

The label is cool…

Naked on the front, bra on the back. So I was 28 when I made this one. I have older art quilts; this is when I was trying to figure out how to take the images I was screenprinting and exhibiting, and turn them into fabric. Turns out hand applique takes a really long time (no duh).

This one isn’t quite as old…this is Caught in the Headlights, from January 2002.

It’s got a lot going on in it, but also is using the Wonder Under technique I use now. Talk about a brain dump…everything I was thinking about ended up in that drawing, wherever it is now.

I’ve made over 100 quilts, art quilts, in 30-odd years. I’ve got another 100 in me. Just give me the time.

Here’s Nova, doing what cats do best. Sitting on my fabric.

Trying to keep these two babies out of my stuff has been difficult. I’ve had to revert back to baby stages, when you just put stuff away, stack it so they can’t get into it, put it up high so they can’t reach it. But they go after the stuff hanging on the wall, jump into bins I’m working in that very moment, bat at what I’m cutting. Sigh. It’s OK. They’re babies. They’ll chill out and we’ll be fine. In 6 months. Maybe.

OK, speaking of chilling out (ha!), I’ve got another parent meeting and a day of teaching…which is fine…because the two dingbats from yesterday who didn’t think before they did will be out. It’ll work. It always does. It’s just a matter of how frustrated I get while it’s working. Then I can come home and make some more stuff.