Staring at the Paper…

So. If you have a meeting after work about a kid, but you also have your exercise class, which is part of what keeps you sane and healthy, do you (I’m not skipping the class, y’all) dress for the class so you can stay longer at the meeting? Or leave earlier to go get dressed. I’m leaning toward the latter. The former is more efficient and makes more sense, but probably the latter is more professional. Or just send notes to the meeting and know your co-teachers will say the same stuff you do, because it’s not like the kid is different in his other classes. He’s pretty consistent. These are the things that keep me up at night…that and my natural distrust of the white male politician. And a sense of overwhelming dread that accompanies my workload.

It’s a good thing I’m drawing an hour every night…that’s my goal anyway. Draw for an hour, meditate, attempt sleep. Repeat. Some of the “drawing” is just staring at the paper, which is also allowed.

Not sure if it’s the future mom or the fetus who isn’t ready in this figure. Maybe both. That night, there was thunder and lightning galore, and Calli lost her mind over and over again. So I didn’t sleep much either.

The left side is coming along…

I will give them a natural landscape to be in, a green space. The bubble on the right is harder to draw.

I think I have most of the figures on the left done. I’m trying to refrain from more details. There’s enough. I got myself all tied in knots over shadows last night…drawn shadows. They just got to be too much. So I got rid of a bunch of them.

I also entered another show, which took over an hour, although that “family friendly” tag is in there, so who knows what will get in, if anything. I did get into two things yesterday, which is nice. Swallow Me Whole will be in Fiber Art Now as part of Excellence in Quilts…

And Wise Choice will be going to San Diego Mesa College for their Sowing Seeds exhibit.

It was part of the Earth Stories exhibit and hasn’t been seen locally, I think. It traveled a lot and then got rolled up. It’s all about birth control and giving women the right to plan families and childbirth…ironically very similar to what I’m working on in the current drawing. Things don’t change. I wish they would, but they don’t seem to.

The symptoms from the booster seem gone now…a little fatigue and feeling like I was coming down with the flu, plus a sore arm. I think I’m good now. And more protected, which is a plus.

OK, with that, I have two meetings today during and after school, an exercise class, and then hopefully some delightful drawing going on. One can hope. The drawing itself will be delightful…the things I am drawing are not so much. I probably have to grade some things too. At least it’s nice and cool for a few days…no more lightning, but drizzly clouds. I’ll take that.

Missed This, Remembered That…

Saturday was already sorta packed…I wanted to go to a show that was closing that day, plus I had a meeting, an actual in-person meeting. I totally spaced on the fact that it was October and there was a women’s march. Damnit. I meant to look it up, but apparently I’m off the information list or something, and I missed it. Sigh. I did come home after everything I DID do and start drawing an angry quilt in response to the crazy Texas abortion ban. It’s been in my head, drawing and redrawing itself for days, so I finally started to vomit it on paper. With a pen. Much cleaner that way.

I tried drawing part of this in my sketchbook earlier in the day, but eh. Not so much. And my evening was kind of irritating. I almost just shut down and did nothing. My brain was in a bad place. But then I got up and cut the paper and started sketching in pencil, getting the broad idea of where things were going, and kept going from there. This was about an hour in…

And then last night, I started in on the details…which is the one problem with drawing full size…I put too many details in and they’re small…

I’m trying to remember that. But maybe I don’t care as much as I should. I just want a project that takes up all of my mind after work and keeps me going for a while, and work is taking up too much time and brainpower. I need something to counteract that. Big complicated quilt to the rescue!

The closing show I went to was Paula Kovarik’s exhibit at Visions Art Museum…

It was a fascinating show. I have seen some of this develop online, but it’s so much better in person. I’m glad I made it to the show. I did say to the volunteers working there about 5 times that they need to make hours that working people can get to, more than just 10-2 on Saturday. That’s a really rough time for me. If I want to hike, I won’t make it. If I have anything else I need to do, it’s during those same hours. It’s hard, because I know they’re making financial decisions as well, but it’s been near impossible to get there until this weekend. It was totally worth getting up earlier and getting out of the house before I usually do. Saturday is my relaxation morning, the only one I get, so I give it up to very little.

Her work is fascinating…I probably said that already.

The stitched line…

The 3D shapes…

Cutting things up and making them into new things…

The hint of traditional quilting but really not…

Fascinating. Like I said.

I just walked around and enjoyed it…

More than once…

Yeah, that phrase pisses me off.

Crazy amount of details…

If you ever have a chance to see her work, you should. I did listen to her talk back in early August, when the show opened, right before school started (hence my inability to get to the actual show). And I bought her book. Fun stuff. I’m always inspired by how other artists do the work.

I stitched a little on this at the meeting I was at, until I volunteered to remove paper from pieced blocks…

And I drew this at dinner…

The weekend also included a negative COVID test after two positive cases in my classrooms, and a COVID booster. So far, my arm hurts, but nothing else symptom-wise that I’m noticing. Good news.

Nova support on the drawing front…

Although some of her support is not really supportive…

I need those.

And to finish with this…

I wish I lived in a ‘socialist’ country that cared about the health of its people. Sigh. My biggest retirement expense will be medications.

OK, long busy day, already feel tired. Could be vaccine; could just be life. Hopefully energy will rebound at the end for more drawing. I’d like to get done with that stage and onto the tracing.
We’ll see how that goes.

Today I Am…

Today I am efficient and on task. I finish many things. I make sure I leave my Friday classroom ready for Monday morning so that is not as stressful. I come home. I maybe exercise my dog and my self and maybe even another dog. Because we have an extra one at the moment.

What a dynamic group they are. It’s actually really hard to get them in one photo because they are all needy and jealous of the others. This was as close as I could get so far.

School is…sometimes fine, often overwhelming. I like teaching in person better. The kids and rocks…you know, rocks seem pretty boring until you listen to a bunch of 12-year-olds try to describe them and figure out what they are. We do a ton of hands-on stuff that our official adopted curriculum doesn’t even attempt to do. Hence our disdain for it. All that is exhausting on our part, though…prepping it, managing it, putting it away. So I’m kind of looking forward to a week when I don’t have to do all that. Well, until I’m in the middle of that week and a whole class is waiting for me to give them the answers. Then not so much. But hopefully today will be OK, fairly chill. Do this, finish that, do this other easy thing. We’ll see.

Teaching art is more of a challenge. I wish I could go watch the other teacher and see what she does. I feel so disorganized and ineffective. But then they do some cool stuff and I think, well, it can’t be THAT bad. Yes, some of them are just talented (and some aren’t), and some work hard and that gets them close (and some don’t). Just like science!

Anyway. It’s October now. Still a chance of hellacious temperatures (supposed to be over 90 degrees today), but hopefully all the beginning-of-school stuff will calm down. Wait. Except I have 5 or 6 pandemic contracts to do by Monday. And three kid meetings next week? So not so much. I was hoping for a week without a positive case, so I wouldn’t feel like I had to shove COVID testing into an already tight schedule. Yah no. That’s a no. Got tested yesterday.

I did finally photograph this.

She needs a name and a label, and then I’m mailing her to my patron on Patreon…hopefully this weekend.

Also this weekend? Starting a drawing for the new quilt. I stared at a bunch of artspeak statements and titles last night and was decidedly uninspired by two of them. Whatever. I will have to write statements that explain how I met those themes at some point, but not today. Today I can grab my sketchbook and just draw for a while. Hopefully. Looking forward to that.