Attempting Wake-Up Maneuvers

So the not-sleeping catches up and whacks you in the face. OK. It whacks me anyway. I napped after work yesterday. That’s it…I’m officially an old person. What I love is the cats climb up on the couch with me, flanking me. I set an alarm, because I didn’t want it to be like last time, when I lost 2 hours to nappiness and then couldn’t fall asleep at night. I’m already having issues with that. So 40 minutes later, I was all groggy (hey, I set it for 25 minutes and then it went off, scaring all the creatures on the couch, so I went for another 15…then the girlchild was texting me and I attempted wake-up maneuvers). And I didn’t really feel like doing anything, which is too bad, because I always have stuff to do. And I didn’t feel like figuring dinner out either. I probably had enough leftovers for lunches and dinner last night, but the potatoes were MEH and I had eaten that for lunch and hell, what I really wanted was to be physically transported, no WAIT, I wanted the waiter at Himalayan to be able to walk through some sort of transport thing that put him in my living room to take my order and then to bring it to me. But not to wait around and stare at me, wondering why I can’t get my butt off the couch.

That’s when I got up and ordered more tea, because I’m running out. It took me a good two hours and some fakeout of a dinner menu (it’s always OK to have salad and Brussels sprouts), plus staring at my phone and the telly for a good long time before I could function. Part of that is what I taught yesterday, which was kind of a performance art, relay race of neurons and action potentials. I spent a lot of time running around the room yelling “DO IT! DO IT!” and “SEND IT BACK!”. So if you’re thinking teachers just sit at a desk (I don’t really have a desk for such activities), imagine the yelling and the running instead. Today will be a nice quiet video viewing of brain structure and function to counteract the running and screaming of yesterday. The one day you could have the superintendent walk in and you’d be totally OK with him seeing the real live crazy of Nida teaching science? Yeah. He didn’t show.

So when I remember that and the not-falling-asleep of the night before, I guess a nap is warranted.

After that, I finally got my brain to function and finished cutting out all the Wonder Under for the new quilt, which is temporarily called Fishface, just because I had three drawings out at the same time, and I needed something that would tell them all apart. The other two are Totemwoman and Spiralwoman. I already have a quilt called FishWife, so it could get confusing. She’ll have a different name at the end.

There’s all the pieces…about 2 1/2 hours of trimming Wonder Under.

Then I sorted them. This quilt is gonna go fast, I think.

Compared to the last one anyway. And I still wasn’t tired. Because I’d had a nap. So I sat down with the drawing from the weekend and tried to finish up the torso a bit so I can copy it. And I think I’ll toss it in the car today and go enlarge it and start drawing stuff for real.

Like real size. This is already big. And I’m not sure that heart is gonna stay. There’ll be a heart, but the chest/upper torso is off. So maybe I’ll cut it off a couple of inches up into the drawing and then redo the chest and heart full size. Usually I enlarge 200-300%, though, and this head is already considerably bigger than the last Earth Mother, so maybe I won’t? Or I’ll rethink the rest of the body? I’m not sure.

I got good news last night that two of my quilts will be in the Feminism Now show at Gallery D in Barrio Logan. The opening is May 14 from 6-10 PM. If you haven’t been, it’s part of the Barrio Art Crawl, so there are a few studios in the area of Gallery D, plus other studios, like La Bodega Gallery and the Bread and Salt Gallery, in the area. I’ll post a link closer to the time.

This is the smaller piece that will be in the show (currently out for professional photography)…

And the larger piece it connects to will be there too. The smaller one will travel to Sweden (date/location TBA) with the exhibit, and then hopefully there’ll be another exhibit in Los Angeles or down here in San Diego, once the Swedish exhibit closes.

Yeah. I really need to go to school. I had to meditate to fall asleep again last night, so caffeine will be a necessary part of the day today (it’s what’s for breakfast! and lunch! and dinner!). At least I’m making progress, even if I have to nap in between the job and my real life.

A Sketchbook on the Deck

Oh my lord. Morning. Not my superpower. I’m pretty sure I have to go to school today, but it’s so quiet here, I have to check the calendar and the clock to make sure that’s true. Is it really Sunday? (it’s not) I keep expecting the trash trucks, but in truth, they don’ t show up until it’s time for me to leave for school. My phone still has the golden hue of nighttime…which is funny, because it’s not THAT early. It just feels early. I really should have a job that allows me to be a night owl and an introvert, instead of what I have. Oh well.

So I managed to get some stuff done yesterday: quilt made it to the photographer, bookshelf that had broken and been fixed made it back into my office, all the crap that belonged in it made it out of the bathroom (yes, that’s where I put it), a pile of school stuff made it to school (after I took a turn too fast and threw it all over the back of my car). Yeah. I rocked it. Funny. It didn’t feel like I rocked it. I remember getting to a certain point in the to-do list and looking at a clock and thinking SHIT. The day is almost gone.

I worked on the drawing some more on Saturday…I like the feeling of sitting out on the deck in the semi-shade, even though the dog keeps chewing up the pinecones she brings me, and then I have to step on all the pieces, which is kinda like walking through a field of Legos. I swept the deck yesterday too. I had some eye starts on the drawings…it’s interesting that all I have to draw are the two eyes to know something is wrong…

Nope. Way too far apart.

These were better. Good distance. Similar size. I’m onto something here.

I think this was another fail. The face. The eyes. Aargh.

Insert picture of cute baby. I made the quilt under her. I love that her feet are blurry.

Maybe I should just stick to baby quilts…

No. I can do this! There we go…

That’s what I needed. This is working. Except the fish in the net are smiling and they shouldn’t be. That’s as far as I got. I’ll finish up the head mostly and then go enlarge it and do the rest to size. I think. Like I’m going to have any brainpower for drawing this week. I’m already exhausted. I honestly don’t feel like I slept at all last night. That’s really common for teachers, by the way…to not sleep well on a Sunday before school starts, especially after a break. You’re convinced you’ve forgotten something major and you won’t remember it until the kids are sitting in front of you.

So yeah. Sleep.

Meanwhile, I’ve been tracing the Wonder Under for this other quilt…

And it has so few pieces (399…except I realized at the end when I was tracing the cactus spines that I totally misnumbered all of them and there’s really probably 415 pieces in this)…that I finished it last night. It took 3 hours and 40 minutes and one yard (approximately) of Wonder Under. At 11:43 PM, I was going to quit, and then I realized I had hardly anything left, so I just finished it.

That’s it. And no teensy weensy pieces like on the last one. It’s almost sane to make this quilt. There must be something wrong with me. It’s like I’m attempting to do something that won’t completely challenge me while I try to finish out the school year (which will challenge me). Actually, I would hope this would be done well before the school year is out and I’m working on another one. But I’m not that bothered at the moment. I will be later. Just not now. Now I’m trying to figure out how to survive the next 11 weeks. What do I fill my weekends and my evenings with to make the Kathy World a better place? People and art and hiking and books. Obviously not a clean house, because I didn’t achieve that or an amazing yard over break.

Although last night, girlchild and I made a plan to spend ALL the money we both had in savings to just hop onto planes and meet in Jamaica. We figured we could afford a round-trip flight and maybe a cheap hotel. Food would be a stretch, but we didn’t care. Probably doesn’t help that it snowed in Boston over the weekend. I have less of an excuse with 80-degree temperatures here, but it was a nice fantasy.

For today, though, I’m gonna be doing pretty good if I make it through school and a walk with the dog. Then I’ll reevaluate. But really, right now, I’d rather be sitting on the deck with my sketchbook…see, I don’t even need to go to Jamaica.

Drawing in the Sun…

OK. Work poking its head in. It’s been doing it all week. How do I know? Work dream (nightmare) last night). Stress teeth grinding. Better today, because I only have one period left of the project to grade, although I have two assignments I haven’t even touched. It’s OK. One is extra credit and only about 15 kids did it. The other one…sheesh…I’ll get to it eventually. Just not today. Today I will finish the one period and hopefully it will be easy. Less than 3 hours. And then planning for next week. The other science teacher and I did plan the week…it’s just that some of it was kinda vague. And I don’t remember what we did. Plus I have to write warmups and send the parent email and update my website. Teachers of the computer age. Except when we lose teams next year, I won’t be able to send a team email to parents any more. Sigh. That’s gonna suck. Because I’ll still do it, but if I can persuade the other teachers to do it too, parents will then get four emails instead of one. And they barely read the one. Oh well. This is not a problem I made and it’s also not one I can solve. I’ve spent the last month telling myself not to worry about next year until it happens. Maybe fairies will descend upon us and make everything sparkly and nice and I won’t need to deal with the shit I think will happen.

It’s not really denial. It’s just hope…I think. It’s certainly protective.

So yesterday I was having a crisis of mental attitude. I made lunch and I went and sat on my deck in the sun and I threw the ball and pinecones (because she lost two balls) for the dog. I used to have a view of the mountains, but I think I would have to climb into my neighbor’s yard and prune his trees to get that back. Might do that someday.

Calli knows that if she wants me to throw it, she has to put it in my lap. This is her pretending she doesn’t know that. Eventually she follows the rules.

So I wanted to try drawing a revision of last year’s Earth Mother, but without the no-nudity clause. So I started with the face, and this one was too angry. Or petulant. Or irritated. Hard to say. Too much chin.

A plane flew by. Apparently yesterday was the Assyrian New Year. Kind of interesting. I wouldn’t have known that without the plane.

I made another false start with a shitty pair of eyes before I got to this one…which WAS going somewhere, but…

I didn’t want both arms down and that damn jellyfish is way too huge. So I stopped on that one and made two more lame starts, before I gave up and went and graded things. I’m not done trying…I will try again. Maybe today. But it wasn’t working for me yesterday. That happens…especially if I’m aiming for something in my head that’s still a little unfocused and vague.

But drawing in the sun is probably something I should try to do more regularly. Because that was nice…birdsong and blue skies. Except for the tree shredding that was happening in the neighborhood somewhere (woke me up this morning too).

After grading, I did some straightening up on the light table, which has a plywood cover on it when I’m not using it, so I pile stuff up there that needs to be put away to trace stuff. And then I started tracing the next quilt, which isn’t huge…

She’s about 17 x 21″, so a little different than the one I just finished…plus only half the pieces. That should be a plus. I drew this while flying back from Boston after dropping my daughter off for college. Rough flight. But another version of the Earth Mother. I guess it’s on my mind. Constantly apparently.

OK, so I am going to finish grading this morning. Well…probably early afternoon, based on previous attempts. And then maybe draw. We’ll see. I do have to move a bookshelf back in here that dad fixed so I can refill it with all the books etc., which are currently living in the kids’ bathroom. And rumor has it at least one kid is coming home, although not for 7 weeks. Not sure about the other kid. I’m sure he’ll let me know if he needs a flight, right? Sigh.

My positive attitude for the rest of the school year depends entirely on what I can fill the afterhours with to make up for the crazy. And my ability to just write off certain kids, because they haven’t changed their behavior and contacting parents has no effect. So yeah. Whatever. Let the politicians go wild with that shit. I am not a magician. And then try not to react to whatever crazy admin throws at me. I’m done, people. I’m still teaching, I’m still helping the kids who are there and present and asking, but I can’t parent 155 kids. Someone else has to help. Such a frustrating year. For all of us.

Remember. Drawing in the sun. Panacea.

Keep Calm and Hermit On

I often go into hermit mode on breaks from school. I’ll go days barely leaving the house. Yesterday I left twice, both for things that were already on my calendar. I don’t actually have anything for today, but I’m going to walk the dog. Next week is a swathe of unscheduled days. I know I need to grade stuff, clean stuff, trim stuff, but I also need to clear my head, make it possible to go back to school in a little over a week and survive the rest of the school year without totally losing it. I need some calm and patience. My counselor says I need to fill myself back up, and she’s right. More importantly, I need to do a better job of that on the weekends through the end of the school year. Problem is there are so many to-do’s and other things that get in the way of the filling-up.

Anyway, yesterday was hermit mode. I worked on art-related things for over 6 hours, about 4 of those hours on the small quilt I’m putting together, which just so you know is supposed to be 16 x 24″ finished. That’s way smaller than I usually work, and it’s been difficult ironing it together, because tiny pieces are fussy. But it’s a good place for my brain to be at the moment. Clearing shit out inside the head, even though I can’t seem to get it together on the outside the head part.

I had these ironed the other day, but they were in the bin, because a couple of them aren’t attached to anything, and I was waiting on the cloud until I got the legs in.

There were some other free-floating pieces I did yesterday…

And then I started on the legs of the central figure, so the clouds went back in. That damn tree is a pain in the butt…

It’s always in the way.

This is a tiny uterus with an even tinier eyeball in it.

The torso came together. The girl’s knife is because she cooks…not because she wants to hurt things, although at the moment, that’s probably a toss up.

I think that’s when I went to counseling…then the store, came back and went to my quilt class. More on that below. After class and cooking food, I started on the upper torso, which was a little fussy.

Overlapping shit…then on to the head and hair, which I did separate from the torso at first.

Then once I had all the main pieces in, I ironed it to the torso.

There’s a few more things to go on there, like the face for instance, and the missing hand. I was too tired to deal with them last night though. Faces are complicated and they hold the strength of the figure…the expression is important. And on something this small, I didn’t want to fuck it up. So I went to bed with my book instead. Today I’ll get the rest done, I’m hoping. I should be doing other things, but I can’t get my head there. Maybe tomorrow.

On Wednesday night, I was in a bar at a music thing, so I drew. Desert plants were definitely on my mind. Not sure about the rest.

Those big heads are still in my brain, percolating. And a new Earth Mother drew part of itself in my head last night. I guess I should put it on paper. I feel a need to just make some stuff for a while without a deadline attached to it. I didn’t have anything portable on the current quilt to take to class, but I had three drawings I’d copied, one of which I wanted to do next, so I numbered all three of them.

They each came out at about 400 pieces…

They’re all about 17 x 21″ inches, so smaller than what I normally do. I’m in the mood to just bang out some smaller pieces (not as complicated as the one I’m doing right now). So maybe that’s my pre-summer project. And I can draw another Earth Mother in between and aim to do her over the summer.

Although there are shows that are talking to me, and I should consider them. Their deadlines are later in the year, though, and right now my brain hurts. So I’ll deal with these, I think. At least the first one. I’ll see where I’m at once I finish it.

That one reminds me of one I gave away. Unfortunately.

OK, so I’m going to walk the dog this morning, even though it’s a later start than I wanted, because I need to clear my head. Cobwebs. Shitty crap in there. Then I’m going to come back and spend at least an hour on taxes. The taxes I should have done a month ago, maybe more. Then I can do art. Or maybe I should set a yard or house goal as well. Sheesh. Too much in one day. I really just want to iron the damn quilt down. And continue to Keep Calm and Hermit On.

Sustenance

Deep breaths. It’s only 5 days, 1 major project, 1 unit of study, 2 parent meetings, and 1 field trip away from Spring Break. You Can Do This. Seriously, though, Friday was a bitch. So was Friday night and most of Saturday. I didn’t get anything done at all except art, because that was all I could handle. So that’s what I did. Friday night I drew…

I have a few ideas rolling around in my head, so I messed with one of them…

The cats kept me company…they don’t really like each other, so this is as close as they get.

No, that heating pad is not on. I guess it’s possible it had residual heat on Friday night, because my neck was still a mess. It’s better now.

Then I went into the studio and tried to iron a bit…

Exhaustion took over at some point. I got up the next morning, made my post-it list for the weekend (this is becoming a disturbing habit), and stared at it for a while. Then I ironed fabric instead…these are the flesh fabrics…

I needed to cross something off the post-it, so I went and picked up the dog from my ex’s house (soccer tournament) and walked her about 3 miles. She was very excited to see me. I brought her back here and she lolled around on the floor for the rest of the day. And I kept picking fabrics…

Honestly, most of this piece is the three figures, so lots of fleshy bits. At the end of Saturday, I had this stuff left to iron…

Basically everything that wasn’t flesh. Notice I still have all those loose bits of fusible web on that blue lid over there. Honestly, it hasn’t been that bad finding the missing pieces. I’ve only had to redraw a few.

At the end of Saturday’s 5-hour ironing binge (yeah, you read that right…I only got two things crossed off the damn post-it list and one was walk the dog)…this is how much I had ironed down.

I went to watch a band play. The waitress really liked this one…

The sitting at the table part is a piece of another drawing in my head. I think I’m going to try that one in a bigger sketchbook.

And this one…

Three drawings in 25 hours…not bad.

Sunday was busy. I crossed two more things off the post-it list and did a bunch of stuff for school that wasn’t even on the post-it. Plus the grocery shopping and crap around the house and cooking for the week. And I graded. Shocking. But I tried to stay away from it most of the weekend. I want to be sort of caught up for vacation…which is actually impossible, because see above…one major assignment and one unit due this week. It will take a long time to grade those. Oh well.

But later Sunday night, I got started again…slowly. This is ironing a tea set. You know. Like you do.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far in a remarkably messy pile.

And here is the dog…still lolling around at my feet. She groans if I step over her.

Here’s what’s left to iron. Two sets of wings…I don’t know what color to make them. Should they be the same? Different? Bright? Dull? Earthy? I just don’t know. There’s a set of lungs and a uterus in there too. And her hair, which involves some seawater, a jellyfish, a starfish, and some other fish.

Here’s what’s in the box as of last night.

I’ve been ironing for almost 9 hours. Almost all this weekend. Yeah. I wasn’t really in the mood to Real Life it this weekend. Art. It’s what’s for dinner. Actually, no, bacon/leek risotto was for dinner and it was quite good. But art is my late-night snack, my dessert, my sustenance.

Quiet Meditative Tiny Little Fucking Pieces

Some nights I think I’m going to get all this artmaking done, no constraints, and then that just falls apart. Sometimes it’s for a good reason, like your kid face-timing you from college or taking the dog for a walk, or both…like last night. Sometimes it’s your brain…it’s tired and can’t deal with even getting off the couch. It’s easier to stare at distractions on the TV or the phone. It’s too hard to stand up. You know you have to clean up first before you can start. Most people have already gone to bed. What is wrong with you? Don’t you know lack of sleep is unhealthy?

I guess that’s the part I’m pretty good at: getting up and starting, no matter what. I have grades due in a week, so I can’t really take a break and blow off grading, because I need to get caught up, best I can. So I’ve spent the last two weeks basically making myself try to grade a thing a night, although sometimes “a thing” is one class’ worth because it’s a time-consuming assignment, or more common, their answers are so off the mark that if I grade more than one period, I become so incredibly frustration and convinced I’m the worst teacher in the world, until I come to one where the kid did it right, and it’s not the smartest kid in the class, and I say to myself, “Well if JOEY got it (there is no Joey, just to be clear), then everyone could have understood me.”

Yeah. Those are not the best nights. Except it means it will only get better. If I do something else afterwards.

Last night’s grading session wasn’t hard, but there were head-banging-on-the-desk moments where I thought the cats might call 911, because I was a little frustrated. Talk about ignoring simple instructions. Anyway. It’s done. I’m getting down to a reasonable number of assignments left to grade, if I don’t think too hard about the last unit that’s piled up at school.

So after a 3-mile dog walk/hike hybrid, cooking dinner from scratch, face-timing the girlchild, and grading homework about hiccups, I almost just went to bed. It was late enough. I was tired enough. But it really feels like shit to go to bed, wake up the next morning, and realize I did no art stuff at all the day before. Especially when I’m working to a deadline.

So I spent about half an hour doing art stuff…because even a half hour a day counts. Some days that’s all I can do, but it’s better than nothing. And it got me started on the next task for this project, so that’s a good thing. I cleaned off the cover on the light table and then moved that off the top and got started with the tracing.

I am a whopping 50 pieces in. Of 819. Yeah. It’s gonna take me a while. But I got my butt off the couch and did it, so yeah, I feel better this morning than if I hadn’t. I actually find the tracing process very meditative. I look forward to it. Some of the artmaking tasks are more heinous, like trimming Wonder Under, but this part is nice. It’s just following the line and deciding what overlaps and drawing that in. Finding the next piece. Doing the same thing over and over again. I know it sounds like it would be boring, but it’s not.

So that’s what’s in my future for probably the next 8 hours of artmaking…quiet, meditative, tiny little fucking pieces. Yup.

With Age Comes…Late-Night Drawing…

So the plus is I worked on grading stuff and prepping lessons for about 6 hours yesterday, so I could go out to the living room and finish that tiny little drawing that is now going to kick my ass for the next (shit, count them) four and a half weeks. Damn. I thought I had 5 weeks. OK. I can do this. I think I did the last one in that amount of time, oh wait, no I didn’t. I started tracing Wonder Under on January 10 and finished February 21. OK. I see. Well this one is much smaller so hopefully everything will take less time. Or more. Plus Spring Break is in there. That should count for something.

I got interviewed yesterday for a local newspaper and he asked what I was looking forward to, a project or piece, and I said I was looking forward to working on a piece just for me, one that I wanted to work on that wasn’t for a particular show or theme. And that’s true. But if I want my work in shows, sometimes I have to work like this.

So Saturday, after grading, I had a couple of hours to work on the drawing. I did go in with pencil and do the main parts of the two figures. And that bird at the top? I ended up erasing it and moving it before I inked. Usually I just go for ink, but this one is small enough and fussy enough that I didn’t want to mess around with…well…messing it up.

I love the late afternoon blue tint there.

Saturday, I started inking the top figure, which is male, despite the long hair. These are my kids. Then I kept going on Sunday night. I moved the bird down and closer.

Then I turned the drawing upside down and did the other female, the girlchild. I’m still debating the empty space in front of her face.

That’s one of my problems…that the empty spaces kind of bug me. You might have noticed. She has a knife because she’s a damn good cook, not because she’s a serial killer.

Someone emailed me about one of my pieces that was in Florida this last weekend and her interpretation really threw me…not in a bad way, but she’d taken the title to mean something different than what I had, and it threw a new interpretation on the quilt…but it wasn’t an incorrect one. In fact, I quite liked it. So this is why I explain the knife. Although there’s also the meta-interpretation of daughter and knife with mom, because that relationship is often a dicey one, as mothers and daughters throughout the ages can attest. You love them but there is a struggle there.

Here’s the whole thing…

I think it’s done. I may change my mind. I like to let them sit for at least a day before I start the next step, although with only 32 days, I don’t have time to sit for any days. Besides the first bit of drawing, the main part of the center female, the rest took me about 4 1/2 hours to draw. It’s always longer than I think it is. I think I can bang out a drawing in an hour, and sure, I can, but mostly it takes longer than that.

What I should have done at that point is go to bed, but if you’ve been reading here for more than a week, you know that’s one of my weak points…knowing when to stop.

So I numbered it.

I needed to know how bad it was…and it was. Bad. Over 800 pieces. Seriously. OK. I can do this. Yes I can. They’re small. They won’t take long.

And yeah, I went to bed too late. With age comes wisdom? Well, yes, in that I know that it’s numbered now and I can get on with tracing it tonight with very little brain power. Awesome. But maybe not so much feeling wise this morning with my brain in mush state as I go to work. Whatever. I always wanted to be one of those crazy old ladies.

The Goddess of Something…

So I have two quilts in Daytona Beach right now…with the AQS circuit. So enjoy Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

I keep forgetting about the pieces traveling with all the quilt shows. I have a real shortage of work in house at the moment. I know, it’s an elegant problem to have, unless you have shows to enter and nothing with which to enter. I have two coming up where I think I just can’t enter. That kind of sucks. Oh well. I made decisions about what to enter where, and this is what happens. It’s kind of a bloody miracle I’ve gotten the last two pieces done in time for the shows I figured they were made for. So there. Keep making work. I love the chaos of the Lifejacket piece. Should remember that for the next big one. Maybe blow off the themes that are coming up and just MAKE something.

You’ve got a few more days to see the exhibit at Grossmont…we’re pulling it down next Saturday. Hoping to get a little more press out of it.

And I got photos back from the photographer of the new piece…

Her name is still in my brain, working its way out, so just know it’s the Goddess of something, I’m not sure exactly what yet. Possibly everything. Just like me…I’m the Goddess of something…of cleaning up cat puke. Of coupons. Of paperwork. Of Google Classroom. Of the bougainvillea. Of multi-tasking. Of blueberry oat bars. That seems like enough.

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

Hard to see anything, because I’m still in pencil, because I don’t wanna fuck it up. I think the male figure is almost ready for ink. Then I’ll need to turn it upside down to do the other female…and figure out what’s going on with the hair. And the empty spots. Probably should figure out the main figure’s hair before I draw his wings. You know, like you do.

I’m really annoyed by empty spots. I like to fill everything in. I blame Richard Scarry. And Dr. Suess. OK, maybe that’s just how my brain works.

I saw this last night. There were two, but there was a guy in the way of the second one. Please sir, move so I can photograph the scary faces.

And Midnight is in her standard place.

I’m buried in grading. I have a ton of yardwork and housework. I still need to finish taxes and start financial aid. I can’t deal with any of it right this second. I’m too tired. Sad! That said, I got up at a reasonable hour, finished grading tests and another assignment, then did yardwork, drew, ate, and I think I showered in there. I think I’m going to spend an hour trying to draw some more and then give up for the day. Because. Because I have to hang out with humans for some period of time or I go a bit bonkers. More than I already am. There’s a fine line between the bonkers that keeps me going and making stuff and the bonkers that throws me down the hole. I’m staying above ground right now. Need to keep doing that.

Slow Percolation

First of all, I’m not getting much sleep lately. I’ve had something (probably animal) waking me up every night around 2 AM and sometimes I’m so hyped afterwards that falling back to sleep is just troubled. Last night it was the mockingbird…the one that visits every year. Last year I was lucky and he (she?) hung out at the neighbors’, just far enough away that I could hear him while I was falling asleep, but not like when they live in your yard. Last night, he was in my yard. Move on, you bastard!

Then I woke up with a start at about 4 AM…someone kept saying “low battery.” What the fuck? Oh yeah, the smoke alarm. Pillow over head again until it started that loud horrendous screeching that I will appreciate only if there ever is a fire or…well, my house is so leaky airwise that there will never be a carbon monoxide leak big enough for me to have an issue. So at 4 AM, I was switching out batteries. The dog was mightily confused by the timing of all of it. And falling back to sleep was not easy.

I actually took a nap yesterday evening. Just 20 minutes. Power mom nap. Yeah baby.

My counselor is trying to graduate me…I get it. I’m not clinically depressed any more. That’s a good thing. But I still want balance in my life and we went through and listed everything and work has to give. It’s the only healthy thing. Can’t sleep less or exercise less or art less. Work is the time suck. Like I didn’t know that.

Moving on to the art stuff. I did grade last night, so I didn’t start artmaking stuff until almost 11. I started with the easy stuff, the cutting and taping. It’s rhythmic, meditative. Cut. Measure. Tape. Cut again. Measure. Draw a line. Cut.

So the finished size on this needs to be 16×24″…I measured the paper at 15×23″ to give me some space for a binding, and then I’m going to try to stay about a 1/2 inch inside. Maybe. Maybe not.

Damn thing is tiny. Anyway. I then stared at it for a while, trying to have a vision. It is kinda like that. I stare at the paper until what needs to fill in the space appears in my head. There’s some little elf in there, or a gnome or something, that’s drawing on a white board while someone else erases, trying to find something I like, because sometimes I’ll get picture after picture and almost shake my head like an Etch a Sketch (you would laugh to see all the words I just typed into Google because I couldn’t remember the name of those things). And then one will stick and I’ll draw it. It’s a slow percolation process. Nothing fast and furious.

I gave up on the staring and started to tape the two larger drawings together. This is Bathtub 6, I think.

It’s the creepy one. Some part of me wants to draw more around it, but the minimalist in me (which rarely surfaces) says it should stay the way it is.

Then I taped this one…tentatively named Heart-Shaped Box. It needs a lot more drawing…more room on the bottom. I think. Anyway, it’s there for when I want to work on it. You can see how much bigger it is because the first drawing is up in the top right.

I have another huge one that will probably be a triptych just so it’s not overwhelming to quilt…maybe that’s something to draw during Spring Break, since I will have hours and hours of alone time. Huh. Not looking forward to that…except I am. Difficult. This will be the first school vacation where I’m not visiting someone else or having the kids come home. I need to do yardwork like every day. Ugh.

So I finally picked up a pencil! (Sion is happy now…) Because I didn’t want to fuck it up.

Good thing really because I had to redraw the lower figure about 5 times. Still not sure what to do with the heads. Gotta let the gnomes do their white board thang. Will have to get back to you on the heads. Even hers needs something. Hair? Who knows. Why keep it so simple? Oh yeah, because the pieces are gonna be freakin’ tiny. I’m not enlarging this one. Need to remember that so I don’t go crazy later.

Cut and Tape

Tired morning. Sleep is messy. Whatever woke me up at 2 AM didn’t bother the dog. The cat was as alert as I was, but she gets to sleep all day, curled up in my laundry. (Doesn’t that sound nice? I should have been a cat.) Me? I’m a little on the edge of irritable and crazy. Nothing new there.

I was so efficient yesterday afternoon. Walked the dog…three miles uphill. OK. The whole three miles is not uphill. But the hill was easier than it was on Saturday. This is good. Then I came home and ran errands and talked to girlchild, who was trying to figure out insurance crap.

After dinner, I finished grading one WHOLE assignment (OK, I had 2 out of 5 periods already done, but whatever) and then I worked on some fabric hobby stuff, something I’m not allowed to show you, but Sue Spargo wool embroidery stuff, which really just gives my head a place to rest sometimes when it’s all over the map, wanting to be creative and stitchy, but not able to focus on that for whatever reason. So I traced freezer paper for two blocks and cut out the freezer paper, and now I can move on to the next step. It was enough to calm the brain down and let it focus. Unfortunately it was then also really late.

Sigh. Yeah. I know why I’m always tired. I don’t sleep enough or well. Really, I never have. Even as a kid. Not sure about as a baby. But never a deep sleeper.

So I did get up off the couch and try to deal with the stuff I’d copied. At least some sense of artistic achievement most nights, right? That’s what keeps Kathy happy and sane?

So I copied the one from Tuesday night. I stood there debating for a while if the part I cut off (on the left) would make a cool small art quilt all by itself.

Yeah. The composition is kinda cool. But I don’t want to make one that looks like the other one. So I recycled it. Now I need to add paper to this, measure the final size, and decide how I’m going to do the rest.

Then I had my smaller sketchbook, the one that travels with me. There were three drawings in there that I thought would make interesting smaller quilts. I enlarged them 200%. Honestly, with all the detail, I could have gone to 300%, but then I wouldn’t be in the smaller quilt range. I taped together all the pieces to get the one I was going to do next…

Sort of a reminder of Earth Mother for Ventura in some ways. No boobs! Technically no nudity. I couldn’t enter my local SAQA show this year because I had nothing small enough with no nudity from recent years. Guess that says something about me…and my local SAQA show. Oh well.

These all started in a sketchbook that’s about 9×12″, so these are about 18×24″ or so. Here’s the second one…

She looks like she’s related to the one above. One was done on the plane home from dropping the girlchild at college in Boston. The other was done either on the way to or from Seattle for Thanksgiving. I guess planes are my new sketching arena. Too bad I don’t spend much time on them?

This last one was drawn while watching Mockingjay. So there goes the plane theory!

It’s a reminder of another older one, although it doesn’t look like it at all…just a vague reminder. These spiral-shaped women often show up in my drawings.

So that’s three smaller ones plus the other one that needs to be done by the end of March (should get my butt going on that one).

I also copied two larger ones, out of the 14×17″ sketchbook. They’re both older…

One is the most recent of the bathtub series, a kind of creepy one…I can’t find it at the moment, although I know it’s filed somewhere. Oh well. And the other one is something I started drawing a long time ago but it wouldn’t fit on the paper. So I enlarged it to be able to draw the rest. No rush. Maybe it’s the next big one. Maybe not. We’ll see.

It’s a start anyway. I have some directions to go once the next have-to is finished. It would be good to have some smaller art pieces around this year I think. Don’t worry. There will be a big one. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Or whether I’ll draw a new one.

So tired still. Work calls. It’s kind of a whiny bitch, but I can’t ignore it.