Just the Wings…

Some days it feels like I am just getting by until I can go back to whatever art project I am working on. I get through school and errands and exercise, except I really enjoy exercise, and then I get through cooking and eating and paperwork (is it paperwork if it’s on the computer?) or the technological equivalent, and then I look at the clock and calculate how much time there is left in the day for artmaking. I really wish it didn’t always start after 10 PM. Especially when daylight savings is already kicking my butt. The night owl self wants to stay up an hour later, but the morning self reminds me I have to teach 155 7th graders tomorrow and patience is one of those things that wears thin with little sleep. It already wears thin on project weeks. Gone are the days of scantrons and multiple-choice tests (well, they’re SUPPOSED to be gone…some teachers still use them), which means more work on both sides. Kids want me to give them all the answers. Then they get mad when they calculate their BMI as part of this project (yup. I brought in a scale) and realize they are classified as obese. Or that they have a higher risk for heart disease because of their gender or their race. Or that the parent who smokes around them is increasing their risk as well. Yeah. Well. Welcome to critical thinking.

So what little patience I have gets fully used up by 3:30 and then I’m supposed to do tutorial after school…unpaid tutorial, I might add, and I’m doing it today because of that project that’s due, but what I really want to do is come home and finish ironing. Well, that’s not all I want to do. Tonight is a little different, but it’s OK. It will get done.

This is a messy pile. I don’t like messy piles, but even if I straighten it all up before I start, this is what it ends up looking like…

I had a lot of little fussy things to iron last night: a cat, some hair, a uterus, lungs, a jellyfish.

I actually had myself convinced at some point that I would have no problem finishing the ironing last night, but then it was after midnight and I stood there staring at this pile…

Totally exhausted and still completely undecided as to what color(s) the wings should be. And that’s all that’s left. The damn wings. Hard to make decisions at that hour. So I packed everything up, turned off the iron, peed the dog, and walked down the hallway toward the sweet comfy bed, and the solution popped into my head.

Yeah. That’s how it works. If you make art every day, even on the days when there is no inspiration and nothing strikes your fancy, and all you’re doing is picking up fabric and moving it around or drawing godawful things in your sketchbook, or even just stitching something down because it needs to be stitched and you don’t feel like being more creative than that…if you do all that, then your brain gets in the habit of solving those creative problems while you’re too tired to even consider them. My brain figures shit out while I’m doing the dishes, while I’m driving to work or on errands, while I’m standing in a line. I let it wander and it does. It wanders until the answer is just there.

This is not an instantaneous thing. You have to work at it. I make so much work because I work at it. It seems so easy now, but there’s almost thirty years of practice in there, some years better than others. More intensely now than ten years ago. In fact, that might be my greatest fear about getting old is that I’ll lose that. I won’t have art every day. So when I talk about getting old, there’s a few things I want: I don’t want to be that old lady with the cane or the walker. I want to be the one who’s still hiking the mountains. She may have poles and she may go slowly, but she’s still moving. I want to make art every day. In fact, I will have worked my butt off for years and I deserve to retire and make art every day. No, I don’t know what that looks like yet. I don’t even know if I’ll ever be able to afford to retire, but whatever. Those aren’t the only things I want, but they are two of the most important.

With that, I guess at least I know what color I’ll be ironing tonight…just the wings…and then I’ll be ready for the next step on this project. Time to cut out all those little tiny pieces. Way better than stressing out about school.

Minor Flail

Don’t you hate waking up in the morning and struggling to remember what day it is? Yeah. It’s Friday at least. That’s a plus.

I can’t say I got much done last night. I did a lot before I considered not getting much done. Like counseling and the chiropractor (yes!) and the gym and dinner and then it was really late. So I finished the last of these three birds…

I have two months left to finish (6 birds). Yeah, it’s taking forever. Here’s why I do this stuff though, because people always ask why I’m not working on my own stuff. My stuff requires brain power a goodly percentage of the time. Sometimes I don’t have brain power, but I want to stitch or handle fabric or whatever it is that lowers my blood pressure (actually, mine’s always low) and makes me less likely to yell at inanimate objects (it could be argued some of my students are inanimate objects, but usually I mean computers or the fridge or a couch). Last night I just wanted to veg out and so I watched one show and stitched on wooly birds.

Yesterday my principal said something about our classrooms being reflective of us, but the words he used were “you get what you put into it”. And wow. Did that bug me. Because I still have a massive number of Fs. And I had to walk away from how that felt, because as a teacher, you do assume that if kids are failing, it is entirely your fault. And then you try to fix it. And the trying to fix it was driving me crazy. So I stopped working so hard at the fixing it part, because then I’d meet with the parent(s) and I’d think, wow. They raised him. I can’t fix that. I can offer a variety of assists, but at some point, I can’t do a thing if the kid doesn’t want to do the work and the parent isn’t going to do anything.

I’m in the middle of a big project in class, and I’ve chunked it into smaller progress checks so the kids who flail when given big things don’t just stop working. I’m monitoring them regularly, which means I’m walking the entire room in circles. I’m physically exhausted from walking the room by the end of the day (hence the not-getting-shit-done last night). The hardest part is the kids who just sit there and try to fake working all period. Are they gonna keep doing that for four more days? Yes. Yes they are. So I get what I put into it? Yeah. Fuck you. Not even.

Another parent meeting this morning. Hopefully this one will actually show up. I’m really tired. Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning (hear that cats?) and Spring Break in a week, even though it will be altogether too quiet and lonely. I do have a quilt to finish, and if I keep flailing at night, I’ll need a chunk of that time to get it done. Last night? Minor flail. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some stuff done tomorrow so I’ll feel better about this thing being due in 2 1/2 weeks.

Which Parent Will You Be?

Neck is still messed up. Call to chiropractor today. Same with the pool. Whatever. I survived yesterday with about 300 people saying or singing happy birthday to me. I think 6th period was the most melodic AND in tune. Fourth period was just screechy and although 8th period was a nice volume, they only knew three notes.

I sat through a union meeting and drew this…

I have two drawings in my head that are Big Heads (way bigger than this…the sketchbook is probably 6×9″). Need to find time for that.

Then a quiet evening with pizza, Walking Dead, and my sofa companions, some more needy and some more verbal than others. Then I did the dishes and put the dishwasher stuff away, wrote an email to my union people about what happened at the meeting, moved a bookshelf (17 other pieces of furniture had to move first), and finished putting fabric away. While I was doing that, I remembered Amanda Palmer had posted on Facebook about a new song, a serious song, not a last-minute plinking of the ukelele (not that I mind those), and I scrolled through until I found it…listening to the song, I read the story behind it, which is sad, of course. But this part got me…photo of babe in suitcase while she tries to finish writing a song all night. Being an artist AND being a mom…two of the hardest jobs to juggle at the same time.

And I like that…“you are either going to be the person who stayed up and wrote the song, or you’re going to be the person who went to bed and didn’t write the song.” I don’t care about the boring fucking parent side, but I guess I was always the one who stayed up and made the art. Who made it despite parenthood and divorce and all the other crap. I think that’s the artist’s drive, the one that woke me up around 2 AM with this vision of a drawing in my head. Anyway, the song is good…see link below for the story and the song. I read it while I listened, which I think is the best way to do it.

Amanda Palmer: Machete

So in the light of being that person, the one who stays up late to have her other artistic life, here’s what I did after 10 PM last night. First of all, the damn Wonder Under is being an asshole. Here are all the released pieces.

So when I’m ironing, if a piece doesn’t have the web on it, I do this kindergarten-level pattern matching. It has a pointy bit here, it’s long and skinny there, and I try to match them up. If I can’t, I trace a new one. It is a rancid pain in the ass. It’s like an online intelligence test.

Here’s the first 100 laid out.

I honestly didn’t get far, through the 50s and into the 60s I believe. Tiny little pieces and a tired little brain. But I started and that’s what matters. Now I have a plan for the next few nights. This is one of my favorite parts of the quiltmaking process, picking out the fabrics. The piece isn’t even colored in my brain. I just stare at the drawing and imagine it in a variety of colors as I’m picking stuff.

It’s a little crazy actually. The background is on the left. The stuff I’ve used so far is on the right. This drawing is small enough that right now I have it just sitting on the ironing board. Easier to see what’s what, cuz that’s some tiny-ass pieces.

I got to a stopping point and was trying to straighten other stuff up in the studio, when I realized I had a piece of dowel that would work for the SAQA auction piece I bought last year and hadn’t hung yet. I cut the dowel, stuck eyebolts in, and then realized it was REALLY tight. The sleeve was tight against the piece…making the dowel bulge out…

It’s hard to see in this picture, but look on the left, where you can see the bulge of the dowel. I hate that. I always leave room in my sleeves so that won’t happen.

So I ripped the bottom edge of the sleeve and repinned it.

And then I’ll sew it down where it belongs. So I can hang it up with all the other art that needs to get hung up.

Wow. Tired. Sore. But looking forward to that late night tonight when I can hang with the fabric again.

Made Shit Up

So I finished my trimester 2 grades last night. Around 1 AM. Because the thought of working on them over the weekend gave me the heebie jeebies. I really truly must have a break dammit. So I graded the last assignment and input a bunch of stuff and finalized all of it and analyzed the kids who were on the cusp and determined they hadn’t made an effort to bring their grades up, so they were stuck with the real-live numbers. I really am a numbers woman when it comes to grading. Let them fall where they belong. Rubics for all! However, I’ve decided I need to start using some new codes. I had one I was using with the kids that I can’t remember now, because I was tired of writing them same thing over and over again. So if they saw FRUP (or whatever the fuck it was), they knew what it meant. They already know WU is warmup (not to be confused with my personal life, where WU is Wonder Under…luckily I can tell them apart) and EC is extra credit and HW is homework and I is incomplete. And no. F is not Fabulous. It’s Fired.

I have two more codes to add after grading the last few assignments: FA for Fucking Awesome. Like you’re the kid who makes me get up out of bed in the morning and come into school, because you remind me that I know what I’m doing and you’re getting it and running with it and BLESS YOU MY CHILD. Luckily there are about 10 of these. Mostly girls. Interesting that. They really do help me survive this year. LOOK! I taught them.

The second one? MSU…for Made Shit Up. Because you did. Because I asked you to summarize what you just read and (a) you didn’t read it or (b) you don’t understand it or (c) you are just a jerk who thinks teachers don’t read assignments (sometimes we don’t). You just made up random shit and typed it up and turned it in and if I call you on your shit you will tell me “I tried!” or “That’s what it said!” at which point, I throw the story at you (I don’t do this in real life…just in my head) and demand you POINT TO WHERE IT TALKS ABOUT THAT in the story. I got that from the English teacher, who might be as frustrated as I am this year. Which helps, because then I know it’s not just me going off the deep end.

I think I’m probably gonna get in trouble if I use this one on a regular basis. But seriously, nowhere in the story did they mention surgery or cystic fibrosis. You just fucking made that goddamned shit up. And you alternately annoyed me and depressed me with your actions. So no. You get no points for that.

So I just needed to be done. With grades. And I was. And that would have been fine if I hadn’t had to get up this morning to take down my show. Which is now down. Took a whopping 10 minutes to get it down. And now I’m exhausted because I didn’t sleep anywhere near enough.

Now I didn’t put all those other quilts away that I pulled out while the show was up. Didn’t see the point. Wanted to reorganize the whole mess anyway, because sometimes I can’t find stuff. Seriously. Annoying. I had rolls of quilts I had taken and not used in the show, rolls of those I decided not to bring at the last minute, and rolls of those that were never in the running. One was on the floor in my bedroom next to the bed. I’ve been climbing over it since mid-January. Two were in the little living room and another smaller one in the living room.

So today was the day. Put it all away. In the past, I’ve kept them rolled up in old sheets on the upper shelves in my closets…or the kids’ closets. And that works pretty well, although sometimes lifting up the rolls (or quilt burritos) is difficult by myself. I’m still young! Well. You know. Enough. I’m not very tall though.

So I laid out two sheets, the one on the left for larger quilts and the one on the right for smaller ones. Although in this picture, there doesn’t appear to much difference in the size of what’s on top!

So this is another excavation. You may not know that I made my first “art” quilt in 1990. This may or may not be it. No seriously, I think it is. We were supposed to bring in a drawing, and then she taught us machine piecing of all the curved pieces and machine applique on top for some of it as well. Or maybe she had a drawing for some people to use. I know I had drawn this for a screenprint I never made. I’d taken classes from Susan before…one is further down this pile. But this one is dated 1990. And it has a small amount of silk ribbon embroidery on it as well. What’s amazing is I still have some of that gray street fabric.

Susan taught me traditional quilting as well. The one and ONLY mariners compass I have or will ever make. Seriously.

Pain in the ass. Then I started taking some art quilt classes from local quilt guilds and began to mess with the more freehand approaches they taught me. These were all pinned down and sewn down. Something to do with Frida Kahlo…can’t remember exactly, but I actually started keeping track of the art quilts at this point…this is 2000…probably based on how Joan Colvin taught me to construct quilts.

Meanwhile, I had been making applique landscape quilts with Susan all that time, so I tried an art quilt with hand applique. Oh yeah. That’s not fast. This is dated 2000, but I know the drawing was done when I was nursing my son, because it’s called Soda Sux, Wine Is Better. I had these nasty headaches during and post-pregnancy, but was encouraged not to drink tea. She suggested sodas (ironic considering my current status as a diabetic, but whatever). Dammit. We all know what’s better.

Anyway, I quickly realized I was never ever going to finish quilts if I did them all by hand. So with a few more teachers’ techniques under my belt, I figured out the way I make them now.

Anyway. More piling of quilts until the pile was big enough to roll. I needed a way to keep track of what was in the roll, so I wrote them down and put them in a plastic sleeve that’s taped to the sheet…

Rolled-up burrito o’ quilts.

I used to just have a paper list taped to the roll, but this makes more sense I think. Because they got all torn up and trashed over time.

Found this one too…Genesis. Very simple, bunch of embroidery on it. I had some weird idea and here’s what happened. Can’t always explain art brain.

I got the one big burrito rolled up and started on a second big one, while I kept the small one going.

And the final product: two large and one smallish burrito. About 90 quilts in there.

I pulled one big one that needs a bottom sleeve so it will hang better. It might be in another show this year. I pulled another big one because I’m going to hang it in the living room finally. And I hung one other one that had been out for the show. I have two more that I think I need help to hang. I’m only so tall and long-armed. Like not really. No one’s here to help me lift those burritos up either. I can do it by myself…usually. But I’m debating storing them under the bed instead. Just for easier access. Yes, there’s already stuff under the bed, but maybe it can find a better home. I’m thinking about it. So I’m not putting these away until I decide.

Now I’m going to go trace some Wonder Under. Because I fucking can. Because I finished my work for the weekend (except I have to deliver a quilt…debating doing it tomorrow, although it makes more sense to do it today. Aargh). I hate this shit where you have to be responsible and do stuff you said you would do. And I want cookies. So there.

I Suck at Sleeping

Ahhh tired. I never think about you at 11:30 at night when I’m thinking it’s time to start tracing. Even though I had to take a 20-minute nap last night before I found the energy to go to the gym. I’m not sure why our culture is so against naps for adults except for the elderly. I’m starting to think they should be a part of every day, based on my nighttime sleep habits.

It’s not that I hadn’t done art-related stuff before 11:30 PM. I had to iron, dehair, label, cut slats for, and pack up a quilt for a show. And make a label for UPS. So that was like an hour plus. That was the problem. And I graded before that. And gym. So it’s no surprise that I started late. I could have justified not tracing last night, but I want to get this thing done and that means working every night. Even though grades are due.

Head down, getting it done. All of it. Whatever it is. Mornings are rough though. And tomorrow will be no different, as I have to be in early to take my show down. Sleep! It’s for the…sleepy. Ha.

I haven’t cleaned out all the photo files from last year yet…I have a weird system, and I’m not sure it’s a good one, but it helps me find the photos I need for art stuff. Anyway, the March 2015 files are mixed in with the March 2016 files, and I keep opening the old ones…what’s funny about that is I was tracing Wonder Under then too (I think for Earth Mother for Ventura), so the photos look the same…except that one had way bigger pieces. These are freakin’ tiny. As I keep mentioning…

The pieces are so tiny that they don’t take up much room on the Wonder Under. I’m only 3 1/2 hours in…and up to piece 476, which is the jellyfish in the larger figure’s hair. So I’m past the halfway mark.

You can see I group similar pieces together and then draw a line around them, so I cut them out as one piece of Wonder Under and iron them all together onto the fabric. It saves cutting time at this phase, and if they’re really small, like some of them, I’m less likely to lose them.

So maybe another hour tonight? If I’m lucky? Tomorrow is looking a bit hairy. So probably Sunday night will be the next tracing day…although it also has its challenges.

I feel like this every year about 2 weeks before Spring Break. Exhausted, overwhelmed, head down, trying to survive. And the girlchild is texting me about how shitty she feels and you can’t make an adult who is 3000 miles away from you go to the doctor. Luckily, there’s Google and she can just diagnose herself. And probably medicate herself.

Meanwhile, boychild has scored himself housing on campus again just by waiting it out. I know I didn’t want to have a roommate by my junior year, but it’s easier than finding somewhere else to live. And he possibly won’t come home this summer. Which is depressing. But again, I did realize they would go away to college and eventually they would not come back, and my future would be this house, mostly empty, a really annoying dog who is scared of the ducks next to the pool and cats and everything in the world sometimes, and two very needy cats who headbutt my hand while I’m trying to do stuff and lick me and want to sit on me and get annoyed if I don’t do what they want. And all the fucking quiet, even with Pandora and TV and Netflix, it’s just way too damn quiet and empty.

I guess it’s a contrast to my daytime job. I might sleep all Spring Break. Except I suck at sleeping. OK. Going to the job. The place that sucks up all my time and patience. Aargh. It’s chaos there right now. Too much.

Furiously…

I worked for 12 hours yesterday. I really wish I could say that I worked on ART for 12 hours yesterday, but I would have had to blow off my real job completely to do that. But wow, think of that. Getting up in the morning, having a cup of tea, then settling in for 3 or 4 hours of work, maybe go for a walk, have some lunch, another 4 or 5 hours…you can see how this day might go. Reality is that even when I have spring or summer break, I’m not that efficient most days. Some days I’ll pull 10 hours of artmaking, but never like I do with teaching. And it was stuff I needed to do. Yes, some was grading, but I have a project coming up for my students, and even though it’s probably the last year I’ll teach it because the standards are changing, I still felt a need to completely rewrite it. And I don’t know if that will help at all. It will probably still drive me crazy. It’s the nature of the beast.

But grades are due Tuesday, so there’s some of that stuff that just has to be done. I actually think I’m a little ahead of the game though. I have two more assignments that really NEED to be graded, and then a handful of makeup work, and then I’m done. Well. I still need to input all that crap. And take my show down at Grossmont. And deliver a quilt to another show. And pack up one for yet another show. So it’s not looking REALLY good over the next few days, but it’s certainly not as impossible as it seemed last week. At least I’m pretty damn efficient. Most days.

So I didn’t start tracing until late. In fact, I had a really hard time getting up off the couch. I didn’t even grade on the couch. I was just tired. I ran a lab in class yesterday with a ton of water, and the kids did really well with not spilling TOO badly. I had 20 towels in there and they were all significantly damp by the end of the day, but that’s normal. Last year was a lot worse. I should thank them for that…for not being as bad as last year.

But in an hour, I did manage to trace about 350 pieces, so I’m still going faster than I normally would. Because those pieces are tiny. Seriously tiny. Aargh.

This part is never very exciting to photograph. But that’s what 350 tiny little pieces look like on Wonder Under. I’m about halfway up the second torso, having finished the first one, which was only her butt and up. I don’t think the girlchild is thrilled that she’s naked in another quilt of mine. The second one is a full torso, so it will take a little longer. I’m almost at the halfway mark. So if I figure another half hour to halfway, that’s about 3 hours…so 6 hours total? That’s not bad. I might be able to finish by the end of the weekend…because this weekend is kind of a mess. I might try to start cutting them out on Friday at my meeting, although they’re pretty tiny and I don’t usually like to trim Wonder Under away from the house. It’s too hard not to lose pieces.

I’ll have to think about it. Speaking of thinking about it, I’m deep in my head at the moment. Reflective I guess. Trying to figure out who I am and who I want to be, where I want to be. How.

I stare at this every day…

The computer screen and then that crazy raccoon behind it from The Bloggess. Furiously Happy is Jenny Lawson’s new book (Lawson being The Bloggess) and no, I haven’t read it yet, because I don’t own it yet and maybe I should see if my library has it, because they bloody well should. They DO have it…and holy crap, it has 75 holds on it. OK. I can handle that. I requested it. I might be reading it over the summer. But I can read her blog while I wait. The real point is that phrase “furiously happy” because I really do think I don’t do happy the normal way, that I’m just not one of those happy perky people who can just BE happy with things, but I also think that’s what makes me good at the art and teaching and crap, because I’m never satisfied with what’s done or what’s out there. I need it to be better, to make more, to try this, to draw that, and if I were just normally happy, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do. So I’m gonna get FURIOUSLY happy about some things, like mailing two quilts out in a week for shows that are a long way away and getting an article published and almost getting on top of my grading. And then Ima gonna (like my students say) get some of that furiousness (way better than furiousity) and channel it into making stuff. And maybe even cleaning the house and doing yardwork, but honestly, that’s more furiously irritable than furiously happy.

So if you live near me and you see me out in the driveway yelling like a banshee, it’s OK. I’m being furiously happy. About the dead leaves piling up. It happens.

Art Is My Superpower

I have this pool vacuum that sometimes tries to climb out of the pool. I’m listening to it now, realizing it sounds like a wild animal devouring burgers in the backyard (sorry, neighbors…I don’t know how to make it stop doing that). It doesn’t seem to bother the ducks…they avoid it, but they don’t stay away because of that. Nor do they stay away because of the Golden Retriever who swims in the pool and barks at them. Halfheartedly. Like, “get outta my pool bitches…eh…stay awhile. I don’t really care.”

I’m barely awake, despite the shower and a reasonable (for me) amount of sleep. My sleep app tells me 4 AM was troubled sleep. I don’t doubt it. I already know I have to be up early on Saturday, my normal morning of rest. Oh well. Sleep is wasted artmaking time. Might as well rejoice in what little I get.

The plus is that the tracing is going well…

I traced over 150 pieces last night in less than an hour…because they’re small pieces, so they don’t take as long to draw. Duh. That’s a plus. So there’s only 600 pieces to go. Too bad grading is competing for my time. I did grade papers last night. I might sort of get caught up (maybe). Don’t hold your breath. I don’t think teachers are ever really caught up. Even in the summer, we are prepping for the next year, how are we gonna change things or fix things, or in the summers that follow for the next THREE years, how do we transition to new science standards with no curriculum. No problem! say the districts. There’s the INTERNET. It’s like magic. Curriculum just appears. Well, it appears after hours of searching and tweaking and messing and collaborating. It’s a giant time suck. I know because we started doing that kind of stuff this year.

So why do I do this job? Well, it is creative and requires most of my brain. I don’t like to be bored at work. It’s also cool when kids get stuff, like holy moley, so that’s what a heart looks like. And they can see the muscle. And middle-school kids can be funny and loving and all that. But it is an incredibly stressful and demanding job, like no other job I’ve had, and sometimes I just need to talk about it. That’s always been an issue with non-teachers. There’s a difference between complaining and venting. I vent and it’s out. I don’t have to think about it any more. Frustration released. Moving on to the next daily challenge.

Maybe that’s why I’m still in counseling. Because I just need someone who listens and lets me get it out without taking it on themselves. You can’t fix my students. You can’t fix my school (and next year, based on the plan we’ve heard about, is gonna be hell on wheels with no teams). You can’t fix what’s wrong with public schools. Seriously. It’s unfixable as long as parents don’t care and politicians are involved. Or parents care too much and are ignorant of how a school or classroom actually run, and politicians are involved. I can handle my job…most days…I just need someone to say uh huh, that sucks, have a hug. Or a glass of wine. Or both.

My joy in life doesn’t come from my job. It comes from my art. And I wish I could make more of it.

Today I’m running a lab that requires 17 towels. That should be interesting. Labs are exhausting, especially with water or chemicals or dissectable things, but the kids get a lot out of this one, so I do it. I’m still trying to prep for next week’s project, so I’m a little behind. Hoping to get caught up by the end of the weekend. Might not be socializing much between grading and that. Ugh.

All this is why I make so much art, people. The job sucks my brain out and spits it on the ground. The rest of life is somewhat stressful and often lonely. Art makes it all OK. It’s my superpower. Certainly doing taxes and financial aid apps and going to the store and cleaning out the litter tray and trying to analyze the tire pressure light in my car all just make me crazy. I need something to tip the balance in the other direction.

I was interviewed for San Diego CityBeat. You can see the article here. I think he did a good job of capturing me and my art. And he didn’t mention my grandmother’s quilts, so that’s a win.

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.

White-Out Is My Friend

I have this crazy-ass dog (it’s my daughter’s dog) who likes to go in the pool. She just wades in up to her belly and wiggles around a bit, but then wants to come straight back in the house, which means a 5-minute struggle with a dripping Golden Retriever and a towel. Most days she just goes in once, but some days, it’s 3 or 4 times and all the towels are wet and I’m going a bit bonkers, because she’s like a big smelly 2-year-old.

I have this wacky cat who started out by finding all my hair scrunchies (yeah criticize all you like…I’m not and never will be a fashion maven) and dropping them all over the house. Once every couple of days, I find all of them, pick them up, and deposit them in the bathroom so she can start over. She’s recently started doing the same thing with pairs of socks and apparently with one flipflop (would have liked to see that in action).

The other cat, also the girlchild’s, has recently become overly needy, wanting to knead your belly into submission, which would be fine if the claws were not part of the process. She’s very pushy about her needs, biting you if you don’t continue the never-ending petting. She’s also a fat beast of a cat, so that doesn’t help.

Some nights I come home and feel like I am needed more here than at school…and after a long day of whiny stuff at school (from the parents, no less), it’s nice to sometimes have a break from the three furry creatures. Last night was not one of those nights. It’s OK. They love me (most of the time) and need me (way too much). Right now, I only have two of them in here with me, so I’m doing OK.

I graded for a while last night…I’m trying to do a bit every night so I don’t get too frustrated, but last night, about halfway through one minor assignment with only one period, I was about to chuck the computer through the wall. I’ve taught what organ systems are…multiple times. I even showed a short reminder video before we started the assignment, so they would know what the systems were…again…because I’ve taught them multiple times, but I realized I was having to repeat my instructions over and over. “Organs work together in a system. Name one of the systems? Yes. Cardiovascular is a system. Digestive is a system.” And this is my highest-level class, so it should be fine, right? Oh holy heaven, some teacher goddess must be out there for us, because I needed support. There were multiple kids that were so far off that I wanted to bang my head on the desk…so far off, I don’t even know how they found the answers they did (because they will say, that’s what the internet SAID! And I will scream at the top of my lungs and run flailing out of the classroom into the street some day when a kid tells me that…because I’m not allowed to simply say…”Bullshit. Show me where you found that.”). I bullied through though, because honestly, if a kid can’t figure out (after I modeled the first one even) what I’m asking for, and doesn’t have the guts to ask me (OK, I might have gone off if he had, because like I said, already TAUGHT you this multiple times, why aren’t you freakin’ listening, is it because you have a hearing problem or I’m not speaking clearly or what the fuck?), then they deserve the F they just earned for not doing what I asked them to do.

This year has been so frustrating so far…we are almost 2/3s of the through and I don’t know how I am going to survive the last trimester.

This is why I stop the working part at some point in the night and move on to less crazy-making shit, although last night, even that was an issue. So I had an idea for what I wanted for the next piece, which isn’t very big, so I have to watch how crazy I draw…nothing too tiny (I think I’ve already blown that). But I started…the main figure was fine, but then I tried to decide how to add the secondary figures, and that’s where it went all to hell…

That is so not working.

It happens…especially when I haven’t been drawing regularly for a while. And yeah, people are like, look you crazy woman…you’re drawing with Sharpie, not pencil…what do you expect? I get this flow with the Sharpie that I never get with a pencil. I like it. And my drawings aren’t the final product, so I don’t care if I mess up and have to use white-out. And I rarely DO have to use white-out.

The bottom arm on the left was fixed…but the rest of the body just wasn’t working. At all. So I got rid of the whole body.

And then I drew a face.

Now you can see the body under her arms is gone (but that one boob is giant-looking in this photo)…I’m actually going to go copy this to size and try to draw the rest. I might even use pencil to start. It happens. But I’m much closer than where I was before, so that’s a good thing, because this whole coming home and NOT having a project in progress, where I can just pick it up and do the next step or continue what I was doing…well, I’m not liking that. I’ve been pretty much booked solid on projects for months now. And it’s not like I don’t still have a deadline. I do. I just don’t have the next step ready to go yet. When school is this frustrating, I need a nice outlet in the evenings. Really. I do. Every night.

So I’ll copy this one and another one that I think will make a good quilt if I enlarge it and draw the rest. And another smaller one, so I should find that sketchbook too. Letting my art brain lie fallow is not a good plan. Especially if the only other thing I have is incredibly frustrating student work that makes me want to throw my computer into the pool. After the dog. Yeah. Bad plan.

Art…It’s What’s for Dinner…

The part that sucks about finishing a really time-consuming piece, even early, is that all the stuff you blew off in order to get it done is still waiting there, sometimes not very patiently, like a Rottweiler behind the door, slavering, ready to attack.

I spent all weekend working pretty much. Lots and lots of hours of grading and lesson prep and trying to do taxes and FAFSA. Trying to just find all the paperwork to do those things and make sense of the federal government’s wording and questions. Even the help box doesn’t clear it up. Luckily, there’s Google. I’ll be glad when the kids are done and I don’t have to do this any more…I just will be paying it off. It’s ironic that my scrambling to make more money so that I can pay college bills will probably result in their qualifying for less aid. Frustrating! Cornell seems to understand how much money I have available. Too bad Brandeis is less helpful.

Four weeks until Spring Break though. I’m alternately looking forward to having some time off (already!) and worried that it will be too many hours with just me. Inevitably, I will have plenty to do. At least one art quilt, hopefully two in process by then. Plus the yard. The yard is a disaster. So is the house. I keep considering getting a roommate, although they’d have to move out for the summer, but I can’t behave well enough for a roomie. They’d have to tolerate my late nights, sometimes sewing on the machine with music blasting, my inability to clean. The crazy-ass cooking I sometimes do late at night. I made to-die-for blueberry oat bars last night. They’re a knock-off of the Starbucks ones, and they’re not the healthiest things in the world, but holy hell, are they good. I’m gonna have to freeze them so I don’t eat all of them.

Anyway. So the weekend was a clusterfuck for art…except I finished the binding on the quilt in progress and will be delivering it to the photographer today, a full week early. Whoo! And I went to an opening Saturday night. But that was a plus and a minus…

There’s this new place in town called La Bodega Gallery and it’s in this huge old building with soaring ceilings that are a little ragged. And they throw a LOT of shows. I don’t know how much traffic they get during the week, but they’re open 9-5 M-F. Or 12-5…it’s hard to say. Anyway, the thing I love about this gallery is that they get a LOT of traffic, they get a ton of people coming in to see the art. Part of this is because it’s changing up its exhibits every two weeks or so, and they tend to be popular themes, like the Frida Kahlo exhibit last year and the Star Wars one in December. The exhibits sometimes are invite-only and sometimes they put out a call, although honestly, they don’t give a lot of heads up on some of them. The show I saw Saturday was a Pin-Up exhibit and the call went out in mid-January. I couldn’t have done something for that (honestly, I don’t really do pin-ups anyway). But the biggest issue with them is that there doesn’t seem to be a curating process…there’s no culling of the bad stuff. And this time there was some seriously amateurish stuff. But then you see mom taking a picture of her kids in front of the piece dad painted and you think, eh, there’s the future art community maybe. It’s definitely more low-brow than some of the exhibits I go to…in fact, if you go later than 7 PM, odds are you can’t even get photos of the art because it’s so crowded.

So. There’s that. But we went and I got pictures of some good pieces, although I didn’t get them all resized today…running late! I don’t know why. Some perfect trifecta of work, laundry, and dishwasher. Or something. They all need assistance.

They don’t usually have a lot of fiber in these shows, so this one really stood out…even if it’s biologically inaccurate…

By DeAnna Munoz

And this right next to it…which had no name or number I could find.

Everything is for sale…that crotch is a little terrifying.

There were lots of guns in with the pin-ups. Somewhat disturbing as well.

This by Raz Holly. I’ve liked his stuff before. I’ll post more over the next few days. There’s always some interesting stuff and sometimes some stuff that you’d consider dropping $50 on. And they bring art to the masses…I just wish they’d edit sometimes. See…even when I don’t MAKE art, there’s still art.

My next step is a drawing. Gotta make time for that. Maybe I can start tonight…we’ll see. Still battling the FAFSA and taxes for now. Also grades. But I want to get started on the next quilt soon. I don’t like not having something to pick up when I’m having a bad day.