Category: Travel

Paying Attention…

I’m supposed to pay attention to, label my feelings, pay attention to my movements…going from stopped to moving, from seated to standing. I think too hard about the latter…wait, am I moving now? Am I stopped? When does movement start? Trying. Not breathing right this morning. Irritated. Stressed. Too much to do before I leave for Houston. Work raises its ugly head and demands more attention. Fuck you…you have too much of my life already, you bastard. I’m ignoring you. Hard to do with the sound of hundreds of middle-schoolers outside my door.

I started typing this in the morning, before school. I was trying to get everything set up and my brain was vibrating, it was working so hard to push emotion down and out and away. So I stopped. I typed. I cried. I cried with kids right outside the door. Better than inside, right? It’s OK. It’s under control most of the time. Or is that OK? Would less control be better? I don’t know. I have to function. I have to do my job, pay the bills, take care of my kids.

Tension. Nausea. Tweaked one part of my back. Bloated, tired. Wanted to stay home and read my book. Still want to do that. (got to read at the gym and during dinner…having dinner by yourself? Or having dinner with the characters of your book? Sad either way, but at least I semi-enjoy one version.)

Here’s the core problem to paying attention to your feelings: mine get overwhelming pretty quickly, and that’s not OK at work. I try to draw from positive interactions at work, especially with kids, but they seem more heavily weighted in the morning hours, and then I try to check in with my team at lunch for their collective strength and with my science coteacher between classes, in the space between our doors, but some days I just can’t get enough mental and emotional space from all that crap that swirls around in my head, making soup out of my control and logic and planning. Mr. Meditation doesn’t probably deal with what I deal with…he looks too damn calm. Give him my life for a week or so and see if he changes his tune. I spent all day breathing and paying attention to how I felt (you are about to duct tape a student to a chair…how does that make you FEEL?). Not really. But maybe it worked, I don’t know.

He says, “Experience overtakes the intellectual understanding of your feelings,” like that’s a good thing. OK. I guess it is. It’s just not good in the context of work or the gym or the grocery store or wherever I’m standing that isn’t in my room, a closet, in my car, in a big field in the middle of nowhere (can I be transported there now?). I am very good at experiencing my feelings. I am also good at understanding them. That unfortunately does not help them leave me alone for a while. Or even control them enough to feel like I’m in control.

Speaking of control, tomorrow’s dinner is already prepped and in the fridge for the slow-cooker tomorrow (I’m getting the hang of this. Praise my efficiency, dammit). My sub plans for the two days I’m gone were done this morning. I did extra laundry today for the trip. I’m not packed, but that’s OK…I’m doing that tomorrow night. I have food for the trip. I’ll be running on very little sleep (hey, what’s new?). Expect me to fall into a closet and cry at some point. I have books on the iPad and in real life (just in case), I have a couple of sketchbooks (have to make a decision about those), and I spent time tonight prepping the last two months’ of Sue Spargo’s birds to take with me…

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I needed to iron and cut things out…

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and sew a few things down with the machine. Tomorrow night I will put the bags together for stitching on the plane. I’m hoping we aren’t in terminals for long…if we are, it’s because we missed a flight. I’m prepared if we do. I have food, books, and stitching…materials for drawing. I hate being bored. Headphones for music. I will need music.

I’d like to say I’m excited, but mostly I’m nervous and apprehensive. I don’t travel well. I have to talk about two quilts, and I don’t really have anything logical to say about one of them, although girlchild approved my rambling explanation from last night. I’m worried about being around people. I know, that’s lame. I’m hoping to hold it together without my routines of exercise, meditation, reading, and drawing in a safe place. There are no safe places in a hotel or on a plane. I have my gym clothes. I have my meditation app. I have headphones.

I had to grade tests tonight, so I didn’t get any time for real art, but I did interact with fabric. During school, I needed to do a cover page for the new unit…

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So I even got to draw at school. And color! You wonder why I draw what I draw…or maybe you don’t. I wonder if I were an English or Math teacher, what would I draw instead of body parts? Or was I fated to be a science teacher? Who knows.

I had 17 ideas today for drawing uterine-related stuff, women and their periods, women and menopause, women and their uteri, the pain, the blood, the mess, the annoyance, as you age, having to deal with the vagaries of the female body deciding to ignore routine and just mess with you on a regular basis. Cramps so bad it hurts to stand, it hurts to sit…and yet, there you are, doing both, in front of 35 kids who have no idea what you’re feeling or experiencing. This is your teacher…she is basically hemorrhaging AND suffering from depression. And you think YOU have it bad? Really? Deep breaths. It’s like my inner emotional world is being wrought upon the physical body. I can draw that.

I need to draw more of that…you know, because it will be so accepted in the art or art-quilt worlds. Yeah. Whatever. I obviously don’t pay much attention to acceptance in either. I just do what’s in my head and rail at the world when it causes issues.

I’m going to Houston for the opening of the Art Quilt Portfolio: People and Portraits exhibit that SAQA is sponsoring to go along with Martha Sielman’s book published this year. I was one of 21 featured artists in the book (if I’m smart, I will find my copy and take it with me for signatures). They are exhibiting two quilts from each artist. I got to choose which two out of the book (oh my…what were they thinking, letting me choose?). I chose Fully Medicated and I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket. I’ll post them later this week (although they are on my Current Shows page). My mom will be there too…be nice to her. It must have been hard to raise me to be the crazy-ass artist that I am today. I’m sure it was hard.

When I get back from Houston, it’s race race race to the end of the school trimester and getting two quilts done and the stupid fucking holiday season (hate the holidays) and the high-school soccer season and family stuff and maybe some free time. And maybe some mental space, who knows. Probably some pain and hurt as well. That seems to come with the holidays, whether I like it or not. Lots of have-to’s and shoulds and not a lot of enjoying the moment. I will have to work on that. More exhibits to enter, some to get into, some to reject me (I can handle that…it’s disappointing, but it’s a rejection that I’m used to and can deal with). If I had my choice right this second, I’d be working on a quilt right now, instead of trying to persuade my brain it’s bedtime.

I don’t often have a choice, though. Paying attention. Sigh. I really wish someone had been paying attention. That’s part of my test, now. You need to pay attention. If you can’t? Fuck off. You’re not worth it.

Quilt National 2013: The Beauty’s in the Details

I keep trying to finish this post. Today is the day.

While girlchild cooks dinner and I try to relocate any mental energy for the evening’s tasks, I am writing my last Quilt National 2013 post. The one thing that never really shows up in the show catalogs are detail shots…this is why seeing them in person is always better…as before, if I didn’t put a link in on one of the two previous posts, I will put it here. Otherwise, you’ve gotta go back and read Quilt National 2013 and Quilt National 2013: The Artist Talks. Know that I write these posts more so that I will remember a year or more from now what I saw and what I thought…you’re welcome to come along, but I’m all about documenting.

This is a closeup of Pam Rubert’s Seattle–Wish You Were Hair. She does a lot of patterned stitching on her pieces.

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Lisa Kijak’s piece El Cortez, Las Vegas, is made up of thousands of pieces. On her blog, she talks about a special piece of rust-colored fabric that she used in this piece…

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Paula Kovarik’s piece Round and Round It Goes…I could stare at it for hours, just tracing my finger along the line and finding the frogs and the birds and the just crazy number of animals in this piece.

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I talked to her more than once, but my brain was all crazy with Quilt Nationalness…now I wish I could sit her down WITH the quilt and say…OK…how? Time? Drawings? Hours? WOW.

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It’s just too amazing for words.

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Brienne Brown’s Moonset is a similar technique…but hers are all sea creatures in a smaller space. Her silk deals with light much differently than Kovarik’s recycled cotton tablecloth.

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Susan Lenz’ Circular Churchyard is grave rubbings with crayon, all overlapping in space.

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I’m amazed by her ability to decide what goes where on a wholecloth piece like this. It works. It seems like it wouldn’t, but it does. And she did all the rubbings in one go, in the cemetery.

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Brigitte Kopp‘s Hands off!–Hau ab! is about child abuse and how children deal with it, what their body language and facial expressions tell us.

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Sidnee Snell’s Riveted reminds me of Kijak’s work, with the glow that comes from many layers of fabric working together to make this beautiful section of a steel bridge. Snell talked about the many trips she has taken over this bridge and the many photos that she also has of it.

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Eleanor McCain and Kevin Womack’s piece Swaddling to Shroud–Birthing Bed, is largely made of digitally printed fabrics. Some of the detail shots remind me of the unit I was just teaching.

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Yup. Them’s some ovaries!

Brooke Atherton’s piece SpringField is full of these details of objects sewn on and into the work.

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You could stare at it for hours and wonder what each thing meant (and she said they DID mean stuff).

I had a conversation with Leslie Rego about how her piece Four Seasons at the Beaver Pond glowed, about how the silk was part of what made this piece look so much more beautiful in real life.

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She thought it looked better in the book…she’s wrong. This is so much deeper in real life. None of the photos do it justice.

Miriam Nathan-Roberts used her stitching to help with the illusion of glass reflections in her piece Salt & Pepper.

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I don’t have a full picture of Arle Sklar-Weinstein‘s piece Truth or Consequences, but here is a detail of one of the nuclear pockets with leftover bits and pieces sewn in.

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Here is a closeup of Dianne Firth’s Storm, showing the felt and the tulle that make up the piece, as well as the shadows thrown on the wall behind the piece.

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This is a detail of the center of Bonnie Peterson’s Kora (Pilgrimage), showing some of the hand embroidery.

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And some of Sara Impey’s bitter pills are in this photo…too bad my camera can’t handle lighting.

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Sheila Frampton-Cooper did some very tight background quilting in her piece From a Seed, imitating the rain in the background.

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This is a closeup of the very tight yet random-looking stitching in the background of Mary Rowan Quinn’s High Expectations.

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This detail shows the scanned and built-up leaves in Barbara Schneider’s Forest Floor, var. 2.

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You can clearly see all the torn-up bits of Susan Brook’s Together in this photo: from ugly fabric (her words) to a coherent piece.

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In the detail of Lorie McCown’s My Grandmother’s Dresses, you can see how the simple dress shape takes on character with the wrinkles and the stitching.

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Elin Noble, who received the Quilts Japan Prize for her piece Fugitive Pieces 11, dyed her fabrics and her threads. This is another piece that is completely different in real life.

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Carol Goossens’ piece As Summer Slowly Fades… details the red-winged blackbird. There is an intense amount of hand and machine stitching on this piece.

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Cathy Kleeman thoroughly covered her piece Post No Bills with paint and marks after it was quilted. You can see how the marks lay on top of the fabric texture.

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Marianne Burr‘s hand stitching is apparent in this detail of Thru the Lens.

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Sandy Gregg’s pools of water give up words in the detail shots of Listen to the Rhythm of the Falling Rain.

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Robin Schwalb’s Jive Boss Sweat shows words and big stitches in the detail.

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The distinctive drawing style of Kate Sturman Gorman in her piece Bernadette in Artichokes shows up her detail, along with the hand-stitching in the background.

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Dinah Sargeant’s long, skinny ribbons of dyed fabric and the vague details of her figure’s face and hands are clearer in this photograph. Someday I will remember to ask her about whether she plans the faces or whether they just appear in the fabric.

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Susan Shie’s detail of Dragon Sushi has a wonderful quote: “Beware of Artists…They mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most dangerous.” She has made this into a digital print for purchase, available here…

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A detail of Anne Smith’s Gabriel shows the details of embroidery and fabric choices, which seem chaotic until viewed in the whole.

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Peggy Brown’s detail of Soliloquy II shows some of the paper she used in her quilt.

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This detail shows the marbled patterns in Karen Tunnell’s Bubbles.

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This detail of Vintage by Carol Watkins shows the contrast between the printed background and the heavily thread-painted car.

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The detail of Cris Fee’s self portrait, Contemplating Self, shows the heavily stitched eyeball.

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Pamela Allen’s buildings in My Town by the River are a modpodge of fabrics and printed words, held together with hand and machine stitching echoing roads, textures, and flowers.

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Deirdre Adams’ Tracings III is a texture party…detail shots reveal things I would never have seen while staring at the whole.

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John Lefelhocz’s Mona in the Era of Social Butterflies reveals letters in each box that look like keyboard keys, typing a message into the image of Mona.

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I think this was my mom’s detail shot of Barbara Schneider’s leaves in Forest Floor, var. 2.

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All in all, I think the best part of the Quilt National experience was getting to spend so much time with the quilts and their makers. I rarely get to see a show over and over again, and hope I have the chance to visit again…and hopefully the brain power to remember to ask all the questions about their work that vanished as soon as I was in the artists’ presence. One can only hope.

Now I can finish cleaning my studio and putting the QN 2013 book in the bookshelf with the others…it was a great experience.