Do It or Lose It

I’m getting there. I managed yesterday better, although I woke up to chaos this morning. About 6 emails that had to be dealt with right now. RIGHT NOW. Which is why I’m running late.

I meditated last night, although my brain was all over the place. And then I drew. I did financial aid stuff before that…almost done…woo hoo! Three more things to scan and submit on one kid, the other kid stuff finally came through this morning, so I’ll do it tonight. This stuff is so stressful, my brain wants to explode.

So meditation reined the brain in a little bit. Maybe. Because then I got up and I drew…I finished the earth on the bottom…

Hard to see, but I tried really hard to not make a bunch of tiny things on there. Really hard.

Then I went back up to the torso, staring at the other boob. I had been looking at leopards and jaguars and cheetahs, but the spots…holy moley, the spots. And I couldn’t find the picture I wanted. The pose. I don’t know. I just wasn’t sold. I’ve done lots of lions. Female lions are just gorgeous creatures, so strong and determined, although I hate when they watch a new male come in and kill their babies. Yes, I’ve watched every episode of Big Cat Diary…like 7 times. I miss that show.

Anyway. So I went to tigers…because the stripes can be kept simple, and in a piece like this, where there’s already a ton of detail, I don’t need to be making 100 spots on a leopard.

I added the other lung, decided to continue the grass just under the neckline instead of putting something different on the other side, and then put a prickly pear cactus above the tiger to fill in that space.

What you can’t see here is that I have one arm and then the rest of the torso, which will include a uterus this time around, because when I make things for myself instead of for shows, I don’t have to worry about the nudity. I even added a nipple on the tiger, to be done in fur colors.

I’m enjoying drawing this. It’s soothing. I can’t say falling asleep or staying asleep are getting better for me, but I think that’s hormones and stress more than anything else. So exercise, meditation, drawing or making art in some way. Deep breathing when necessary. Get done with stupid stuff that stresses me out and that will help. Ignore all the people who are stressing me out (whoops, that’s half of my students right now and about 17 other adults) and hang out with those who don’t. Or hang out with the dog and the cats, because they’re demanding in their own way, but it’s pretty basic needs…pet me, feed me.

At least I’ve figured out where art fits in all that…do it or lose it.

Make Art or Die

Hi. In about 4 days, all the financial aid stuff will be done and I will no longer feel like ripping my eyeballs out of my head and mailing them to Cornell and Brandeis…along with my ex’s entrails. Seriously. I went to the gym late last night (long day, couldn’t get up off the couch for a while) and then cooked a new dinner that tastes OK but cooks like a natural disaster. Then I came in here and tried to finish up all the financial aid for the boychild (still not done…because it’s a giant fucked up mess, that’s why).

So did I get any art done? Fuck no. I looked at the clock and it was almost midnight and I just went to bed. Frustrated. Irritated. Woke up to texts and emails and more financial aid crap and realized I was grinding my teeth. Really. I love this stuff. The smartest thing I did was buy a new printer that actually scans multi-page documents into a PDF file (I know y’all are going, Kathy…they’ve been doing that for a while…but you don’t know how old my last printer and scanner were). This was joy compared to last year. At least that part of it.

The place my brain goes on the stress-o-meter though. Tonight I NEED to draw. Or something. Yes, I have 7 other things on the to-do list tonight that have nothing to do with art. Dammit. Quickly evaluating what can be put off…at least two of them. Maybe. Sigh.

In four days it will be done. Maybe sooner. I love all these happy-go-lucky slide shows and videos you see about how you make your own happiness and stress can kill you and take control of your response. Oh. OK. Except I go straight into fight or flight and then have to meditate myself back down into semi-stressed. I’m trying to do that RIGHT NOW. Except I have to go to work and that’s not a stress-free place at all. It’ll be fine.

This was cool. This made my day…except I got it last week and didn’t even look at it. So it was a nice surprise on Sunday when I finally did.

Yeah. That’s my quilt cropped on the front of the postcard. It’s a cool crop too. I’m pleased.

See. Think about the card. Not the financial aid. Not the other crap. The card. THE CARD.

The opening is June 25 at the Oceanside Museum of Art. I don’t have a time yet I think.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been watching all these home renovation shows and it’s making me irritated about my own house, but I can’t afford the money right now, let alone the time. So I keep watching, instead of switching over to the cooking programs, which make me think I should’ve been able to flip those damn quesadillas last night without causing a mess. That’s why I end up on the sci fi channel so much! It doesn’t make me feel bad. Aliens? I can handle aliens. And zombies and the X team. No problem. Bring it.

OK, long day at school, at least one contentious meeting and then tutorial, which mostly drives me nuts, so there we are. A goal for later on, though. Make art or die! OK. Maybe just make art. Ignore the silly videos with their dire warnings. They actually stress me out more.

Look. There was a tshirt. But no longer.

I Need to Listen…

Really I should listen to myself. I flailed all Saturday morning, rightfully so, wrote the blogpost, and finally got a shower, but worked…on school stuff…for the rest of the day until about three, when I headed out for some openings…one art, one music…well…sound anyway. And then yesterday, I worked almost all day and then did financial aid documents for about 2 1/2 hours before I wanted to scream. I am missing three pieces of information that have to come from the boychild, I need two signatures from him and one from his dad, and then I need to upload a bunch of stuff. Then I’m done. DONE. I’m getting faster and more efficient at filling out this bullshit, but I still hate hate hate it.

So at 11:09 PM, I had been grinding my teeth for almost two days straight, and I was gonna explode. I didn’t sleep well Saturday, so I thought about going to bed, but I wasn’t anywhere near tired. I was wired instead. Close. One-letter difference. That letter is a biggie.

OK. Let’s draw.

I’d like to say the drawing slowed my brain down and calmed me, and maybe it did a bit, but I know I saw the other side of 1 AM and it was still wide-awake time. So I’m a bit rough this morning.

While I was showering Sunday, I had this great idea for how to do the bottom of the figure in the drawing…I even typed up a note to myself in the Notes app on my phone. A very useful beastie that phone app.

Speaking of non-useful beasties…

Kitten. You’re sitting on my drawing. Why do cats like to sit on your stuff? Is it a possessive thing? She’d spent all day lying on my clean bedsheets until I offended her by making the bed with them. All of a sudden, they are now not very interesting. But this drawing is…by god, mommy, I need to sit on your drawing…you can see the other cat in this picture as well.

Unfortunately, I needed to draw on the bottom, which meant slowly pulling the drawing along the light table until she realized she was unwanted, shot me a viciously nasty glare, and set off (apparently to find every hair scrunchy I own and strew them down the hallway, because that’s where they all were when I went to bed). People wonder why I have cats in all my quilts…I think I socialize with them more than other living things.

So I ended up adding another 8-10 inches of paper at the bottom, as I penciled in the torso to the part where I wanted to stop, then drew the Earth. Well, half the Earth. In this picture, I had a photo of the Earth from space on the Pacific Ocean side.

I find it really strange that the most-common view of Earth on the internet is the one with North and South America almost in the center. You rarely see the back end…maybe because it’s mostly water. Less common is Russia with Africa, Europe all tiny off to the side. I wanted Japan and Ecuador, reminders of the earthquakes there. I’m still drawing the stuff in the Earth. It took me about 45 minutes to pencil, tape more paper, and do the stuff on the sides…volcano and mountains on the left side…

Hills and waves on the right. I think that’s South America drawn underneath it. Needs some work.

And there’s the whole thing, so you can see what I drew last night and then way up at the top, the stuff I had already drawn. There’s a lot of space in between to get filled up with plants and animals.

I’ve spent about 6 hours on drawing this so far…4 documented on my task app and the 2 that it took me in the sketchbook. Some drawings are so easy, 30 minutes to an hour or two. And some are beasts…the one in Earth Stories took about 25 hours just to draw. A lot of that time is think time, stare time, but it’s still time I count. It’s part of the making.

There’s a little voice in the back of my head that keeps whispering that I need to look at the two shows coming up in fall, start thinking about them too, not just focus on this giant ass piece that might not get in anywhere. And then I tell it that it’s fine. It’s only April. That I will look at those and think about them, but not right now. Right now, I’m head-in on this piece and it’s talking to me and I need to listen.

Processing…

Some mornings…some days. I figure if I wake up in the morning and have zero motivation to do anything at all, I should listen to myself, because it’s rare that it happens. There must be a reason. I mean, obviously I don’t feel like working. I graded last night. I need to do more this weekend, but maybe not right this second. Now two hours-plus later, I got the laundry going, lots of bedding. It’s a start. And I cooked some food. Second cup of tea. Resized the photos from last night. But first I spent some time reading blogposts (yes, mine) from last April and May, so I could remind myself that it’s always like this and that’s OK. I mean, yes, it sucks, but there are only 43 days of school left and they never kill me and I always survive them, just as I will survive them this time around.

And not being able to really focus on one quilt-related thing at the moment? Oh well. No deadlines breathing down my neck. That’s OK. I can afford to wander around the artistic pile a bit. I’ll get that orange quilt done, do the body one as well. No rush. And I’ll start picking fabrics this week hopefully for the other one. Meanwhile, it’s the drawing that’s calling the loudest…the furthest thing from finishing…the one I probably won’t finish until the end of summer. It’s all good.

If you don’t draw or hike or do some other thing that puts your brain in that meditative place, that space in your head where all the crap is pushed aside, I don’t know how to explain the peace you get from it…whether it’s puzzling out how to finish the arm between a cat-boob and a snake-arm…or it’s setting out on a 17-mile hike (um, that’s the boychild…I stick to 3- to 10-mile hikes personally). It clears your head like a spring breeze. Like a wave.

So yeah, a bat. It made sense last night…still does today (but drawing too small!).

Then I did the hand. I was debating bird and butterfly, and one of those will probably still fill the space above it, but the egg made the most sense last night.

That snake head is pretty.

Then I finally drew the octopus. Had to think about the suckers…not too complicated at this size. I once did one with like 150 pieces in it. Crazy.

That’s how far I am right now…head and half an upper torso. It’s slow-going.

But ultimately peaceful and calming. So I don’t mind.

And maybe today should just BE a slow day. I’ll get stuff done…just not all of it or what I thought I would do. Maybe. I realize I’m pretty hard on myself, probably too demanding. Then again, I’ve seen so many friends just stop making art completely when they started families, and I’m not that person. And it’s hard to keep on top of the job and make art regularly and still venture out of the house occasionally.

The struggle! Yeah I know. I talk about it. I fight it. I get up off the couch. And some mornings, I veg out and read a bunch of stuff and refuse to take a shower or go to the gym. The world still turns on its axis. It’s not like I get nothing done. Cut me a break. (That’s me talking to myself)

So for the drawing, there’s another arm that comes down over the belly area, there’s obviously another breast. One of the reasons I wanted to do another one was because I wanted a uterus in this one, so that’s on…then maybe lower torso dissolves into landmasses and clouds like the other one. Definitely need a volcano. I swear, I can’t remember the other one, which is good, because although I want this one to talk to that one on the phone, maybe even be sisters, I don’t want them to be clones of each other. This is the less-restricted version…the one that still has animals and plants covering her, but not because they have to…because they want to. And the important stuff is still there. Nipples dammit. And a bird or butterfly or both. Still drawing itself in my brain. Holy crap…maybe she needs a vulva. But that puts her sitting. Hmmm. Processing…

Needy Dogs and Late-Night Drawings

I didn’t write yesterday because I had to be at school really early. And the night before, I went to bed about 2 hours early because I was so exhausted, and I got nothing done, and I was sitting there staring at the computer and thinking, DAMN. I got nothing to write about. So I didn’t. It happens.

Yesterday was eyeball dissection day at school…only one injury (only had 3 in 14 years). But it was a long day that was followed by chiropractor and picking up the girlchild’s dog from the vet because this was up her nose…

And then she was all drugged out and wobbly. This is what Calli looks like high.

And I had to watch her constantly, because she likes to swim in the pool and I was fairly sure she’d drown if she went in. Besides, when I got home, there was a dead male possum in the pool already (I hate when that happens). Huge beast. So I dealt with the body and then she whined at me all night and spent a lot of time staring at me like this…

So I would pet her and hug her but mostly I got this reproachful look, like I had done something very very wrong. Let’s clarify. I did not take you to the vet. I’m the one who RESCUED you from the vet. Nope. Still mad at me.

She’s fine this morning.

I drew after that. Well, after dinner and grading, which took forever because of the needy dog, so really late.

I started by adding paper above the head so I could draw the sun out…

Which I did, but didn’t photograph. Of course.

I had penciled in an arm, hand, and a snake, but was debating what else should be in there. Apparently I figured that out…

See, sometimes I use pencil.

Then I filled a boob with a cat. Like you do. There’s a lung in there as well, although pretty damn simple, and a flower nipple. Of course.

I stared a lot at the space between the snake and the boob, and googled a lot of different things, but still didn’t make a decision.

Must let the brain ruminate some more…

So I adjusted the arm to the appropriate angle and did some snakey details. You can sort of see the sun in this one.

This thing is gonna be huge. But I’m trying to keep the tiny little pieces to a minimum. We’ll see how that goes. (Laughs maniacally to herself)

So those things, the sun, the arm, the snake, the cat boob, took about 2 hours. There’s a lot of staring time in there honestly. I tried to visualize what could fit there. I made a tentative list of things I think should be somewhere on her…a bat, an octopus, a giraffe. Something else. Bees. I’ve done a bee before. Anyway. This isn’t for a show. It isn’t for anything. I just wanted to do an Earth Mother that didn’t have the no-nudity constraints from last year. I like the idea of filling the body with living organisms. So I am.

In art news, Lisa Kijak (who makes very cool quilts of neon signs) was nice enough to send me photos of my piece in the Art Quilt Elements exhibit that is at the Wayne Art Center right now. In all the photos I saw posted, I only saw mine in one. I like to see what’s around it, so I really appreciate her doing that…

They look pretty happy there in the corner…

Hope they’re having a nice time.

I would like to thank the Goddess of Science Teachers and Divorced Moms for helping me to survive until Friday. Any assistance on today would be mightily appreciated, because I’m gonna make those kids read and figure stuff out and write again. Because I’m mean that way. I was supposed to write a study guide last night, but that didn’t even come close to happening. So there we are. I have homework for tonight. Or maybe I can do it during prep, if everyone leaves me alone. We’ll see.

More drawing tonight? I hope.

My Brain Is Like a Rampant Bunny

I have two mornings this week when I have to be at school early for meetings, which just throws me off. It makes it harder for me to fall asleep, and then my overactive workaholic brain wakes me up a full hour early to make sure I don’t sleep through the alarm (silly brain, I never sleep through alarms), and then I can’t go back to sleep. I’ve tried telling my brain how counterproductive that is, but then it blames the early wakeup call on the local birds outside my window. Also under your control, I argue…with my brain…which doesn’t ever freakin’ listen to me.

I will pay for this lack of sleep later, for sure, on the busiest day of the week. Unfortunate really, but whatever. We bully through it. We soldier on. Both good words for how I get my brain to keep going when it doesn’t want to. Years of practice with middle-schoolers? Maybe. I spent two days fighting to get them to do what I needed them to do, and then I gave them a similar assignment yesterday, and I must have broken through some wall, because they were dead silent and working. Still had to repeat instructions about 70 times for the kids that didn’t pay attention AND can’t read them (proof that I could write poetry about boogers and ear wax in my instructions, and only 5 kids would ever see it).

My brain is still like a rampant bunny, bounding through tall grass, sometimes moving uber-fast to get away from predators, and sometimes stopping to smell the daisies. I can’t get it to focus at all, but at least I have plenty of projects lying around to distract it. Although then it just gets over-interested and I can’t get it to mellow out and go to sleep.

I started with cleaning…I put all that stuff in the boychild’s room because it would force me to clean it all up before he came home. So I filled that trashbag hanging off the door and piled up some other stuff in logical piles.

Not that you can see logical piles from here. You’ll just have to trust me. That yellow bin is empty though and can now go away. It’s circa 1985 I think…and not in great shape. It certainly held a variety of crap, most of which was just that…crap. Like samples from a flower-pounding session I did with the kids. Man those were ugly. Tossed them. And a ton of quilt patterns pulled from magazines that I will never do. That goes way back. Recycled those puppies.

This the bookshelf that has been blocked for years. I have bags of tie remnants to sell too. Back to eBay. I hang a lot of stuff off of there that probably doesn’t need to be there…quilt tops I may never finish. Blocks for quilts I’m not even working on.

Kitten had a rousing game of find the lizard on the window. Really. You can’t see it? Because the only reason I knew it was there was because she was batting at its foot…it’s hiding behind the center bit. You can just see its fingers/toes on the left side where she’s looking.

Or not. Then I quilted. I found it rather frustrating. I really just wanted to be done, but thread breakages abounded. No fun.

I got about halfway around. I still need to do the hill as well.

Then it was 11:30 and normal people would have gone to bed, but I knew my brain wasn’t ready, so I drew instead.

Cried all the way through the episode of Call the Midwife where Jenny…oh geez, don’t wanna ruin it for you. It was sad. Well and hormones. Because it probably wasn’t THAT sad. Notice that damn lizard is in my drawing. Can you see where? I don’t know what to say about that. Except that’s how I draw. Brain wanders, plops on paper.

Damn, I even graded last night and wrote an extra blogpost on here and another blogpost for someone else. Maybe that’s why my brain was in overdrive. Too much stimulation, getting stuff done. Plus I need to get some exercise in this week, but it won’t be today…dual meetings and then book club. Hopefully I’ll be able to come home and just go to bed. With my book. For next month’s book club.

By the way, I saw Deadpool over the weekend, and yeah, it was violent, but hysterically funny, except when it was being sad, but more importantly…Wade is a stitcher! He made his own costume…over and over again…and the character Blind Al, played by Uhuru from Star Trek, is my favorite.

I get a little irritated with the goody-goody attitudes of some of the superheroes, like Thor and Captain America, and it drives me nuts how much the movies blow off good female characters who aren’t wearing slinky bras to kill bad guys with, but this guy is kinda fun. And he sews. Can’t be all bad.

Stitch Dialectic

I braved the rain Sunday for the opening of a local SAQA show, Stitch Dialectic.

Sometimes, when I remember to make a quilt without boobs in it, I have a piece for this exhibit. Not this year, but I did find some pieces I really liked while I wandered around.

Canyon De Chelly, by Patricia Charity, had all this amazing textural complexity. It’s even better in real life (because you can ignore the unfortunate lighting).

Broken, by David Charity, her husband, has a graphic quality, in this case both in image and subject matter, that I truly appreciate.

Rusted, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, is another one that is even more radiant in real life. The surface of her work was truly beautiful.

Whidbey Island 5, by Sherri Foster, was simple but so textural, with lines of close stitching only visible up close.

Siena Portal, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, used that yellow hand-dyed fabric to create a sense of dimension.

Close Reading, by Viviana Lombrozo, is ironically so much better up close. I should have taken a detail, but I was in a hurry. There’s hand-stitching everywhere in what looks like a secret alphabet.

Waiting Expectantly, by Sherry Davis Kleinman, is simple, but so evocative of that last month, waiting for baby to come out. So few lines and limited detail create a beautiful portrait of her daughter.

From the show postcard, Botanica Balboa and Floribunda Balboa, by Karen Cunagin. If you’re local, these quilts speak of Balboa Park.

Kalamina Gorge, by Carol Sebastian-Neeley, has more of that complicated surface beauty that is hard to photograph.

Bitmap, by David Charity, shows his sense of humor.

Three-Eighths, by Catherine Baltgalvis, is exactly the kind of subtle yet complex quilt that I could never make, but appreciate for its visual interest.

There were many other quilts to catch your fancy. It’s up until the 24th, so you should stop by.

Tentacles Don’t Have to Be Complicated

You’ll be glad to know I did actual artmaking activities last night. I know y’all were concerned. Certainly I was too. It’s not that I don’t want to…it’s that it’s the last trimester of school and that is just plain hard. Most teachers are in burnout mode right now, even with Spring Break packed in our brains. By the time we get through testing in a month, the jokes about margarita machines in the teacher’s lounge will be very very serious-sounding. If there’s a teacher in your life, make them a care package or something. Send them to a spa or get them a massage. An evening with friends might be what they need to get through the next 5 days. Rinse. Repeat.

I did grade stuff first, which is where I learned that apparently chewing gum causes heart attacks. Yup. Seriously. OK. Moving on to the next assignment, where answers might be more clearly thought out. And all that was after driving downtown to brainstorm on a new exhibit for 2017 with my women’s art group about sexism in the art world. Should be interesting. And I made the boychild’s flight arrangements home. I know he was trying to find a job out there for the summer, but I’m glad he’s coming home, even though it means I can’t rent his room out to Airbnb…to people who don’t mind my sewing at midnight…with music on…loud. Yeah. I’m never gonna be a good roommate.

So I taped together the head of the drawing I’d done…and then I added more paper for the rest of the drawing…

Apparently I think this drawing will be quite large.

It’s kind of a pain to deal with it like this, but I’m doing it anyway. I want to do another Earth Mother, so I am. You Can’t Stop Me! So there.

I don’t like the arm on the right at all, so I’ve redrawn it, although you can’t see that here because I’m still debating what will be ON it…there’s a snake already, but there will be something else. I’m leaning towards cheetah or leopard, but I need to deal with some other stuff on here first…like a better heart than what I had.

It needed to be smaller and better. And now it is. So now I just need to keep reminding myself not to make it too complicated. Because this is full size. And I don’t remember how many pieces the last Earth Mother had, but it was tiny pieces in the bottom section, and that was a bit crazy. I can look that up…it was only 891 pieces…so not a lot more than what was in the little piece I just finished. Interesting. It seemed more complicated than that.

And I just remembered I wanted a sun up top that was more complicated than what’s there, so I’ll need to add a piece of paper up there to extend it as well. Last I checked, it was 50-some inches high. So that’s not too bad. Only minorly crazy.

It’s taking a lot of brain time to draw though…a lot of staring at it and visualizing what could be there. I have pictures of snakes, octopuses, and leopards pulled up on my iPad at the moment. Think the octopus will go on the left shoulder, up in the hair but tentacles curling down onto her arm. Octopuses are weird-looking beasts…their…um…heads? are such strange shapes. I have to remember from previous quilts that drawing all the tiny suckers means crazy when it comes to tracing and ironing them. Tentacles don’t have to be complicated.

Anyway, it’s a start. It’s peaceful to draw. It calms my mind, lets all the stress dribble out and wander off, so I can do the next day. I have been meditating more for real, using my app, but honestly, sometimes this is all I need to do. Stare at the paper and draw.

Spring Cleaning

I have art photos from the weekend, but no time this morning to resize them. Forgot about all the stuff I had to get done this morning. Saturday was good but Sunday kicked my butt? I don’t know. I managed to cook enough variety in food to deal with one breakfast, three dinners, and three lunches. Not bad. And I made it to an art opening, plus the grocery store, and finished the taxes and wrote something that needed to be written (only 3 more to go) and did a bunch of school stuff, but it’s never enough. I really flailed sometime around 9 PM. Except now I know both kids are going to be home for the summer, so what did I do? I messed up the boychild’s room.

I had good reason for it. He’ll be home in 6 weeks. That means I’ll have to clean it up by then.

It forces me to deal with the mess. So all that has been piled up in my office in front of one of the bookshelves for years. The pile changes, morphs, revises itself, but it seems like all it’s done in the last five years is grow. So that’s it. I’m done with it. I have no clue as to what’s in that red box or the yellow clothes hamper (which dates back to college I think?), but it’s all getting sorted and either tossed or filed or rehomed. Because I need that two feet in front of the bookshelf to be clear…I washed the floor last night…

I should have taken a before picture, but it was stacked a good two feet out and four feet across. Now I’m sitting here at the computer and looking to the left, and there’s my old computer (had this one a year now) and why the hell is it still in here? You don’t even want to see the crazy piles of paper that have resulted from college apps and financial aid, plus art entries for the last three million years. It’s just nuts. But in my spare time, I file stuff and find homes for it. So that’s mostly what I did last night. I had stuff in my room from when we remodeled the living room two summers ago, so I started emptying boxes and either tossing it or finding a better home for it than my floor.

Whoa. I think I’m spring cleaning. That can’t be right. Hmmm.

Probably I’m just avoiding whatever all the next steps are in my art quilting existence: tape together and draw the rest of a really huge drawing that’s only partially in my head. Start picking fabrics for the new quilt. Give up on being truly creative and trace Wonder Under for the other two small quilts that are lying around. Not sure why this is so hard, but am blaming it on school restarting and already hiking my stress levels through the roof last week. Hopefully this week will be a bit better. At least it’s mostly planned, although there’s an eyeball dissection in the middle that might be a bit challenging…mostly for cleanup though. I’ve been dissecting eyeballs with classfuls of 7th graders for years.

OK, have lots to do this morning. Need to get my butt out of here. I’m hoping art content will be on here tomorrow morning…either I will have resized the damn photos or more hopefully, I will have made art tonight (don’t look at the calendar…it’s booked until 8 PM I think). Certainly I think I will need to do something creative tonight or I’ll be out of sorts tomorrow.

Saturday’s Under Control

Hello Saturday. I am kicking your ass. Bow down. I have completed 17 tasks and errands and you cannot bring me down. I am mostly awake and caffeinated, although my food plan for this week was mostly shit, and it’s supposed to start pouring any second now, but fuck you, I am still conquering the to-do list. Because I finished all the out-and-about stuff (well, except grocery shopping, which I could do, but…eh…not in the mood). And I now can make art or whatever without your judging me.

You don’t need to snort and chuckle with Friday about how I almost lost it during 4th period yesterday due to some mass attack of teenaged fuzz brain, or how I went to bed early with a cup of tea (yes, caffeine helps me fall asleep when it’s part of a cup of tea) and my book. So no, Saturday, I didn’t fucking make any art last night or Thursday night or whatever, but hey! I’m still adjusting to being back at school and I put out 38 fires on Friday and I am so bloody efficient that I scare myself sometimes.

Yeah. I know. I forgot something. Someone will tell me that later. I don’t wanna hear it today.

Anyway, one of the amazingly efficient things I’ve done in the last 24 hours is pick up the photos of my new quilt, And Then There Was One.

This one is only 16″ x 24″, but it still has over 800 pieces in it. Because I’m crazy, that’s why.

So one of the art groups I’m in had plans for a show about current issues of feminism. They wanted us to pick a larger piece that dealt with these issues and then make a 16″ x 24″ piece that went with it. So I had picked One of My Kind…

which has me, both my kids, my mom, and my (dead) grandmother, as well as a bunch of other stuff. It’s from 2011, so it’s actually kind of old, but I’ve never been able to get it into a juried show. It’s more of a storytelling quilt I think, plus it’s kinda in your face and chaotic. But it was important to me and I really like all the detail. So I looked at that image 5 years later, and I’m a single mom with these two adults, both in college, and you know they’re leaving and at some point you’ll only see them once a year unless they move back here, and that’s been hard for me to deal with. I’m proud of them and think they’re cool people, but it’s hard after 26 years to all of a sudden (not really) be totally alone in this house. And yes, girlchild is coming back for the summer…still up in the air on the boychild, and neither of them are children any more, but I drew the smaller piece in response to all of that.

That’s the last two quilts getting into shows pretty much right off, which is kinda cool. Not sure that will happen with the next two (because it didn’t happen with the two before those either!), but it’s nice when it DOES happen.

OK. Still need to deal with cranky tax question and some other to-do list items before I truly relax for the day (night?). But yeah. Saturday’s under control. In case you were worried.