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.

With Age Comes…Late-Night Drawing…

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

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

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

I love the late afternoon blue tint there.

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

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

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

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

Here’s the whole thing…

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

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

So I numbered it.

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

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

The Goddess of Something…

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

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

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

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

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

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

And I worked a bit on the drawing…

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

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

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

And Midnight is in her standard place.

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

Slow Percolation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cut and Tape

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Pen on Paper…

I’ve had this idea in my head for days and finally last night after school and the gym and dinner and then grading stuff, where my mood slid from acceptable into dark and grim (actually, that might have been after completing the FAFSA), I drew. Finally. But I don’t like it. And that’s OK. I mean, it has its moments and it was something to do with the pen last night so hopefully I can get my head where it needs to be for the drawing of the next quilt.

I have this book I’ve owned since before I was divorced (so officially a million years ago) of mastectomy nudes. I can’t even remember where I got it or why, but the scar has been in my head. It’s visible maybe. So many scars aren’t. The drawing isn’t done, but I’m not sure I will finish it, because the next one is niggling at me and that’s the one I need right now. Plus another one is tickling at my amygdala. Man, that’s a hard word to spell. Maybe I should just draw every night this week. Don’t worry about fabric right now, although damn, there was a quilt top that was squealing at me last night, like a teenaged girl who just got asked out for the first time.

I think my moods are full-on hormone-related, because my body is confused as heck about what it should be doing and they hit like a random summer storm…no warning, just BAAM. And you’re out. And down. And wow. Seriously? I did not deserve that.

In response, I made a Starbucks fake of their blueberry oat bars and they are so damn good that I had to freeze 3/4’s of them so I wouldn’t eat them all in a week. Seriously. These things are good. Now I just need to rework them so the calories aren’t so heinous. It’s fine if you just eat one. I want it to be fine if I eat two.

More pinups below…then I have a parent meeting. Ugh. I didn’t sleep well. I couldn’t fall asleep. Stupid brain.

By Marea Korea…

Jacki Geary…

Lauren Grant…

Chelsea Wilde…

I can’t explain why I pick the ones I do. But there they are. There’s more…but I have to go do my job.

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.