Hello Friday…

Hello Friday. I’m glad you’re here, although you will be long and full of tests and whiny kids who didn’t study because they think grades are magical things that happen to them and there will be soccer and a plane flight and lots of girly squealing on the other end…wait…no…this is me and Vickie…we don’t girly squeal…we guffaw and snort and make rude comments. So there’ll be lots of that. And maybe I’ll be allowed to sleep…who knows? But there will be lots of food and a musical and hanging out with Tanya and Ethiopian food and maybe some SCIENCE and some art supplies and who knows what else.

But it’s Friday at least, and although I will get absolutely no art made today, Saturday, or probably even Sunday, that’s OK, because I will be feeding the artist’s mind with all the experiences and laughter and goofiness and serious discussion that it needs to be what it is. To do what it does.

Plus I have Monday off, so I can catch up!

Who am I kidding? I will never catch up. Seriously, I have three assignments that need grading from last week, can’t hand any of them off to my TA because they’re too complicated, and I’m about to get four more today. Really I should take all my grading with me (not happening). Or I should stop assigning things.

I am looking forward to coming back and getting my focus on…it’s been off this week for a variety of reasons. I need to stitch down, sandwich, and quilt the two cancer hands. I need to stitch down (although it will probably fray like a bitch) the first of the recycled pieces and pick fabrics for the next one, because they are currently in piles in my living room. I need to start tracing Wonder Under for the Earth Mother from Ventura (seriously, I think that’s her name). That’s next week. Ha! Because I won’t have 7 assignments to grade, 2 soccer games, a union meeting, and god knows what else that hasn’t even hit me upside the head yet?

Yeah. Whatever. I can do it.

And I’m taking my sketchbook on the plane. I’m hoping to sit beside some conservative businessman and draw scary boobs with eyeballs in them. Wait a minute. I really do like that idea. I have not done that. How have I not done that?

Hey Vickie, can I sit at the breakfast table with your kids and draw? She’s gonna say yes.

Meanwhile, my FFAC donation quilt will be winging its way to a newish art quilter in Florida, while mine comes from Belgium…

I’ll post pictures when it gets here. Could be a while. I can handle waiting. Then maybe I will hang art in the living room, ignoring the girlchild’s edict of no nudity. My house. My rules. Ha. Like that works.

In other cool news, Earth Stories is now traveling through the middle of 2017…

It will be in Athens, Ohio, May 23-September 7, 2015; San Jose, California, November 6, 2015-February 28, 2016; Huntington, West Virginia, June 25-October 2, 2016; and Erie, New York, January 20– June 11, 2017. Plenty of opportunities to see it…I’m aiming for the San Jose one of course.

I fly places once or twice a year…my quilts? They get to go all over. Lucky beasts.

Ironing Her Down…

My hand hurts tonight from cutting the upholstery fabrics for two nights running…it’s harder to cut through than cotton quilting fabric. And my scissors probably aren’t great.

There’s the trash…

Here’s the upholstery fabrics I used…texture really was the only pattern.

I had all the pieces ready to cut out on Monday night…

Oh yeah, I had two cottons…white because there wasn’t any, and black for the pupil, because it was going to be tiny and the nipples are bad enough in this stuff…

I started cutting stuff out Monday night (and almost finished). You can see the seam in the arm.

I did find a background fabric that works. I usually pick them first, but because my fabrics were limited, I started with what I had for the body. I figured I could thrift shop a background fabric if I couldn’t find anything in my house. Which yes, of course, meant that I would be carrying around cut-out body parts, like boobs and things, to local thrift shops. I don’t always think these things through. There it is…it’s purple…it’s a Jinny Beyer tiny dot print probably from the 90s. ANCIENT. Or vintage. You decide.

What’s left in the box is what I had left Monday night at 1 AM, when I decided sleep was in my best interest. Sometimes I think these things through…not last night, though, because I was up Way Too Late. I blame the full moon. I blame it for lots of things.

Tuesday night, I finished cutting pieces out and then started ironing.

This quilt only has about 150 pieces, so I could lay them all out at once…

The textures were interesting. Here’s me ironing the eyeballs separately. Then I can lay them on the face at the same time and make sure spacing is right and they don’t look kittywampus.

I was going to go to bed around midnight, like after I had ironed a whole bunch together, but then I realized I was almost done, so I didn’t stop. This is what causes my sleep issues. My art. The part of my brain that thought that was a good idea.

And here she is on her background.

Looking much pinker than she is in reality…she’s more the yellow tones in the upper picture.

The bitchy bit is going to be the stitchdown, because I think it’s gonna fray like crazy. I debated putting tulle over it, but I don’t think that will stop it and it will just annoy me. So I’m just gonna go balls out and stitch it down. I don’t know when that will happen though, because I’m going to be gone for a few days and I’m way too tired tonight (see last night’s excess for explanation) to start anything that involves a needle going up and down very fast near my hand. I’m going to finish this post, print one thing for school, and go to bed. Well, first I’m going to have to rinse the girlchild’s dishes, because although I asked her to do it before she went to bed, I don’t think she did, so I will have to do that so I can run the dishwasher. I was gone for 13 hours today and she couldn’t manage to get the dog from her dad’s house and feed both the beasts. Ugh. She needs to go to college. I love her dearly, but she needs a reality slap upside the head.

And I need more sleep.

Tomorrow Is the Day

Tomorrow is the FFAC donation day…10 AM Central Time (that’s 8 AM Pacific time, if you’re time-challenged like me)…email as directed. Here’s Virginia’s instructions and my piece, which could be yours (artwork is randomly assigned). I just need one person willing to donate for this thing to work…

1 Day – 100 Artists – 100 Patrons – $10,000
This Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Opens 10 a.m. Central

How The Fundraiser Works

1. On February 4, the first 100 people to contact me (Virginia(at)VirginiaSpiegel.com) beginning at 10 a.m. Central will be given a link to donate $100 by credit card directly to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

To be fair to all, no e-mails time dated before 10 a.m. Central will be opened. I am not responsible for the vagaries of the e-mail system.
Please note your donation to the ACS will be credited through the Forest Lake Area Relay For Life. Why?

2. Each donor will receive an artwork from one of the 100 generous and talented artists listed below. Assignments of artwork will be made using a random number generator by someone other than me. Artwork will not be shared here in advance, but may appear on artists’ websites or other social media before the event. See ourPinterest board for previews of many artworks. Thanks to Deborah Boschert for maintaining the board.

3. The artwork may be any size as long as the minimum retail value is $100. Artwork smaller than 8×10″ will be mounted to 8×10″ or 9×9.” The artwork will contain fiber and may or may not be stitched. The artwork may or may not be made specifically for this event.

3. Each artist will receive her/his patron’s e-mail address to arrange shipping. Artwork will be shipped directly from the artist. Please note this is an international roster of artists. Please thank the artist for not only donating the artwork, but also shipping it to you.

4. Each artist would love to receive a low res photo of the artwork in situ from the new owner. This is not required, but the best photos may be shared here after the event.

Questions? Contact me at Virginia(at)VirginiaSpiegel.com
or here is a series of Q&A about the event.
If you would like to be sure your Request to Donate does not go in my spam folder on February 4, send a trial message today.

Special Note: Our goal of $10,000 will make Fiberart For A Cause’s donations to the American Cancer Society a nice even one-quarter of a million dollars and FFAC will be happily retired.

To Fray or Not to Fray

Some cats are sweet. Some are just annoying. Some stand in front of the computer screen while you’re trying to watch Walking Dead and iron at the same time, and if you move them, they squawk and jump back up, and then try to stand on your fabric AND your Wonder Under all at the same time.

I want you to guess what kind of cat this is.

I decided at some point last night to just jump in and start ironing fabrics with the upholstery samples…I mean, I have to start somewhere. It may make me nervous, because it’s outside my normal practice, but it’s going to make me nervous no matter what. So get on with it.

I needed a variety of shades of one color to do the whole human body. The only color I had enough variation in was an off-white color.

But I didn’t have enough of each texture in that shade for the two largest pieces in the quilt, so I had to piece them…and I had to piece a couple different types of texture together to make it work. They were about the same shade, though, so I think it will work.

I know they look different on the back, but that’s because some of the fabrics have a lining-type backing on them. The other fabrics have a sort of rubbery backing that comes off a little when I iron. Does that worry me? A little.

Sewing them together was an issue, which yes, does in fact worry me. I didn’t rip on this one, but cut the seam right off and tried again, because the stitches were too damn small and buried in the texture. And then I lengthened the stitch as well.

Here’s the piecing I did for the other large piece…

All the other pieces were much smaller, so I put together a run of medium to dark values, just like I normally do…

I finished all the body parts except for eyeballs, lips, nails, and hair.

So there are a couple of things I’m thinking about…first of all, I think these are going to fray like crazy. I’m hoping the Wonder Under will help a little with that, plus the backing on those that have it. Otherwise, I think that will just be part of the piece. I’m thinking of embellishing the seams and some of the pieces with stitching, a la crazy quilting. I’m also considering painting over this, but I haven’t decided for sure. I think stitching through the whole mess is going to be a disaster. I might have some issues with the weight and strength of the rayon thread I usually use, and my machine might balk at the coatings on the backs and the general thickness. That’s why I’m thinking I need a cotton background…like one if Mariah’s leftover pieces? Or a random tablecloth. There’s always a trip to the thrift shop. I have some old sheets too.

Tonight, I’m hoping to get the rest ironed to fabric and start on the second one. Or maybe cut these out. Who knows? I need to grade papers too, so it’s not a free night. They never are…

Finding Fabrics

I’ve been sewing since I was 7 or 8. My first machine-sewn piece of clothing was a 70s floppy blouse made from my mom’s old yellow curtains and some lace. I sewed many of my clothes in middle- and high school, thus assuring my freak status. It did mean I always had bits and pieces of fabric leftovers, off cuts from this or that outfit, lying around.

When I got older, I started sewing for the house: curtains, cushions, couch slipcovers, and whatever. In 1990, at the age of 23, I took my first quilting class. I started by buying 1/4 yards of fabric. Now I buy 1/2 yards unless I need it for something in particular like a backing or a background where I know I need more than that. Over the years, many people have gifted me fabric, some randomly sending it through the mail, some giving me gifts at Christmas and birthday, and more commonly, divesting themselves of THEIR stash by moving it on to me. I rarely say no. When crazy people say things like, “I have too much fabric and I need to get rid of some,” it just confuses me. One woman about 10 years ago went through her stash and gave me about half of it. I still don’t really know why. She was a smoker, so that took some work, but I wash everything anyway. My SIL sent me offcuts from when she quilted. When my grandmother died, I got all the leftover pieces from all the pajamas she had made as Christmas Eve gifts over the years…talk about vintage. I did actually pack a bunch of those up and sell them on eBay for quite a profit. I kept small pieces of some of the more interesting ones.

So this show came up on the radar for a group I’m in called California Fibers. The Loft at Liz’s is a gallery in Los Angeles that does a Diverted Destruction show every year, suggesting people use recycled materials to create work. Our group was chosen to do a show there this summer, and Liz got us access to those upholstery fabric sample books you see when you go pick out your next couch or whatever. I chose one that was texture, not a lot of color really…

Mostly because I couldn’t visualize my process in any of the others. I’ve removed all the labels off the back and cut them out of the book, then ordered them vaguely by color. OK, there’s some pink and red in there, and even some green and blue…but none of the pieces are particularly big, which might be a problem. I could also paint over them. This is an option I have used before.

So I have a drawing for this one…

I think the big pieces will lend themselves nicely to using texture…but I think the major body pieces might be an issue. Still trying to figure that part out.

The other drawing…because I’m apparently supposed to do two…

Has more detail and really lends itself to being done in cottons…just because of the piece sizes…so for this, I turned to my second recent stash of recyclables: Mariah.

Mariah texted me around the new year and asked if I wanted some of her offcuts from making quilts. She’s made baby quilts and sold them around town, plus she’s made some beautiful batik quilts for her family. But once you have these long strips or tiny triangles or squares cut, they aren’t good for much except making a big pile in the sewing room. Since she was pregnant with baby number 2 at the time (born last week!), she was trying to clean up and pare things down, so we filled two trash bags with fabric…here’s halfway through my color sorting at home.

I still have the problem of small pieces in general, though…although there are some large pieces in there that I took for backings. They aren’t really body appropriate though. There’s a LOT of blue and brown…

Not very much white or gray…

And these randomly pieced bits that are leftovers, which I’m trying to figure out how to get into the quilt…I think I can do it…

So the biggest problem with this batch, besides folding it all or figuring out how to store it, is how to make sure the quilt isn’t a crazy mismatch of stuff, because I can’t choose from my whole stash. I might need to piece the background if I can’t find something that’s recycled, in my stash, and appropriate. There are about 10 fabrics that were big pieces that are currently in the dryer, but most of them would compete too much with the image.

So there’s that. Sometime this week, I’ll start picking fabrics out for this. Until then, know that the show will be June 27-September 8 at The Loft at Liz’s, and one of these pieces will be there. And I’ll keep you updated on the process as I muddle my way through it.

Taxing My Brain

Where have I been for the last two days? Well, after running an eyeball dissection lab and the next day taking 125 people to the Fleet Science Museum, I then had to do my taxes (didn’t get the W-2 until Friday) and the college profile for financial aid, all in about 36 hours, because one of the 10 colleges she applied to needs it by today. Assholes. It’s OK…it only took 7 hours and the ex had to come over so we could share data at some point, since he’s in charge of the girlchild financially. Sort of. However that works. I don’t know how divorced parents who are fighting all the time do this stuff successfully. The plus is the fact that teachers are paid crappy will help out, because as the financial parent of the boychild, I qualified for some monster tax breaks, thus almost paying for next year’s tuition. Wild that.

So I spent those two days falling into a hole of required financial crapola. But now it’s done! Well, almost. They’ll want a bunch of papers sent in the next two weeks or so, but I can handle that. So I had a tax headache for about 24 hours straight.

What’s nice about today is that I have nothing planned. I had things I wanted to do, but they didn’t work out. I should go to the gym, and maybe I will later. I have a tiny bit of grading to do, mostly because I left everything at school. I have to go grocery shopping, but I can’t until girlchild gets back from her interview and getting her phone fixed.

But I do have art stuff. 1. I have two cancer hands to iron down. It wouldn’t take long. 2. I have two quilts to be made from recyclable fabrics that I will post about later today, because there is progress, but it is slow. They have Wonder Under trimmed and are ready for ironing. 3. I have a drawing that is numbered and ready to be traced. I just need to clear off the light table, which I started doing yesterday, and hope I have enough Wonder Under. If not, I have the technology to remedy that.

All that is exciting. I have a strange week ahead of me. I’ll actually be traveling for part of it, different for me I know, but there were cheap plane tickets a while back and I took advantage of a friend’s invitation to book a trip north…short and sweet.

So this is the house of an art hoarder…I got a new stove, because the other one was killed by the girlchild and turkey drippings…but I can’t seem to get rid of these…

Fellow artists understand. You can print with these suckers. I’m kinda looking forward to maybe Spring Break? Or maybe one of the 3-day weekends that’s coming up? I’ve got some books that have some printing ideas I haven’t tried. I still have the gel plate I got last year that I haven’t tried yet. Looks like fun. I like spirals. So they’ll go on the shelf in the garage for artmaking supplies along with old sprinklers and random bits of metal and every broken dish or mug I’ve ever had. Don’t question it. Just be glad you won’t be in charge of getting rid of all of it when I die.

Katie is here visiting…she’s my parents’ dog…

She’s somewhat needy, following me around like dogs do, rolling around and getting dog hair everywhere (I was spoiled by the last dog, who had really short hair). She gets along OK with Calli…they’re not buddies, but they don’t hate each other. And she goes to bed when she’s told to. That said, she hasn’t eaten anything in 24 hours…I think she’s on a food strike. She wants Calli’s food. Little does she know that it’s essentially the same low-cal stuff (they are both on diets), so I may just trade bowls later today and see what happens. Or she’ll get really hungry and eat.

So get off my butt, eat some breakfast, pick a project, and work on it for a while. It’s a beautiful day and I don’t watch football…so art it is.

Traveling Art

I like it when my art travels, when the quilts get vacations away from my house and all the cat hair, when they get to hang free, not be rolled up in a sheet with a bunch of other quilts in the dark. It’s probably nicer for them to get some air, see some new people, experience new places. So I enter shows (OK, that’s not why I enter shows. You’re right). I’ve had a hard time lately getting into juried shows, with a variety of theories as to why, so some friends suggested some that I enter, and I did, and I’ve been rejected from every single one again. The last rejection came in yesterday from Extreme Fibers, which I actually expected, because I think they are looking for extreme technique, and not extreme images, and I don’t do anything extreme with technique, unless you keep track of how many pieces are in my quilts. That’s somewhat extreme.

It’s OK…there are at least three or four shows to enter this month (although one of them, I couldn’t find a single piece of mine that would work for the theme…always an issue). I’m not giving up. Besides, the ones that are already out there and traveling are getting more venues, and that’s never a bad thing.

Wise Choice is in Earth Stories, which will now be at the Kennedy Museum of Art, Ohio University, Athens, OH, from April 24-September 13, 2015, and even more exciting in terms of my being able to see it, at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose, CA, from November 6, 2015-February 28, 2016 (road trip!).

I haven’t seen this show yet, so that will be cool.

I have two quilts in People and Portraits, which will now be traveling to the Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts, St. Bonaventure University, St. Bonaventure, NY, from October 1-December 20, 2015. Here’s Fully Medicated…

And I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

Meanwhile, I sit at home, filling out college financial aid applications, trying to figure out how to pay for the rest of the kids’ college, getting texts from one about how a girl fell onto his laptop and now the display is messed up (ouch) and from the other about how she didn’t really use all the data for which the phone company would like to charge me. Uh huh. Right.

Really, I should stop thinking about all that crap and get going on the next step of whatever art quilt I’m working on (5 at a time at the moment) and enter the next batch of shows, because the real life stuff is kicking my butt at the moment. Unfortunately, first I have to go to school and take 110 kids on a field trip…so survival first…then art.

Evolution of a Drawing

I stared at the middle of the torso for a good long time last night. I even tried putting the headphones on to drown out Gilmore Girls (girlchild) and meditated (while standing, while staring at the drawing). Honestly, I haven’t meditated in a while and I need to get back in the practice of it, as the stress levels of this week are reminding me. When the session was done, I was staring at tree pictures. I googled Trees of the World. Baobab came up, but I thought it was something else, and that wasn’t what I wanted, so then googled Trees Africa and got the Acacia (oh YEAH, that one)…and I drew three of them. And then I googled Elephant because for some reason, I wanted to do an elephant. I’ve never put an elephant in a quilt. Now seemed the right time. In the end, three of them appeared…

Because they travel in groups, in families. Three acacia trees as well…do they travel in families? Then I had this blank spot to the right to fill in the left hip. More staring. Lots of staring. I think the girlchild had gone to bed by then and I was on Walking Dead. Not that either show is particularly helpful in the drawing process. But I finally decided, after trying to put a dog in there about 15 times and being stymied by how to make it fit in the space without being cartoonish, because nothing else in this was particularly so, that a plant should go there…trying to balance plants and animals in the torso. And I thought a fruit tree would be good, because…well…because I can add colors besides brown and green. I started considering how this will actually LOOK, colored in, and my brain freaked out.

So I drew an apple tree…

And here’s one of the core problems with enlarging a drawing and then continuing to draw on it…I draw too much detail when it’s not enlarged. OK, I draw the same amount of detail…it’s just fucking SMALL. So that tree is kind of crazy for the amount of space it’s taking. But whatever. I could have just drawn leaves with no stems. Or not. My brain said not. I did want to draw lots more elephant wrinkles and I forced myself to stop. I told myself that the Essence of Elephant was all that mattered, that everyone would know it was a fucking elephant without all the wrinkles. But someone will ask me “why elephants?” Remind me to say, “because they travel in groups and have families and mourn their dead and attack lions and are just generally kick-ass animals.” Better yet, just say it for me, because I might not be there.

The next problem was that I couldn’t tell from a drawing that covers my light table whether it read OK as a whole, because I couldn’t see the whole damn thing. So I dropped it on the floor and stood on the piano bench to see…

Interesting movement here. I did have an issue with the big wide open space at the bottom left. It was bugging me. So I added trees.

They’re not huge, but they move the eye back up towards the lightning bolt, so you don’t fall off the page. I just realized that this morning.

At that point it was midnight. Let’s go back in our heroine’s story, where we always tell her that she doesn’t get enough sleep and she should stop working an hour before she’s ready, because sleep is healthy and she has eyeball dissections today and a field trip Friday and those two things are enough to kick her ass with a normal amount of sleep.

What’s normal for me though? No sleep. You got it. I wanted to know how many fucking pieces I would be dealing with here. I didn’t want to wait around for that information, because it would have been Friday night before I knew, and that’s unbearable. So I numbered…

Goddamned tiny tree. I numbered for 59 minutes. Wanna take bets on numbers? C’mon. Think a number in your head. I did this on the last quilt and only one person was close.

There are 891 pieces. Actually, one piece got numbered twice, but inevitably there will be a piece I missed, so let’s just call it 891.

You know, that’s not so bad. But I thought I had 5 1/2 months and I don’t…I can’t count. It has to be photographed by June 15. Four and a half months…four if I make sure there’s photography time. Plus two other small quilts that need doing in the same time period. Uh huh. I can do it. No problem. The last big quilt had 768 pieces and took 80 hours and I (crazily) finished it in 6 weeks. So I think I can pull this off.

So I have now conquered the problem of a non-nude, non-political, non-violent quilt…well, except I have to make it and then the juror has to pick it. Minor issue. And I’ll be pissed if it gets into tons of shows while my other more controversial pieces languish in the closet. So I guess not sleeping is mostly worth it. I seem to be able to harness the creative beast. I mean, we did have soccer last night too…

Yes, she is actually heading the ball…

I sewed through all of it. I was too done with school to do any grading. And then I came home and made dinner while listening to the girlchild read her history textbook to me (this is how she learns…I understand…I do that too)…and then I roused myself off the couch for the drawing part, starting around 8 PM. You know, when I should have been thinking of going to bed soon. Silly brain. But that’s how I get it done.

Go Big…or Don’t Go

My original drawings are rarely done to actual size. They start out in the smallest sketchbooks at about 6 x 9″ up to the largest one, which is 14 x 17″. I don’t usually leave them that size though, because the tiny details I love to draw will kick my ass if I try to make a quilt that small. I’ve done it…back in the day (you know, dinosaur age), but I don’t do it now if I can get away with it. The FFAC donation quilt was drawn to size. It’s the only one since the Babygirl quilt of 2013. OK, the two smaller quilts, Planting Choice, which went with the Earth Stories exhibit, and the traveling hand and uterus that is in People and Portraits…they were drawn to size. Still both in 2013.

Anyway, so the Earth Mother from Ventura (that might actually be an awesome title for it) started out in a 14 x 17″ sketchbook, and then I ran out of paper last night…and couldn’t figure out what to do next. I just knew I needed to Go Big. I often enlarge the drawings and then add stuff afterwards. In fact, the one that’s traveling with Quilt National right now, the original drawing was done in 2002. I enlarged it and added a big chunk of stuff in 2012, when I actually made the quilt.

So after the staff meeting today, the science meeting, and braving Costco on a rainy afternoon, I made my way to the Not-Kinko’s (OK, it’s FedEx Office now, but that name just sucks) to enlarge the drawing. I usually go somewhere between 200-300%, depending on what I need to end up with…this one is for a largish space, and honestly, they’re only gonna get one entry out of me, because I can only make one non-violent, non-political, non-nude piece on purpose…not that I don’t like what I’ve drawn so far, but I don’t have a ton of time, and I’ve drawn a lot of pieces. So let’s be realistic. Stop. You’re not drawing the whole body…not on this one.

Kitten has been venturing out into the living room to sit with us and be sociable…she’s afraid of Babygirl (the cat, not the quilt), so this is strange for her, but she does it every few months or so. She likes to play with all the offcuts from my taping the copies together…

This was not easy to tape together…it took over an hour and there were some fussy bits. It was not a perfect copier. But it was $4.50 to copy it my way, instead of $30+ to do a full-size copy. Maybe when I’m rich and famous, I will do the full-size copies. Ha!

I think girlchild is still in here at this point…hunkered down on the couch directly in front of the light table. Here’s the drawing at 250%…

So she started watching Gilmore Girls, which I never saw the first time around. It is funny at times, but it’s a massive contrast to The Walking Dead, which is what I’ve been watching late at night. Sometimes I imagine the zombies taking over Rory and Lorelai. That is also amusing.

So I knew I wanted to add to the bottom for the torso and to the side for the heron wing, so I taped on more paper (yes, I have the 50-yard roll from some educational supply house that I could barely carry out to the car)…

And then I stared at it for a long time. Kitten occupied the space and stared back when I tried to move the paper so I could actually draw on it (now girlchild is in bed, because that’s the asshole Governor in the background from The Walking Dead. I swear, if Rick doesn’t kill him, I will. Actually, no. Michonne needs to kill him.).

I did actually draw the wing and stuff at the bottom in pencil first…just to make sure it looked the way I wanted it to. Most of the time, I just wing it (ha ha, wing it) with Sharpie or some other black pen that feels better on the paper, but doesn’t dry as fast as the Sharpies do. If I fuck it up, there’s liquid paper. The drawings are not the end product. You can see here that I added Earth, Wind, and Fire. Yup. I did that.

Reads right to left. I can’t explain it. Well, I can. And the water is already in her hair…I considered that. I considered a volcano as well…but having her emerge phoenix-like was not what I wanted…and having her planted in a pot or in the earth, I wanted her to be an Earth Mother, so she needed to have all the parts of Earth…the four classical elements. I left out the fifth, aether. I figured then I would be dealing with spirituality or religion, and if that’s not politically violent, I don’t know what is.

Plus I didn’t know what to draw for that. Well, that’s not true either. But again…politics and violence = religion. Stay away.

I’m not done. There’s the lower torso under the arms and filling down into the elements to do…filling it with plants and animals. So I have to pick an animal or more than one to go in that space. I drew for a good hour and a half tonight, maybe longer. Oh yeah, I did the heron wing too…

Much better. The bird just looked fucking weird without the wing. And something needs to fill the lower left space…but maybe I will know what that is later this week.

I made a list of shows to enter that are coming up too…some are easier to find stuff for than others. Stupid size requirements or themes that I just don’t cover.

Drawing puts me at peace in my head. It was a rough day. Nothing was working in the morning. Everything was frustrating, and I had come to some sort of peace with all the frustration early during prep period, but I could still feel it in me, like I was holding it struggling in a tight towel, like you hold a recently bathed cat, and it was uncomfortable and annoying, clawing at me. And then all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Because I solved like 17 problems in 20 minutes. And although the rest of the day still had annoying moments (it rained and I had the first day of duty and didn’t bring a coat), I came home and it was OK. I had achieved things. I felt OK with it all. But then the girlchild showed up and that was an issue…and maybe it was the start of the day still looming over me or maybe it’s just stupid old lady hormones, but that was enough to throw me off. I thought I was mostly past all the crying, but today…in fact, the last week…but who knows what that is? All these college apps and the girlchild’s stress just remind me that she will be gone in 8 months, and that will be incredibly difficult on one level and a relief on another. I love her, but she needs to go out there and be on her own and realize that the dishes don’t clean themselves. Seriously. But then I’m coming home to an empty house. And that feels OK when you know someone is showing up later, and sometimes a relief when that person is always just irritated with you or yelling at you, but still hugs you when she remembers you’re her mom and you’re not Satan. Yeah. Raising teens. Messy crap.

So all that. All that throws itself into a drawing of an Earth Mother covered in plants and animals. You see why it’s so hard to explain my stuff when I’m at an opening and someone who doesn’t know me says, “So what were you thinking when you made this?” Holy crap. What WASN’T I thinking? Yeah. Go big. Or don’t go.

Inhabiting the Drawing

This Ventura drawing, the Earth Mother who is covered with things from the Earth, she’s inhabiting my brain…she’s sat down right in the middle of the cerebrum and is having her lunch, spilling crumbs into the connections that allow me to get work done, to clean the kitchen, to cut a new screen frame, to dig the tree holes. At the gym yesterday morning, she was right there, drawing animals onto her arms for me, trying out all the options…raccoon? Nope. Cat? Not on the arm…somewhere else. Whale? No, all the water animals are up in the hair. Or something. I’m not sure. I’ll think about it. By late afternoon, it was a fox. I’m not sure why, but the right arm was definitely a fox. So I sat on the floor with a bunch of fox(y) pictures pulled up on my iPad (eyepad) trying to decide how to fit it on her arm, how to make the arm be filled, what to do with the hand. It just spilled out.

And then making dinner, the heron was there, from a picture I pinned on Pinterest earlier from a human body painted as a heron…Shannon Holt…it’s your fault. So the left arm needed to be a heron…I didn’t have time or mental space to draw that until tonight…

And I’m debating trying to put a wing in there falling off the right side, under the hand, but I need to enlarge the drawing and add on to the right side and the bottom, and figure out what the hell I’m doing with the rest of it. Because it has to be done in 5 1/2 months, along with two other small quilts, one of which NOW has to be done by April 1…more on that later. So I don’t think I can do the whole body, but if it’s just a torso, it still needs to end somehow and it needs to make sense to me, so all the options are running through my brain, like a flipbook on speed, because really, this drawing has inhabited my brain and I am just sitting here waiting for the reveal. The hard drive is humming. It will make sense at some point. In fact, after I took that photo, I sat back and watched TV for a bit, maybe 10 minutes, and then this happened…

Because it was supposed to…that’s what’s so hard about people asking me what this or that in my art means…I don’t know. I was sitting there and the drawing happened. I can’t explain it half the time. I know where the heron came from, but the fox? No clue. The cat made it in, though, can you see? By the way, I think my small-quilt focus for the summer will be cats, like I did the birds. Keep them small and simple, draw from existing cats in my quilts. We’ll see if that works. So many were bought by friends and family…I can’t depend on them to pay my bills this summer.

So tomorrow, I will drag this to Not-Kinko’s and enlarge it 250-300% (haven’t decided yet) and then I will make a decision about a heron wing (I think that decision is already made) and the lower torso and what happens at the bottom. And then, much to Julie’s relief, I will number the pieces and see how bad it will be. Look mom! No nudity! No politics! No violence! I still like it though. That’s what’s hard about the birds…they’re easy enough to do, but I don’t get any art high off of them. They’re the equivalent of my mom making placemats and pillows when she was weaving…and that’s fine. Where I’m at in my life, finances are tight…I need to find ways to collect extra income for college costs. So this might be it.

So then I have two pieces that have to be done in recycled fabrics…with some weirdness about the definition of recycled. So I pulled the upholstery samples apart and divested them of most of their sticky labels…

I did not spend hours doing that. What a lame group of colors. Ugh.

Honestly, I’m stuck at the moment…

What the hell am I going to use for the background? I thought about using all the lighter colors and piecing them or just plopping them down on a base fabric. And I thought about painting over them a la Deidre Adams…she pieces all these discordant pieces and then paints a bunch of stuff over them until they become beautiful fiber pieces. But I don’t even need that. I just need a semi-unified background. And I don’t want to trash my machine…with the whole sewing-through-paint thang. Fuck. I really need to just let this one mellow in my head…fucking ferment really. I’m annoyed by it.

The second one, I’m using Mariah’s batik leftovers from all her quilts for that. I spent time yesterday and today sorting them into color piles, and though I don’t think I have any flesh-colored pieces large enough for the main female figure, it’s possible she should be blue or green anyway. So whatever. I’ll finish sorting and then decide.

It does mean I don’t really have something I can come home to from work and do without any brain power. Everything requires thought, reflection, processing time. Ugh.

So I really flailed this evening. Because of all that. I guess I could iron the cancer hands together, except I’m tired. So maybe I should start the week off right and go to bed. Everyone else did.

Double ugh. Really flailing. Hey, this is the reality of being an artist. Some days, my brain is so inundated with decisions about how and what and even why that I can’t even take a step out of this room without feeling like I’m doing the wrong thing. Or without being convinced that it’s going to really suck.

I know. Just keep working. Cutting things up and drawing what’s in there, watching her spitting cracker crumbs into the machinery. Ironing things together. Trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find a way to make what I want and fulfill a million obligations…and be happy in the midst of all that. Tie all the pieces together in my head. Spill them out on the paper once the knots are strong enough to hold together. I’m so very much in my head right now. Distracted. Not a bad thing…just a nasty knot in the embroidery floss. It will take time to pick it apart. And that’s who I am. I always pick it apart. I don’t ever just cut it off and start over. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad…it just is.