It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night*

So there’s this three-day weekend, and all us teachers sit around and joke about how we always lose this weekend to work. We don’t do anything exciting. We don’t even WANT to do anything exciting, because we’re two weeks into the school year, and we need a recovery day. Honestly, I need a full day just to catch up on schoolwork. Because you forget how sometimes you have to force yourself to grade some assignments. You forget how much TIME…your personal time…goes to this job.

And then I am still trying to adjust to cooking just for myself again. I get tired of it. If it’s a day I know I’m hiking with the dogs or going to the gym, I have to assume there will be very little cooking when I get home, or if I know I have a meeting, same deal…so I have to cook in advance. Sometimes I get lazy and think, “Oh, it’ll be OK if I eat the same thing every meal for the whole week.” Well. It’s not. Funnily, this week, one of the three meals I cooked (one breakfast, one lunch, and one dinner) was causing some digestive issues by the end of the week. But I couldn’t tell which meal it was…so I really should have just tossed all of them. I mean, I am a science teacher, so I could conduct an experiment where I remove one meal from each daily rotation until I figure out which one it was, but I probably would have run out of food by then. So you know…I just bullied through…and reminded myself to cook more meals during the week next time. I really don’t like eating the same thing every day. And where some people might give up on a Friday and go out, I was too tired. So I ate leftovers. I think I officially have no edible leftovers as of today. That’s probably a good thing.

So a three-day weekend with nothing but stale bread and cheese. And whatever is in the freezer. Sounds good. (It’s really not that bad. I have an artichoke and two kiwis. And an old peach.)

The really really amazingly good and miraculous news is that I finally finished cutting out all those damn pieces! Whoo! Yes, I stayed up past midnight. It was 16 1/2 hours in the end…

IMG_8562 small

And it looks like nothing. Seriously. All 1200 pieces fit in a shoebox-sized plastic box. I’m hoping to get a significant chunk of it ironed this weekend, finish during the week, stitch down started by next weekend.

OK. That’s a little crazy, but I’m running out of time. I keep saying that like it’s gonna change something. I guess the good thing is that all my calendars just went to September, so I can see the span of time clearly. If I look back through past quilts, I don’t see any that are equivalent in time at the moment. But I would guess at least 13 hours to iron. Really? I can do that this weekend, right? I still need to sort the pieces though. So I should aim for about 3 hours today. Because I have this shit to deal with too…

IMG_8544 small

That’s three assignments. I have fewer students (knock on wood) this year, although I can tell the behaviors are a bit more challenging. And they got their Chromebooks this week, so then a bunch of this goes online, which just means I can’t see how big the pile is. I’m not sure that helps. Certain things take more fortitude to grade, though, like essays. So I made it through two classes yesterday (well, I had taken all week in class and prep trying to get through one. I really just needed to force myself to sit and read them. I would have been a lousy English teacher.). I plan to do one class a day, so as not to strain my brain. The good ones are easy…the ones that some of my language learners write? Oh. My. OK. Now I know why writing has been so hard to get them to do this week. But how do we get better? We practice. Which then I have to read. I love that the training we sat through talked about giving them complex texts…because I don’t think they can access those. But whatever.

Puppy. Sigh. I took him for a 2 1/2 mile hike, then played Pull on the Toy and Throw It When I Can Get It Away from Him for about 45 minutes. But he still wanted to bring his toy and put it in my face.

IMG_8545 small

My new thing is to put the pillow between me and him…so I can get a break. Eventually he calms down, but still wants to be in my lap. So I cut pieces out with him perched on my leg. Poor puppy is missing the kids. I know he doesn’t understand I’m tired on Friday nights. We’ll figure it out.

Anyway, I’m working on the weekend post-it note, and it’s not too bad looking, if you forget that most of the things on there are multiple hours of work. Yeah. A day off. My ass. I’m glad to have the time to iron and just wish the schoolwork was less of the work time.

*The Beatles, A Hard Day’s Night

My Brain and Tongue Just Met

Definitely a Friday tired feeling. I even went to bed early last night. I know! Before midnight even. It’s like the world is ending. But really it was just to make up for the huge lack of sleep the night before. If any raccoons were on my roof last night or if my neighbors were moving all their vehicles into my bedroom, I did not hear it last night. I was asleep quickly and mostly stayed that way. Well, until 5 AM? Don’t you hate that…you’ve got another hour or so, but then your brain starts to rehash all the shit you need to get done, and you’re like, NOOOO, you must sleep that hour, but the brain is seeing the hints of daylight and hearing the dogs fuss. Yeah. My brain is not helpful.

I did take my scissors and accoutrements to the stitching meeting, which is good, because when I came home, between being tired and Simba launching himself at me with toys (I did play with him for a good long time before I started), I only got an hour in. So much for my thinking I’d be done last night. Ha! Three hours in last night, and I still have a lot to do. It’s deceptive. You don’t think about how hard cutting around a bunch of rocks might be. But it’s time-consuming. Waves are much easier to cut. I have all the waves and hills and mountains to do…plus a bunch of little rocks. Probably there’s only a couple hundred pieces left to cut…but they are not the easiest pieces…you can see how empty the box is though.

IMG_8527 small

SO CLOSE. So tonight I’m going to sit here and watch TV and finish. Here’s what’s done so far.

IMG_8528 small

At least I have a 3-day weekend. It’s a post-it weekend though. A weekend when I have so many things to do that I need a paper reminder. My desk in front of my keyboard often has 4 or 5 post-its sitting there, trying to force me to do stuff, until I get annoyed with them being under my arms. One of my important post-its, the one with all the art deadlines on it, got partially eaten by the puppy. It’s OK. I wrote it on the door (on a whiteboard thing), but honestly, I barely look at the door, so I should stick to the stickies (ha ha). I have 3 attached to my monitor, but they all remind me of how to do or access things on the computer that I can’t remember how to do without help. As I get older, this will get worse, I’m sure. It has to be in front of my face for me to see it. Reminders on the phone have to be timed just right, or I’ll ignore them…or not even see them.

I’ve been getting a lot of peer pressure (which you might notice I’m ignoring) to do a penis quilt…at some point, I had this post-it started…

IMG_8532 small

The numbers are for something else. I think. Really, I don’t work like this. I sit down with my sketchbook and I draw. But now you kinda know how my brain works. I have 5 bathtub drawings, with two having been made into quilts already. I’m not sure I want to (or need to) go there. But I wrote it down. I also have a list on my phone, which is where these will get transferred eventually. But probably will never come to anything.

So things for this weekend include some cleaning, some errands, the basic laundry and groceries that happen every weekend, plus grading at least two assignments, lesson planning, updating the website, and maybe sleep. Possibly an art opening or two. But what I really want to do…starting to iron this quilt together. Maybe doing all of it in one day (I suspect it will take more than a day)…I just want to be in here with all those pieces and an iron and my brain…yeah.

Midnight agrees.

IMG_8525 small

I need to be able to walk away from the school stuff a little. We’re two weeks in and this first month is always too much, so I need to find the balance and stick with it.

I forgot. Yesterday a woman from this official state group who comes every year to make sure we have enough textbooks for our kids was in our room. I’m a little irritated (or as my daughter says, salty) about this, because I know they don’t go to the “richer” schools. And they’re only supposed to check 20% of the classrooms, and they always come to mine. Last year, I got busted for having hand sanitizer not locked up. It was the stuff the district gave me. It was in a cupboard, but it says it’s not safe for kids (because they might drink it), and I was like…um…sure, these are 12-year-olds and sometimes they make really dumb decisions, but drinking hand sanitizer IN CLASS WHILE I’M HERE has not been one of them. So this year, every god damned fucking thing they might fuss about was locked up, including the pinto beans, because they might put them in an orifice. And you know what she did? Besides checking every faucet (safety issue?)? Came up and asked me if all my lights were on, or was it always dim in here.

I took some significantly deep breaths. Because she just came in from outside and it does seem dim in here when you come in from outside. But uber brightness isn’t a great thing in a classroom either. I also did not say to her (although I thought it), “You’re dim.” Because this law…I understand why it exists. I know there are assholes in education who don’t give us books…in fact, at the moment, the entire fucking state of California does not have a relevant science curriculum, because the damn state hasn’t adopted one, even though we have to teach to the new standards. So I almost told her all that, but instead, I used my superpowers of momhood to (probably quite scarily) smile at her and say, “No, they’re all on.” Rolled my eyes though. I love bureaucracy. I wish we could trust people to just provide the stuff they’re supposed to in schools so this shit wasn’t necessary.

But yeah. You can see why I need to come home and just make art and not think about work.

*Regina Spektor, The Consequence of Sounds

Each Morning I Get Up, I Die a Little*

I’m sort of braindead. It’s true I went to bed a tad late, mostly because I was cutting out tiny pieces of fabric and I wanted to finish all the flesh pieces, so I would know I only had about 300 pieces left, so I kept cutting. Plus I wasn’t tired. At all. Unlike this morning. So it was a late start in sleeping, and falling asleep was an issue as well. But then Simba was Mr. Barkypants last night. Someone was outside moving cars or something at 2:30 AM and then a raccoon was dancing on my roof at 4 or so. So I’m sure I slept, because I had 700 dreams of large cats (like lionesses) all around the house, stalking me, stalking the dogs and cats, and I kept trying to get good photos of them to prove it to all of y’all, but the damn things were sneaky fuckers and kept fading back into the shadows just as the phone clicked the photo. Plus I kept having to grab Simba, because he wanted to attack the big cats and they would have eaten him. I have a lot of those rescue-type dreams where I’m essentially failing at it. That’s part of what that big penis-free quilt is about. But AQS doesn’t want to hear that part.

It’s unfortunate that I didn’t have enough sleep, because I think I have to teach metric conversions today (I almost wrote conversations…that would be hard. A metric conversation?) and that takes voice and brain power. I’m a fan of metrics for measuring things, mostly, but some part of me really likes that we Americans stuck with a bizarre measuring system that includes the length of some king’s arm or foot or thumb, or whatever the fuck it was. I mean, I can’t be the only ~~fabric hoarder~~ um quilter who uses the fingertip-to-nose measurement for yards? I mean, I guess I could measure how many centimeters or meters it is from fingers to nose, but then I’d have to remember that, and being raised in the US means we don’t even realize metric is a thing. Until we have to convert its ass. And then…confusion. Because what the hell is 2/5 of a cup. Impossible to fucking measure, let me tell you. Why do I know this? Girlchild cooks. Her dad is a Brit. Hence we have British recipes. I convert better than she does…and honestly, I write the conversions in Sharpie marker on those British recipes. Because I can’t think that hard every day.

Unsleep mental wanderings.

Yup. Still cutting shit out. Over 11 hours of cutting shit out right now. And I don’t think I’m going to finish tonight. Dammit. Sigh. Puppy. Speaking of dammit. He was relatively well-behaved last night. The night before, he stuck his head in the pile of cut-out pieces and tried to run off with them. He also grabs fabric. I’ve never had a dog go after my fabric before. Cats sit on it, occasionally vomit on it, but no dog action. I think he’s jealous of the fabric. It gets more attention than he does.

IMG_8516 small

I did manage to do all the flesh pieces. The cut-out box on the right is almost full.

IMG_8518 small

This is all that’s left…the ocean and that one kid with the fish (OK, a little more flesh) and the sand, hills, and mountains. A sun and a cloud and a lightning bolt.

IMG_8519 small

I have my sewing meeting tonight. It’s in a Barnes & Noble coffee space (it’s not a shop). It would be hard to bring this with me, but I think I’m going to anyway. Because I fucking need to be done with the cutting out of pieces. So I can sort and start ironing. Plus I need to iron that baby owl down. I have the background for that. Three-day weekend coming. Coloring book needs to get done too. UGH.

See…OK, actually, it looks like a lot in this view. I shouldn’t have looked at that. Dammit. It’s OK. I can do this. The hand is sore today, but only a little, and I did lift weights at the gym yesterday, so that might be part of it.

IMG_8521 small

See I was playing with him…he was resting.

IMG_8510 small

Little psycho.

I have to play music in the morning (a) to wake myself up, (b) to distract the parts of my brain that miss my children in the morning, and (c) to drown out my neighbor on the phone on the slope above me. SHHHH. It’s morning. No talking. I really am not a morning person.

*Queen, Somebody to Love (this is actually a good waking-up song…just inspirational and sing-along enough to perk my brain up. Not as much as highly caffeinated tea will, but it’s a help.)

I Look at the Floor and I See It Needs Sweeping*

Oh bless the world, after a long summer of no official teacher paycheck, of scrambling to make sure the mortgage payment was in the right place, of wondering if I should buy this or that because no pay…today, today is the glorious day when not only do I finally get paid, the first time since June, but also when I turn around and give a significantly larger chunk to the two colleges where I sent my kids off to be official and get jobs. Oh wait. College doesn’t do that any more (well hell, it didn’t do it for me either. Art degree. Comparative Literature degree. Not so marketable.). I’m always told to have high expectations, though, so I do expect them to get jobs and not move home to live for the next 10 years of unemployment. High expectations follow in my school, so even if a kid doesn’t read in any language at all, I should be giving them complex text so they can make meaning out of it (someone needs to explain that gigantic gap to me. I’m sure it’s magical. That was this week’s training.). My teacher cynicism is showing. Sorry. I spent too much time being a teacher brain yesterday. A year with no state curriculum but new standards makes teachers a little cranky. Like, I can DO this, but when can I do anything else? Like clean my floors (need to do that) or have some sort of life outside school (it’s questionable that I do that). But I got paid! Well, it’s still pending. So hold your breath that it posts.

Enough. I will have to spend all day persuading kids that writing is part of science. And they can DO IT. It’s OK. I do the impossible a lot.

And in free moments, I dream of working on quilts. I come home and do chores and deal with dogs and cats and sometimes have a meeting or go on a hike or go to the gym, and then I find time to make. Every day. Well. Almost every day. Last night was one of those nights when my brain wandered into depressoland. Whatever, brain. We’ve been there before. Ignore. Distract. Cut shit out. That’s what I need to do right now. Get this quilt done.

That’s hard to do when you only have 2 or 3 hours a night. But it’s happening…last night, my biggest issue was with the two animals that wanted to be close, on me, licking me, biting me, playing with me. I had already sat on the floor for a good long throwing-ball session, but it was not enough. Midnight eventually settled down next to me, but kept trying to lick the cutting hand. Not a good plan.

IMG_8503 small

And I kept flipping through new Netflix shows, trying to find something I cared about. Eh is all I’m getting at the moment. Oh well. I’ll keep trying.

I did finally get well into the flesh fabrics. So the left side is cut, the right is trash. I don’t throw any of the trash away until the quilt is ironed together. You never know what you’ll accidentally have tossed into the trash…plus if I lose some tiny piece, there’s a good chance I have a small piece of it in that box. I also don’t put the fabrics I used away until the quilt is ironed together, in case I need to recut a bigger piece. You never know.

IMG_8504 small

This is the side of the box of stuff that still needs cutting. Yeah. It’s still a lot, but once I get through all the flesh, there’s only about 300 pieces left (ONLY…laughing at that).

IMG_8505 small

I wish I could finish tonight, but I doubt it. So I’m hoping to finish cutting Thursday AND sort them all. So I can iron Friday night. Might be tough, but it’s a goal, and as long as I keep setting goals, I’m moving in the right direction. There’s a three-day weekend coming, and it’s full of shit I gotta do. Those damn floors, plus a feminist coloring book, and this quilt. Plus have a life. Just a little one. OK, straight up, these quilts, my art, are a huge part of my life. I remember the amount of art I used to make when I was first married, before I had kids, and when I had a job I didn’t have to take home with me every night…I think I make more art now. I even had a studio then, and I would go there after work…but now my house is the studio and so it’s everywhere. It makes it easy to just make…especially if my other choice is cleaning a floor or crappy TV.

When the kids were little, it was harder to make art, but I hit some barrier, slammed right through it a few years back. I used to wait for school breaks to work on quilts, but now I just do it all the time. It probably helps that the kids are away at college, but I was powering through before they left.

This is some kind of obsession, sure. I can’t even truly say it’s healthy, but I can say that I don’t mind it. I wonder what it’s like to come home from work and just watch television, to do nothing else. I love making art. I love how it makes me feel. I love sending work off to be shown (well, most of the time…I don’t love the crazy shit that sometimes happens when I send it off and people get upset that I drew parts. That part I could do without. Which reminds me, another interesting article on how AQS handled me…or the issue…badly. Apparently social media is not their super power.).

So it’s good. There should be more of it.

Simba in a rare quiet moment, after boisterously cleaning Midnight’s ears. I think she’s licking his chest here. It didn’t last long.

IMG_8499 small

Work. Then the real work.

*The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps (No really. This song came on while I was typing. The universe is in tune with me.)

Now This Is Apparently My First Life as a Woman…*

So I realize that showing you piles of cut-up pieces and the trash resulting from the cutting is very exciting, and you, like I, can see the subtle difference in the size of the pile from yesterday to today and that interests you as much as it does me. Uh huh.

But that’s what I’m doing. Coming home. Walking two dogs that were very enthusiastic about walking until we actually started doing it, and then were very eager when we finally turned around to head back to the car. So eager at that point that they forced me to run. The car! The car! Where is it!

Yeah. The excitement was palpable. (A thesaurus was used in this post. I originally had the word excited or some variation of it at least 10 times. It’s early. My brain not so worky.)

After dinner, I got to sit and be repeatedly attacked by a puppy who apparently didn’t get tired from the hike. After significant interaction with said puppy, I was allowed to cut things out for a significant number of minutes. Seriously, I’m at about 5 1/2 hours. Honestly, I don’t know how close I am to done. Not much in closeness, I think. The to-do pile is still hugeish…

IMG_8476 small

But I’m down into the hair, which is right before the fleshy bits…so I’m getting there. Wherever there is. I suspect I’ve got at least another two nights of doing this. The hand is sore today, but not too bad. I’m going to run out of things I know I want to watch though. Or maybe I should look more closely.

Pile of stuff that’s cut is on the left. The box with the trimmed bits, which the puppy at some point head-butted into the air and all over the couch, is on the right. That too was ~~exciting~~ stimulating.

IMG_8475 small

It was an ~~exciting~~ tumultuous night. Really. It was. I’d like to be ironing this together before the weekend. I don’t know if I can actually pull that off, but if I keep staring at the calendar and panicking, maybe I can make the days longer just by the force of my own will.

I’m trying anyway.

I used to make clothes and other household items, but they’re pretty boring. I’d rather do what I do.

*Laurie Anderson, Oujia Board

I Slipped Away*

Every Sunday, I make a list of all the stuff that needs to be done to get me through the week: lunches, dinners, sometimes even breakfasts when I feel like I need control of that (this week? Yup.). Then there’s the stuff I have to prep for school: update the website, send out a parent email (those haven’t started yet), prep for the week, write warmups etc. I grade papers. Yesterday I even set up the gradebook, because that’s a thing. I grocery shop and run errands if I need to. Laundry. And then, sometime usually after dinner, I get to do what I want. It depends on how efficient I was during the rest of the day. Certainly I woke up yesterday with all of it weighing on me, and then I tried to book through as much of it as possible. I’m sure I forgot something, though.

But I did get to the cutting stage last night. I had to tire the puppy out first, so he wouldn’t try to help…

IMG_8458 small

I threw all the balls for him for a long time.

All the stuff I’d ironed last, all the tiny stuff in the brain cloud above her head, had to be cut out first. I don’t even cut out the tiniest of them, not until I’m ready to iron. But they were all small anyway.

IMG_8456 small

Doesn’t look like much, but it was about 150 pieces.

It got easier after that, bigger pieces that didn’t require tiny scissors…then medium-sized pieces that are the meat of the thing.

IMG_8461 small

I got through a good chunk of them, almost 3 hours of cutting, and surprisingly, my hand doesn’t hurt today. But there’s still a ton left. I didn’t even get to the flesh pieces. They’re all piled in the box in backwards order of when I ironed them. So all those inner body pieces, the hearts and lungs, that’s what I’m cutting out now. I’m always amazed that I can look at a little piece as I’m cutting it and know what it is…because they don’t really usually look like anything. But I drew that piece. And then I traced that piece. And then I cut it out of Wonder Under and ironed it to fabric, and now I’m cutting it out again. Somewhere my brain has an inventory of all those pieces, and it knows what each one is. Which explains why I can’t remember anything else some days.

I keep staring at the calendar and then the due dates, and getting a little hyperventilaty. No, that’s not a word. But it should be.

I think I can finish it, but I’m not sure. And there are two standing right on top of it when I finish.

IMG_8462 small

I didn’t mean to have so many due dates on top of each other. I’ve already ditched another one and revised one of the ones I can’t ditch. But that one got doubled up when I wasn’t looking. Long story. A collaboration I need to get started on…and then one I’m going to simplify…which is what this pre-drawing is for.

IMG_8449 small

I’m going to draw it bigger, but then I think I’m going to be taking some short cuts. Using a real sheet. Not quilting it maybe. I can quilt it later, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be quilted for this show. I need an old sheet first though. Thrift shop. No pattern, solid color, gray, blue, green, but muted. I think.

Anyway. The brain is working on it. The rest of the brain needs to get to school and figure out the teaching part. Which includes a 2-hour staff meeting after school. I wish they’d figure out that the second hour is a waste of time, because we are all completely checked out. I guess I can grade stuff. Then maybe I won’t have to do that tonight at home. Plan.

*Boston, More Than a Feeling (I never knew the words to this one…always thought it was “I see my derriere walking away.” Which makes no fucking sense, I know. But whatever.)

Pouring Down All Over Me

Finally was able to name this one…

Art Quilts and Fiber Arts

I’ve been calling her Earth Mother 2016 since I started her in April. I knew I wanted to do another Earth Mother. I’ve done a few over the years. Well, more than a few. So I named it Holding It All In…because that’s what it felt like. Usually titles are much easier than this. It took me over two weeks after finishing it. Most quilts name themselves during the drawing stage or as I’m working on it. I listened to a bunch of music, looked up quotes about earth mothers and nature and the planet. I wrote down some stuff to try to stimulate my brain. Finally I just put the picture up on the screen and stared at it, let my brain wander around with the image. Took about 10 minutes. Kinda funny. Because otherwise she was gonna be Yet Another Earth Mother and that’s a shitty title.

The one I’m working on right now already has so many titles. I will have to choose.

I didn’t get anything done last night. Sometimes that happens. It’s OK. I make art almost every day. Sometimes my brain is on another quest. I’m going to finish the fabric choosing today. As soon as I get back from picking a background for the owl. I need to get ready to leave honestly.

I came back last night to Kitten in the damn fabric box again. My fault for not covering it. She was not happy when I did that. Sigh. Because there aren’t other boxes filled with fabric that cats have sat on in here? I can point her to another one that three other cats have sat in besides her. But she doesn’t want THAT one.

IMG_8429 small

I sent one dog to her dad’s to play. Two is easier, but only slightly.

IMG_8435 small

OK. More accomplishment of art stuff will happen while you’re not watching.

*Peter Gabriel, Red Rain

Tell Me Why It’s So*

Hey. First Friday of the school year. I’ve almost survived the first week. It’s gonna be a challenging year. Which is why I’ve come home every single day and launched myself into artmaking as soon as I could. I’ve walked dogs and gone to the gym and done some ball throwing and general lying on the floor so dogs could check in, but mostly, I’ve come home and made art. Luckily there’s been food in the fridge, so I haven’t had to do a lot of cooking.

And some time Wednesday night, my brain released most of the crap about AQS and their statement (I had already released the censorship part…it’s just irritating stupid crap that I will keep running into as long as I make the art that’s in my head). I’m in serious Fuck You mode on all of it now. I briefly considered making a quilt of a certain AQS high muckymuck with a penis coming out of her head, and then I grew up and continued on.

OK. I still have that image in my head, but I don’t have to make that quilt. Honestly, I don’t have time. And I don’t care enough about it to do that. I have a million other deadlines I’m dealing with right now, and I want those quilts NOT to be reactions to this, although the censorship angle…it works for a show I’m hoping to be in next Spring. So maybe that’s where I go. I was going that direction anyway. Honestly, so much of my work is feminist and/or based on women’s lives and experiences, that all this focus on a penis that was never there is kind of a slap in the feminist face. Or a highly amusing, ironic event that got my work some eyeballs they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten. So there we are. Come for the imaginary penis! Stay for the real art!

This is how I keep my head straight. Well, as straight as it ever is.

Yeah, I saw SAQA’s statement. I saw it ahead of time. I honestly think they are trying to make all this work. I really really don’t want them to pull the whole exhibit because of this. And I am still concerned, because I think my work will still be an issue…and I know that because it’s pretty recognizable, there are probably jurors who will see it and think, um, do I want a Nida quilt in this show? And they’ll decide no. But they probably would have said no anyway. So thanks to the jurors who say yes. And I’m OK with the jurors who say no because it doesn’t fit. Because that happens. But yeah, the gut is still concerned. The brain has a tiny bit that worries all the time. Well. A not-so-tiny bit. I’ve told it to shut up and have a margarita and get back to me when it wants to worry about real shit, like paying for college.

I do exhibit in art shows too…but that’s a challenge as well. So. I guess I’m up for some more challenges. Bring it.

If it seems like I’m ironing all the time at the moment, it’s because I am. I have not organized this for two days. Wait. That’s not true. I organized it right before I started ironing because I couldn’t find anything.

IMG_8424 small

And it’s messy again. That’s my real issue with cleaning.

Kitten sat in the box and squished all the pieces down. I kicked her out, turned around, and she was back in it. Sigh. So it looks like less than yesterday, but I did all that detail stuff…hearts and veins and tattoos and lungs and hair and I don’t even know what else. A knife.

IMG_8425 small

I still have a rocket to do (they keep showing up in the last few quilts)…and the top part of the main figure’s face, because it’s not flesh colored. And then the clouds and everything (fucking tiny pieces) in them. So I realized this morning I really only have about 150 pieces left. I can do that. Not right now. Even though I’m already exhausted. And it’s morning and I have to get through a Friday with 140 7th graders on their first real lab day. Yeah. I’ll be FRESH when I get home. And after I go hang out with gamer buddies and maybe play games. Uh huh. No really. I usually do work on Friday nights too.

It’s a big quilt. Not as big as the last one. Taller than I am. Not that that means much.

IMG_8426 small

My students make cover pages for each science unit, and I always do one too. The girlchild says this is weirder than usual. The snake happened because I had this empty space and the kids said, “you’ve been talking about snakes getting loose all week…where’s your snake?” So I drew one. But he was up in the air, so he needed wings. And then he was too fat in the middle, so he must have just eaten. Probably shouldn’t fly so soon after eating.

IMG_8402 small

I kept calling the mad scientist female, and they were convinced it was a man. Oh my. Well we will have to change some of that shit this year. Yes children. Girls SCIENCE. That’s why she has pink pants. Because I would never wear pink pants, but in their minds, a male never would either, so they HAVE TO SEE HER as a woman. And I didn’t even give her boobs and a uterus. Ha! Yes. I think that hard about what I teach and how I teach it.

So today, we will science. And hopefully I will have more patience than yesterday.

The dogs aren’t helping. This is a brief moment of quiet truce. Otherwise it’s been chaos.

IMG_8409 small

I love making art. I love drawing. I love picking fabrics. I love ironing it all together and seeing the image appear. I love adding the stitching line and waiting for the official photographs. I love coming home almost every night and coming in here to iron or sew, or sitting on the couch with a pile of pieces that need to be cut out or with a binding that needs sewing. That’s the shit I need to remember. I love all that more than I love mailing it off for a show. Really. I do.

Thanks again for all the comments. I’m buried and overwhelmed with trying to answer all of them, but know that I’ve seen them. And they mean something to me.

*Tom Waits, Tell Me

Living Life Gets Hard to Do*

In a different place today, in my head. Those late-night conversations I have while I’m trying to fall asleep don’t help. Last night was better, because I know I am just going to keep making art the way I do, drawing what I want (I can’t tell you how many people are demanding I do more penises now…and if they come up? That’s fine. Come up…heh heh heh…see, I AM a middle-school teacher. But I really am gonna just draw like I normally do, without all y’all watching over my shoulder), making the quilts that I want, trying to meet all my deadlines. That’s what I need to focus on. Not the crazy. Hear the good and ignore the bullshit that major companies make up to make themselves look better (by the way, AQS, it didn’t work. I still think you suck. And I’m not the only one. You didn’t count on some introverted antisocial quilter from East County being louder than you. Thank you, internet.).

Whatever. Actually, some part of me wants to enter every AQS show from now until I die, but I don’t have a lot of extra money and I don’t want any of it going to them. I’ve never entered an AQS show. I don’t plan to start now.

SAQA has contacted me, and they’ll release a statement soon. I think they really are trying to change some of the stuff that has not been great in the past. I think one of the best things about this was the people on the floor at Grand Rapids who took a picture of my quilt and were showing it to the viewers and telling them it was banned. That warms my heart.

Someone asked about my exhibition plan…and I always have one. I always enter some, like Art Quilt Elements (got into that this year), Quilt National, Visions (those are always long shots), Quilts=Art=Quilts. I don’t always get in. I look for the SAQA shows that are going to travel, especially the museum ones. I don’t even enter the regular IQF show. I can’t enter my local quilt show, because they have some clause about “family friendly” or whatever it is now. I don’t live in a particularly progressive county. We have a SAQA regional show in a local performing arts center, and it’s always a toss up as to whether I’ll have work that can show there…I didn’t this year. I don’t always plan to have a smaller no-naked quilt lying around. So none of this was expected. I live sort of on the edge of quilt world and art world.

I’m trying to get this next quilt done, despite all this and the stuff at school and dealing with the kids being gone and the herd of dogs I’m now managing. It’s a better place for my head than out in Wonder Land.

I finished laying out the last of the human figures, the biggest one, but also mostly hidden by the figures in front of it…which is an interesting concept in itself.

IMG_8392 small

This is what a piece of fabric looks like when I’ve tried to fit them all on there. This one will have a lot of little pieces left, but not a lot else. I should design a quilt with a lot of little people in it to use up all the little pieces of flesh color…

IMG_8394 small

I tend to use the same flesh colors over and over until there isn’t enough of it to use anymore. I have one flesh fabric that I bought yardage of way way way back, like when I started art quilting. Seriously, it’s in my first real art quilt, back in 1999 or so. But usually I only buy 1/2 yards, so there isn’t a lot of it if there are big flesh pieces in the quilt. It might not do more than two quilts or bodies.

But I still hadn’t done all the inner pieces, all the non-fleshy bits. It was a ton of pieces by then. An overwhelming pile.

IMG_8393 small

But I put a dent in it…an eyeball here, a lightning bolt there. Until I was too tired. About 2 1/2 hours last night, I think. I’m in the 1000s, but I still have a bunch of filler pieces to do. So I’m getting close to done. I don’t think I’ll finish tonight, but I might get close.

Here’s the box…glad I moved to the bigger one.

IMG_8398 small

Because it’s almost full…

IMG_8399 small

Kitten keeps adjusting music and video by lying on the keyboard.

IMG_8396 small

Apparently she doesn’t like Gillian Anderson’s British accent any more than I do.

OK. Artmaking in the brain. Because the rest is too much chaos, even for me. (That may include my job, for which I need to leave rather soon.)

*Maroon 5, Sunday Morning

More Than This*

So AQS finally felt enough pressure (thank you all) to make a statement about pulling my quilts (although they only talked about pulling the one). I’m confused because it doesn’t match anything I was told. Well, except that they removed it. The statement is below…I’m not exactly sure where it’s posted in real life, because it wasn’t sent to me by AQS. Nothing has been sent to me or communicated to me from AQS directly.

“After receiving numerous complaints from attendees about a quilt in the SAQA exhibit, AQS removed the quilt from the People & Portraits exhibit at the Grand Rapids QuiltWeek event.

Prior to removing the quilt, the feedback AQS received was not limited to one isolated comment. Attendees reached out to AQS staff at the show and via emails and phone calls to our office.

Despite the removal of this quilt, AQS was able to display more than 700 other quilts at the show for viewing by the general public in Grand Rapids.”

This kind of thing makes me sick to my stomach. I’m amazed by their disrespect toward me and SAQA. And I’m worried that this will hurt me and other art quilters in the long run. I wonder if there were no comments during the other four QuiltWeek events or if I was just kept out of the picture. I remember the feeling in my gut when SAQA told me this exhibit was traveling with AQS. I think I have quilt show PTSD at the moment. So I guess any traveling show I’m in, my work will now get pulled if it goes into one of the quilt show circuits. Thanks to the Mancusos for not reacting that way back in 2011. Appreciate the respect.

Here’s a post by Virginia Spiegel that explains why I haven’t been sleeping for the last week. As I’m sitting here working on the next “controversial” quilt, I’m wondering how this is going to affect me. I have a piece in SAQA’s Turmoil exhibit that will hopefully travel after it shows in IQF Houston this year. Or maybe it won’t. I’ve already been warned that my Earth Stories piece might be too controversial and pulled from some venues (it deals with free birth control and Planned Parenthood, giving women who WANT it the power to control how many children they have and how often).

Will the work I’m making now ever be in an exhibit? I hope so. But if it’s not, I blame AQS. I blame the woman (what I was told in the beginning) who saw an imaginary penis. Shit. I blame the country’s attitude toward women at the moment and controversy and anything that isn’t pretty. Don’t get me wrong…I love me some pretty art and beautiful quilts. But that’s not all there is.

I really really tried last night to get my head into art so I could sleep. The last part was a failure, but I got a lot of ironing done (and know that there’s some shit at school as well right now that is incredibly overwhelming and stressful, so that’s not helping with the sleep part.).

I lay pieces out by the 100s…I think these are the 600s? Or maybe the 500s.

IMG_8374 small

When I’m dealing with figures, I try to do all the flesh pieces at the same time, so I know what is what color. This is the 2nd figure, the one in front. Some people are going to look at her and be disturbed. AND THEY SHOULD BE. That is my intent.

IMG_8375 small

Then I laid out the 3rd figure, who is just behind the 2nd one, so mostly hidden, except for head and shoulders.

IMG_8380 small

I haven’t ironed all the inner non-fleshy bits though…I still have to do hearts and lungs and hair and anything else that wasn’t basic flesh color. I’ll do some of that tonight, I think.

IMG_8381 small

I’m in the 700s, but there are probably close to a hundred pieces that aren’t done prior to that (hearts etc.). So maybe halfway done. Shit. It’s taken 11 hours. Not a fast process, by far.

Here’s what I’ve used so far…lots of flesh colors. The pile that’s not in the boxes is for the last figure, who does still have arms and shoulders and head showing.

IMG_8383 small

Here’s what I have ironed down so far.

IMG_8384 small

I’d like to be done with ironing them down before the weekend, if not before, but I’m not sure I can do that in two nights. Not if it’s another 11 hours. I did iron for 3-plus hours last night. I kept waiting to be tired. Honestly, I was also watching the last episode of Happy Valley and couldn’t stop. Great show.

On top of this, I’m currently dealing with an extra dog. It was more than I needed yesterday. It took two of us humanoids to manage dinner, and I won’t have that help for the next 4 days. Too much stress. Maybe they’ll be more mellow tonight.

IMG_8371 small

Kitten is fine though. Irritated about the extra dog, because she’s a cat chaser, but…

IMG_8385 small

She loves me even though I brought the interloper in.

Shit. This week. This month. I’m going into full hermit mode soon. OK. Maybe I’m already there. I hear all of your messages though. I’m trying to NOT hear all the other messages out there in the world.

*Roxy Music, More Than This