Hermiting

Making art is so often a solitary process. Yes, I love having the time off during the summer where I can spend a ton of hours making art (although I feel guilty the entire time for not getting my yard into better shape or finishing the painting of the house or cleaning out the garage or whatever), but it is really isolating at times. I spend hours talking to no one, texting occasionally, with a random phone call NOT from a solar manufacturing company tossed in there for some semblance of sanity. I try to get out and go to the gym or hiking or to meetings with friends, and that helps, but really…I’m spending hours in my head making stuff. I do WANT to be making the stuff. It would just be nicer if there were more people around occasionally. I need to be in an artists’ commune or something. Or not. That would drive me nuts.

So on the 4th of July, as the sun goes down, when most people gather with friends and family, I gathered with my fabric…

Only for a little while though. I did go to fireworks with the kids and their dad, like we do every year. But I got her eyes ironed down in the right place before I went. I always iron them together separately and then make sure they’re placed NOT crooked.

Sunday, I spent most of the day cleaning I think. Or trying to avoid the grocery store. The fridge is all cleared out and totally clean, except for the drawer that only comes out if the door comes off. I think I need to replace the door seals. I don’t know how to do that, but I’m fairly sure I can Google that shit. Maintenance is not my strong point.

But I did finally go back to the ironing. I only had the snake’s eyes to do, and then I needed to iron the whole thing down to the background…

That’s what it looks like when I pull it off the teflon sheet…ready to place on background fabric. I had a brief moment of panic when I thought it was totally the wrong size (I am making this one for a show, so it probably won’t get in, and I don’t care, because it will go somewhere. Sometime.)…

So I obsessively measured it and it’s fine. Not huge, though, which is a good thing, because I think I have to finish it this week. Deep breaths. So that was last night around 9 PM. Or so.

So what next? Start stitching it down? I’m working on this small commission piece, though, and it just seemed easier to put that one together now that the iron was all set up and ready to go…

So I started doing that. This is a smaller version of a section of my Mammogram quilt. This one is the actual size of the original drawing, whereas the quilt was enlarged probably 200-250%. So it’s tiny in some ways…

Yup. Those are some tiny fingernails. I probably could have reduced the detail in those for the size, but I didn’t think that through. But I did get it all ironed down to a background…

It’s straight in real life. Actually, it’s going to wrap around a canvas frame, so I’m leaving extra on the sides for that. Not sure how I’m going to finish it though…need to figure that out.

Then and only then did I start stitching the other one down…

Yes, I looked at the clock. I wasn’t going to finish it last night…just start it.

At least, that’s what I said to myself at the beginning, but then it just got easier and easier to think I should just finish it NOW (here’s how I get into trouble sleepwise)…there’s the back.

Yes I finished the damn thing. Why?

Now I can clean the entryway floor (dogs have been sleeping on it) and then lay this out. I think I even have enough batting for this one. Although I should be watching sales…because I know the next big one will need a chunk of batting and I don’t have anything big enough. Although I haven’t finished DRAWING that one yet (minor issue) and there might be another experimental one in between. PLUS, I’m supposed to be working on those little ones for sale. Got sidetracked again. By art. And yes, I have my own chores for today. Sigh. But I’m going hiking with the boychild (he doesn’t know this yet…in fact, I’m not sure he’s awake. I think he is. He has not shown his face.). But first, clean the floor and lay out the quilt. OK, I should eat too (diabetic). Maybe shower just in case someone comes here (doesn’t happen). Another cup of tea. I do shower every day. I swear. Unwashed artist hermiting in her house. I could do that. I could.

The Dream Police Are Inside of My Head

So this has been in my head all morning…

It’s just so wrong. This is not the best way to start a Friday.

I could show you pictures of cut-up fabric pieces…I cut out everything on the hands except the spiky bits, because I forgot my tiny little scissors. But I can do that tonight. And then iron them. Yeah. Maybe. I’m already tired and I had to get up a million hours ago to take the girlchild to a 7 AM doctor’s appointment.

And Cheap Trick is vibrating in my head. I slept like crap all week. There’s an animal that’s rummaging through the leaves outside my bedroom every night between 2 and 4 AM. I’m hoping it’s a raccoon and not a skunk, because I’ve been skunked before and then can’t sleep in my room for a few nights until my eyes stop stinging. Not in the mood for that. But it wakes me up every night. And my neighbor has been leaving (in his dump truck) at 4:48 in the morning. And I have these weird-ass dreams and the rummaging mammal and rumbling dump truck keep coming into the dreams and fucking with me and I wake up in a hot sweat, pulling blankets off, scaring the crap out of the cat, reaching for my water bottle, convinced I’ve been hiking through the desert for days. WHAT THE FUCK. Women of a certain age…we just write sleep off. Don’t tell me that my health depends on my getting 7 hours of sleep a night if you can’t fucking fix the hormonal shit that is messing with my sleep. That’s just not fair. Dammit, I’ve had periods for HOW MANY YEARS? And then I was pregnant and puked my guts out for 40 weeks straight and gave birth with no drugs and nursed them for how many months and NOW? Now you are gonna mess with me even more. Intelligent design my ass. (someone should do a search on my blog and see how many times that phrase pops up.)

Grades are due dammit. Yesterday, while my students were watching a video and taking notes, I had my headphones in one ear and was watching their videos on the computer or the three tablets I currently have collected in my room (one is my school-issued one; two are from another teacher). I’m ALMOST DONE. Except for all those kids who haven’t sent me their scripts or a YouTube link. Honestly, I guess Cheap Trick is better than some of the videos I’ve seen.

I could also show you a pile of Wonder Under pieces…I cut one of the larger quilts out last night, but didn’t start the second one. I could do that tonight too. OR I could finish grades so I don’t have to think about them after that.

AND I want to work on the non-nude Earth Mother, as someone called it. So maybe once I get home from the girlchild’s soccer game, make dinner, clean the kitchen, and start laundry, I can cut things out and draw (sounds like I’ll be falling asleep on the couch, if you ask me).

I do sound cranky. You’re right. I kind of am.

There’s a new exhibit in Yerba Buena (I have to admit I have no freakin’ idea where that is, assuming San Francisco area) that sounds interesting…maybe…Riot Grrrls hit the scene right after I graduated from college, and I have to admit to being mostly ignorant back then, due to living in San Diego, uber-conservative town when it comes to art, but so watch this…

And then maybe you’ll want to check it out. The concept of Alien She is something I definitely felt in art classes in college. The majority of the students were female, but the curriculum and professors were heavily male. They weren’t bad professors. They were just almost all men. I had one female art professor I actually respected. At UCI, they had to be practicing artists, exhibiting out in the real world, and that made it interesting…although I suspect all art professors ARE artists, I know I had some when I wasn’t at UCI who hadn’t exhibited in over 10 years. Not really in touch with what might help us then, eh? Not that UCI prepared ANY of us for the real art world. I don’t know if going to an actual art college would have helped with that…I just know I wasn’t allowed to go to art school until I had a “real” degree (my real degree is in Comparative Literature, which might actually be more useless than an art degree). So I never did. Go to art school that is. I suspect the real art school is leaving school where they help you and provide access to all this expensive equipment and exhibit space, and then you have to do it all by yourself. That was much much harder.

I feel comfortable being an artist now. It’s not that it’s not frustrating to only be able to make art a few hours a day by foregoing sleep. It’s not that I don’t get pissed off when I get rejected from show after show. I do feel absolutely at peace though with the fact that I AM an artist and it is a more crucial part of me than any job I’ve ever had. And although openings are uncomfortable because I don’t like to EXPLAIN my work, and people always want the summary and then every detail explained (hell, it’s not that SIMPLE), it’s still nice to go and realize that people you don’t even know, have never met, who don’t know anything about you, can look at your work and enjoy it or be enlightened by it or whatever. And the shit in my head, now I can just sit down with pen and paper and make mistakes and know that eventually it will come out. I wasn’t able to do that 25 years ago. And that’s all good. Now I need to get this damn song out of my head.

That One Thing

I didn’t do too well with my goals in the last week. Too many things in my head, kinda like vines taking over newly planted flowers…choking out what I wanted to do with whatever their goal was when they took over my brain. It’s OK. It’s not like I failed or anything. I overplan so there’s no down time. There’s never a moment when I’m wondering what I could possibly do with my spare time. There are many things on the list, things of all types of creative expenditure…from drawing to ironing to sewing to simply cutting things out, which honestly doesn’t require a lot of brain power or motivation. Plus there’s always grading and cleaning and dehoarding and yardwork. I do all that on purpose. If there were nothing to keep my brain fully occupied, I might rip it out of my head and toss it in the garbage disposal. Shred that puppy.

So I did some of what was on the list. Saturday. Sigh. Well, Saturday was different…and yet the same. I’ve been there before, not to that particular place, which was quite beautiful…

Made me wish I had lots of money and no fear about fire danger…gorgeous views. Quiet. Neighbors forever far enough away. But that’s not my life. SOOO not my life.

That was followed by this…

OK. Well. I’ll be dead. Although this did foster a funny drawing in my head that never made it onto paper. Oh well. There is no shortage of drawings in there. I’m not sure drawings of Kathy’s version of God should be a part of this world.

I hiked this morning…another post on that later. It was good. The rain held off…just a few sprinkles. Which reminds me, I only had 6 eucalyptus branches down and they all missed the house, but the pool pump died in the storm (after I went out to try to clean it out)…so the continuing hits to my financial stability are in fact, well, continuing. They are all out of my control, so I will have to deal. I’ve told the boychild we can be a mother-son pizza-delivery team. He’s not amused.

Speaking of not amused, during Friday’s soccer game, girlchild headed the ball by slamming her forehead into another girl’s head and got this cute little bruise…

It’s actually even more purple and darker (but less swollen) today. Should be green by the banquet (and photos) on Wednesday. Looks like eyeshadow gone horribly wrong.

Girlchild and I often text back and forth…especially when we’re not in the same place.

Yeah. I don’t know. At least we both have a sense of humor.

Wolves rock by the way.

I am amazed by this stuff…trying to figure out how to smash more natural selection into the year so I can use this as part of it.

Plus NOT audio books…I tried to listen to an audiobook the other day because many people were recommending it, and I failed miserably. I could not keep all the words in my head. I couldn’t concentrate. I will try again, maybe while quilting? Usually I listen to music when I quilt because I zone out. I tried listening to a podcast once and completely lost focus on the quilting if I listened hard and lost focus on the podcast if I focused on the quilting. Some connection in there is fried maybe. Or I am that deeply in focus when I quilt? I don’t know.

One of my goals this weekend was to start ironing fabrics on the Mammogram quilt (which by the way is a really lame name for a quilt). I really wanted to start last night, but was way too exhausted and knew I was hiking early this morning…so I went to bed early (for me) instead of getting the first steps done. I needed to straighten up a little and move Babygirl off the ironing board…

She wasn’t happy about that, but I managed it…at least for now.

This quilt doesn’t have many pieces, but it does have BIG pieces…I hang the drawing up so I can see it while I iron. I also marked the flesh pieces (which are the biggest part of this quilt) with numbers for the range of colors…I originally had 1-7, but added a subcolor to 1, because I honestly didn’t have a yard of any light-enough flesh color that would work for all the pieces that needed to be the lightest color. I usually only buy 1/2 yards. I found two that harmonized well on the light end, so split it into 1 and 1a.

Yes, my brain is somewhat convoluted sometimes. Originally I was going to go buy some fabric, but I don’t have any money to spare right now. Oh, and I haven’t really picked a background fabric yet. I just realized that. Maybe the purple is going to be it. Who knows. I’m a little unfocused at the moment. OK. A lot unfocused. Ask Mr. Meditation. I’m in the next series, the Heart series. It’s really throwing me. It’s all about feeling happiness in yourself and seeing it in others, and I can’t get there at all. What’s amazing about this app is that whatever discomfort or problem I’m having with the meditation, usually within a day of my having issues, he’s addressing that exact issue. Wow. So either I’m semi-normal or he’s psychic. Either way, I do just stick with it and at some point it will start to make more sense to me. It’s not surprising that I can’t remember being happy or doing something for someone to make them happy…the only things I can remember are so painful at the moment that my brain just literally shuts down, slams the door, and screams that she’s not coming out until I stop all that recollecting and shit.

All righty then. Moving on.

Hence the fabric-picking. It’s really another type of meditative state.

And though it doesn’t make me happy to do it, it does give me some sense of peace, some relief from the shitty mindstate in which I otherwise exist. Crappy beat-up license plate on a junker car. Yes. THAT mindstate. That above was my original run of 7 fabrics, but I added another similar light one to go with the first one…because here’s how much fabric HALF of the pieces that needed to be the lightest color took up.

Yup. So I have two now. There’s not much left of that fabric. Sometimes certain fabrics are so precious-feeling that you don’t want to do this to them, but then I think, when it’s in the drawer, I never see it…if it’s in a quilt, I might see it. But then it doesn’t really matter once the quilt is made.

Sometimes being an artist makes me feel like an alien. My brain does all this stuff and is obsessed for hours, days, weeks, months, with all this act of creation stuff and when you talk to other people about it, they don’t really know what to say. Huh. OK. Well. Yes, I’m a freak. It’s strange, I get so much fulfillment and peace from the artmaking, but it really does push me away from lots of people, just because the doing of it seems such a foreign concept to them, unless they have a friend or family member who makes art, creates something. Or there are a few people who just get it. Not many. Most give me that look and that nervous laugh. Especially when they figure out how much time and energy I spend doing this. I actually wonder what they heck they do all those hours when I’m doing this. Oh. They’re probably sleeping. Or cleaning.

Sigh.

Some of you reading here will understand this, though…the arrival of the Dharma catalog…

Be still my beating heart. You have no money. Plus you have dye stuff. You don’t need more (“need?” What is this word “need?”). I still like to read through the whole thing. Maybe there’s some tool or coloring device that will just make my day and I haven’t heard of it yet and it’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for to change my life.

Yeah. Not? Are you sure? Because I’m definitely on the lookout for that one thing I’ve been waiting for. I just don’t actually believe it exists.