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.

Ironing All Day…

A nice cool breeze wanders in the window. I spent over 7 hours yesterday making art. I was pretty significantly braindead at the end of all that, but I got a lot done. I didn’t get anything else done. Well, I made dinner. I copied some stuff. I picked up some stuff for my parental units. So not NOTHING. Just close to nothing. It’s OK to do that sometimes. Seriously.

I actually started by picking the fabrics for the breast commission…I had my iPad with the original quilt, so I could see if I could get similar fabrics.

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Which meant sitting on the floor and going through 5 drawers of flesh fabrics…but I found a range that worked.

I was supposed to be at my quilt meeting about 30 minutes after I got to this stage…I was only about 15 minutes late.

And this is what was underfoot.

The first fabric in the range, I’m down to this much fabric on this print…the long piece and the pile of tiny pieces above it.

I think I had a 1/2 yard to start. Luckily, I didn’t need much. The way I make quilts works well with tiny pieces of fabric for most of it.

Here they are, all ironed down…

And then I went to the meeting and cut them out…

I also started working on some smaller quilts for sale. I have 1 owl, 2 hearts in hand, and 6 cats. One cat is really weird. Can’t seem to not make the weird. They are all numbered and two are traced onto Wonder Under. I did all that because the larger quilt I’m working on is not really portable at the moment.

Then I came home and ironed for a good long time.

Kitten was hiding from Katy. The stuff above was what I got done before I started dinner. Well, except I had already done the head and random hand last night. Each hand has around 27 pieces in it. And they’re tiny. Kinda crazy.

I kept going after dinner…

I did actually converse with humans (albeit related to me) at dinner. OK, I conversed at the quilt thing too. Before that, I went 16 hours with no talking, except to the dogs and cats.

I stopped here, tired, and took a break. I had one part of an arm and another hand to do (you can see the fingers in the bottom right)…

I actually ironed the lungs and heart separately, and then put them on top and made them fit.

Then I had some apple crisp and managed to finish the arm. And that’s where I stopped last night, well after midnight.

There will be a lot of detail added with stitching. There’s just the last head left (and all the crap around it). And I need to iron the legs to the torso. I’m at 7 hours and 15 minutes. Not bad. It’s fussy ironing, tiny pieces, but not particularly hard to do. There’s at least another hour, maybe two in this…and that’s to get it down to the fabric as well.

It’s actually really hard to stop at this stage. But I needed to sleep. And be woken by dogs early and often until one kid took one onto his lap (yes, a dog) and the other finally settled and I put my pillow over my head, which is my signal to Kitten that I really need to sleep and she’s annoying me. And for the first time all summer, I did sleep. A miracle.

Katy really isn’t letting Kitten be Kitten…

That look. She might kill you, Katy. Katy is under the ironing board there. Because that’s not an annoying place to sit.

But no. I need to go to the gym, and there are fireworks tonight, and I might even socialize with people. OK. Person. Let’s not push it people. I don’t count my kids in all that. And I should get some ironing done as well, as I’m waiting for everyone to be wherever it is they want to be. No barbecuing with the family (parents are gone, kids are with their dad…I got them last year), no party, just another Independence Day. Reminds me of the July 4 we spent in Sweden, where no one celebrated with fireworks etc. It was strange. I think it was the first year in my life I hadn’t had all that. We are not hiking to fireworks this year. Maybe next year. I just don’t feel like it. Too tired. I want to sit right under them and hear all the annoying people playing their stupid radios and the crowd getting there and getting back. I want to hear the little kids alternately squealing and screaming, not sure if they’re scared or excited.

Meanwhile, need to get my butt out of here so I can come back and iron. In true independent fashion…

Found My Happy Scissors…

I’m plugging along on the art stuff. Summer is so strange. I don’t have to deal with the stress of students and lesson plans, but the home stress increases because everyone is home all the time or they don’t want to be home and they’re going to complain about having to pay for gas or whatever. And yeah, I made you come back and wash all your dishes. I’m that mean.

Giant ass sigh. I actually got shit yesterday for making art instead of driving someone somewhere. Someone who has a license and doesn’t need me to go to that place. And I wanted to say, you know, your mom actually made some money last year and this year off her art, and she used that to buy food last summer. Did you eat that food? Plus art. Sheesh. It’s the part that keeps me alive sometimes. It’s the part that keeps me going when I don’t get enough from elsewhere. It is the only thing I really truly know I have, the only thing I know I can trust to be there. I no longer listen to that voice from that early professor who had lost it, the ability to come up with new ideas. About how it would someday be gone and I should plan for that. I am older now than he was then. And I have enough drawings in my sketchbooks to make quilts until I’m 172, so I think I’m good. Fuck you for putting that worry in my head. Or thank you, because I’ve fought to make sure it would never happen. Hard to say which.

I know the girlchild knows how important it is. Notionally. And when she gets older, she will understand more. I know she knows it was more important for me to be sorting pieces than to drive her to have her TB test checked. I was there at the physical. I am at as many places as I can be. My job…that’s what she should really be mad at…because it’s sucked up more time than my art ever has. And I’m blowing my job off to fly her to college, even though I know we will probably argue the whole time and I will go back to my hotel room in tears…it’s OK. I know it will be OK.

But right now, today, this week. Not so much.

So I make art. And apple crisp. And tea. And I try to shut down the part of my brain that gets sad.

I finished cutting yesterday…because I found the good scissors…and I labeled them so I could find them easier next time…

And because I couldn’t be in the living room because it was already occupied, I came into my office…

I think the cutting took about 5 1/2 hours. Everything on this quilt is taking about 5 1/2 hours.

I’ve been having to manage the animals though. Because Kitten, that’s where I lay out my pieces, so you can’t sit there.

No really. Even though Katy is staring up at you…

saying to herself, Oh My God, what IS that? Is it tasty? Does it want to play? Katy, the answer to all your questions is No. No, she does not want to be your friend. Kitten. I need that space.

Then I got Calli, and Kitten moved down onto the chair (see the tail?)…

So I could actually start ironing. And when Calli left, Katy took her spot, so I was always walking over a dog.

I started ironing in the afternoon…

And then onto the legs, after a 45-minute-long conversation on what the girlchild should be allowed to do and who was responsible for what. Because honestly, I’m a little tired of being responsible for everything. More than a little tired.

So the legs were not easy to iron. Fussy little shading pieces that overlap in a very specific way…

Plus I had numbered by body, not by logical ironing order. Or maybe I thought it was logical at the time, but it obviously wasn’t. Because it never is.

So I pulled the 200s before the 100s, ironed the bottom of the front leg (front body’s leg), then the top of the back person’s leg, then the top of the front person’s leg, then the top leg, which belongs to the back person. Oh yeah. Follow that?

I almost quit then, even though it was only 10 or so. But then I realized the remaining leg was a piece of cake compared to what I’d just done, so I whipped it out. Four legs…

Very pale without their outline stitching of course. I could have stopped then, but sleep has been difficult lately, falling asleep, so I figured I was better off continuing the work…

Then a patterned head. This is back into the 100s…

Which are almost done. So I think I have about 275 pieces done, close to half. I need to do the whole torso and the hands (the hands are fussy bitches, and there are four of them.). That will take a while. Unfortunately, my quilt class today is taking up the afternoon, and this isn’t really a portable section of the quilt, so it will have to wait until tonight and tomorrow.

I’ve got a brace on my right foot. Rolled my ankle back in April…now I have another list of exercises. Luckily, my podiatrist is a hiker, and besides telling me to spend about $300 on new shoes, he doesn’t want me to stop exercising and hiking, which is awesome, because at one point, I was looking at the shelves of boot casts in the doctor’s office and saying Oh Fuck, Not Again to myself. So I’m relieved. And pleased.

Now I just need to get my butt out of the studio long enough to do those things. It’s hard, because there is so much art to be made. Meanwhile, I have been bidding on editing jobs, but it hasn’t turned into real work yet. Hopefully soon. Meanwhile. It’s not so bad to be making art. Really.

Finishing Up…a Quilt and an Exhibit…

Normally I’m a fan of rain, but not when the thunder associated with it makes the girlchild’s dog want to climb into my lap. Then it just sucks big time. She shut the computer down in the middle of a long post for one of the art groups I’m in. I finally managed to close the door to my office, just to get some peace without her trying to dig a hole in my fabric (she’s a Golden Retriever, not something that is easy to hide in a drawer of fabric, but she does it nonetheless). Her mom (the girlchild) is apparently NOT at the Fair, because it’s raining up there too, and the boychild just lost 4 wisdom teeth, so his patience is worn a bit thin and bloody. Plus it’s humid and muggy, not good for me either. But I’m trying to get all this computer crap out of the way, and then I can come out and sit with Ms. Whinypants, because I really need a Retriever on my lap.

Last night, finally, after a ton of stuff was done, I managed to finish ironing the pieces for the newest quilt…

I told you I would be adding color. It has 49 fabrics and it took about 5 1/2 hours to pick them all.

Pretty fast, actually. That’s because the majority of them were the same fabrics, so I just had to find them all and figure out which of the 6 flesh or 4 bone colors it needed to be, rather than find all new fabrics.

Kitten has appropriated the chair once taken by Babygirl and by Limbo before her.

In fact, she’s sitting there now, curled up against my back. I rarely get to sit in the chair properly. I’m always sharing it.

I did start cutting them out last night, mostly because I had to stay up until the girlchild came home, but also because I’m a night owl…

Although I’m feeling it this morning. Hopefully I’ll get the rest cut out tonight and then move on to ironing. Or maybe I’ll cut out the commissioned breast fabrics. That wouldn’t take long. We’ll see how tired I am. Cutting is fine while tired (I still have all my fingers). Ironing is harder. It requires standing and conscious thought. Always a problem.

I posted for California Fibers about the show opening on Saturday. You can see it all here, on the California Fibers blog. There were a few other artists involved in the show, so I wanted to post about them here.

This is Dani Dodge’s Sutured Jane with her video The Weight of Fabric playing on top of it.

I met Dani and had a conversation with her after we accidentally photographed each other in this panoramic…

She’s holding up the camera in the right middle…you can see how crowded the gallery was.

And here’s another view from more in the middle…of the gallery, not Dani.

Sandra Lauterbach was there with 6 pieces…yes, I know there are only 5 in this photo. I’m not sure where the 6th was.

Here’s a view from the stairs in the back, where more pieces were hiding…notably, Camilla Taylor’s We Waited, 4 figures total.

Here you can see three of them and her piece on the right, Feign.

I was more than a little fascinated with their construction…

listed as fabric, welded steel, paper pulp infrastructure. The stitcher in me wants to know HOW.

Terri Hartman’s work continued down the stairs with her Melancholy Sideshow…

Her Bullseye pieces…

In different sizes going up the stairs…

And her highly amusing My Family Tree…

consisting of descriptions of people we ALL want in our family…

Sold separately!

Seriously. I know these people.

And her Altered Definitions…

Lastly was a room with an installation, photographs, and video by Marisa Caichiolo…No More Blood in Your Clothes…

As you can see here…

The requisite picture of the harried artist, finally in front of her art (which was in a good place, right in front of the wine station)…

This guy matched the quilt…

Anyway, it was a good exhibit opening, which was nice, considering the drive. I would love to go back and peruse the hardware store as well…

Walls and walls of fun stuff. Now on to the next exhibit…although, honestly, I’m not sure I have one coming up with a local opening (or even one within a 3-hour drive), so it might be a while before I get to have those types of photos again. All the more reason to enjoy this one.

Interrupt My Routine

You know you want to. Just interrupt it. I dare you. Get me out of my routine. I’m used to getting up, showering, feeding animals while making tea, and writing my blog while drinking the tea and eating my Cheerios. Then I go to work. It works. It’s 9 months of the year. The other three…it takes me a while. I often still get up, shower, etc., all in the same order but a few hours later (hell, I go to sleep later too), but there are some days where I can’t manage anything close to a routine. I had a cup of tea this morning on the way to the girlchild’s physical. I didn’t eat breakfast. Lunch was late because I was on hold with two separate medical offices, trying to coordinate two appointments (some nurses are angels, I will say that).

I turned the iron on to get working about an hour and a half ago. Then I remembered I was supposed to be writing a proposal for a piece in an exhibit. I’ve written proposals before, but not for something like this. I wrote it once and then accidentally deleted it. I wrote it a second time, making sure I saved it 17 times. But I don’t know if it’s any good. Whatever. I’ll wait before I send it. Read it again before I send it. There’s no loss if I’m rejected…it’s kind of a tight deadline as it is. As I considered an editing job this morning that would have taken 50-60 hours a week for the next 4 weeks. And decided I couldn’t do it. Sigh. Bugger.

I think it takes me a while in the summer to get used to working during the day. I’m so used to working late at night, after dinner and dish cleanup and all that crap. Into the early morning hours, which are plaguing me now, at sleepy-afternoon time. Seriously. I don’t do well between 2 and 5 PM.

So I wrote the damn proposal and dealt with some other paperwork and college stuff, and then I made another cup of tea and tried writing today’s blogpost. Seriously. So I can get on with the fucking ironing.

Yesterday was a mess. I was tired. I did the grocery shopping etc. and then finally started ironing at 9:30 at night. See? I’m on vacation and I can’t start earlier than that. I started with the ground and a cat…

Easy peasy. Then I started on the flesh. I had already picked out the fabrics (although I had to add one at some point when I realized I needed a darker one), but needed bone colors as well. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t think this through, because the majority of this quilt is flesh…

It took two hours to pick them all. Because like I said, the majority is flesh…maybe 400 pieces of it. And stopping in the middle would have meant confusion, getting off track, getting off the roll I was on. So I didn’t stop. And then I realized it was like 11:30. And I still had to iron them all down…

So I did. It took a long time and I was pretty tired at the end.

Here’s all the pieces that weren’t flesh: the lungs, the nipples (technically flesh, but different colors), the hair, the eyes…I still have to do them.

That’s why I turned the iron on an hour and a half ago.

OK. I’m amused. They just extended the proposal date until next week. My lord. I could actually go look at the space (again…I’ve seen it before).

Here’s everything I got ironed. Looks pretty bland.

It kinda is. Well, all the color will be in the weird stuff I add now…the tattoos and the fish and the holy crap it’s humid here. We San Diegans cannot handle humidity. (OK, it’s only 45% at the moment, but it’s usually 2%. So we’re dying.)

Yesterday I had Midnight until she decided the iron was pushing out too much heat in her personal space…

Today I have Kitten, who keeps coming in and meowing plaintively at me, “Get out of the chair, bitch. It’s afternoon and in the afternoon, I sleep in that chair.” Well, yes, and I WOULD be ironing, if people didn’t keep fucking with my routines. Tomorrow I’ll be sitting in a waiting room…waiting. Boychild needs his wisdom teeth out. Fun stuff.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far (in the plastic bin).

Mostly flesh and bone. The pinks outside the box are going to be used, but haven’t been yet. Not a ton of color yet. But it’s going fast. Three hours in and I probably only have another hour, maybe hour and a half to go? Like NOW. Except I said I would go to the gym today. FUCK. I swear, I need 5 or 6 more hours in a day, which is crazy, because I’m not even going to WORK right now and I can’t get it all done.

OK. It’s OK. I read this in the last book…”People are screwed up in this world. I’d rather be with someone screwed up and open about it than somebody perfect and…you know…ready to explode.” (Ned Vizzini) It’s true. I’m done with the people who think they’re perfect. Or that tell me I think I’m perfect (so not true). The wonder of living with teenagers…

Gym. Then home and probably dinner and ironing. Maybe ironing, dinner, ironing. I should probably run the dishwasher before I go. They use a lot of dishes, those bizarre complaining aliens that were my children. Earlier today I called myself an unpaid project manager with shitty employees. Yup. That’s it. I’m getting a new one tomorrow. It sheds and it’s very needy. Stay tuned.

Stuck Down

I’m trying to stay on track. I have a list a mile long. Actually, I have multiple lists. When I wake up in the morning, my phone says alarming things like, “You have a busy day today. There are 22 items on your calendar.” What the fuck? Are any of them “eat” or “sleep?” Nope. The standard stuff isn’t even on there. That’s just the extras. And some of them are easy, like “pay the damn bills” or “enter a show.” OK, that one is not easy, and many thanks to the three varied and useful brains (plus Google) that were helping me come up with a theme/show title for a one-woman show I’m considering. Though it made me realize that a lot of the words that have to do with women just annoy me. Like “feminine.” Anyone who knows me is clear that I am sort of the anti-feminine, and yet that is the word, the adjective, that is supposed to go along with me and my parts. There’s “womanly” as well, which just means you have curvy boobs and hips, right? “She has a womanly figure.” Fuck me. I hate that stuff. “Feminine” implies pretty smells and wafting silky fabrics and a pinky raised for tea. It’s interesting what words just set my teeth on edge. “Tits”…that’s the one my male students use that just sets me off. I don’t know why. (I should probably carry warning labels…maybe I do.) Don’t call me a girl, don’t call me a lady. I’m not either.

Anyway. My brain is on overload with that, and I have about a week to figure it out…surely from the list I typed into my phone as the other three threw stuff out at me, I will be able to find something semi-appropriate.

Meanwhile, I finally made it home and tried to focus. I’ve been so tired, and I’ve been going to bed early, but then I don’t sleep, so it’s fucking pointless. I am going to buy a gun just to go find that fucking mockingbird on my street and blow its perky, loud feathers away (moody much?). Then I will sell it back (the gun).

I wanted to iron everything to the background on Wednesday night, but that was exhaustion level tired. Last night, I had a cup of tea and some food and started to revive. I cut a background piece…luckily it didn’t need to be pieced, because this quilt isn’t actually that big, and then I started ironing…

The tree leaves tried to be fussy little assholes, but I ironed them into submission. This was actually pretty easy to iron down, because it was all one piece and only the tree was fussy.

It took me less than an hour…

So that’s a little over 10 hours in ironing, more than I thought, but not unreasonable. Notice in the bottom right corner that Kitten is venturing out into the house again. She’s still really nervous about being out, and keeps looking around for Babygirl, and Midnight is being kind of a pissy bitch about her being out too, so there’s some growling going on, but I think they’ll adjust.

ANYWAY. Hopefully tonight I’ll start stitching it down, which shouldn’t take long. My Saturday is kind of a mess at the moment, though, so I do have to grade papers tonight. I wanted to pinbaste it on Sunday, but I don’t know how realistic that is. We’ll see. Probably not an option.

But I’m two weeks ahead again. So that’s good. Anyway. Stuck down to the fabric. Ten days of school left. Then I have to get my head above water and try to figure out how to get some extra money this summer. I have three things going…I just need enough time and space to get them moving. Right now, it’s a lost cause, but it will get better soon.

Last night, I did sew some feet…

Although it feels like I should have been able to do more than that in an hour and a half. Whatever. Thirty-nine bullion knots in 90 minutes. OK, see it doesn’t sound so bad when I say it THAT way. That’s 2.3 minutes per bullion. OK then. I’m not going for the world record in bullion stitching. I think. Is there money in it?

Makes Me Crazy…

I made art for over 4 hours yesterday. I didn’t work when I got home. I couldn’t. It’s been a really long week. Again. I keep reading articles about how to keep sane as a teacher, and they all scream BALANCE at us. And then you have a 14-hour day. (I made art on that 14-hour day. I’m a little nuts.) It helped that it was my monthly quilt meeting last night and I had something at the right stage for working on there, but still…I worked a full school day and then some (testing was extended an hour due to internet issues), and then I came home and (collapsed for a good long while and) made art.

I don’t know if I’m doing it right, because I’m pretty stressed and tired at the moment, but I think I’d be that way just because of my job, and the art is the part that makes it all OK.

This quilt is finally interesting. The fabric-choosing part really sucks me in. I find it hard to leave it, even at 1 in the morning when I know I have to go to work the next morning.

So I finished last night…76 fabrics, 7 hours and 53 minutes to choose them all…

Not a ton of color in this one. The blues and whites are the largest sections, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing it come together.

Here’s what it looks like when I have a bunch of small, weirdly shaped pieces that are all in the same fabric…this is hair.

I cut all those out yesterday too…here’s the whole bin full of pieces at the end of the ironing, although…

I had already started cutting stuff out at my meeting earlier in the evening…

I got a lot done in an hour and 40 minutes. I was exhausted when I got there, but managed to keep going. Bought dinner, drove to my parents and picked up snow chains that I won’t need, then home and ate. That woke me up a bit, so I came in, ironed for almost two hours, then looked at the clock.

I’m not going to sleep before midnight. So I might as well keep cutting…

There’s all those browns cut out, plus some others. Still got a good chunk to cut out, but I have a good start. I’m debating taking it with me this weekend. I have a hard time sitting still without doing anything. Then again, I have hiking and canoeing on my list for the weekend (hoping my foot is finally healed). Not a lot of sitting still with that, but we’ll see. I prefer to take a bunch of artmaking stuff with me, so I can pick and choose. I’m still debating taking grading with me. I don’t want to. I should. We’ll see how that pans out. I just know I need some sleep and some time away from my job and my life. Isn’t that what 3-day weekends are for? Yes. Yes they are.

I’m actually thinking this quilt might be put together by the end of the school year, I’m that far ahead at the moment. That’s two weeks earlier than I had thought…which is good, because the other one has to be done by the third week in July. And I’m sending out stuff on editing jobs too. So I might have paying work on top of all this. Crazy.

With that, I have to get out of here to that place that makes me crazy…

The Picture of a Happy Family

It is just the picture of a happy family at home here, as we nestled on the couch last night, boychild providing calculus support to the girlchild while randomly Googling facts about the show we were watching, SVU (happy wholesome TV), and I graded assignments about reproduction (asexual, sexual, and cloning), often dissolving into hysterical laughter when I read student interpretations of the notes I’d given them. Girlchild cooked a lovely dinner with vegetables, which are no longer forbidden here…well, they were never forbidden, but they were limited and now he eats a lot of things he wouldn’t eat before. Boychild helped out in the kitchen and then cleaned things, which was scary and nice. But eventually girlchild, who gets up earliest, went to bed, boychild wandered off to his room, and I went off to my studio to deal with the flesh and the water.

Tuesday night, I had time to pick the flesh fabrics I was going to use, but not to actually lay them out and iron them. So that’s what I started with…

There’s not actually much flesh in this quilt. Most of the larger body and a goodly portion of the child are all under water. While I was ironing, though, I realized the bones didn’t go through to the bottom part of the leg. I don’t usually change things at this stage, but this bugged me, so I drew in the lower bones…

Traced them and ironed them. Easy enough, and now I won’t stare at it, wondering where the bones disappeared to.

Really, that’s when I should have gone to bed. I’ve been up way too late all week, and it’s starting to hurt in the morning. Or maybe Thursday mornings always hurt. Hard to say.

Being my usual cantankerous and stubborn artistic self, I kept going…and I didn’t keep going into something simple. Oh no. I went for the water…big crazy pieces of curliness…

And this crazy thing…

That is one piece. I don’t know what I was thinking. It will be “fun” to cut out (not).

I have quilt class tonight, so I’ll start cutting them out then…

I’m not done ironing yet though. I have at least another 150 pieces to go. I’d like to get them done tonight, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to. I have a little over 6 1/2 hours in so far, which is more than it should have taken for a 600-piece quilt.

I also seem to have more colors of fabric than I normally would for a quilt with this few pieces…

We’ll see if that’s true at the end. All I have left to iron is the adult woman in the piece. She doesn’t have a lot showing, but her hair is incredibly complicated. Wanna know why? Because when I first drew it, it wasn’t the right size or shape, so I just added to it…and that added about 40 pieces. Crazy, right? Well we already know about that.

Today is the last day of state testing (hallelujah) and my kids started microscopes yesterday, which means my sarcasm spilled over…”What is that?” “I don’t know.” “Where is your slide, your coverslip?” “What are those?” “The things I just stood up there and showed you how to prepare, that I showed you a video on yesterday and made you take notes about the day before. Where are they?” “I don’t know.” It takes a massive amount of patience to teach some days, really, on any hands-on lab day and many technology days, and I can’t say that my patience is at a maximum at the moment. I said, “Oh my God! Look! It’s an e!” about 17 times yesterday (the first assignment is to look at a newsprint letter e).

But they will survive me, as I survive them. And they will move on to the next grade, the next science teacher, and they will either hate them or come back and tell me how they have an A in science now (good job!), and the really annoying ones, the ones I wanted to run away from on the last day of school, they will come see me every day and yell “I love you!” across the quad and hug me when they get close enough…except for the few that I am STILL glaring the evil eye at, even a year later. I think it’s sad that we only really remember the badly behaved or tragic students…that those good kids you see every day doing amazing work…they make me happy in the moment when I see their test scores or their very cool science drawings or their happy little faces as they wave at me…but they’re the ones I forget over the years…their names, their faces. Sigh. Is that proof that the bad sticks to us easier than the happy? Hard to say.

This is an interesting article about an artist who did a show of white women in advertisements over a span from 1915 to current-day, removing all the text and just leaving the pictures. I thought it was telling that the author, a white woman, wasn’t sure if things were better now than they were in the ad from 1915…in fact, they might be worse. In advertising, in imagery about our bodies, I think it is worse.

Me and my early-morning headache (woken by girlchild screaming about spider; I really needed that extra two minutes of sleep, dammit) will now attempt to go to work and be calm and patient for the first part of the day. It’s really up to the kids as to how long that sticks. Looking forward to hopefully finishing the fabric-choosing part of this quilt tonight. And maybe sleeping. That never seems important at night…just the next morning.

Girlchild is now at school, now that the spider is dead. Boychild is intelligently still asleep. I am questionably awake and ready to go to work (well, not really READY per se, but I should go). The happy family continues (yours may be a bit different than mine).

Sanity Is Built Up of Many Crazy Parts

Not much time this morning. Yesterday was crazy rushing around, but the boychild is finally home, recovering from not eating for hours and all that other traveling crap. I suspect there was some serious running in Philadelphia’s airport (he has long legs), but all three California kids from that really late Ithaca plane made it. Apparently no plane ever leaves Ithaca on time. He can sleep almost all day here if he needs to. I don’t think the cats know he’s here.

Meanwhile, I have three interviews (not mine), an emergency scary meeting (not about me), and a massive lab to deal with today, so I need to be at school early and for a million hours (fun stuff)…so I’m writing this quick! That Quick!

I did iron for a short bit yesterday…

There was a faucet and a handle that needed doing, and then a soap holder with soap. I’m trying to remember what the red fabric was for…who knows…part of the handle maybe? No, that doesn’t make sense. Anyway. I then spent about 20 minutes under the desk picking out flesh fabrics in a run of 7 (the pink/flesh drawers are under the desk…gonna install a light under there next)…

Before having to leave for the airport. It was too late to start ironing when I went to bed, so I’ll be ironing body parts when I get done with everything tonight…maybe. If I don’t collapse from exhaustion before then. Plus boychild is home and he’s usually pretty talkative the first few days. I’ve got about 4 1/2 hours into the ironing so far.

So there is progress, but it’s fucking slow at the moment. I’m not a full-time artist…some days, I’m barely a part-time artist. That’s because I choose to hang out with more people after a long day of hanging out with mostly little- or medium-sized people. Crazy, I know, but sanity is built up of many crazy parts.

Five Whites That Aren’t White…

Oh morning. You are sometimes so sweet and pretty and bright, but this morning is delightfully gloomy (really, that’s easier to wake up to) and there is a cat butt in my face. The cat quite boisterously cleans itself when it thinks I should be waking up. I have three alarm clocks really and one is sentient. And it’s not my iPhone.

I sat through my daughter’s prom dress fitting yesterday. I have pictures, but she would surely kill me to post them. A small, lovely, and very competent woman is making my daughter’s dress from a photo. I’m thoroughly impressed by her wizardry. After that came flopping on the couch to read, because it was a long day that included a bunch of crazy because one of the substitute cleaning team at my school unplugged the computer cart over the weekend and every computer was dead…on the first day of math testing…online. We managed that crazy though (never again, please).

I also spent a good chunk of time finding all my reproductive unit paperwork (didn’t actually find most of it, strangely), and then creating a profile on a proofreading/editing site. Once they’ve approved me, I’ll post it here. Because y’all are looking for editors? You never know.

So it was late when I started the artmaking part of my life…as always.

This thing is actually going pretty quickly. I stopped the night before when I got to the bathtub pieces, because they are huge and required some thought. Here’s one of them.

Basically, I have 5 whites that aren’t white. Well, one of them is white. The other 4 pretend towards whiteness but are really what white would be if there were shadows and 3D going on.

Here’s all the fabrics I’ve used so far…

You can see the whites, such as they are, in the left column in the middle. So I didn’t do a ton of pieces last night, maybe 50? But they were huge and complicated and took a long time to iron and cut out.

The pile grows…

And this morning, I still have three hundred pieces to go. Tonight I’ll be somewhat busy…and my late night, which is normally saved for artmaking crazy (I stayed up too late last night), will be spent at the airport getting the boychild.

Really, there are days when my life seems inordinately busy. I’m glad I took a half hour with a cup of tea and my book yesterday, partially because I like this book and want to finish it, but also because my brain needs shit like that. I didn’t grade hardly anything yesterday, between the testing fiasco and refusing to work when I got home. I worked enough hours as it was. Oh, I also took the lake boating test so I could kayak/canoe at Lake Arrowhead this weekend. I need a license for that! I don’t know if I passed. I would hope so. It was open note.

Anyway, so we’ll hope today is better, less crazy, more grading at school (except I’m starting microscopes tomorrow, which is a little crazy in itself). Time to get stuff done at home, but also that the boychild’s plane comes in on time so I don’t have to go to bed super late. Like even for me. And nothing else pops up on the radar. For now. Just let me get a little caught up before something else shows up.