Tag: Luana Rubin

The Word of the Day Is Chaos

I’m trying to get my writing back on schedule. My brain has been summer break fuzz. I did realize over the weekend that I’m leaving for my residency in less than three weeks, and I have 17 thousand things to do before I leave, so there’s a tiny bit of panic in there. But also, I’m still waiting to get my car back…it’s been gone since Thursday. I’m glad I took it in, because the radiator probably would have died and maybe the battery too and that would have sucked big time. So it’s all good. Still don’t have the radio thing fixed though. Sigh.

OK, let’s start with fabric…I finished ironing everything to fabric last Thursday…

I used 176 different fabrics.

I like to sort by color; it gives me an idea of what I used more or less of in that particular quilt. Although sometimes if pieces were small in one color, it won’t be as obvious in the quilt as when I use big pieces of colors…like I know there’s big gray clouds everywhere and some big fleshy patches plus a giant sun. So those fabrics will show up more in the quilt than they might in this color sort.

I actually started trimming them during an art Zoom on Wednesday, but here’s the first official photo of trimming on Thursday night…

Top left is trimmed, top right is not, bottom is trash, which I hold onto until the quilt is done in case I lose a tiny piece and need to replace it. I also keep all the sorted fabrics until the quilt is done; same reason.

Scribble likes to sit on my lap while I do this, which is not always convenient. No way can I reach my tea in this situation.

But I will rarely say no to a cat on my lap.

Friday night…flipped

Trimmed stuff is on the right.

Saturday night…trimmed still on the right…

More Scribble assistance.

Sunday night…

And more Scribble…

She doesn’t stay for super long. And she does bat at the loose bits. So at this point, I am almost 13 hours into the trimming and I probably have at least 2 hours to go, if not more. I’m hoping to be done today, but there’s a lot of chaos today that needs to happen as well, so we’ll see. I need a car!

I also took a ceramics class on Saturday from Moni Blom. I had gone to a demo class of hers before. Her stuff is just fun and whimsical…

However, I didn’t consider that whatever I made in class would need to be added to list of things I needed to get done before I left! I made two sculptures…you can see another student’s piece behind my blurry ones (obviously badly focused in the moment).

Plastic is covering my Fallopian tubes. You know. Like you do. I made two because the first one (taller) was starting to lean. My hand is holding the second one. In real life, you’d make all the parts and let them sit for a day before trying to put them together. I’m hoping they are still standing upright when I go in to glaze them today or tomorrow.

I dropped at least two of the parts doing this anyway. Fun things though. Would look great in the garden, if your garden was less chaotic than mine.

My heart made it out of the bisque fire.

Oh yeah, they said the sculptures needed to sit for 2-3 weeks before firing. That’s when I leave. Yikes. I’m a little stressed at the moment at the timing of everything. I’m trying to enter shows too, and that’s kind of a clusterfuck…can I ship before I go? Can I deliver before I go? Who knows. I dumped one because I couldn’t tell…not enough info. Frustrating.

More art-related stuff. This is the Instagram of the newish group I joined at the end of last year.

You should go follow it; this is a detail from a piece by Luana Rubin. We have a show just finishing up at the New England Quilt Museum in a few weeks, then it travels to Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England. There will be an exhibit at IQF in Houston, Texas, but I unfortunately won’t have a piece in that. I was considering going, but it’s all a timing thing. Then it will all go to Road to California in January. There are more exhibits planned, but I will be making a new piece to travel at that point.

Here’s a photo Margaret took of me in front of one of her pieces I really liked, when I was up in San Francisco.

One of my favorite shirts too.

I had two work-related events in the last few days; here’s my whole teaching team at the retirement party of one of our principals…

Almost mentally on break. Soon. I said goodbye until August to a lot of people on Sunday. I suspect I may be on Zoom with this crew at some point before that though.

Ah this.

I’m eternally frustrated by humanity…and the lack thereof. Because this…

And this…

FFS folks. We work our asses off. And it’s so hard starting break and having people tell us we’re LUCKY to need this time to recharge so we can go back to working our asses off. Unpaid too. I won’t see a paycheck until the end of August. But at least we have this…

Thanks to my solar panels and the battery. They help.

But this happened today…

And the more disturbing part of this is the far right’s argument that childbirths are down and we need more babies. From teens? Who need more supports? Which you have also decimated? What the absolute fuck. So I’m considering a quilt about this. Maybe. I have so many things I have to do in the next 7 months quiltwise. The topics are up in the air though, so if I can get my head around what this would look like. I think I can. Certainly there’s falling…lots of falling and flailing with no help.

And lastly, because it’s summer…

Although not potatoes; too many carbs. It’s summer and my blood sugar is a pain in the ass. Plus I have two MRIs next week, and though I’ve done one with my glucose monitor in, when I called, they said no for the first one…so I think I’m going without the monitor for a week. Which is a little scary with the numerous lows I’ve had. My body is in recovery from school still. And the heel pain is still there, though walkable. So I have another acupuncture appointment set up. And I have a pile of exercises to get through. Plus a pile of pieces of fabric that need trimming. I need to be ironing this thing together in the next day or so. Yesterday, I started putting the 20+ quilts away that had accumulated in the girlchild’s room over the last few months, as shows returned work and I finished a few. I got three rolls of quilts dealt with, but I can’t fit one of them under the bed any more. Not sure how I fit it before, because I didn’t add anything to it…just tried to put back the six quilts that had come back. I can’t lift the other roll up onto the bed, so I’ll deal with those tonight. But I think I need to start a new one and I’m not sure where it’s going to go. I’m still storing other people’s art for a possible airport show that hasn’t come about yet. I feel like I’ve had those hanging around for a year or so. Ah well.

OK. Today. Need a car. Need to go grocery shopping (see ‘need a car’). Need to paint the back deck railing for the third time. Need to finish cutting things out. Need to get to ceramics if possible and glaze. Definitely tomorrow if not today. I’m doing laundry. Need to put quilts away. Need to lay out stuff I want/need to take to residency so I can get a good idea of what I’m shipping and what is going in the car. Need a walk, honestly, but it’s warm. And no car, so that limits my walkiness. I do have a lunch for today though. And I have paint and stuff to cut out. So if I can’t leave the house, there is (unfortunately) plenty to do. I need someone to help me lift this quilt roll up. Should have had the Man help before he left for work. Oh well. Plenty of yardwork to do (always…never ending). You know what I don’t have to do? Lesson plan. Grade shit. Go to school. Whoop whoop for that.

Apparently Balanced

My brain is kind of drained at the moment. All the activities of the day have sucked out any relevant thoughts for now. I had plenty of them before. I’m not sure where they went. Maybe they got bored and wandered off.

It was a really busy day. I have duty before and after school for two weeks, which tends to suck up a lot of time and energy (morning duty at the tables? Makes me want to shoot myself. It’s early, I’m not really awake, it was bloody freezing this morning, and it’s all about picking up trash and their high energy vs my incredibly low energy at that hour and temperature…they win). We had a meeting about students, then I had tutorial after school, which is like herding peeing puppies who are constantly yapping and snapping at each other. I did manage to get work out of them today, though. Miraculous. It restores my faith every time they do that…I guess that’s why I can teach, because I constantly believe they can do it if I just work hard enough to persuade them to do it…and many of them DO. Freaky. We have meetings galore in the next two weeks to deal with kids and grades etc…which sucks up a lot of time too.

After school, I booked it to the girlchild’s soccer game. I’m actually glad I was only there for the last 27 minutes, because I almost froze in that short period of time, even though I remembered boots, two sweatshirts, and gloves (two sweatshirts were not enough). Plus I was trying to sew and had to take the gloves off. Mistake.

Home to make dinner…oh no, no you don’t…back to the ex’s house to retrieve Biology book and practice shorts while girlchild tries to get her head (and nauseous stomach) ready for tons of homework. She literally has tons of homework. Realized today that with ex gone for two weeks, I will have to provide dinner EVERY NIGHT. What the fuck? Shit. Not ready for that. Can barely manage what I’m doing now. Would let the girlchild cook, but she is buried in schoolwork. Need Meals on Wheels for busy working mom.

Made dinner, had argument (discussion? is it ever a discussion with two teenagers or is it always an argument?) about sexist portrayals in fiction. Read some examples. Confirmed sexism. Don’t know if I care…the books are good so far. Did grades for a while, then onto the bike for nightly exercise, followed by meditation aka crying and breathing. At the same time. A feat unknown to man? Well sure, but woman is pretty damn good at it. Then finally…49 minutes of cutting out pieces…

Dec 9 13 003 small

I’m only 3 1/2 hours in. I’m not getting much time at night at the moment. Sucks. Not home enough. Anyway, I’m doing it. The green? Lungs. Yup. Aren’t your lungs green with pink flowers? I’m sure mine are. There are some bitchy pieces to cut out in that bin. If I’m tired, I just cut out the easy pieces and leave the hard ones for when I’m more awake. I think I’m hoping cutting fairies will come by and do those. I guess that’s unlikely.

Busy. Tired. Telling the brain to fuck off. Half of my brain says one thing, thinking logically, making plans and decisions, seeing the Big Picture. The other half is a fucked-up mess and is just flailing around in emotional crap so deep it can’t get out. It wants to draw. I almost let it tonight, but then I saw how late it was. Need to sleep. Maybe I will have time to draw tomorrow night…I’ll be minus the tutorial, the soccer game, and the grading…or will I? Huh. But I will add the gym. Another time sucker, but definitely a good cause. Trying to just sit in the emotional half of the brain and let it do what it needs to do. Either I’ll understand it more or the emotions will be less of an issue. Or something. Meditation helps. Even when I sit there thinking about 1-2 1/2 hours spent every night meditating and exercising, I wonder if that’s sustainable…it has to be. If it keeps me sane, keeps me moving, keeps me calmer, it’s worth it. So just do it. My priorities have changed. More art, less school. Less work at home. More exercise. Meditate. Fewer people (that might not be a good thing). Apparently cry…that’s a daily thing. I could do without that one. Wonder if I ever will.

This morning, as I was updating some of the website, I was feeling all cranky about only getting into 7 exhibits in 2013, but then I realized that it was 8 exhibits, and I already have pieces in 4 shows in 2014 and 2014 hasn’t even started yet. So shut up, stupid brain. You’re doing fine. Stop being such a mope about stuff. Make the work. The shows will come. And if they don’t? You will still make the work. That’s the logical half talking to the emotional half. They don’t really get along at the moment. The logic is frustrated with the emotion, and the emotion thinks the logic doesn’t listen…because hey, most of the time it doesn’t.

Here’s a video Luana Rubin of eQuilter did of the SAQA exhibits at IQF Houston, including People and Portraits…

You can decide if that quilt is truly whimsical, or just plain old disturbing. Funny that it’s about being Fully Medicated, but I keep trying to get away from meds, and I keep having to take more. I should do one called Over Medicated, except I’m not. I have this Tshirt that says USDA Organic…which is ironic, because I’m not organic…I’m full of meds that keep my systems apparently balanced because my body doesn’t know how to, even though for half the ailments I have, I was told if I lost the weight, they would all go back to normal. Fucking liars. Well, the meds are supposed to keep everything balanced, but I don’t think I’m there yet…I’m freezing again. Under Medicated also might be fun to draw.

Apparently balanced: despite all the mindfucks that are going on at the moment, I seem to have found a balance between art and work that is somewhat functional: basically do very little grading at home. Do art every night. If there’s a question about how to use my time? Art wins. That’s sustainable. I hope.