They Just Keep Coming…

Sheesh. Another Monday. It’s like they just keep coming, one after the other. I couldn’t find the shirt I wanted to wear. I have some tweaked muscle in my right hip. My right hand is sore…from tracing things, I guess. Muscles I use and then don’t use and then they complain about it. Not sure what the hip is about…probably some exercise I don’t even remember that got it just there.

So Monday…this Monday is all weird. My schedule is all whacked for today. Things I normally don’t do on a Monday are happening today. State testing again this week, but math. That’s always a challenge. Math is harder for a lot of kids. I personally think math is pretty easy, because you know there’s an answer. You just have to figure it out. It’s not like you have to engage the reading comprehension part if you’re not quite awake. The creative part.

Speaking of that creative part, I wrote an article on Saturday morning. Hopefully it’s decent enough. Who knows. I don’t remember what I wrote. I’ll let you know when it publishes.

Is my brain wandering all over the place? Yes, yes it is. I was awakened last night around 12:49 AM (pretty specific actually) by a screech sounding somewhat like a child’s cry of pain. Probably an owl…but not a sound I’d heard from them before. It wasn’t coming from the owl box, but it was a terrifying noise. Woke me and the cat right up. I don’t think anyone else did more than stir in their sleep. Weird. Really incredibly weird.

OK, so in the I’m Making Stuff world, I finished the drawing on Thursday night…

No wait, I did everything but the last bit of the sky. I knew I wanted something, but not a lot, and I wasn’t sure of what, so I went to bed Thursday night and posted on Instagram that the sky needed something. I already had some ideas in mind, and I wasn’t asking for help, but you know how the internet is…a lot of people wanted to help. So I got a bunch of suggestions, mostly to leave it empty (nah…) for the eye to rest (double nah) and I drew what I had been bouncing around in my head already. Amusing though. I don’t do critique groups either. I trust what’s in my head, and although I realize that people are not wrong about eyes resting and/or whatever might come up in a group critique, I just don’t work that way. In fact, it irritates me. Enough that I have to talk myself out of never posting pictures again (don’t worry…it keeps me accountable to do so…so I will continue.). If you put your work out there, people will comment and that’s OK. Not sure where that interior response comes from (probably a couple of art teachers in the past).

And then I numbered the pieces, although I missed the sun.

So I guess it’s 1065 pieces…

Not too bad. I tried to keep it simpler. I know it doesn’t look that way to the viewer, but I know what I meant.

Saturday night, I started tracing, although I didn’t get very far…

But last night, I made it to piece 232. So not bad. Probably got another 8 hours of tracing to do. It’s very meditative. Calming. A good place to be right now.

Saturday afternoon, we did an almost normal pre-COVID thing and went to two exhibits, one the California Fibers’ show at Visions Art Museum, where two of my pieces are hanging.

That’s Hold On in its first exhibit. I started this before COVID and finished it in quarantine.

And this is All Stacked Up with Linda Anderson’s piece Perceptions of Life…

The show is up through July 3.

Then we headed to the Oceanside Museum of Art to see James Watts’ exhibit there. I love his stuff. It’s fun, it’s deep, it’s so touchable…

You should go see it. Totally.

I spent a little time stitching on this…so close to done.

Finished all of the type 5 flowers and moved on to type 6…

The backstitching is easy but will take forever because of all the petals. Nothing quick about this border…I’ve been working on it for over a year.

Nova likes to lie on whatever is on top of my drawing…

I cover it so she won’t nibble on it, as she has done in the past…

That cat is a weirdo.

OK. So tracing all week. Math testing for two long days. A bunch of meetings, although today’s was canceled. Sex ed this week includes Yes Means Yes, anatomy, and puberty. All good. Easy peasy. Stuff I know. What a relief. Although there was an issue with one class that is heavy on boys…entitled boys…boys who really don’t get it…sigh. We’ll see how today goes when I introduce the law that doesn’t let them be entitled…well, you know, even that law doesn’t work right. But at least it tries. Tired. I’m still tired. We’re getting close to the end though. Close to the end of a very long, very tiring year. May next year be better.

Does Not Currently Exist Anywhere…

Well this is a weird time for me to write, but it’s the time I have. My brain is in some sort of stasis mode in between work and sleep, or maybe somewhere else. I’m trying to bully through the to-do list for today but also to get ready for school tomorrow. I need a certain mindset to get there, and a brain dump here will help with that. I have science sussed out for tomorrow and mostly the rest of the week, although I have to set up and test the demo for Tuesday and finish posts for the rest of the week, but I have done NOTHING (let me emphasize how big those capital letters are…they are as big as a redwood tree looming over me) for the art classes. And maybe Advisory, which I worry less about. I finished grades Friday night around 11 PM and went to bed fairly early. Exhaustion is here and in my face all the fucking time. I graded all through online gaming and managed to pay attention somehow, although not to the level to which my co-player expects. It’s easy when you don’t bring your job home with you. My job is always here and currently making me grind my teeth in a very vexing manner.

Yeah. That.

So I posted last on Friday morning. I’m really trying to get back on an every-other-day schedule, best I can, not for you, my dear readers, but for me, the crazy brain that needs a focus, a goal, a written document of what has gone and what is to come, so I can actually DO some of it and maybe celebrate some as well.

Saturday, I packed up three quilts for delivery to the Front Porch Gallery.

California Fibers’ show Figuratively is opening there October 4 and continues through the middle of November. Enjoy! I have three pieces in the show.

After I did that, I worked for about 2 hours, trying to make sense of the new science curriculum and my stupid schedule that starts next week.

Yes, I stand there. I sit too much right now.

Then we dropped off the three quilts for the next show. From there, we wandered over to the Oceanside Museum of Art for the Southern California Contemporary Quilts exhibit. That link also has a slide show of the whole show, if you’re interested. I would suggest going online and reserving a ticket and time for an in-person view, but I realize not everyone can do that, so the slide show is what will suffice.

This is Libby Williamson’s piece Burn Cycles at the entry point.

I am a haphazard photographer of shows when I don’t have to document them, so I can’t even say these were my favorites, but maybe they were at the time.

This is Lisa Kijak’s Neon Pacific.

Lisa was there with her family while I was there, but I was apparently not in a sociable mood and didn’t say hi, but I do love her work.

I also liked Nancy Lemke’s work Seaside 1.

I was intrigued that the hand fabric is one I own. My gallery co-visitor mentioned that I never make hands out of one piece. Well sometimes I do, but not this big.

Charlotte Bird’s Southland Odyssey is amazing…

Lots of details here.

Intriguing construction too…

Lots of So Cal details.

And one of my favorite artists, Dinah Sargeant, with her piece Spines Return.

Plus a fun wall shape by Gillian Moss, We Came, We Liked, We Stayed.

There are other exhibits in the museum, including a large plein-air collection from Gardena High School, but also some photo and ceramic pieces by Pamela Earnshaw Kelly

I get overwhelmed in museums at times and stop taking pictures of signage…so no names on these two…

But those two were my favorites, and I liked the graphic quality of the little room of pieces by Allan Morrow.

Oh yeah, and my piece, So Cal Mama…

She was pretty nice too. I recorded video for my Patreon of this and a little of the rest of the show. Hopefully that will get processed in the next 24 hours.

Our current Saturday goal includes a walk and food. Because we were already in Oceanside, we went to Guajome County Park and walked around there…

They claimed it was 4.3 miles, but I think we did something wrong, because it was 3 miles.

Different plants…

Still too suburban, so too many people.

It’s hard to get around all that at the moment.

And then we had our first restaurant dinner since everything closed down in March. I remember being in a restaurant the Saturday after the schools closed, but not after that. We did eat outside, near the edge, far enough away from people, but I didn’t have my hand sanitizer with me, and I wanted it. So I’m still not comfortable with it, but maybe that will come. Or maybe it shouldn’t.

Also apparently some parts of the PCT are in my future, assuming it opens. We’ll see.

Today has just been crazy trying to do all the things. I needed a new sun shade for the window where I work, because the old one broke on Friday and it’s supposed to be in the 100s all freakin’ week holy shit i’mma gonna die. I needed some bins to pack up fabric. I apparently may have sold the quilt that isn’t finished yet…I’ll wait on the contract and deposit for that maybe. For now, it’s a nice feeling…and I need those. Hey Nova…that’s my clean laundry.

She knows. She doesn’t care. And Kitten has taken over my paper box.

So much for getting paper out. Cat in way.

Ah. So it’s after 6 PM, and I still need to post school stuff, or in some cases, create school stuff that does not currently exist anywhere, not even in my head, and I need to finish the ceramic and fabric pieces that are supposed to be done this week, and then finish the quilt that is almost finished so I can make money off of it, because I need some money coming in soon, and then maybe even sleep tonight (ha! Such a joke) and not worry so much about everything under the sun, even though that’s how my brain works and I’m not very good at making it stop. Yeah. All those things.

Friday Tired

Hey. It’s Friday. I’m Friday tired. Maybe more so. I find sitting for so long makes my feet swell up or something by the end of the week. I think it’s the chair or the height of the chair or just sitting for so damn long, but by 7th period, I just can’t stand to sit any more. I don’t get the kids who try to work while lying in bed, because I’d just fall asleep. Oh wait. Some of them do. Their camera is off and I’m talking to them and typing to them and there’s nothing…except probably some drool and snoring on the other end. I get it. This is hard.

My district officially made the announcement yesterday that kids would be going back September 9th. At my school, they will phase in in groups, so our kids probably have another 4-6 weeks until we switch. I wonder which kids I will end up with…and whether I will be teaching for multiple schools. Sounds hard. It’s all hard. Just give me a plan period with my co-teacher so I don’t go insane trying to plan it all myself. She scales me back. Then I scale her back. Then she makes things and I edit them. Or sometimes I make them and she makes me edit them. We always make it too long, too much to start. Right now, especially, too long is not working for any of us.

I’m trying out a different teaching location in the house today. I tried it back in April, but it was too hot. It might still be too hot…we’ll see. It’s more an internet test, because I got kicked out of Zoom 5 times in one class period yesterday, and that gets old. Tuesday was hellacious. All day getting dropped, sometimes just on the laptop; sometimes on all the devices. Fun stuff. Also I broke the toilet on Wednesday.

OK, the parts were just old and they were making noise, leaky noises, so I fussed with it and broke things that were plastic and probably 20 years old. So I don’t feel really bad. Plus I’m the one who had to go buy the kit at Home Depot after work so I could make the boychild install it.

He wanted to wait a day, and I’m like no, I need a working toilet so I don’t have to go down the long hallway in the dark at 4 AM and by the time I get to the other bathroom, my body is like (a) nah, I’m good. Don’t need to pee any more, and (b) now I am also wide awake PERK. Fuck that. I need sleep.

So it’s fixed. Now if I could get him to go fix the mailbox. Because IDK how to do that either and I don’t have the time or patience.

This was me trying to grade Wednesday afternoon at the vet with the old lady. Google Classroom has not been doing a good job with the iPad version of the app…

Which is unfortunate.

Wednesday night, I ironed a little. I have no idea how many pieces are left to iron because all I’m doing is all the little pieces in the body that AREN’T fleshy bits. So from the 200s to the 700s, but not all of them because a bunch were already ironed because they were skin.

Thursday night, another quick run at the ironing. About 45 minutes after 11 PM…

Yes, those piles look different. To me. Not a lot. I ironed a glove, a thermometer, some eyeballs, some virions, IDK what else. I’m getting close to done…

This is all that’s left…dirt, fire, blood, hair, lungs, heart. OK. That’s a lot. But I could bang it out in a night if I weren’t so tired.

I’m always tired at the beginning of the year. This is different, true, but the tired part is normal.

I stitched for a while as I listened to Beth Smith talk about the contemporary quilt exhibit she curated for the Oceanside Museum of Art…my piece is on the right, So Cal Mama. The slide show of the exhibit is on their website, so you can see it.

They’ve installed the show and it will be up until February 21…their hope is that businesses will open by then…

I don’t have a list of the other artists. This video will be up on the OMA site soon.

At least we could see the show.

Swallow Me Whole got into Quilts=Art=Quilts…so I’ll be shipping her off in a few weeks…

And here’s the morning, hopeful but predicting warm…

I’m hoping for the chance to stand up and walk around between classes. I’m hoping for everything to work techwise. I’m hoping that the tea kicks in soon. I’ve been trying to go to bed earlier and it doesn’t help most nights…I can’t fall asleep earlier. I’m hoping to get some ironing in. The man and I have a date night planned for tomorrow, but we’re a little nervous about the dinner part. We’ve agreed that if we get there and the table setup worries us with proximity to others (tables 6 feet apart does not mean people 6 feet apart), then we will apologize and get takeout. I’m hoping the girlchild’s interview goes well. I’m hoping the weather starts to cool off. I’m hoping the new schoolroom setup works better. We’ll see.

Survival Is Insufficient

I officially ran out of milk this morning, but I haven’t gotten to the grocery store yet, so I’m using cream in my tea. It’s a bit much…not my favorite taste, but my brain has informed me that the tea is necessary and it’s my fault for remembering a burrito on the way home last night but not milk. To my credit, the burrito place didn’t also carry milk, and I don’t think horchata would be good in tea. So there.

Yesterday I spent 9 hours in the car with the same 3 women (we didn’t lose anyone) avoiding all the Los Angeles traffic (don’t know how) and going to two diverse openings, eating cheese, crackers, pretzels, bread, and a bit of wine. Some tea. Lots of ignoring Siri wanting me to go here or there for no apparent reason. I came home exhausted. I finished my book…this is funny, actually. Apparently the library app tells you how many hours until the book is due, so I’m sitting there with an app that won’t update, finally driving to the house where I’m picking everyone up, reading while pumping gas, trying to finish the book, with 49 pages to go. Nope. We had to leave. Someone suggested going to Barnes and Noble to finish those pages (I was gonna do that). But when I got home with my burrito, I opened the app, expecting the book to be gone, and it was there! So they calculate the 21 days based on the time I checked it out, but it doesn’t actually RETURN until midnight. Oh hallelujah, I finished. I hate not finishing. So that was positive.
The whole day was pretty freakin’ positive. It’s nice to hear people talk about your work. It’s fun to see all the connections between artists in your life and other people too…one of the artists in the second show is married to a man who used to manage a science program I was involved in…so it’s a small world.

Anyway, at some point, I’ll post the two shows…for now, I just have some bits and pieces. The first show is at the Branch Gallery until May 6. I’ll be back on April 14 for the artists’ talk…

There’s my piece with other members of California Fibers (I’ll post all this later this week)…

She’s big! But looked nice with the high ceilings. She’s called I Can’t Be Your Superwoman.

People were asking if it’s my biggest piece. She’s 52″w x 88″h. I have some that are 72″ wide and more squarish…so it’s a crapshoot as to whether she’s the biggest. I’d have to do math to figure that out.

It has 1323 pieces (approximately)…so a lot. But not as bad as some.

We had plenty of people at the opening, lots of artists.

We checked out the knitting store next door, and then the fabric store, Sew Together. We did in fact purchase some fabric (shocking). It was different stuff than I usually see down here…they had a class going on while we were there.

Their bathroom sign.

Then we kamikazed down to Oceanside…and saw this parked outside the museum…

Our show Artifacts is part of the big read in Oceanside. The city read Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. I read it last year before entering the show. It’s a cool idea.

My piece, Give Me Time, is part of that show…

I’ll post more about that show later too…but there were interesting bits from the book all over…

Waiting outside for my crew to find their ways back out…

A much bigger opening…

Girlchild has been a little absent lately, apparently because she’s on Insta instead.

My friend Susan made these for the March for Our Lives on Saturday…

We’re watching you! I think that’s what it’s for.

Here’s some of the fabric I bought yesterday…

Lots of black and white. Plus hedgehogs. Can’t explain that.

OK, so I have three quilts to deliver to the photographer, I have school stuff to do, there’s the grocery shopping, my head throbbing, and cleaning the studio so I can start picking fabrics tonight for the next quilt. It was a good day, but I’m feeling a bit Hit-by-a-Mack-Truck this morning. Hopefully that will improve over time.

Dancin’ and Singin’ and Movin’ to the Groovin’*

So I drove my quilt 45 minutes north of here yesterday and then drove another hour back (same distance, welcome to traffic), and while I was driving, an entire drawing populated itself in my head. I’d had a vague idea of it before, but it was flat out laying down lines and spaces during the drive, to the point that I don’t remember a good chunk of it (let’s hope all the safety parts of my brain were fully engaged). So when I got home, I could start working on one of the things that needed working on, or I could sit down and draw.

Well. Um. So even though I have a to-do list 17 miles long with some pretty damn important things on it, this was a compelling drawing, so I sat and drew for about an hour before we left to finally see The Last Jedi…

I did pencil in general shapes before I started, because the overlaps on this thing are numerous. So that’s about an hour of drawing.

And then when we came home from the movie and dinner, I finished it.

Maybe another hour. It felt really good to get it on paper. So that’s that thing…I can plan all I want, but sometimes, I just have to do what my brain wants. I blow off what my brain wants when I’m working and when I need to grade things, so it seems fair to let it have its way sometimes. And now I have a drawing from it.

Here was the Oceanside Museum of Art yesterday…there was an artist’s talk going on, I think, but the quote on the building was cool…not that you can see it that well in a tiny picture.

Luckily, it’s part of the installation with the wall above, so you can see the quote and its explanation by the artist, Marcos Ramirez, on the page associated with Undocumenta, one of the exhibits that just closed in the museum.

I finally took a decent picture of this so I can put it on Etsy. It’s 11″ square.

It’ll be up there in a little bit.

And today? Today I actually have to do the things on my list. Like a lot of them. But that’s OK. I got a drawing out of it yesterday. I’m good.

*Wild Cherry, Play That Funky Music

In the Key That Our Souls Were Singing*

OK. Well that was an exhausting week. I got to sleep last night, despite 46 texts from my kids while I was asleep, plus a text and phone call from the pool guy, and a very insistent, apparently starving cat. I have lots of plans for the weekend, but as always, everything small and tiny takes up all the time. I’m still in pajamas (hey, I was in pajamas all day yesterday) and the first cup of tea hasn’t quite kicked in. Probably need to make cup number 2.

In good news, we made concrete and learned about superplasticizer and nobody died or got concrete up their noses, so we’re good.

What’s funny is that they all had the same recipe…but look at the results.

That’s a sign of what we deal with every freakin’ day. I’m laughing, actually, because otherwise I would be crying. Two more weeks. Two more weeks with a field trip and an official observation. I didn’t leave work yesterday until after 5:15, because we had to clean up all the concrete stuff, help the company who came out pack up all the stuffs, and then try to revise our field trip and notify everyone in the world that we were doing that.

I made it to gaming…but brought shit to cut out, because I’m trying to be DONE DAMMIT. I’m a little over 17 hours in…

Home to puppy. Fell asleep soundly for a good long time…

So I’m almost done. The bottom has maybe 10-15 pieces left. And then I’m done.

Did I mention that I was almost done?

So. I can’t work on that until I get through the second readthrough on the copyediting. Doing that now. Then finish cutting and sort the pieces. Then IRONING! Woo hoo! Finally get to see it go together.

I got into a cool show this week that will be at the Oceanside Museum of Art February through July, opening March 17 from 6-8 PM (I can put 4 people on the free list to get in). It’s called Artifacts, and will be opening with two other exhibits at the museum, all based on the book Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, about a future civilization where we have lost electricity and many other things that make our society go. I did read the book before entering. I’ve seen the work that will be in our exhibit, which is with Allied Craftsmen, and it is pretty amazing…wood, ceramics, fiber, basketry…a wide variety of good stuff. So that was good news.

And I’m looking forward to some music and drawing tonight…need some down time after all this.

*Earth Wind and Fire, September

Art over Work…

Although I have 700 things to grade and the deadline is positively LOOMING over me (it always does…some times of the year, it just feels like I’m ducking down to avoid responsibilities for weeks at a time), I am blowing it all off today for art. Seriously. It’s the weekend. I’ll deal with it tomorrow. And Monday. And every freakin’ day next week. Whatever doesn’t get done…doesn’t get done. Honestly, nobody’s grade is changing THAT much at this point.

Teachers at the end of the year…sigh. I was done yesterday, and we still have nine more days.

Anyway, I got nothing done last night because of gaming and exhaustion, but I will today. First, I have to deliver Mammogram to the Oceanside Museum of Art…the opening of the California Fibers: Eclectic Fibers show is Saturday, June 25, from 6-8 PM. If you’re planning on coming, let me know and I can put you on a list so you can get in free.

CAFibersEclecticThreads

There will also be some sort of artist talk on July 12 from 6:30-8. It will either be artist meet and greet or an artist panel, but I’m planning on being there either way. The show is open for quite a while, so you have plenty of chances to go see it.

The closing exhibition for Feminism Now is next Saturday from 6-10 PM, which is part of the Barrio Art Crawl. I will need to be there at 10 to pick up my work, but I won’t be there for the whole 4 hours! (Sorry)

I have a post-it attached to my computer with all the upcoming deadlines and ideas for some of them (at least one of them needs a drawing in the next month or so). However many things I have on my phone to remind me of stuff, sometimes I just need to go old school so I can SEE it every day. All the ways you can poke the brain into remembering shit.

The rest of today will be tracing stuff and then the Art around Adams two-mile art and music event this afternoon and evening. Because it’s a weekend and summer and it doesn’t all have to be work all the time. Because that’s what makes us cranky. But first I have to drive to Oceanside. Eh. Oh well. It’s for a good thing. The other stuff today will help with inspiration for the next few pieces (that nightstand thing is currently rolling around in my head, and not necessarily in a good way). Hopefully I can get some drawing in soon too.

Upcoming Shows

Yeah. I blew off writing yesterday. Head in a place. May write later. Well, technically writing now, but just about upcoming shows.

Primal Scream will be in a local show, The Power of Feminine Energy, at the Centro Cultural de la Raza (in Balboa Park, one of the round buildings on Park), San Diego, CA, March 19-April 3, 2016.

The opening is March 19 from 6-10 PM and will have 50 women artists and over 100 pieces of work.

Then if you happen to be in Pennsylvania (there are some good fiber reasons to be there), I have a piece in Art Quilt Elements, Work in Progress.

In Deep will be at Artist as Quiltmaker XVII, FAVA’s 17^th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Quilts, Firelands Association for the Visual Arts in Oberlin, Ohio, from May 15-July 31.

Then I just found out Friday that Mammogram will be at the Oceanside Museum of Art in our next California Fibers’ exhibit, Eclectic Threads.

The opening is June 25 from 5-8 PM. There will be at least one other exhibit there at the time, Love Letters in Metal: Jewelry by Svetozar and Ruth Radakovich. Lots of work out there. I keep reminding myself of that when my brain goes for a swim in depresso-soup.

Protected: Starting with Condoms…Ending with Hare Krishna Astronauts