Light Strikes a Deal with Each Coming Night*

Well I can’t say I made art yesterday, but I sold some. So I guess that counts. Certainly it’s good news, although amusing in some ways, since I really need the money right now to pay for college fees, and because the show is traveling, I won’t see the cash until both kids have graduated. Oh well. Life goes on. Plan a vacation for 2019? Maybe.

The Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos sold at IQF in Houston yesterday…it will still travel with the Tranquility/Turmoil exhibits, but at the end, it will go on to its new owner.

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So that’s nice. I’m happy. I wish I’d been able to be there for the opening and to meet the new owner, but such is life.

In other good art news, the exhibit I was in last May, Feminism Now, will be traveling to Stockholm, Sweden in May 2018. Yes. We plan that far out. So that is also cool.

My piece, And Then There Was One, will be part of that show.

Kathy Nida Quilt

Meanwhile, I really need to find time to make the next quilt. I’ve started thinking about the work for my show at Visions next July. I have one drawing sitting in my head, waiting for time to draw. Like. It’s fully drawn in there. Seriously. But the piece I’m tracing right now is due quickly too.

Meanwhile, grades are due for school, so that’s what I’m doing all weekend…basically until I’m done. We took 240 or so kids to the zoo yesterday…

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Which was exhausting…yes…but fun. I forgot the sunscreen…luckily, it’s November, so I am just a bit pinky red.

Let sleeping bears lie, I say.

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This guy. I threw the ball 40 times this morning before he gave up. I felt bad for him after two nights of my being gone at openings.

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And now I’m grading while he runs around outside, barking at anything that moves. Also lying in the sun.

OK. Back to work. Art is in my head, but unfortunately, not on the radar. Hopefully tomorrow night. Otherwise, I think every teacher I know is grading shit right now.

*Iron and Wine, Each Coming Night

You’re My Wonderwall*

Exhaustion hit yesterday. I went to bed early even. I have to listen to the body sometimes or face consequences. Part of the exhaustion was an opening after school of the new exhibit I’m in at the Women’s Museum of California. It’s called Night Stand: Bedside Imaginings by the Feminist Image Group…strangely, I have a nightstand (it’s one word, dammit) and a bed in the show, one of only two beds…and one of the things I’ve found about trying to take photos of 3D art, even a quilt lying on the bed, is that it’s hard to get a decent picture…gallery lighting doesn’t help.

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It’s an old army cot…one I actually slept on a couple weekends ago while camping. The quilt itself doesn’t come all the way down…it’s just the top part. Begging the question of…what the hell am I going to do with this after this show closes? Dunno.

Here’s a long view that includes pieces by Stephanie Bedwell and Jeanne Dunn, as well as my nightstand with Prudence Horne on the right…oh, and Irene Abraham’s nightstand in honor of Barbara McClintock.

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This show kind of morphed, I think, after the first discussion of trying to do something like Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party (copyright issues) and then somehow got to WomanHouse…although I think I missed that meeting.

Anyway, Prudence and I worked on a nightstand that started out about the fact that we read ourselves to sleep, so our nightstands always have books on them, and then the stories you’re reading about end up in your dreams, followed by hey, some women writers have to write under pseudonyms…having to hide who they are to do what they love. So we put names of women authors with their pseudonyms (which we crossed off…it’s not who they are)…

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It’s a weird little beast, but I like it.

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This group often challenges me to do things I don’t normally do.

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I sold a pile of coloring books at the show, and there are more at the museum. I’ve been paid back at this point, which is good, and now we can start saving for the next exhibit, which is coming up all too quickly, and which I am heavily involved with. You know, in my spare time.

So that was my excuse for exhaustion. Teaching all day, then going almost directly to an opening for three hours. I got home, ate dinner, and went to bed essentially. Sad but true. We did talk at the opening about that…if I went to all the openings I got invites for, or even just the ones I wanted to go to? I would never get any art made. So sometimes we have to just stay home and hunker down.

*Oasis, Wonderwall

Looking at the Mutating Skyline*

I’ll be so glad when the internet issues get fixed. I literally sit here and watch it come and go. Right now it’s here. But it might not be by the time I get to the end of the sentence.

We’re doing a field trip this week, so a ton of my time has been spent dealing with that. And energy. By the time I got home last night, I was already exhausted. But I dealt with food and then graded for a while and then prepped food for an opening tonight that I don’t really want to go to. Oh well. Actually, there are two. I’m not in the mood for either. I could skip one. Mentally I could skip both, but really not an option.

So it wasn’t until late until I started tracing again…

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It’s going slowly. Not sure if it’s because in the bottom part of the quilt, the pieces are all pretty big, so they take longer to trace, or it’s because I’m tired. I’m about 160 pieces in, but it’s taken me about 2 1/2 hours. That’s too long. Anyway. It will get done. It’s obviously not getting done quickly though. I guess my job gets in the way of that sometimes. Or a lot. Regularly. For instance, I had to get up early today and will have to be at school 30 minutes early for a staff photo. Let me tell you how I feel about that. No really. Because (1) I love having my photo taken and (2) I love getting up earlier than I have to. And I already had massive issues falling asleep last night (too much shit in my head). So I’m tired. Ugh.

I’m really really looking forward to next week (only a 4-day week) and Thanksgiving break (ah, so many days to sleep in. Potentially. If I didn’t have the puppy.). Then I can stay up as late as my brain needs to in order to fall asleep quickly, and I won’t have to get up early to go have my photo taken.

So looking at the rest of the week, I’ll be lucky to finish tracing this by Monday night. Which is scary, because I know when the deadline is and this is another tight one. Shee it. So hopefully fabric choosing by the 3-day weekend. That’s my goal. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

*M83, Midnight City

No Discrimination Here, Squirrel*

Huh. Yeah. OK. This week. I started a blog post. Internet (or lack thereof) just ate it.

Some weeks…some days…I get up and I eat my breakfast and take my meds and get showered and dressed and shuffle through. And it’s already a trial, so I do that thing in my head where I try to talk myself through it or persuade myself there’s some light at the end of some shortish tunnel. But some days. Weeks. Are just hard. October was a bitch. November can only be better.

It has to be. There’s no other way to go but up. Cooler weather (90 on Saturday. Shit.). Days off from school (piles to grade). Shut up brain. A chance to hike. Maybe go to the movies. Just be instead of having to be it all.

So eventually last night I got up off the couch (I was trying to grade…until I just plain gave up) and started tracing the new deadline. I’m really tired of deadlines. I need to stop thinking of them as a deadline and think of them as a way to make another quilt. But themes kick my ass at the moment. I’m tired of themes. I just wanna make stuff.

So maybe I will figure that shit out.

I didn’t get far, somewhere into the high 50s. But that’s OK.

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There’s only 800 pieces in this one…so about 8-9 hours of tracing. Probably not getting that done before the weekend, especially not with Trimester 1 ending and a field trip. Really I should just go back to bed and take a few days off. Ha!

Calli’s got it. She understands.

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Here’s the one I couldn’t post yesterday. I decided it was a laser for radiation therapy. They probably don’t really look like that at all, but tough shit. I’m OK if I’m the only one who understands my art. Today at least.

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Ugh. This mood. Sucks. Operation take care of Kathy. Going to the gym and reading my book tonight. That’s a start.

*Outkast, The Way You Move

Guess It Will Have to Wait

The tech issues continue to plague me. They’re sending a tech out Saturday. Now they think it’s the external lines. Woo hoo! “You just need to have someone home at a random time during the day.” “Do dogs count?” I guess everyone has someone waiting around to deal with the internet provider. Oh well. I’m struggling here, but surviving with waves of internet on and waves of internet off. But grades are due this weekend, and I don’t want to do that in a Starbucks.

Yesterday was mentally exhausting. I think I added up the field trip numbers 17 times and got a different answer each time. So it was an actual requirement to walk the dogs last night…especially since with the time change on Sunday, I’ll be lucky to do that after school for a good four months or so…

The sky rewarded me.

Kitten was chilly, so I didn’t get much attention from her…she wants me to iron things so she has a space heater.

It’s really not cold here compared to where the kids are.

I finished drawing. I told you it needed a dinosaur.

It’s the first time I’ve put a dinosaur in a quilt.

I tried to persuade the little dog that the big dog would let him curl up next to her. He didn’t believe me.

She’s warm, little boy.

I finished drawing an eyeball, like you do…

Gave her some weather…

And though ’twas late, in good Kathy fashion, I stayed up way too late numbering shit. Hey! Only 803 pieces.

Not bad.

I’m having to do this from my phone, as the computer is being an asshole. Which is too bad, because I have this edited photo on the computer that won’t freakin’ load of one of the things I drew originally on this drawing…and I’m not sure what it is.

Guess it will have to wait.

Don’t Matter What I Do*

Internet is sorta resolved. I spent hours on it this weekend, and I’ll need professional help at some point, but for now, I’m mostly up and running. Slowly. (“I’ll need professional help”… ha ha ha. Story of my life. Seriously though…it would be nice to be able to fix something without help.)

So it was an insanely busy weekend. But I managed some drawing time…like I wrote on Saturday, I’d decided one of the problems with this drawing was the existing head. It wasn’t quite right…her expression was off. At least for what I wanted.

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Then I filled in with white paper…this thing is like a Frankenstein drawing with all the things I keep cutting off.

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That’s as far as I got Saturday…and then last night, I started drawing in. No the old head isn’t staying. She’s just watching…

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I still don’t think this thing is done. For one reason…there’s no dinosaur yet. And there needs to be a dinosaur (can’t think if I’ve ever put a dino in a quilt? Don’t think so…it’s about time.).

I’m using this Google extension Momentum on my home and work computers. It makes you write a focus each day…Sunday was impressive. But the to-do list went from 16 or so things to just 5, so I did good.

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I made the semi-last-minute decision to add a cloud to this thing, but was trying to figure out how to attach it without the staple gun that I’m pretty sure is at my ex’s house. The animals were not helping.

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Yes. I made a cloud out of fabric and stuffed it. I might make more.

This came in the mail on Saturday.

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Obviously I’m on the Turmoil side of that with my Goddess of Never-Ending Chaos…

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It’s hard not going to the opening, but oh well. People are there seeing her, vulva and boobs and all. No there’s no penis. Why? Because she’s a goddess and the only appropriate place for a penis in that scenario is perhaps in her hand. Of which she has 10.

So she’s premiering in Houston, Texas, right now at IQF, which I think officially starts Wednesday or Thursday.

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That quilt has a lot going on in it.

Then over the weekend, Quilts=Art=Quilts opened with two of my quilts…although I haven’t seen pictures of them yet at the show…

Here’s Finding Peace (Bathtub 5)…

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And the ever cheery You Make Me Wanna Die…

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Yeah. That one. Crazy painful. Or painful crazy. However you wanna look at it.

So hopefully people saw those too. No penises in any of them…although technically there’s a male in that one. Maybe 2.

OK. Well it’s Monday. I have an early parent meeting. It’s Halloween, so everyone will be dressed up. The teachers have this thing for themes. They annoy me, the themes (well, sometimes the teachers too). This year is Heroes and Villains. I debated Trump. But I decided to make a different statement…I’m going as Ms. Marvel, the Muslim female Captain Marvel. Easy costume from one of the covers. Way easier than last year’s cow costume, which was hot as hell…but kinda like wearing pajamas.

I’m hoping to come home, walk dogs, and then finish this drawing, maybe even number it…OR make more clouds. Whichever makes more sense to me at the time. I am so not ready for it to be November. Sheesh. Not sure where the month went, but it went. My deadlines. Yikes. And I think I’m supposed to hear about 3 entries in the next two days. Knock on wood. I don’t need to get into all of them, but one would be nice.

*The Style Council, Don’t Matter What I Do

Big Hands, I Know You’re the One*

OK. I’m officially over all these dogs. Scissors chewed up. A drawing by a kid chewed up. One monster stalking my trash can in the studio, trying to surreptitiously sneak shit out of it (Swiffer things, dumbass. Gonna sweep for me?). One big dog peed in the hallway because she’s scared of the dark, even when I escort all the dogs outside for pee excursions. I have a pack that follows me everywhere. There is barking in the small hours of the morning (that’s just one of them…the other two are smartly snoring away on a variety of beds). I can’t even find all the toys to entertain the little bitey chewy animal. Hence the scissors. Bastard.

I didn’t grade last night. Nope. Nuh uh. Did not.

My theory was that I would quilt (because I had the right color of thread) until I was done, and then if there was time, I would grade all the things turned in late. Except then the quilting took almost three hours. And it was after midnight. So I gave up on that plan.

I still think I did the right thing by starting with the quilting.

Morning reminds me that I didn’t get enough sleep. Like I didn’t know that already.

Outlining everything first.

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There aren’t a lot of pieces on this one, so it didn’t take long…

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And then I started quilting the background.

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At one point, I was looking at this vast expanse of white that had to be filled in. Boring! But I powered through (turn the music up louder, bounce a little in your seat as you quilt? Whatever makes you keep going…there was the voice telling me I could be done tonight.).

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Because there’s still a lot less quilting than there was on the last piece.

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While I was doing this, Kitten kept trying to sleep on the quilt. No. She was squawking at me. And then went over to the bookshelf and kept trying to pull file folders and stuff out of the shelf. I finally cleared her a spot, put a towel in there, and watched her happily curl up in there. Who knows why.

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A good hiding spot.

So there it is. And it’s almost done, because at least for now I am not binding it. I want that unfinished look. Like mom didn’t have time to finish it.

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So moving on to the nightstand. Maybe this will all make more sense when I have pictures from the installation. Or not. If I ever decide to make it a wallhanging, I’ll have to put a sleeve on it, but for now, it doesn’t need anything else.

I also need to do some drawing for the next three shows. Yikes! The deadlines keep piling up.

As for the dogs, tonight I’m going out. Without them. And I’m ditching them all weekend. By then, maybe I’ll miss them. And one of them will be back at her own home. Where she can pee wherever she likes.

*Violent Femmes, Blister in the Sun

Using Your Headphones to Drown out Your Mind*

Artmaking is the core of my existence. It really is. I’m not happy without it. If I look back over the years, when I was just out of school, first married, I made art a few days a week. I actually had a studio downtown for a while, which was nice, but still…I had a life outside of that. I went places. I hung out with my husband. I worked on the yard. Walked the dog. I still did art…probably a good amount, because I made about 6-10 new pieces a year (this is before quilting, so screenprints). I entered shows and got rejections and acceptances and shipped stuff all over the US.

Then the kids came along and that kind of put a minor wrench into it. It was a lot harder to find the time, so I shifted from screenprinting to making quilts, because I didn’t need big blocks of time and I could carry parts of it around with me. It wasn’t a quick shift. It took a long time to figure out how to do what I wanted to do. Sometimes I think I’ve figured too much out about the how…it’s not a challenge any more. And then I remember all the images I want to make into fabric, and I tell myself to shut up. I do about one piece a year that’s a challenge, usually for this feminist artist group I’m in. So I’m good. I usually get significantly frustrated with the process and feel some relief at going back to what I usually do. So I guess that’s good. “I’ll never do THAT again,” is often how I feel after one of those.

Now the kids are at college, gone 3/4 of the year, and even though I do have some social stuff, I mostly do art. Yeah, I’m an introvert, so honestly, at the end of a school day, I need fewer people around anyway. I need some quiet space.

So I have two for this feminist group at the moment…the fabric one is going OK…not TOO out of the box…I pinbasted the top part…batting and a backing even. Like a quilt. Going onto a bed…

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So I’m making a quilt of someone sleeping on a bed. To go on a bed. Weird.

My cat…because she’s there almost every night…I’ve always had a cat in the bed.

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Here she is modeling for her next cameo

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Oh yeah. And before I did all that (and made dinner and graded stuff), I walked the dogs. It was nice. Not hot (unlike what it will be later this week). We got the whole three miles in. Only one horse (two of the dogs go a little bonkers at horses…I have to stand off the trail and rein them in).

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I found yesterday very frustrating. I’m getting a lot of that this year. Some difficult kids. Trying to build a relationship with someone who acts like an idiot most of the time is a challenge in itself. I’m not sure I always have the patience for it. Sometimes I’d really just rather find a job that doesn’t follow me home and stress me out. Then just make more art.

*Regina Spektor, Eet

I Can’t Do Much from Way out Here*

Yeah. I took the weekend off writing. It really was just that I ran out of time. I regularly take Sunday off, but Saturday started with places I had to be, things I had to do, and I never got caught up enough to write. I got a lot done, though…so I guess that’s good. I’m still a little panicked about deadlines and having too much to do this week, but I’ll survive. I’m a few steps closer to being done with what has to be done.

I had ironing to do on Saturday…but Kitten really thinks of the iron as her own space heater…

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I was trying to figure out how to attach the sheet to the background fabric and keep the bottom free, but also leave the possibility of finishing the top as a wall quilt.

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For this show, I want it to hang free…but I don’t know if I want that in the long term…

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So I figured that out, marked the fabric, cut and washed the background, and then headed off to the Visions opening (more on that later), plus band watching. I draw in bars a lot…this because I like the music, and I do sometimes dance, but I’m often in there for 4 hours or so, and that’s a long time for someone like me to just SIT there. So I draw.

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I did two drawings…I don’t think this one is done…

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Nice shadows though.

Sunday, after spending most of the day dealing with household stuff and a ton of grading (I think I described it as grading until my eyes bled), I finally got back to the problem…So I didn’t want a visible stitch line, because I want it to look like the sheet is just pulled up. So I started with Wonder Under underneath…

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And once I had it attached, I hand-stitched the top and the folds…

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Because if I want all that to hold when it’s hung on the wall, it’s got to be more than Wonder Under…you can see the stitching on the back…

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Then I laid out the pieces where they belonged. I had to put another layer of white under her butt so the sheet wouldn’t show through so badly.

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And then I did the stitch down, which took less than an hour, compared to the two hours it took me to get it all on there today.

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I got it all stitched down…here’s the back.

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I don’t even remember what my time estimates were before, but the ironing took a lot longer than I thought, mostly because of the sheet. Hopefully tonight I can sandwich it and start quilting. This is a crappy busy week, though, and I still need to draw on the nightstand. Sigh.

I’ll figure it out. I always do. I think I’m OK on time, actually, so I should stop panicking…but this week feels tight already. Starting with today, because I didn’t prep for today’s lab AND I have before-school duty…so I really need to be at school early. I’d much rather make art…honestly.

*Freedy Johnston, Save Yourself City Girl

There’s a Place That We Belong*

It’s Friday. That’s a good thing. Unless you’re trying to get a doctor’s appointment as soon as possible. Insert crying/laughing face here. Oh well. Urgent care on Friday after school it is. Nothing major…just an allergic reaction I think. Love my body’s immune system. It goes into overdrive for the stupidest shit. It would be fine if it weren’t constantly evolving. Intelligent design, my ass.

So when I got home and was done with dinner, peppered by texting from the kids about politics (well, the girlchild jumped ship early on that one), I went straight to the studio. I had updated the coloring book files, fixed the two typos and the one picture issue, and submitted the new files for review. This thing is almost done! Hallelujah.

But I also need to finish these two projects for the same deadline.

I ironed…

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I lost part of the cat’s ear for about an hour, but then it reappeared. I actually did really well with all these parts…nothing lost permanently.

It was a fussy iron though…lots of tiny pieces.

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I originally guessed 2-3 hours and it was just under 3 last night…but I still need to iron it to a background and engineer the sheet part. So that will take a while.

Here’s the second 100 pieces all laid out for me. You can see all the tiny pieces in the top half. Finger wrinkles and baby faces…

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So I didn’t really get anything else done last night except this…

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Good progress though. Hopefully she’ll get completely ironed down tonight. And maybe even stitched down. We’ll see. That’s the plan anyway.

I have pens for this now, nice new ones. But I didn’t draw last night. I sent this picture to the kids and they were worried about how sad puppy looked.

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Well yeah, he’s sad because I won’t come sit with him (I did eventually and then all he did was bite me). I’m not a good dog entertainer when I’m working.

All our ballots showed up yesterday. Time to vote! Then I can really ignore all the drama. I’ve been trying, although the media certainly doesn’t want me to give up on it. Please tell me how I can lose my right to vote. Please remind me that I’m a second-class citizen for having a uterus…god forbid all of us who aren’t straight white males have rights in this world. I’m often confused by the things people say, supposedly intelligent people, about how I’m imagining the war on women, that it’s not really that bad. Oh yeah? BE ONE. That doesn’t even touch on being someone who’s not white or not straight or not a round peg in the round hole. So frustrated with humans right now. Moving to a really big island and taking the sane people with me.

*Peter Gabriel (with Kate Bush), Don’t Give Up