Take a Sad Song…

So much for my plan to go to sleep earlier…my brain got in the way tonight and forced me to draw to make it better.

It was late and my brain just didn’t fucking care…it was disinterested in the whole “normal amount of sleep” theory and how sleep is supposed to protect me from all this health shit. Vicious damn cycle. Can’t sleep. Health is an issue. Can’t sleep. Depression. Depression affects health, affects sleep. Fuck it.

I’m still working on this drawing. It has so much detail in it that I will be hating myself when I go to make it…because I don’t think I can enlarge it more than 200%. So those suckers on the octopus? Holy crap. They will be tiny (they are two concentric circles). Whatever. It demands to be the way it is. I didn’t draw for long, about 30 minutes. I just felt so shitty after meditation…which is probably not the way it should work, but it did. I can’t remember exactly what the issue was…something about my calm confidence (which doesn’t exist, by the way) or dealing with problems calmly (fuck no)…I just cried. It’s a good thing no one watches me meditate. It’s probably somewhat disturbing. I guess the crying was calm.

I figured out what was on the other side…

DNA. DNA is part of this, you know? DNA gives you tendencies, precursors to certain problems. Then your environment fucks with that, the people around you…they fuck with your DNA tendencies and cause nasty shit to happen. Or not. I wish I were one of the ‘or nots,’ but apparently I angered the gods before I was born and my nasty-ass karma is now fucking with my entire existence. If you believe in that shit. The combination of the two, DNA and environment, makes you who you are. Although I have to believe that my brain, my own personal will, free will? Nah. Not free. Paid for. That my will can affect some of that. When I’m feeling sane. When I’m feeling strong. I am feeling neither at the moment, sane nor strong. Mine is a particularly toxic combination, apparently. It’s one I’m really unhappy with, one I don’t want to be. I know I can mess with the environment part…the nurture part. The DNA, well, I’m stuck with that. You can’t escape your DNA. Is my brother’s DNA so different from mine? He makes better choices. I suck at it. I wonder if he is happy. I hope he is. I’m not.

I did finish the Wonder Under on the Mammo quilt…

There it is, all sorted out. Isn’t it cute? It only took up 4 bins, instead of the 13 I needed for the last one. Goals? Get this ironed onto fabric, cut out, ironed down, maybe even stitched down by Spring Break. Break is really late this year, starts April 5…so I have 6 weeks. Then I need to start drawing the next invitational quilt…can’t talk about that one yet. I guess I will start drawing it when I finish this crazy one. Then I’ll need to decide what big one will occupy me for the next few months. The mammo one won’t take long. No down time. Down time is DOOWWWNNN time. Yeah. Moody. Stupid fucking hormones. Stupid woman existence. Sigh. I don’t really hate being female…but it’s not a whole lot of fun at the moment.

Calli doesn’t seem to mind her existence…

Wish I could sleep with such sweet abandon. Maybe I should have been spayed. Or a dog.

I used my meditation skills today during one class and during tutorial. Really, my brain wanted to strangle a couple of the tutorial/detention kids who were doing their best to annoy the crap out of me. Seriously. They were doing it on purpose. They’ve learned that if they irritate their teacher enough, they will get sent out and they won’t have to work. I didn’t bite. I tortured them and made them do their work. I didn’t really torture them. I just made them stay with my evil eye. Ticket out the door is a completed piece of work. They bought it. Deep breathing though. Then came home and got drama from the girlchild. Cried in the car. Cried at home. Cry cry cry. Solves nothing. Just makes my eyes hurt. Bought nice eye drops for sore eyes. Sad. There should be a formula for Sad Eyes. Crying Eyes. Mostly no…they have allergy eyes and dry eyes and contact eyes, but not Depressoid Eyes and Fucked-Up-Life Eyes. I looked. I really did.

It isn’t really surprising that I cry as much as I do.

I wish I didn’t have to.

Two teachers today were commenting on how skinny I am at the moment, and how I growled about their saying it before. I just looked at them. They said, just say thank you. So I did. Begrudgingly. And in my head, there was the litany of the unhealthy status of my weight loss, about how it’s sickness that caused it, not healthy behaviors. Healthy behaviors are maintaining it (well, as healthy as I can be at the moment, because some of my obsessive exercising and avoiding food are not particularly healthy).

I finally ordered some external hard drives to deal with my storage issues…and then the camera wasn’t working right with the computer. Thought it was the camera, because it’s actually starting to pull apart…the two sides are not fully connected (sigh. yes, I drop it a lot, and now it’s taped together…yes, seriously)…but it turns out I think it’s the fucking hub. Dammit. Could I have more go wrong? Seriously? I just don’t have the patience for all this. I’m hoping the boychild will help me with the hard drives, move the photos maybe and set up the backup on the new ones…then maybe I will have to get a new hub as well…plus I think my computer has a memory issue. I know the boychild’s does, but I would have to buy him a new computer to fix that issue, and that’s not happening…because he’ll need a laptop for college and I can’t afford both.

MONEY. God damn. It’s tight. Deep breaths. Stop panicking. I didn’t want to be this old and still living paycheck to paycheck. I wanted my life to be different, more stable. I don’t think this level of stress is healthy for me. I don’t want to be this stressed, this worried about my future and the kids’ futures. I didn’t want to be constantly worried. But I am. I don’t see an end to that…there’s no magic that fixes the stressed-out part of my life. I just push it over THERE. Meditation helps me numb my response…is that meditation? Or depression? Hard to tell. If I’m numb, it doesn’t matter. Numb isn’t a healthy state, though. It’s supposed to be short-term, enough to get me to the hospital and into triage…enough to get me through hospice and a funeral…and then I’m supposed to feel properly again. Sheesh. Don’t want THAT. Feelings bad. Feelings make me feel bad.

I’ve been listening to the Beatles a lot lately…they are a big portion of my iPod library. This one…

I’m trying to listen to the voices in my head (yes, I sound crazy…the counselor asked me if I have conversations with myself…well, yeah. Doesn’t everyone?). But the part I keep hearing is “take a sad song and make it better.” Trying, Paul. Really. I am. I’m the sad song. I can be better.

The hardest thing to admit is that I’m not better. I want to be. I really do. But I’m not. And maybe I never will be.

Searching for Better Than This…

When my head gets all tied in knots, I have this stash of partially written or barely started posts in draft form on here, and that’s what I put on the blog. It’s like fill-in-the-blank posts, posting-lite, don’t have to think too hard about posting…like the Road to California post…I had all the pictures resized and stuck in the post. I just had to go through and add all the names and links. I can do that without hardly thinking about it…and yet it takes up mental space and time. So I don’t have to deal too much with the goo in my head that wants me to feel bad. Avoidance. Book reviews? Same thing. I have about 8 other posts that are started in draft form, just sitting there, waiting. The Chihuly glass one? Started with photos, but then words took over.

This weekend? Not so much fun. Just keeping my head above water. Trying not to think too hard about feeling bad, about feeling sad. Trying not to remember how I used to feel, because that Kathy does not live here any more. She has moved out. She is never coming back. She can’t get in past the hoard (imagining when they try to get in the front door and all the crap that’s been hoarded is blocking it, and you can only squeeze in).

I went to a movie last night. I used to go to the movies almost every Saturday night. I loved going to the movies. I don’t love it so much by myself. I did it, though, because I felt like I was being punished for being alone, that I didn’t feel like I could do the things I love because of that. I’m becoming a hermit. OK, I was kind of hermit-like before, but I’m getting worse. It’s because it’s honestly too hard to be with people. I often feel more lonely in groups than I do at home alone with my sketchbook and my fabric and a cat or two. It’s sad. I wish it weren’t true. But it is. Right now. And realistically, the movies cost money and money is really tight at the moment.

So I picked a movie I had wanted to see when I first saw the trailers ages ago (there were others, but they weren’t at convenient times), and I drove out there to the theater and I cried through almost the whole movie and all the way home. I saw Her.

It was good…although it had some slow bits and the ending was…eh. Thing is, when I see people with technology now, out to dinner, hanging out in groups, everyone is doing that…talking to themselves, to their OS instead of a human…so it’s creepy, but not that far off of reality. Shades of that book…crap…Wake, by Robert Sawyer, where the WWW becomes conscious and starts talking to a teenage girl…because I know that’s who I would choose to talk to if I were the web (not). Anyway. Here’s why I’m on Goodreads…so I can look shit like that up, books I read before that I can’t remember the name of because my brain is like mush.

I suspect it’s really that so much of my brain is otherwise occupied that stuff like that just slips through.

So that was really successful, guys! I joined a couple of movie-going groups on MeetUp…maybe it will be a better experience. Of course, I can only go like one night a week, and most of their movies are not on that night. Sigh. But it’s better than this. It’s got to be. Something has to be. I keep searching for Better Than This…it’s an island in the Atlantic and there are no boats that go there. I might have to swim.

All the hikes I wanted to go on this weekend were too many hours for a two-day weekend…I had too much I needed to get done, so I got up this morning and hiked Cowles Mountain instead. It’s a quickie, but still is a good workout. San Diego has two mountains that get the shit hiked out of them by every weekend-walker and lame-ass wannabe hiker in the whole town: Cowles and Iron Mountains. The annoying part is the number of people…and the number of people who don’t know trail rules (yes, I’m a hiking elitist, sorry, get the fuck over if you are hiking that slow please)…and the number of dumb bimbos and assholes who are hiking up the side of the mountain, not following the trails, destroying it for future generations. Yes, I yelled at two girls. I apologize. Wait. No I don’t. They were being stupid. Ladies, if there’s a fence, it’s there for a reason. Where are the vicious rattlesnakes when you need them? Avoiding Cowles, for sure. I should carry one in my pack for times like this, just hurl it at the dumbshits who can’t walk on a trail without damaging sensitive habitat. Yes, they went over a fence right next to a sensitive habitat sign. I don’t feel bad about yelling at them.

That said, I did it fast (the hike) and proved I am much more fit than I was 7 months ago, when I would have to stop to rest. I didn’t rest at all, and I ran the downhill, passing two of my former students. HA! That was funny. And their mom. YOUR MOM. Sorry. Middle-school brain took over. I did pass your mom though. She’s looking good. You should be proud of her.

I didn’t do much in the way of art, because I was doing a lot of work-related shit. Which sucks. Always. I did a whole 16 minutes of cutting out Wonder Under…

The thing is, there isn’t much more to do on this one…then I’ll be on to the next step of picking out fabrics. But to what purpose? Hell. I still don’t know. Still don’t feel it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t push it. I knew I’d be done and have to go on to the next step and I wasn’t in the mood. It’s depressing to finish a step right now. I hate that. It used to be fun, sometimes even exhilarating. Now it’s just fucked up.

Then I cleaned photos off my phone. My computer is actually getting full. I have too much music and too many photos. I need to do something about that, like soon. I meant to do it over Xmas and freakin’ ignored it. It’s too much for my brain to handle, like the broken sprinkler lines. I just can’t take it on. I have to though.

The girlchild got reading glasses.

Which is funny, because it was the boychild we thought needed glasses and turns out his vision is almost perfect. She describes her vision as “buzzy.” We said, “vibrating? blurry? fuzzy?” She said, “No, buzzy.” The child has her mother’s way with words. Oh well.

There was this…

Now, it’s one thing to put all those words on the back of your car (to remind you? because it’s not reminding others…driving along, OH SHIT…I’ve blown number 8. Dammit.); it’s another to spell one of them wrong. Sigh.

Jake helping the girlchild make her bed…

I am still learning to take panorama photos on my phone…I inevitably do it wrong three times before I do it right.

That’s Penasquitos last weekend. NOT a panorama.

And here it is again…done almost right this time…

Pretty, huh?

And here was the top of Cowles’ Mountain this morning…

San Diego does have the weather, doesn’t it? OK, summer will suck. I’m a little worried about summer. I won’t be able to hike like this. I don’t do heat well. Maybe I will borrow my ex’s kayak a lot. Maybe I will swim more. I don’t like swimming though.

I finished this book…A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore…

which is a good thing because book club is Wednesday. I liked it. I liked his turn of phrase. I like his weirdo stories. It’s the second of his books that I’ve read. It’s a little wacky, a little out there, but amusing and not dreary. Probably that was a good choice for the weekend, because it was a bit dreary…except for the hiking bit.

I watched this, a Tate Gallery video on nudity in art through the ages…

What’s funny is that to actually link to this video, I had to persuade YouTube that I didn’t need Safety Mode on my videos. They thought it was unsafe…I guess you shouldn’t watch it at work (I thought it was pretty benign myself). I like their shorts…educate the public about art. God knows we aren’t doing it in school any more.

This week? This week is the girlchild’s team finally making it to the CIF playoffs…two games this week guaranteed unless a volcano swallows us up (could happen), a book club meeting, and I think I signed up for two hikes next weekend, just because I think one will get canceled due to rain (she’s a real water wimp, the leader is). I set some goals on the art stuff for this week…I have two drawings I’d like to get done…one is in the sketchbook and one has been copied full size, but needs more. I want to finish the Wonder Under on the Mammogram quilt and start ironing it to fabric. I’d like to get all the wool cut out for Ivy’s quilt too, but I suspect I just shoved more into a busy week than can actually realistically get done. All that is better than thinking about the muck my brain wants to wallow in, though, so hopefully it will keep me distracted. If not, I may be back here again, clearing out photos and writing filler posts that don’t let my brain think too hard about reality. My other goal is to try to go to bed earlier…those super late nights aren’t helping. Maybe just 10 minutes earlier each night until I get back to something in the realm of sanity? Or not. It’s got to be better than this.

Road to California 2014

I know. It’s taken me a while. It’s been a rough month. Too much stuff going on. When I found out my piece was going to be in Road to California, I set up a road trip with Julie and my mom…Julie was really nice and drove us…first stop? The bathroom. The mens’ bathroom, which is kind of underutilized at a big quilt show, so they had made this one into a womens’ bathroom…complete with flowers in the urinals…you know, like you do.

Julie and I set out to try to understand the various categories of the show…I had entered Art, People, since, as it lists, “quilts in this category must illustrate some recognizable aspect of human form.” I think most of my quilts do that, but you have to watch Art, Pictorial, because it might be Naturescape AND People. In the beginning, we weren’t completely jaded about the categories…this is Sandra L. Nehlsen-Cannarella’s My Palette, which actually has a 3-D arm coming off of it to paint the still life.

And is Art, Naturescape. OK. I accept that. I liked the arm too. Even though it’s cut off. It’s one of the winners…this link takes you to information on all the winners.

Then I had to photograph this Sue Spargo piece all in wool…this is the block-of the-month Imperial Blooms, now available in book form, this version sewn by Diana Tatro.

This is when I remembered that I was at a regular quilt show…because this is a pattern and it won an award…and it was even the BOM fabrics, so the maker didn’t even pick those? It was beautifully made, don’t get me wrong. It was under Innovative, Applique. Yes, Sue’s stuff is not traditional applique, but who exactly is being innovative here?

I photographed just one piece of this one, Magic Carpet Ride by Janet Wilson, because I liked the edge treatment…it was different.

By the way, I would love to link for websites on all these quilters, but if I can’t find them, I can’t link them. If yours is on here and I missed your site, please let me know and I will link up to it.

Always a crazy quilt fan, this one was a little too regular for my tastes, but I did like the edge treatment (there’s a theme here)…this is Gypsy Rose by Patty Johnson.

Here’s my mom’s head examining it up close…

Two quilting friends with their pieces hanging side by side, Linda A. Miller’s Linear Moves and Sherry Davis Kleinman’s Geisha.

This struck me because of the triptych and the movement of color…this is Monument Valley at Sunset by Cathy R. Geier.

And these fish were very cool…this is Aqua Meets Marine by Gail Wax.

Lots of beads and scales on the fish.

These three caught my eye because of the metallic fabrics and the tight, very controlled and detailed quiltings…this is Odin’s Trilogy by Linzi A. Upton.

Really, you should go to her website just so you can see her quilted yurt.

I think that was the point at which Julie and I became jaded…for instance, there were lots of little quilt guild or group challenges, which I have taken part in at times in the past, but this one…it’s hard for me to be intensely critical because it’s not meant to be art, and the maker is certainly messing around with materials in a creative way, but I’m not sure whether Road wants to be a local quilt show (like the San Diego Quilt Show, which pretty much shows anything and anyone, except nudity) or whether they want to be an art quilt show. They’re not IQF…they’re more of a Mancuso show. I hadn’t been to Road for a while, and I used to go way back when it wasn’t juried, so it has improved, but I guess that’s it…it doesn’t want to be a big art quilt show. It wants to attract a lot of art quilt wannabes and traditional quilters…so I’m not sure I belong in it, honestly.

This is Bread #2 by Barbara Ulrey Schafer…a reminder of communion time…please note that the plastic tabs form the shape of a cross.

I’m hoping she collected bread bags from friends, because that’s a lot of carbs.

Sheila Frampton-Cooper’s piece on the left, The Ray, The Roses, and the Portal, actually worked quite well with the more traditional piece on the right, Hexahedron by Cecile Choi.

Two things going on here…first of all, Frampton-Cooper’s piece is Modern Piecing, a category that “should utilize improvisational piecing techniques,” and Choi’s is Modern Negative Space, which “should be set with large amounts of negative space.” I think this is where Road went a little bonkers…I’m not entirely sure where the lines have been drawn between art quilts, modern quilts, and innovative quilts, let alone traditional quilts with a modern look, like Amish quilts or even Gees Bend quilts can be. Maybe it doesn’t matter unless you’re crazy like me and Julie and you’re trying to see what is in which category and WHY.

The second issue was the fold marks…see the folding down the center horizon of both the quilts? Word is that those hanging the show had the pieces folded in half on the floor, so if you spent a lot of time ironing all the wrinkles out, it was to no avail.

This is Valley Snapshots by Timna Tarr, Modern Piecing. Why is it not innovative? Not sure. Don’t know what the difference is.

It’s pretty, but…I don’t know what makes it modern.

This one is more modern to me…I actually really liked this, until I saw the orange…the orange was too much of a gimmick. This is Didn’t Get the Memo by Alissa Haight Carlton. I like that the triangles are more regular in some spots than others. This is Modern Piecing.

This one is Bias II, also by Carlton…this also has a more modern feel to me…this is Modern Negative Space. Sigh.

There’s some awfully arbitrary designating going on here. Because the one below? It’s Resonance by Heather Pregger, Art Abstract.

Don’t get me wrong; I like most of these quilts. I don’t like the categories. I guess if we just look at them as ways to give out more awards and more money, and maybe that gets more entries into the show, then maybe that’s a good thing, but I think it’s unnecessary categories that don’t really make sense. I can see trying to figure out what category to put an abstract piece into based on where you thought there would be fewer entries, so you’d be more likely to win money.

And here, to confuse the issue even more, is 369 Gees Bend Road by Rachel Keller, Innovative Pieced. It could have been Art Abstract. Someone might argue it into Modern Piecing. Who knows?

I put this in here so you could see the BACK of Alsea Highlands Falcon by Karen L. Donobedian.

Here’s the front, but I really liked the back.

I put this one in here for two reasons: cool thread-painted raccoons and funky quilt shape. This is The Birds’ Perspective: Life at the Water’s Edge by Ann Horton.

This one was quite beautiful…at this point, Julie and I would walk up to a quilt and try to guess what category it was in before looking at the signage. This is Basket Weave II: SeeSaw by Ann B. Feitelson. This is Innovative Pieced, based on a traditional quilt pattern.

This…well, you had to put this one in…although the fuss about quilted toilet paper is now years old…this is The Real Quilted Northern, and strangely, it’s in the Miniature category, where it so does NOT belong. This is by Jerry Kay.

This was a beautiful painted bird, with lovely quilting lines for the show and the trees in the background. This is Winter’s Veil by Patt Blair.

This one is strange…I’m not against strange. Y’all know that. But this was strange. This is In the Beginning by Robert Hix. Aah. Makes more sense, hate to say…but here’s some freaky on this. I would totally put this in the Art Abstract section, but it’s in Modern Negative Space (say WHAT?). And then the statement…the statement says, “Sometimes simple designs are encouraged by a lack of decorations. Simple visual effects can be rendered quite tedious by actual techniques.”

Huh? OK. I’ve written some oblique statements in my time, but…I really want to know what this thing is about, and all I know now is that it’s tedious. And it reminds me of my new leach field.

This quilt, you couldn’t get far enough away to photograph the whole thing…it was hanging in an aisle space and 400 people were crowded around it…it was a prize winner though, so you can see the whole thing on that site above, but I really loved the quilting. Amazing. Not sure I care for the rest of it…it’s OK…but the quilting was amazing. This is Time to Catch a Dream (sigh…here’s where I give a big collective sigh to the need for quilt artists to have puns or crafty word use in their quilt titles) by Claudia Pfeil, Innovative Mixed.

Here’s part of it…like I said, you couldn’t get a whole picture of it. But Innovative Mixed? OK. Innovative is supposed to “implement fundamental deviation from traditional patterns and settings and should reflect growth through tradition.” Sigh. OK, if I stretch that definition, I can see innovative parts of traditional blocks and piecing throughout. I would still put it in Art Pictorial though…or something in the Art categories…although she won a big prize, so maybe I’m all wet?

Naw, she was fine…Best Embellished Surface…she could have won that from any category.

So here is my crappy picture of where my weirdo art quilt ended up in all of this…and I never got a better picture of the stuff around it. I think I was so confused and irritated by all the categories by then that I didn’t really care.

II was surrounded by Marvin and Ruffie (the dog) on the left and a dragon on the right. Where else do you put the only uterus in the show?

This octopus was great, but I do not like the background…it’s way too busy and detracts from the creature. This is Mischief Maker by Sue A. Wilson.

This is actually an old redwork quilt of signatures, part of the Lest I Shall Be Forgotten exhibit.

Here was a crazy quilt on a strange hanger in the same section…it would have been nice to be able to see it better…

OK, here’s a modern quilt, surely. Hell yes, this is Pods by Heather Grant, part of the QuiltCon exhibit…a modern quilt special exhibit separate from the modern quilt categories in the show itself. Grant is one of the founding members of the Austin Modern Quilt Guild, so she is sure she’s making modern quilts (and I agree with her).

This quilt was cool…Sushi III by Mary Kay Price…Innovative Mixed, in case you were wondering.

These two little sorta creepy dolls were by Nola Hart. I’m not usually a doll fan, but these were just creepy enough.

My camera had a hard time with this quilt because of the bright colors…but I loved the birds. This is Bad Hair Day by Martha Nordstrand, one of the Road Faculty. The birds are based on molas.

Here is David Taylor’s Maynard…nice use of negative space (but not modern), and you can’t turn away from a dog butt quilt.

So the quilt show wasn’t just in the convention center…some of the vendors were out in the parking lot under these big tents, but the trees of the parking lot were in there too.

And some of them were a little worse for the wear (the sides of the ceiling sloped down near the edges and the trees no longer fit.

So. What did I think? I bought nothing. The vendors were a lot of the same stuff, geared more towards traditional quilters. I didn’t buy much at Houston either, though, so you shouldn’t hold that up as a pro or con. I thought the show itself really crowded the pieces in, I didn’t like the categories at all…I thought they were confusing and fussy and made very little sense. It was more a popular quilt show than an art quilt show. I’m not sure I’d enter again…is it really worth all that shipping and time and effort for only three days of exposure? If it were IQF Houston, I’d say yes (a lot more people and a higher level of art, I think), but I don’t think my stuff really belongs there. Will I travel up there to see the show again? Maybe. I’m not highly compelled though. It was worth the drive because I got to hang with Julie and mom and we saw quilts, but I don’t know that I would be that motivated to do it again any time soon. Your mileage may vary…I’m obviously kind of a fussy art quilter.

My Still Quiet Calm Is a Rabid German Shepherd

A student today was asking me how I dealt with the really annoying obnoxious students. She said to me, “Ms. Nida, I know you always say it’s not worth the energy to hate them, but how do you NOT?” It’s true. I do say that. I think you would have to do something truly heinous for me to hate you, like kill one of my kids maybe. Even then, I’d probably be analyzing your childhood and wondering about the chemical imbalances in your brain that would make you think it was OK to do that. Then the students wanted to know how I stayed so calm, so patient…and I told them I meditated. For some reason, that amused some of them, amazed a few others, and then a couple just nodded their heads, like, Yeah. She meditates. Makes sense.

It was an extremely difficult day. My patience was worn incredibly thin. I need to find my way again. I think I can, maybe even tomorrow. I know I was making parent phone calls from my daughter’s soccer game today. I don’t know if it will help. I do know I don’t hate a kid who is acting out. They have reasons…not excuses, but certainly reasons, whether they know about them or not. It’s better that they get it out of their system and learn how to cope with it in 7th grade, rather than waiting until they’re in their 40s and inflicting that on the world then.

So I meditated tonight and I am still dropping the black oily blob of my depression into what he calls the stillness and clarity of the light within me. The light is supposed to melt or dissolve the question or the problem. I’m visualizing the light like melted butter, trying to melt down this black goo, and sometimes I can make it work, but tonight…tonight it’s not still or calm, there’s no quiet confidence, as he projects…there is nothing but a savage dog (the color and smell of melted butter) grabbing that bitter-tasting black ooze and piercing the outer coating with its sharp canines, throwing its head side to side in a frantic attempt to bleed the depression blob of all its power and lifeforce. It’s growling menacingly the entire time, planting its front paws firmly on my heart and shaking hard again, trying to dislodge the black tar from my parts…it keeps sticking to my organs, trying to grab on, take hold, grow like a parasite.

My still quiet calm is a rabid German Shepherd.

Tonight? Tonight I’m OK with that. Sometimes the visualization does what it needs to do, and apparently tonight it needs to beat the crap out of something.

I was supposed to have quilt class, but the teacher wasn’t feeling well. I was hoping to get a lot of Wonder Under cut out, but in the end, I graded a bunch of stuff just to get it out of my hair, and then I cut stuff out for a short time…

I wanted to draw too, but decided it was more important to try to get to bed at a semi-reasonable hour (which I didn’t do).

I stitched at the girlchild’s soccer game…

These are Month 4 of last year. Her team probably made it into CIF, so there will be at least one more game next week. Honestly, I’m looking forward to a break after that. She will go back to club, but will not play for three months due to the back surgery. I think there’s one possible tournament in there before the surgery. Unfortunately, she says she wants to travel to the other tournaments anyway…someone needs to tell her that driving to Arizona the week after back surgery is not happening. Both her dad and I have tried, but she’s not listening. Reality will kick in eventually.

Besides, I can’t afford the hotel and gas at the moment.

My leach field is done, but I got home in the dark, so I haven’t seen the final product yet…tomorrow morning. So that was the cost of a new car. Bad timing.

Her game today was on a blue turf field…

With their orange uniforms, it was very pretty…

She did get to play a little…it was a fairly tense game, but they won.

Sometimes they do know how to pull it together.

Sometimes I do too. Although it doesn’t feel that way lately. I have to say that the hormonal crap that goes along with perimenopause makes it really difficult to fight sadness and depression. You’ve got these hormonal swings that are too frequent to modulate well…and they are often extreme and unexpected. If you’re already feeling low, it just fucks with you in a major way. I can be real intellectual about it here, now, but knowing what’s happening doesn’t always stop it from happening. You just understand what it is. You can’t stop it. I do everything I’m supposed to do (except get plenty of sleep). Maybe it helps in the long run, but in the short term? Not so much.

I am not looking forward to anything in the next three days except sleep. And that is not a sure thing. I’m going to try to change that mood…art is in the works, as is exercise of some sort…and catching up on grading, which is not very nice or exciting, but has to be done…and since I know I have two hiking weekends coming up right before grades are due, I should try to be focused on it this weekend. I may take the boychild out for a hike. I may sit in a hole with my depression and observe it (aka draw). I may discover a cure for cancer. All these things might happen.

Dissolving Problems

Apparently Mr. Meditation is stalking me and listening in on my conversations. We are supposed to be visualizing being filled with light and then dropping a problem or question into that light and watching it dissolve. Last week, getting the light to fill me up was difficult; I seem to have managed it for this week, and then I drop this problem of depression into the light…it’s like an oil slick, black and globular, dense, spreading, trying to take over the light. Sometimes it succeeds and I have to start over, sweeping the black away and trying to refill the body with light and trying again to dissolve its greasy self into the golden light. Sometimes I manage to break it up into smaller and smaller black blobs, but they never go away; they just float around like errant black tadpoles. I guess that’s all a very realistic interpretation of how I am dealing with the depression…I try to break it up, destroy it, and it either grows and grows and takes over everything else, or it breaks up into smaller bits that still color my daily existence. There’s no escaping it.

So Mr. Meditation tonight is talking about how we deal with difficult things in life, and he says that people generally try to move quickly past challenges in life, to get through them as easily as possible, that we like security in our lives, we like things to be definite. He suggests instead that we sit with difficulties. Allow them to dissolve. Watch them dissolve, even if it’s slow and tedious and sometimes unsuccessful. He says we need difficult situations in life to practice, little challenges to be embraced instead of running away, so that we will be able to deal with whatever life throws at us. Ironic that. I’ve had enough of those. I need those around me to deal with their difficulties so they don’t make MY life more difficult. Dude. I think I’ve had enough difficult. Cut me a break for a while, eh? Bring on the security, maybe some peace, some joy, and don’t tell me I just have to make my own joy. If it were as simple as buying the ingredients and mixing them together correctly, don’t you think I would have done that already? Yes. I drew again tonight. I didn’t have much time in the end…

Grading sucked up some time and there was another soccer game, plus exercise (in the end, I did not make it to the gym). I worked on one piece of it, the drawing. Not much. Girlchild got to play some soccer tonight…

It’s been a rough season for her. She’s freaking out about the back surgery, understandably, getting cold feet. It’s hard to be the mom right now, to be the always-responsible one. There’s a lot of grabbing and pushing going on here, with no ball in sight.

They won. This picture looks like the Hokey Pokey (put your left foot in, put your left foot out…)

What can I say. It’s late. I’m not sleeping well. I was cranky today. One kid asked me if I’d taken my pill today. WTF? Sometimes teaching middle school is really difficult, challenging, in your face. I did do a color chromatography lab today, and the coolest part is when the ink (which I have them make in class) starts to move and spread the colors up the filter paper…they actually OOOH and AAAAH. It’s very cool. That’s when I know I’ve got them. Now if only I could persuade them to do their homework. I have been stitching anywhere that I sit down for any period of time…last night at the quilt meeting I got all of this done except for about an inch of the wing before they turned the lights out for the presentation…

Damn! But I finished it at the girlchild’s game, so that’s all of Month 3 from 2013 completed…

And I started Month 4. Yes. I’m behind. Welcome to my world.

And Sunday night, I started cutting out Wonder Under for the Mammogram quilt. I didn’t get very far…

This is going to be a troublesome piece. There aren’t very many pieces, but many of them are bigger than I usually do, so they will need big honking pieces of fabric…and since I usually only buy 1/2 yards, that might be a problem. I do have lots of flesh fabrics though, so maybe I’ll just go all out crazy on this one and pick really wild fabrics for the body, like 30 of them. Maybe. Or not. I have a while to decide…I have quilt class on Thursday, hopefully, and will be cutting these out and the wool pieces for Ivy’s memorial quilt. But if I keep drawing every night, then that will slow me down. The drawing really does help me process some of the ugly tarry crap in my head…anger and stress and sadness and those repulsive black thoughts that try to take over your brain in the middle of the night (during which I am always apparently awake, even though I told myself I needed to go to sleep early tonight…early wakeup tomorrow for girlchild)…if I can just draw them out, literally, on paper with black ink…then maybe they will haunt me less. Maybe I will be able to keep some of them from slipping back in to the unconscious and continuing to fuck with my barely stable equilibrium. It’s hard to say.

I’ve been reading The Dresden Files by by Jim Butcher…I have a 3-book volume of Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril, and I’ve made it through the first two…

They’re pretty good…formulaic, but interesting light reads in the urban fantasy realm. Apparently I have 12 books to go. The proof that they’re light fiction is that the publisher pushed a bunch of them into omnibuses instead of letting each book stand tall on its own. I don’t know if I’ll get through all of them. What’s interesting is that I ordered the 3-book omnibus from the library back in June or July, and it only showed up in the last few weeks. Now that I know that the word omnibus does not mean a really big bus, I’m going to use it all the time. So I guess this is either the only of these omnibuses in the system, or it’s really popular. It’s similar to the Iron Druid series, in that the male protagonist is sort of obsessed with breasts and how women dress, and there’s lots of weird magic and creatures and potions and getting your shit together and ending up naked on the side of a road with big purple bruises a lot. Seriously. But like I said, a light read. I’m sure I’ll move on to serious fiction soon.

Actually, I need to read the book club selection by next Wednesday, and it’s still not here from the library. I might have to suck it up and buy it…which would mean finding the money for that. Sad but true, a single book purchase is an issue.

My SIL, whom I love very much, sent me a V-day card with the F word in it (actually, it was just the letter F as a stand-in for the F word, which I type here all the time) and gift cards to go buy a little black dress. Hmn. Where does she think I will wear such a thing? On the hiking path? It’s sweet. I might actually buy something useful with it. It could happen.

The girlchild was doing a project today on Magnum Opus, and she was thinking of art and painters, and suggested a shirt like a Jackson Pollack painting. Mom to the rescue. I actually OWN a dress that I painted about 10 years ago to resemble a Pollack painting…I went to Halloween post-divorce as a JP painting. Yup. I did. There is no other household IN THE WORLD where that same conversation happened. She said, “what about a shirt like Pollack?” and I said, “come here, my pretty…it’s been done.” And what did she do? Did she take it with her to wear to school, as her mother would have? No. She did not. She said it was shapeless. Sigh. I was impressed. So were my son and ex. Girlchild? Not impressed. Oh well. I tried.

The Place You Go…

I’m sitting here (Sunday night) waiting for the laundry to finish so I can put the girlchild’s soccer stuff in the dryer for tomorrow morning. I’m actually kind of wide awake…must have been that 26-minute nap I took this afternoon when I realized I couldn’t keep my eyes open. That’s the problem with hike days…they do kick my ass and I get very little else done, which is why I can’t do them every weekend. I can’t lose a day every weekend.

This is a 3-day weekend, though, so I still have tomorrow (Monday, yes I started this on Sunday night) to play catch up. I had a rough day yesterday. I actually cried on the hike…usually I don’t, but strangely, being in a group that large was isolating for someone like me. I’m not an extrovert at all. I need space, both mental and physical. I felt like some alien creature. It was so loud and raucous and overwhelming…I had to strike out on my own and physically super-challenge my body so my mind wouldn’t freak out. I have an event coming up with a lot more people than that…and I’m worried about my ability to deal. It’s strange…I spend all day with tons of people, but I don’t feel so out of place with my students…they are safe. I can handle interactions with them. Interactions with large groups of strangers? Fuck that. I’d rather stay home. I will be that crazy cat lady who never leaves the house if I’m not careful. The hike was redeemed slightly by the last 30 minutes spent talking to one other person. I can handle interactions like that, but you have to have something in common or at least something you can talk about.

It was a relief to come home after the hike and space out for hours, grade some papers, hang with my kids, cut out some Wonder Under. I appreciate the physical exertion and being out in nature, but hanging out in groups isn’t making me happy. Then again, nothing much is making me happy.

So in the middle of this post, the rant came through and became its own post, and then I went to the gym to try to leave some of my irritation and anger there instead of carrying it around. I’m debating calling the doctor (hemorrhage!), I need to find eye doctor paperwork for the kids, I haven’t prepped for tomorrow, I need to go to school to check for lab supplies, but I can’t get out of my driveway, because they are in fact digging holes in my front yard so my toilets might work properly someday. I’m wondering if I will ever stop grinding my teeth, if my eyelid will ever stop twitching, if I will ever sleep properly again.

The part I was having issues with was people making assumptions about other people based on how they behave or look or are labeled. I’m constantly amazed by how different people are than what they project…my leach-field guy looks like a redneck, talks like a redneck, and then starts talking to me about the Lord of the Rings trilogy and how many times he’s read it and whether Smaug is the coolest dragon around or what. The guy is 64 and you’d never think to look at him that he could have slogged through that series (god knows I haven’t been able to after multiple tries). You cannot make assumptions about people. You have to talk to them and listen to them and turn on the part of your brain that pays attention to someone besides your arrogant self, and only then can you make any decisions about people, and you still have to leave open the possibility that you are completely wrong. Maybe I know that from teaching middle school for so many years. Maybe I’m just that kind of tolerant person. I don’t know. I just know that it’s not OK to hurt other people. And sometimes people think your emotions are hurting them, but it is really their response to your emotions that’s the issue. I had the girlchild full on screaming at me this morning and I realized that she was having the same issue…her emotional reaction to what I had said was hers and hers alone. I was not the cause of the screaming. She was. Granted she’s a teenager and doesn’t modulate her responses well…she’s not Asperger’s, but teens often have this idea that they are the only people on the planet (shocking!) and it can manifest in similar ways. “My way is the only way.” Boychild and I often have discussions about her inability to realize there are other people in the world who might not have the same priorities as she does. In this case, I let her stomp off and slam a door, and then she came back and it was eventually all OK. I wonder what it will be like when they are both gone and I no longer have to tiptoe around those kinds of emotional outbursts. I wonder if her roommates will survive! I wonder if having the girlchild as his sister has helped the boychild navigate emotions any better…god knows they are full on in his face on a regular basis. His sister screams. His mom cries.

Wondering about my own sanity. Wondering after reading someone else’s blog if there is actually always a way out of depression, or if it just becomes something you live with for the rest of your life. After this weekend, I don’t see a way out, I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, I don’t feel like it will ever change. It does not help that my hormones are going ballistic. I could really live without that additional mess in my head…hence the thought to call the doctor…more because of the physical symptoms than the mental…the physical symptoms set off all the alarms on the stupid online symptom checkers. But I already know what they will say, what they will want to do. They’ll use the words ‘abnormal’ and ‘dysfunctional’…ironic because those can apply to my physical symptoms and my mental symptoms. OK, not fully dysfunctional, because I do manage to function fairly normally…I’m just patently aware of how nonfunctional my functioning is.

Anyway. I find the solution to all this angst, short-term as it might be, is that silly thing called art. My brain wandered about a bit, trying to figure out what it felt like doing, until that urge to draw came a banging at the brain door…so I pulled this one out from before, in December sometime (was it really that long ago?)…

I had copied it and taped it to another page, so I found that and started drawing downwards…

Shades of the Celebrating Silver quilt…I still need to put yet another page on the bottom…

because she needs more room. She wants the rest of her body. She told me. She demanded it. I listened. And I need to figure out what else is happening here…maybe more of those crazy birds. Who knows. Draw, Kathy. It gives you some peace. Draw the assholes out. Draw the arrogant jerks out. Draw the emotional reactions and put them on paper. Make someone see what’s in your head. Make someone feel what’s in your head. Make.

I made it to my quilt guild tonight, for the first time in 12 months, I think. Mary Pal was speaking and she and I had seen each other Saturday night at the Coast to Coast opening. I think we might be sisters from another mother…we are in the same shows, feeling some of the same artistic angst. I hope for her sake that she is not feeling the rest of my angst. It was nice to hear her talk, to feel her deep hug again, to feel a connection to a fellow artist who plumbs the depths of her artistic self to make work in the middle of the night, by the skin of her teeth, in the early morning light. To feel a connection that deep to someone you barely know…simply because of the place you go when you work.

Art can be amazing that way.

Crazy Mess

You know what’s a hard word to spell? Hemorrhage. Really. It took me like 4 tries and then I finally looked it up, and then I had to look at it twice and finally say it in my head as Hem-Or-Hayje to be able to spell it right. I’m usually a really good speller…I mean, yes, I make words up and sometimes I spell stuff wrong on purpose, and as a former editor, sometimes the left side of my brain almost has a conniption fit (did not have to look THAT word up) when I purposely fuck with grammar…but I figure this isn’t formal writing…it’s a journal, but even fiction has its way with words, messes with the structure of language, because how we talk, think, is different than how the rules of language try to control how we talk, think.

Why talk of hemorrhage? Sigh. Perimenopause. So tired of it. Girlchild says to stop googling stuff…but that’s how I learned to spell hemorrhage! I’ve got another drawing in the head…and it ain’t pretty…which reminds me of a conversation I had tonight with another quilt artist who said that she likes my work, but there’s always something in it that disturbs her (in the case of the piece she was looking at, it was the snake…and there are often snakes in my work. Snakes bad. Christmas lights good.). I had a bunch of people ask me tonight about particular symbols, about what they meant. Hell. I draw. Sometimes I draw something that has a particular meaning. Sometimes I don’t remember that particular meaning 4 years later. Sometimes I just have a feeling, a sense of bad or good or evil or pain or whatever. But why are the lungs red and green? I don’t know. Contrast? I don’t necessarily think of colors in the same way…well with some I do…I don’t know.

Anyway. The experience of being a woman of a certain age is not pleasant in many ways…and I have an 11-mile hike tomorrow, so this could be an issue. Certainly feeling like you’re bleeding to death is an issue. Knowing that you’re already anemic, despite taking iron…sigh. Whenever I get frustrated with this stage of my life, and I think about how intolerant some people are (men) of this stage…like I CHOSE this? Are you kidding me? Not only did I not choose to be female (although I’m OK with it, honestly), I would have no problems with some sort of switch you could flip once you were done with the babymaking so that this would stop, but I also know that the menstrual cycle and the hormones that come with it do help with a variety of other biological functions…bone density, longevity, even digestion and sleep, but hell…I didn’t choose to bleed every 23 days, or every other week, or whatever my hormones seem to think might make sense. So unintelligent designer aside, it would be nice if there was more empathy and understanding for women who are going through this. It isn’t fun for us either. Try being a teacher and being unable to use a bathroom for 4 hours. Think on this…all of us of a certain age have spare clothing, like sweatshirts we can wrap around our waists just in case.I just packed a whole container for tomorrow’s hike of what I might need to get through it…because we are a society that doesn’t appreciate an aging woman and her needs…that decides that’s the best time to start ignoring women. They are no longer of childbearing age. They are no longer useful. They are just troublesome.

This is a lot of what my Celebrating Silver quilt is about…but there will probably be more drawings about all this fun stuff as the biology in me continues to change. Our bodies take us hostage. Or maybe we’ve always been hostage to the period, to the possibility of pregnancy. Maybe menopause will be a relief. The getting there may kill me.

So yeah, there was an opening tonight and I went and I talked to a lot of people and in general that was good…sometimes even funny…or supportive…and even inspiring. I mean, I cried all the way there (this Saturday night thing still fucks with my head…I am much better if I just stay home and be Kathy the Hermit), but on the way home, I was inspired to work on the current quilt…

I traced Wonder Under for a few hours and got through all 364 pieces (small, by my standards)…

It took almost 5 hours. Now I can cut them all out.

I had another conversation with a quilt artist who has been in some of the same invitational shows as me who is going through the same sort of brain issues I am…we spent so much mental energy getting Earth Stories and Celebrating Silver done (and in her case, one other…I guess I did one other, but it ended up not being in the show it was originally meant for), that it’s been hard focusing enough to get back into creating. It’s a push. We had to laugh when we realized we are both in the next invitational as well…and another quilt artist told me someone had told her I was going through some hard times, that they had read it on my blog. Sometimes I forget there are actual people reading this who might talk to me. I notionally understand that I have readers, but I’m really only talking to myself, talking it out, processing, trying to motivate myself to do better, get better. Stay focused. Make art. It’s weird when someone admits that they’ve read it…I have to wonder what they’re thinking. Wait, dammit, they know EVERYTHING (OK, not everything…believe it or not, I don’t write everything). What do I say now? Fuck.

I was surprised to see my quilt on the wall at the exhibit. It was bigger than I remembered it. Hanging on a big white wall…it had a presence I didn’t remember giving to it. I mean, I made it. I drew it. I put it together, sewed it, quilted it. I actually don’t remember much of the latter stages…happened this last summer. It was a filler quilt, filling up all the empty space in me, trying to keep my brain occupied so it didn’t jump over the edge, never to return. Watch the squiggly line, the thread running in and out of the fabric. Keep it occupied…keep it tied to reality, best you can. Quilting, for me, is good for that. My art is good for that. The one artist said that it had been like that for her, and then it stopped working.

I couldn’t handle that. I mean, maybe in the future, when I am stronger, when I am less broken…but I hope it never happens. This is my lifeline. This is all I’ve got. This is it. It can’t stop working.

We also talked about taking pictures from cars…

I do it all the time; so does she. People tell us we’re being unsafe, but we’re not. I drive with one hand, point the camera with the other, often on the steering wheel. It seems crazy, I guess…but it works. I wanted a picture of the rising moon in the clouds. I knew it would be gone by the time I got home, and it was. Not a great picture of the moon in the end, but maybe a good picture of the night…and my brain…that’s kinda what it looks like a lot lately. Squiggly lines. Crazy mess.

I’m taking the crazy mess to bed now…up early for hiking.

Make the Head Fit…

I drew…

Feb 14 14 004 small

It’s not done. I don’t know where it’s going. I had to make the head fit. That was fun. Or weird. Or something. I drew for like an hour or so…like right when I came home…well, after I talked to my philosophical drainage guy, the guy who is charging me more than my car is worth to redo my leach field and quotes Khalil Gibran while I’m signing papers. Exciting stuff. He gave me marital advice. Whoops! Too late. I don’t think that’s on the menu any more.

I drew because my head was in a bad place…had been for a couple of days. Hormones are out of whack…I mean, they’re really out of whack. Love being a woman of this age, perimenopause hitting me upside the head. Body doesn’t know what it’s doing. Fucks with the mind while it’s at it…and the moods. It’s annoying. No way to control it if you can’t take estrogen. You just have to ride it through.

So I drew and made dinner, and then I traced Wonder Under for over an hour…

Because I could. I mean, I could also grade, but there’s only so much suckiness a day can hold before it can hold no more. And I had reached my limit. The problem is that I don’t have moments of joy at the moment…I just have more or less of the suck. So I have to do things to make it more on the high side of the sucky wave instead of the low side. Artmaking. It’s what’s for dinner. I traced through about piece 240…so about 100 pieces to go. I need more Wonder Under (errands…hate errands). I need to stop being sick, even though it’s really low-level sickness…it’s messing with my head.

I put feet on them…

The two on the left are almost done…they need outlining around the eyeballs. Not sure what the one on the right needs. A life? Oh no…that’s me.

I don’t really know what it means…

But you should watch it anyway.

Yeah, it’s long, but you know what? Most of the good stuff is longer rather than shorter.

Art opening at VAM tomorrow…I will be there. Hopefully I’ll be well enough to hike on Sunday. I’m sure there’s other things I have to do. I’m trying not to think of them.

That Distant Feeling…

There are many questions and issues running through my head, and yet it is completely empty. It’s like a river running over there and I’m standing over here on the rocks, where it is dry and dead to the touch. I’ve pushed it all off over there, the water rushing past and tumbling over stones and making loud noises…but it’s all over there. I think that’s the meditation…watching from over here. Not judging it, not trying to fix it, just watching it. It’s one of the benefits of meditation, but I’m not sure it ever solves anything. Mr. Meditation talks about not judging how you feel, not wanting to change how the mind or the body feels, but just accepting it, being with that feeling.

Yeah, but that sucks, Mr. Meditation. I mean, I feel like I’ve been with this feeling for an awfully long time now, and I watch it, and it’s still the annoying asshole who doesn’t put the dishes in the dishwasher, who leaves trash out on the counter (hey, I’m describing my teenagers…my depressed mind is just like a teenager). When will it move out? When will it wander off and harass some other poor soul?

You don’t have an answer for me, do you?

Anyway. So I read and I meditate and I exercise, and today I can get the point of light to expand to my whole body by tricking my mind into not thinking about it, not forcing it. Somehow it works…for about 5 seconds and then the dark sucks back in.

When I left for school this morning, Midnight was sitting on the light table, right on top of the drawing I’m tracing, staring at me.

I’ll guard this for you. OK? When you come back, it will still be here (with my black hair all over it).

You can’t disappoint a cat like that. So I started tracing Wonder Under around 10:30 PM…

For a little over an hour. I’m up to piece 135 or so. There are only 300 and something pieces in this quilt. It’s not small, but the pieces are big and fairly simplistic. It’s not a bad piece to work on after all the monster hours of the Celebrating Silver quilt…none of the steps will take super long because there are fewer pieces. That’s probably a good thing. I will eventually have to plan my summer quilt…I’m still debating on that…internally. I have one that needs to be done by November, but it’s not super big. I like to do a big quilt over the summer. I might be able to do both…I haven’t figured that out yet.

I’m still sick, but not bad. It’s really far, over there…hey, like the issues and crap of the river. Maybe meditation pushes EVERYTHING over there. Bet that missing sock is over there too.

The problem with this state of mind is that I don’t like that distant feeling…it feels like I’m not in touch with anything, it’s all shaky and unreal. There’s nothing to ground me, to hold me to the earth. There’s nothing to hold onto. I’m a helium balloon floating away. The sky is endless. Not even the clouds will stop me. It’s like I don’t even exist.

So I keep making art. Maybe it will hold me to the ground long enough for my brain to come back. Maybe it will prove that I exist.

A Plethora of Shows

I keep forgetting to post about all the shows I’m in that have just opened or are about to open…I’m too busy writing blogposts for that group to post them on my own page (sad but true). In January, the California Fibers exhibit at Soka University in Aliso Viejo, California, opened. I have two pieces in that show, Earth Mother…

And Untied…

The exhibit runs through May 8. It’s only open Monday through Friday from 9-5. I haven’t even seen this exhibit, except in photos…it does have 66 pieces in it, so it’s a fairly large exhibit.

Then just opened this last weekend is the California Fibers show in Ojai, California, at the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts, a much smaller space. The juror for Soka liked our work so much that he invited us to put a second exhibit on in a space he works for at the same time. Here is in Ojai at the moment.

NidaHere

The Ojai exhibit runs through March 30 and will include an artists’ panel on the closing day. I don’t think I’ll be at that…it’s a long drive and girlchild’s back surgery is only about a week before that. I can’t really commit to anything right now.

Then opening this Saturday at the Visions Art Museum is Coast to Coast, a joint juried exhibit between California Fibers and a group back east, New Image Artists…my quilt Buried Under is in this exhibit…

I will be at this opening, Saturday from 5-7 PM. This exhibit runs through April 19.

Then I also have two quilts at the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, Texas, as part of the People and Portraits exhibit. Both I Was Not Wearing a Life Jacket…

and Fully Medicated will be there through March 30.

I haven’t seen photos of this exhibit in situ yet…and I’m unlikely to make it to Texas in the next 6 weeks unfortunately…so will have to imagine what it looks like in a museum setting.

Anyway, if I seem a little off my head sometimes, more than usual, it might be because I’m trying to manage a lot of shipping of quilts and posting about shows for my groups, since I seemed to end up on publicity for both. It’s been a bit much the last month or so. But being in exhibits is a good thing, so you deal with the other stuff by telling yourself that. Some people say, well isn’t that why you make the art? So you can get it into exhibits? Actually, no. I make it because I have to…because I’d go truly crazy otherwise. The exhibits are just the thing you’re supposed to do when you’re an artist. Plus sometimes it actually makes me feel good to know my work’s out there.

So there we are.