Forced Smile

I talked to three people yesterday. One of them was the guy who held the door open at the gym for me. I said thank you. The other two were a student and his mom, who met me at school, because he apparently hadn’t turned his journal in and I had missed it (I really thought I had caught everyone, but he’s a sneaky guy). Well, until the girlchild came home from Disneyland at 11 PM, but she was really cranky and didn’t want to talk much, just complain about whether I had the lights on or not (I do need light in order to walk down the hallway without killing myself, especially since she keeps leaving things IN the hallway for me to kill myself on). And I talked to the dog and three cats. Pretty exciting.

I graded my butt off until around noon. Then went to the gym and then to school to pick up the journal from that kid. Finished grades around 5:30 PM and started cleaning out this one section of my office that has been getting worse and worse. Basically, it was a pile of random shit that had fallen over and then been piled on again, and cats had knocked stuff over and spiders were living in there. Yes, I probably should have taken photos, but I decided to just get in there and clean it. That was good. Now I have 17 other sections of the house that need the same level of attention. It took about an hour to deal with this one section, about 2 feet square.

Giant ass sigh.

It’s a move in the right direction. Then, after procrastinating all day (yes, I clean to procrastinate), I finally started quilting again.

Tiny little squiggles. Sigh. Lots of them. My left elbow is bugging me again. I stopped lifting weights because I thought that was the problem, and it may be part of the problem, but it’s certainly not the whole problem. Tendonitis, yes, and I have a doctor’s appointment right before Thanksgiving, so I’ll bug her for more physical therapy appointments, because I used up my allotted amount for the year on my knee. My question is does the number of PT appointments per year go up as you age? Because maybe it should.

I got a couple of hours in. Not as much as I wanted, but then I thought I was further along in the grading and would have more of the day. I do have most of today.

I need to buy more thread though (did that). This is the back. And I need to get the binding fabric. And my car is having an issue that might be nothing and might be an alternator or battery. I’m trying to decide whether to be proactive and take it in or just ignore it until it’s a real issue. Really mature way to deal with life, eh?

Ugh. This week. I’m not allowed to say or think that it will suck until I have experienced it (thank you, counselor), but ugh. One day at a time. Except I can’t do that, because I have to plan. So I’m trying to plan without thinking about how the days will actually go. Difficult to do. Especially when you experience a sinking feeling just by typing out the instructions for your guest teacher. Dammit. I hate being out this much, but I don’t have a choice.

I really was writing my book on the stationary bike and the elliptical yesterday at the gym. I wrote a whopping 2800 words yesterday. I didn’t mean to; it just happened. I’m over 19,000 words at this point, and totally keeping up with the plan to finish on time.

Girlchild petting Babygirl, who was very demanding yesterday.

Oh dear. Am I the only one wondering why the parents don’t just grab their baby in their beak and fly them down from the nest? Don’t panic…there is a happy ending (I got very worried at one point)…

Barnacle goose freefall

Yup. Need to go quilt. Fighting a really down mood. Tell it to shut up. At some point, depression just gets old. Don’t think about the crap that makes you depressed. Look at clean area of floor that was not clean yesterday. Smile. Then quilt. Forced smile. Yeah, sometimes when I smile and don’t really mean it, it scares people.

The Pattern of My Days

This? This is the dryer full of fabrics from my trip to Houston.

The trip I haven’t written about yet because I’m so buried in quilting and grading and trying to get through the days that I can’t go through the 7,000 photos I took and try to decide how to make sense of them (there’s really only about 200 photos, and since I take pictures of the signs too so I know who did each piece and why, there’s probably only 100 quilts). I did buy fabric this year. I don’t usually, unless there’s something in particular that I’m looking for, but I was in the mood to buy fabric. I haven’t been buying much at all. I only go to the quilt store when I need a background or binding, which is about every 2-3 months, and then I try to keep it reasonable. I look for stuff I use a lot of and has been an issue lately. I do always look for flesh colors, and when I get these out of the dryer and folded (god knows when that will be), I’ll show you. I didn’t want solids or almost solids…I wanted funky patterns.

I did buy some browns too, because that dirt thing keeps showing up in my quilts and it uses big pieces that are really convoluted in shape, so I need big pieces of brown. I also bought a few reds…while I was picking them out, mom walks up to me and says, “Hearts?” Yup. For hearts mostly. The average heart I draw needs 4-6 fabrics. Or more. Complicated buggers, those hearts.

I managed NaNoWriMo last night again, although I tried to write while on the phone with my SIL, and that was a clusterfuck. Apparently the writing part of my brain can’t multitask THAT well, plus it sounded like she was about to run away from home (not sure I blame her). And then I went to book club, where we all pretty much swore off Orson Scott Card for the rest of our lives, but did pick a 900-page book for February. I’ve already read December’s book and we’re skipping January due to the holidays. Most of my book club friends are much younger than me, and only one of them has children, so the poor pregnant woman who was there, we were talking about all the advice you get, and I said I had none…oh wait, yes I do…”SLEEP NOW. You will never sleep again.” Seriously. I think it’s true. We did talk a lot about how we as a society protect and treasure pregnant women, how it must be hard-wired into our brains to take care of them. And babies…them too. Mostly. Yes. I go to book club for intellectual conversation, because we don’t just talk about Oooh Babies, but we analyze society’s response to babies. And we drink and eat. You can’t go wrong with that combination.

But I was tired and headed home early to get yelled at by the girlchild, apparently, who had left dinner cooling on the counter for over an hour. Not willing to risk vomiting all night, I didn’t touch it. Sigh. Frustrating. Perfect bacteria-growing temperature.

So that’s when I wrote…actually, I started writing (again, because I had started when my SIL called) and then she needed my computer, so I went and graded for a while and then came back. I’m over 10,000 words, averaging over 2000 a day. I was only at 1200 last night and was tired, and thought I was going to quit because I didn’t feel like writing the next bit. Plus I have a bit of a cushion, but I don’t want to use it now…I’d rather be way ahead and plan for having issues later than be way behind now and assume I can catch up (that’s probably the best summary of my personality that exists anywhere…because I know life is gonna bitchslap you with some crap you don’t even know about yet and you won’t HAVE that extra time later on…seriously). Sometimes I feel (shockingly) that I am writing too much detail, but I suspect it’s better to have too much at this point and edit it out later. The whole book is almost at 35,000 words now. Good progress. The story is developing. No, I still have no idea how it will end, but I’m heading into the rising action section, maybe? I think there needs to be a kidnapping or an attack at this point, so I’m letting my brain play with those ideas as I stare out at a small sea of faces at school. Little do they know what their teacher is thinking about…

And then I quilted. Oh, I graded first, but couldn’t keep going on that for long. I had a goal of finishing one assignment last night, and I didn’t even get close. Sigh. It’s gonna bite me in the butt this weekend, but whatever. Quilting was fun…really.

Thread rebelling against me. I’m still only getting in about an hour a night, although I guess that’s better than none. I was just hoping to be oh-so efficient last night, and it didn’t work out that way. I did finish all the outlining though, and I started on the background quilting…

Which, of course, I started way too tiny and crunched up. There isn’t a ton of background on this quilt, but there are these big pieces of sky up in the tree, and they’re not all behaving nicely, so I suspect that section will make me swear and possibly even cry (OK, I don’t cry because of quilting…I get frustrated and walk away.). I didn’t get very far in the background quilting, honestly, because I was bloody tired and probably should have gone to bed an hour earlier, but I did START. And that’s what I wanted to do, so there. Nine hours in. If I can shop for binding on Sunday and put it on that night, I’ll be good (um, Kathryn, you have a soccer tournament to attend on Sunday? Damn. You’re right. Sigh.). Anyway. It’s getting there, which means I need to get my butt in gear and draw the next one. Seriously. If I type Seriously one more time, please slap me.

And there’s Ms. Bitchy, who started a fight with Kitten last night because she deigned to use the food area.

I was so tired I just watched most of it and then tried to intervene so Kitten could get away. This cat is 11 years old and out for blood most days. And then she takes over my chair and complains if I try to sit on it. Cats. Damn cats.

OK. Survive the school day. Hang out with friends. Grade stuff. Quilt. You see the pattern of my days.

The Neverending Quilting

Oh my god, I just want to be done with it…the neverending quilting. That stage when you aren’t far enough along to be close to done, dammit. You can see the end of the dark tunnel, but it’s just a speck of light in the distance, not close enough to start running towards it, because you have to conserve your energy. Sigh. Even trying to get done with the outlining would have been OK, which was interesting, because when I started quilting (late, again) last night, I thought, oh no, you’re not going to finish the outlining tonight…even though the previous night you thought it was just one more night, that part of your brain was obviously delusional and just needed to go to bed. Then I started stitching, and I got about 45 minutes in, and I’m looking at it, and my brain is at war: one part is sure I can finish and the other is telling me to give up and go to bed (that’s really what the responsible, normal adult would have done, but as I have proven over and over again, although I am responsible with many things, making art and going to sleep at a reasonable hour are not my strong points). In the end, I kept going, sure, positive, convinced I could finish.

I was so close…really, maybe another hour. But no. Sigh. Went to bed. Slept the sleep of the crazy dreamer who wanted to be DONE. Which is just stupid, because I would only be done with the OUTLINING. I still have to quilt the fucking background, and it’s proving to be a bitch, bunching up all over the place, trying to make a mess of my quilting, so I’ll be swearing at it and pulling at it and stretching it flat and wondering how all those people who quilt like 1/8″ apart do it without making a monstrous mess (this is why you are NOT one of those quilters. You think they’re ~~crazy~~ amazing for quilting that close together and they think you’re the same for cutting out a million pieces and then trying not to lose them all while ironing them together. Really, you’re all nuts.).

So I’m 8 hours in and I haven’t even finished the outlining, and I suspect I’m about halfway through, but really I don’t have a freakin’ clue. I do know that at only an hour a night, I’m not going to make my deadline. AND finish grades. AND hike on Saturday.

Oh well. And I really want to clean house; my bedroom and the studio are driving me nuts and I’m barely home long enough today to do anything. So. Yeah. Dysfunctional human much?

Don’t you wonder what happens in the artist’s brain to make the expression of some image (or sound or whatever) SO important that everything else seems pointless? I mean, food isn’t pointless, especially being diabetic, but I wish I had a replicator and could just ask it to make more of that avocado tomato salad this morning so I could take it to school. I have all the ingredients, but not the time (or mental energy, apparently). OK, I might find energy for that. Maybe. But I’d really rather finish sewing or do the next drawing or anything really rather than clean house. I wonder how close to hoarder status I’m approaching. That should motivate me to take the bags of clothes out of the entryway to the thrift shop today, except I don’t actually have time to do that.

Anyway. Writing is also taking up my time these days, but it’s OK. It was my November goal, and I realized at the time that it would be a stretch. I’m writing more than 2000 words a day on the novel at the moment, killing off characters with wild abandon and then going back and giving them a video entry or a first name only, because dammit, they had kids and I need their kids for genetic testing. In the book. Not in real life. I don’t have an outline for this book. I don’t know how it ends. I don’t know how it gets to the ending. I have a general feel for the shit that might happen and for the core problem of the book, but it’s writing itself. It reveals itself to me while I write…which honestly is the way I draw as well. Although I might have a drawing in my head, it doesn’t come fully apparent until pen hits paper, and I often have no idea where it will go until it’s done. I’m tapping into some part of my brain that just makes. It doesn’t really care what you think about it; hell, it barely cares what I think about it. It does take some direction, when I have some, but mostly I’m just spilling some synaptic goo out on paper or screen and trying to make sense of it afterwards.

Seriously. The book is gonna need a massive edit. But that’s OK. I hear that’s normal. Maybe tonight I’ll finish outlining, and then the light at the end of the tunnel might feel a bit closer. Sigh.

Apparently Crazy Ass

Hello very furry cat tail that is dipping into my tea. Please removeth yourself.

I’m juggling. Grading and dark coming earlier and school stuff and a dead black widow and a tire that won’t behave or maybe it’s the tire pressure monitoring system, who the fuck cares, just make the light on the dashboard with the exclamation mark go off. I served dinner at 9 PM last night (but I served it, and it was healthy and made from scratch. So there. And there are leftovers. So double there.). I only graded two periods of tests instead of all three (at least I got through two). I was determined to quilt, because goddammit, how am I going to finish the quilting by Saturday night if I don’t actually QUILT every night? So let’s ignore the fact that I was still awake at 1 AM and that my body on non-Daylight Savings time believes it should be awake an hour earlier, and honestly, so does Kitten, so there’s no point in trying to sleep longer. In fact, amusingly, my body seems to think it’s being allowed to sleep in, so although it had barely more than 5 hours of sleep, it feels better than normal, because it’s an hour later. Or earlier. Or something. I’m sure it will all even out in a few days, but for now, it’s what’s keeping me moving.

And you know what? Dumbass subs who leave no notes as to what happened at all (apparently he wrote a referral on an entire class?)? Give Up Now. Or stay out of my class. Really, there was less chaos returning to the classroom after two days gone than I thought there would be, but that was mostly because I put it all on them, made sure that all the responsibility lay squarely in their laps. Oh, you didn’t complete the work on Friday? So sad. If you don’t have it done by Tuesday, you will be unable to do the required assignment that you only get one day to do. Oh, your class doesn’t know how to plug in the Chromebooks? Y’all can write it down on PAPER…that archaic substance that frightens you so much. So sad. Other classes will be on Chromebooks today. You are not so lucky. Maybe you will learn from this. Or not.

My team is in Bitch Mode. End of the trimester mentality, but more like where we would be in March, after Trimester 2. Not sure what’s up with that. I just know it feels crappy. Teachers blame themselves when the kids don’t perform, even when they know kids are making choices to do so. It makes you feel like a failure. No one likes that.

So that’s why I need to lose myself in quilting at night. I need a place to rest after grading all those tests, a place for my head to go where I have control over the outcome…or at least more control than I have over 140 12-year-olds.

So I quilted for an hour almost…

I really like those hands. I’m 6 1/2 hours in and almost done with the outlining.

I just have the tree left, and I’ve done some of it. Then I can start quilting the background, and honestly, not very much of the background shows. Then binding and trying to figure out what to do with the bleed spots. Almost there. Still need to draw the NEXT one. No pressure. OK, lots of pressure. Crazy-ass pressure, honestly.

I’m also writing the novel again, burying myself in plant/animal hybrid genetics and escaping from the government and chemical responses and how people might die. Weird stuff. I’m doing NaNoWriMo, where you write 50,000 words in 30 days in November. I wrote on the plane on Saturday morning, I wrote in LAX’s tiny little offshoot terminal where we were stuck for four hours, I wrote on my computer, and I wrote on the iPad while sitting in a meeting (hey, it kept me awake and I was actually listening.). I’m over 6,000 words in three days, so I’m doing OK. I’m trying to stay ahead of the 1667 words/day that will definitely get me there. It’s nice to have the website tell me that at the current rate, I will finish 5 days early (unlikely in real life). It gives me a cushion for the days I can’t get much written. And the story is progressing! I wrote 7 new characters in and promptly killed them off! Good times.

Anyway. I am busy. I might need a break soon. Meanwhile, here’s the video my mom took of me at Houston explaining Awakening the Crone…there’s a Quilt Alliance video too, but they haven’t sent me the link to that yet.

Apparently I invited everyone to take me out to a bar and explain myself. You know, like you do. Yeah. Apparently crazy ass.

Barely Awake

Started this on Thursday morning…days ago…so this is less than 3 hours of sleep. Hmn. Yeah. Don’t like it. Head is all swimmy. Brain thinks it’s still asleep. It told me to go lay back down. Stop this uprightness and just lay the fuck back down. On a bed. With a nice soft pillow. Yum.

I did this last year too…got up at 3:30-ish to get out of here. I just don’t remember it. You know why? I was asleep when it happened, that’s why. Just like I’m asleep now.

Did I go to bed early last night, like a normal person would? Nope. I quilted. Here’s Midnight watching me quilt…

I wasn’t tired. There’s no point in going to bed if you’re not tired.

I realized some things in Houston this year. One is that I’m not particularly stable. I mean, I’m not completely off my rocker, but stable, normal people do not stay up until midnight making art (stitching around a penis, let’s be specific here) the night before they have to get up really early and fly to Texas. They go to bed early. They schedule their time differently. They probably have a clean house. They probably seem a little less frantic than I do. I am not that person. I think of the unstable as the part that gets me to drop all the grading and grab my sketchbook one night. The part that blows off some Have-To for a Want-To. Not all the time…just enough times that I’m not predictable.

I also do a lot. I know that. I always have. It’s not a choice…some people think it’s a choice. I think I’m a little ADD and that doesn’t help, but also, my brain does not like to just sit in a chair by the pool and relax. It does not like peace and quiet. It can do that for a short period of time, but there still better be a purpose, a plan. Maybe there’s a book I want to read or a drawing I want to do, or I just want to enjoy the sunshine, but I’d still be better off DOING something. Not doing feels bad. As I attempt (and I say ‘attempt’ because quite honestly I suck at it) to venture into the dating world (again, shoot me now), it’s all online and there are all these questions and you have spreadsheets and graphs of info on your potential dates, and questions like “how does it feel to do nothing all day” or “normal or weird” put me in the small percentages. I feel like crap when I get nothing done. Workaholic much? Yeah. But a hike counts as something. And a drawing counts as something. And reading a book counts as something. And maybe if there were someone around, hanging out with them and doing nothing would be OK, but I don’t know. And weird. I’m definitely weird. And apparently intense. I guess that’s true. I guess…what’s the opposite of intense? Mild. Mild-mannered. Temperate. OK. Yeah. I’m not any of those. Nor am I calm. Or drama free. Look at my drawings. Seriously.

Houston: one thing that has been great both in Houston and as I post pictures of Awakening the Crone and You Make Me Wanna Die is that I am getting a lot of comments, positive comments about my work, my vision (for lack of a better word), my art sense. I have people coming up to me or messaging me and saying the work is good, reminding me of that, because deep down inside me, I know that. But when I am deep in a hole, it’s hard to see that there is a purpose to my work, that when it is done, it will go out there and cause conversations and thoughts (even negative ones), and people will come back to me and grab my hands and smile at me and make it feel worthwhile. So I guess I needed that. Because sometimes being an artist is such a solitary pursuit (and maybe that is why I write SO MUCH, talking to myself) that you forget that this is an image and you are putting it out there with your name on it and people will see it and then they will associate you with that piece (and no, that’s not always a positive thing), but mostly, the vibe coming back at me is good, keep it up, don’t stop.

So I have that. And that is what I am holding onto right now.

I read this…and Polly, thanks. I feel better now. I’m not one of those girls. I know that. I’m not trying to be what someone thinks I should be. Because she says it’s OK to be messy and have emotions and not be perfect and still to WANT to be part of a relationship but on my own terms. Even when people tell you it’s NOT OK. They’re wrong. Because life isn’t always calm and pretty and positive and perky, and if that’s the woman you want to be with, then maybe she’s just faking it because she’s afraid of rocking the boat. I don’t want to be with fake people. I’m spending a lot of time and energy trying to negotiate some level of balance with my body and my brain, and I’m open and will tell you exactly what I’m thinking and feeling and if you can’t roll a bit with that, if you are going to run away when there’s sad or mad, because all you can handle is happy, then I feel sorry for you…because you can’t really feel the happy, experience the joy, unless you’ve felt those damn awful really lows, those sads that make you want to crawl into bed. They are there for everyone. You need to experience them just like you experience the others. And own them. My sad…it’s mine. I know that. I hold on to it sometimes and it struggles and I just hold on until it stops and subsides and I can move on. Read a book. Have a cup of tea. Draw.

I had a great time at the Halloween party last night. It was funny, amusing, intellectual, and engaging. Am I still lonely and sad on either side of it? Yeah. I am. But I can hold on to that few hours of feeling entertained, amused, as a cushion…not a solution, not a goal, because I don’t believe all of life is like that or SHOULD be like that…but accepting that both sides exist, that the spectrum is normal…that’s what I’m looking for. Someone who thinks THAT is OK…meanwhile, I will keep being who I am, because I can’t really do anything else.

The Crone Emerges…

After Thanksgiving, I was ironing all the pieces down…here’s the biggest pieces of flesh on the whole quilt. I used up almost all of this fabric (which I really loved)…

Pieces were piling up, and I was cutting them out as quickly as I could…

Here’s all the fabrics that were used in the quilt.

And here’s a pile of leftovers after I finish trimming stuff…

After that, I sorted pieces, around the end of the year. I had about two more weeks of Winter Break left.

I started ironing around New Year’s Eve and was done a few days later.

No, I don’t have a life. Why do you ask?

This bird was the beginnings of an idea in Julie’s mind to have me make the small bird quilts I did last summer…

Ironing went quickly…

I was motivated to get it done before school started up again.

The maiden…

Both of them together…

The upper torso coming together…

And Kitten on the crone’s shoulder. Every crone needs a cat.

And this is where I started questioning my choice of background fabric.

I actually laid the whole thing out on the purple fabric…purple that I loved. And then I rejected it. And went shopping for that blue…that eye-popping blue.

Because that blue is what it needed to be. Here it is ironed down, waiting to be stitched down…

Stitching it down, all in early January…

The great thing about those vacation weeks is that I don’t have to do a whole lot of schoolwork.

So I have more time to make art. She definitely has a marked face…

I started quilting it on January 9. That’s probably about when I went back to school…

Lots of outlining…

I quilted it in 7 days during school. I was a little obsessed (honestly, I was running out of time).

There’s all that detail again…

And then I started quilting the background…

The binding went on around the 17th and I was handstitching the night before I was supposed to take it to the photographer.

The next post? Official pictures…

Deep Breaths…Again…

I stitched a baby tonight (yes, I started writing this last night). I stitched mammary glands. Not very realistically, but whatever. It’s like Picasso meets Richard Scarry. I stitched a tattoo and some arms. I did a female face.

I didn’t start until really late, because I went to the gym and then spent more than an hour trying to plan to be gone for two days, just for school. I had to write 4 pages of instructions and load three files on my website, and I still don’t know if it will all work. The timing sucks for being gone. Then again, it always sucks. I wonder what it’s like to be a nonteacher and go on vacation or take a long weekend. Being a teacher, it just seems like punishment sometimes. And I still don’t have next week figured out. I also spent some time searching out photos of the quilt that will be in Celebrating Silver, the SAQA exhibit opening at Houston like right now. I set up 3 posts…now just pictures, words to be added later, probably starting tomorrow, because I haven’t been able to show the whole thing until the opening. I’ll be in Houston Thursday afternoon with mom, hopefully in time for the SAQA meetup. I’ll be at the artist’s tour on Friday. We leave early Saturday morning. Yes, we kamikaze Houston. Three million quilts, four million vendors, and we basically do it in a day. It’s a little insane.

The back.

Tonight, I shoved my head deep into the next book and exercise and art, because the school day was so incredibly frustrating, I wanted to scream. My team agreed…kids aren’t listening. Tomorrow is the test and the entire unit is due (yes, I will be grading for days), but apparently none of that is important. I’m seriously going to run out of the classroom throwing papers wildly about. Either I will be relieved after they take the test…maybe my lecture today kicked their asses? Or I will wonder why I do this job.

Deep breaths. Walk away. Enjoy two days off. Of course, I have to survive tomorrow first.

Ironically, I keep saying Deep Breaths to myself, and we are finishing up the respiratory unit.

I found my sketchbook. I sorted through my stitching for stuff to do on the plane. I’m going to wear lots of black. I will need to bring 5 pieces of electronic equipment and all the chargers. I plan to start NaNoWriMo on the plane Saturday morning.

Girlchild rocked her second take on the SAT…I’m so proud of how she’s handling this college stuff. Except for when she freaks out on me. Seriously. She’s just motoring on, finishing essays, making decisions, asking for advice, doing what has to be done. Thank god. Now I feel like I can send her off. I counseled (seriously, that’s what it was) another parent of a friend of hers the other day, 20 minutes in the gym, interrupting my workout, because he’s so freaked out about sending his oldest (a girl) off far away…and I kept telling him, “But that’s what you have to do. That’s what they need. She will be fine.” Over and over again. Because most of them will. A few will flip out or do something really incredibly stupid that negatively affects the rest of their life, but most of them get through and even excel. It’s alternately exciting and terrifying and even depressing, as you realize they don’t ever really come back…that the babies you had and sent off will come back as competent (mostly) adults who will have their own lives. Although then they will text you for two hours about what to wear in snow. Apparently it’s my fault his daughter wants to do a year abroad; she heard me talking about it and now that’s on her list. He was bitter about that, but I think it’s really important to send our American brats off to the rest of the world to get a clue.

OK. So I think I’m ready to face today (Wednesday now, for real, in the morning, parent meeting in 45 minutes)…despite what my students might throw at me. I’m ready to go to Houston, but I have to tell you, I’m not ready to talk about that quilt. I guess I need to get there by Friday…the talking part, not the Houston part. I’m being squawked at by a small black and white psychotic cat. I’m not really awake (oh god, wait until tomorrow). I need a serious infusion of caffeine. And deep breaths for getting through the test. Deep breaths for just getting through.

Ode to a Safety Pin

This poor pin…stuck into 4 or 5 layers of fabric pelvic girdle and Wonder Under, then somehow wrenched open and destroyed.

Probably it got caught on something. You know, I use a lot of safety pins in my work…but I reuse the same 500 over and over again (and yes, I think that really is how many I have…so I can have more than one quilt pinbasted at a time. I think I have at least one pinbasted right now besides the one under the machine). The thing about a wrenched-open safety pin is that it’s no longer useful. I tried rebending it, but the top section (OK, I did in fact Google the names of the parts of a safety pin, and despite the fact that many disturbing things pop up in that search, I did find out that the top portion is called the clasp. So you learned something today. Or not.) is almost pulled out and separating, so it is in fact now completely useless for its job. So I threw it away. I almost never throw them away. I’ve even been known to sand the burrs down on the pin part if they are snagging while going through the fabric.

I’m sure this is some metaphor for my life, that I am a useless, bent-out-of-shape safety pin, right? Eh. Whatever. I’m getting by. I’m getting shit done. I’m not getting it all done, but getting some done. It’s not easy. I don’t know why it is easy for some people. I guess nothing affects them. This is a continuous conversation I have with my counselor. I need to learn to barely react to extreme stress. Or something. Sigh. I think I spend too much time in my head with no distractions. I don’t think my brain works like those people’s brains. I don’t even understand how their brains work.

So when I finished all the work duties yesterday, I went shopping for stuff for the boychild (and me, although I failed at that) because snow starts Friday. And I don’t know. He might die. OK, not really. But I’m shipping him some stuff today, including a rewards card to the local sports shop (which is also out here). And I sat and finished my book. And exercised. Because drama. And girlchild. And stress. And garrrr. And then I made dinner after being screamed at, because it’s my fault Etsy people can’t ship stuff here by Thursday (sigh. Don’t leave Halloween costumes until the last minute if you want choices). And we ate together, watching the last and final episode of Big Love, which made me cry, and girlchild is getting all freaked out because I’m crying, and I say, HORMONES, like all the time, and she’s still freaked out (I’m a little freaked out too, because the hormones don’t seem to be mellowing out, and my face breaking out nonstop tells me it probably IS hormones, and hell…WTF? Leave me alone, you silly chemicals. I don’t have the patience for this.). I’m fairly sure all this chemical imbalance is not helping with my moods or my reaction to stress. And my blood sugar levels have been completely fucked up for about two weeks now. I’m getting tired of it.

I finally found the energy to quilt after 10 PM again. Ugh. I really need to go to bed earlier tonight and tomorrow night, because my Thursday AM wakeup call is actually in the middle of the night.

But I quilted two legs…

And a pubic area, plus pelvic girdle and uterus…and then I should have gone to bed, but I’m an idiot and I quilted a bird as well, because it was kinda fun and I didn’t feel like stopping.

That late-night bad judgement that tells me it’s OK, that I’m really not tired (I wasn’t. I had a really hard time falling asleep, even though it was almost 1 AM)…I don’t know what that is. It’s the part of me that wants a different life, I guess. I’m totally jealous of all those fulltime quilt artists I meet, the ones who have a marketable skill and can sell classes and books about their technique (OK, I really don’t want to do classes, to be honest), the ones who have a partner who fully finances their habit, their drive. Man oh man. Do they know how lucky they are? Do they know what it’s like to work a 60-hour-a-week job and come home to screaming drama and cooking dinner and no one will help you take out the trash (yes, we were doing that at 10 PM and she was yelling at me then too, because it was my fault we hadn’t done it earlier). Bloody hell. Maybe I would just be a shitty lazy artist if I didn’t have all that hanging over me. Maybe I would never get anything done because I wouldn’t have this incredible drive to create something to make up for all the other crap. Maybe I’d have given up on art completely.

Seems unlikely. This is who I am. This is how I am. But it would be nice if it were a little less ouch. And weepy. Tired of the weepy. Damn safety pin.

The Pieces of a Weekend

Here’s to trying to pull all the pieces of a weekend (and a brain) together into one coherent post. Why start now? I mean, sometimes I am probably coherent, but if you really expect me to be all together on a Monday morning, then you’re probably a pretty demanding person, and I don’t want to hang out with you. Leave. Go read another blog…the blog of someone who has perfect hair and wears makeup and is all fashion-conscious and shit. I don’t want you here anyway (OK, you can wear makeup and be fashion-conscious and stuff, but just don’t expect me to be making any sense right now).

Weekends are kicking my butt at the moment. I make lists that are miles long and then I realize I got one thing done on them. ONE THING. I actually took grading with me to the California Fibers meeting yesterday. I needed to get grading done. I graded in the car on the way up and at the meeting. It was a slightly contentious meeting anyway (many of them are, but it’s a good group that gets good shows and there’s a core group that I get along with just fine)…so it was good to have something else to focus on. Artists…we are so emotional and opinionated. It’s hard to have a whole room full of us. Saturday night I actually went to a Halloween party, but no one knew what I was…OK, not true…they knew I was a painting. They just didn’t know who the artist was (SIGH. Jackson Pollack. I know. Maybe I don’t expect you to know, but it would be nice if someone knew. I expect too much.). I’m not much of a party person…and I know these people, but it’s still hard for me to stand around and make small talk and ask the appropriate questions at the appropriate times. It makes me want to crawl back into my studio by myself (yes, counselor, I am isolating myself) and make art. And rarely come out.

I didn’t have a lot of time for that this weekend. No art at all happened on Saturday. Saturday was all about errands and soccer and finishing stuff and being sociable. Sunday was all about trying to finish the stuff I didn’t finish Saturday because I wasn’t efficient enough and going to a meeting. But I finally started quilting around 10 PM.

I didn’t get far, just an hour in, just the very bottom section of the scales, with the two hands. I got the heart done too…

But if I figure I have 15 hours of quilting, then it’s not surprising that I didn’t get far. I wanted to start much earlier in the day, in case I didn’t have the right colors of thread, but I was lucky and I seem to have enough of what I need. I might be a spool short (ha ha ha…is that a euphemism for not having all my brain parts in working order? It feels like it is. Don’t judge.) of the background color, but that isn’t going to matter this week…this week, I will just be outlining. I love the outlining stage, when all the features start to pop, like drawing that black line on the white paper. The defining moment. Except I never use black. Black thread is so dead-looking. On this one, I’m using a dark blue. Anyway. This part of the process is very meditative. I gave up over a year ago on listening to music in this stage. I used to always listen to music while quilting, but music has fucked with the dark side of my head too much, so I just put the sound up real high on Netflix (still watching Star Trek) and listen to the blather instead. Fewer triggers.

I also went to the last official game I will see of the girlchild’s season (she has tournaments, and then high-school soccer, and then more tournaments, so it’s not like it’s OVER over…it’s just the season is almost over…one more game, but I’ll be in Houston)…

She really likes to head the ball. By the way, the ref in the back? Asshole. We used to be on a team with the daughter, who seems perfectly nice, but the dad has a Napoleon complex that makes him a psycho jerk on the field, and he seems to be getting worse each year. So we played half the game down a player because she got red-carded for calling him ignorant (which he is). If you can’t control your game, get off the damn field.

We should have won, but tied.

Toldja she liked to head the ball.

Makes for amusing pictures.

Babygirl is annoying me with her need to be right next to (or ON) the computer. She also wants to be on fabric. Or my hand. Or my leg. She’s very needy at the moment. I really need to clean up the studio and get her off the stuff I need less cat hair on…

I did clean this weekend. One thing (well, besides the entryway floor so I could pinbaste). This:

Yup. A spider web. It was a big one. No one sits in that room now that the boychild’s not here. Kinda weird to realize that.

Here’s a video of the SAQA exhibit that is at Poway’s Center for the Performing Arts until Thursday…my Eyeball Tree made it in the video, so that’s cool

That’s all I got. The brain is still wallowing around in Feels-Like-Shit (the town next to Feels-Like-Crap), so I distract it with books and quilting and trying to push everything into the corner. I stay off the social media, I don’t read anything online. I just focus inward and get shit done. I don’t know if it’s healthy or not. It just is. The counselor warns about not letting myself fall back into the hole, and I really do try…but it doesn’t feel like I have control over that. I have control over that damn spider web. The ability to just switch that part of the brain off…I wonder about the person who can do that, who can shove everything under or in a drawer and lock it up. Maybe it’s healthy? I just don’t know. I do know that I don’t know how to do it. I just have to work through it. Apparently for months on end. Frustrated yowl.

Quilt Visions 2014: The Sky’s the Limit

So I went to the Quilt Visions opening a few weeks back and this is what I thought: Wow. This is ABSTRACT. In fact, if you didn’t have squares or abstraction in your piece, you probably weren’t in this show. I can think of about 3 pieces that weren’t abstract, and two of them were abstracted. And another two were so close to the subject, that they read as generally abstract. It reminded me of the Visions of old, back up at the Oceanside Museum of Art, where I’d walk through and say, well, I don’t do squares and I don’t do abstract, so I will never get in.

Now in reality, it’s different jurors every year, so that does have an effect on the show. The three jurors are Patty Hawkins, Sue Benner, and Bruce Hoffman, two art quilters and one director/curator. The jurors stated that they wished for the exhibit to show that art quilting is fine art, and it shows a universality of artistic expression. They were directed to “assess the entries in the broader contemporary art context.” Benner admitted that “as a panel we tended towards abstraction.” I’m glad they admitted that. Hawkins claims they were “seeking outstanding artistry within the broad range of voices.” Hoffman mentions that “all art should be judged with the highest of criteria and should be true to great design, understanding of color relationship, secure in strong draftsmanship and the nuances of fine craftsmanship.”

I am glad that they said nothing about the show being innovative or the cutting edge of the art quilt world, because those things would be untrue. Let me be clear, there is some beautiful work in this show. There is some amazing work in this show. There are also pieces that are derivative and that I can walk right past without feeling a need to explore. Yes, that’s always the case, but I would hope it would be less so in one of the bigger art quilt shows. Much as I love having the Visions Art Museum in my town, it’s small…I wish it were a bigger space and that the Quilt Visions exhibit could also be bigger. Then again, I wish a lot of things that haven’t happened yet. And the theme? I saw a few quilts that hit the theme, but I don’t know that the theme is the point.

I would suggest you get a copy of the catalog if art quilting is your thang…you don’t have to MAKE them. You can just like looking at them. Here’s some that I thought were intriguing.

Melody Randol’s piece Still Waters is quietly beautiful. OK, maybe not so quietly with all those marks, but a stunning piece, really deep with wonderful mark-making. What’s interesting in looking at her website is that she has a lot of beautiful landscapes on there, but none that look like this piece.

Rachel Brumer’s 88 Constellations is another intriguing abstract, with marks and stitching representing an “abstracted vision of a turbulent sky,” interesting because it is mostly white. This doesn’t look like much in print, but is wonderful in person.

Diane Siebels‘ Head 3 was a piece I really loved. A flashback to crazy quilts, but without all the pieces, the stitching is full of movement and color. I have to say, this piece doesn’t fit into the show, but I’m glad it’s there (and to be honest, I wish there were more pieces that didn’t FIT into this show…it would be more interesting). Siebels has some interesting tree constructions on her website as well. I will tell you that I couldn’t see the heads on there on Chrome; I had to switch to Firefox. YMMV.

Maggy Rozycki Hiltner’s Red and White Quilt with Racist Embroidery is more interesting because of the thought behind it than the actual construction. Rozycki Hiltner added rescued racist embroideries from old textiles to a rescued red and white quilt, bringing up all those stereotypes of African Americans in our past, definitely a conversation piece. She has some very interesting and political (and some just amusing) pieces on her website, all echoing or appropriating the embroideries of the past, those dish towels and potholders and tablecloths.

Jean Herman’s Katherine a la Picasso caught my eye because it was one of the few figurative pieces in the show, yet highly abstracted. I’m still not sure I like it, but if I stand and stare at a piece for a long time, I would call it successful. The black line unifies it greatly.

Helen Geglio’s The Lost Art of Mending 3: Constellation is a quirky little piece that needs to be stared at. It has the look of the top of someone’s bed, but it’s the mending marks and hand-stitching that makes this an interesting piece. This is an abstract I can get behind. I would love to see more of her work, but she seems to not have a website.

Emily Richardson’s piece Swiftly is a subtle piece, but so beautiful, with the depth of the silk and the color shifts across the piece, plus the hand-stitching. Richardson doesn’t seem to have her own website, but here is one gallery that represents her.

Vicki Carlson’s Points in Time is another piece where the hand-stitching has made it interesting. The color movement in the repeated circular shapes where they overlap creates a lot of interest. I do think this one also reads better in person.

There were other pieces that were executed well or looked nice, but they just reminded me of other pieces I’d seen about a million times. And there were some, like Shin-hee Chin’s piece Ryu, Gwan-Sun where I was intrigued by how the piece stays together…it’s interesting to look at in terms of construction, and I do love how she is experimenting with making faces in different ways.

And then there were a few that I thought, why is this in here? This is not what I would consider fine art, to quote the jurors. And yet, I know that looking at a million pictures of things that look better in real life and trying to make decisions for a coherent show must be difficult. I also wish that if the jurors were only going to focus on abstracts that they admitted that beforehand, so the figurative people could decide if they wanted to make a donation to the museum, because that’s what it is when the jurors go that way. I guess they could have realized their tendencies after that fact, but it’s amusing to me that there’s never been a show that hasn’t been heavily abstract…and even if I were the juror, it is the way with art quilts that the entries would probably be mostly abstract…but can you imagine picking a Visions or Quilt National exhibit one year that is almost all figurative work? That might be interesting…in a whole ‘nother way. Hey, I think I suggested a show like that to SAQA, and they told me I needed to find a gallery that would do that (ahem. hello.).

Anyway, the show’s worth seeing. Most of the bigger-name shows are…even if it’s just for the 3 or 4 that rock your socks off. Seeing fiber art in person is always better than on a screen or a printed page. You’ll see a lot of abstracts, things that you feel like you’ve seen before. There was a lot of hand stitching this year. The food at the opening was great and so were the people. I love meeting artists. Someone told me this was “the best Visions show they’d ever seen.” Um. Not for me. I’ve seen more exciting and interesting shows…I’m thinking of I think it was the last one at the Oceanside Museum of Art, with the huge pieces they could hang there. It had a wide variety of work from abstracts to calm landscapes to bright and vibrating florals. It rocked my world. This one? Eh. Go for the few pieces that make you happy.