I Guess I’m on Vacation…

Wow. So it’s a surreal world today, isn’t it? My principal announced in the last five minutes of 2nd period yesterday that school would be out for the next 5 weeks (the last 2 weeks are our Spring Break anyway) and the crowd went wild. Literally. Like wild animals. Fun stuff. By the end of the day, each class was down 7-10 kids, which made it much easier to teach. Some kids cried, some whined, some were planning trips to venues that will most definitely close down in the next few days. The teachers were torn…on the one hand, this last week was really difficult and the 3-week stretch to Spring Break seemed endless. On the other hand, holy crap, had to get my classroom ready for deep cleaning before I left, post a video of the lab 1/3 of my students missed, make sure I had everything I needed out of the classroom, fill a big bag with stuff to grade, and then start processing it all last night. My kids who need the free breakfasts and lunches every day. The kids on suicide watch. The kids who prefer to be with their friends. How to come back after 5 weeks and get them back into the middle of a unit. How to behave for the next 5 weeks. I’m pretty good at self-isolation in general, but I do run errands and go to the gym and all that. How crazy do we get? Hard to know. Weird shit.

OK. Well. First of all, I have two shows that are essentially closed down, one for three weeks. That’s the Southwestern show. I think they reopen April 5. The library show is open today and tomorrow, and then the libraries close Monday until April 6. So I’m going to try to see it today. At some point, I have to ship two pieces out of here…but I think I have a week or two to deal with that. My head is whirling between what I SHOULD do, and what I CAN do, and what I NEED to do. My Spring Break is usually pretty straightforward: spend a day or two getting the errands done and then drive away from San Diego with a bunch of camping equipment. I have three weeks until we hit that, and who knows what will be happening then. So I can spend three weeks grading stuff, exercising, and making art. Sleeping in. Peeing when I want to. Trying not to worry.

This is the show at Southwestern College, which should be open after their Spring Break…you can see my two pieces on each side of the sculptures…

Looks good. Wish I could see it in person…but I will hopefully be traveling. To campgrounds. With a lot of cleaning supplies.

Ah, who knows what is happening in three weeks.

I’ll try to take pictures at the library today.

I was so bamboozled last night that I just sat on the couch, petted animals, and downloaded books from the library.

Eventually I came in the office and processed the video I needed to put together for my students. I stayed late at school yesterday and recorded all the pieces.

At one point, I was sandwiched between a warm and purring Luna…

And a warm and not-purring Simba…

Which helped enough to get my brain where it needed to be to come into the safe place…

Where the iron (and Kitten) was. I ironed and talked to my SIL (who is in Seattle, a week of self-isolation ahead of us, but with 3 kids cooped up with her). My niece, a senior in high school, has dropped her first official song on the world, on Spotify and iTunes…check her out.

My favorite part is when she sings about how she’s not dramatic. But dramatically. There’s also a great video of her and her mom dancing to the song while my brother reads. Which is about how it always is.

We all find ways to entertain ourselves. Boychild and I have a hike planned for Monday. Or walking the dogs. Same deal. It’s the only day with no rain.

I got all the 300s ironed together…I think it’s time to start ironing the flesh together.

I also woke up at like 2 AM with an entire drawing in my head. So there’s that. Tonight maybe?

Calli. You are a goofball. OK, well, again, wash your hands, stay safe, whatever that looks like for you. Stop buying all the toilet paper and rice. There are other healthier grains out there, people. I’m going to go shower now and venture to the post office and then hopefully to the library show. I don’t know what’s happening beyond that. Can’t process it. I guess I’m on vacation.

My Authentic Space…

I have a couple of shows opening this week…one is an artist book show with a group I’m in, Feminist Image Group (aka FIG).

The opening is this Saturday.

This was kind of a weird thing for me…but I like a challenge. I actually made three pages and rejected one. This is called Ominous Nature…

Each page is a box. I’m not sure why I wanted to do that, but I did. Anyway, the opening is this Saturday from 12-2. The exhibition is on the ground floor in the Dickinson Popular Library, but the reception is on the 9th floor in the Art Gallery’s Valerias Sculptural Garden. I haven’t been to the downtown library ever, so this should be interesting. I have to kamikaze down there after school to deliver the piece…should also be interesting.

The other show is Contingent Upon at Southwestern College, with the group Allied Craftsmen…

It opens tomorrow and includes Portrait of the Artist As a Young Woman…and And Then There Was One…

So that’s cool. Meanwhile, I’m making the next piece…it’s coming together slowly. I have the first 300 pieces (mostly) ironed together…including all these tiny little cars…

And these tumbling birds, which started showing up in drawings in December, I think.

They’re in that artist book above too. I do seem to repeat images for a while…sometimes a Long While. And then I did the swathe of space behind them and the Earth.

I do the Earth next, I think. I can’t remember when I drew this, but if I drew it today, there’d be coronavirus added to it. Certainly there’s war and pollution and fires and climate change already there. I haven’t been drawing much lately, but my brain certainly has been talking to me about drawing. It’s the one thing I wanted to do over the weekend and didn’t do. There’s never enough time for everything I want to do.

Yesterday was exhausting too. I taught a difficult (not really, but the kids made it that way) lesson…kids just not engaged in a fairly simple task. Not processing information. Hopefully today will be better (sigh. It’s unlikely.). I went to tutoring. Then to a school board meeting as a union rep. I got home around 6:30 PM, totally exhausted, made dinner, and read my book for a while. It’s due Friday and I don’t think I can finish in time, unfortunately. I’d like to, and I can re-request it, but there are already two people waiting for it. It’s good too…I just needed to input some grades and then I wanted to iron things together. Art drive. It’s loud.

The #marchmeetthemaker prompt yesterday was my authentic space. Here’s where I do a lot of my work…the studio/office.

It’s about 10 x 10′, which is a little small for everything I have in there…

especially when the ironing board is set up in the middle for me to iron…but I’m grateful to have had it all these years. MY ROOM.

There’s a lot of fabric in this room, yes. Never enough. Here was the setup while I was ironing, to give you a good idea of how little room there really is in there.

It works well though. I would love to remodel this room, pull out the old, holey floor, redo the wallpaper, put in real storage, put in a bigger window and maybe a room air conditioner, replace or fix the sliding glass door so I can open it more easily, get rid of the popcorn ceiling. All that is a healthy chunk of money though, and that’s not in the budget yet…I think the bathrooms and kitchen are higher up on the list.

I don’t just work in there though. I have a large light table in the living room, and a few stages of making involve sitting on the couch and cutting shit out. So this is also part of my maker space.

Where I often have helpers…

Yeah. Not helping.

Anyway. Today. Get through assessment, hope it’s at least quiet and productive. Go to union meeting after school. Hope it’s quick and productive. Go to grocery store for tomorrow morning’s breakfast items…hope that’s quick (yes, and productive). Then cook dinner, maybe grade some stuff (ugh), and then iron some more. If I’m still awake. Daylight Savings is kicking my tired ass. Maybe skip the grading and iron instead. Seems like a plan.

Me. I’m the Good Cause.

I was supposed to grade this big pile of stuff I brought home, but I decided not to. I did another smaller, easier assignment. I’m OK with that. It was a long day, lots of climbing on counters (just don’t even ask…it’s for science) and meetings and then walking the dogs…wait, I liked that part…

It was raining on my way home, but stopped in time for this. I don’t mind walking in a bit of rain anyway, but the dogs were muddy enough as it was. I’m trying to break my new hiking boots in before our trip…think I’m going to have to take both pairs.

This is what grading looks like sometimes. Sleepy puppy on the left, bitey asshole trying to break into my grading bag on the right.

She likes to tear papers and bite them and eat plastic bags. All very annoying. They are kittens. They do annoying kitten things when they’re not sweetly sleeping with each other.

After all that, I just wanted to cut stuff out. For 3 1/2 hours…

So I did. No, I’m still not done. I still have the stuff in the top right box to cut out.

Maybe I will be better tonight about grading? Or not. It’s not like I didn’t grade. I just chose a simpler, quicker assignment that I didn’t actually finish because my printer is out of ink and I needed a printout to finish it. A printout I already made but left at school. Uh huh. Not on purpose. Grades are due today. I should check them and make sure they’re done. I think they are.

Anyway, a little left to do and then I can iron this beast together…but I will be gone this weekend, so that will make it a little difficult to get a lot done. It’s OK. It’s for a good cause. Me. I’m the good cause.

I’m getting into some shows…Fantastic Fibers yesterday, but also Contingent Upon at Southwestern College…

I have two pieces in this show…it’s only open Mon-Thurs, 10:30 AM-2:30 PM. The opening reception is 3/12 at 11 AM and the artists’ talk is 3/12 at noon. I won’t be at any of it, unfortunately, due to my day job. It’s up through 4/14, and I won’t even be around for my Spring Break enough to go see it. Oh well.

I also got into a book show at the downtown library. The opening is Saturday, March 14, from noon-2 PM. I will be at that one at some point, not sure when.

OK, but today it is photosynthesis day, so I am grateful for the blue skies and sun that are out today (and weren’t yesterday)…to make this lab easier. I’m wondering about next week’s sun-related lab though, since there’s rain in the forecast. We might have to adjust slightly. I remember it raining when we did it last year too, but not a lot. Just a sprinkling. No biggie. A little water won’t hurt them. The kids. Or the lab. We’ll see. First I’m going to work to find that printout. Make some attempt to be efficient.

I’ve Got Nostalgic Pavements*

Sometimes there’s a moment and it reminds you of a space in the past that was so incredibly different, a moment that should have been the same or similar, and you have a choice: be thankful that the current moment is not like that at all, or worry that all moments will be like that eventually. My brain is a worrier. I spend a lot of time telling that core part of it that those moments aren’t inevitable, that they are the choices of others, sure, and you have no control over those, but that there is a different person in each of those moments, and it’s better to believe (hope?) that this person is better at moments than the last one…or the one before. I think humans are great at hope…it’s what keeps most of us going.

Including that student from yesterday at tutoring who was telling me his plans to play American football and I’m thinking about his grades and, straight up, his size (sure, he’s gonna grow, but maybe not enough), but I’m not going to tell him nope, that’s not your future. I pull out my phone and show him a picture of a former student with not-great grades but an amazing drive and attitude and I tell him about his full college scholarship and his current amazing GPA and maybe just maybe plant some drive or motivation in there, because he has the hope, the hope of a 12-year-old, and I’m not getting in the way of that, and he asks, then can I come back and show you what I did? And I’m like, well hell yeah, I hope you do. I hope you all do.

My car is back. It wasn’t as bad as I feared. It’s funny though…because they want me to bring her in for an oil change every 3000 miles, and I barely remember to check the little sticky thing in the car. I don’t even know when 3000 miles might be. I mean I did 2500 miles last week (whoops, with not enough oil, although THAT light never came on)…but during the school year, I have no idea when that is. And when you’re talking to someone who lives, breathes, drinks cars on a daily basis, it’s hard to explain to them how low the car’s fluids are on your priority list. I mean, I can’t even get the floors and the bathrooms clean at the moment. I swept around the pool last night, but didn’t have time (I was grading) to scoop it all up into the composting trashcan. There’s Too Much to Do. In fact, I stopped typing this for 5 minutes to send a school-related email that I should have sent two days ago. I’m sometimes surprised that my brain can hold onto some of the threads tangled up in there.

Calli agrees.

Anyway, one more assignment is graded. One more thing to check off the list. That’s a plus. Gotta keep doing those.

I finally got done with that assignment around 9 or 9:30 last night…then spent some time trying to center myself. But almost falling asleep at the same time. Fighting that sleep instinct is the crazy part of my existence. This week I am so tired. And I’m hot-flashing constantly…although that might have been my air conditioning not working at school. OK, no, it’s hot flashes…thought they were mostly done, but apparently not.

And then it was 11 PM and normal people go to bed if they have to get up at 6-something the next morning. But I hate going to bed without some art being made, so I managed to wake up enough…because that drawing had been muttering inside my head all day. So it’s rude not to listen. Get up and grab a pen and do something.

I stared at the paper for a while. I’m not ready to draw the thighs, even though it’s weird to start at the bottom and then jump to the top. It’s weird, but I did it anyway. I’m trying to think about who I was as an artist when I was a kid, when I was in high school and college. It was harder then. I didn’t do it every day. There were many other things to do and I wasn’t always inspired. I love that the inspiration is such a deep well now.

So the head…and the cat…

And I put roots in…

Hopefully more tonight, although this evening is a clusterfuck.

I sat on the couch for a moment to finish my thoughts…Simba was happy to be with a human…

There’s some art stuff coming up in the next few days…the opening of Art That Cuts at Mesa College is Thursday night from 5-7 PM. I’m planning on being there. I have one piece in the show…

Then Saturday, I have two events…I unfortunately will only be at one. The one I won’t be at is the closing reception of Mind the Gap at Southwestern College on Saturday from 1-3 PM…I’ll finally see the show next week after school one day.

I’ll be at the artist talk for California Fibers’ Surface and Structure, at the Branch Gallery, Saturday at 2 PM. The show is coming down after the talk, so it’s your last chance to see it. I hope you come by.

See? Busy week in art. Oh yeah, and Fantastic Fibers opened last week I think? Or is it this week. It’s the 14th…right. So that’s in Paducah, KY, at the Yeiser Center, and you should go see that from 5-7 PM. It’s not just quilts, so that is also cool.

Meanwhile, all I know about the girlchild is that she had to walk to the next village (12-15 miles?) and I haven’t heard from her since…it’s possible that I won’t hear from her until she gets back next week. Hopefully all is well and she’s doing interesting things. Crap. Gotta go to work! I love when time just flips by like that.

*Kate Nash, Mouthwash