Tag: teaching

Aspirational Batting

Quilt Visions opens tonight…looking forward to seeing the whole show. Looking forward to my abortion-rights piece being out in the world. I started it about a year ago in reaction to Texas tightening up abortion laws. I really wasn’t thinking Roe v Wade would be a memory by the time I got it into a show.

My Body. My Choice. Lots of yelling in this quilt. It was a traumatic, stressful quilt to make. So much so that the next piece is all just pretty. That one got into Quilt National. Not bad for two quilts made in a year when I didn’t make much.

I will be at the preview opening tonight, the members’ opening tomorrow, my art time from 10:30-11, and then the show is open through January. Check it out! It’s always an honor to get into these shows…one I didn’t think I could attain 25-30 years ago. So that’s cool.

On average, I finish about 6 good-sized quilts a year. COVID has kicked my ass on that number. Well, COVID was the initial cause, but now it’s just my teaching job that does it. In 2020, I did make 6 pieces, but two were 12″ square or less. So 4 good-sized quilts. There were 8 in 2021, but two were small (12″ square or less) and one was a final finish on a quilt from 2001 or so. Two of the other 5 were relatively small pieces for me. This year? This year is fucked up for some reason. I’m on the 4th quilt of the year, but they have all been big, hefty beasts. That said, I finished the first one in January (it’s the one in Visions), and then the next one took me 6 freaking months to get out (the one in Quilt National)…then one over the summer, finished by the end of July, and this one, which I don’t even think is that big, is taking for-freakin-ever. I started it the end of July, early August, and I’m still not done. It’s the piddly I-can’t-even-work-for-an-hour shit that’s killing me. I did get exactly an hour last night, because I went to bed later. But I’m so frustrated. I so need more art time. I don’t know what is going to give (probably my sanity), because it’s not like I can just wing the day job. There is no useful curriculum that makes sense. So completely frustrated.

Sigh. The plus is that I’m getting closer to done on the stitchdown. Here’s Wednesday night…

I made it to the last head! I basically went in a big circle. And last night, I got one arm and her upper torso half done.

I’m pretty sure the other arm is half done? Maybe? Or not. So finish the torso and the left arm, and then I can sandwich it and start quilting. I bought batting on Monday. Let’s call it aspirational batting, because I thought I would be sandwiching earlier this week. Maybe not. I have a shit ton of work to do this weekend in between all the Visions things (which I’m really excited about!), but next weekend is pretty wide open. I’m hoping to finish stitchdown in the next couple of days, then sandwich is an hour or so, then get quilting this week. Stitchdown is taking longer than I thought it would (all those letters!)…I’m well into the 7th hour and have at least another hour, possibly two to go. So I am getting there…but I’m also evaluating the upcoming shows and seeing what I have that can be in those shows so I don’t have to make new work. I WANT to make new work, but let’s talk reality…I need to (1) make smaller work, (2) stop sleeping, or (3) quit the day job (can’t afford to do that yet). So that. Yes.

OK. School. Be efficient. Be be efficient. Don’t let the 7th graders get you down. Deal with the parents’ stuff this afternoon (was supposed to do it yesterday; didn’t happen). Enjoy the art time with other people this weekend…it doesn’t happen as often as I need or want, so enjoy. Get as caught up as possible this weekend. Keep making art.

Instantaneous Velocity…

I don’t know what I’m teaching tomorrow in three of my classes. I made some things, found some things, but I can’t get my head around the sense of it, and last night, was trying to figure out what instantaneous velocity is (it’s not what I thought, but now I know) and whether my kids need to know what it is (I still don’t know the answer to that), all of this while sitting at a school-board meeting because our board seems to think cost-of-living and inflation don’t matter, we will work our asses off no matter what, and staring at their faces as I’m WORKING THROUGH THEIR MEETING WHERE THEY VOTED TO PAY BOARD MEMBERS WHO DIDN’T SHOW UP LAST MONTH (seriously, can I get paid to not show up?), I’m more than a little irritated with them. There’s one I can stand. The others? Not so much. So there’s that fun stuff going on. By this afternoon, I will have a plan for tomorrow’s classes. I hope.

A bunch of high flyers in 7th grade were gone yesterday, and the classes worked amazingly well, even without an aide (for the 2nd day running). Good to know they are teachable when certain people are gone. Frustrating too, but hey. It was a good day for teaching, lots of labs in 8th grade that worked well…this one!

That’s a kid who doesn’t do much of anything in class. So I’m glad I got him to do something. Job skillz? Who knows. (We’re learning about inertia.)

I didn’t start sewing last night until 9:45…the night before, I got a bigger chunk of time, almost an hour and a half. Because I stopped grading things.

I finished one of the heads and the entire earth…then last night, I got a goodly chunk of the other head done…

I’m pretty stressed about not getting more art time right now. I’m having to work weekends for school just to keep my head above water and mostly ahead of the game. I delivered art yesterday after school for an upcoming show, which is cool, but I need to MAKE more art, and it’s just taking me so long to finish a quilt because of the day job. I can’t get far enough ahead…this weekend is problematic because of all the Visions things happening, which I’m excited about, but also stressed, because I still need to grade and plan for next week, and I’m having a hard time with it. I think I need to post a bunch of stuff for school this morning too, but I have a morning meeting and a union meeting after school, so I’m not sure how all this will get done. OK. Well here’s a picture of the dog who wouldn’t move so I could make the bed this morning.

His boy is home today, so hopefully that will help with his mopeyness. Who knows. I’m going to do some school stuff now. For quite a few hours. Then hopefully sew some more.

Raising a Caterpillar

How to distract yourself from work: try to raise a caterpillar. First of all, I had to bring it home because it was eating so much that I was afraid it would starve over the weekend…

They ate through everything I had, so I offered them my own tomato plants, but they were a different subspecies and the caterpillar didn’t appear to want to eat them…

So I went to school Sunday morning, after watching the caterpillar pace around the edge of the container Saturday night and Sunday morning, and got the right kind of plant…no go! So finally I Googled some more details on the caterpillar and figured out…it wanted dirt! Well, that’s easy. I got dirt…

Oh, it was so happy. So was I. As soon as I put it back in, it started digging…

So in two weeks, hopefully we’ll see a moth. Things I will do to avoid grading and lesson planning, y’all. Totally. Although I did a bunch of that too. It felt like a lot until I got up this morning and realized all the shit I still need to do for this week. Whoops!

I delivered two pieces to a gallery curator/owner on Saturday, and she recorded me talking about them…

Apparently this post is mostly videos. I also packed up three more quilts for delivery tomorrow. I’d like to make art, but I’m spending a lot of time delivering and picking up instead. It’s a good problem to have.

I’ve done a little stitching over the last few days…

All letters really…well some stuff coming up to the letters on Friday, I think.

Last night, I managed to stitch the edge into the stitching, so I got to rip and restitch a bit…

Stitching down the letters is not a fast process. Nothing about those letters is fast.

Lots of video. Like I said.

Saturday night, the Man sang with another band, Sonic Moonshine.

I hung out and drew a bit…

This is Simba’s face after I got home…I was playing elk mating calls (don’t ask why…just know he was perturbed by it)…

This is remarkably true…

And this just made me laugh (as a non-church person)…

Well I’m going to take my container of dirt (and liquefying caterpillar) back to school, hope I survive the day (I’m just tired, still), and get to stitch some more tonight. This coming weekend is the Visions opening, which is nice…I think it’s also Quilt National 2021 with my sold quilt up at the San Jose Museum of Quilts, if you’re up there. I’ve got a busy week and I’ve only planned 8th-grade science completely about halfway through Wednesday. Minor issue. Ah well. I will get there. Somehow. I have three assignments, all in different stages of preparedness. One is typed up but needs slides and a video. One is barely started and only half a thought in my head (gotta navigate the stupid curriculum they provide us with). And the last one exists on paper in 5 different versions, so I have to make something out of that. So the first one needs about an hour, the second probably an hour, maybe more, and the third, at least an hour. Do you wanna know how much prep time I get at school? Not enough to deal with that and everything else, that’s for sure. So it will happen, but probably after hours. Along with the four meetings I have before and after school this week. This year is a challenge…and not in a good way.

I Did Not Buy This

This Friday kinda snuck up on me. Not bad. Appreciating its presence. Would appreciate it more if I knew what I was teaching next week in 8th grade. Spent a few hours last night Frankensteining a variety of labs together into stations and then searching through the house for materials to use…one of which was fabric…I know, I know, this shouldn’t be a problem, but it has to be two 24″ squares of fabric I don’t CARE about, and I care about a lot of my fabric. I did however find this…

I did not buy this. It came to me. I don’t know from where. But two chunks of it are going to school for science labs. Along with 9 plastic Easter eggs, which I had put out in the pile for the thrift shop, and 2 bowling balls that I liberated (with help from an employee) from a local bowling alley. THIS NEVER HAPPENED (he said, as he helped me put them in a bag). I’m waiting for 40 lids to 2-liter bottles (please don’t ask why I have bottles with no lids; I agree that it’s stupid, and it’s not MY stupid).

So yeah, work is complicated and requires a lot of work. Beyond my working hours. A lot more than last year. Probably equivalent to the Zoom COVID year. Although even then, there was already curriculum we had done; I just had to convert it to something they could do online. This year, the curriculum is mostly useless and boring, so I’m having to scramble. I have planned through Wednesday of next week, almost. Ha! Wait, not even all the way through Wednesday. Nope. FUCK ME.

So this may explain my slow status of the stitchdown. I’m not starting until after 9:30 PM most nights, and I need to go to bed at 10:30 or I don’t get enough sleep, so last night, as I was stitching and looked up and it was 10:38, you can imagine how this is going.

Wednesday night, I think I only got about 30 minutes in…

That said, it was a pretty good 30 minutes. No flags in uteri…

The thread is not happy though…it’s having spool issues and loopy issues. It keeps getting itself caught under the spool and then pulling every which way, or it loops up (just one loop) down below and catches on the foot. I’m not sure how to stop either of those things. I love that after a million years doing this, I still don’t know how to fix anything.

Last night, I started on an arm and the three young humans in the bottom corner, my titular folx…

I’m hoping to get a ton done this weekend, but please remember the science planning and wonder with me how that will be happening. Because I can do a little planning at school, but literally nothing NOTHING gets graded or done at all during the 2 7th-grade classes because they cannot self-start, self-maintain, or self-anything but yelling and drama. It’s really only about 6-10 kids per class, but that is enough to make me crazy.

Meanwhile, I got to school yesterday and the caterpillar had eaten everything and was (blurrily, sorry) waiting for me to get more food.

Which I did. Immediately. Also, I took pictures of their poop…

So you could see it. It’s actually sort of star-shaped. AND do you see the other caterpillar? I did NOT see it, which means it is currently in my trash. Ah well. Can’t save all the parasites.

Anyway. Fatso is hopefully going to be going to be liquifying themselves soon.

What else is going on? Sigh. Trying to figure out how to insure two pieces in a show that doesn’t have insurance. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. Home insurance is not covering much. Also Katie is here.

She’s been good, but all the animals are a bit on edge with the newbie. Including her.

OK, going to work to feed the caterpillar, survive the last day of a unit with some classes, research day with some other classes, being super efficient with my time (ha! What a joke…I’m sure something will come up that fucks that over), getting a massage (short) and back pop later, plus need to water and pick up mail, plus finish all the planning for 8th grade for next week and grade all the stuff from last week that got subsumed under grades being due. LOSE MY MIND somewhere in there and maybe read my book. That would be good.

Fascinating Poop…

While it is awesome and feels really good to get into shows, the paperwork and the prep to get stuff out of the house and into the world is sometimes a bit much. I’ve got two to get ready before Saturday, but am having problems contacting the person I’m delivering to. They keep emailing me, I respond, I get nothing. Then next week, I’m delivering four, so I’ll get those ready this weekend. They’ve been really good about being flexible, which I appreciate, since I can’t deliver during the regular work day. Two nights ago, I was filling out paperwork online and one cell in the form wouldn’t take any answer. Until I put a blank space after it. Don’t understand that shit. Luckily people are mostly helpful and understanding, and it’s just me losing my mind in the background sometimes quietly and sometimes with some force. Day job does not help.

So yeah, I got into Quilt National with Desert Mother…

I think this is the fourth time I’ve gotten into QN with a piece made for (and usually rejected from) another show. This one was too late to enter into the show it was made for. I guess it turned out OK. She was the palate cleanser between the abortion rights quilt that will be at Visions starting this month and the two pissed-off Roe v Wade quilts that have come after. It felt bad to be finishing her during the beginning of the Russia/Ukraine war and all the other crazy shit that was happening, but I needed to make her. So that.

Meanwhile, I’m working on one of the pissed-off Roe v Wade quilts…finally doing stitchdown. I got really stuck in my head about starting this, so hard to get the machine set up (not really) and such a pain to do the stitching (not really). But last night, I finally stitched…

Even though it was less than 30 minutes, it was a start…

I’m figuring 5-6 hours. I could be totally off. But the last one, which is bigger than this, was 5 1/2 hours, so hopefully by the weekend I’ll be done? I don’t have any more meetings this week, I think. I did go to the gym last night, which ate up some time, but I needed it. I need it every week. I got to read my book and exercise. Perfecto.

Tonight is pilates and I have to cook and my parents’ dog will be here, so there will be some adjustments going on, but after that, I should have time to stitch down some more. I’ve just been so tired lately. Anyway. It’s progress. Slow as hell this year getting quilts done. It’s frustrating. I did get good news yesterday that my other 8th-grade co-teacher, the one who will actually plan interesting stuff with me, will be back in a month. Halle-fucking-lujah. Not doing it all by myself! What a concept. Looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, Monday morning, I got to school and this was on my door.

Yeah I figured out who left it (I had two reasonable possibilities), so we ID’d it (tomato hornworm, turns into a pretty cool moth) and housed it…

Our school has a garden that is mostly not doing anything at the moment but producing limes and compost tomatoes, so I’ve been trimming the plants to feed this thing, which must be close to chrysalis stage…

So we’ll see how that goes. It’s very slow-moving at this point. And it makes the most fascinating rectangular poops with ridges in it. Sorry. Forgot to take photos of its poop.

Anyway. So that’s where I’m at. Making art slowly. Exhausted by the day job. Raising a caterpillar.

This is the Week…

THIS is the week where I get back to regular artmaking. I swear. I have two pieces to prep for delivery Saturday and three pieces for next Tuesday, but otherwise, school notwithstanding, I can art at night. Maybe. Ha!

The show I’m delivering for on Saturday will be at Liberty Station at the end of the month; first official opening is the first Friday in November…

I have two pieces in the show, and they’ll be up for a few months, so check it out. I’ve never seen this gallery space; looking forward to it.

I spent all weekend grading. And I’m not done. Well, I think I’m done GRADING…I just need to post everything and add comments etc. THEN I will be done. THEN I can try to plan Friday for 8th grade (I only got through Thursday in planning) and maybe even the next unit. I’m not crying. You’re crying.

When I grade, I have to constantly distract myself from how boring it is to just sit there for 5 hours straight, sifting through emails and docs and kid verbiage. So my eyeballs are constantly wandering…

Hummingbird through the weird coating on my windows where the kids tore it off.

Simba contemplating his hedgehog…

Simba contemplating ME!

Poor puppy. It’s boring when I’m working, I know. And I’m almost always working.

On Friday night, the Man had a show at the La Mesa Oktoberfest, which was pretty fun (albeit exhausting)…

It was their first time playing there…

Pretty crowded. And then Saturday night, his band played at the birthday party of one of the bandmates…

Nice location, although I was too exhausted by then to do much…

Except draw and read my book, amusingly enough…

Honestly probably should have stayed home and finished grades, but he wanted me to go. They played well. And I’m not going to the next show…it’s a school night and it’s some Battle of the Bands thang…nah. I’m good.

Last night, I headed up to PHES Gallery in Carlsbad, where FIG has its current show, Portals, to be part of the artist talk.

Ellen Speert ran the panel and Paul Henry took photos and found more seats.

We had our token mansplainer in the audience who tried to tell us women have all the same exhibitions that men do and there are no gender issues in the art world. I love it when that happens. NOT. All in all, though, it was a good talk. I hope.

Meanwhile, my sourdough starter is still alive…

Oh yeah, and we got a gift for doing the artist talk…

Best kind…homemade stuff from the artists’ yard.

OK, school calls, loud and clear. Grades. Two-hour staff meeting that better be cut short. The potential for some crazy in science. Ugh. I’m tired. But my goal is to get it all done during the work day so I can drag myself in here tonight and start the stitchdown on this piece. I’ve got three more I need to make before March apparently, and that will be tight. So gotta get going.

Head Banging

You know, I’m currently in a Zoom for school (yes, well before school hours) because they couldn’t send it in an email. It’s chaotic and I’m not going to remember any of it. Plus someone just ordered at Starbucks and was not on mute, so hopefully she got stuff for all of us. CLUSTERFUCK FRIDAY. I had a headache when I got up. It has NOT gone away.

I’m having a hard time concentrating to write this. Head banging away while listening to woman back East who apparently couldn’t do this Zoom at a time when it was reasonable for us to be required to go.

I ironed everything down on Wednesday night…the right way this time.

Wow those heads are big. But that’s real. They’re so big and in our faces. Stupid Supreme Court. I’m seriously not coherent today. I have school shit all over the place, grades due, too many things to get done, plus the Man has two shows this weekend and I have an artist talk. So I’m feeling sort of BEYOND overwhelmed. So deep breaths. All over the fucking place.

Last night, I did the serious iron…the spray with water and 30 seconds of heat over the whole thing. It’s all I had time for. Hoping that I can stitch sometime this weekend, but it’s not currently looking good (cries into her tea).

Note to self. Trying to write while this woman is talking is very difficult. Plus the dog is barking somewhere. I should figure out where. OK. I give up. Pro: It’s Friday. I need to get through today without feeling like I’m a shitty teacher (ugh), then meet with the parental units about their trip, then figure out how to get to the La Mesa Oktoberfest to see the Man play. Then hopefully get a full night’s sleep. Then grade my ass off on Saturday. Not sure I’ll make it to my guild meeting tomorrow. Then another show. OK. I’m getting my head around it.

Dear Wild Animals:

Dear wild animals: I realize many of you are nocturnal and I sympathize with that whole ‘avoiding predators’ things, sleep during the day, yada yada yada. But I am not nocturnal. Well mostly. Let’s put it this way. I have to subsume…no, not subsume…sublimate (something sub anyway…is subserviate a word?)…my nocturnal tendencies to hold down a day job that requires some level of awakeness (oooh also not a word) and ability to make 7,000 decisions in 14 seconds flat. So when you, wild animals, are traipsing through my yard and on my roof at holy shit in the morning, the little dog who is currently sleeping with me loses his tiny little mind and barks and boofs until at least an hour after you are done traipsing. Please traipse elsewhere. Or do it more quietly. Please.

Tired. Yes. Why do you ask? When am I NOT tired? Hmmm. Good question.

I think I might finally be getting back to some normalcy in the art stuff after last week’s disruption. Monday night, I had to pack a quilt, a HUGE quilt, that need ironing and lots of dehairing and is just huge and awkward as hell to get done in here (stop making huge quilts!)…

So I got that packaged up into a box that was 83″ high. And yesterday, I shoved it into my car after school and dropped it off so it could go to Quilts=Art=Quilts in Auburn, NY.

Hello box that is almost as long as my car. I love this quilt. I love that it’s getting into shows. I don’t love shipping it. This weekend, I need to clean up and pack two more quilts…wait, no, there are five quilts going out between 10/8 and 10/14 I think. Still waiting for an answer on one…because they want delivery during the day…not shipped. Um. Artists have day jobs? Really? Sigh. It’s a school, too, so you’d think they’d get it. No answer yet. OK. So there’s that. It’s done. So last night, I’m like, where the hell am I on the quilt that I wanted done by the beginning of September that is now going to be an October quilt because my day job is a time-sucking asshole? Oh yeah, sew the background together. Easiest thing I’ve done all day. Seriously. Then I trimmed it. I did measure twice (good). I probably should have checked my drawing with the measurements twice (oh well) because I had graded for about 3 hours and I was tired. I knew I was tired, but I wanted to be making art dammit. Anyway. The measurements are fine. Somehow in my head, though, even though I’m staring at a drawing that is taller than it is wide, I started ironing with the fabric horizontal instead of vertical. Luckily I didn’t get far before I figured out shit wasn’t going to fit. And I didn’t iron hard yet, because I didn’t know if it was in the right place. So I could pull off everything I’d ironed.

It’ll be fine. Everything is fine. Tonight (hopefully…after school and taking the cat to the vet and cooking dinner) I will try again. Thinking it through. Again. Wish me luck. I also ironed the nonwoven version of my drawing down to some silk I had lying around (welcome to my weirdo stash)…plus a random diatom thing that we put on there to use up the nonwoven.

I trimmed the silk away on the smaller piece…didn’t have time/energy to do the larger one, but I will. Then I can paint the silk from behind and see how that looks. That’s not happening soon…I have grades due in less than a week and that’s all I’m doing is grading and trying to plan 8th-grade science with zero help. I emailed the other teacher and that’s a no. I don’t think he’s doing anything but the provided curriculum, which has no labs, or hardly any. It’s driving me and my kids bonkers. I’ve been trying to map out the next unit so there’s plenty of hands-on stuff, but I can’t even get my head around the subject matter (Force and Motion, Velocity, Speed, ugh…it’s not like there’s a shortage of cool things to do…I just can’t figure out how to organize it). I will have to get there at some point (actually really soon), but I’m not ready. Hopefully my 7th-grade co-teacher will be helping this week with some real basic stuff. Here’s my piece in the PHES Gallery in Carlsbad…the artist talk with four of the artists (including me) is Sunday night at 5 PM.

Hopefully I will be coherent. Questionable at this rate. This is a mental war I’m having with the online library at the moment.

I order books online to read on my iPad, and they’ll be like 6 weeks out or 3 weeks out and then they all come the same week. Every time. Luckily they have a new thing where you can say, um no, deliver it next week instead…so if you’re like me and you already have one book you’re reading that’s supposed to take 7 hours and you only get to read for like 30 minutes most days and another book queued up that’s supposed to take 9 hours, and you really really want to check out a third book, but you can’t. Because you only get them for 21 days and there’s already 5 people in line behind you, so if you start reading it and don’t finish, it might be another 21 days before you see it again. Or more. Someday in the future we will just pay writers a living wage no matter what and all the books will be free and fully accessible. Seems reasonable, yeah? I think so. But for now, no, I will try to save up all the books I want to read (right now, I am obsessively checking out every book written by two women authors…been working on them all year. I think I have four books left for one of them and only three on the other. Then I can read other things (I do read other things while I’m waiting for these to show up). Who are the authors? Natasha Pulley and Sarah Maas…light, except when it’s not, total fantasy or steampunk or dystopian strange fantasy. Not real. Makes up for everything else. OK. School. Today is rocks and landforms in 7th grade and designing systems to capture energy in 8th. I’m hoping 8th runs itself and I can do some planning. 7th never runs itself. It requires constant putting out of fires and sometimes arguing with the adults who are supposed to be helping kids in the class, which I honestly could do without. So hopefully that’s solved today too and I can do art for real with a larger portion of my brain tonight

.

Three Days of Art…

I had a great three days of art, although I hit some line on Saturday and had to come home a few hours early and take a nap to beat a migraine that was starting. I’m still tired, but that’s normal for me, unfortunately. Certainly, this is not the week that will fix that. I’m glad I signed up for the conference. Most class situations I need to travel, so there are travel costs, plus hotel etc, and then it’s too expensive for me. This was perfect…in town, no travel/hotel costs. Kept my food costs down by bringing lunch one day. Wish I had had more energy for hanging out after, but that was my body telling me I was doing too much. I know the next SAQA conference is in Florida, so that’s not happening, but I’d keep my eyes open for another one (although they don’t do workshops usually, and I really enjoyed that).

The best part about workshops is getting to know/hear how another artist’s brain works. Betty Busby has a very interesting and creative brain, and it was very cool to listen/see her process. We did lots of fabric painting, which was cool, but also the nonwoven stuff in the cutting machine was very cool too.

But first the painting…sun prints…

Plants under the silk…

Metallic paints…

This needs ironing…

I didn’t make as many as some…

I had more silk…just never know what to do with those pieces…

Although I have more ideas now than I did. The coolest part for me was the nonwoven stuff in the cutting machine. I did a few diatoms the day before…

And then went home Friday night, did schoolwork for 2 hours (ugh), then took one of my drawings, thickened the lines and simplified it…

Until it looked like this…

Then texted it to Betty, who put it on her computer, and then we made a cutting file of it…

Tossed my other piece of nonwoven into the machine…

And got this!

Fiddly as shit. The plan is to iron it to silk, then paint from behind, cut the silk away from the design, and then put that on a background for quilting etc.

The leftovers are pretty fascinating too…

I was not organized enough to save them for a backwards version. Not really backwards. Opposite? Notan? IDK. But certainly I have some ideas…she showed us how she has all these parts (if I divided a drawing into parts) and you can compose with the parts.

Hmmm. More ideas. Also finally found my Inktense pencils and played around with them a little bit before my brain shut down.

It really did shut down. I drove home and went straight to bed for an hour. In the afternoon. Took meds. Woke up and felt better. I did not get enough sleep last week and my brain was in overdrive. Plus Saturday night, we went to the Man’s dad’s 85th birthday party. So I needed to be awake for that.

Sunday was all work. Simba on guard dog mode…

Until about 9:30 PM, when I started searching out all the quilts that need to be shipped or delivered in the next few weeks. A big one needs to go out ASAP. I have one more roll of quilts to pull down for two of them that are going later, but I found a chunk of them.

Some of them have never been in shows, so that’s cool. And now the studio is a disaster area! I’ll get the exhibits on the page where I tell you what shows I’m in…as soon as I get progress report grades done and survive this week. It’s hot again. What are the odds that my class A/C is working? Three work orders, no change. I’m gonna be irritated if today is still no change. Probably gonna be irritated anyway, honestly, because I was gone for two days and a bunch of kids did absolutely nothing. Ah well. It is what it is. You reap what you sow. Or something. Off to the day job. Hopefully I will get back to ironing soon…probably not tonight, but soon.

Hello Art Friday…

Hello Art Friday. I’d like to make you a thing. A regular thing. I used to have Friday Draw on my calendar and then every Friday, at night, I’d pull out my sketchbook and draw for an hour. Ah the days! Then I got buried in school stuff and sometimes I do absolutely nothing on Friday nights because my brain is gone, and sometimes I grade things, because it means I don’t have to do it some other time. I don’t know what the solution this year is, but I want to draw more, but also, school is taking so much time that I can’t do the things I want.

Although I took these two days off for the SAQA thing…yesterday we got to listen to a bunch of inspiring artists talk about their practices: Jane Dunnewold, Paula Kovarik, Betty Busby. Best quote: “When you know what you’re about, no one can take that away from you” (JD). Paula made me want to use more, play more, cut things up more. Betty is just amusing and inspiring as hell. I’m spending the next two days in a workshop with her. Looking forward to it. I got to see lots of other people I hadn’t seen in years, since 2019 or 2015 or whatever. Yes, I also got a new student at school, had to add them to my online class, then to the app they were using in class, and then they pulled my sub, the one that has access to everything, fuckers, seriously, if I set up a specific sub that I trust while I’m gone, then you shouldn’t fuck with that. That shit pisses me off. So who knows. I did set stuff up so hopefully anyone can handle it, but you know how that goes.

I have all my art supplies packed up, I’m wearing an old holey shirt and shorts, I got sunburnt yesterday at lunch, so I have my sunscreen. I even packed a lunch so I could save some money and just buy caffeine and maybe spend more time playing during the 2-hour lunch break rather than waiting in line somewhere for food. I have ideas swirling around my head and it feels really good. So yeah, I’m an introvert (I needed a serious alone-time break yesterday between the talks and the two exhibition receptions). So I went to Liberty Station, walked around, ate…

(it looks better than it tasted, unfortunately) got some caffeine, and then sat in the car, trying to charge my aging phone (it was not happy) and drew for a bit…

Oh, I also graded a week’s worth of homework papers while listening to artists talk, and then stitched the rest of the time, because I am notoriously bad at listening if I am not distracting myself with something in my hands…

Definitely making some progress, but it will still take forever :-). Forever is OK though. For some things. Not traffic…

I don’t usually have to sit in traffic. But I did it for art. And besides, the location where the art is happening is pretty nice…

Cooler too. Always a plus. Autumn my ass. Southern California does Autumn for about a week in late October, and then that’s it. We’re done.

My ex is at a wedding in the UK…check out that building…also check out that family! It’s nice to see them all in a photo together.

Also looks like nice weather.

Last night, I sat on the deck in the dark, talking to the Man, collecting mosquito bites. Thought I was staring at a planet up in the sky. I was…it was Jupiter.

Also my birth constellation. Nice coincidence.

This morning, the sky was pretty. My phone can’t handle the pretty…

Unfortunately…

OK, well, the personal art project is definitely suffering this week, but it’s for a good cause. I don’t expect to get much done on it until maybe Sunday, but we’ll see. I will however be slinging some paint and who knows what else today…looking forward to it. Plus after all the emails from school yesterday, it’s good I wasn’t there I guess. I don’t know. Whatever. Just needed a break. If I take two days a month every month? Yeah, that won’t happen…and it’s too hard to do the prep and after stuff. But definitely to remember that making art helps…and maybe taking a day off to catch up on grading AND make art would be a positive thing. We’ll see. For now, though, it looks like there is less traffic today, so I will be leaving soon. Need more caffeine. I’m certainly failing on the sleep front still.