Weird Wiggly Space

I’m still in a weird wiggly space, although this is more about relearning the routines I forgot on purpose over the summer. Remembering that school controls everything, however much you try to control it back. Ultimately, if you don’t do the work, you’re not ready to teach, and that’s a problem. Your problem. So sure, you can say, oh I’m going to take this weekend off, but if you didn’t do the work Friday for Monday, then you just fucked yourself over. That said, I’m not ready. I did some work but not all of it, because I didn’t have time to do all of it. Hoping to do some of it actually AT work today (what a concept). We’ll see how that goes. Two-hour staff meeting at the end of it. Could do without that. Apparently not an option.

I did do art things this weekend though. I finished two quilts, went to an opening, delivered the two quilts to my photographer, and started another one. Not a bad progress report.

I finished the binding and sleeves on this big one…

And then took a really crappy night photo of it…

Saturday, I ironed it and dehaired it and packed it up for the photographer, who will do a much better job. On Saturday, I did the last little bit of embroidery on this, on the phone…

Had to add the mail app. And then I quilted the background with the machine…

I did most of this embroidery at the residency.

Smaller, but not less time-consuming when you do this to it. So I also ironed it, dehaired it, and packed it up for the photographer. Two in two days sounds impressive, but the other one was almost done before I left. I just didn’t take it with me.

And now on to the next one…which I started as a drawing at the residency, after listening to/watching a bunch of videos about fungi and mycelial networks…

I enlarged what I’d drawn so far…there will be more. So there’s the next one.

I also put this together, Rooted by Sue Spargo…

I’d finished the embroidery a while ago. I also put the borders on, but there is some stitching on the borders, so I’ll need to prep that. Didn’t get to that last night…I was doing other artsy stuff instead.

Saturday night was the FIG Master Glitch opening at the Techne Art Center in Oceanside.

It’s a big space and we have a lot of work in it.

I have 6 pieces in the show, mostly big pieces, and they’re all upstairs.

Some of them are older and haven’t been out for a while. But if you’re one of those weirdos who is always looking for the penis in my quilts, that’s a legit penis in that one. Meant to do it. Not hiding it.

My work is surrounded by the ceramics of Linda Litteral.

There’s lots of reasons to go to this show, even if you didn’t make it to the opening.

There’s a lot of art.

There’s some great burger joints in Vista, which is pretty close.

And I will be there Saturday, August 29, from 1-6 PM. It’ll probably be less crowded then.

The Man did an admirable job of trying to get photos of me with my work…which is hard when it’s spread out along a balcony basically. That guy wouldn’t move. So he’s in my photos.

And you get a good idea of how big some of my work is.

There’s a small one! Anyway, check it out, open Tuesday-Saturday, 1-6 PM, through September 30.

Busy weekend. Busy upcoming week. I’d like to make it to ceramics today after a month of being away. Not sure what I will be looking at. I know the glazes I ordered came in, but I don’t remember what I was doing before I left. Should take better notes. Glazing, yes. Be more specific. I’m hoping I’m not completely knackered by the end of the 2-hour meeting. What are the odds? But otherwise I won’t be able to get there until Friday. And I’ll be tired then too. Gotta get up, despite the tired part. I don’t have to cook tonight, but I suspect I have to empty the dishwasher. I think there should be a rock, paper, scissors thing for that, because I didn’t have a dishwasher where I was…I just had to wash them all myself. So I think there are some assumptions that might need blasting.

Speaking of blasting, is it true that the dumbass government I didn’t vote for is thinking about using nuclear weapons on Iran? Like WTF? Are they idiots? I mean, I guess I know the answer to that.

So much incompetency. So many bad decisions. Not even sure where to start.

Except I need to go to work and (ironically) teach about safety in the lab (don’t set off a bomb, any kind, especially a nuclear one). Then sit through two hours of yammering. Then hopefully go to ceramics. Then come back and discuss the dishwasher. And hopefully get to drawing at some point. That’s the plan anyway.

Jiggety Jig

Well I’m home, as of yesterday at around 2:30 PM. 900 miles of driving in two days. It could have been worse. At least the landscape was gorgeous for most of it. Very little traffic. Some very stupid drivers trying to pass trucks unsafely…I’d like to see the death/crash statistics on that after making the drive. But southbound wasn’t bad.

I have a lot of photos I’ll try to deal with later…but here was our last dinner together…we went out to one of the two restaurants in the area.

We all got burgers; it was good. I think we all got along as a group, which is nice. The last night, we met in the Commons and talked about Playa and things (mice! birds!) and then went out on the Playa for stargazing. The smoke cleared enough to see shooting stars and the Milky Way, but also this weird yellow light that kept moving around that I apparently semi-hallucinated as moving. Sigh. It was moving. Then I stayed up too late packing the car and cleaning up. The mouse beat my trap one more time and met me on the stairs in the dark and then just disappeared (probably between carpet of stairs and wall, so sleep was not my friend. I left second, around 8 AM, and drove 9+ hours to Bishop, CA, through Oregon, California, Nevada, and then back into California.

My studio for the artist tours we did just for ourselves, because there were logistical issues. There’s four more pieces on the left wall and another one on the floor cooking and the last one on the table, just outlined.

We had a lot of smoke in the last few days from a fire in the Klamath Falls area. Honestly, we fought wildfire smoke most days. Coming back here to an air quality index of 43 is just weird.

There was a reservoir about 15 minutes away that was a daily afternoon trip for some. I went every three days or so…it cut into my afternoon painting time. This was Sunday…they’d been there longer than me and were staying…but I had one last painting to finish.

There was a water snake I kept seeing by the dock. The water wasn’t ever really warm, but it was refreshing and a nice break from sweating in the studio. It was just as warm and dry up there as it is down here (actually, it’s humid as hell here right now, at least for us).

I went out and collected some dried plants in the afternoon as well. There were a few that were really interesting and I never got a chance to do cyanotypes, so I brought a few home with me. See the smoky skies?

Yeah.

I finished painting this at about 7 PM or maybe 8. Some of my dyes were having issues; I washed it out in the hotel room and the brown is mostly gone. We’ll see if I feel like repainting it. I might.

I did bring all the dyes still mixed home. I might test the other brown out before I paint the whole thing again. The reds, oranges, etc are all fine.

I loved having a studio attached to my sleeping place. Very compact.

I mean, technically I have that here, I just don’t have that much room and I can’t leave things lying out like I could there. When I’ve dye painted here, it’s been down in the driveway, do it as fast as possible.

I didn’t sleep much the last two nights…some anxiety about leaving, plus mouse drama. Beautiful skies the night before though.

And in the morning as well…

So hard to leave.

I mean, I miss the animals and my people and being here, but getting that time to do what my brain always wants to do…that was a gift. And now that I’ve done it, I want more. And it makes me really irritable about how much time and energy my day job steals from me.

The Lakeview (no lake, no view) Cowboy, driving out of town.

Then lots of driving. My lunch stop was all burnt out…well the rest stop wasn’t…the surrounding landscape was.

No shade. This is the Bug Fire, which started by the side of the 395 and then joined another fire and has now grown immensely.

I saw CalFire and USFS fire crews cleaning up two fires by the side or in the middle of the 395. Thanks to them.

Eventually I got rain even.

Went up to 8000+ elevation. Saw the Sierras…always a pleasure.

Followed them all the way down. That’s definitely rain.

Spent the night in Bishop with a struggling air conditioner. Got up early and left. More Sierras.

It’s a long straight road for a long straight time.

But the views are expansive. This photo is just for the electrical thingies…three different types. They look humanoid.

Yeah, so I got home and the Man met me and helped unload the car and then watered everything as I tried to get everything put away, washed, cleaned, etc. I did not get it all put away. Then he fed me, which is good, because he has dinner plans today and Friday.

I finished the quilting on this.

I petted all the animals (Simba is already waiting for me on the bed)…

And I already had two phone calls about work, plus a ton of emails and texts, and I have the first three hours already booked in meetings this morning. Could do without that. It’ll be fine. Sure it will. I’ll be fighting for my time.

I have an opening this Saturday, 5-8 PM, at Techne Art Center in Oceanside. I have 6 pieces in the show, including some big ones. Here they are hanging two of them.

Come by; I’ll be there. I’ll also be there from 1-6 PM, sitting the gallery, on Saturday, August 29, if that works better for you. There’s over 150 pieces in the show…it is huge.

OK. I have to go to school for the first meeting. Kids start tomorrow. I have lots to get done today, if I’m allowed to. I have pilates for the first time in like a month after school, and then dinner on my own. Then trim the quilt I finished and get the binding on it…I bought that before I left, anticipating not having the time when I got back. Still processing, y’all. Expect some mind lag. But not in a bad way. Home again, home again, jiggety jig.

Dead Fan…

It’s finally cooling off…a week of ugh. And our bedroom ceiling fan died yesterday. So that was fun. I kamikazed over to Home Depot after school and bought a new one, but the Man will be installing it today, so we found one of those tower fans in the house (there’s like three of them) and put it on a dresser to keep the bedroom cool last night. The house does not release heat easily after a heat wave. My office here is still 88 degrees; it’s much cooler outside. But soon…it will cool off. At least the fan made it through the worst of the heat.

The quilting on this little piece took forever. I ripped out so much…I think because it’s small and any mistake is much more obvious? Or I was tired at the end of the day and didn’t stitch as well? I don’t know. I got all the outlining done Tuesday night and barely started the background…

I had the right color of thread. Miraculous really. And last night, I finished quilting…

And I trimmed it up, ready for binding. Which I’ll need to do quickly if I want it photographed before the deadline and shipping. It jumped up on me! Deadlines do that. I have a bunch of bits and pieces I want to do after that, while I draw the new big quilt. Which I drew in my head during the MRI on Saturday. Results came back fine, nothing that explains the visual disturbance. So good news, still no brain tumor or infarcty thing or blockage they can see. Bad news, they still don’t know what it is and they’ve run out of tests to do. So. There we are. It’s there, it’s not going anywhere for now, and I will be living with it. I realized as I was driving last night that nighttime is where it annoys me the most. I was trying to see where to turn into a road and the little swirly thing was right in the way. Frustrating. But in the larger scheme of things, better than cancer or MS or a seizure disorder or any of the other crap they kept throwing at me. A migraine that doesn’t hurt and will never go away. Except it’s not a migraine. Whatever. Moving on. Well, first make a quilt about it and everything else.

I’ve noticed people like quilts about one discrete issue, not many issues. Ah well. ‘Tis not how my brain works.

One of the shows I went to on Saturday was at the R.B. Stevenson Gallery in La Jolla for my friend Jeanne Dunn’s solo show Forest Bathing.

That’s her in the middle and the infamous Anna Stump on the right. I realized later that her new work kind of reminds me of Dr. Suess and the Lorax (I guess the trees?). But it’s very bright, colorful, and fun. Apparently this piece has a fourth panel…

My favorite part is the DNA tree there in the yellow. Jeanne works hard at her art and is a sweet person…glad to see her getting shows and selling stuff!

More pieces from the Techne Art Center show…

By Gail Wagner…

Interesting cyanotypes by Annalise Neil…

Rhonda Anderson…

These intriguing sculptures by Reginald Green…

They are listed as ceramics and mixed media…

Very colorful.

Ellen Dieter’s work is there too…

I’ll post some more next time. It’s a nice show…lots to look at. I strongly suggest you check it out.

Kitten is moving uber slow these days, but this piqued her interest…

She’s moved down onto the floor with the heat. It might be that she can’t get up on the table any more. She’s pretty stiff moving. Much like me after sitting too long.

This shit.

My school board may flip this way soon. It’s certainly trying to. Assholes.

Yesterday’s weird really red morning sun. Pretty sure there are fires out there causing this…

The smoke from the Line Fire in Riverside maybe? Scary fires in LA right now.

Oh, I did work on ceramics, on my mug, on Monday. I was tired and forgot half my materials, so I just carved for an hour.

Sometimes that’s all I have in me. I’m going to add more underglaze colors to it. If I remember to take the glaze box with me on Friday.

I found this interesting feather yesterday…

So polkadotty.

The last of the science lab apples…this was was truly trashed by Period 1, who didn’t realize I needed it to last all day and poked way too many holes in it (it’s used as a battery for one of the energy stations).

I went through 6 apples…and composted all of them afterwards. Poor things. Glad those stations are done; although they are cool…they are a pain in the ass for the teacher.

OK. Today. Test for the kids. Ha! Fun times. Finishing our first unit. Tons of grading to do, but glad to move onto the next one. I need to make 5 seating charts today, grade a bunch of homework, finish an academic assignment, finish vocab slides (I got next week’s done at least), and survive a union meeting. Ugh. Plus hopefully get a new fan in the bedroom (it’s still warm in there, really warm), take the trash out, and read my book. And put binding on this quilt! Because now I’m committed to delivering it to the photographer. So that’s a thing. It’s cool. I don’t know why it feels like the first two days of school is a week’s worth, but it does. How is it only Wednesday? Yeah. Well. OK. Off I go.