Studio Time Turned Errand Time

I had good intentions.  First, I find NO paper in the house for the printer.  Four people use the paper and printer and not one goober could wave the flag to tell me that they'd taken the last of it, so errand #1 was to get paper.  Then my distractible self saw Cost Plus and I just KNEW there was something I intended to pick up there, but couldn't remember what so I wandered through the store, growing increasingly stressed at the sight of all of the Christmas goodies and the long mental list of things I need to do to get ready for Christmas, so I ran out with empty hands.  Then there was the trip to the grocery store for specific items for a wonderful dinner.  During the grocery trip, my husband called while on a break from stressful board meetings to say that he wants to go out for dinner tonight and reminded me that the daughter for whom I planned this particular dinner has grad school classes tonight.  Duh.  I should have remembered.  Of course it's just as well since the majority of ingredients I needed were either unavailable or inedible.  I ask myself, how can I live in CA and not be able to find a single avocado in the store that I can eat in the next two days?  They're like rocks!  Grrr.  Oh, and I was reminded that yes, there ARE shirts to pick up at the cleaners.  I feel like the maid.

Everyone is on notice.  Tomorrow I will not answer the phone or check in on Facebook.  I am plotting a couple of art projects that are just for the family, so there's no pressure to produce a marketable anything.  I am going to take the great advice I've been offered in the last day and just make something, be creative and have fun.  THEN I'll go to another store and try to find a stupid avocado.

Another Brain Freeze

What is wrong with me?  I have the urge to be creative, but sit here with my brain permanently in "park" mode and unable to move ahead.  I started thinking about making holiday gifts, but then I wonder what I could make that someone would actually want to receive.  I think friends and family like my quilts, but it's November (reminder: start making quilts in January!), so that's not a real option.  I look at all the magazines and "how to" books that I've got that cover every medium known to mankind, but the first thing I think is, "What would someone do with this???"

Yesterday I read a blog written by someone that reminded me of myself.  She loves being artsy and craftsy and is drawn to publications about creativity, in awe of the super talents and prolific work of so many others.  Yet, like me, she feared looking too closely or spending too much time exploring others' work for fear that her own ideas and art would be influenced by the work of another artist.  Then there's the part of me that is like a deer in headlights.  I'm surrounded by artistic materials and, more often than not, have the time to be creative but do nothing.  It's depressing.

Today I will at least explore some resources for artistic prompts.  I'm wasting time, wasting opportunity and need a nudge.  OK, I need a really big kick and a shove.

A Dream or a Plan?

While I rarely watch bad daytime television, I had the TV on while folding laundry (so much for making art) the other day, unable to find the remote control to change the channel.  I was about to turn it off when I heard Dr. Phil ask someone if they had a dream or a plan, and said that the difference between the two was that a plan has a timeline. A plan means setting dates and deadlines and then checking in to see if progress is being made.  I'm grateful for my most artsy friend Debbie, whom I can fuss about the frustration and who always has kind and positive words to get me back on track.

What can I do to turn my dreams into a plan?  I guess it's time to work on that timeline, or at least on establishing the next single step in that timeline in the hope of creating a real artsy life and (hopefully) business.  Deadlines and I have never gotten along in the sandbox, but it's time to try.  If at first we don't succeed, it's a bad idea to keep doing the same thing over and over again that failed!

Published! Sort of....

Last year (or was it the year before?) a friend sent me a link with a video featuring the sketchbook project by the Art House Co-op in Brooklyn.  While visiting their site, I discovered an upcoming project, a project about which I agonized (because that's what I do best) with respect to participating.  I butched up, signed up and participated.  Now after a long, long, LOOONGGG wait, the book for the project has arrived.

Every participant was given three words for which they were to produce a visual definition.  The words were submitted by the general public, and were selected randomly.  One of the three canvases of each participant was to be reproduced in a booklet containing these digital images.  They chose my canvas illustrating the word "atmosphere."  I think there's a picture in the way-back-pages of my blog.  Anyway, the book arrived today and I'm so excited.  It's silly given that all I had to do was participate to be published, but I don't care!  It's a book and it has my name in it, so I'm have a celebratory glass of chardonnay.  Like I needed an excuse ;-)

To Etsy or Not To Etsy?

When I left my full time job at the hospital a whopping three and a half years ago, many of my co-workers expressed concern for my sanity. They know that I'm a social beast and inquired about how I would occupy my time and fulfill my need to interact with real people. My expectation, as silly as it seems now, was that I would create art during the hours my son was in school and be super mom and carpool queen when he was home. I had discovered etsy.com and wanted to open a shop within six months of having left the job, sure I could do that with nothing but time on my hands. That is NOT what happened.

What did happen was that I discovered that as a family, we have way too much stuff. That stuff is constantly being left where it doesn't belong, or it's dirty and needs cleaning, or that it needs to be repaired, returned, or replaced. I live the life of an around-the-clock personal assistant to the clan and spend too little time making art.

Yesterday was my birthday. My husband asked me now that I had reached the age of (choke) 51, had I any grand words of wisdom to share about what I felt about life, what I had learned, or some other silly thing. Actually, I had been thinking about it. My mother died at age 63, my younger sister just days before turning 47, my paternal grandmother in her late 60's, along with a few others that have rattled my emotional cage. I've spent too much of the little time we get in life planning or thinking about what I wanted to do, but not really doing much. It's time to revisit plans for the future.

With the success of the sale of the rocking chair and quilt, I thought again about the possibility of opening an etsy shop. It's incredibly inexpensive, the site is so well known that marketing isn't an issue (for the site as a whole, not for an individual shop), and I wouldn't have to be wed to a single type of art. I haven't made up my mind yet, but I have given it serious thought and spent a ton of time looking at prospective "competition." What I see are thousands of people who did more than talk about it and who are enjoying creating and selling their creations.

Here's hoping for just a pinch more courage.

The Jacked Studio

I'm sharing space that is too small to actually share. The studio has been jacked by my daughter. I'm still trying to figure out the source of the sand on the desk given that we live 30 miles from the beach. Sigh.

This week has been chaotic trying to juggle the Mom stuff and the artist stuff. On the mom side, my son's German teacher organizes and chaperones a trip to Germany every year during Spring Break, taking high school students from two schools. The parent meeting was not permitted on the school campus this year (new laws regarding not being able to discuss money that isn't an official school fund raiser, blah blah blah, and it's not an official school trip), so, of course, we volunteered our home. That was before we were notified that the electric company would be shutting off power for the day. It wouldn't have been such a big problem had the electric company not run into complications, extending the "power back up" time from 4 p.m. to a predicted 8 p.m. This with about 20 parents expected at 6:30 and the curbs on both sides of the entire block coned off and marked "No Parking." Oh, and having no lights. Ack! Thank goodness the power was restored an hour before the meeting. I had just enough time to bake cookies (yeah for frozen dough blobs from a school fundraiser!) and entertain the parents while we waited for the habitually-late teacher. He did not disappoint, showing up about 1/2 hour late. What a day.

This was topped with the chaos (an increasingly frequent condition at home) of getting my son and his friend registered for Blizzcon and get the name on my ticket changed to that of his friend. Moms who hear screams of, "For the Horde!" and other World of Warcraft of StarCraft blabberings from their teens know what I mean. I was surrounded by gaming geeks and nerds for hours. It was most amusing. But it's done, they're gaming their brains out and I have the sandy studio desk to myself for a while. To top it off, all these geeks get to enjoy a closing concert by the Foo Fighters. OK, NOW I'm jealous!

On the art side, I have to admit that I'm suddenly obsessive about the idea of generating more quilts. I'm exploring techniques for incorporating images and/or paint and other medium in an art quilt, plus looking at just fun modern quilts. I always wonder, what do the more prolific artists and craft-persons do with everything they make??? I'm still working (slooowwwly) on my art journal that I'm going to swap with my sister for completion and return. We know what we're doing with those. But what do people do with their art journals when they make dozens of them? Or paintings to numerous for the limited numbers of walls in the house? I picture the most colourful episode EVER of Hoarders. It's funny, I haven't seen a single episode that included the home of an artist or crafty mama. Hmmm. We must keep the studios well hidden. ;-)

Time to make a mess and enjoy a little solitude!

We should all be so colourful!

I found this video on Rice (I can't figure out how to type the "e" with the umlaut over it) Freeman-Zachary's blog and will assume that the option of embedding the video allows for sharing it along with credit for the source! What inspiration for creativity!

SUE KREITZMAN - Artist Profile - Short Documentary from Pat Grimm on Vimeo.