Trying to finish projects

What a frustrating day! I decided that I really should try to finish half-completed (or less) projects before starting a lot more, though I can't really stand the thought of just doing one project at a time. So I'll start one new project (a "strips and curves" quilt) and complete one old project (a long past due unfinished quilt) for now. Of course, I'm still sneaking a little time in the studio to work on the Monday project.

Today's mission was to select a new focus fabric for the new quilt I'm starting. The one I had chosen before just wouldn't work. I drove forever to what USED to be a fantastic shop loaded with a zillion fabric choices. I was stunned to walk in and find row after row of scrapbooking materials, but a gigantic empty wall where the fabric used to be! I stopped in my tracks and asked what happened. They looked at me like I was from Mars and asked what I meant. It's a little hard to miss an entire wall of empty cubbies that used to hold fabric, so I pointed it out to the goobers. They said that because of the economy, they were cutting back on inventory. I pointed out that there was a total of a mile of aisle of scrapbooking stuff, but not many people can make much with fat quarters of fabric (just about all they had). I tried really hard to find something, anything, I could use, but left with my lower lip extended a little. I ended up at (choke, gag) Jo-Ann Fabrics. Yuck. Their inventory consists of the same fabric (and I swear even the same bolts) they had last year and the year before. After 3.5 hours out and about, I came home with a measly three bits of fabric and a pinch of thread. Ugh.

On a positive note, I'll be at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach next week and know I'll be able to buy fabric. Even though it can be a little crampbed and disoragnized, it's so much fun to be surrounded with thousands of people that enjoy creating as much as I do. Woohoo! I can't wait.

My first challenge

Today I received my first "Make It Mondays" challenge via Facebook. Lisa Vollrath has so much good common sense advice about creating art and I'm trying like mad to take it all to heart as I start. Creating work without self criticism is tough! Today I read Lisa's comments about art not being a competitive sport, noting that we should be inspired by the work of other artists, not wasting time or energy criticizing their work or our own. Motivated by the challenge for this week of creating something with paper scraps, I marched into the studio to get started. It took a while. I don't have a lot of paper bits. Pulling out the few pieces I had (and used previously on my business cards), I started looking at paper not designed for art. I pulled out magazine clippings, an old Pottery Barn catalog and some children's books for inspiration. The modge podge came out, along with the scissors and an xacto knife. I haven't used that one in a while! For an hour I puttered with clipping, folding, tearing and gluing bits. I'm not quite finished with the project, but took the time to stop and look at what I'd accomplished. It's good for a chuckle, if nothing else. I'm just not at the point where I don't criticize myself, but the critic isn't so brutal today. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I had fun making the mess. I am reminded, once again, that this is the entire point. Today was fun and, for once, I feel like a LOT of the pressure is off to create a masterpiece.

Tomorrow, I'll spend more time on the Frankenstein in my studio. It's a mish-mash of stuff, but it's a good mess.

I swore I'd never write about my cats...

Today I'm making a single exception. What the heck kind of cat eats avocados? My son asked why there was an avacado in the dining room, to which I had no logical response. I thought about it for a second, then asked if it had chomp marks on it. It did. That scrawny beast took it from the kitchen and ran with it. Those suckers are expensive, and the brat didn't even eat it. He just made it inedible for us human folk. I can only assume that the reason his scrawny behind has been sitting by the kitty toys all afternoon is because he's nursing a sprained neck from carrying the big load. Serves him right. I guess Albert the Racoon is going to have himself quite the lovely snack tonight to go with his kitty food.

Dumb cat.

Boston Comments (Get it? :-)

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to post my comments about Boston while they are still fresh in my mind and I've had two hot cups of coffee (and one sip of cold. Ugh. I'd rather eat cat food.)

We took two tours via a bus equipped with one seriously noxious potty - one to Plymouth (which they spell "Plimith" everywhere but on one government building as far as I could tell) and one to Salem. There were two common factors with these tours. Both drivers were named Bob, pronounced "Bwaahb" if you are a native. They both had a penchant for sharing macabre bits of info unrelated to the tour. After the 2nd tour, Bwaahb #2 was delivering tourists to their respective hotels, pointing out such attractions as a former prison where they were known to put quite a few people to death, or noting that the raggedy faux flowers near a train track were in honor of the young lady that watched carefully as a train passed before crossing the tracks, but sadly failed to look the other direction to see THAT train coming, at which point she was sqwooshed. I believe I am quoting Bob accurately here.

Another observation about Boston is that those little illuminated "Walk" and "Don't Walk" signs at lighted intersections just don't have the same meaning for those folks as it does here in California. I do believe that with their particular form of dyslexia, what they see is "Step into traffic whilst you give the stink eye to the guy with the right of way that could sqwoosh you too!" We were freaks, pressing the little button and waiting forever for the illuminated permission to step in front of the worst drivers in the contiguous 48 states.

Our trip to Salem was amusing. When I was a kid, I remember my older sister Lisa being somewhat over-the-top in her interest in witchcraft. I felt like I needed to sleep with one eye open for a couple of years. The spell book under her bed made me the most nevervous. That, and the fact that I had humiliated her by collecting my younger sister and best friend and sporting Lisa's half slip-with-legs on our heads while conducting a horrible little dance down the stairs in front of her boyfriend Chuck. Of course, we were sure to inform Chuckiepooh that these lovely crowns were, in fact, Lisa's undergarments. We would never wear such silly things but as a crown. This only inspired her to read her spell book with greater passion. Her interest waned eventually, and I never actually saw any eye of newt or frog parts in the house. In Salem, we visited the scene of the witch trials in 1692, the burial ground of the accusers, and saw the area where the accused were hanged (and one poor soul killed by "pressing" with a pile of rocks). We expected serious, macabre tales and visions of ghastly reenactment of the trials. While the museum promised a "dramatic history lesson using stage sets with life-size figures, lighting and a narration," we got a pretty darned silly show of illuminated giant creepy looking statues (I think they were paper mache over balloons) reminiscent of a giant dioarama. The second room was filled with little posters and blurbs about witch hunts around the world. As soon as I saw Dorothy and Glenda the Good Witch on the wall (seriously), we left. It was good for a chuckle, and "Bwaahb" enchanted us with amusing tales from his youth, as well as stops that weren't on the tour.

I was grateful that it rained lightly for all of ten minutes during a period of time where we'd been promised daily thunder showers. The only drawback to New England is the humidity. For someone with curly hair who is trying to get through the growing-out-short-hair stage, this was a challenging week. I looked like a dandelion. There was no amount of hair product meant to make curls look fabulous that was worth its weight in advertising. It was futile, frustrating and downright fluffy. I was the official "Glamour Don't" girl of MA for a week. Worse, my husband can NOT seem to get control of the camera and discover the "slim" feature. Add the poof on the top of my head, and it was a week of photography nightmares for moi. I'm going to be investing some serious time with Photoshop this week. I'm also not going back to Boston until I have either very long hair, or very short hair. I don't look good as a dandelion.

Inspiration by Surprise

I got a phone call last week from a dear friend (and amazing artist) that I hadn't seen or talked with in a long while was visiting from out of town with her sister and was invited to get together. We were getting ready to head out on vacation, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to reconnect, as I feel we've really drifted with the miles between us. I had a wonderful day filled with loads of laughter, very little talk of kids, husbands and jobs (great girl stuff!) and lots of discussion about creativity of all sorts. I was revved up to get back to work, stop being such a baby and to stop feeling like I have to make excuses for my inadequacies as an artist. We fit into such different categories. I've known my friend Susie since I was a teenager. I remember seeing her "homework" in art school and being blown away at her creativity and skill. Our foyer is home to one of her magnificent watercolours. Her sister Amy is fabulous - full of amazing energy, funny, skilled in so many areas. The best part was that both of them were so positive and encouraging with me, and I appreciate it more than they could know.

As odd as it may sound, I was also significantly inspired by the headstones in the many burial grounds (they don't call them cemeteries) in Boston this past week. The artwork on the tombstones and markers was incredible. There was one in particular that moved me, that of a young woman with a message carved on the stone that spoke to the person reading it and noted that at one time, she too had stood there looking down at graves before death claimed her to join them. It was much more poetic than that, but I'm exhausted and sleep deprived and must review my photos after coffee. Having seen so many graves of so many young people, combined with the remarkable number of celebrity deaths this week of folks my age (Michael Jackson, Billy Mays...), I am reminded that life is short. Time to make art! After grocery shopping, picking up the pile of vacation mail, etc. of course. Ugh, the real world beckons.

I fall into a category after all

After the emotional dousing I took with the lackluster response to my painted chair, I decided to head back to working on my (I choke on this description) art dolls. I hate calling them art dolls. Calling them "multimedia figurative sculptures" dredges of feelings of being a pretentious phony, so I'll call the beasties art dolls. Until I come up with some happy inbetween something or other.

Anyway, a friend recently commented on my "primitive" dolls. I figured it was primarily a reference to being roughly handmade. Not that I took it as an insult, but didn't really know what to make of the use of the word as it applied to my art. To get myself in the mood to get started on this project again, I poked around Etsy today and looked at many of the art dolls in the various categories - altered, folk art, and then there was primitive. I checked it out and didn't see much continuity in style or technique. What made it primitive? As goofy an idea as it was, I Googled "definition primitive art" and up popped the following definition: a genre of art and outdoor constructions made by untrained artists who do not recognize themselves as artists.

That's me! I actually feel better. The icing on the cake is that I couldn't find anything that looked like my work. Oh, happy day. Time to go play in the studio.

Wanted: Thicker Skin

Here we go again.  I was so excited to finish the chair for my friend's daughter on her 4th birthday.   The seat design was inspired by a painting exercise in an instructional book by artist Cristina Acosta, and the rest of the details were just my fancy.   I started the chair when Raegan was one year old, but had no place to work.  Now that I have a studio, I was able to work on it every day and have it finished on time (as on time as one can be when the birthday girl is turning four).  The birthday party was an intimate gathering - other than the immediate family, me and Kevin, there were three adult friends. 

The response was underwhelming.  I don't know what I expected.  I'm not a great artist.  I can't even claim ownership of the bulk of the primary design.  I know my work isn't everyone's cup of tea, but still... I'm feeling like a big baby, discouraged and foolish.  I want to hide my work.  I'm too old to feel like this.  Of course, I'll get back on the horse and get back to work (not on furniture!) in the studio, but it makes me feel like not doing this any more.  Could I be more petulant?!?  I'm not upset with anyone because no one did anything wrong.  How do I feel?  Defeated.  For now.  I'm not sure I can reach to kick myself in the patoot to snap out of this funk.