Empathy or Sympathy?

This dog looks sympathetic, but actually he just wants my teriyaki hotdog at the neighborhood picnic on Sunday.

Postcards: Never Say Never

Again, I want to thank everyone who has posted or emailed comforting messages. Even the simplest of comments mean a lot, and I appreciate you taking time out of your own busy lives to read my blog and write. I've been falling behind on my email and keeping up with everyone else's blogs. I hope you've all been busy, creative, and happy!

I was hoping my creative energy would return and I could get back to work on something besides just drawing, but it's been slow. I'm blaming the shot they gave me at the hospital -- it was an evil-looking fluorescent yellow liquid in a big ugly syringe. At first glance, I thought it was something toxic and wondered if it would make me glow in the dark or turn into Hulkdora. (Now that would be a cute drawing, wouldn't it?)

Actually it's something they also give to cancer patients to kill fast-growing cells and if I'd done my homework earlier, I would have been a lot more worried about it. Since the shot, I've been so tired all the time, more than from the pregnancy. I have a new empathy for cancer patients who endure weeks and weeks of those treatments.

But things are looking up -- yesterday was the first day I felt like doing yoga again, and tomorrow I might even try going back to class if I can get up that early! And today I finished ten postcards for Myra's postcard swap.

I know I said I would never enter a fiber-art postcard exchange. Too small, too many, no time....wah, wah, wah. But Myra's was different because she said we could print out a photo or a drawing and send that. Of course once I printed something out on paper, I immediately thought, too flimsy! So I ended up making them out of fabric after all.

It's a silly idea really, but I haven't been able to get this postcard joke out of my head since I thought of it. It seems like no one else in the exchange is posting their designs, so I feel like I shouldn't either. But I can't resist, so if you're not in the exchange you can peek at it here. And DON'T LOOK if you're in the exchange!

You didn't look did you?

Anyway, it took way to long time to figure out how to make them, then make them, and then to sew all the addresses on the other side. So I'm NEVER doing this postcard thing again...

Illustration Friday: Daring, or Hotter Than H

When I first saw the new topic for Illustration Friday, I thought for sure I'd have to recycle the rock-climbing drawing I did back in the February blog archives, but then suddenly *BING* I had a new idea as I lay on the sofa and thought about Russ judging barbeque at the Rock-N-Ribs festival this weekend. He's a certified barbeque judge, something that lots of people seem interested in talking about about, so I thought barbeque would also make a good subject for a drawing and a quilt.

Click on the drawing to see a larger image, but if you still can't read the writing, PaMdora's bottle says Sauce for Sissies, the chef's apron says I'm Hot You're Not, and the trophy says 1st Place - Hotter Than H. On a quilt you'll be able to read this because the quilt would be about 54" x 45" (not quite Viking size, eh?) I must be vertically challenged in more ways than one, since I tried all weekend to make a vertical design, but it just wanted to be horizontal.

The point of really good barbeque isn't to make it hot, it's to make it good, but for me to even consider eating barbeque with my recent attacks of acid-reflux is DARING. Oh, and if any of you are interested in the barbeque judging thing, it's a very nice hobby. Since Russ has taken that up, I can lie around eating good all summer because he's become a very good cook and can grill just about anything. Entertaining is so easy, I just make a salad and he does all the rest, yumm!

Speaking of vertically challenged, I had another inspiration for a Daring Drawing, but not enought time. Russ also kept me entertained all weekend by running up and down a 20' ladder next to the house, peeking in the window at me on the sofa.

He has just bought a new super-duper antenna that is supposed to bring in all sorts of high-definition local channels to compliment his dish channels, so he was running up and down, up and down to adjust the antenna by tiny amounts, calling me on his cell phone from the roof. Since I don't know how to change channels using the 43 remotes that are strewn across the coffee table, I wasn't a very good assistant.

I did finally make it out of the house at the end of the weekend to go across the street for a neighborhood Baseball and Sushi Party. It was a fund-raiser to send a local band of grizzly muscians called the Garbanzos to Japan for a sister city festival exchange. Russ grilled teriyaki hotdogs, and there was sushi, more barbeque and brats, baseball, trampolines, a silent art auction, and Asahi (I even had a little sip!)

End of Chapter Four

Thanks so much to everyone who posted comments about my last drawing "Reinvent" and also my poem "Dear Sophia." I really appreciate all the encouragement, and your comments have been comforting to me this week.

This is an entry I really don't want to make, but I feel I should for continuity's sake. On Tuesday I had a miscarriage. I'm doing pretty well, much better actually than the other three times. My ultrasounds showed that the pregnancy never made it beyond five weeks, and all my blood tests showed my hormone levels were dropping, so rather than go to the hospital for a D&C, I choose to take medicine that would help me have a miscarriage at home. It took about a week for it to work, but now I'm just glad it's over. On a scale of one to ten with ten being the worst, I think I'm at about a three, so it seems like this was the right thing to do.

The nice thing about my Mac laptop is that I can lay on the sofa and hold it sideways to read blogs and surf the internet. But even though it's almost a wireless world, it's not really when it comes to power supplies. I'm still at the mercy of my extension cord.

I already have an idea for the new Illustration Friday topic "Daring." I think this one would make a good quilt. I also have to make my postcards for Myra's swap, so hopefully I can get back to the studio soon.

Illustration Friday: Reinvent

I guess I still have hair on the brain since last Thursday's post Hairy Relationships, because when I decided to join Illustration Friday, a weekly illustration challenge, this is what I came up with. This week's topic is "reinvent." Even if you don't join, it's fun to go to the web site and see the many different ways people interpret the topic.

Image and Text Class: Dear Sophia

I've been reading this blog Kim's Suitcase and it almost makes me want to write poetry again. I haven't done it in so long, I don't know if I still have it in me.

But tonight I decided to post a poem I wrote called Dear Sophia for a class called "Image and Text." I loved the class, it really pushed me to develop conceptual pieces combining images, both two-dimesional and three-dimensional, with words. Sometimes we started with the words as the source of inspiration, and sometimes the image was the beginning.

Here's some examples of what we started with: a list, an old found photo, an interview, a journal entry, a chair -- but with these simple beginnings it was often interesting to see how differently each person's work developed. Dear Sophia started as a letter that I eventually printed out on several pages and put into a handmade envelope addressed with art stamps. When I first posted it here in the blog format, it didn't seem right so instead I've turned it into its own set of web pages. You can read it here.

Hairy Relationships

When we were first married, my husband would occasionally get his hair cut at the same place I did, but he soon stopped because he found that I leave behind me a sordid trail of broken hair relationships. He complained that it was uncomfortable when hair stylists would ask, “whatever happened to your wife?”

I think my history started early, when in high school an Iranian man cut my hair at the mall and later called my mother to ask if he could date me. This came as a total surprise to me, it was not invited by any of my behavior, and I think he was about 30ish and balding at the time. Needless to say, my mother did not let me return. Not that I wanted to.

I thought I had a good relationship with another stylist, who had a reputation for being good with short hair and created cute punk styles for a girl I admired in college. Shortly after I began to go to him, he opened his own salon, and in a few years he was whispering in my ear every time he cut my hair about how bored he was with doing hair. I saw the warning signs and began to look for a way out. But I think what eventually drove me away for good was his habitual questioning, “What’s the point?”

Everything I talked about, everything I told him I did -- whether it was art or gardening or whatever, he would ask, “What’s the point?” I think it was because he had totally re-framed himself in his mind as a “business man” instead of just a “hair stylist,” and to him everything had become business. Maybe there’s a lesson for me as an artist here, I DID NOT want my hair cut by a business man, I wanted it cut by an artist.

Besides, I don’t see how anyone can ever be happy when they are always going around saying “What’s the point?” Maybe this was the real root of his dissatisfaction with life.

I don’t know why anyone would want to be a hair stylist. I think it would be an overwhelming responsibility to hold in my hands the mental well-being and fragile self-confidence of a client. But maybe some don’t see it that way.

One woman I picked up with after peeking in her salon one dark winter night. It was a fabulous faux-painted affair, with beaded velvet curtains, and an antique barber’s chair with big brown vinyl sides and lots chrome. I thought I would endure anything to sit in that chair.

Endure I did, because I found a studio does not an artist make. After some okay cuts, interspersed with a few uneven ones, I finally had one of the worst experiences in my hair history.

As she started to cut my hair, I asked her how it was going. Innocent enough question, but what I hadn’t expected was that she had recently been arrested. Her teen-age son had thrown a graduation party at her house, and he and his friends had snuck a keg of beer into the garage. While he was serving tons of his underage classmates, the neighbors called the cops. When the police arrived, all the kids jumped over the fence and ran away, leaving her the only person in the house, so she spent the night in jail.

All the while she’s telling me this story, she’s getting angrier and angrier, and my hair is getting shorter and shorter, not to mention a few patchy bald spots. When I got home, all my dear husband said was, “Well, I guess you’re not going back to her, are you?”

I’ve had lots of minor relationships too, one recently with a woman who also taught at Jazzercise back when I was doing that. But I got tired of the emotional stories about the rest of the Jazzercise staff – it’s interesting how every sub-culture has it’s own seedy, political underbelly.

I started writing this history, because yesterday I got my hair cut again. Now I’m seeing a guy who just opened his own salon in October, and I call him the hair philosopher (not to his face though) because he’s always talking to me about the philosophy of doing what he calls “great hair.” I found him by letting my fingers do the walking. Last summer when he was still working at a big salon with lots of stylists, I got their number out of the Yellow Pages, and asked the receptionist who she thought did the best short hair.

Great plan -- it worked! He does very good hair, and even talks to me about what he’d like to do with my hair next winter. I’m flattered anyone would be thinking about the long-term future well-being of my hair.

As he colored my hair yesterday, I complained to him how quickly my gray roots grow out. He told me that I was eating too healthy, that I needed to get a better handle on the strung-out-artist role. We talked about why his favorite radio station plays Led Zeppelin when it rains, art quilts, average hair versus “great hair,” and why too many hair products now come in silver bottles. The hair was flying as he chopped away, but in a good way.

After two relaxing hours, during which I also got started reading my new book The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, we parted. I gave him a big check, and he told me to go home and get some sewing done. I felt good all the rest of the day. I guess what I most like about him is he’s so happy doing what he does. All relationships should be like this.

Be a little Decadent

Sunday I wrote about Guilty Pleasures and then read the rest of the responses to the term Guilty Pleasures on the AQRing. It was fun to read about others' secret weaknesses and fantasies, but one thing I hadn't considered was that many people would think it was wrong to feel guilty.

Well, I'm not promoting rack-your-soul type of guilt, but I did take the term Guilt, to be an integral part of the Pleasure -- as in treat yourself, spoil yourself, be a little decadent and lay on the sofa in a poofy bathrobe eating chocolate bon-bons off a silver tray. We all need that once in a while. And wouldn't it be an awesome theme for an art show?

On that note, treat yourself to a peek at some inspiring women who have made their creative dreams come to life on this web site, Another Girl At Play.

Percy Pinhead

Guilty Pleasures

Lounging on the sofa until noon in my pajamas
Brownies (no nuts)
Long hot showers
Babbling art talk with my sweetie over a bottle of wine (can't do it now though)
Buying fabric and hiding it
Ordering clothes on-line, knowing I'll probably return more than half of them
Blogging
Gummy bears
Room service in a hotel
Auctions
Reading a book straight through to the end
Egg McMuffins
A real nap in bed in the middle of the day
Buying new cd's
Going to Barnes & Noble for cheesecake and a book

Lack of Spontaneity?

Considering yesterday's post, it occurred to me that some might think my way of working is too methodical and lacking in spontaneity...and they might be right.

I refused to work this way for a long time because I thought the very same thing. I was interested in creating art quilts, attending an occasional workshop to learn techniques, flailing around trying to find what it was that I wanted to "say" with my art, and taking an occasional stab at actually making something.

I refused to draw a drawing, blow it up, make a pattern, and work from the pattern because I thought it would "lack spontaneity." Even though I knew this was completely within my grasp and made a lot of sense, based on other art I had created.

So instead I would chop up some fabric, throw it around a while, feel wildly creative doing so, and ultimately be disappointed with any of the results. I'm just being totally honest here.

Then one day I took a class with Jane Sassaman, and she said something that hit hard--she said that many artists working with fabric don't stop long enough to draw or conceptualize before they start "fondling" fabric. Well, I don't really think of myself as a "fabric fondler" which sounds just a bit kinky to me, but I had to agree with the lack of drawing part. And to make it more shameful, I'm someone WHO HAS ALWAYS DRAWN. So why on earth was I trying to avoid it?

I think it was that I don't like manufactured, stiff-looking art, and I had this idea following a drawing would create that. Or maybe it was because I saw what I thought other people were doing, and wanted to do that too (although who even knows if I really knew what they were doing.) But mainly it was because I thought it would be boring to follow a pattern, even if it was my own. Silly.

I decided to give it a try and found it was not boring or lacking in spontaneity at all. First off, I had to start with a drawing and a concept that I REALLY loved and that helps carry me through the project, but then that's just common sense.

What maybe isn't so obvious is how translating a drawing to fabric creates something entirely new. It's not just copying one thing to another. The fabric has it's own personality and either augments the drawing or takes away from it. So I'm working more towards the augment effect, but I don't always know what will work until I try it. Sometimes I think a fabric is just perfect, but it looks horrible when I cut it into a shape. Sometimes the most unlikely fabric is a real sleeper, it's either perfect for the part or funny as heck which is just as good in my book.

Sometimes the same fabric has a totally different look if it's just laid out a little differently, like plaid that's a little skewed. Some day I'll take some photos of all my little cut-out rejects, because often I make the same object several different ways before I'm satisfied.

But back to spontaneity--then there's the cutting part. The raw edges cut by scissors have a kind of spontaneous energy all their own. And then there's the stitching. If I can, I like to design new and different patterns of quilting for each project, patterns that communicate some idea or emotion related to the theme. And although I practice on tracing paper and samples, the real stitching is all done without any drawn lines, so for me it's very creative and satisfying.

So I'll get off my little soapbox now, because I realize what works for me isn't going to work for everyone else. There are a lot of people doing wonderful work out there, and I have no idea if they draw or use a pattern. That's just what I'm doing right now.

Build a Bridge

Last summer I read Twyla Tharp's fantastic book called The Creative Habit, and among many great suggestions, she writes about one technique that has really helped me. She calls it "building a bridge" meaning building a bridge from one day of creative work to the next. She sites Hemingway as an example: He stopped writing at the end of day, only when he knew what he was going to write the next day.

After reading this, I began to try it with my own work. I try not to work until I'm bone-tired and at a total loss for what to do next. I find a place to stop when I still have energy and know what needs to be done next. This makes me excited and look forward to returning to the studio the next day.

Here's my pattern printed out and taped together. I used to lay more paper on top of one of these patterns to make ANOTHER pattern to cut fabric for my background. One day I realize this was silly, I could just cut the original pattern apart, use the pieces, and then tape it all back together to use when I trace my applique designs on WU.

Now that I have the background pieced together, I can pin it to the design wall. I've blocked out all the colors I'm going to use, following the small drawing in the upper left corner. This is better than before when I layed fabric on the table, because now I can really step back and see the whole design.

I'm always impressed by the impact of bold patterns and colors on black, hmmm, maybe I should do a black background quilt.

Before I make the final cuts on a figure, I do a rough cut because it's difficult to precisely cut large shapes when there's a lot of bulk on both sides of the scissors. I guess it creates some waste, but not as much as if I were to make a big mistake. Hmmm, this looks interesting too, maybe I should do a rough cut quilt too!

So I keep cutting, pinning, and re-evaluating all the fabrics on the board. As I worked today, I realized that I probably have some habits that come from my painting days. One is to try to work the whole "canvas" at once. This means, don't ignore the whole design while focusing on one detail area. Every part of the design impacts every other part, and it's always a balancing act to make it all work together well.

The other is that I always design standing up. This is probably due to the influence of a college painting instructor who said to never paint sitting down. His theory was that it's too easy to be lazy if you're sitting down, that the tendancy is to not get out of your seat enough, walk around, and evaluate your work from a distance. It also helps to be on my feet as I'm always running over to the fabric shelves to "try one more shade of green."

So I'm making progress on this quilt. I think I've gotten the hang of building a bridge to the next day, and I need to work on building a bridge to the next quilt. I guess this might mean starting a drawing for the next quilt before I finish this one!

Metal Man's Home!

The wagon train pulled in late last night, sunburnt and weary, but jazzed because of a successful mission accomplished. The new sculpture, Russ says, is a kid-magnet, so I am anxiously awaiting him to download all the photos from the digital camera. But right now's he's busy looking over some 6,000 plus emails that are sitting in his in-box.

I'm anxious to see the photos, because that's one of my jobs -- chief documentator of installations, that along with food-runner, curious crowd question-answerer and all sorts of other odd things that come up at such events. But since I wasn't able to go, and if the person he sweet-talked into taking photos didn't do a good job, well, that's all she wrote because there won't be another chance. But I will post something as soon as I can get my grubby little hands on it.

On the home front, I've been a good girl and working all week on my new quilt. It's going pretty well except that the green, pink, and purple combination I've decided on is really stretching me. I've taken photos along the way, but have been too tired at night to post them. Maybe I'll get some on later tonight, unless I can talk Metal Man into a swank celebration dinner.

My Gratitude Journal

Last fall I was having some health problems. I went to several doctors who seemed to think my symptoms were mainly caused by depression and stress, even though I kept telling them that I was depressed because I was in pain and couldn't work and not the reverse.

All winter I tried many things to feel better - restricted diets, exercise, alternative medicines, yoga, meditation. Finally I found a doctor who agreed that my symptoms could be a side-effect of some medication I had taken in the summer and fall. By then I had quit the medicine and was slowly recovering.

Before that happened though, I read a special issue of Time magazine called "The Science of Being Happy." It was very interesting, several of the articles were about how historically psychologists studied only the mentally ill, but recently there has been more research into people who are not and into the things that contribute to people being happy and emotionally stable.

We all know there is a great deal of evidence that people who think positively are more healthy, but something in the research struck me as new. Several studies compared groups of people who kept a "gratitude journal" with those who did not, or who kept a journal that recorded both good and bad feelings. These studies found the people who wrote down about at least three things a week that they were grateful for were happier, healthier, and more energetic than those who did not.

I've always been intrigued by artists' journals, but never felt like I could keep one because I felt it would sap the creative energy away from my "real art." But I decided give this gratitude journal a try.

I bought a weekly planning calendar, picking one with only five lines per day, because I thought the limiting structure would help me stick with it. I guess I could make a fancy cover to dress it up, but it's not necessary -- what's inside is what's important.

It has been easy to do. Every couple of days, before I go to sleep, I write a few short sentences in the book. Mostly it's little stuff, like "I saw a full moon this morning," or "It was sunny and warm today." Sometimes it's goofy stuff, like when I dropped my laptop and it didn't break, or when I left my purse on a plane and a nice mechanic helped me find it.

Sometimes it's about something good that happened to someone I care about, and many times it's something I've accomplished myself.

Now I'm feeling better, so has the journal helped? Who knows. But I am going to continue writing in it, and here's why.

Last Sunday I was feeling kind of down, so I decided to read through the last two months. It was the first time I had re-read any of it, and at first I noticed that each little sentence made me smile.

Then I started to realize that it was filled with special moments of my life that would be forgotten forever had I not written them down. By the end of the last few entries, I decided that I need to fill lots more of these little books, so when I'm old(er), I'll have shelves full of them.

Shagadelic

This morning fellow blogger Melody posted a photo that would seem to indicate that a certain powerful and influencial person has frequently visited her studio for fusing lessons.

Not to be outdone, I've posted evidence that a celebrity, although certainly less powerful, but a celebrity none the less has visited my studio recently to discuss color theory.

And I quote, "Pick the pink polka-dots, baby, they're SMASHING."

Of course he is a little thin if you look at him from the side.

Juvenile Humor

I guess I've always had a weird sense of humor, but only recently have I thought of a way to describe it. I'm not sure when I first thought of putting humor into my quilts, but I do remember what a big impact one art show I entered had on my current work.

When I went to the gallery on opening night, it was very disturbing to find that a small and personal collage about my family tree that I had proudly entered had been hung above the keypad to the alarm system for the gallery. Even worse, it was a dark corner in a back room.

While I was pouting about this, a young college guy came up close to my collage, pointed at the corner of it, and joked with his friends. "What I want to know," he said, "is what is that weird guy doing up in the corner of this one."

Wow, like wow, I was so impressed. That little funny photo of my grandfather (he was Japanese and wore little round glasses) got that guy to come across the room into that dark corner and look at my collage that was not much bigger than the alarm keypad. I don't really think the guy was making fun of my grandfather, I think he was trying to figure out why I put it the collage.

So I thought, if I can just get people to stop, come a little closer, really think and maybe ask questions about my art, that's all I want. They don't have to like it. I just like the idea that they didn't pass it by on the way to something else.

Now I'm making bigger stuff. I think bias towards large or small scale can be a personal preference, but also it's important to ask what scale is appropriate for what an artist is trying to do. I've seen big work that will knock your socks off, and small work that can too. I've also seen big work that is boring and overblown and small work that looks timid and banal.

I like working big, for practical reasons because it's easier for me to cut out many complicated shapes and fit them into a composition, but also for aesthetic reasons. I'm trying to create crazy fantasy world that I want the viewer to come closer, get absorbed, and become a part of for a brief moment.

Russ always says that there is a real physical difference in the emotional response of a viewer to a sculpture that is at least a little bit larger than lifesize, than the response to one that is just a little bit smaller than lifesize. I think this is true also for fiber work, and I usually make the head of my main character in my quilts slightly larger than lifesize.

I want the piece to read from across the room, but I also put in little stuff you can't see until you come up really close. Sometimes it's little jokes, like the hairspray in the drawing today, but sometimes it also has a serious side -- like my concern about breathing in noxious chemicals right now.

So here's the drawing you saw before, but now I've colored in the background and added more things in the back. I'm having trouble with the shower, what I really want is a bathtub with a shower curtain, but I'm having trouble drawing that and making it work behind PaMdora's head.

Here's some of the fabrics I picked out based on my drawing. Looking at it tonight on my computer, I realize the other thing that keeps me going on these projects -- Fear! Am I really going to be able to make it all work??!! Sometimes I really stress out over finding the right colors.

Oh, and if you haven't figured it out yet, I didn't go to NC. When they left without me yesterday I was feeling kind of down. But then this morning, I realized that I had worked hard to get everything done for the trip and told everyone I was leaving, that now it's like I have a surprise vacation for the next few days.

Packing at...

Ultra Sound

I love that word, just the way it SOUNDS. I think it's the ULTRA part. Ultra-white, ultra-bright, ultra-man, I like ultra in front of anything.

I had a two-hour ultrasound yesterday which is not good. The radiologist started taking pictures, then she left to get another radiologist to help. They poked and prodded on me for at least forty-five minutes taking more pictures. Whisper, whiSper, wHisper, ovaries, whisPer, whispeR, something else, whisPEr, now you've got it, whisssper.

I couldn't hear a thing and pretended like I wasn't trying. Then they left, and I waited another forty-five minutes for my doctor to get out of surgery to read the ultrasound. I've never played any of the games on my cell phone before, but I got pretty good at Triple Pop.

Finally a delicate obscure conversation with the nurse, but with a few keywords like "storm brewing ahead," I got the message that it might not be a good idea to travel. So do I stay or go to NC? The guys are packing up all the tools right now, and maybe I should give up my seat. They probably need to put more tools in the truck anyway.

On a happier note, I went to First Friday Art Walks, and it was also the opening of the student show that Russ and I juried Thursday. It was fun to jury, but also hard because it was all media -- photography, sculpture, painting, drawing, digital design, ceramics -- and beginning students to seniors. There was no set number because Todd said he could hang it tight or open.

At when I arrived at the show, I worried that maybe we should have included more work because there was definitely room. But everyone I talked to including some of the students seemed very pleased with how the show turned out and kept thanking us. I was embarressed because it really had nothing to do with me, it was the students who did all the work.

I told a couple of the instuctors a few reasons why we chose some work and not others, in case their students were curious. All in all, the show looked great. And I did get the names and titles to go with the photos I posted on Thursday, so I'm going back to add those now.