It’s been a while since I haven’t even sent a Tweet in the course of two whole days, let alone not making a single post to the blog. My only excuse is that it was hot, humid, and lazy weather this weekend, and so I was very, very lazy. Too lazy to even make it to my desk and use my words to say something, though it’s not like I had anything much to say anyway, what with all the lying around being lazy. It’s good to have a quiet and boring weekend every once in a while. Refreshes the mind!

I’m feeling pretty refreshed this morning too. When my alarm went off and I crawled out of bed to make the coffee, I sensed I was likely to want to go back to bed. Couldn’t keep my eyes open and almost fell asleep sitting on the kitchen floor waiting for the coffee to finish. By the time the coffee was done, my computer had booted up, and the cats were fed, I found myself wide awake. That’s a good thing, because I have a deadline of grand proportions coming up, and I need to get to work on creating three to five cohesive, creative, and downright awesome works. I still have over a month to get this done, but time flies. The deadline will be here before I know it.

So the plan for today … and most of this week … is to sequester myself in the kitchen and create, create, create! I’m pretty much on fire about it lately, and last night I dreamt the five cohesive pieces I want to create for this show. I usually don’t remember any artwork or stories I come up with in dreams –no matter how I remind my dream self to please remember them. It’s always just a fuzzy recollection of bits and pieces that never come together to create the whole again. This time, I remember them. All five of them. In glorious detail. I can recreate them.

I also dreamt that I was excitedly telling Lin I’d received a letter telling me all five of my pieces made it into the juried show, and while I don’t put any faith in prophetic dreaming, it is a sign of a good positive mental attitude that my dream self is dreaming about things going well. My deadline stress-related dreams are usually not at all that optimistic. I’m running with these good feelings, and who knows, maybe in a couple of months, I’ll excitedly be telling Lin I got into the show. It could happen! Positive mental attitude ahoy!

Now for more coffee and to get to work making a charcoal finger-printed mess of the kitchen. LOL!

I had a good art night last night. Didn’t even stay up all night. Sat on the floor with my large newsprint pad, my box of conte’ crayon bits, and my one surviving charcoal pencil, and I did one very large sketch. So I didn’t get a whole lot done, but I did finally “go back to the beginning” –something I have been trying to do all year– by revisiting a motif from my early works. This has had the effect of setting my muse on fire, and provided Lin gets home at a reasonable hour, I will likely be running to the craft supply store to get a few things, most notably a new sketchpad, drawing pencils, and more charcoal (maybe). Oh, and fixative spray. Maybe even some new canvases. Yes, it looks like I will be spending a chunk of my iPad savings for art supplies.

I wish I enjoyed working in charcoal more than I do. It’s not that I don’t enjoy it, because I do (a lot), but it’s the scratching sound it makes on the paper that drives me insane. I just can’t stand that sound! I do like the getting dirty aspect of working with charcoal though. Has anyone noticed I like making a mess while making art? I have. So have the cats and the husband … and my kitchen floor.

Also, I’ve been thinking about the drafting table. It was my dad’s, and I always meant to keep it (and use it) forever, but … I don’t use it. I don’t like using it. I like that it’s my dad’s drafting table, but as everyone may have noticed, I don’t actually make art at a table. I like to be able to moved the piece anyway I like or to crawl around it. I like coming at it from above and flat. In fact, I think trying to use the drafting table has been the very thing holding me back in my artwork. So while I don’t want to get rid of it, because it was my dad’s and holds a lot of meaning to me, it’s huge, and I don’t have a lot of room in my house for huge things without purpose or use.

I won’t just sell it either, because I am incapable of selling things that hold meaning to me to just any old stranger. What I’d like to do is pass it on to some struggling artist or organization or school, where it can really do some good and help someone out. I don’t even know how I’ll go about finding such a person or group, but I guess it’ll come to me when it’s time and I’m ready. As much as I would like it gone, to reclaim space for the way I like to work, I am going to have to work at letting it go. It really does mean a lot to me, and I am afraid I’ll be sad when it’s gone … which is why finding just the right home for it feels so important. I know, it’s crazy. I’m going to play the “she’s an artist (and therefore weird)” card on this one. Who knows, maybe once I can get it out of the kitchen I’ll change my mind and want to keep it.

UPDATE: Drafting table problem solved. That was quick, huh? One young artist in need found, right in the group of people I call family. Now I have until August to disentangle my emotions from the object.

No real plans for the day. Since it looks like it’s going to be hot, humid, and possibly raining –it’s quite dismal and gray at the moment– I imagine I will putter around the house and do a little cleaning, and then I have a couple of logo ideas I am playing with for a couple of friends. Today seems like a good day to do that, since I can’t really work in the garden, and I hate doing housework when it’s so dark and nasty.

But first, breakfast.

And there will undoubtedly be a nap. There’s almost always a nap.

A fascinating video about copyright in fashion and various other industries … or the lack of copyright protection in said industries … and how that fact creates more innovation and creativity. Really, really worth watching, and it’s only 15 minutes long. Trust me, you’ll probably learn a thing or two. I did!

Video via Greg Laden’s Blog

I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to write about that canvas. I even started writing about it last night. I’ll try to be brief.

In the middle of the 80’s, I bought my first 3-pack of Frederick brand pre-stetched canvases for my first painting class. My drawing instructor had suggested I take painting, which he taught. So I did. My drawings didn’t cross over to paintings as well as I’d liked, so I had to resort to being totally creative with paint, without knowing what I was doing. Now I liked my first painting, but it was generally panned as being the ugliest thing anyone had ever seen. I couldn’t destroy it, because it was a work from the beginning of my art career, and one day it might be important. You know, when I became a well-known and much sought after wealthy artist. I had to keep it for historical reasons, you see, so future art history students could fall asleep watching slide-shows of my early works and be forced to remember the name, date of creation, and current location of that body of work.

Unnamed … 1984 … Orb’s closet.

It was, in fact, completely hideous. A series of, well, orbs from small to large overlapping slightly beginning with a small red and ending with a somewhat earth-like looking planet. On a black splotchy background, of course. Seriously. Ugly. Wouldn’t even hang it on my own wall. It was supposed to represent the birth of our planet, but it did it poorly. Very poorly. Yuck. Still, I carried it around every time I moved and continued to take great care with it.

Until I needed a canvas to paint on and had no money. One stressful night when I felt I had to paint or burst, I started painting over it. Can’t even remember the first few incarnations, because the result was as hideous as the previous incarnation, and that canvas became my laboratory. If I wanted to try something new, I’d do it on that one first. There are many, many layers. I always hoped one would turn out great and the thing could be declared art, but I held out little hope.

I could go on and on about the many layers, as I do remember most of them, but I am going to spare you, at least for now. Much like writing, I paint to get things off my chest. I really don’t feel like wading through things I covered over and moved on about, and I won’t be able to shut up once I start describing the various layers of “art” and emo on that one piece of canvas.

End result is that this canvas has been with me since 1984, and has always been in my home somewhere safe, and I’ve basically been working on it the whole time. But, now … it’s done (I think – don’t ask, I might be adding something yet). I’ll probably flesh this post out with more posts in the future, because I really want to tell you some of the story about painting class (and egotistical young artists) and a few of the layers on that canvas should be pointed out, but I’m tired and don’t feel much like talking about it tonight.

In other words, I’d really like to be sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor melting crayons with my iron.

Today got away from me. I was running to catch up from the moment the sun came up, and I just never quite made it. I did get some housework done, some artwork done, and I got some sleep, so not a loss of a day. Just felt like I was running behind on stuff all day. Well, I was. I’ve been running behind on things all week. Weeks, actually. When the neck goes out of whack, it seriously slows me down. So now the neck is good, but I’m fatigued and paying for that physically. Hopefully when next week starts, I’ll be all caught up and feeling human at the same time. Won’t that be nice?

I did promise to talk about the canvas I finally finished last night. I’ll get to that after dinner. I did take some natural light photos of the thing outside today, and one of them is bound to have turned out good. But there is a tale to tell about that canvas, and even though I rarely have anything to say about my art (one of those people who think art should stand on it’s own merits and not a story), I’m going to break my personal rule on that this time. I’ve been hauling that thing around for 25 years and “working” on it off and on the whole time, so yes, there’s a long, long story. LOL!

And I pulled out the next canvas I want to declared finished. I suspect there will be a string of things getting finished in pretty rapid succession now. I’ve finally found my way, and now they all make sense. I finally know HOW to finish them. Yippee! After about a decade of floundering around not knowing what to do with the whole art thing, it feels good to have a clue or two. Yup, I am on an artist’s high right now, and I hope it lasts a good long time.

But now, I have to go make dinner. I had french fries for breakfast at some ridiculous hour, butter bread and a slice of turkey for lunch, and now I’m starving for a big meal … and as soon as I get dinner done and eaten, I can write a proper blog post and get back to working on artwork (which is what I really, really want to do).

This canvas has a story. This scrap of canvas has been in my life and a part of my art for decades. I’ll tell you the story soon, but tonight, I declare it finished. Done. Better photos and media information, as well as the story of this particular canvas, tomorrow.

Right now, I want to celebrate!^†

1. † Unfortunately, the closest thing to a celebratory beverage we have at the moment is coffee or Dr Pepper … and Lin’s asleep. Guess the cats and I will go party down in the kitchen. [↩]

I so want to make these … out of the yarn they suggest too.

Or these…

Of course, I should probably force myself to finish that shawl I still haven’t finished first, but you know I won’t. In fact, if you bet on me going to Michael’s this weekend and buying yarn with that gift card I have, you’d probably have a winning bet.

Though really, I should make myself finish that damn shawl first.

Just south of Fifth Street in Downtown Austin, 16 blue panels line either side of the Lamar Boulevard underpass.

The panels are reflective and some mistake them as traffic signals, but the collective work of art is called “Moments.” Art in Public Places commissioned artist Carl Trominski to create the mixed-media work of art in 2003.

“When I first saw them, I was sort of perplexed by them,” Austin artist Magda Sayeg said. “When I found out that it was an art project, I really liked it. It made me want to think about it more.”

So Magda has temporarily covered them with knitting (and crochet)! Much better looking than the reflectors are all by themselves. I’d always wondered what those ugly blue reflective panels were on that underpass. I would have never guessed they were public art. They look so much better covered in yarn. Doesn’t everything? LOL!

You can read more about Magda -apparently the mother of Yarn Bombing- in the local newspaper, or visit her blog.

I stopped pushing boundaries when I got comfortable. Who doesn’t like to be liked? I need to push boundaries again … in both art and life.

Sometimes, the timer function of the camera gives me a much better shot than I would have gotten had everything worked perfectly. This time it’s me running to save my camera from doom and destruction as the wind tried to blow it off the bed cover on the truck … and I’m in my new skirt, which was the point of the photo session anyway.

And do please be ignoring the sorry, sorry state of my yard. The grass is very dead, and the weeds, as you can see, are not.

MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design has acquired the @ symbol into its collection. It is a momentous, elating acquisition that makes us all proud. But what does it mean, both in conceptual and in practical terms?

The acquisition of @ takes one more step. It relies on the assumption that physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary, and therefore it sets curators free to tag the world and acknowledge things that “cannot be had”—because they are too big (buildings, Boeing 747’s, satellites), or because they are in the air and belong to everybody and to no one, like the @—as art objects befitting MoMA’s collection. The same criteria of quality, relevance, and overall excellence shared by all objects in MoMA’s collection also apply to these entities.

I would like to think this is an April Fool’s Day joke that got posted too early, but it would appear that MoMA is serious about its “acquisition” of the @ symbol … in general and on the whole. I would like to thank MoMA for giving me yet one more reason to chuckle in their direction.

Also, today I acquiring the œ, and æ symbols into my collection, but do feel free to keep using them.