Archive for the ‘procrastination’ Category

loose ends…

Sunday, July 15th, 2012

This summer so far has been an E-ticket ride! My elderly father died three weeks ago and I am having my second knee replaced in just two days. I have been tossing about like a cork in water  with little direction this past month. Yesterday was my father’s memorial and it was great, a wonderful send-off that I think he would have enjoyed. It was such a fantastic reminder about living life to the fullest which I tend to do when I am not over-working or over-worrying. I am physically and emotionally drained though and am now actually looking forward to a few days of forced bed rest!

Last week I finished the re-purposing of 7 favorite stained t-shirts into one! And the re-purposing of a machine embroidered heavy cotton Mexican vest I bought in Texas for a mere $19. It was a funny cut, really long in the body with armholes cut to fit a small child. I took it apart and re-sewed then asked a man watching a baseball game to photograph it and thus we have this image quality!

Today we bought a propane grill after years of debating it. While hubby is assembling  it in the garage I gathered up the charcoal grill components from the deck. I found two briquet lighting canisters. One was incredibly rusted so it is headed for my dye-paint studio for some future rusting possibilities! While I am down there I will paint some masked shoes that have been on the work table for too long.

And then there will be just one more art-design related project I want to do pre-op. Well two. I want to clean my studio floor and I want to draft a template for new work so when I am ready to give that new leg a go in a month or two I will be ready to start. For me starting in with a blank wall is next to impossible!

Catch you on the other side…of surgery that is!

Posted in knee surgery, procrastination, time management | 2 Comments »

getting side-tracked…

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Some time ago there was a  video going around  that showed a middle-aged British woman whose entire day was taken up with getting sidetracked. She was going to wash her car and when she went for the keys she found the plants needed to be watered. She got out the watering can when she noticed the TV remote was on the table which she took into the living room where she found her glasses under the sofa cushion, and on it went. It may not have even been in that order but this is the kind of day I am having today!

After three days of catching up with business, monkey business, photos and email after a one-week trip, I decided today would be the day I got into the studio.  That much is true! I did get into the studio and of course I am back out already.

Yesterday while looking for treasure to pass on to the San Jose Quilt & Textile Museum for their annual May Day fundraiser (for which I received 3 days notice of the deadline) I decided that having already culled the studio this spring, I should instead cull my jewelry drawer!  Mind you I have no great jewels just lots and lots of mostly hand-made earrings and necklaces which had become a jumble.  I sorted it out, and made a pile for charity of mostly orphan earrings. I also made a pile of  rarely worn Czech glass beaded necklaces to sell on EBay.

Today when I went into the studio to sew I was met by laundry to be ironed so I did that. Then there was still stuff from the trip on my design table which I put away as well as the aforementioned cull from the jewelry drawer. I decided to photograph and list on EBay and get that out of my hair.

I got out my point/shoot and pointed and shot. Soon the camera malfunctioned one more time (4th time in last 2 weeks) so I changed the batteries again. It still did not perform well…hmmm what could be the problem?  I came back to the PC and uploaded the images most of which were poor quality. Mind you this is the same point/shoot I took to Texas for landscape shots and had mostly trouble.

So I opened the drawer where I keep the p/s camera and lo and behold there is another one in there! I tried to remember which is the new one I bought before going to France last year and which is the one I should have thrown away and not taken to Texas?!  It should be quite obvious by now!!!

I got out the new p/s, took the jewelry back to the studio to photograph and within a couple minutes the new p/s  started beeping that the battery was low! Of course it is.  I opened the bottom to see it is a lithium battery. So I went to the bathroom where we charge all our devices, untangled the Nikon charger from the nest of cords and this project is now delayed as I wait for the camera to recharge!  Maybe I will get in the studio after all.

The above image is a detail of a cotton embroidered vest I bought in Austin at an antique collective for $19. It was handmade in Mexico and while the body is quite large the armholes are tiny. I will be re-making it into something wonderful if I can just stop getting side-tracked.

Posted in procrastination, time management, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

wonderful news…

Friday, April 6th, 2012

Recently I posted about documenting my work  in an official format other than website or portfolio. And much to my surprise I had designed nearly 200 pieces in 12 years.  This number both comforted and disturbed me as I had been fretting quite a lot with the volume of work I put out into the Universe and what would happen to my inventory when I am no more. Documenting it actually seemed to calm me down a bit. And then I read this from Robert Genn’s column on being a painter…

“I was intrigued by what you see as Norman Rockwell’s decline with age. Do you think artists must inevitably suffer a waning of their powers as they grow older? I would like to think that, unlike athletes, for example, we can just keep getting better and better.”

…The Canadian painter A.Y. Jackson called it “painterly senility.” He thought it had something to do with the number of paintings painted. “Every painter has 2,500 paintings in him,” he said, “no more, no less.”

When I heard that statement (in a radio interview in 1974) I was already up to 7,000. I briefly figured I was prematurely on my way to the old painters’ home, but I was wrong, and so was he.

Seven thousand?! I have no worries. I must get back to work!!!

 

Posted in aging, documentation, procrastination, wisdom | No Comments »

what good are excuses if we do not use them?

Monday, February 20th, 2012

Holy smokes…its been almost a month since I blogged! I have some really great excuses in honor of an old soul who once said what good are excuses if we do not use them?

As usual I have been immersed in the business of art-making  instead of the art-making. One thing to my credit is when I am in the studio I am prolific. So much so that I worry a lot about what will happen with my work when I am no more. Talk about the ultimate control issue!  My husband suggests it will not be my problem but rather my daughter’s.  As one who has cleaned out homes of two others that  is not a viable option.

So I continue to do a semi-annual cull of my studio passing along  treasure from my stash to others at The Legacy. This regional thrift shop which benefits a senior center handles only arts and crafts supplies. It is a veritable treasure chest of goodies and the challenge always remains to deposit more there than what is brought back. Rumor has it a  quilter/teacher/author stops in every Tuesday!

In the bag to go this time are several packets of HP postcard size print paper, some yardage I will never use, various small pieces of fabric that I can’t stomach, and yarn. I finally made peace with some yarn remnants I was knitting and ripping over and over again for 20+ years. It is time for a proper burial…into someone else’s stash!

Additionally we have been dealing with some hubby health issues. The jury is still out on the prognosis and so that makes for a bit more preoccupation than usual.

I believe as humans we are an addictive species. We all have addictions whether they be destructive or productive. We find ways to erase days, months and years from our life.  It simply amazes and amuses me that I choose to spend so much of my precious time doing art-business when in reality I could be making art. Seemingly I enjoy one as much as the other so it is a fine balance. Or is that just another excuse?!   I continue to be a work in progress.

 

 

 

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act without thinking…

Monday, December 5th, 2011

As I have entered week seven post-op from a total knee replacement my thinking cap has been relocated and is now in full operation!  Now that I have regained my ability to drive the car, and walk with a cane my brain has gone into overdrive with all the things that should soon follow. Of course getting into the studio to make art is one of those things.

I continue to be hounded by these thoughts that I should get in there soon and pick up where I left off. Where I left off actually was with two pieces pinned to the design wall with the intention of inspiring me to just ‘start’ again. One is designed and ready to be stitched and the second  has been painted but remains in need of design.

As the remnants of 3 types of anesthesia began to wear off during week four I became aware that not much had filled up my creative well during those 3 previous weeks.  I had been magnetized to the iPad for entertainment and communication. As anyone who has spent too much time online knows, it sucks the life-force out of you; it just does not replenish at all. I read ONE book and countless magazines, played hundreds of games of scrabble but not a lot of creative energy went in aside from sleeping 11-12 hours a night producing great healing results.

So just as I got the nagging thoughts that I should be back in the studio making art I happened upon these words in the Tao…don’t think so hard, don’t think so much…act without thinking. I THINK I will do that!

Posted in knee surgery, procrastination, wisdom | 1 Comment »

time management again…

Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

One of the things on my pre-surgery  list has been to  flesh out two of my five lectures.  With one finished I am hard at work on the other. All five lectures have been given numerous times so it is indeed time to freshen.

Initially I was scheduled to deliver one in mid-November but when my surgery was postponed to October 17th I had to also postpone that lecture. Still I thought it would be of great benefit  to have this tedious task done before surgery rather than procrastinating on it afterwards.

I am just now back to work on it after taking a 2 pm lunch break. I meant to eat an hour ago but kept putting it off as I copy-pasted.  I know now  it was a very prudent option to work on it sooner over  later. I cannot imagine being able to sit at the PC for hours on end after having my knee replaced.

Revising a PowerPoint is both fun and arduous. The artistic creative side of it is great fun and I continually get lost in the play. I am forever adding a key point here or there which in turn means it has to be copied to many more pages. Then I keep re-arranging the order of pages. As I shuffle through the presentation suddenly I come across a page that I moved but not updated. It seems the more I do to flesh it out, the more work I am creating for myself!!! If this were me 20 years ago I would have gone all the way through making one particular change, then all the way through making the next change. Instead the right brain is riding high in the saddle on this one plugging in images here, and text there ad nauseum with no concern to continuity. That’s when it hit me that this is going to take twice as long to do as my former left brain self would have allowed.  So this  becomes a 100 hr prep  for a 1 hour presentation.

But that’s okay…if I weren’t doing this I might be fretting about going under the scalpel again. Right now…who has the time?!

Posted in knee surgery, procrastination, teaching, time management | No Comments »

and now a word from…

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

Over the weekend I finally used a little discipline to finish integrating updates into a PowerPoint presentation I am giving in May. I had more or less put it off since December.  I never really thought much about how much energy procrastination sucks up!!!

On the one hand I didn’t consider it procrastination because I don’t give the talk until May but on the other it hung there above my head in a perpetual queue. Now that it is done I have such incredible energy for making art. And that I am doing. With one piece currently being stitched another has manifested on the wall.

So I shan’t linger long but instead will permit a public announcement from my blog via Jena Moreno. Hit it Jena!

I am here to tell you about Stitched, the 72-minute documentary about art quilters.

We followed Caryl Bryer Fallert, Hollis Chatelain and Randall Cook for a year, beginning and ending with the Houston quilt show. The Paducah quilt show is also included in this film I made with my husband and a friend.
Here are the dates for our upcoming screenings.
International Quilt Festival
Duke Energy Convention Center
525 Elm Street
Cincinnati, OH
World Premiere
4/8 Friday 5:30 pm
  
American Quilter’s Society Show
Paducah-McCracken County Convention Center
415 Park Street
Eisenhower Room
Kentucky Premiere 4/26 Tuesday 4 pm
4/27 Wednesday 6 pm
4/29 Friday 6 pm
4/30 Saturday 4 pm
 
Maiden Alley Cinema
112 Maiden Alley in Downton Paducah
(Off Broadway, Between 2nd & Water Streets)
Theatrical Premiere 4/28 Thursday 7 pm
4/29 Friday 5:30 pm & 9 pm
4/30 Saturday 4 pm, 7 pm & 9 pm
5/1 Sunday 4 pm & 7 pm
For information email Jena .

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"someday" is here…

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

I am by far one of the world’s most organized people. This is the reason organizations always tap my warm body to organize their stuff.

Currents #6, detail

©carol larson 2009

 

So you cannot imagine how frustrating it is to me that I have so wantonly ‘filed’ original digital images of my work. Several years ago I took a one day community ed class at the local junior college on digital photography. The instructor stressed over and over and over again about saving the original image somewhere other than the PC (or Mac) so that if the computer crashes or is stolen one still has their images.

I started doing that right after class. I saved them to CDs which are somewhere in this office! Later a friend literally drove me to Staples after a SAQA meeting and instructed me to buy an external drive, as she had recently lost a lot of data on her own computer. I thought she was a bit pushy but complied…after all I was raised to do as I was told! Ever since then I have been religious about saving files on the external drive.

As I began to send digital images to the external drive I did it with no structure at all. So I have several files of Tall Girl images, both for web and print.  I have duplicate files of many pieces of my work. I have unnamed files. I have files with improper names; that is giving an entire group of images the title of the first image. All the while I have been thinking someday…I would go in and organize the files.

Well, someday has arrived and it is now!!! With necessity being the mother of invention, I spent most of yesterday culling, sorting, deleting, re-naming, etc.  What prompted this impulsive act of organization? Necessity.

After several months of pondering the streamlining of my website I eventually decided to have it professionally designed. And what do I need? I need images. I need original images of all my work to resize. Yesterday I found, titled and resized at least half of the images. Today the scavenger hunt begins for the rest. Who knows…maybe I will have a page of early work that is all smaller images! It could be another design element…

There is no stress though. It is a lot of work now for a lot less later.  Initially I took a HTML class and then a Dreamweaver class and built the current site myself. I still get compliments on it although I know it has a lot of flaws.  I am really excited to be taking this step forward, to allow the pros to do their job and allow me to get back to mine…making art! It is no longer necessary for me to do it all.

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on procrastination….part tres

Saturday, February 26th, 2011

Been back from vacation for a week and experiencing all sorts of unfamiliar emotions. I was completely relaxed for 3-4 days.  I really got into it, did some reading and not much else except the requisite exercise. Then a bit of life anxiety began to creep back in and so I chose to tackle a project on which I had been procrastinating since November!

 

detail, Ziplips
Tallgirl Series: A Body of Work

 

Three months of procrastinaton is pretty darn good in my book. There was a small post-it stuck to the monitor to remind me to revise the PowerPoint lecture I am giving at a May conference. With that lecture requiring 6 performances in 2 days still over two months off I figured if I did the revision now I would free up the energy being reserved for it.  So I started in and 3 hours later it was 80% done. Then I remembered a few more slides to add but alas it was time to do my gourmet best in the kitchen so I put it aside. Now for the past two days I have been attempting to get back to it with the idea that I could just wrap it up and the rest of the weekend is mine (which it is anyway!)……..but that hasn’t happened.

 

Now I fear it is back-burnered again as I prep for my TallGirl lecture next week.  It is surprising how much prep is required considering it is my life story. You’d think I would know it…and I do. Mainly it is about speaking out loud to regain my voice quality. With email and the internet my speaking voice occasionally takes a hiatus.
After that the world is my oyster. I could either finish the revisions or go harvest a pearl in the studio. I love having choices in how to spend my days.

Posted in procrastination, tall girl, travel | No Comments »