Carol Larson - textile artist

Anyone who has raised kids in the past 35 years is well acquainted with Kermit the Frog and his expression, “it ain’t easy being green!”

This came to me this morning at 5:45 a.m. Why it couldn’t have arrived at 7:30 I don’t know. I got up to answer the call of nature and immediately thought “it ain’t easy being green” which clearly was a sign!

A sign from the color goddesses that the family room is going to be too green. We would go from living in a hunting lodge to a kelp forest. ACK…what was I thinking? This pukey green is not even one of my favorite colors.

And while the fireplace looks so much better painted, it is reminding me of canned spinach or baby diarrhea and I am thinking NO WAY am I putting on a 2nd coat of this! Or let me re-phrase that…no way is HE putting on a second coat of this!!!

I broke the news gingerly to my husband this morning. He has been laboring in triple digit heat for days priming the walls to be wallpapered next Monday. We were able to squeeze in the paper hanging between the paintng and the flooring guy.

But alas, it all happened so quickly that I did not take enough time to pick what I really wanted. I had started out with an ochre hued grasscloth, which was not available for months then switched to a somewhat similar vinyl and paint to coordinate. That is where it got away from me. None of it is the neutral ochre. It is canned spinach green.

So I am off, shortly to the paint store, this time armed with a tile from the kitchen (yes, we still have tile) and a quilt from the wall to find that perfect neutral putty or deep gray color to slap-dab on the walls. We will try it on a cabinet. And if it works, then tomorrow we will go back for gallons and return the wallpaper.

Meanwhile, hubby is not surprised. When we painted the exterior of our house years ago, it took three colors before I was happy. I wanted a deep gray with just a touch of violet. Finally, it was soup, and I love it. It is still the most beautiful house on the street. We have glorious gardens out front that just pop with this exterior color. I want the same for the interior, just not canned spinach green.

He would rather I change my mind now than when he is all finished. He’s lived with an artist for 35 years. He knows…

I keep trying to remember that just 4 months ago we were up to our eyeballs in water. It rained for 42 straight days here in paradise. And now it is drying out to the tune of triple digits for days on end. And we, are in the cooler part of Northern California.

Many of my friends are frying eggs outdoors where they live. Actually it was so hot today in Livermore, it melted the asphalt on the freeway. To me the perfect summer temp is 85 degrees. We may get there by Thursday!

So, where was I going with this? Who knows? That’s the thing about the heat. It just lays waste to everything.

Oh, we hung the Gallery One exhibit today for CFA. It is up till Labor Day weekend. The work was to be themed “Rhythm and Blues.” There was an extraordinary amount of BLUE work, and some not even close to the theme, but we were able to pull it all together and it looks great.

My only complaint about the gallery is how cluttered it has become. The owner closed another shop earlier this year and seemingly brought most of it into this shop. It is now one of those places you could spend hours in, looking at all the wonderful jewelry, glass, photography, wearables, paintings, clay, etc. You can only imagine how tricky it was to hang textile art above all of this and not break anything.

My husband, a retired firefighter and very ladder capable, patiently took orders from two women as we instructed…a little to the left, up an inch more, six inches to the right, can you move that one over here?. This is his 3rd time hanging a show for me, so he is good. Only the hammer dangling from his back pocket made me incredibly nervous.

I had to remind him, especially since we are in the midst of and over-budget on a home dec wreck that we need not be purchasing any broken treasure at this particular moment in time.

So there it hangs, it is out of my house and off my mind until September. A breeze is blowing through the window and I might just get into the studio tonight.

We have lived in our house for 32 years. It was built in 1964, when wall-paneling was all the rage in ranch style homes. In the 32 years we have lived and loved being here, we have renovated every single room, as nesters are wont to do. And I have been blessed that my husband has many talents and was able to do most, if not all of the work himself.

It took me about 25 years of this to learn that this is how he expresses his love. His love letters consist of a customized studio, bedrooms, living room, kitchen, etc
All I have to do is express a wish and abracadabra, he builds it. You can keep your chocolates and roses, anyday!!!

The last holdout has been the family room which until last week still bore that 1964 wall paneling. I hated it, he loved it. I mostly covered it with quilts and art, figuring half the house is his, so it must be the wall-paneled half.

Last year, we had decided this would be the summer we would replace the kitchen-fam room floor, which was laid 30 years ago, and was now worn out. Because of the wood walls, I was looking at stone laminates for the floor. Everything looked awful with the paneling, so one more grumble about the lousy paneling and down came the house of cards.

Actually, I really think he had grown weary of my sick little joke about how my daughter and I would pull the paneling as soon as he died, even before the funeral.
No sense of humor I tell ya’!

So he spoke those three little words I have been dying to hear…pull out paneling!!!

Now mind you, this was not particularly good timing. With Swedish houseguests (oh, yes, THEM) due in mid-August and my collecting 24 quilts for a CFA exhibit, which we hang next week. No, this was not a good time to start deconstructo on the house. BUT, I waited 32 years for those 3 little words and so we must strike when the iron is hot!

The CFA arriving work stayed in their boxes until last week, barricaded in a back room, with the door shut. They are still in there. I learned also that this room stays very cool with the door shut. Who knew?

Now that the wall-paneling is out, dear husband has replaced it with Phillipine mahogany plywood, which is the only plywood available in 1/4″. He only had 1/4″ to play with or else have to have all the door jams rebuilt.

He had to rip out the old flooring and particle board beneath to get the wall-paneling out. It was going to have to come up anyway, because they could not lay laminate over 2 old existing floors and particle board. The flooring contractors were talking asbestos and hazmat teams. ay..yi.yi.

We decided to do wood laminate in the fam room-kit area and then change to slate laminate in the halls, because the high traffic is killing the carpet installed just 3 years ago. So the carpet is yet to be pulled out.

Also installed just three years ago were two bathroom floorings, of which both have developed water damage between the vinyl and the subflooring. So he had to pull one floor and is now running a heater 24/7 in 100 degree weather to dry out that wood flooring enough that we can have vinyl laid there in two weeks.

He can’t pull the other just yet as we have no chamber pot! However, this would be a good time to pull out that old wallpaper from behind the toilet, which now resides in the bathtub. I think that is a good job for me (she wisely assumed).

The grasscloth which I wanted to cover the new walls, is not available until Sept, while the flooring has to go in after the paper. So Monday, I bit the bullet and ordered different paper, a vinyl that looks very textural and 2nd day UPS’d it out of Boston to arrive Monday.

With the painting of the fireplace and the back of a cabinet, and the priming of the walls all to do before the paper goes in…whew! We would have just enough time to get the paper hung before the floors go in on Aug 7….or so I thought.

Last night, the wallpaper hanger calls, just before he leaves on vacation and says you CANNOT hang wallpaper over Phillipine mahogany because it expands and contracts and the seams pop. Well, he says you MIGHT Be able to do grasscloth because it is natural and breathes, but you cannot do vinyl. Fabulous.

At this point my husband is ready for a Caribbean vacation. He has been working on this project 18 hrs a day in 95-100 degree weather in a southern exposure room and he is simply running low on humor.

Last night we talked about chucking the wallpaper entirely, hoping to get some of our money back, painting the moving wall and faux-something it. What the hell, I am just going to hang quilts on it anyway.

My theory is this. The new flooring has a 20 year wear warranty. By then, if I am lucky, I will be 78, and based on experience, presumably not very motivated to change it. I will just buy throw rugs!

I know that whenever this house is sold, someone is going to come in, rip out everything and probably install wall-paneling. My daughter says it is almost retro again. Maybe we should have waited another 3-4 years!

Today, while pulling fabrics that suggested pain to me, I was reminded yet again of a pinched nerve in my shoulder that is radiating down my right arm. After two trips to the chiropractor, where it has gotten sequentially better, it is still not fixed, I am ready to go instead to my physical therapist. I need someone to pull my arm or yank my neck and pop this puppy back in place.

Pain is a huge subject for me, as I live with it daily. In the summer, it is of course generally better. On a scale of 1 to 10, in the summer it is generally about 3 or 4.

In the winter, though, our regional dampness sets in and the cold cuts to the bone and I ache like no tomorrow. Several trips out of town in the winter confirmed my suspicions. My husband acts as if I am making this up only to torture him. We don’t have to move, do we? It isn’t THAT bad, is it?

I go into full convent mode and deprive myself of any foods that might aggravate inflammation: sugar, all the nightshades. I double up on the holistic anti-inflammatory remedies. And still, I suffer. Not enough to take the pharmaceutical cocktails, but still a good ache.

It reminds me of the “pain threshold scale.” On a visit to the ER last year in excruciating pain which paralyzed my right leg entirely, I was asked, “on a scale of 1 to 10” what is the pain? I said “the pain is off the scale; it is a 14” to which the nurse repeated, “on a scale of 1 to 10, what is this pain?”

So I graciously responded, “I live with pain daily. My daily pain is a 5-7. This pain is a 14.” She wrote down 10.

In trying to create a piece of work about pain, I am reminded of the length and breadth of living with daily pain. The actual design and construction remains as much a mystery as the pain threshold scale. There is just so much to put in a small area of fabric. Maybe a pain piece should be as big as the pain itself; like a commercial installation! Or a series on just pain, itself.

My husband seldom has pain. He is 60, he played high school football, he was in the Army, he was a fireman who often took tumbles, off the firetruck, down a shaft, through a roof; he skis, he smokes and drinks. And he has no pain.

He is doing the prep work on some home renovation currently. The other morning, he complained, upon rising, that he was sore and stiff. So I fell for it. I said, how often does this happen? “Never,” he says! “I am NEVER sore in the morning.” Never? I asked. Never at all? I could not believe it. I simply can not even imagine my life without pain.

As I said some days are better. Occasionally, I will have a 2 or 3 day and think, wow, I don’t hurt much today! Those are always very special days. Usually the day I want a cookie “reward”, which starts up the process all over again. My latest ploy is to envision a skull and crossbones on the bakery case.

I could probably make a lot of money if I published that book “Really Good Excuses to Avoid the Studio.” In reality I have been a woman on a mission, much of this year. I am not lacking in work produced so far in 2006. So while I don’t feel terribly guilty about it, I do occasionally continue to beat myself with palm fronds about the amount of time I waste. And then my husband reminds me that I am retired. That is SUCH a good one for wasting time. I am retired. I deserve it. I almost believe it!

For example, I quit the QA list last year because I was spending too much time reading it and getting my hackles up, then blowing off steam, only to be met with other people’s opinions, which generally disagreed with mine and got me more riled up. So I quit that list and the complex cloth list and never looked back. It has been wonderful. Now, I read my friends blogs and comment there, instead. Lucky them!

I have had many blessings this year so far, after a crappy 2005. Possibly the brightest star is two wonderful new friends we met on a cruise in the spring. Now we e-mail all day long while they are working and I am supposedly in the studio. I find myself checking e-mail a lot more frequently than I used to and often get into the studio for smaller periods of time. After all, a girl needs her ‘coffee break!”

It bothers me but not enough to stop! I am an artist, not a nun. I am entitled to have friends and communication. See me rationalizing now?

As an old wise woman once said to me: What good are excuses anyway, if we don’t use them?

Well, I better just hurry, then! I am having an non-scheduled studio outage day today and quite frankly I am not very happy about it!!! Where is my humility when I need it?

We have this fantastic Tempur-pedic mattress which allows for less painful sleeps for old arthritics like myself. Unfortunately, the flip side of complete comfort is often sleeping too long in the wrong position, as I did last night and pinched a nerve in my shoulder. One of the FEW things I can do today is type!

I can hardly drive, as I can’t turn my head, but I managed to slink to the gym and tried to swim it out, but no go. So I have been alternating between laying on ice on the sofa, reading a book and wasting time online. Soon I am off to the chiro who will torture me no end and then I expect to be back in business tomorrow.

However, tomorrow, my DH wants to go look at flooring again, so another non-scheduled studio outage. The irony in all of this is two nights ago I had a midnight creative processing explosion. This happened once before where the ideas came hot and heavy. I had the foresight to get up and write them down! Twelve new series ideas…fabulous!

Now I just sit and wait for the physical body to meet the artistic opportunity. I am sure there is some spiritual reason for this minor set-back at this particular moment, but for now it is lost on me.

One of the things that has held me back in my “body of work” series is in telling the truth and pissing people off. Of course that is a whole ‘nother enchilada, why should I care etc. Yet players in this drama are still living and in denial and I don’t know that I want to destroy them as I cleanse my wounds. And so I have discovered that my protection of their feelings (read…dysfunction) has in effect censored the work. I have over 60 ideas but cannot put some of them into a visual format for fear of upsetting those who refuse to discuss it.

A lot of my recent work has been in the abstract. For a person who cannot draw and does not recognize depth perception, abstract is the answer. My husband, likes to “Scorpio” everything I do, into perfection, while I simply reply…it’s abstract! As if abstract is my excuse! Well, it is..not that I compare myself with Pablo Picasso, but who’s going to tell him he was wrong?

Upon the heels of deciding to delve back into this body of work, came the realization that I could do it in the abstract. How freeing is that? I can write, paint, stitch whatever I want and what looks like a pretty picture to those in denial is actually a scathing comment. It will allow me to just get it out there, and not worry about its impact.

I tend to believe the day I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore about their impression will be the day before I die. My life’s work will be done!!!

Earlier this year, I started a body of work about some painful childhood events. I was full of energy and zest for the project totally convinced it would change my life, by helping me discard a lot of old baggage. I found a mentor and went to it. I completed 6 pieces in five weeks, and had chronicled ideas for 60 more pieces.

In February, I began a piece of particular substance and pain. I felt total rage as I wielded my rotary cutter. I realized then that I needed to step back from the project and work on the rage issue; in other words “archive it” so that I could proceed further with the work.

Weeks, then months breezed by. The list of ideas remained on the wall but nothing more came from it. Instead I switched to creating wonderful abstract work. I was fueled endlessly by both my passion and WORKAHOLISM to create. As a recovering workaholic and recovering perfectionist, I KNOW when I go into overdrive, I am really avoiding something.

Then I switched to sewing up some linen for clothes and now I am back ready to start in again, on my art. I have been thinking on more abstract ideas, until today, when it came to me, that I need to face the music. I don’t want to; but I NEED to.

I need to go back and work more on that series; the series that is so incredibly painful for me to deal with. I NEED to deal with it, work it through, get it out. Those 40+ years of stuffing this subject’s emotions are now awakened with nowhere to go. I need to work them out, as difficult and exhausting as it is.

I well know how to dodge dealing with the rage. I have learned throughout my life how to make that disappear. I am no longer willing to accept that as a choice. I am reclaiming my courage, and biting into the elephant…one bitter, chewy bite at a time.