Carol Larson - textile artist

I just watched Bill O’Reilly on Oprah and now I really feel like a rant. However, my rant will not be of any social or political importance.

My rant is instead on the MIA bags and sticks when my work is returned from a venue. Recently, I gave six quilts to a friend (you know who you are!) to hang in two local venues. Three went to the county regional library and three went to the junior college library. The three from the JC library came home with bags and sticks. The three from the regional library had no bags, but did have sticks.

I sent my work to PIQF in the unapproved tube. Now the paperwork said we “prefer” you do not mail in a tube. Since I came from a very authoritarian household, I figured PREFER was different than FORBIDDEN. So I sent the work in a tube, with stick and bag. I figured this was the only way around the juror comments about the folds in the work. It was hanging perfectly with no dents at the show and arrived home in the bag, in the tube, with no stick. My, my, that must have been a challenge to package.

With my husband cutting sticks in massive quantities, I am really aware of where my sticks are. Each one is marked with my name and the name of the work. The bags have an image of the work on the label, in addition to the size of the work. How easy can it be?

And yet, work comes home, without sticks, without bags, or both. It is not like I enjoy hauling the serger off the shelf to make new bags every other day!

Today, work came home from Santa Monica as it is to go to another venue, next week. It was a two day ride on UPS from SM, in a stout cardboard tube with wood plugs. The piece was wrapped in plastic, although not well, and some of the packaging tape actually stuck to the fabric on the right side of the work. When I unrolled it, it felt damp. It hasn’t rained lately, so I surmised this was sweat from the packaging. Just as I was cursing them for sending me this previously sold, sweaty piece of work, I happened to notice my name was on the plastic, in my handwriting! Apparently, I was not about to lose another bag and shipped it to them, encased in plastic.

I don’t know what the answer is, short of learning to love my serger again and making 3-4 bags for every quilt. Or maybe just making 2-3 bags for the traveling ones and keeping the rest in their respective bags here at home.

As you can see, with all the world’s big issues, I really have too much time on my hands.

Today during an acupressure session, I was talking about all the helpful suggestions people have given me throughout my life, as to how to improve myself. It annoys me because I try really hard to never tell anyone, except DH, what to do. How do I know what is best for someone else? And yet everyone feels free to fill my life full of SHOULDS.

So she asked me what I feel is my ‘path?’ And I said I am on it… spiritual development and making art…pure and simple. Just yesterday, a friend told me AGAIN that I need to sell myself out (his words) and make small stuff to sell. I don’t want to.

My healer says when I am really grounded, this stuff will just slide off. She also said she perceives I have such a tough time with it because my family does the same thing to me. Being visual, I immediately thought of a teflon apron and the tomatoes and fried eggs of SHOULDS sliding right off. Or the recurring invisible barrier…

And also, this part I already knew….that oftentimes people suggest what someone else SHOULD do because in reality they feel they sold out, themselves. They sacrificed their dreams, their hopes, their passions just to make a buck.

I have had the blessing of an early retirement in which to live out my hopes, dreams and passions. I no longer have to sell my soul for the almighty dollar.

To which others say…well, you obviously have a good retirement plan. Well, no, actually I don’t. I was grossly underpaid and have retired as a kept woman. My husband supports me on his fixed income retirement pension, and we do live within our means.

Without providing a full financial disclosure, let me just say it is humanly possible to downsize your spending without deprivation. It is simply a choice. I choose to not buy more stuff than I need. I choose to get rid of stuff I already have, that I don’t need. I choose to not sell out myself for the almighty dollar, just to prove to someone else that I have what it takes to be a professional artist.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not opposed to selling my work. If I sell work, GREAT! I am however, opposed to just making work for the purpose of making money. I do not worship at the altar of commerce. My higher power doesn’t take VISA.

My weekend in Mendocino was enlightening! The class was overwhelming and I could have easily skipped yesterday, but sat through it, including 90 mins of the instructor reading legal contracts. I finished knitting a sock during that!

It was just too much information, including volumes of handouts of reprinted magazine articles. I found that particularly humorous after an extensive discussion of copyright issues! To sell or license one’s designs requires as much or more time than designing them, as well as a pocket attorney.

She said my fabric was not commercially viable….too organic, derivative and abstract. The industry wants clean, clear lines…i.e. what people can design on a computer! She suggested I sell fat quarters to quilt shops, which is just exactly what I do not want to do. I don’t want to be a production rat.

The enlightening part came when I stayed awake most of Saturday night analyzing where my drive has gone. I just don’t have it anymore. I tend to blame the lack of estrogen, which is no doubt a lot of it, but I really came down to lack of energy>tired>distracted>obsession with mobility issues.

For the past 8 years, since I retired and have traveled more, mobility has always been forefront in my mind… will I have to stand, how long will I have to stand, how far do I have to walk, are there stairs, can I manage, what is the walking surface, etc etc etc. And when I am moving, my primary thought is about the movement. I recognized this weekend, how much of my energy this takes up in addition to the physical exhaustion.

While I do feel somewhat guilty about being distracted, I do remember 20 years ago when I wore five hats… wife, mother, employee, owned mail order business and chaired a 3 day conference for 1000 people! Maybe I have already done it all. I have nothing left to prove. Now I just need to learn to accept that. Damn, if it isn’t another TG issue!

All roads into and out of Mendocino are curvy and windy. Most all are clogged with RVs, RVs pulling cars, logging trucks, pickups pulling boats and various asundry vehicles that move slightly faster than the proverbial snail. I don’t know why but it brings out the road rage in me!

On my trip up on Friday, I met a friend in Ft Bragg so I took the windiest of the windy, Hwy 20 west out of Willits. I got behind the two RVs pulling cars and the pickup pulling a boat whose drivers all thought the slow traffic pullouts were not for them. I followed them for over 10 miles of windy roads, trying to not burn through brake pads. Thank goodness for the stick shift! By the time they pulled over, I had lost all semblance of sanity and burned some rubber off brand new tires, moving out.

Coming home, I followed a suggestion of someone from the art center. As the RVs and boat pullers started lumbering up the Hwy 128 hill towards Yorkville, I swiftly turned left onto Hwy 253 which was to take me over the same scenic hills and deposit me the foot of the freeway, just south of Ukiah. Sure it as going NE when I wanted to go SE, but what the hell, no trucks, RVs, boats etc.

It was spectacular! It was 19 miles of stunning scenery. It was dusk. I was the only eastbound traveler in the 19 miles. From the ridgetop, one could see forever to the coast in one direction and forever over the Ukiah valley in another and forever towards the Bay Area in another. It was such a find, that forevermore I will go a little out of my way to take this road to the coast. I am done with finding road rage on my way to a relaxing weekend.

There are some old ads from my youth that made such an impression, they have stuck with me throughout life. Just today, I was wishing for my “Colgate Palmolive invisible shield.” This toothpaste ad featured an invisible shield that hugged the teeth and protected them from the evil bacteria, decay and plaque. Or the Burma-Shave ads, signs along the rural roadway, with a different message on each sign.

Our town is covered with UGLY and huge political campaign signs. And yet one candidate has taken the Burma-Shave idea and handwritten an idea on four successive signs. He is getting my vote, if for nothing else than creativity.

When I came home from PIQF chock full of creativity, inspiration and muse, and met four Swedish houseguests head on, I could have used my C-P invisible shield. Today, I could use it again. I had been to lunch with a friend and we talked about our passion for designing art quilts. I came home energized to be met nearly head on by a phone call from an upset adult daughter. It seems her new (to her) car is having some electrical problems, and the mechanics won’t take her seriously.

Once again, I recognized how easily women can fall into the trap of stressing out over other people’s problems. Immediately, I was searching for my C-P shield to protect the vitality I had just brought into the house from lunch. And then my husband started in, on me, that he can’t tell the daughter anything, because she is just like me…she interrupts him (could it be because he speaks at a snail’s pace? Oh, no, this is about me, I forgot?!) So now, I am really needing my C-P shield; rather than plaque, bacteria and decay, I am being assailed with stress and criticism.

And then I got it. I need to visualize the invisible shield around my person whenever I re-enter the real world. I know some people learned this at birth, but I never did. I have only discovered my boundaries in the past decade, so the C-P invisible shield is definitely going to come in handy.

And I need it desperately, because I hate coming off always as a victim. Someone is ALWAYS messing with my peace of mind, invading my space, or my house, or bestowing me with their problems. Dear Abby, or was it Ann Landers said no one can take advantage of you without your persmission? Well, I am withholding my permission. I am hereby erecting my invisible shield. I can just sit, smile and listen, all within my acrylic, invisible bubble to protect me from the plaque, decay and bacteria.

Yesterday was one of those wonderful days full of inspiration that got squashed flat as a bug, by day’s end. I got up long before the sun and drove 20 miles north to catch a charter bus to go 100 miles south! I rode to the (PIQF) Pacific Intl Quilt Festival in Santa Clara, with the Santa Rosa Quilt Guild. We left SR at 7:20 and arrived in SC 3 hours and two bridges later.

I have never been able to understand why these bus drivers cross the bay twice to save nano-seconds in traffic jams. They basically trade one jam for another!

I popped a Tylenol Arthritis Strength and set off to explore the cavernous exhibit hall. I have a system where I mark off the vendors that most interest me. If they have a name like Debbie’s Delights and they sell hand-dyes, I never see them. The name has to give me a clue! Then I set off to see as many quilts as I can before hunger and exhaustion set in. I paced my way back to the entry by hitting only the vendors on my list and any other adjacent that grab my eye, walking by.

I was there three hours and eaten my brown bag lunch BEFORE I spent a dime. Once I started, this “she who already has so much beautiful fabric” had spent nearly $200 in hand-dyed, painted fabric and African batiks. Then I started looking at clothes and rayon for shirts and decided my husband would have wanted to buy me something, had he been there, so I dropped another wad!

By this time, I was pooped, and in need of an iced coffee. I stood in line for 30 mins and spend another 45 enjoying it. I had an hour to spare. I went back in to look for ribbons for my converse and dropped another bundle on ‘treasure!” Yikes. I was starting to feel like I was in Vegas, baby. I was done in, physically and financially.

We boarded the bus for what we anticipated to be the 2.5 hr trip back to SRosa. Again we crossed two bridges, and just got in a HUGE traffic jam where the freeway had been closed. We detoured around that and I finally arrived home just past 10, hungry and exhausted BUT inspired.

As I walked in the house, it completely dissipated. You see my house is home this week to four Swedish 20-somethings. Two are kin, two are not. They just moved in and took over. By the time I went to bed, exhausted, I was annoyed and angry. All my inspiration went south. They are leaving tomorrow…yeah! Maybe if I unpack the bags of treasure, I will be inspired again. Maybe I will wait a day to do it.

The way I feel about aging is quite simple. I am blessed to still be here, period. After that I go into countless obsessions about all of it. It is challenging to age gracefully, as nature intended. I can live with my gray hair but my sagging jaw is another story. I don’t like that my wrinkles make me look like my angry Russian grandfather, instead of the basically happy woman I am. And yet in the grand scheme, how important is this really?

We get so many media messages that we are old farts. And yet we are the majority of the population! Why hasn’t this changed? Why are we letting these little kids in suits and briefcases tell us, the boomers how to age? Come on!

The latest challenge for me is losing more brain cells than I care to donate, right now. When I was a workaholic, I was so in my (is it left or right brain, I can never remember anymore!?!) …either left or right brain that I could only promise myself that someday I would get to that creative project, in the studio. Weeks would go by and I never would, because as a worker bee, wife and mother I had to spend my weekends getting caught up.

Now, that I am retired (8 years, thank you very much!) I live most of my time in the opposite side of my brain. I communicate primarily by e-mail. I seldom speak on the phone and when I do, I have trouble forming sentences! So I have to make a point of inviting someone to lunch every week, just so I can use my speaking skills? It really is not a bad idea, but sheesh, who would have thought that by age 58, without estrogen, a girl would simply lose her power to speak, or better yet, to know when to stop speaking. That is also a problem…when I start, how to turn me off?!

The other part of this conundrum is when we do get out in the world, we are overwhelmed so easily by the noise, the activity, the vitality, the pulse of everyday life! I had a very busy and wonderful weekend, despite a migraine, and yet today I am just too tired to do much but maintenance work (laundry and grocery shopping).

Women in my family traditionally live to their mid 80’s. That means, if all goes well, I have at least another 25 years on the planet. If I stay in the studio and in my (right?) brain for even ten of those years, how on Earth will I be able to function, in public?! I better start looking for the home for aging artists.

Maybe marketing dollars might be better spent on accepting the inevitable non-pharmaceutical slow-down than on making me feel badly about looking like my Russian grandfather?

Today, when I was washing the windshield while pumping gas, I had one of those wakeup moments in life. You know the kind. I was just going along, in my head, where I live too much of the time, anyway. I had just come from a great swim and time spent in the dry sauna; and was bemoaning this gloomy weather which is like being trapped under gauze in a french canning jar.

While I was debugging the window, I heard someone yelling. Not wanting to turn around and look, I just pressed on and when I came around the other side of the car, then I looked up. I was nearly face to face with a woman high on drugs screaming obscenities. For a second, I panicked, oh my gosh, what do I do? All I had to defend myself was the darn window squeegee. So I decided to just look her in the face, unlike I would an angry dog.

And it was there, in that very instant, that I saw a human being. She is somebody’s sister, someone’s daughter, maybe a mother. She shocked me because she looked pretty “normal” except for being loaded. Immediately, she reminded me of my friend Martha Grant who a few years ago wrote poetry about a man sitting in his lawn chair along the freeway off-ramp in San Antonio. A multi-media fiber collaged piece was created from the poem. It was so poignant. She called it somebody’s daddy and it was about the correlation of somebody’s daddy sitting in a lawn chair on the freeway off-ramp and her own aged daddy dying at home in his living room chair. It was so powerful.

When I see things like this, and really SEE them, all the way to my core, it is reassuring to me that I am not fully living in my brain. The spirit is alive and well.

Freddy Fender must have been working on the SAQA regional newsletter when he wrote that song! Who would have thought it would have taken me the entire afternoon to edit this crazy rag? And why, when I ask for input, do some people send me the emancipation proclamation?

This whole bragging about one’s artistic accomplishments is so new to me, and I suspect for most of my generation. I mean we were all raised by these excessively humble folks who would not tell you anything personal, including if they were having a heart attack because we wouldn’t want to be a complainer!

And the few times I have linked family to my website (see how easily I can do it here!) I get dead silence or comments like you are so creative! as if I were really bragging.

I ought to take the next SAQA regional newsletter to the family Thanksgiving. Maybe I could print it out digitally on fabric and make placemats (oh, yeah in my wildest nightmare). My flagrant link to my website (oops, I did it again!)is shallow in comparison.

Maybe next time I ask for input, I can say, tell me all the fabulous things that happened to you in the past 3 months in 25 words or less. Because really, does anybody read this stuff, or do they even care?

Oops, I better be careful or I may get fired from my volunteer position!

Just when you think you have seen everything, some guy sends you 9 jpgs of dirt. Maybe it is because he is a plumber and photos of drainage pipes ring his bell, but please! Obviously, he has never sent a digital file before, because these dirt files were huge and took forever to load.

Yes, it is true, my husband does get his ski club mail in my e-mail box. Try as I might, I have not been able to retrain either him nor the ski club powers that be.

These were photos of a recent ski club work weekend and the work done to repair some damaged pipes. I simply don’t get it. I would think the ones who cared were there, and the ones who don’t care weren’t there. My husband was there and still I got this huge file. I have printed them out for him to enjoy during the next commercial break.

Enough kvetching about that! Tonight I am singing the hallelujah chorus because I finally got my website loaded again!!! It started innocently enough on Friday by taking digital images of 11 new quilts, sorting and resizing in PhotoShop…all the usual stuff I usually do. Yet when I when to upload them to my site from Dreamweaver, it was no go. It kept timing out.

Thus began my long and tedious weekend, of trying to remember those parts of Dreamweaver, that I learned initially but had forgotten. So tedious in fact that I had to stop yesterday and watch “Capote.”

Today, I danced around starting again. I even went grocery shopping, which I hate, to avoid getting started. Finally, I thought how good it would feel when it was complete again and started in. Several cups of tea later, I was able to upload the new images using a different FTP.

I multi-tasked, eating dinner at 8:30 in the studio, while watching my Sunday favorite, The Amazing Race AND uploading files. Finally, the hallelujah chorus began to sing…

Just days ago I turned on the computer after taking a hiatus. At first, it felt so foreign and uncomfortable. I really did not want to be here, on it, for long. Well, now I have undone most of that healing, but the website is updated and isn’t that what really matters, after all? Well, no, but I can cross it off my to-do list.

Tomorrow, I plan to sew. I left that old creative muse ’round here somewhere.