Carol Larson - textile artist

I have lost 17 pounds since July, when I finally had enough of hauling around too much weight. Most people think I am skinny because I am six feet tall; but that just means I have more places to hide it. And a lot of it was hiding on my knee joints and hip sockets; making life more painful than it needed to be.

Because I changed my lifestyle, walking more and eating less, plus giving up my beloved dark chocolate and all desserts, I continue to shed weight. Yesterday, I joked that 9 more lbs and I will weigh what it says on my drivers license! Then I pulled it out of my wallet and was shocked to see I had never updated it; I am still 23 lbs more than it reads.

Months ago I was asked by the local guild to present a lecture on my work, a retrospective, of my 7 years as an art quilter. They asked for a title and immediately a question came to mind, that put the kabash on my creativity years ago. I was humming along, making quilt after quilt and my husband uttered the dreaded what are you going to do with all these quilts? That is the name of my lecture.

She asked me, because the guild had not seen any of my recent work. She was shocked to look at my website and see maybe a dozen pieces I had never shown at guild. I stopped doing show and tell at my local guild of traditionalists when holding up my work drew absolute silence. So it will be interesting to see how they react to an hour’s worth!

Because I kept such good records in the early years, I had slides on file of most every piece of work. Some I didn’t and used the fudge factor, of shooting a digital of a photograph and then having a slide made. It all seems a little ass-backwards, considering I would have prefered to do a Powerpoint presentation! I ran a chronological file of my work from spreadsheets and sorted the slides accordingly. I marked the tops and put them in the slide carousel, replaced the lid and put it on the shelf. It is still there.

The lecture is now less than two weeks away and I am doing everything humanly possible to avoid running through the slides to make certain they are in order, in the right position, that the projector still works and the lights function etc.

In the meantime, however, I am producing work like no tomorrow. Currently, I have one piece being faced, one piece pinned to stitch, one piece on the wall, pieced and another with the fabrics fermenting….my process of just looking how they fit together.

It is very exciting to have so much going on after such a long dry spell. I gave myself permission to play all this week, for tomorrow is the day I will sit down and work out the lecture. Then I need to figure out what work to take to actually show.

Who would have ever thought that speaking about one’s own work could be so unnerving?

Today, I had planned my favorite Sunday afternoon activity. That is to be in the studio, designing while watching some old movie on TV. That is my idea of paradise. I wasn’t even going to turn on the PC at all. But then I remembered that the piece I am designing needs some digitally printed fabric. So I turned it on to do that.

I got tripped up by all the paperwork on the desk. I hate that, and last week after I sent the memory stick for Transformations ’08 off to Europe, I moved all the entries off the desk and onto the floor, in the corner. Voila! The desk was clear and looked fabulous and all was well in the world. But as the week progressed, I kept tossing paperwork in here, onto the desk and today it was a fright.

And my SAQA leather notebook was lingering from yesterday’s meeting with notes to be typed and a recap to be written, for the members. So suffice it to say, four hours later, I did not make it into the studio, nor did I do the digital printing on fabric. But I did do my volunteer bit for SAQA.

Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy the creative process of putting together the newsletter. But I hate seeing my creative energy sucked into that kind of busywork and not into my own art. I tell myself there is always tomorrow and it is true, but there are always more excuses, manana.

What set me off, was after four hours of cut-paste-proof-spell check, I sent the bugger and when I was reading what came in my mailbox, I noticed I forgot to put the bloody time of the next meeting in the notice. I mean, is that not the basics of journalism…who, what, when, where, why? It was enough to just piss me off. Not only had this darn thing consume my afternoon, but I left out crucial information.

Alas, I will blame the bread pudding lady! I was asked, cajoled, encouraged to include a bread pudding recipe in the rag. This goes against every feminist bone in my body!!! How many reasons do I need…let’s see? It is a cholesterol-laden recipe. I don’t eat bread, pudding or even desserts. This reeks too much of guild to me. I don’t want to encourage this sort of thing! Don’t look to me to start mini-groups, bring refreshments to meetings or start the secret pal charade. Eeek, even the word recipe gives me chills!

The thing that torments me the most is no matter how much work I have done on myself, I still cannot break through that old work ethic. In my mind’s eye, my artwork is really play and I cannot do it until I do all my chores. Until I am able to face-off that demon, I guess I will resign myself to endless computer chores on lazy Sunday afternoons.

I am at the point right now, that IF I did eat dessert, I would have a heaping plate of comfort food, like bread pudding. Hmmm. I doubt if an apple would have the same effect?!

About two weeks before I went to Tucson I pinned a bunch of hand-dyes and batiks to the design wall to ferment. I had an idea in my head about the San Francisco skyline and some photo images of sailing back into the city, taken on a cruise ship, before dawn. I figured I would manipulate them and somehow work them into the composition.

The day I left for Tucson, I had planned to drive to the airport, as I had a noon flight, but intuition told me to take the airporter bus, at the last minute. It turned out to be a hot tip as traffic was snarled and the bus driver took a long detour, to go south to the airport. Instead he drove east to Vallejo and then down I-80 along the East Bay corridor and then west over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco. I was sitting on the right side, in order to avoid the morning glare of sun in my field of vision.

Opportunity knocked as we crept along the Bay Bridge in heavy morning commute traffic. I grabbed my camera and shot several skyline images from a completely different vantage point than I normally see.
When I got home from the trip and uploaded the images from my camera, I found many wonderful skyline shots. I tweaked one in PhotoShop to get this image; and then took it to Kinkos where I was able to lighten it considerably which made the buildings look more like skyscrapers and less like building blocks. I discharged and screen-printed the image onto various hand-dyes. The more I added, the better it looked.

I came back upstairs and began to design the fabric that had been fermenting on the wall. This idea that had been rattling around in my brain for months, even years was finally coming to fruition and exactly as I had seen it. After I had it all designed I took this image, so that I could take it apart to sew it. I actually sewed straight 1/4″ seams (who knew I could?). Instead of listening to my favorite creativity inducing music, I watched-listened-sang along to my favorite Sunday afternoon movie Grease. I went into the zone and began to think of other new work combining my love of surface and abstract design.

Last night I found thread on my clothes, which delighted me! It can only mean one thing…I am working again!

About 3 weeks ago, as I was leaving the high school track where I walk several times a week, I noticed this little compact piece of fiber on the ground. I picked it up and brought it home, knowing immediately that it had enormous potential beyond a discarded clump of grass from football cleats.

I stuck it in a ziplok bag and as is wont to happen in my house, other papers got tossed on top of it. I found it again yesterday as I was on my way to Kinkos to photocopy imagery for making thermofax screens. Initially I made the screen of the entire piece of matted grass, and discharged with it last night. It looks good, but today I decided it needed more. It needs to not look like cleat waste material. So I scanned it, and put it into PhotoShop and manipulated it a bit. Now, I can see all kinds of fibrous material there. Now it looks more like a birds nest. I am probably still going to fiddle with it more, but I am pretty dazzled on where inspiration finds me.

A few days later I found purple plastic Mardi Gras beads hanging on a chain link fence after the homecoming game. I brought those home too, feeling a bit foolish. I worry about having too much treasure formerly known as garbage!

I feel this need to explain that I am not working; maybe it is my form of public flaggelation. I just know I continue to feel dissatisfied that I am not creating work, although I have a hunch I am on the precipice of something big! Let’s just hope it is not a BIG Salvation Army truck hauling off my stash.

Every time I walk into the studio, usually to knit while watching TV, I experience how much I love this space of mine and long to be fondling fabric, or stitching or doing something; and yet my brain is just full with other stuff right now.

In preparation for an upcoming retrospective lecture, I made a chronological spreadsheet of my work and saw how prolific I was in 2003-2006. Even the first part of 2007 was good for me. And then I went to Europe, came home, decompressed and just have not been able to get with the program.

Additionally, I took on the task of doing the data entry for SAQA’s Transformations 08 exhibit, because I figured since I am not working anyway, and I have these computer skills, I might as well use them. That work is done for now, and still I can’t create.

I am often reminded that this creative muse cannot be forced, or rushed. Yet I feel as if I have a limited time to fully utilize my eyes, my hands, my legs, so I must do it expeditiously. But it is not happening…

Today, I am making some new thermofax screens in the dungeon, where it is very cold on a rainy fall day. I am going to experiment with some new techniques I have been wanting to try. And maybe, just maybe that will stir the juices a bit.

My mentor gave me a recent challenge to come up with 7 or 8 new ideas using new techniques. We will compare online in November. Well, that is swell, if one can just think of an idea!

Re: the photo. I did not take many cactus photos on this recent jaunt, because a trip to Tucson in 2005 yielded many, many cacti. This one, a reflection of an old cactus at Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson.

Even though I have done an incredible amount of spiritual work and growth in this body, a central theme could be this: should I stay or should I go? It was a question in college, in two relationships, in my career, and in my marriage.

I just returned from a 4 day jaunt down to Arizona for the annual Art Cloth Network meeting. I was invited to join this group of illustrious surface designers several years ago, and attended meetings, as membership requires, in Minneapolis, San Antonio and Asilomar. I have been doing the should I stay or should I go dance for well over a year as physical issues kept me from traveling; as well as not actively making artcloth.

I chose to go this particular meeting because I love the high desert, it was a short flight, and I needed to get resolution on the should I stay or should I go question.

The travel was arduous, at best. The rental car had a flat tire, I got sick on the airport food; but alas I am not complaining about the travel! Complaining about travel is like cussing the farmer with your mouth full. At least I get to travel; some people don’t.

Everything else about the weekend was wonderful, except eating too often (the farmer groans again), too much business meeting, and too much Roberts Rules of Order (did he have OCD?). Our Tubac Art Center gallery exhibit and reception were spectacular, the accomodations super, the artcloth inspirational and the fellowship of like-minded, strong women outstanding.

Should I stay or should I go? For now, I am deferring the decision…again! In the meantime, I will make more artcloth. This meeting and these women reminded me how much I love the process.

One has to have a sense of humor in life, otherwise there would be no pets! As mentioned last post, I am the entry receiving person for an upcoming SAQA exhibit, to premiere in the UK next year. The absolute positively last deadline for me to receive the entries is October 12, but because it also said postmark by October 1, I am inundated with entries at present.

I have come to celebrate those who enter just one work! Yeah, love those people. Or the ones who enter three but all the descriptions are the same. Yeah, love them too!

The ones that are time consuming are those who don’t know how to use their digital camera, nor how to get the pictures out, nor how to resize them nor how to burn them to the CD. Several CDs have been blank, many have been incomplete, with a detail of one piece and nothing of the other three. When I e-mail them to send me the jpegs by e-mail attachment and specify the size, they send me in return the Emancipation Proclamation at 10000 pixels and jam up my e-mail. You gotta have a sense of humor!

My all-time funniest is the way people package their CDs, presumably with images on them. Some just toss them in an envelope like they were mailing a letter to Mom. Others, put them in a plastic sleeve, some in a plastic CD case, some add bubble wrap to that. One woman put the CD in a plastic CD case, taped that shut on 3 sides, wrapped it in bubble wrap, taped cardboard on top of that and sent it in a cushy envelope. The postage was over $15!!! Get real. You are not shipping your kidney, lady!

Have you ever tried to destroy a CD? It is next to impossible!