Carol Larson - textile artist

As if the reader were on pins and needles, no pun intended, I made my self-imposed deadline! In fact I made it with 2 hours and 45 mins to spare before the scheduled Fedex pickup. With the CD getting stuck in the drive being the only glitch, all went well and I was thrilled to discover that after 9 years of retirement, I still can, on occasion, call upon the overachieving workaholic person within to get the job done! This morning during my walk I considered, briefly, having her come back and live in my house and body permanently, to really get things accomplished. But alas, I decided my life is much more enjoyable being relaxed and right-brained.

So on my way to the drop-off point, I was considering what my treat should be! If that is not a childhood hangover I don’t know what is. When I was a good little girl I always got an ice cream cone. Being lactose intolerant however, probably from an overdose of lactose as a child, I don’t eat ice cream anymore. Sure there are rice creams and soy creams, but nothing beats dairy. Allergies also rule out cocktails, wine, beer, chocolate, pastry, cakes, cookies, candy bars and anything else that would resemble a treat for a job well done. Well, that certainly put me into a funk. What can I eat to celebrate?!

And how funny is it that we are so conditioned that food will make us feel better! When I gave up desserts and chocolate permanently in July 2007, I distinctly remember the first time I felt that I needed a cookie for comfort. Somehow a handful of sunflower seeds just doesn’t cut it! What is life anyway without comfort food or celebration food?!

So I toddled down the aisles of Whole Foods looking for the elusive yet perfect celebratory food that I could eat. I passed on Amy’s Frozen Brown Rice and Vegetables because how much fun is that? Finally I settled and I emphasize the word on some fresh spinach so I could make a wonderful spinach, strawberry, goat cheese, walnut salad! Yum-O!!! That’s almost as good as a quadruple decker ice cream cone…yeah, right!

Two weeks ago, after months of anxiety over whether or not I should enter the prestigious yet unnamed exhibit, I mailed in my entry. While I could enter 3 pieces, I tossed a coin, and chose two, partially because one had been published on someone else’s blog, which is against the rules.

The anxiety was based both on better odds of winning the lottery (which has happened!) than actually having one’s work selected for said exhibit AND the annual tax deductible contribution factor in the form of entry fees that we all make to bribe them to choose our work for said exhibit.

Unlike most everyone I know, I did not announce to the world that I was entering said unnamed exhibit BECAUSE I am an ex-smoker! What does that have to do with anything? A lot. As an ex-smoker, it was a sure bet if I told anyone I was quitting smoking, I failed. When I finally did quit, I was hypnotized and it worked, but no one knew, except my husband, as he was subject to my moodiness. My logic was if I told no one I was entering, then no one would know when I got my your work is lovely and we sure appreciate your underwriting the exhibit but sorry sucker…letter!

So I mailed off the entry a full 3 weeks ahead of the deadline, and went on my merry way with the anxiety gone forever…or so I thought. Monday, I waited all day for the Comcast guy to come and install a new modem to replace the dead one. So what was I to do? I spent the day in the studio and two brand new designs were on the wall by day’s end. Tuesday, it occured to me that one of these new works would be fabulous for afore(un)mentioned exhibit. So I e-mailed the venue and asked (sheepishly) if I could add a 3rd entry on the same tax deductible contribution? On Wednesday evening, I had my reply: Yes, if I could have it there by week’s end! Now are we talking work week or the Sabbath or what?!

Since I had not yet begin to quilt it, let alone bind and photograph, I decided to spend at least two hours playing a computer game whilst I mulled over the offer. Hmmm…nothing ventured, nothing gained or it might be a lot of self-imposed stress for nothing. What should I do?

Well, judging by the title of this post, you know what I chose! Another e-mail and I learned that I could Fedex it Friday, arriving Monday, or worse case scenario send it Monday, but as of right now they have received only 12% of the anticipated entries and they want my addition before the official deadline avalanche comes.

So I am now on a break, as the machine and operator both get hot. And it is 3/4 stitched. So sometime after dinner and during the Olympics, it should be all stitched, and I can begin the finishing. (finish the beginning?) I may just make the 5 pm deadline tomorrow, if I don’t shower or exercise.

While stitching, I thought of how much stress in our lives is self-imposed. So much stress is our reaction to the circumstances, or people annoying the shit out of us. This is just such a great example to me, while I fussed for months over which work I wanted to be rejected from this big exhibit, now I am actually creating more. Maybe I missed it, so I had to go out and create more? Weird science.

And don’t go telling me if I were more positive, my work would be accepted. That has nothing to do with it. I am a realist!

When I first retired I thought a lot about what I wanted to do. One of my thoughts was to create an exhibition where artists clamored to get in! That is becoming more appealing all the time. I could just sit back, collect all those tax deductible contributions otherwise known as entry fees and live la vida loca, stress-free. Ha!

Once upon a time, a long long time ago in a far off land, a romantic young woman obsessed with Cinderella married a stoic Swede and expected they would live happily ever after if he only lived up to her unrealistic expectations. One of the things she learned in the ensuing years was that her Prince Charming was not one of the glass slipper, love letters, diamonds, roses, Mercedes for Christmas (she digresses)crowd, but rather one who showed his adoration through simple acts of kindness and a good bandsaw. It only took several decades, way too much therapy and several glasses of vintage merlot for this to sink into our lovely maiden’s hard head.

Fast forward 37.5 years! The latest chapter of the love letter was delivered today. Two days ago, I mentioned that alas, I was about to bite the bullet and buy one of those ugly spool racks for my thread, as I can no longer distinguish what I actually have…except a juggernaut in some cases. What started as a few colorful fabric baskets full of thread has now grown into a pile here, a basket there, a bin somewhere else and having to actually go out this week and buy a spool, because I couldn’t really tell if I had lavender or not!

I mentioned the spool rack to my husband because I knew if I bought one he would have told me he could have made that for me. And since I did not like the design of the store bought ones, I figured I would go straightforth and ask! And here it is, nailed into the wall, ready to accomodate 209 spools. Only when I got all the thread out to make this collage, did I begin to fear that I may have more than 209 spools! He says he can add on to it, but I sense I better get sewing instead.

Ta-da!!! I filled it with a few stragglers which can easily be sewn off. And the metallics which I seldom use holding court in a basket on the shelf.

We finish our true story with the strange question Cinderella is often asked. Is this your first husband? (as if there were to be two, three and four) Her answer is simple: she is not about to train another one!

Today I served on a critique panel for our regional No. CA- NV SAQA meeting. I can honestly say I was not looking forward to it at all, because I personally cannot stand to have my work critiqued nor have I ever enjoyed critiquing others. Yet I agreed to do it. Why?

I agreed because the new reps asked me, and as the recently retired rep of three years, I know first-hand how challenging it can be to come up with inspiring and thought-provoking programs, for frijoles! My thought process was this was just a short time out of my lifetime and it would not kill me.

Kill me it did not…inspired me, it did! I loved doing it. The other two women on the panel are both well-established and well-known quilt artists. They both possess decades of experience and education in their chosen field. I am a graduate of the School of Hard Knocks and react viscerally to what I see. We worked fabulously together, often agreeing on changes that might improve the color or composition of the work. Of the 16 pieces we “judged” there were just 2 or 3 that were absolute perfection and needed no tweaking whatsoever.

Not only did it surprise me how much I enjoyed it, but also how much I was not intimidated by jurying established and reknowned artists’ work! What also surprised me was how much our comments were appreciated by the individual artists, how inspired I felt to come home and make art, and how I must really reconsider the new crit group starting by our local art council.

One thing that making art has taught me is if something initially repulses me, it is darned sure something I need to learn. I suppose it is my mind’s way of signaling FEAR AHEAD. My natural instinct is to say eeew! and turn away. Now I recognize that is a sign…instead of FEAR AHEAD, it reads GROWTH AHEAD.

I just emerged from the dungeon where I broke my surface design fast of four months. How is it possible that I have not been down there since the end of March? Actually, I have been down there, to change the cover of the padded surface to virgin canvas. I have been down there to lay xerox copies for potentially new thermofax screens on the table. I was down there to get my luggage to travel. I have been down there to drop off paints I bought in Long Beach. I have been down there with various lengths of cloth to someday work on. And I have been down there to photograph my work and to pick fresh produce from the garden right outside the door.

But down there to create artcloth? Nope. And the more time that passed, the more difficult it became to do it. And yet once I got into it this late Saturday afternoon, it all came back to me, how so very much I love painting fabric!!!

What finally pushed me was a few days ago I was looking at my exhibition spreadsheet and found I have very little work that is available for exhibition. And of those, there are several pieces that do not ring my bell. Now if they don’t ring my bell, how on Earth can I expect them to ring someone else’s? Well, I know it is possible, but mostly unlikely.

So I took down four new, not so new and older pieces of work and painted them! I love this life on the edge of painting over a finished quilt. I don’t cover it entirely, although I could and some do, but give it one or two or three more layers of depth. Of the four I took downstairs, only one is looking like so what? And the other three are looking like what took so long?! They are looking fabulous, and this is just one layer of paint!

Before I became a quilter, I was a weaver & spinner for 25 years. One of my mentors was Randall Darwall. Well, actually Randy is still a mentor. In a workshop with him over a decade ago, he said, if it doesn’t look finished, add more! So in a memo to myself, I would say, if the work doesn’t just blow your socks off, take it downstairs and paint it!

The photo above is the before shot of Graffiti. The after shot will be coming to a blog near you, shortly…