Carol Larson - textile artist

Reverberations is home today after traveling the world for the past two years with a group exhibit. It’s been to the UK, South Africa and zig-zagged across the US a couple of times. Welcome home, old friend.

While I spend endless hours on the business of art, I also spend a fair amount of time moving the pile of exhibit submission forms back and forth across the desk. This day I separated those for Tall Girl Series from the rest of the pack, and in reality the pile is now much smaller. Which pile?!

After being slammed by a seemingly 24 hour bug, I decided today would be a good day to be lazy. Well, lazy is probably not the right word; more like productive while wearing jammies! In my infinite wisdom I decided to tackle said pile of submissions.

It is not so much a crap-shoot which to enter, as it used to be. As my bio has grown, I now aim for venues where I have not shown before, where the exhibit is at least a month long and where the entry fee is not exorbitant. I keep exceptional records on a long spreadsheet of where every piece has been submitted, accepted/declined, exhibited, dates thereof, etc. I also color code said spreadsheet so I can instantly tell which work is sold, nfs, unavailable or just too old! I doubt painters deal with the age factor like textile artists do. As my own inner critic I know which work I do not choose to exhibit, work that no longer speaks to my style. I don’t need an assigned age to separate out my best work!

So in my short stack was one for artists whose work has been rejected elsewhere. Everyone, including Picasso I imagine has had work rejected from various exhibits. I kind of laughed when I read the prospectus and then thought what the hay!

I grabbed the hardcopy of said spreadsheet and began to peruse the list. I have had a lot of work that was rejected from exhibits over the years; much of which has later gone on to glory, sold or been accepted at some other fabulous venue.

Additionally, this exhibit of rejected work requests a copy of the rejection letter to accompany each entry; or the verbiage of same letter. Actually I don’t collect decline/rejection letters! What is wrong with me?!!! (rhetoric question)

I barely read them. As soon as I get into the we received 10 gazillion stunning entries, my attention has lapsed. Spare me the melodrama please! And yet last year as curator of SAQA’s Points of View, I too had to send the sorry, sucker letter to over 100 artists with stunning entries! It was one of the few tasks as curator that I actually had some input in, so I drafted my own rejection letter which really was a work of art itself. Many e-mailed back it was the kindest rejection letter they had ever received!!!

Back to my entries, which you can see I am procrastinating on again, by writing this blog. What I really learned in perusing my spreadsheet for the potential entries in the rejection exhibit is I have accomplished a lot as an artist in the past five years. I was recently accused of being an art snob by one who clearly does not get it. I have worked really hard to attain this level of success with my work, and I am darn proud of it. The only thing is I don’t have a fistful of rejection letters to prove it. You just have to take my word for it.

The asparagus whisperer…and other tall tales. As I have dusted off my caregiver chops recently I have found with very little going into the well and a lot going out, that my mood is changing to one of generalized funk. That is until I ran into the asparagus whisperer in the supermarket.

I came upon an elderly gentleman holding a bunch of asparagus to his ear. I thought, how bizarre and asked him what the asparagus said? He seemed to ignore me (maybe he couldn’t hear well) but then turned to tell me if you hold asparagus up to your ear, it will tell you if it is fresh by emitting cracklin’ sounds. Well, alrighty then. I mean I knew about thumping melons and sniffing pineapple bottoms but talking asparagus…oh my!

Mostly what this encounter taught me was the asparagus whisperer was just the right amount of levity I needed in that day to lift my spirits. It doesn’t take much really yet another reminder to look at the well as half full.

Our patients are healing, some better and faster than others. Until I can get out and run free for more than an hour, I think I will commune with the cauliflower.

Ever since I slipped into my caregiver role, my creativity has hit the highway. Now this should not come as a complete surprise to me, as a decade ago I was the primary caregiver for nearly two years for a friend who ultimately died of brain cancer. At that time all my creativity went south and when I told another friend about it, she said caregiving is a very creative endeavor! Huh?

So I prepared myself somewhat by spending the time my hubby was in surgery working on a new PowerPoint presentation. I am teaching a class at the art center in September and I had images from previous lectures in both slide and digital format. In preparation for my hours in the surgical waiting room, I had 40 slides transformed to jpegs, saved all the files on a flash and loaded them to my laptop. I was so extremely well organized and had a blast having a creative experience in such a mundane environment.

For the past week, I have done nothing creative, unless you count reconciling the checkbook. Oh, I take that back. I finished knitting a pair of socks I began 3 years ago. I don’t know what is with that partioular pair. They were of gorgeous hand-painted merino yarn I bought in NM in 2005. I actually bought two colorways and knit one pair instantly. This second pair only saw the light of day when I traveled, and often they barely made it out of my luggage. When we were at Tahoe, I decided to finish them and yesterday actually did.

As primary caregiver, now for husband and dog, I am a tad sleep deprived. So this afternoon as I began to doze at the computer I moved to the sofa and took a nap. When I awoke, I was motivated to once again tweak the aforementioned PowerPoint. I was well into it and began to notice that certain slides were missing images. Huh? It took my sleep deprived brain a while to remember that after my creative design experience at the hospital, I came home, put the laptop away and NEVER copied the files back to the PC. So now I have two different but well-developed PPTs on the same subject.

Now, my goal for the weekend, other than keeping the dog from her sutures, is to revise said PPT into one spectacular presentation. Maybe after that, I can pick at stitches myself!

The image is of a sink divider in a historic kitchen in a historic house in the Tallac historic area at South Lake Tahoe, CA. I loved seeing my signature squiggily line as a sink divider.

Today is the first time I have had a chance to take a deep breath and exhale in nearly two weeks. Wow, does that feel good!

My husband had surgery this past week to repair damage done by his steadfast refusal to go to the doctor for a decade! Since he had retired from civil service and the mandatory annual physical, he just figured he hates going to the doctor, so why go? Until I reminded him, so graciously that we all do, dear! So now he is on the mend, and I know feeling much better as I found him in the garden this morning, dead-heading blooms while it was over 90 degrees. It’s hard to keep a good man down!

Yesterday I gave my TallGirl PowerPoint at our regional art center. It was scheduled to coordinate with the local quilt show, as there were some quilts displayed there as well. A good crowd showed up to hear the revised version. The first time I gave it, being so familiar with the story, I apparently zipped through too quickly, so I added more anecdotes and humor to make it a decent length, and got rave reviews. The next talk is 3 months off, so by then I will probably have even more to say.

This week our dog is having surgery for a cancerous lesion on her leg. This has really been an ethical decision for me, as my husband and I have always said we would not do surgery, chemo, nor radiation on any pets. There’s that never say never again.

And then there was Millie, this fabulous 8-9 year old lab mix shelter dog we adopted 8 summers ago. She has stolen our hearts, and when we got the diagnosis on this lesion, my husband deferred to me, the ministress of finance…no pressure whatsoever! Our adult daughter and her boyfriend, who originally chose this pooch were equally in favor of the surgery. So at last, I agreed, OK, yes, just this once, we will do this, but if it comes back, no more surgery. While I hate to hang a price tag over my dog’s head, I figure in a year, it won’t matter. I will be really happy I spent the money just to have this loving & gentle spirit around a while longer.

So what does this have to do with my art? Probably very little! It has a lot to do though with living life while making art. Perhaps this will be the week I actually make some. If I weren’t so prolific when I do work, I would be in deep doo-doo.

We are just back from a fast weekend trip to So. Lake Tahoe. My husband’s cousins had a reunion there and as usual I managed to get some amazing shots of both the landscape and texture variety. People soon learned it was normal for me to be taking shots of fallen trees from 2″ away!

I have always been smitten with a beautiful sunset and probably have taken more than my share of photos of them. In fact I have probably taken several people’s share. Sunsets are like people; no two are alike. And to prove my point Saturday’s was not as spectacular as Friday’s even with the live musical accompaniment three blocks away of Earth, Wind & Fire and Chicago!

Friday night we dined at a lakefront restaurant in Camp Richardson. As the sky began to turn, I could tell we were in for a treat. After dinner we walked out the pier over the water and then it got darker and darker and some 60 images later (yikes!)Mom Nature presented absolute glory!!! None of these shots have been enhanced in any way!

Perhaps I can be my own best example and use these images to remember to breathe this week. I have had an unusually busy summer and this week is no exception. My husband is having surgery Thursday, the dog next week, which is something I said I would never do! Hubby is helping daughter demo her new biz location right up until they wheel him in on the gurney. And I am giving my TG presentation at the local art center on Saturday as part of Arts Live!

Maybe when I am being Nurse Nancy to husband and dog, I can breathe. Right now, I just don’t have time!