Carol Larson - textile artist

While I have dabbled in fabric, thread and yarn most of my life, I became a serious artist about five years ago. I make art because it is fun. I don’t have to, as in I will die if I can’t, I don’t need to as in I need the money to live. If I needed the money that badly, art is certainly not the field I would choose for employment! The wealthiest artists are the dead ones.

I just make art because it transports me to the fun house where there are no rules, only colors, textures, patterns and absolute joy! And even though I consider myself a professional artist, the time I do actually spend in the fun house as compared to the time I spend everywhere else is miniscule.

Thirty years ago I was a hand-weaver. After weaving lots of yardage and nothing much else I collaborated with my cousin on a booth at a holiday crafts fair. She was etching glass and made tree ornaments and a few small window pieces so I also made handwoven mandala ornaments and some purses. From there we went on to festivals and mostly what I learned from these experiences were those most successful at selling were the food vendors! I also learned I didn’t want to dummy myself down by making small trinkets just to turn a buck.

A few years ago I found myself once again marketing hand-dyed, hand-painted silk scarves at two local galleries. It was quick and dirty work until the owners began to request I rotate the stock with ‘Mother’s Day colors’ or an ‘autumn palette.’ I amassed an inventory of returned merchandise and began to feel like a distributor, not an artist! I had been seeking something small to market that did not take from my already precious studio time. Soon it did take over, and the tail began wagging the dog…again!

In June when I joined the ACCI cooperative in Berkeley, I quickly came face to face with the canine posterior once again. Do I dummy down and make smaller and smaller STUFF to put in the gallery to sell, while I gain exposure for my larger work? This goes so much against my grain and yet it continually comes to the surface in my life.

It gives me great pause for reflection for just that reason. It just keeps coming to the surface. I often wonder if that of which I am so resistant is really something I need to learn; or is it my intuitive voice just saying ummm, no thanks!

Whatever! This struggle is keeping me from working. I need to put my blinders back on and press on making work that I love, work that sings to me; after all I am in this for myself!!! And perhaps with less analysis this tail-wagging will work its own way. Otherwise, it will just re-surface later on down the path.

I never have been a big fan of birds. My idea of a boring vacation would be one spent birding! I mean birds are okay, They make nice sounds, and some are gorgeous but I could basically take them or leave them, until recently.

Last month I mentioned buying the above painting at the members’ exhibit at the local art center. This poor image taken with my phone has to suffice until I actually bring the work home, from the exhibit. The painting is of two birds, I thought crows, but some have called them blackbirds. The staff at the art center told me they could have sold a dozen of this painting. Everyone wanted it. I got it…woohoo!

Since then I have seen birds everywhere. I received two birthday cards with blackbirds on them, and both are gorgeous. Today I was inventorying new work at the gallery and looked up to see this wonderful painting of a crow’s head. And then I thought…ok, so what’s up with the birds?!

There is symbolism for me about taking off and soaring, etc. I just Googled it and came up with crows being messengers. Ooh, ah, this is getting more interesting all the time. Here I had thought they were just the noisy birds who attack our cherry trees all summer!

Tonight I attended a wonderful meeting at the local art center about making art in hard times. It was very enlightening and exactly what I hoped for, to engage with artists of all different media in discussions about art-making. Already I feel as if I am soaring toward my 2010 art goals, while still in 2009.

The bottom line was this is to the time to make more art, amass more inventory so that when the economy improves, we are prepared. Intuitively I have been working that way all year!

I have been posting lately about being motivated to cull, sort and move older works from the storage of the guest room closet. And yet I simply could not actually do it, until now.

It started innocently enough but I am so prolific when I do make art that the closet was nearly full of standing, rolled, covered, labeled work! Whenever I tried to find a certain piece to send to an exhibit, it became a laborious task. So I had decided to pull out the older work, the before I found my voice work and re-file it in the studio. In order to do that I had to clear two high shelves of what was previously there.

Sometimes this reminds me of the walnut shell game. I play this game where I move ‘stuff’ around the house under the guise of doing something with it. A perfect example is snail mail that I think I need to act on. I move it from the kitchen counter to my desk. Then I move it to one of two places depending on the urgency. Sometimes it goes into a manila pending file and then when I get around to sorting through that file, whatever was to happen has happened and I toss it.

So this game of musical textiles strikes me the same. I am refusing to get all dreary about whatever am I going to do with all this work?! Because if I dwell on that, I would stop working entirely! I have gifted a few to friends but seriously there are at least 20 that need to go somewhere soon. I know the very next time I tackle the inventory, I am going to have to make a decision. And don’t write me and say you want something. This is my choice to make, not yours!

I am toying with taking the labels off the back and donating them to charity. The problem with that is this is work I don’t really want in circulation, so I suppose the best answer is to just toss it. For a long time I kept them in case I was asked to do a retrospective. Now that I have, the only one I would choose to show is the first one! I am toying with unrolling them and folding them (gasp!) on a shelf in the closet but there again I eventually will run out of room. If all of us who wanted to unload older work donated it to museums, their closets would also be brimming. Maybe it is first come, first served…get outta my way!! Or I could just leave them for my daughter to figure out…oh, that would not be nice! I welcome all good ideas.

If we are lucky, we get to age! When I hear people whine about getting older, I realize that they have probably not lost a loved one to a premature death. Otherwise how could they possibly complain about a wrinkle, an ache, a pain, a lack of energy, libido or anything else? Even whining about your investments taking a hit while others are living in tents is a bit much, don’t ya think?

Now I am not saying I have not complained, but I am saying I have always been aware while complaining that I have nothing to beef about! I owe it to those who didn’t make it to live a life of gratitude.

This afternoon we saw “Blindside” a fabulous and moving film. Had my husband not been in the car, I might have driven to the inner city (several miles away) and adopted myself a poor kid! This film was just such a great reminder about opening one’s heart and not taking anything for granted.

I do get a tad more sentimental than the average duck this time of year. Two loves have died this time of year, one 11 years ago in November and one, 15 years ago today, my birthday. With a tip of the hat to my mother who was just 5 years older then than I am today. You do the math…

One of my annual rituals is to read my horoscope for the coming year!!! Today I quote Elissa Heyman, a psychic from Santa Fe….

Expect to feel fear and know it will be short-lived: bear the discomfort of the fear of trying something new, or taking a risk, for an obviously desirable goal. Much like stage-fright, it will go away as soon as you step on stage. It’s an easier year for you to get things accomplished, to please yourself, and to get into the right position. It’s easier to have things work out well if you’re relocating or traveling, and to connect with people you enjoy. This year your attempts to heal yourself are particularly successful; you get healed of an awful lot and you feel clearer! It looks very good to take an opportunity that might mean changing your location. In order to become a master at something, you can’t stay with the known, you must try out your ideas and experiment with any works in progress.

That sure sounds like a re-run of 2009 to me! Maybe that is why my goal-setting for 2010 has been a challenge. And yet the other day, when I least expected it, watching some drivel on TV I penned an entire list.

On the art front, I just received word that Arctic Glow (above) was juried into a fine art exhibit Midwest Seasons at the Center for Visual Arts in Wausau, WI. They hope I will come to the reception; Wisconsin in January? I don’t think so! I designed this piece in 2007 with the December wintry landscape of northern Sweden in mind. Wisconsin, Sweden, they all look alike!

Well I decided to bite the bullet and send out the seasonal cards. The deal is I love to receive them! This is the time of year we hear from old friends and old relatives. Please pass the joy!

I am compromising however and may just start a new tradition. In sorting the studio I came across a HUGE stack of cards I have purchased over the years. There is a watercolor of Hong Kong harbor and a herd of zebra at a watering hole. There are gold cards and silver cards. There are photo collage cards I designed long ago and cards to benefit this charity and that. These are the cards I will send this year. Nowhere is it written a Christmas card has to be about Christmas!

To me it feels just right. I am both saving trees (and money) and still being a bit of a rebel as I fall into another tradition of the season. I am a late bloomer rebel. I was not allowed to rebel in my youth!

At least I am not sending out photos of my dog…and her half sister!

I finally finished culling and sorting in the studio and yesterday took a healthy carful of treasure to the Legacy, a thrift shop 15 miles away which specializes in art and crafts supplies. Since I only go there about once a year, I don’t mind the distance. Plus it was a wonderful foggy bucolic scene going there and back, also translated to mean colder than somewhat! After dropping my treasure, I perused theirs and came home with a few items for new work.

Now the only thing left to do in the studio and guest room/office is to move the older work from one closet to another, allowing me to more easily locate newer work. I don’t know why I have put this part off. It was my original incentive for the sorting process to begin.

Today, I added some new links on my website. Earlier this year I had a solo exhibit at a San Francisco day spa and the owner had asked me if she could link my site to hers and vice versa. While I was at it, I linked many of my past exhibits to their respective websites.

I also linked the Wiseman Gallery which next year will be showing the debut exhibit of my Tall Girl Series. I scrolled down their gallery page only to find this description of my exhibit: Larson shares her courageous story of acceptance after a loss of mobility and independence in her complex cloth creations using layers of dye, stitching, paint and screen-printing.

Now this is not exactly how I would describe the tallgirl exhibit. In fact it is nothing like I wrote to describe the exhibit. What it appears to be is a severe cut and paste from part of my artist statement. I never would describe my work as a “creation.” To me creations happen in pre-school! I have requested a terminology transplant.

Meanwhile I volunteered 6 hours at the gallery last weekend and will do so again next. I punched in time today at the art center on their annual fundraising mailing. I finished my father’s Christmas cards and got those mailed, but have not even started to think about my own. I am feeling very rebellious this year, don’t want to decorate, don’t want to string lights on the house, don’t want to shop, don’t want to do cards. So basically I am not doing much. Blink and it will be over, anyway.

One last thread…Someone sent me a bluemountain.com card today and I can’t open it. If it is you, thanks! If not, thanks anyway!!!

The image above is of ice skating in Union Square, San Francisco on Thanksgiving. I am not in the photo. As a rule, I don’t stand on anything that moves. It took me many decades of birthdays to figure that one out.