Archive for July, 2013

what happened to july?

Wednesday, July 31st, 2013


Here I sit on the last day of July wondering what happened to the month? I was flat on my back for ten days of it after tweaking in a side motion of either lifting out or putting in a sewing machine on the floor of the passenger seat in my car. It was one of those really dumb moves like the time I put my back out taking off my swimsuit in the shower at the gym! OY!

I spent another week tweaking backgrounds on images and updating my bio for a marketing project. And several trips to Sonoma and back prepping for/reception/working the gallery/taking down my featured artist exhibit. A couple of days were spent packing up our daughter’s kitchen for the move into her first home and then two days later unpacking all said kitchenware. We bought our ‘first’ home nearly 40 years ago and have stayed put. I hope the same for her as moving is such hard work.

Now I hope to get back into the studio and do serious work on Earth Stories. I am motivated both by the approaching deadline and the boredom of having it consume my design wall for months while yearning to do new and smaller work. I am at the halfway point with one of the two long pieces completed. The ironic part is I applied for this entry right after my father died as a way to motivate myself to get back to work. Lately it has been about finding the time to work.

In the meantime I share images of the floor my daughter painted in her attic design studio.

She pulled up the carpet which her Dad rolled into taquito rolls and shoved into the back of his station wagon for a trip to the recycling center. Together they endlessly sanded the beat-up hardwood floor. After working/commuting during the day she spent many nights laying down the paint. She put down two base coats of white and drew a diagram of what she wanted the stripes to look like. She then masked off the floor using her Dad’s t-square and started painting the stripes. The red was the most difficult to cover and took three coats. She diligently painted every night after work and the masking tape came off just the night before the move!

People always ask me if she got her talent from me? Certainly there is some genetic link as she comes from a long line of seamstresses…and women who get things done! Yet she has far more inventive creative energy than I ever did. She has always been a bit ahead of the curve and it will be exciting to see where that creative drive will take her now that she has the freedom to decorate any way she wants.

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emerging as we speak…

Friday, July 5th, 2013

I really enjoyed my monthly art group this morning! Each time I learn something and as of late it has been how much I edit myself in my art-making. Case in point: this mammoth project for the “earth stories” project has changed in scope a couple of times as I find myself meeting exciting, interesting and ‘impractical’ design concepts with “practical” solutions. Today I was reminded again to just move forward with my what if ideas and worry later about the post-photography clean-up and the shipping crates.

Of course this reminder shot me right back to a creative writing class of long ago where the challenge was to write, write, write and edit only when entirely finished writing. In the case of this ‘earth stories’ work I need to fire my internal editor. Interestingly enough in the group a couple others were struggling with the same nagging critic.

After completion of my Tall Girl Series I thought a lot about making more narrative work. I have a lot to say, why not say it in cloth?! Yet something stopped me. I did do the Keeping Up Appearances series which is narrative but also humorous. What about narrative serious work about real meaty issues? What stopped me? Perhaps time to lose that editor again.

Related to writing, last week I came up with an awesome blog post on the eve of a short road trip and never got to the computer to write it down. So here goes from what I can remember of it! The date was the first anniversary of my father’s death and just two weeks after he would have turned 89. I was reminded of the ‘book of humor’ I drafted in the late evening of his 80th birthday.

We held his birthday party at the beach because he so loved the California coast. I had volunteered to get the cake. As a very young girl I always dreamed of being a ‘bakery lady.’ So it was only fitting that I should select and purchase the cake for Dad’s party. I went to a local gourmet bakery and ordered a chocolate ganache half sheet cake. We took the cake to the beach and it was a huge hit. After the party my sisters and I divvied up the cake and I made certain that I took home the end piece with the most amount of the super luscious chocolate ganache frosting. I had a piece of cake at the party, a piece at the beach house while divvying up, a piece when I got home that night. Fast forward to 2 am and I was wide awake flying on caffeine and full of the giggles. I got up, grabbed a legal pad and began to write. I wrote ‘the bones’ for 14 chapters for a book on humor. It was great, great writing! The next day, hungover from chocolate cake I typed the words from the pad into the computer and there they have rested ever since.

This year on the anniversary of my father’s death I decided it is time to ‘flesh out’ the bones written 9 years ago. So I set a goal for myself to not only flesh it out but also publish before June 13th next year, on what would have been his 90th birthday. Ten years fermentation seems just about long enough.

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