Little Big Challenges

I'm typing one handed with a baby on my lap amongst other hinderances, knowing what I want to write, and also knowing I don't have the time to write to my quality satisfaction.
This is life.

It's easy to show my process when life looks pretty and put together, and harder when I have more time to think than act. This is a really crucial point in my work, I think. I've never felt more assured about direction, more certain of my mind, more confident in my work, or more supported by the people who count in my life. If only I could get into the studio!
In my twenties I was really honing my technique, I just didn't know what to do with it. Now I'm motivated, but the same little people who are arranging transformative life experience are also the main reason I can't get a move on. Here's to taking the scenic route!

 

Succulent Painting

When I am working on a project I desperately want to be able to write about it one day and show you the next without a pause, but art labor intensive, and it takes time. Factor in making meals and taking kids to lessons and parks and libraries... well, here's what is left!

I have been working on a silk painting for a while now. My idea was that the girls love to paint too, and maybe they wouldn't interrupt if we were all painting together. Hahaha! Sheez, I crack myself up.

The original sketch itself was in progress for the months of February and March through mid April:

I drew succulents afternoons, evenings, and whenever I could steal a moment while binge watching Beauty and the Geek Australia on Youtube. As I am a beauty married to a geek I consider this to be pure research, not reality tv. What I mostly learned is that self tanner has magical transformative powers. Never mind that, what is important is that I finally ended up with a 36" square pattern of succulents. It is a repeat, meaning that if you lay the pattern side by side in any direction it will fit together like a puzzle.

As I said, the pattern is one yard square, but my fabric is 45" square. I traced the pattern onto my fabric lightly in pencil making use of the repetitive properties. You can kind of see the faint pencil lines in the picture above. The fabric was then painted over with wax, then the wax ironed off. This is what the paper looks like with the wax ironed onto it. I always think it is rather beautiful.

  I had to do the wax/iron step twice as I ironed too thoroughly the first time and not thoroughly enough the second. Applying wax is fun. Ironing the waxed fabric is pretty much my least favorite job, pretty paper notwithstanding.

Then I paint. And paint. And paint. I am trying to watch as many of the American Film Institute top 100 movies list as I can stream while I paint. That, and looking introspective. You can't spend enough time trying to look introspective.

 

Such is my progress to date!

Artist? Craftsman? Designer?

By now I have read enough blogs, listened to enough podcasts, and watched Lost in Living so I know I am not the only one asking “Am I an artist?” and “Am I still an artist when I am not making?” For me there is another foundational question I have to ask before that: Am I an artist, designer, or  craftsman? It's a loaded question because these are different paths. By far the option with that takes the most courage to look in the eye is artist. Growing up I was “the creative one,” shirking my responsibilities to draw and manning many a craft booth to make cash. I won a few little prizes, but nothing exceptional. My parents paid for years of watercolor lessons and I am still a terrible painter. Since my mom spins yarn and sells it, that was the family business, and definitely a craft. 

My real talent and passion after the baby-seal-drawing phase was in clothing, so I had the gaul to apply to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. I didn’t know how bad the odds were, I just knew that I had read every book on costume and fashion in my small town library, and they were written by FIT professors and/or referenced the FIT costume library, so I scraped together money I didn’t have to apply to a school in a scary city I had never visited. I got in. I thrived. I worked myself into the ground. I still don’t think I was exceptional, I just had a good sense for design honed by years of reading and making, and I worked exceptionally hard. There was a lot of talent that burned brighter than mine, but I struck a decent balance and I won bigger awards, had bigger opportunities and teachers who believed in me.  

Then I got married and moved to Texas. I was completely lost. I Drowned in a sea of the infinite possibility of time and absolute impossibility of place, being remote from all things creative. Remote, really, from all things. 

I am grateful for the time of experimentation I had in that painful solitude. I am thankful for the forge of motherhood and just generally growing up. I began to find my voice. But then there is motherhood and stuff. I haven’t put in the hours I need to. 

My studio is calling me now. I am serious enough about creating that the first room you see in my house is the one dedicated to making. Making a mess, mostly. Should I seek my voice again? Is that even right or responsible? How serious am I? Where is my place? I have asked the questions thousands of times for more than half of my life. Sometimes in my head I say I am an artist because what I have to say is not just practical, not just a thing, but a living idea. Sometimes I call myself a craftsman out loud because I am not making real art. But the-buck-stops-here reason I am not making real art is that I am afraid. I am a decent and dedicated craftsman but a designer with no market and no heart for mass production, and a poor artist. A dabbler, really. 

Being the worst at something scares me more than anything else and I have no credentials. 

In fact, I have trained and refined taste, so I know exactly how bad I am. I don’t even know if I have a dream. But there are things I must do. Things I must make. Things I must say. Things that have nothing to do with alphabets. Can I be an artist if what I am doing is knitting and sewing? I don’t know. I tried self-identifying as an artist at a party the other night and I wanted the heat in my cheeks to sublimate my whole self and all claims on artistry into the heavy air. I didn’t, not because it is impossible, but because I caught my breath and the crush of imagining denying this part of me held me in place and time. 

That is why I am still here to ask the question. 

Henna Alphabet Letter "Z" Printable

 Can you believe this is the last letter? I started this alphabet in the Fall of '13, so it's been a long time coming! Soon I want to get them rounded up so you can see them all at once, but until then, all of you Zs out there have something nice for a change.

Click to download and print in Brights Palette "Blue Green." 
Click to download and print in Naturals Palette "Sage."
Click to download and print in Black and White.

Getting Unstuck

This popular meme summed up the creative process in 6 steps:

1. This is awesome.
2. This is tricky.
3. This is crap.
4. I am crap.
5. This might be okay.
6. This is awesome. 

You know it's true. In the past 2 weeks I find myself hanging out in the vicinity of steps 3 & 4 wondering if all the collagesI have made  –which are so many more than these–  were all flukes!

That's just how projects go sometimes, and the best thing to do is go for a walk, soak in the tub, have a dog pile/tickle/cuddle extravaganza with my kids, sing Shake It Off karaoke style (go big or go home), and tell ridiculous jokes.

Here is the one I cooked up:
Q: Why did Cinderella's soccer coach bench her?
A: Because she is always late to the ball, and half the time she loses a shoe!

Here is one my daughter shared in the style of a knock-knock joke:

Her: Salmon!
Me in a stage whisper: What do you want me to say?
Her: Whoa!
Me: Whoa!
Her: Wait. I'm a salmon, not a horse!

So there you have it.
Now time to get back to work, because the main thing is just to keep showing up!