how do you do it all?

A drawing from Tuesday nights class, I played along for about 30 minutes… it’s a pelvis/spine!

Several times this week (on the phone) friends have remarked, “I just don’t know how you do it all!”. If I were less embarrassed and more honest I would post a picture of my kitchen right now, every dish we own is dirty, and even though the dishwasher (is now) is full of unwashed dishes my counters are still covered with dirty stuff… but I’m too embarrassed to post a picture, you can imagine the mess for yourself. My living room floor is littered with papers, books, magazines and the remnants of a package I just received from my Mum (thanks Mum) in England. The coffee table is disappearing under a sea of college mail for my son (he got his class ranking this week, 49th, in a class of about 400, so OK, but of course as his Mum I know he could have improved on that…), and bills that are (thankfully) paid, but not filed. Basically I am telling the world that my secret is that except for the weekends I am a terrible housekeeper! The laundry in the basement is clean, folded, but still in the laundry baskets… and I think it is possible that there is a table under the pile of art supplies and the sewing stuff that is in the dining room. I am seriously considering a dumpster! By now I’m sure that it is pretty obvious that not much art has been happening around here this week. I am feeling a little under the weather, thanks I imagine to all my students/kids who have all been sick (except my son who almost never is) and the problem with housekeeping I find is that as soon as you let just a little dust gather, pretty quickly it multiplies like rabbits and you are lost beneath a mountain of undone chores. Oh well, the week is almost over so the house will reappear again Saturday morning, in the meantime the mess makes me frazzled and cross! The only thing I have actually done art-wise this week is for my classes, a sample project for my 2-D class on spatial depth and I drew along with my drawing class for about 30 minutes Tuesday night as they were all working so productively, I wish I had taken my camera, because they produced some really great work!. What I hate most about the end of term is that just as the class is finding it’s feet and beginning to have a useful relationship with each other, the term ends and we have to begin all over again, gaining trust and getting to work. So for what it’s worth all I have to post are those images… the drawing’s up top, and here’s that sample project (surprise it’s a Victorian wallpaper design from Morris!)

bookish…

This is a scene from my bedroom tonight, I like to write my lectures in bed, it’s comfy and there’s lots of space for spreading things (ie books) around, which was a good thing tonight, as you can see! Tonight I am writing about the Art of the Middle Ages, one of my favorite historical periods because of course, it’s when they invented my favorite object, the codex, better know to us all as the bound book! Poor students, they have no idea what awaits them! Persian miniatures and Christian illuminated books, yummy! Not to mention my fascination with early Christian history/theology, agnostic gospels and women mystics! I am really looking forward to the next few weeks of mosaics and catacombs…

OK, off to move the stacks to the floor so I can go to bed! Goodnight all

space at last!

As those of you who are parents and artists know, sometimes your needs get shuffled to the bottom of the pile, and that can make your inner child pretty grumpy! This has been happening around here a lot this semester, so I made a conscious decision this weekend to put a few of the things I wanted to do at the top of the list!

Friday night I went to the opening of The Producers at Jamestown Community College, it was a hoot! (disclaimer, my youngest child is in the show, so I may be a little biased) Then my hubby and I headed out after the show for a late night supper and a few drinks. Very nice.

Saturday I woke up to find that the book fairy had stopped by, this happens occasionally, people know I use old books in my work, so they drop them off. These were fabulous little children’s books, with great woodcut illustrations. So whoever you are, book fairy, I thank you. Then I decided to take $20 and go non-retail shopping at the local thrift stores, scored two new jumpers, a great pair of pants, a new handbag (oh and more books…shhh don’t tell my family!!) I’m the early bird of the house, so even after the shopping I still had a little studio time before the rest of the clan surfaced! No time to really start a  major new piece, but I did finish a little Morris-esque page meditation.

Later after lunch, my hubby drove me out to an open house in his beautiful car, we had a great time, and I did a little shopping. Thanks Pat, Sean and Lisa

To finish the day of perfectly, we ended up having the house all to ourselves, as everyone else was out!

Today its time to come back to earth again, and retake the reigns of obligation, grocery shopping, laundry, but having had a little me time, I find myself in a better frame of mind, and happy to be puttering around the house. Everyone is out but me, so I can just relax and enjoy the peace and quiet and cross a few more things off of my to-do list. Hope all of you had a relaxing weekend too.

a closer look

I decided to try scanning my new journal pages, my photos were terrible, so here is a closer look…

its here!!

Yea! How exciting to get fun post instead of bills! I haven’t opened the envelope yet, I want to savor the experience, so I will post a picture later when I have chance to look over my treasures, greedy me, I want to savor them all by myself first! * So once class was finally over I opened up my letter and here is the picture above… I don’t know what I’m going to do with all this fabulous stuff!

On a completely unrelated note when I was feeling down and defeated a few weeks ago, Karin made a reading suggestion that I leapt on, and then discovered I had tried reading the same book once before, and set it aside because it just wasn’t speaking to me, the book, Sacred Contracts is by Caroline Myss and I, of course, had to make a new journal to accompany my journey. This is just an altered book journal, made my gluing pages together, and removing part of the contents, it was a book on geraniums, (I kid you not a whole book devoted to geraniums), it had some nice book plates so I left them, but otherwise I painted out the type blocks to create “blank” pages. Here is my first journal entry, about being worn to a raveling, a feeling I’ve discussed before on this blog, the image on the right is an old shawl I bought in Turkey when I was about 16 and it has been repaired many times, and now is entirely too fragile to be worn at all, on the left, there were some irregular bumps in the paper that began to form themselves into some kind of crazy knitted object (?), some of the text was peeking through the paint so I picked it out, then I added in new text, trying to match the font… I imagine the page will change on the journey, but here is where I am right now, fragile, hanging together by a thread and really looking forward to some time off of work later this week

paper swap, my turn!

here is what is on its happy way to Lisa in New Zealand! Oh I hope she likes it, this has been so much fun, both in sorting through my paper collection for suitable treasures to pass on, and in the anticipation of new gems on their way to me… it has cheered me up, to paraphrase Winne the Pooh, “no one can be uncheered with a piece of paper!” OK Pooh says balloon, but the point is still valid!

I really hope she likes them! A set of US state seals from an old encyclopedia, some stamps, a fragment of yellow wallpaper (of course), so fragments of old lithos,a  page from a journal, odd scraps, a piece of an old board game… all winging their way across the ocean!!

regressing…

I gave my students a middle of the semester evaluation this week, since I couldn’t help I decided to draw along with them, and boy do I need to practice, but anyway just for fun here is the end result (it’s a leaf in – case you can’t tell!!)

paper swap

Badge created by Artwork by Egmont van Dyck

I am excited to be a part of the paper swap being organised over at Woven Letters. I was super excited when I discovered my partner, you can meet her here at her blog lucky dip. She has posted a picture of what she is sending me, I was tempted to peek, but turned back at the last second and didn’t! I really like her work, we have some shared sensibilities and I’m looking forward eagerly everyday to getting my post, although as she lives in New Zealand so  I’ll probably have to wait a few more days! I am sending my packet of paper off to her tomorrow, I hope she likes what I picked! I’ll take a quick picture later before I put everything into the envelope!

Last night I had one of those incredibly vivid dreams of a new piece of work, I can still see it in my minds eye, and I was wondering if finished work ever delivers itself to anyone out there in the same way. It doesn’t happen to me very often, and of course bringing the piece into this realm is another thing altogether, but I’m sure I can’t be alone in this experience – right?

trying to keep up

I have been surfing the blogs, but I am running to keep up these days, hence no news here at my own blog, its kind of refreshing just visiting! Here is a mysterious something I am moving around the studio these days until it decides what it will be… it was part of a corset, I have no idea what it is becoming, just wanted to let you all know I’m still alive. Exciting things are happening, but they deserve more time, so I’m leaving you hanging until I ransom some, off  to teach…later!

cease and desist…

“If people are highly successful in their profession they lose their senses… Sight goes. They have no time to look at pictures. Sound goes. They have no time to listen to music. Speech goes. They have no time for conversation. They lose their sense of proportion – the relations between one thing and another. Humanity goes.” Virginia Woolf.

(I was looking for an image for burnout, a search turned up loads of images of burnout velvet, like this one  from buy and create fabrics I guess burnout can be beautiful too if you let it…)

Or if you are me, and you refuse to listen to your exhausted body, your back goes. I have spent a painful few days trying to get my back to behave. It has been gripped in a violent spasm since Saturday night. My doctor remarked that maybe this was a good thing, the alternatives could be worse, heart attack, stroke… a woman cannot run on fumes alone, not forever anyway. My husband made me practice saying NO! (Like that will work!!) Really I am serious he sat next to me saying,  “n..o… now you say it…”

I am often asked how I fit everything into my life, like many women I do it by not sleeping mostly… LaWendula over at woven letters was musing on truth this past week, she wanted to let go of duty and be free to play more …

So here is my addition to women speaking truth, I am overcommitted, I need Valium and about 37 hrs in everyday! Even though I was in pain, it was good to lay in bed for two whole days, and watch sappy movies and sleep (I slept a lot!). I would like to say I feel renewed, but what I really feel is foreboding, I KNOW I have to make some changes in the way I live, I am still exhausted and in pain.

So fellow artists/bloggers tell me true, how do you balance it all?