Been encouraged to take it easy and wait. The creative urge will return with energy to support it. I'm looking outside for solace and staring at the sky. Looking to much within I found not a blank canvas, but a little pain in understanding how I do what I do and the who I am in all that. I'm tempted to jump ship and cry over a good passage of Mircea Eliade. I wish I may I wish tonight this longing within to be of the light. As it matures and within my abode, to understand why I am it it chose. Restful in daze, thought devout, disturbed within, peace without. Follow the ripples to the source.
Sights and sounds of the garden today. Perfume on it way to being slow brewed in the window. Little housekeeping and I started hand quilting today on the new bag for myself. Freehand and organic. I am happy with the developments. Trying something to imbue the spirals and give them something to play off of. Planning to post a photograph after I establish more ground. Other site today was a decision to concentrated on papier mache and fabric ornaments for the Christmas season. Pricing materials and researching methods again. A long time ago I was knee deep in papier mache. With the plastic mold material I was able to edition natural object and masks. I miss those days. I might return with a little more work. It is easier than oil painting and keeps your hand busy in a pinch. For the market, painted versions I seem to be gravitating to, more than decoupage or collage versions. Though that may give me a low base price to sell from. Competition from World Market and Target may happen, but with original designs, I may hack the curve and come out with a profit.
Been encouraged to take it easy and wait. The creative urge will return with energy to support it. I'm looking outside for solace and staring at the sky. Looking to much within I found not a blank canvas, but a little pain in understanding how I do what I do and the who I am in all that. I'm tempted to jump ship and cry over a good passage of Mircea Eliade. I wish I may I wish tonight this longing within to be of the light. As it matures and within my abode, to understand why I am it it chose. Restful in daze, thought devout, disturbed within, peace without. Follow the ripples to the source. A shot from where I was sitting today. Outside the Winspear Opera House and we got there before the crowd. Three times we've been before and had no extra time or place to sit so we went directly to our seat. Today, we, mom and I, took the train and again, it was a beautiful trip in this mid-Spring. Graffiti included. I long to get of the train and join the ranks of vagabonds scrawling on walls. Making marks and leaving a hand print, like the Lasceaux Caves, on history. Yeah I think they all need art lessons and I need a year in street calligraphy. I notice now, not the trees, urban sprawl and cement 'scrapers, but the quick and developed hand of master calligraphers and the city's attempts at blanking canvases under bridges and in water drainage systems. I'm not daring to be derivative. I just want to remember the night air and the rush. The intensity of looking onto the sketchbook during the peak of dusk and scrawling till a step back says, that is alright. The Aspern Papers is what we saw. It is in English. A few Italian phrases here and there but totally in English. I never had that experience before. Once, my ignorance taught me there was no American Operas. English speaking is for musicals. Needless to say, I have received my education today and will be holding on to the playbill for a time. I did the same when my mother took me to the opera when I was young. Those I think have gone missing in the past years. Now its time to start again. Though this time I plan on incorporating the playbill into collage piece with the Opera of choice in mind for a themed run. If I learned from Latrec, it is to use all of the arts to fuel your inner flame. No matter the street corner aria to full blown staged productions of the superb and common man. Other's inspirations may spark a renewed vengeance on the canvas and new birth happens once again. Even new visions of old conventions become valid renewal of progress in creativity. I've been side stepping the point. I've been out of the line of fire of my conscience and criticism seems light. Colleagues are calling me to the task and rescuing me from eating my own young. I have destroyed my own work before and do not seek to go back there. I recovered and understood that I must know intrinsically the nature of my chosen medium before getting involved. Or in the least make time to experiment and research. At that time I was basically told I did not push enough. "I played it safe," was intimated. I mistook my strategy and thus destruction. Where I was in a safe place, I was encouraged to move outside my medium. I went as far as I could. I still play in clay these days, intermittently, through the years. I come back to raku and ransack notes and my mind. I was working on a divining tool based on animal medicine. I even dug a pit in the back yard to fire them in. With patience and permissions for local kiln use, I may come back to it. As for coming back. Its slow. The last piece for Cell Line kicked my tail. I have notes and designs for those to follow, but I became daunted. Pressed down by weight. Besides that I had sewing on my mind and I weighted myself down again without preparing or planning properly. To many pieces and not a unit in sight. Miscalculated measurements and the like tore my time, joy and encouragements to pieces. Luis, the neighbor suggested I sew, but he did not see me fall. I got sick meanwhile and moved on to writing. I have not touched the desk on any planned endeavors in weeks. A good long break and my mind was freed to understand author as well as painter in The Aspern Papers. My dear neighbor heard my spirit fall again and helped. I was rescued in a small task I was contemplating before, but refused because of no planning. I planned this time for myself. I'm onto make a new purse. Complex and lined, the same design I normally carry but machine made mostly instead of hand. I was planning to repair my old stand by, but this gave me fun and no pressure for seeking an audience to buy my wares. No editioning. It is started and I'm moving on to the hand quilting this week. Simple task. Very Simple tasks to rescue the mind. What I can do in small batches. What I can do with what I can see. what I can do with no obligation or demand of time. Simple tasks at hand. Till I can rescue where I got lost, plan and perform. Cell Line is still in progress. Slow and easy. Food is getting cold, so I'll be brief. Writing after writer's group and my columnar pad is full of notes, ideas and boning. Fleshing is the score and slowly it comes. Six meandering pages today and I'm feeling assured this is a minor note in the afterthoughts of literature. I'm being told it is good, but I want more crit. Not bone crushing, just critical. When I get more done I'll send it to a friend or two for opinions. Now that I see it more clearly it seems trite and ordinary. Everyday fare for me, but not in the least for some with perfect sons, perfect daughter and perfect lives themselves. I'm not picking on the wealthy, just pointing out my jealousies to those who have no comprehension of dysfunction, dependency and perpetual need. I'm hoping , dying to know this is not a comedy of errors, a bridge to creative non-fiction, but purely purely fiction that emulates possible reality. Its guess work for me mostly and hints and places and people that may have never existed. We just see the bubble up form the bottom, as it were, on the news. From Heaven's Gate to Waco and Boston. There's a back story that runs for miles, lives and a hell of a lot of depth that may or may not go untouched in the years to come.
I write to get this out of me in a way. I write this to dabble. I write to find a way to sustain the fascination machine for as long as I live and even beyond. I'll get around to posting an excerpt or two. Feel free to share your thoughts when I do. Blessed Be and Peace upon your household. Been writing and editing. Trying hard to follow the Nanowrimo premise of just write and not edit is difficult for me. It takes a tenth and twelfth edit for me to understand what I started. It like the opening scene to a play and the actor is down stage front. That is all you got. That is all you really see till your eyes adjust to the lighting and you begin to recognize shapes and patterns. This is helpful only if the environment truly reflects the characters. So here I am, pouting and lamenting for months only now coming out of the shadow to develop a clear picture of the first few scenes.
I have a bad habit of writing with out care or knowledge of what I am saying. Vacuous indeed but determined to sound loudly intelligent and poetic with a clever edge. I see this in retrospect and talk in hindsight about the garbage I use to turn in to professors and teachers alike. There was a time I was so bold as not to edit ever and pass with good colors in grades. Now, now I see I shortchanged myself and others of my true intellect to impart a scene, analyze a painting, or write a letter with care. Automatic writing comes to mind because believe you me the hand writes sometimes without the mind being engaged. I'm not training myself to look for Casper,but source beyond the veil of the subconscious to someplace sometime I am seen as true. I write now. I go back now to revise to give my best and to unearth myself first, before you, my dear reader finds me out again. I've gone back to the intro, tapped out a few more characters, started an outline which is half or one third through the plot development. I lose myself in the characters and their day to day plights. I become immersed in minuta and seem to write for lives not vehicles to carry a message in about 350 pages. I am afraid I have too many characters. Tough s#@t, I say. I'm polyamorous and involved with them all. NO one is taking my circle away from me. Not even by force. Well, maybe I do have something to say after all and I'm not writing into oblivion. In any case, there are more edits to change before tomorrow writer's group. I've decided to start from the beginning with this group and save the vignettes, character changes and plot diversions for later. I recently printed out helpful sheets on writing a novel and goodness me, I got saved from a few pitfalls. More to read though. Namely planning the transition and close of the story. I keep changing my mind without writing anything down and lose it all. Not good. I will learn. Off to the Opera today to see Giacomo Puccini's Turandot. Loved it. Was transported which is key for me. The set and dressings were fascinating. The costuming, exquisite. I'm a bit of a exoticist like Gauguin was and a heap of a primitivist like Picasso was. So I was enthralled. To be the props manger for that opera would be a bitch. I drew the whole time and took time to start in on edits during one of the intermissions. The notes I have like with the other operas and shows all go in the same mental blender show by show and hopefully come out a cohesive collage or assemblage series complete with titles significant to the librettos. I always put in on the shelf for months or years to come back when I am ready to shift in that mindset. I still have gobs of notes and drawing from undergraduate years at Hiram, the Cleveland Museum of Art, graduate years at Texas Woman's University, and the wonder world museums of Dallas and Fort Worth. In those pages I am at home and raw to the bone. Observing and writing taking copious notes without the interruption of a docent or braggart of an art historian. My eyes become tired for days afterwards. Well, most of the occasions are in one book. Working up sketches for pieces is next. I took notes on places during the train ride down. That too was a treat. Sketching little light signal and feverishly writing down cryptic signs whirring by. The graffiti was excellent to watch for as well. Overall the afternoon was good and I did not mind the odors of dirty flesh and alcohol. By the third act it was gone from my mind and tolerated by my nose. Some people you meet and forget, some you remember and pen into novels. This time I want to remember and I'll share the love when I clearly understand where he'll belong. Opera again this month. I'll have plenty to share. Also go see/rent Turandot before you die or lose your eye sight. If I remember correctly its the same opera that foiled the romance in Moonstruck with Cher and Nicholas Cage. Viva Puccini! Viva Amor! FYI: It will be a little while before I post again, so make sure you hook up with me via RSS for notification or via Facebook. I've got a few health issues to take care of and to do that, I'm cutting back on some activity. Then again if it is like last time I got sick, I delved into creating hands first and posted like crazy. Boston is giving me a little reflective time and so are a few other obligations. Stay hungry and curious.
How does it all happen in the span of a few hours? A lot of confusion endues, a lot of doubt eschews and many a cramp from pinning things together. Well, the squares are cut for the pinwheels. Slight difficulty level as I've run out of the companion fabric. It was free, there is no more, back to stage one in decision making: what can I spare? I have to come to grips with having no room for more stock, so I can not build more purses. So the fabric that would be solely for those purses runs off into quilting endeavors. Better the stroke than ending up at CCA after several years of collecting and culling. I do not want to give up anything. At All. Still space determines the spin and gravitational pull goes to blue. Maybe not a cotton, but what does that matter, I'm a mixed fibers enthusiast. So the pin wheel will evolve out of 237 slices of six inch squared bliss. From red to green to blue and a schmattering of yellow as well.
Well the donuts gave me a curve and redesigning the schlew took over the rest of the night into the monthly meeting. I complained backhandedly to Carol. She told me in no uncertain term that she had confidence in me to complete. I turn back to the drawing board, thinking I had another ten minutes of blah blah blah and well, I clipped the 'tude and got to work. I'm thankful to say the least. Foraying out into the open, braving were no man has gone before, well at least yourself, I had got into the habit of occasionally pissing in my pot and asking people to smell. "See my mistakes", me trying to play the martyr wanting permission to give up. Leaving grad school, you leave the group critique and hopefully you learn where your biggest problems are and fight and correct against them. Somewhere you've got to take charge and brave into the mist, establish your ground and set base camp with plans for building the outpost or castle as you may have it. Either way take responsibility and be brave. Correct your mistakes and don't let that blip on the screen stop the trip of a lifetime. So, I'm redesigning for the third time because of poor measurements when I was cutting fabric. Either way it didn't matter. The sizing for the squared donuts did not match the pinwheel. It was smaller. The redesign changes the match and use. With confidence now.... The new design is estimated at 110" by 100". There are eight units planed, measuring 20" to 30" in length by about 15"-18" in height. The eight will be laid interchangeably in rows making up for variance to reach 110". I have five more to draw, but may change the variable. The kicker is all around working in the scraps. I was saving the bulk for a string quilt, but most try those eventually. Why not work a as many in as possible. Whatever I have left over I still have an urge for a string quilt, but If I'm going to go beyond expected I've got to push the envelope every time. No matter success or fail. So its was cold today and I did not cover as best as I could. I loved the wind and the smell of spring. Six hours in today and if I remember tomorrow I'll design more quilts. Especially laying out what I have already drawn. I'm called back to the Marija Gimbutas studies I was trying. Maybe in a butterfly quilt.I think maybe to detailed. I'll keep going till I understand how this quilts can become fabric art in the right size and design. Pushing beyond a colorful comforter or partition between room to hide unsightliness. Something that hangs to the left of the Picasso down state. Something as worthy and desireable as any painting. Would that could that happen? I straddle the recycled world with two gloved fists, holding on wondering if it will ever be as worthy. I dig in the people's art persay, trying to give the materials every bit of dignity and significance as oil paint has. But alas I may be in the wrong game, fiercely fighting upstream losing , back peddling and drowning in my own refuse. I got a little studying on where each plays in the art game in trade, intrinsic value and significanc eover time. I think achivality is part of it, but not the whole. Not much to add. Taking a day or two and concentrating on my other life, namely chores, and rest. 1/3 of the quilt is cut. Two -Three more sections to wrangle and I'm doin' them in stages. Pinwheel, donuts and scraps. I apologize for the repetition if I've said it already. Maybe I am just convincing myself. I shifted from traditional to a variance. The scraps will help make the difference. I love making quilts you can't duplicate. Give the whole airy of originality and singularity a weight that can't compare. Looks as if I'll be sewing out this and next week. Writing is on the docket as writer's group approaches. I started on a new character and location to weave in the story. However all these characters meet will have to be an explosion somehow and create more interest. Glad I seeded that though and hopefully it will come out sooner than later. I'm slow working on the book and when I get into it, I am there. Even but for a day or a few hours. I friend in the group says he writes everyday. About two hours. I can't get out of the studio for but ten minutes some days: bathroom stop and the kitchen, then headlong back into the rift. Luis, the neighbor, believes this will give me some perspective and healing time. He comment that I hit a wall with "Cell Line". Obviously I couldn't argue. I had plans but Limping Tiger the Weaker took something out of me I don't understand. Truly I make something following how it wants to develop versus how I design it. Michaelangelo spoke of that once; carving the being out of stone as if excavating. It was already in there. There is a difference between additive and subtractive sculpture, but you just might get what I am hinting at.
No photos of work today. Just not ready, but I do have batteries finally (yea!). I may start carrying the camera with me again to find everyday beauty. I'll remember to share. Good late night. |
N.A. JonesPicking up where I left off. Archives
November 2019
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