New Space

For the last several weeks all my spare time has gone to the big rearrange.  We recently put a yurt in our back yard that will serve as a studio space and guest room.  The round house construction is an amazing, flexible, intricate wonder.  We (7 of us, thank you, you know who you are) put the yurt up in several hours.  Its an adult lego set in wood and cloth!  Now we are outfitting the yurt, moving the girls into separate bedrooms (yes they are thrilled), moving ourselves into the old studio, moving our computer into a closet, generally dismantling every space in our house and moving it across the hall.  I am so grateful and excited to enter this new era of my art making life!! 

Nude-lings? Noodlings?

These are a few of the tiny watercolor nudes I've been making for this weekend's sale.  My brother-in-law coined them Nudelings.  I can't decide how to spell that word, but I love saying it!  Go ahead try it.

potted plant

When I was a child my mother kept an Aloe Vera plant on the table near the kitchen window.  Amazingly, that heat loving desert species thrived on the thin and infrequent sunlight of northern Alaska.  I would sit at the kitchen table staring out at snow drifts under street lights or finishing an after school snack and absently stroke the fleshy green spears with their thorn laced edges.  I'd marvel at the new red shoots emerging from the sandy soil.  A few leaves were always cut and puckered at their tips, where my mother would snip a bit of the plant to put on our cuts or burns, instant relief, a little green band-aide.  Maybe that plant survived in that improbable environment simply because it was needed, a tiny desert oasis in a frozen realm.

Thinking like a teacher...

My artist brain has taken the multiplicity of small manipulative tasks involved in art making and fused them into a fluid sweep of motions that I do with little consideration.  For example, in this basic weaving sample my needle hand wraps, loops and pulls while my other hand tugs and untwists.  These things all happen simultaneously in that mystifying graceful dance that hands can do with practice. 

My teacher brain (considerably less developed than my artist brain) really struggles with breaking down the fused motions of a task into accessible steps.  As I practice a project intended for the classroom, I attempt to write down the steps as I work.  The resulting literature reads like those complicated toy assembly directions that have been written in an incomprehensible blend of several languages.  "stick needle between strands 5 and 6 while holding unwoven yarn parallel to strand 4, bring needle back up btwn strands 4 and 5, keep weaving yarn to the outside of needle"  What the hell am I talking about?  This work fills me with renewed admiration for people who can write a really clear instruction manual.  That is a special skill indeed!

imagine the maniacal laugh of a power hungry artist...

    When I spend my day quietly easing clay into uniform shapes or laying little squares of fabric in careful overlapping patterns I emerge from my work somewhat distorted, feeling larger than life.   I briefly see the whole world as a waiting workable lump of clay.  I arrange our dinner's chopped vegetables into neat colored piles.  I imagine my words as tools, capable of molding or shifting the moods and actions of my teen and tween daughters.  I engage with my neighbors over repainting their dull beige houses.  It is no small wonder the stereotype of the reclusive work obsessed artist exists.  I experience an odd, wonderful, intoxicating, power when I sit and work with accommodating clay and cooperative cloth.  In that realm I am creator, ultimate decider.  I shape landscapes and build beings.  In the real world there is chaos and the unforeseeable whim of others.  In the real world I am merely a participant, an influence, and sometimes even a victim.

a giddy reunion

Summer is over.  My daughters are back in school and my own teaching schedule is relatively set.  I have the immense pleasure of proclaiming (albeit to myself in the quiet confines of this room) thursdays and fridays as my new studio work days.  I will wear slippers, drink cold coffee, and listen to podcasts while I make ART!  This is my second week back at it, and it really feels as if an old dear friend has returned to my life.