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Labors Of Love

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The windows, or should I say the window? Don’t ask. I have now spent days and days on it. I’m not done. I think it will be beautiful when I’m finished (apparently sometime around the end of eternity), but as I said last night, I can never charge enough to make up for time and effort. I think at this point I’m earning about maybe a dollar an hour on this one. Dan labeled it a labor of love today, and I couldn’t agree more. I love what I do, and I love to see the work come to life. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be finished with it tomorrow.

For tonight, a labor of love of a different kind. I looked at the photos on my phone, and I found a lovely picture of my friend Gabby, who just celebrated her tenth birthday. Gabby is a beautiful and special girl, and it really was a pleasure to do this drawing. I need to tweak it just a little in the morning, it’s now ten thirty and my eyes have called it a night. I’m excited for Gabby to see her portrait, which of course means that a portrait of Kingston can’t be far behind. (You know, the brother-sister stuff, can’t do one and not the other.) IMG_5597

My Constant Companion

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Still in the process on the window projects. They are both turning into another of those pieces that I put far too much into with no hope of ever selling them and paying myself anything for my time.

I decided tonight to return to doing a little fine art for a project to post. A solitary figure in watercolor based on a rather out of focus photo of my son Brian’s performance as the town drunk in a high school production of “Our Time”. I think I was inspired by a conversation that Dan and I had earlier this evening. We talked about ourselves now that we are officially “empty nesters”, and are now alone. I had been talking to my Dad. He is eighty-one and living in an independent living home. It has been nearly seven years since my Mom died, and in those seven years my Dad has been desperately lonely. He made a few half-hearted attempts at seeing other women, but it never felt right to him. I call him every night, and have done so for the last seven years. I hate the idea of his loneliness. He is in Chicago and I am in California, the phone calls are the best way I can help him. He has often said that for him loneliness is the worst disease a person can have. I have to agree. I have spent a great deal of time alone in my life. The difference in my Dad and myself is that while he is a very social person, I am the opposite. I am a very solitary person, someone who enjoys quiet, and doesn’t mind being alone. I have always said that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely. The truth is that I’m never really alone, I always have one companion, my art. I quit work twenty-four years ago to stay home and raise my children, and yes there have been times when I’ve been very, very lonely, but my salvation has always been my creativity. Without art, without creative expression, I think I might have lost my mind. I never really worked on my art, on the kind of art I wanted to do, but I used the gifts I have to do things for my children, to design my home, and to do the occasional craft show to contribute to our holiday spending. I’ll never regret spending the time with my kids (who are by the way, two pretty spectacular human beings), I do regret not giving myself a little love and attention along the way. I will always be grateful for the lifeline that kept me sane, gave me personal moments of joy, and I think gave my kids a rather special childhood. Art and creativity is so much a part of who I am, it’s been my place to hide, my place to express happiness, and my best friend when I had no friends. Now as I near the end of this year-long project I realize that I need to work a little harder to honor my companion, my talent, and continue to push myself to go far beyond this year, to realize my potential while I still can.2 17 14

So Many Projects, So Little Time

After a very hard days worth of work, I again find myself with no photos to post. I made some progress today on two of my projects from yesterday, and then just to add to my workload I added one more piece. I have a children’s rocking chair that I picked up years ago. It’s missing the seat and needed to be repainted. Dan cut a new piece of wood for the seat which I will be upholstering tomorrow. I have also decided to paint on the fabric for the seat. Not sure what as of yet, but I’m thinking some kind of vintage children’s illustration. My window project from last night is also still a work in progress. It is a very old window and needed to glued and nailed in a number of places. Dan took care of that for me as well, but it took a while to fix and then to dry so that also bleeds into tomorrow. I picked up my posters to add to the other window only to discover that neither will work. I have to revisit it in the morning and choose another photograph to use. I did work on a table that I am refinishing for a friend, and painted two chairs and a table for Brian’s new place, and reupholstered those seats. No wonder I’m exhausted. So although I worked for several hours today on a multitude of pieces I have no finished projects as of yet. Hopefully all of our work today will pay off when everything is finished tomorrow.

I will share instead a little something I did here at home, something that I love, but unfortunately can’t travel with me when I leave. It’s a mural on the wall in my butler’s pantry. A watercolor of the original idea, and then the completed wall. I took a dead space in our house and I think turned it into something special.IMG_5565

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Looking For Suggestions

Tonight I will be a woman of few words. The reason? A low-grade fever, dripping nose, (I know, too much information), sneezing, oh and I forgot to mention that my head weighs twice as much as it did when I woke this morning. Flu shot? Yes, I had one, and although many people I care about have had the flu in the last few weeks, I thought I dodged the bullet. I was wrong it just took longer to reach me. I still managed to get a little something done for this evening. A watercolor based on a vintage book cover. One of the things that Dan and I want to do in our business is embrace the community we live in. This piece is part of that. We want to involve the people who visit our store and make them feel like its their place as well as ours. As I mentioned last night I love children’s books. I plan on doing a little story telling, and I’m looking for suggestions of favorite stories.  If anyone has one I’d love to hear it.

For now I’m calling it a night.2 13 14

Who I Am

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I think I was born with a “No Compete” clause. I have no competitive edge, none. It doesn’t mean that from time to time people don’t annoy me enough to make me want to prove something, that is a whole other animal. Maybe that’s why I shy away from promoting myself. A few things brought this to mind tonight. First on the list is that I happen to be watching some of the Olympic coverage. I marvel at the athleticism. (We all know by now that I have none.) In college I had switched majors to advertising, a young and stupid move. Not that I couldn’t have produced some fabulous ideas, I come up with some pretty amazing ones all the time, if I do say so myself. It’s just that there aren’t too many careers as competitive as advertising, I’d have been eaten alive, unless of course someone pissed me off, then it’s game on. There was also a conversation that I had not once, but twice today. I have three sisters, when everyone starts to talk I quiet down. With Dan’s family, everyone talks over one another. They are quite good at it, and amazingly all know what the others are saying. I’m not loud enough for that. I don’t even try. Another reason is that last night a friend (well-meaning of course), wanted to know how to post a comment on this blog to tell the world how (her words) AMAZING I am. While I very much appreciate the sentiment, I would be mortified if someone wrote that. This isn’t a self-esteem or self-confidence issue. I am old enough to realize it’s OK to say that I’m talented without feeling like I’m bragging. It’s a fact, I do indeed have a lot of talent (not downhill skiing talent, but talent none the less), I’m just not comfortable shouting it from the rooftops. It’s not who I am. Thanks to age (and this project), I am more and more comfortable with the idea of myself as an “artist”. I spent a lot of years feeling like a fraud. Claiming to be an artist, but feeling like I didn’t have the pedigree. Well I do have the credentials,( just ask God, he gave them to me.) I’ve always loved being able to do the things that I can do, I’ve always longed to do other things that I can’t do, (No, not downhill, but maybe figure skating, or even walking and chewing gum at the same time without requiring knee surgery.) I’ve just always felt that as privileged as I am to have the skills that I have, I realize that they are skills that many other people are blessed with as well. I have from time to time been accused of “showing off”. It couldn’t be farther from the truth, because the truth is that I enjoy using my talents, every one of them to do things for others. Whether it is cooking a beautiful meal for friends or loved ones, painting something for a friend, or (my favorite) making something as a gift for a child, it’s never about, “Look what I can do.” It is always about my love of giving, of making someone happy, or hopefully making a difference in someone’s day, or a child’s life. That is who I am, no rooftops required.

Back to readying things for our business. I completed last nights pen and ink. It will be used as an award for one of the promotions we want to run with local schools. The second piece tonight is an idea I “borrowed”. Not the artwork, that’s me, although it was inspired by an old vintage book, but the idea for the product it will become. My daughter was invited to a baby shower. The guests were given a label and instructed to put it inside any book they might purchase for the baby. It had a place for the baby’s name, and who it was from, but my favorite part was where the guest was supposed to say why that book in particular. I loved the idea. I love children’s books and love to give my favorites as gifts. I wish I knew who to credit for this lovely idea, unfortunately I don’t. I do think it adds something really special to the gift of a book, and I think a book is the best gift one can get. My finished pen and ink, and watercolor, and pen on Bristol board with a little bit of computer help on font.

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Reality Sets In

I’m struggling tonight. Parenthood never ends. I offered help to my son last night as he prepared to move on to bigger and better things. He and his friends rented a truck for 7a.m. this morning, and despite our earlier suggestions that he just might want to pack, he waited until the last-minute. Youthful optimism and inexperience were the order of the day, Brian turned down my help, but later once the enormity of the task at hand hit home, he finally caved. I’ve moved thirteen times in my life. Dan is an Air Force brat, and I’m sure doesn’t even have a count. Essentially we know what we are doing. It had to be near ten when I began to help, Dan wasn’t feeling well and went to bed, and Brian? He had his fill at about ten forty-five. (To his credit he had been working for about three hours before I came in.) As for me, Mom, tenacious, stubborn, hard-working, and did I mention, Mom? I worked until one fifteen, until I forced myself to go to bed. When he came for the final push this morning things were well-organized. Today we helped with the moving in, and tonight I shed my first tear when I started to make dinner and realized that Brian wouldn’t be here later to rummage through the fridge for a late night snack.

As for the other part of my day, breakfast with Gabby and Kingston, it was wonderful. To begin with I gave King his painting from last night. I got more from his response than I could ever possibly ask for. He is a very happy little boy. We decided based on the painting to write a story together. Its something I did with my daughter. I would write a line, then she would write a line. Kingston and I wrote our first two lines this morning. I also made them a favorite of mine from childhood. My Mom would soft boil eggs, cut the tops off, and place them in egg cups. She would make toast and cut it into “fingers” for dipping. They loved it, and loved it even more when I told them how we would turn the empty egg shells upside down and try to trick my Dad into thinking he had a boiled egg. Hearing them laugh is the best way to start the day.

I wrote my post a few hours ago, knowing that at some point I would hit a wall. The wall has arrived. I’ve spent the last two hours working on a pen and ink, but I just can’t go on. I’m much, much too tired. Here is my incomplete pen and ink…to be continued tomorrow…IMG_5514

Holding On Tight

If you are someone who has followed along my journey since the inception of this blog, you know that within weeks of my taking the steps to finally find something for myself, my life took a drastic change. My husband lost his job. As I have been spending these past ten months searching for my artistic self, my incredible husband has been on a search of his own. My obstacles are self-imposed and personal, Dan’s obstacles are imposed by the world and its prejudices. Somehow in this society who we are and what we have to offer becomes minuscule in comparison to our age. He has a fountain of knowledge, incredible skills, intelligence, and is hardworking and loyal to the core, yet here we are nearly a year later. We got more bad news yesterday, and then again today. I find myself feeling a little hopeless today, and worse yet I see it in Dan as well. It has been a roller coaster of emotion for months, more so for me because as always, Dan protects me and denies his own worry as to not upset me. We try to hold each other up, we try to assure each other that all will be well. To be honest I was in no mood to create today. My heart and mind are heavy. I have not given up on prayer, but maybe a little on hope. So many times in the last ten months we have had a glimmer of hope only to have it snatched away. The one consistent throughout is our love for each other, we are in this together no matter what the outcome. Tonight I drew a small sketch in an effort to express what I’m feeling. We are two broken hearts, each holding on to and supporting the other as the chaos of the world swirls around us.2 4 14

Creating Stories

When I was in college I took a three-dimensional design class. It’s been quite a few years since then so I barely remember the teacher, much less his name, but what I do remember was thinking that he was odd. One afternoon he began to explain as he called it his”glove fetish”. He had the opportunity to design one of the school windows in way of showing what the school was about. He used his glove collection. By way of explanation he told us a story about finding a glove on the street. It was apparently a very elegant glove. He spoke of his fantasy about the owner of the glove, wondering what kind of woman she was, and proceeded to tell us of the imaginary woman he had created in his mind, all from a single glove. I was twenty at the time and came home to tell my family that my teacher was, in my young words, “a major league weirdo”. As time went on he only cemented my opinion. In grading my work he spoke of my “cosmic” design sense, or would fixate on one particular element and in his own mind decide it was something that I had never envisioned. Of course I never argued, I agreed, I wanted the grade. On one project in particular we had to create in clay. I’m allergic, so in rummaging around the storage in the art department I found a leaf-shaped cookie cutter, I used it to cut out as many leaves as I could in the time allotted. I was jokingly referring to it as “Gilligan’s Hut” (if you are too young…Google it). When it came time for grading this teacher was gushing with praise for my “organic” creation. I of course played along, telling him that I too loved the “organic” creation I came up with.

I guess now that I am older I understand just a little bit of that teacher’s way of thinking. Unlike him I’m not drawn by single objects, but I am drawn to singular figures. I look at these people and in my mind I imagine who they are, wonder why they are alone, and hope that they have someone in their life. My Dad always says that there is no disease as bad as loneliness, wise words that I agree with. A few months ago it was the man with the umbrella at a bus stop in Chicago who grabbed my attention in a fleeting moment at a red light, just weeks ago the portrait of a lonely woman, and the oil painting still in progress of the young woman whose back was turned to me at Starbucks.  Last week there was a photo in the New York Times that really drew me in. It is of a woman with her back to the camera. I can’t really put my finger on why these individuals appeal to me. Sometimes I think it is a reflection of myself. I can still be quite shy, and have many times in my life felt alone or lonely. I wonder if maybe its the empathy I feel for singular lonely souls. The watercolor I did tonight is loosely based on the photo. There was a profile of a man to the left of this woman, he could have been with her, I can’t be sure, but he wasn’t important in the feeling I had about her. You will also see to the right just the silhouette of a man. The man on the right was engaged in conversation with someone else not relating to the woman, but I wanted to add his silhouette as a way of making her even more singular, but it was the woman I was interested in. In my imagination she is quietly listening. She is hesitant, she is older in how the world perceives her, but inside she is young and full of life. She is in my mind someone who lives alone, she is successful, she has friends, but none that know her as well as they think, and maybe, just maybe, she is holding an elegant pair of gloves in her hands.2 3 14

A Life Reflected

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Something I wrote last night sparked some interesting thoughts in my head today. Last night I made reference to my half painted canvas, which upon a coat of paint, was fully clothed. I thought a lot about that today. Sexuality is a subject that makes many people uncomfortable, not me. (Just ask my horrified children.) To be human is to be a sexual being. To give birth is a sexual experience. When I look at that “virginal” white canvas that I started with yesterday I cannot help but think how much life it gains when paint is laid upon it. I give birth to my art. It becomes vibrant and alive. Think about it. How much great art has been produced through the ages due to love, to lust, or because of frustration? The human condition immortalized in paint, in charcoal, in photograph. The Mona Lisa’s smile, the lusty vivacious work of Georgia O’Keefe, even the loneliness of strangers in a diner in Hopper’s “Nighthawks”. The virginal blank surface that has yet to experience life, it is the artist who is tasked to recreate emotion through color and image. The connection between the work and the artist as a human is singular. As I thought about these things today I realized that my own hesitancy, my own cautious approach to laying the paint upon a surface as a young artist has been replaced with a love for richness, for texture, for color. All reflective of the life already lived. I was timid in my younger self, afraid to put too much paint on the surface, afraid of revealing too much of myself. There is a confidence in aging, a wisdom that the young artist can never have. Even the most skilled artist as a youth will find that the work will grow as the life experience grows as well. Love, heartbreak, loneliness, regret, laughter, joy; the list of emotion is endless, the effect on the artist is immeasurable. I need to respect my own process, my own growth and life experience, to leave more of myself on the canvas.

Tonight a face. I love faces. I didn’t want to sketch a recognizable face, but to draw for practice, for the enjoyment. This is a woman who doesn’t exist, created by my hand.1 28

Mission Accomplished!

Three days in and I’m finally finished with this project. As I said last night I will never be able to charge enough to cover the amount of time I’ve spent on this project, but I had a few mishaps along the way, as well as some areas where I rethought the way I was doing things. I’m pleased with the finished project. In all there are thirteen pages in this miniature accordion folded book. Each about the size of a business card. It has a velvet ribbon inside to keep the accordion in place, and the same ribbon to tie it shut. I’d really like to expand on this idea. The one I created for Dan has photos of us, and more personal notes and quotes. As I thought about the piece today I thought it would make the perfect vehicle for a romantic proposal. I may offer them with blank pages for personalization, places for photos, song lyrics, anything that someone might want to add to make it a really special gift.

I admittedly have still not really bitten the bullet and put any of my art up for sale. Dan and I talked about my artistic insecurities again this morning. I really don’t understand what’s fueling these feelings at this point. I’ve produced a lot of work I love including what I did tonight, but I can’t seem to shake the insecurity. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a good cook, actually a really good one. Last night we had dinner at the winery. My food was good, not great, but considering how fussy I can be it was really good. I got up this morning determined to recreate last nights meal, only better. I didn’t hesitate, it never once occurred to me that I couldn’t do it, I recreated that dish and it was better. I am completely fearless in the kitchen. I want that fearlessness when I pick up a brush as well as a spatula. I’m going to put at least five pieces up tomorrow. I need to force myself to get over the hump. I know that as I move forward there will be judgement and rejection, it’s part of the game. I just need to find that belief in myself so that what anyone else thinks won’t matter so much.1 26 (2)

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