Anyone remember this piece? This is Swoops, aka The Magic Schoolbus. It has been languishing on my design wall (in its intended vertical orientation) since the summer of 2005. Pa The Tic.

Anyway, I have, with the help of Eric Maisel, art coach, come to a major conclusion: Not finishing my crap is *2* strikes against it. If I just finish the ratzenfratzen stuff, I might find that not everyone thinks it is the crap that I think it is. Better yet? Even if it turns out that my stuff really IS headed for tertiary treatment at the local sewage plant, at least it will be DONE AND OFF MY WALL. That, all by itself, would be a huge blessing.

Therefore, my art project of the week: I actually took Swoops down and worked on it, and PLAN to have it FINISHED (or at least ready for backing) by Wednesday noontime (so I can show it to someone that afternoon). My daughter, Dana, happened to be in the studio with me when swoops came off the design wall, and, much to my chagrin, she almost died of shock; I don't think she knew that things weren't up there permanently and COULD come down. This piece hasn't budged since before she was conceived, and here we just bought her first pair of Big Girl shoes for her playdate at the park today. Sigh.

No need to beat myself up for what I haven't gotten done before now though - I have learned those lessons, and punishing myself for not having learned them sooner is pointless. I am NOW working on getting this piece finished, and that feels great.

BTW - I opened Picassa to gather together my photos of finished work for my gallery page. It (depressingly) didn't take long. Some of the pictures are lousy, some pieces I just don't have pictures of, and, well, I just haven't finished that much work, obviously. So - I need to take some new pictures, juggle computers for lack of a connecting cable, and then I'll get back to you.

Body of Work

Funny that this title includes the word 'work,' eh? No one calls it their body of play.

Anyway - I *am* actually working on a gallery site for my work. I'm not sure what I will PUT there yet (lol), but folks *will* actually get to see my work.

Art at last!

Not only did I spin up the rest of a rainbow top this weekend (for a present for my girls), but I am almost finished with a multi-year UFO needlepoint (orange trees in blossom, by Candace Berhouth (sp?)).

Yeah, those are more 'craft' than 'art.' But I ALSO made my *first-ever* woodblock carving yesterday! The wood carved WAY easier than I thought it would - hardwood even! - and the blade holder didn't even hurt my hands once I wrapped muslin around the textured part of the handle.

No, I won't show you my work today. It looks crap. I didn't say my carving was GOOD, just easy to do. I made a real mess of it, but loved it anyway, so at least I got the important part right! Hurray!

Next project, after I finish the needlepoint? DH and I are GOING to clean the kitchen today, and I am designing little leather shoes (basically homemade Robee's) for the girls for our upcoming season of medieval reenactments. Hopefully they won't grow out of them as soon as I get them done!

BTW - I WILL give y'all a picture of my girls in their medieval getups once I get them all done. Greenland gowns and Viking aprons (without the brooches) are what I'm thinking. Coifs won't get worn much, but I can try, right? Lol...

Gotta love the creative kick in the butt of jumping back a millenium!

Nothing so profound

No quilts, no politics; not really all that much ME under all of this spit-up. I LOVE being a mother - I've never wanted anything more than I've wanted my girls - but I have to have something that I want to do other than take care of them - I need something for my down time, something for my ME time; something FOR me, something ABOUT me, something ME, not just something MOM.

Fatigue is a very insidious disability. I keep getting just enough sleep to realize how frustrated I am with my situation. The art that I used to create is, again, too physically demanding. I stepped down from weaving to quilting years ago for the same reason, and I don't know where to step now. I dream of making furniture, but that is obviously right out of the question, and even my much lesser dreams of beading and scrapbooking require a stillness of hand and a dedication of time and environment that I just can't offer them. Let alone, a stillness of mind - I have to be able to put something down for an indefinate period of time in the time it takes my girls to go from asleep to inconsolate (about 30 seconds) and I need whatever I'm doing to be inexpensive ($360/month on less-allergenic formula to supplement my breast milk), baby/cat safe/proof, and not particularly flat surface consuming. I still haven't finished knitting the coming-home sweaters for my girls, and they are almost too big for them at near 6 months of age, and I am already spinning wool for blankets that I want to crochet for them that they can't outgrow, but neither "knitter" nor "crocheter" sounds like a description of myself that I could find self-satisfaction in.

If we move to the South Shore of Massachusetts, I can take on textiles and textile equipment curation at the Alden House in Duxbury, but we can't afford living there, and my parents can't afford to help us live there, and when we have said that, we've said it - no amount of *wanting* is going to change the financial facts of the situation, and I really don't want to risk my girls getting to see more of their grandparents just to get to spend most of that time watching them talk money with Mama and Dada. Plus, we can all do without the traffic, even if it does come with a lovely beach and dear, dear friends.

I *WILL* go back and get my MSW at some point, but my husband has his RN to get first, and who knows what life with the girls will be like by then anyway, so it sounds more than a little bit lame to define myself by what I want to do when my girls grow-up! Honestly, I want to spend the bulk of my time being the best Mom and wife that I can be, (as hokie as that sounds,) but I also need something where the free-will of others isn't going to be able to derail my senses of self and accomplishment.

My husband says that I could write, or program a game of my own (his hobby/semi-profession), but something about me just requires handwork, and not of the 'can do it in front of the TV without even watching' variety. Anything that a machine can do isn't likely to make me feel very good about my hard work.

Yes, I am a human BEING, not a human DOING, but I want to be something for and of myself, not defined by my relationship to others for 10 minutes a day (mother to my children, wife to my husband, daughter to my parents).

Suggestions welcome...

Politics : Fabric - the minimum wage

I'm just wondering if you think the two mix. I figure if it worked for Betsy Ross, it ought to still sort of stand for the real day to day life and how it looks at the issues of our day.

Crazy ideas I've had for political art quilts include my latest rant - the minimum wage. I haven't done the math out, but I do know that someone working 40 hours a week at the federal minimum wage still doesn't make enough money to break the federal poverty line. How stupid is THAT? It would seem to me that figuring out what the minimum wage ought to be should be a pretty simple calculation, namely poverty line amount divided by 52 (for the weeks in our vacationless and never sick working joe's year)and then divide your result by 40 for the number of hours in a full working week, American-style. Shouldn't THAT number be the minimum wage, ie the minimum amount someone can make an hour and still NOT fall below the poverty line and be able to get some sleep and have time to eat? (If they can *afford* somewhere to sleep and something to eat on what the federal government thinks they can, ie the poverty line.)

So - how to show this in fabric? I think fabric is actually the PERFECT medium for this subject, (other than dollar bills themselves, which, being printed on cotton rag themselves are pretty much fiber objects to begin with) being about daily life.

Idea #1: Some sort of mosaic-like graph of actual wage vs poverty line wage. Lame, but first anyway.

Idea #2: Seven panels wide - one for each day of the week. Photo transfer image of person at different minimum wage job printed at top of each. Money actually paid (the real US currency, since I mentioned it) glued beneath, then beneath *that*, the money that the person DIDN'T get for each day, dyed red bills, painted red coins, and below *that* an image of what that money would have gone towards in the life of a person actually living at the poverty line, like fresh fruit, bus fare, or even protein other than beans (horrors!) Then quilt the whole sucker with words; words that people use to describe folks who manage to get up and face another day at or below the poverty line. Words that I would never want to be called, and won't repeat here. You get the idea.

I actually really like that image, so I'll stop there. BTW - sorry I'm not actually drawing that for you and posting it as my uber-blogger friends would, but I'm just not feeling that cool today, or ever, really. So - where to show said quilt? I mean I *could* make it and just hang on to it, but a quilt about something this important should be SEEN. Somehow though, I just don't see it going over very well at the Vermont Quilt Show. The prize-winning quilt this year was about a pretty group of Native American women; that is about as much cultural guilt most shows seem to be willing to deal with. And, no offense intended, but many of the small, fringy shows that actually DO show politically progressive work all just preach to the choir when you get right down to it. How frustrating THAT would be.

Anyway, that is what I *would* quilt about right now, babies and all, if I thought it would make any difference what so ever, but it wouldn't and I just don't need that kind of disappointment right now.

People who continue to make and actually show political art must be just as hardworking, dedicated/desperate, and able to deal with frustration as those folks working and living at or below the poverty line are. Then again, many of the folks that I know that fit into either category have problems with alcohol and/or relationships. I guess art DOES imitate life, and when that life is spent working for peanuts it can look pretty dreary. A sort of dreariness that I am glad that I can be unself-absorbed enough to notice, but not enough to make me want to spend a lot of time there... even if that time would be in the studio.

shows what *I* know and block printing

I guess I do have readers - they just can't all post comments to my blog. I don't know why, and I'll try to figure that out when I've had a little bit more sleep.

Right now though, I am contemplating the uses of block printing in art quilts. I have an itch to try carving some, and want to put them to use asap, so...

I thought about making a sort of diaper pattern (all-over texture, not the nappy sort), or doing a large piece and make it a whole cloth quilt. I have even thought of printing part of the design on one side, and a complementary part on the other side of the quilt sandwich, and then quilting both designs, so that the pattern becomes complete only though the quilting stitches themselves. Then that begs for a translucent batting so that the whole pattern can be viewed at one time, and...

Well, you can see the sorts of things my brain dreams up during the 4 AM feeding!

Anyone have any brilliant ideas on what I can do, art-quilt-wise, with three rolls of tin foil?