I Need a Remedy

My sweet friend from Alabama so clearly described a feeling for me one day. 

While talking about a funk she was in, she lightheartedly said, "Oh, I've got snakes in my head."

I loved that phrase on so many levels. 1) It was said with an Alabama accent, 

2) It so perfectly described the frustration of being in a funk, 

and 3) Snakes can be driven out. 

Instead of thinking about the blues as a lingering fog that stays with you indefinitely, 

the concept of snakes implies a temporary nuisance that will slither out rather quickly.

After years of struggling with fog issues, 

I have finally learned that making stuff helps me clear out the snakes. 

There is really no need to over-analyze a funk. 

Most of the time it is caused by something random that creeps along my path.

I don't try too hard to clear it out on my own, I just notice it and get busy with my hands. 

The snakes leave on their own while I am working.

The remarkable remedy drives them out.

The Junk Collector

When I was a girl, I was quite a junk collector. I saved every trinket I could find and 

traveled with my Junk Collection, an assortment of gumball machine toys, Cracker Jacks prizes, 

feathers, broken jewelry, and rocks delightfully housed in an old Pringles can. 

I still have trouble leaving sparkly bits and trinkets behind.

Thankfully the world of mixed media art has renamed junk and raised its status in doing so. Useless pieces of junk are now called "found objects." What was previously a greasy chicken sandwich wrapper found on the side of the road is now called "found paper." I love the new terms. 

They reflect the sense of mysterious good fortune I feel when I find something to save.

I like to find such objects and paper in junk mail, on the floor, and in the scrap pile left behind when I work on a project. Last Saturday I decided to tear all 

my found pieces into tiny bits and sew them together. These are some of my creations. 

 

Change Gears

 

I have had a quiet week because both children were at camp. With hours of precious solitude on my hands, I tried my hand at something new. For about a month, I've been thinking about making dreamy pieces using wire. Armed with wire cutters, pliers, and many spools of 20 gauge wire, I've been bending and snipping all week. When I work with something so detailed, I've got to have a diversion for my eyes. I need to look up and refocus every few minutes in order to let them rest.

 

My diversion this week was watching Art 21 episodes. Listening to artists talk about their lives, their work, and their ideas was incredibly inspirational. I realized that I need to slow down a bit and enjoy the process of making art, to ask more questions, to create more worlds with what I do. I don't need to trade in the car, just change gears.

In his now famous commencement speech to Stanford University, Steve Jobs talks about the importance of doing what you love. Setting all the carpe diem aside, I heard a specific message when I read this speech. The importance of change.

If what you are doing each day is not in line with what you love to do, make a change. Jobs doesn't say to throw it all out the door. He simply says, "change something." I think of driving a car. If you have run off the road, it is best to make a slight adjustment to your steering. Over-correcting can cause you to lose control of your car. (Unfortunately, I know this from experience.)

 

I'm not ready to make my wire sculptures public, but I am happy with what is happening. I will still get up day after day and empty the dishwasher and go to work and sweep up dog hair. But I will also change gears, turn around, and correct my steering every once in a while.

Where Did I Leave My Glasses?

Since turning 40 a year ago, I have noticed a sharp decline in my visual abilities. After a life of perfect vision, I am continually surprised that I cannot see the eye of a needle, the details of my husband's face when we kiss, and my armpits when I try to shave them in the shower. It is a humbling feeling to so vividly understand that something is shutting down in this machine of mine. Recently, I was even more humbled when I shopped for cheap reading glasses at the local junk store and stood near giggly teenagers wearing their short shorts and flip flops. It was like looking at my sister and me over twenty years ago. Peachy skin, tanned legs, carefree silliness. I felt quite moldy.

So now I find myself saying things like, "Now, where did I leave my glasses?" and "Let me get my glasses!" I have added a pause to my life. I can't just pick up a book and start reading 

or remove a splinter on the fly. I have to stop and get my glasses first. 

This is frustrating.

Somehow I know there is a message in all this. What am I supposed to learn from this experience? 

Enter Yoda. My children both have Yoda moments. These are moments when they speak nothing but truth that I need to hear. My 9 year old said something the other day that stuck with me. We were having breakfast and she said, "Mom, I don't understand that phrase about nothing being perfect. To me, life is perfect. We have a nice house and a good family and nice friends. Seems pretty perfect to me." 

 

She wasn't dreamy-eyed about it. She was quite matter-of-fact. 

I realized she was responding to a woman she knows 

who gripes and complains about what she doesn't have. 

I heard her message.

I think the new pause in my life is one that I need. 

It's time to question how I perceive what is in front of me. 

Do I really see it?

So now I have turned into one of those ladies who can never find her glasses. 

So far, they have never been on my head all along. 

But I know that day is coming.

Still a Happy Trash Picker

As a little girl, I regularly sat on the floor while my mom sewed. 

The floor was a magical spot, as it was covered with fabric and trim scraps. 

My sister and I crafted many purses, belts, and doll clothes in our younger years. 

Nowadays, I don't sit on the floor anymore, but I use the scraps from the floor in all my work. 

Tiny pieces of paper, fabric, trim, and even balls of discarded thread 

find their way into my collages and quilts. 

While I am scavenging the floors, my mind takes me back to being with my mom and my sister. 

I experience vivid memories of my mom's sewing machine humming away, 

an old western or Godzilla moving playing on the tiny black and white TV, 

and sweaty glasses of iced tea. 

Those little nuggets of memory make me happy. 

They connect me with my family and bring a sense of calm and confidence that I am in the right place.

Perhaps this is not the grand lesson my mom hoped to impart, but somehow 

I know that picking trash off the floor is what I am supposed to be doing.

Lesson from mom: Never underestimate the power of regular old life.

Art Among the Toilets

Cleaning the bathrooms is high on my list of least-favored activities. I know I could hire someone to do this, but I am plagued by some sort of deep-rooted sense of obligation to do it myself. Perhaps I know in my heart that I need to humble myself regularly. I wouldn't want to be getting too fancy here.

Today, I decided to break up the job into three parts and to create a series of mini-rewards to keep me motivated along the way. The three parts = the three bathrooms. The reward...art time. After each bathroom, I went into my studio, turned the music on and painted until I needed drying time. Then I turned the music off and moved on to the next bathroom. Once that bathroom was clean, I returned to the studio to work on the next collage layer until I needed to break for paint to dry again.

The whole experience was quite pleasant. By the time I finished the bathrooms, I ended up spending lots more time making art. The end result... clean bathrooms, a completed collage, and a happy me.

My husband even got in on the mini-rewards as he did yard work. His reward... beer.

Letterpress Class Blues

It is almost over. My letterpress class has almost ended and I am sad. 

I have become close friends with an old Vandercook machine. 

I learned how to set the type, register my image, and clean up all that ink.  

The scissors are printed using a linoleum block that I carved and have used when printing fabric. The lettering is set in metal type.

Metal Type

Wood Block Letters - notice the imperfections (which I like)

I have a new appreciation for letterpress printing, as it takes at least 30 minutes to get everything set up before you even start the machine. All the machines are at least 50  years old. They don't always run smoothly, they get wonky, and you  have to do lots of fiddling and finagling. For some reason this really appealed to me. Perhaps it is refreshing in this age of software to have to face problems relating to moving parts, gears, and true grease. It must be the farmer in my blood.