Making Stuff Makes Me Happy

Blue Holes on March 1, 2014

Rabbit, Rabbit for the first of March and the beginning of my 68^th year. There are aspects of blue between round, blurred-edged clouds above my curtains…and shocks of sun randomly shooting through. This is a month of many aspects, like me. 

Two sculptures taking shape on my north facing studio table

Yesterday I renewed my passport, just so I’ll be ready to go anywhere, even the 23 miles across the Strait to Victoria, BC. For the first time in years I put my occupation as Artist. Now I can afford to make the little money that most artists make…I’m not comfortable as a huckster…I see what it takes to be known, popular, comfortably wealthy. I sold my extra financial cushion ($1000 a month into forever) for two extra years of freedom now…and I won’t regret that. 

Where is my One? Starts to take shape...use the Good Stuff!

  I’ve been discarding previous commitments right and left, re-visiting my Myers-Briggs INTJ personality style…and as the women in my online Three-dimensional Doll Construction class from all points of the globe say: Nothing we create is truly original, we build from materials and ideas that evolved from others.  We are each a ball of swirling mist of many aspects and no lasting substance…and we find what joy we can in engaging with materials and ideas…and in recognizing each other and this glorious planet in the process.

Starting to take shape...over a period of months

So I will keep making things, reading things, learning things, cooking…Experiencing. There is no hierarchy of value, from quilts to sculptures, from the perfect grilled cheese to Beef Wellington (I haven’t tried that one yet). I write and read every day, and have for most of my life…at moments stringing glittering chains of words/ideas to fling out into the ether…or an image or combination of colors that makes me…and maybe you…stop and catch our breath.

Paperclay hand, painted with acrylic to coordinate with the ceramic face

Today I don’t even mind that my parents discouraged me from going to art school in 1965, because I was way too self-conscious to do any good work. I really had to make a living at whatever I learned in college…and now I DO NOT HAVE TO make a living, just a Life!!!! I can spend ALL my time making quilts and Fabric Journals if that’s what I enjoy, doing yoga, driving around, eating good stuff--as long as I don’t get overweight, because I don’t want the health risks from that. I DO NOT HAVE TO PROVE MYSELF ANY MORE…and I’m recovering myself from having to prove myself to ME…that dual nature/multiple nature without substance that gets me into mental difficulty. I like writing well enough for its own sake to just keep doing it…and reading. Read ALL of Brain Pickings and Alan Watts…the duality that subverts us. Did an essay on quitting my job, and the agony of trying to justify my existence when I am not required to.

Finished piece

 Sampling TED talks…SO MANY POSSIBILITIES~I just had to sit with myself and be patient. I’m getting into the groove, MY groove—no one else’s. Patience, and I see that I am putting out work, and I enjoy that. I wish I’d taken process photos of painting the Emerging 2 sculpture--went from dead white to stripes of mixed interference purple and peach, to covering the whole thing with a watered down peach/purple glaze to stroking with chalk in red, turquoise, tan, and smearing… looks like something made of stone, sort of…well, Enough. 

I can throw away healthcare emails with only a second’s thought now, soon none. I may not become renowned as an artist, but I am quite a bit happier. Patience with myself, and following my instincts to jettison what needs to go, emphasize what’s left…a distillation of the previous 67 years, and each moment fresh and new but built on my past.

All Art, All the Time!

 

Emerging 2